Don't Look Twice by Andrew Gross

do—relocate me to somewhere in Arizona? Help me open up a little taco joint out there? I have a son. I’ve got my life in this place. How’s it going to play once the press gets hold of it? ‘Local Eating Place Target of Gang Intimidation.’ ‘Half off on any entree if you come in wearing a red do-rag.’”
    Hauck wished he could answer. Then Annie shut her eyes, shook her head in frustration, and came back with almost a smile. “Might just give me a bit of a lift with the Bridgeport market…”
    Hauck smiled back.
    â€œHe cocked a gun against my head, Lieutenant. He said next time he’d shoot me.”
    â€œI promise, this won’t happen again,” Hauck said.
    â€œ How? Are you going to come in here and keep watch at the door every night?”
    â€œI don’t know. That depends…”
    â€œ Depends …That depends on what, Lieutenant?”
    Hauck shrugged. “The food, mostly.”
    Annie Fletcher stared at him. She brushed a wisp of dark hair out of her eyes, then smiled. “It’s good. I promise. Before I became a witness intimidation target, I ran a pretty tight little kitchen here.”
    â€œLet me drive you home.”
    â€œYeah, right…” Annie sniffed. “You must be kidding. We have a full house tonight.”
    â€œYour crew can handle it.”
    She tapped her fists on the bar, lightly at first, then with more force, something brewing up in her between anger and tears. “I wanted to do the right thing, do you understand? For that man. And his family. I wanted to fight them back. Say ‘You can’t do this to people’…”
    Her eyes started to flood. “When he put his hands on me, I wanted to turn and say ‘No, you can’t…You can’t hurt me.’ But you know what? They can. They can totally hurt me. And you know how that makes me feel?”
    â€œI know exactly how it makes you feel…,” Hauck said. He put an arm around her and she sank against him, squeezing the lapel of his jacket tightly in her fist.
    â€œAll I could think about was seeing Jared again. That I just had to get through it. Whatever they wanted. You know what I mean?”
    Hauck stood there with her leaning against him and nodded back against her head. “I know exactly what you mean.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
    T he federal prison in Otisville, New York, was in the foothills of the Catskills, about ninety minutes from Greenwich. It housed mostly midlevel felons, drug dealers, and prisoners shuttling to trial in Manhattan. Not exactly Florence, Colorado, or Pelican Bay.
    But someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep Nelson Vega away from the old neighborhood.
    Hauck and Munoz stowed their guns at the entrance in the administrative building, and the assistant warden, Rick Terwilliger, met them and took them through a network of checkpoints to the facility’s Secure Housing Units, SHUs, the maximum-security detention pod.
    â€œDon’t let the street punk act fool you, Lieutenant. If you read Vega’s file, you already know he had a couple of years of college. A stint in the army. He tests high. He’s been very active in his own defense.”
    Hauck asked, “What kind of contact is he allowed with the outside world?”
    â€œHe’s permitted unmonitored phone calls and outside visitors three times a week. Mr. Vega is merely in a holding status here. To this point he has not been convicted of any crime.”
    Which, Hauck knew, didn’t mean Vega wouldn’t be the first crime figure who continued to run his day-to-day operation from jail.
    â€œNonetheless, we look at Vega as a very dangerous man. This is a person who had no qualms about trying to gun down a Connecticut state trooper in the process of committing a felony.”
    They arrived at a secure, bolt-locked room with a tiny window on the door.
    â€œYou can record your conversation, if you like.