it, were the true untouchables. They couldn't be bought. They couldn't be reasoned with. They were zealots. They ran a lot of smaller dealers out of business, ran a lot of newcomers straight back out of town. The bigger dealers-the Cheese Olamons, the Winter Hill gang types, the Italians, and the Chinese-pretty soon started factoring in these raids as the price of doing business, and ultimately, because the whole drug business went into a downswing, and because the raids never proved all that much more effective than anything else, the unit was rumored to have been disbanded."
"And Broussard and Poole transferred to CAC."
He nodded. "Some other guys did, too, or stayed in Narcotics, or transferred to Vice or Warrants, what have you. But Cheese Olamon never forgot. And he never forgave. He swore that one day he'd get Broussard."
"Why Broussard and not the other guys?"
"According to Pharaoh, Cheese felt personally insulted by Broussard. It wasn't just the burning of his product, it was that Broussard taunted him while they did it, embarrassed him in front of his men. Cheese took that to heart."
Angie lit a cigarette, held out the pack to Ryerson.
He looked at his cigar, back at the sign that told him he couldn't smoke it, and said, "Sure. Why not?"
He smoked the cigarette like a cigar, not really inhaling, just puffing, allowing the smoke to roll around on his tongue for a moment before exhaling it.
"Last autumn," he said, "Pharaoh makes contact with me. We meet, and he says Cheese has something on that cop from a few years back. Cheese, he promises me, is playing Payback's a Bitch, and Mullen has intimated to Pharaoh that everyone who was in that warehouse that night and had to sit by and be humiliated while Broussard and his boys burned the coke and laughed in their faces is going to enjoy this one. Now, besides everything else, I'm a little confused why Mullen and Pharaoh are suddenly so chummy that Mullen would intimate anything to him. Pharaoh gives me this bygones-be-bygones shit, but I don't buy it. I figure there's only one thing Pharaoh and Chris Mullen would bond over, and that's greed."
"So there was a palace coup in the works," I said.
He nodded. "Unfortunately for Pharaoh, Cheese got wind of it."
"So what did Cheese have on Broussard?" Angie said.
"Pharaoh never told me. Claimed Mullen wouldn't say. Said it would ruin the surprise. The last word I ever got from Pharaoh was the afternoon of the night he died. He told me he and Mullen had been dragging cops all over the city the last few days, and that night they were going to collect two hundred grand, humiliate the cop, and go home. And as soon as that was done, and Pharaoh could figure what it was exactly that the cop had done, he was going to rat him and Mullen out to me, give me the biggest collar of my career, and then I'd be off his back for good. Or so he hoped." Ryerson stubbed out his cigarette. "We know the rest."
Angie gave him a confused frown. "We don't know anything. Shit. Agent Ryerson, have you come up with any sort of theory as to how Amanda McCready's disappearance plays into all this?"
He shrugged. "Maybe Broussard kidnapped her himself."
"Why?" I said. "He just woke up one day, decided he wanted to kidnap a child?"
"I've heard of weirder things." He leaned into the table. "Look, Cheese had something on him. So, what was it? Everything keeps coming back to that little girl's vanishing. So let's look at it. Broussard kidnaps her, maybe as a way to force the mother's hand, come up with the two hundred grand Pharaoh told me she embezzled from Cheese."
"Wait a second," I said. "This has bothered me forever: Why didn't Cheese send Mullen to beat the location of the stolen money out of Helene and Ray Likanski months before Amanda disappeared?"
"Because Cheese didn't find out about the scam until the day Amanda disappeared."
"What?"
He nodded. "The beauty of Likanski's scam-while shortsighted, I admit-was that he knew everyone would assume the money was impounded along with the bikers and the drugs. It took Cheese three months to find out the truth. The day he did was the same day Amanda McCready disappeared."
"So," Angie said, "that points to Mullen being the kidnapper."
He shook his head. "I don't buy it. I think Mullen or someone working for Cheese went to Helene's that night to fuck her up