Page 67 of Roma Queen
“Change of plan, Patrin,” I say tightly. “We’re leaving. And we’re taking him with us.”
“No!” Shelta tries to get around me, tearing at my shirt, but for all her years of cold indifference, seeming so much larger than life, so much stronger and more powerful than me, it turns out that she’s week and feeble as can be; I think it comes as a surprise to both of us. I hold her at arm’s length, already pitying her for her fall from grace.
“Make up your fucking mind,” Patrin grouses, throwing Lazlo back over his shoulder. My mother sobs as he takes him and walks out of the motel room, down the stairs that lead into the parking lot. I pause in the doorway, searching her face, knowing this will be last time my mother and I are ever in the same room together.
“Don’t worry, Shelta. If you want to see him again, all you’ll have to do is turn on a television and watch the goddamn news.”
With that, I turn around and I go.
Thirty-Two
PASHA
Detective Holmes isnothing like I expected him to be. I assumed he’d be balding, overweight and dressed in a grease-stained trench coat like Columbo or something. When he flits out of the police station and jogs down the steps toward the Mustang, suddenly a guy my own age, wearing a leather jacket and scruffy, faded out jeans, like he just raidedmywardrobe, I’m thrown off balance a little. He climbs into the passenger seat and laughs softly when he notices Patrin looming ominously in the back.
“This isn’t a mob meet, gents. No need to get gung-ho on me.”
I rap my fingers against the steering wheel, pouting. “You’d know all about mob meets, huh, Holmes? Best friends with the Petrovs, I hear.”
Holmes clears his throat, bridging his hands together in his lap. “The Petrovs aren’t mob. They’re…the Petrovs. Now, I’m about to head home for the night, guys. Unless you do have something for me to sink my teeth into. If that’s the case, then get on with it.”
“We have him. The guy who took Corey Petrov,” I say. “He’s hurt a lot of people. Children. There was also a nun in New York a while back. We’ll give him to you, along with statements, evidence…the works.”
Holmes is staring at me now. Really paying attention. “And in return? You want a payday. The department doesn’t—”
“No. We want something far more complicated. We want two guys, Sammy and Jamus Rivin.”
“The Gypsy boys? The kids who robbed that bank?”
Patrin growls like a rabid dog in the back. I shoot him a warning look, then to Holmes I say, “They’reRoma. They need to walk.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? Never gonna happen. They held a bank up at gunpoint. That’s beyond Spokane PD’s jurisdiction altogether. They committed a federal crime. They’re gonna spend the next twenty to thirty years behind bars.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste our time continuing with this conversation. Good night, Detective.”
Holmes’ jaw flexes as he stares out of the windshield, scowling at the snow that’s started to fall. He has the eyes of a hawk. I get the feeling he sees everything. “You have no idea how hard it’ll be to accomplish what you’re asking,” he says.
“Hard’s better than the impossible you gave me two seconds ago. See, we’re already making headway.”
Holmes grunts. Thinks for a second. “There can be no guarantees here.”
“Shame. Because that’s exactly what we want. A guarantee that Sam and Jamus Rivin will be free men by the end of the week.”
I can feel Patrin’s eyes burning into the back of my head, but he keeps his mouth shut. I made him swear he wouldn’t say a goddamn word, and thus far he’s kept that promise. It’s killing him, though, I can tell.
Holmes huffs, forehead a mess of worry lines. “I’m gonna need more than the guy, then. I’m gonna need the money those kids took. The department never found it.”
“We have no idea where they hid it.”
“Not my problem. Forty grand and change. If your guys have any hope in hell of being cut loose, then that money needs to be on my desk by nine a.m. tomorrow morning, or this thing goes nowhere.”
“Fine. Then get it from Yuri Petrov.”
“Excuse me? Why the fuck would Yuri hand over forty K to bail out two kids he’s never met before?”
“Because that motherfuckerowesme. Actually, he owes Zara.”
“If this perp of yours is who you say he is, I’m going to cop enough flack from the Petrovs for not immediately handing him over to them for some Russian justice. The man killed Yuri’s fucking so—”
