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I’d sent Eddie out on that.
Son of a bitch… that’s why the DEA didn’t raid us that night – because Eddie knew it was bullshit from the get-go.
GOD DAMN IT.
But that made me think of something else.
Venus called two numbers – that 213 area code, and then that 310 number from the phone company records.
What if those numbers were to cell phones that Eddie had? Cell phones that might be somewhere in this house?
They’d been disconnected when I’d called them before. I doubted anything would come of it, but what did I have to lose?
I scrolled through my Contact list and found the number I’d saved almost a year ago under ‘DEA?’
I was about to hit dial when I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to call the DEA directly while I was standing inside one of their undercover agents’ house.
I hoped that wasn’t the case, but… shit. I was becoming less and less certain by the minute.
I went back to the kitchen and picked up the wall telephone with the spiral cord. There was a dial tone.
I dialed the 213 number and listened for the sound of a cell phone ringing in the house.
Nothing –
And then my heart skipped a beat as someone answered.
“Hello, and welcome to Annie’s Florist Shop. We’re busy right now, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll get right back to you!”
That didn’t make sense. A machine right off the bat, when it was three in the afternoon on a weekday?
Then something else surfaced in my memory: Jack telling me about the phone call Venus had made.
Their front is a florist shop in Los Angeles. She left a message, said Venus the stripper was calling, and for Robert Smith to call her back.
They’d turned the number back on.
Maybe they’d turned the 310 number back on, too.
I clicked the hang-up button on the wall telephone, then scrolled through the pictures on my cell until I found the photo of Venus’s contacts from a year ago. I dialed that number, too, and waited, listening for some sort of ring tone in the empty house.
None came – but after the fifth ring, another machine picked up.
“Thank you for calling the offices of Westside Dentistry. No one can come to the phone right now, but please leave a message and we’ll call you as soon as possible.”
Different voice, different message – but again, it was three o’clock in the goddamn afternoon. What dentist office is closed at three on a weekday?
I hung up the phone and pondered my next move.
If I showed up at the meeting, I could confront Eddie… but with what? There wasn’t shit around here to incriminate him. I suppose I could railroad him, get the other guys riled up against him – but what if I was wrong? I was fine framing Fiona, especially since she’d been trying to fuck me over with her playing detective. But I sure as hell didn’t want to lose a good soldier for bullshit reasons.
Say he was DEA, though. If I tipped my hand and let him know that I suspected him, but didn’t do anything about it, I’d never catch him again. This was my one and only chance.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see any way forward –
And then suddenly the wall telephone rang.
I froze, freaked out as shit.
