He picked it up, looked at the screen, and his expression did the thing it had done earlier, that careful deliberate neutralizing that meant incoming information. He answered. He listened. His eyes moved to Mike.
His hand holding the phone lowered slightly at the end of the call. "Talk to me." Mike said. "Sully's confirmed delivery." Bobby said, and paused. "Velasquez took the call personally.
Sully said, paused." A brief pause. "He said Velasquez understood the full scope of the conversation." "How did he sound?" "Sully said he sounded like a man who had just done math and didn't like the answer." Mike nodded. "Good math is the most persuasive kind." "There's a second thing," Bobby said.
The room tightened almost imperceptibly. "Torres," Bobby said, "one of Velasquez's enforcement guys. Sully says he's loose tonight, not at the yard, not reachable. Velasquez couldn't confirm his location when Sully asked.
Mick and Chucky are accounted for. Torres isn't." Declan had not moved, but the quality of his stillness changed. It was the same stillness as before in the way that a river and a spring are both water. Technically the same thing, functionally very different.
"Torres have a reason to be out this way," Mike said. Bobby looked at Leo. "Leo, when's the last time Velasquez sent someone to see you?" Leo's face changed. "About 10 days ago, Torres came to the apartment, stood outside for about twenty minutes, then left.
He didn't come in, he just stood there, like he was making a point." "Did he say anything?" "He said through the door, he said, 'Tell your cousin time's running out.'" Leo's eyes were moving faster now, doing the same math Bobby had mentioned, not liking the answer any more than Velasquez had. "You think he sent Torres tonight before the call?" "I think," Bobby said measured, "that Velasquez may have had Torres mobile before Sully reached him. And that Torres may not have gotten the updated instruction yet." Mike set his coffee cup down with a quietness that was itself a kind of statement. He looked at Garrett.