She told them she was taking the rest of the night — paperwork to finish, or a cold to sleep off, whatever line would keep Sergeant Rhodes from asking too many questions. Rhodes believed what he needed to believe: that keeping Alice in the game was cheaper than losing her results.
Alice lied well.
The city smelled like diesel and old rain as she stepped out into the night. Streetlamps pooled orange on the sidewalks, and steam rose from manholes in ghostly threads. She kept her coat pulled high, the collar against the damp, the burner phone warm in her palm like an accusation.
She had directions, not addresses. An hour earlier she'd taken the number from the evidence bag and run it through a half-dozen dark places: faded leads, a ghost CI, two old hustlers who owed their lives to favours she'd never write down. One of them — his name was Lenny, a bend-in-the-law kind of guy who kept hearing for a living — sent her coordinates. Pier 21. A dead satellite of a pier off the river, boarded and quiet unless someone wanted to make something disappear.
She turned off her phone's visible traces, put the burner into aeroplane mode, then tucked it into her jacket. Alice didn't need GPS pinging her to death. She could find the place by the city's breath: the direction of the wind, the thump of distant freight. She walked like somebody who belonged in alleys.
The pier smelled of oil and fish guts and forgotten things. Shipping containers bristled like stacked tombs. She moved in the dark where the cranes made safe shadows and scanned lines of shipping codes for oddities. At the far end, a light blinked — a handheld lamp, the meter of older men fifty yards away. Two silhouettes leaned over a crate. One had the gait of a man who'd served time; the other stood like a lookout.
She watched them for a long beat and then moved. No sirens, no police lights, just the wet slap of her soles on rotting wood.
"Easy, boss," a voice warned before she was close enough to be a problem. A man stepped out with his hands up, bleached hair and a face burned by cheap whiskey. He was older than she expected and looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.
"Lenny?" she said.
He blinked. "Detective Pierce. Didn't expect you."
"You sent me the coordinates."
He shrugged. "I sent you a rumour. You sent yourself." He glanced behind her, toward the two men bent over the crate. "That ain't for cop work."
"Is anything I do ever for cop work?" she asked.
He had the grace to look guilty. "Look, I didn't know they were gonna—"
"What did you know?"
He fumbled with a cigarette then gave up and stuffed it back. "They get work from the Broker. Small things, big things — depends on the day. Cash under the table. Burners. Sometimes bodies. They say the Broker don't show his face. Just orders."
Alice nodded like she hadn't heard any of it a thousand times. The silhouettes finished whatever business they were doing and straightened. One of them walked toward the edge of the pier, looked out at the river, then turned and took a step toward the containers. The other glanced around and started to move off. Habit told Alice: follow the one who left the line of sight.
She kept low, shadow to shadow, until she was within whispering distance of the man who'd moved away. He wove between containers, light catching on a small pendant at his throat — a crude circle with three slashes etched inside. She didn't think. She acted.
A hand on his shoulder, a twist, a cuff. Her other hand was on his phone before he could drop it. "Name," she said.
He spat words like a mouthful of gravel. "You got no warrant, lady—"
"Name," she repeated.
"Jonas. Jonas Reed." His voice shook. "I do nights. I do cash. I don't—" He swallowed. "I don't kill."
She looked at the pendant again. Etched, worn. Not a tattoo. A brand, maybe. Family gear, initiation. She slid the burner from his pocket, thumbed power off, and palmed it into her coat. Old training told her to bring him in. New habits told her to keep him talking.
"You work for the Broker?"
He stared at her like she'd lost a screw. "No. I do trucks sometimes. I do loading. You think I know Broker? No. He got runners. He got brokers." He laughed, a broken sound. "You gonna let me go now? I got kids."
Alice's face tightened. That always worked; she'd heard it on repeat. "Where does the runner meet the Broker's people?"
Jonas' eyes flicked to the water like he could see the Broker waiting with a ledger. "Pier 47," he said. "That's where the last meet was. But I ain't been involved in that." He swallowed hard. "Don't make me go to jail, lady."
She thought of the picture in her pocket: Marcus in a crowd. Laughing. Alive. A day-old phantom of possibility. She thought of the pendant, the mark cutting a clean line through the city's recent blood. She thought of the message on the burner: *We warned you once. Now we're watching.*
"You're not going to jail tonight," she said. "You are, however, going to tell me everything you know about Pier 47 and the men who run the pickups."
He gave her a list between one breath and the next: names of trucks, shifts, a crooked foreman who liked to get paid in whiskey and quiet, a cell number that rarely stayed on for long. He could be lying; he could be afraid; he could be the most honest man in the harbour. None of that mattered. He had the smell of truth enough to follow.
Alice left him there with a cigarette and a cigarette lighter and told no one. Back at the car she put the burner phone up to her ear, lit it, and texted a single question to a number she'd never save in any official place: *Pier 47. Who's the foreman?*
The reply came back in two minutes: *MARTIN'S. Clean up crew. Ask at the docks—ask for Obed. Say you're from Lenny. Pay cash.*
Her palms went slick. The name hit like a fist. Martin. Not the first time she'd heard it, but until now it had been a rumour made of whispers. The Martins were a rumour with teeth—an old network that cut into the city's marrow. Marcus had been one of them. The name felt like a lock clicking shut on possibility.
She should have gone back to the precinct. She should have phoned Ortega and waited for his steady voice to tell her to be smart. Instead, she drove deeper into the harbour, into the places where white vans moved like vultures and men traded in favours with a handshake.
Obed worked at a greasy lot behind an auto-body shop, a squat man with forearms like tree trunks and a permanent scowl. He greeted her with a nod that didn't quite reach his eyes and a handshake that smelled faintly of oil and fear.
"You Lenny's girl?" he said.
"Something like that." She handed him cash without asking what for. "You do cleanups for the Martins?"
He stared at the bills then back at her. "What's it to you?"
"Curiosity," she said. "And I need a favour. Names. Trucks. Times."
He watched her through a beat, then shrugged. "You're bold, lady. A lot of trouble in it for you."
"I've got a lot invested in trouble."
He laughed once, harshly. "Name a time and place, I'll give you a name." He started listing: the docks where they preferred to unload, a bar where drivers counted their money, the number of a man who could move a crate without asking too many questions. Little things that built into larger pictures: the Martins had runners, a clean-up crew, people who made things vanish.
Alice left with a folder of names and a phone that hummed like a live wire in her hand. She'd promised herself she'd stay off the books tonight, but she'd come back with too much to keep secret. There was a list, a map in her head: Pier 47, the foreman Obed, trucks with plates that never matched their VINs, a phone chain that started with burners and ended with orders.
Driving home, the city uncoiled around her like something half asleep. Her apartment smelled of stale coffee and the ghost of last night's whiskey. She stood at the window, looking down at the street where a single car idled for a long moment before pulling away into the dark. She thought of Jonas, the pendant, the men at the pier, Obed's greasy handshake.
She'd walked into a place where the Martins were more than rumour. She'd found the faint groove of their hand in the city's belly. She'd kept the burner, the envelope, and the photo — things that could get her indicted or killed — because evidence is only as good as the person willing to use it.
The phone vibrated. A new message, from an unknown number: *Careful who you collect for, Detective.* She didn't answer.
She dropped into a chair and opened the envelope again. Marcus's smile looked softer in the dim lamp. For a long time, she simply watched it, letting the city's distant noise fill the room.
She set the burner on the table and pulled out the little pendant from her pocket — the circle and slashes glinting cold in her palm. Her thumb traced the grooves. The Martins were a rumour no longer. They were a map with an X that put her in the centre.
She didn't pretend to be afraid. She had better things to do. She made a note instead: find the Broker. Find who ordered the cleanups. Find the man who used her father's face like bait.
For the first time in years, she felt the old training line up behind her — the small things, the details, the habit of watching not to be the one watched. The city breathed around her, hungry, patient. She breathed with it.
And then she went to work.