Page 8 of Tied Over

She squinted at him. “Why do you care? He’s a low-level piece of—”

“He killed an ATF agent in a raid last week and went to ground.”

“Well, shit, you could have led with that,” Clark said, groaning, and sat back down.

The CPD officers had to step away then, and I stood up, shook both their hands, and thanked them for their help. Clark thanked them as well. Once they were gone, Crouse sat back down, closer to me, his knee wedged against mine.

“An associate of Burian’s talked to your boy in lockup.”

Clark and I both turned to Washington.

“Technically, yes,” he agreed, “but all he needed was some molly to smooth him out.”

“You got him ecstasy in jail?” Clark was horrified.

“Yes, but like I said, just enough to make sure he stopped climbing the walls and driving everybody nuts. I had no idea he’d come back to talk to me about my source.”

“Who’s the guy?” I asked him.

He grimaced. “Moses Laramie. I didn’t know he was mobbed up with Petrov. It’s all been a mess since the Lenkovs got busted. That family kept everyone else in line. Now shit has gone to shit, yanno?”

“I thought the Lenkovs weren’t in the drug business,” Clark questioned him.

“They weren’t, you’re right. But you also couldn’t deal or do anything they didn’t like in their territory and their territory was big.”

“I heard that,” I told him. “But let’s focus on you now, all right?”

He gave me a quick nod.

“So what does Petrov want from you? Is he after you playing middleman between your supplier and him?”

He looked like he was in pain.

“Yes?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I told them they’d have to wait for my resupply for me to get a message out.”

I directed my next question to Crouse. “I’m guessing you didn’t wanna wait once you found out they made contact?”

“No. I did not,” he said cheerfully. “We have Petrov’s entire world bugged and still had no idea where he was until suddenly we heard he was going to make a move on your supplier,” he said, refocusing on Washington, “we decided to make things happen.”

“Why don’t you just arrest Petrov for killing the ATF agent?” Washington asked.

“He told you already,” I answered. “He went to ground. They have no idea where he is.”

“But now we know who he wants to talk to,” Crouse threw out.

“Why does the FBI think Petrov will come out of hiding for Washington?” Clark sounded exhausted, and I understood. The machinations of the FBI were always tiring.

“Not for Washington, for his supplier,” Crouse clarified. “Petrov, along with everybody else, has been scrambling to fill the vacuum left by the Lenkov crime family since they were dismantled. They all want to be the one that takes over Chicago, but Petrov and his old man, they’re in a shit situation because of all of them, all the families, they’re the weakest. His family is all drugs and the sex trade and gun trafficking, whereas the Lenkovs—”

“Had senators on their payroll, we know,” I acknowledged, leaning forward to look at Washington. “They want to meet your supplier to kill him and take over his operation.”

“I’m confused,” Washington told me. “Since the Lenkovs weren’t in the drug business, and Petrov wants to be as big as them, why does he care about continuing with—”

“Because he can build collateral quickly with drugs,” I explained. “He needs a fast infusion of cash to make certain his family can compete with the others.”

“Okay, got it.”