“Go ahead,” Lance sneered. “It isn’t illegal to dance.”
Marlow smiled faintly. “But the placewillbe shut down for a week—or more—if I tell them I’m sure there’s something to find. And I came up under Piper, so if I’m sure I can find something? I know how to be sure I find it.”
Doubt flickered over Lance’s face. He sat down hard, as if his knees had given way under him, and Marlow let go of his wrist. Lance sat back and rubbed his wrist as if Marlow had gripped him hard enough to hurt.
“Piper didn’t send you,” he said. “He made sure I don’t know shit about that stuff anyhow.”
“So what’s the money for, then?” Marlow asked. Cade gave him an irritated look. He’d been ready to edit the plan; Marlow had just ripped it up entirely. Marlow hitched a shoulder in response and pointed out, “He knows we’re not working for Piper. Might as well cut to the chase.”
“Run errands,” Lance said. “Spy on his ex-wife, deliver messages. That sort of thing. Give the big hero something to feel good about while he’s locked up.”
The mix of gratitude and resentment that twisted through Lance’s words was acidic. It might be useful too.
“What?” Cade asked. “Don’t tell me he still expects you to grovel just because he saved your life once?”
Lance stared at him for a second and then twisted his mouth into a bleak grimace of a smile. The music dropped in volume as the redhead grabbed the last notes from a customer’s hand and hopped off the stage. The music cut out, and a bored voice introduced the next dancer. She took the stage to a remix of what sounded like choral music and Madonna, all wild curls and aggressive hip action.
“That’s his version, yeah,” Lance said. “Maybe I don’t remember it the same way. In my version, I might just get what I’m due.”
“What is your version?” Marlow asked.
Lance looked up, honest surprise on his face for a moment. “You know what, no one ever asked that before. Not back then. Not since.”
“And?” Cade asked.
It took a moment, but finally, Lance shrugged. His voice softened, the rough edges burred off the words as he remembered. He sounded younger.
“I’ve heard the story he tells, and it’s pretty much true. Close enough that no one ever questioned it. Except he’s the one who froze, who freaked out. I was the one who dragged the wolf out the front door and managed to get back inside to pass out in the hallway. By the time I woke up in the hospital, though, Piper had told his version of the story to everyone. He got to be the hero, and I got this.”
Lance dragged his thumb along his jaw, just under the uneven, roughly raised scar.
The part of Cade that wasn’t entirely sure how Marlow had felt about Piper—once upon a time before the murder attempt—reveled in the revised story. So, Piper wasn’t a good cop who’d made some bad choices; he’d always been an asshole.
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“Couple of people. No one believed me. I was just some music nerd, and Piper already looked the part.”
“The other kids—” Marlow started to ask.
“Didn’t see anything or didn’t want to get involved. The only one who could have corroborated was Raymond—the wolf—and he obviously didn’t remember anything after it started.” Lance looked bitter for a second and then shrugged. “It didn’t matter anyhow. Not like being called a hero in the paper would make my eye grow back. Piper could have it.”
“And he paid for the privilege?”
“Not till it went down with him shooting that rookie.” Lance picked a chip from the bowl and broke it between his fingers. “I guess prison worked, made him think about everything he’d done wrong. The people he’d done wrong. First time I’d heard from him in years. So, you want something on Piper? You’re talking to the wrong guy. All I know about him is how much he’ll pay to feel like the big man.”
He was wrong. Or maybe just lying.
Piper had run his racket out of the heart of the SDPD’s Night Shift for years without a single complaint or flag on his file. That wasn’t the sort of man to be suddenly overcome with regret. Never mind that there were plenty of people who should have been ahead of Lance on the amends list. Marlow for a start.
No. The reason that money dropped into Lance’s account every month wasn’t altruistic; it was self-serving. Lance was someone that no one had any reason to tie to Piper’s racket and who was bitter enough to accept the idea that his payday was “reparations” without any questions.
Errands. Messages. The ex.
Cade got his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a picture of Maria. He turned it around to show Lance.
“Do you know her?”
Lance glanced at the photo and then back at Cade, his face set in a studiously blank expression.
