Nothing Good by R. J. Piper

Author:R. J. Piper [Piper, R. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: R. J. Piper
Published: 2024-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Florida Man Joins Violent Spree; 3 Casualties

Rainy estimated that he had about five minutes before Parish would start to question his whereabouts, so he dug into the desk straightaway. There were stacks of papers secured by clips, printed memos, and a yellow legal pad with such enlightening shorthand missives as “call m” and “b street no.” Rainy rifled through them all, pausing only to adjust himself uncomfortably every few moments.

He’d done a fair job of wiping himself off with the towel, but he still felt sticky and awful in those horribly tight pants. If this was how Adler had felt after they’d done it in the multipurpose room, Rainy was starting to understand why he’d felt the urge to shoot him.

There was a locked file drawer in the bottom of the desk, which Rainy picked open efficiently with a pilfered paper clip. Inside was the good stuff—files on Parish’s holdings at the docks. Everything was legit, stamped with the letterheads of real, heavyweight property law firms, not legacy mob attorneys like Lina. Parish’s was the kind of empire that was ironclad to everyone below his class. You couldn’t touch him without pulling strings higher than the ones he already had looped up in his hands.

But Rainy had once been a rising star in the Espinosa ranks, and he may not have understood arcane contract law, but he did know illegal shit when he saw it. And he saw it all over—off-the-books ledgers with the names of suppliers he recognized, shady contractors, bribes. Very much the Espinosas’ bread and butter.

Folded inside one envelope was a map of Parish’s holdings on the docks, marked up in ballpoint shorthand. Off-the-books storage, the kind you couldn’t register with the port authority. Rainy puffed out an impressed breath and snapped a photo with his phone.

Seong’s presence in Miami had clearly emboldened Parish to press Emilio. That meant that he was afraid of Seong’s connections in a way that he hadn’t been afraid of Emilio’s. And yet, Adler was here to spy on him, which meant that the two weren’t working together. So Seong wasn’t really a big enough threat for Parish to bargain with him. He was the inverse of Emilio—all connections, no brute force.

A delicate spiderweb of an idea began to spin itself into existence in the corner of his mind.

The door swung open on oiled-silent hinges and light leaped across the room, framing Rainy in a damning square of yellow. He jumped and, childishly, shoved the folded paper back into the drawer.

Adler closed the door behind himself, expression flat and humorless in a way that was all the worse because Rainy had now witnessed him displaying actual human emotion. He was still conspicuously unbuttoned, his tie loose. He folded his arms.

“Real subtle,” he said. “Don’t worry; I kicked a rug over the skid marks you left on the floor.”

Rainy now found out what his body did without Parish there to keep him in check. He darted across the room and slammed Adler against the wall.

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