Caller: This all should have been handled months ago. This was Oscar Tierney
playing games. The man is a menace.
Host: I know Eddie. Tierney has not played this well. He’s alienated the best
quarterback in football, fans and the team looks bad here.
Reilly took his exit and worked his way to his house with little traffic this time of
night. He hoped she was still there. Maybe slip into bed beside her. Not wake her up.
Have “the talk” tomorrow. Maybe not even have the talk. Yea, right.
He looked at the dashboard clock, 1:04 AM. He drove the car into the driveway. The
house was dark, the street deserted. Hit the garage door opener and pulled the Vette in.
Gathered up his stuff from the passenger seat and opened the car door. Put his foot on the
ground to climb out.
He never saw who put two in the back of his head.
Chapter 1 – Two Months Earlier
You never get a good call at 4 AM. “It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that
matter,” Marlene Dietrich said. I’m looking for no new friends at this point. 4 AM calls
are always bad news. “Hey Tommy, you just won the lottery”. No one calls you at four to
tell you something good. I get more than my share of 4 AM calls. I consider myself an
expert on 4 AM calls. I’d been sleeping, maybe a half an hour, when I got it this time.
“Mr. Mullins, it’s Torley.” Torley worked for me as an IT expert and sometimes did
investigative work even though he’s not licensed when we’re short handed, which we are
all the time.
“Torley.” That’s all I could manage.
“My wife is having the baby, Mr. Mullins. I have to get to the hospital. I can’t stay
on this guy. What do you want me to do? Take the van?”
I’m drawing a blank trying to figure out what he was talking about. I said, “The
van?” The brandy I had thrown down wasn’t helping.
Torley went back to square one. “I’m on surveillance, watching this dickhead,
Hinton. We’ve been on him for the last 3 days. Jose Penna is in Sacramento. We got no
one to cover. I got a personal emergency here, Mr. Mullins. No one else around to take
over. You want me to leave or can you cover?”
Brain begins to engage. Hinton was a suspect in a murder investigation. The agency
was working for the guy who was sitting in jail for it. Our client was a shitbag dealer who
had been paying us at double time to try and nail this guy Hinton, who the dealer said had
to have done it. “I guess I’ll have to come out and sit on him.” Tough blowing off
something when you’re supposed to be the boss. It’s my detective agency. I own it with
my Aunt, Velma Schwarz. She’s not really my Aunt she’s my Godmother. She’s 74 and
looking to retire so it’s mostly been me running the show lately.
“You want I should call Roger, Mr. Mullins?” Torley asked.
“Why?”
“He knows the equipment,” Torley said.
“Oh.” The surveillance equipment in the van was complicated and not my strong
suit. I closed my eyes and said nothing.
After a minute, Torley pleaded, “I gotta go, Mr. Mullins. What do you want me to
do?”
