I was in the van with three men in the back with me and one driver up front. Two were seated on benches on either side.
But the third was right in front of me, crouching down on his haunches. It was him.
“Nice to finally meet you in a more… informal… setting, ADA Branigan. It’s hard for everyone to relax and let their hair down in court, don’t you find?”
“What do you want, Larroca?” I hoped I sounded as defiant as I pretended.
He laughed then, a coarse, harsh sound. It was louder than it should have been and longer than it should have been. I looked to the men on either side, who looked back with stone faces. No expression of any kind. May as well have been robots.
“What do I want,” he said, smirking like a jackal that just caught a rabbit. “Well now, that’s the question, isn’t it? And so many possible answers to that. What do I want?”
He giggled slightly then, in a way that I found unsettling. What was going on here?
“If this is to threaten me or make me feel small—” I began but he cut me off before I could go any farther.
“Make you feel small? I doubt that is even possible, counselor. Doubt it’s even possible. After all you’ve accomplished? I suspect that you rarely, if ever, feel small. Unless you’re standing next to Shaquille O’Neal,” he erupted into another burst of truly bizarre laughter.
Whatever I expected from Larroca, this wasn’t it. And it unsettled me.
“But let me tell you this, Theresa… can I call you Theresa? You don’t mind, do you? I feel like we’ve known each other for so long, what can it hurt, am I right?” He reached out and lightly clapped me on the shoulder then, like an old college buddy would. I felt my skin crawl at his touch.
“What can it hurt,” I echoed back to him carefully. I didn’t want to upset this very carefully calibrated apple cart. One wrong move, I could feel, and the whole thing would come crashing down.
And I suspected Larroca wouldn’t be too interested in being delicate then.
“Good, I’m glad you feel that way,” he grinned. “I have to tell you, Theresa, I’m very impressed at what you managed to accomplish. When all this started, with me and you, I thought you were just a fly in the ointment, you know? Something that could be swatted away. A burr in the saddle, so to speak.”
Likes his metaphors, this guy, I thought.
“But now I know you’re much, much more than that. You’re a monkey wrench in the works, aren’t you? Something that has the potential to truly derail all my plans. And that’s really not something I can allow. You understand that, I’m sure. Being as intelligent as you are.”
“I understand,” I said simply. Best to just play along for now. Until I could figure out my next move.
“You’ve proven to be so much trouble in fact that I have been forced to push back a contract. The one on Councilman Terry Hayes. Because of your constant interference, I’ve been made to reach out to my client and apologize for the delay in completing the assignment. And now, you understand, delaying a contract is something I never do. I mean, not once in the whole of my career. Now, thanks to you, I’ve been made to do that.”
“Well, at least I’ve made an impression on you,” I smirked. It was probably a dumb thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself in the moment and it felt good to say.
He leaned in close to me then. I could smell his breath. Peppermint, with something sour underneath it. It was slightly sickening. “That you have, counselor, that you have,” he said. “Sadly for you, it wasn’t the best impression one could make. In point of fact, I’d say it was the worst possible impression one could make. Incredibly annoying. Amazingly foolish. Impossibly angering.”
“Is ‘angering’ a word?” I asked and that’s when he whipped out a gun, so fast I didn’t even see him move.
He pressed the barrel against my forehead and there was probably going to be a tight little circle-shaped bruise on me as a result.
“Here’s a word I wonder if you know: annihilation. You familiar with that one? I’m a fan of it. How it sounds, how it’s spelled, what it does, know what I mean, counselor?”
I had no idea how to respond. I froze. Which is probably what saved my life, in many ways. If my smart mouth had gotten the better of me again, I don’t doubt that he would’ve killed me right then and there.
“But luckily for you, that’s not on the menu today. Not yet, anyway. I’m looking to get some information from you first. Let’s see if we can’t find a way to help each out, right? What do you say, Theresa? That sounds better than me blowing a channel through that pretty little head of yours, don’t you think? Fun though that may be.”
Well, if I wasn’t sure before, I sure was now. Larroca was insane. Fully and truly insane. And I needed to watch my step and find a way out of this mess.
…if there was a way out to be found…
14
The Fixer
The van was slowly weaving its way through the city, apparently not in a hurry of any kind. That was good, as far as I was concerned.
Moving slowly meant they weren’t alarmed and hadn’t made that they were being tailed yet. And I doubted that I was on their radar anyway. As far as I knew at this point, I wasn’t. Which was how I preferred it.
I had some dealings with Larroca in the past—indirectly really. We had passed each other a few times, intersecting orbits, one might say.
There were a few clients I’ve had over the years whose paths had crossed his, usually because someone close to them had been taken out by Larroca or his cronies.
The truth about him, Larroca was this: he didn’t give a damn about money or anything else. He liked murder. He was a serial killer who happened to get paid for his actions. I think it got him off, more than anything else. He enjoyed killing. That’s what made him so hard to predict.
Men who did things for thrills are motivated by entirely different circumstances than people doing it for money, doing it for honor, doing it for revenge.
Thrill killers do it… well… for the thrill. And what gives them that thrill can vary from situation to situation.
It didn’t help that on top of all psychopathy, Larroca was also as sharp as a knife, with a dark intelligence backing up his every decision.
He was a predator, in other words. In a world made mostly of sheep.
Luckily… I was a predator myself. And I was hunting my latest prey even now.
I tried not to worry about Theresa, but thoughts about her being hurt, abused, etc… they crept into my mind, no matter how much I pushed them back.
Which said to me that ADA Branigan perhaps mattered more to me than I was willing to let on. Even to myself.
I knew she could handle herself and in almost any other scenario, I wouldn’t be concerned at all. The opposite, in fact. I’d be more worried about the person holding her against her will.
But Larroca wasn’t anyone. And Theresa had managed to get closer to putting him away than anyone else ever had, or had even come close to doing. If there was something I was sure of, it was that Larroca was rattled by that. He had to be.
After years of being untouchable and untraceable, to be so close to being taken down, by a female assistant district attorney no less, was sure to put him on edge.