V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone 22)

Dante sorted through Talia’s objections and picked one. “She wondered about the weight gain. She thought a pregnancy would be hard on you.”

“And?”

“She might have a point. I worry about you.”

“I know you do and you’re a sweet guy. You can tell her the baby’s a nonissue. I haven’t had a period for a year. She’ll be tickled to death.”

“Let’s not talk about that now. We have time once you get healthy again.”

“Ha.”

“You know there’s help out there if you’re interested.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, matching her step to his. “That’s what I love about you. You never give up hope. You think if you keep at it long enough, everything will turn out all right.”

“You don’t see it that way?”

“Here’s my view: I think this relationship has run its course. I’m releasing you from any sense of obligation because that’s the only thing keeping you here. The rest has been gone for a long time.”

Dante squeezed her shoulder, but he had no reply. There was a time when the remark would have cut him to the core. Now his thoughts reverted to Nora with a flicker of joy.

He drove Cappi to the Allied Distributors warehouse in Colgate to the shipping and receiving department. Pop had acquired the brick-and-frame complex in the days when he was running booze. Dante had adapted the structure for his purposes, expanding the square footage by incorporating a prefab steel addition across the front. The mechanicals were below ground, a largely unfinished area that Pop had always referred to as the catacombs. Dante suspected there were actually more than a few bodies buried there. He’d take a flashlight down and explore the space from time to time, occasionally coming across dusty cases of whiskey and gin tucked away in the odd corner.

As the two walked from the parking lot to the loading dock, Dante filled him in on the basics. “Audrey was a trotter, the middleman between the whips and the baggers. She covered the tricounties, coordinating the central coast operation with San Francisco and points north. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have been on the scene, but one of our pickers was arrested on a bad check charge and she was filling in. You tossed her off the bridge and the entire circuit was thrown into disarray. We’re still scrambling for coverage.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Cut the whining. I’m done hassling you on that score. You fucked up big-time. You should’ve asked, but we’ll leave it at that. I’m trying to get you to understand how the system works. That’s what you’re so hot to hear about, right?”

“Well, yeah. If you want me to be useful.”

“All right. So the trotters pay the pickers for a day’s work, usually runs about three grand in cash. The goods are called ‘the crop’ or ‘the bale,’ sometimes ‘the bag.’ Workers we call ‘crop dusters’ strip tags and remove identifying marks. They meet every couple of weeks.”

“Where?”

“Couple of places we rent. There’s a regular route we call ‘the tour.’ The guys who drive it, we call ‘cabbies.’ Don’t worry about job titles. I know it’s a lot to take in. It’s a tight fit. Take out any one of the players and you got a problem on your hands.”

“How many people are we talking about?”

“Enough. We make sure each crew knows as little as possible about the other crews so if there’s a breakdown, no one’s in a position to expose the rest. Eventually, the crop comes off the circuit and lands here for distribution.”

“To where?”

“That depends. San Pedro. Corpus Christi. Miami. At every point along the way, the crop’s passing through the hands of people I know I can trust. Doesn’t always work that way here. This is the current trouble spot. We’ve been hit twice. Last week, someone walked off with a pallet of pharmaceuticals. Now we’re short cartons of infant formula. I can’t even get a count on that. I thought it was a clerical error, someone puts a decimal in the wrong place and it throws everything off. This’s not a paper loss.”

“Somebody’s stealing from us? You gotta be kidding.”

“We don’t recruit help from vacation Bible schools. Point is, we have to limit access to the loading docks. This is the area where we’re most vulnerable. Guys come out for a smoke and end up hanging around. It doesn’t look like they’re doing much, but they’ve got no business being here. We’re initiating new oversight procedures, which is where you come in.”