I know that tone of voice. Brody is in trouble, and he doesn’t realize it yet.
“I meant to ask,” Ernesto continues. “Who did kill Sofia?”
I sit bolt upright, my breath catching in my throat.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“You got it done, and I was grateful, but I never found out who you hired for me. Who was it?”
Brody starts laughing. “That’s the funny thing. I was still working out who to pay off when it clicked in my head.”
“What did?”
“I had this dealer I brought in, and it turned out she was one of his clients.”
“So what?”
“So she owed him money, and she hadn’t been paying for long enough that he wanted to send a message out about what happens when you don’t pay him for your stuff. Want to know his name?”
“Go on.”
“Oswald Lewis. Small world, isn’t it?”
“You sent him to do it?”
“I didn’t do anything like that. I simply told him her address and made sure he made bail. Told him the charges would be dropped as long as he ensured he got them both. The son of a bitch was too wired to pay me any attention. When he got there, Hunter was in the bathroom, and he forgot about him. Just went crazy with her but never made a fucking sound while he was doing it. Cut her throat with the first blow and nicked her vocal cords. She tried to scream, according to him, but nothing came out. Said it was kind of funny to see. Anyway, he got out of there and returned to me, but he’d thrown the knife, and Hunter was still alive.”
“There was me thinking you loved Sofia.”
“I did, and that’s why I was happy to kill her. I loved her, and she picked that son of a bitch to marry? I’d have slit her fucking throat myself for the insult. No one rejects me and gets away with it, am I right?”
“You’d a fucked up bastard, Brody, but so am I.”
I sit perfectly still, glad the tape is recording all this. At least I know what happened to Sofia now. That’s something. A strange weight has lifted from me. I know who killed her, and justice was served. Her killer is dead. Except Brody hired the killer. He needs to pay for what he did.
I tune back in. Brody’s talking again. “Two witness statements will send Hunter down for good. Commission won’t kill you for killing him. We’re all good to go. Partners, right?”
Ernesto pauses for a second. “The thing is,” he begins, and I know that tone. It’s the tone he used just after he beat my dog to death when I was eight.
“The thing is,” he said back then. “It shit in my room. What was I supposed to do?”
The same tone of voice now, and I tense up. Something’s about to happen, and I can guess what. “The thing is, I wanted you to frame my brother for his first wife’s death, and you couldn’t manage that.”
“No, but we got him now.”
“And I asked you to frame him for killing Oswald, but you couldn’t manage that either.”
“It’s not my fault the lab couldn’t match the DNA. I tried to change the results, but they were already locked into the system.”
“My DNA was found on the knife that killed Oswald. I had to pay a lot of money to sort that out.”
“Not my fault you didn’t clean it properly.”
“Had to pay a lot to get those witness statements. Because it’s not your fifty grand you offered them, is it? It’s mine?”
“So what? We’re going to make so much with this new setup we can wipe our asses on fifty grand.”
“The thing is, you have to look after the pennies to build up the big bucks. I paid you to set my brother up, and you haven’t managed to do it. He’s still walking around free as a bird.”