KELLY WALSH STOOD twelve inches from the table, close enough so he was forced to look up, but not so close as to touch the table. Pike recognized this as a controlling technique. By assuming a superior position she hoped to create a sense of authority. Like unplugging the camera. She was demonstrating she had the power to do as she wished, even at Parker Center.
Pike thought it was all a bit obvious.
Then she said, “Was Frank Meyer smuggling guns?”
This was the first time one of them asked a question that surprised him.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Sure sure? Or you just want to believe he wasn’t?”
Pike didn’t like this business about guns. He studied her face, trying to read her. Her eyes were light brown, almost hazel, but not. A vertical line cut the skin between her eyebrows, matched by a scar on her upper lip. No laugh lines, but no frown lines, either. Pike didn’t like her certainty.
“How did you find me?”
She made an offhand shrug, her face as flat as a Texas highway, ignoring his question.
“Okay, you’re sure. Personally, I don’t know, but I need a reason Darko killed him, and that one makes sense.”
“Guns.”
She pointed at herself.
“ATF. The F is for firearms.”
She studied him a moment longer, then cocked her head.
“You don’t know about the guns. You’re just in this to get some payback. Okay, I get it. That’s who you are.”
Pike knew she was trying to decide what to tell him, and how to play him. Same things he was thinking about her.
“Terrio lied about our not having anything that ties Williams to the earlier six invasions. We found a woman’s bracelet in his grandmother’s trailer that puts him with the Escalante invasion, and an antique Japanese sword that puts him with the Gelber invasion. We’ll probably find something in Renfro’s crib, too. The gun comps will be the icing, but these boys are our killers.”
Pike knew that Escalante was the second of the six previous home invasion/homicides. Gelber was the fifth.
“If you found these things only now, then you didn’t know Williams was involved.”
“No. Turns out Johnson was living with Renfro. That’s why no one could find him. Except for you. You did a good job there, Pike, finding these guys so fast. We hadn’t even come up with names for these guys, but you found them. I like that a lot.”
She reached into her inside jacket pocket, and fingered out a four-by-six-inch photograph. Pike saw a clean-cut African-American man, early thirties, high and tight hair, and a tasteful gold stud in his left ear.
“Special Agent Jordan Brant. Jordie was one of my undercovers. He was murdered twenty-three days ago trying to identify a takeover crew employed by one Michael Darko. This is Darko.”
She produced a second picture, this one showing a big man in his late thirties with wide-set eyes in a round face. He had black hair pulled into a short ponytail, a thick mustache, and long, thin sideburns. The man who would not let himself be photographed had been captured on a security camera at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.
Pike stared at the picture, and Walsh read the stare. Walsh smiled for the first time, but it was nasty and mean.
“Yeah, baby, that’s him. Killed your boy, Frank. Killed those little kids. The young one, Joey? Was he named after you?”
Pike sat back, and said nothing.
“You know where he is?”
“Not yet.”
“Jordie was found behind an abandoned Chevron station in Willowbrook. They used a box cutter on him. Wife and a child. You can relate to that, right? Me losing my guy. You losing your guy.”
“You believe Williams killed him?”
“Considering that Williams and his crew were Willowbrook homies, I’d say yes, but all we knew at the time is that a Crip set was involved. Jordie was trying to identify them.”
She returned the pictures to her pocket.
“What does this have to do with guns?”
“Darko works for a man named Milos Jakovich. Also known as Mickey Jack and Jack Mills.”
She arched her eyebrows, the arch asking if he recognized the names. Pike shook his head, so she explained.
“Jakovich heads up the original Serb set here in L.A.-the first of the old bosses to come over in the nineties. Think Don Corleone in his later years, but meaner. Jakovich is bringing in three thousand Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles.”
The number stopped Pike. He tried to read if she was lying, but decided she was telling the truth.
“Three thousand.”
“Full-auto combat rigs that pirates stole from the North Koreans. So if Darko sends his killers to murder a man who used to be a professional mercenary, and who probably knows how to buy and sell weapons anywhere in the world, pardon me if I see a connection.”
Pike took a breath. A new element had entered the field, and now Pike felt a stab of doubt. He felt bad for having it, as if he were betraying Frank’s memory.
“Frank wouldn’t do that.”
“Tell you what? Let me figure out whether he would, since that happens to be my job. Here’s what’s more important-you’re going to help me get those guns.”
Walsh moved for the first time. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the table.
“Darko works for Jakovich, but he’s trying to take over the deal, pick his own buyer, and force a regime change. Old school out, new school in. That buys me time to find the guns, but if you keep dogging this guy, and he feels the heat-”
She snapped her fingers.
“Poof! The guns disappear, and they could be anywhere-Miami, Chi cago, Brooklyn. So-first-you’re going to drop your search-and-destroy.”
She didn’t give Pike time to respond, but pushed on, leaning even closer.
“These East European sets, if these bastards didn’t know you in the old country, they don’t talk to you, and they haven’t been in this country long enough for us to develop informants. My guy died trying to bust that lock, Pike, but you-I think you have someone inside with the Serbs. So-second-I want your contact.”
This was why she bounced him. Pike still didn’t know how they made him at the trailers, but Williams was the break point. A Crip connected to Darko. When Pike reached Williams, Walsh must have realized he had inside help, and triggered the bust. She was with Terrio and Deets on the day they made such a big show telling him about Frank, and now he wondered if she was behind it, and if she had been using him to get inside from the beginning.
Pike thought it through, wondering if someone as far down the food chain as a prostitute would have information about an important deal. It was doubtful, but Rina might be able to find out.
Pike said, “I’ll see.”
Walsh shook her head.
“You don’t understand. We have three thousand automatic weapons coming into this country, so I am not asking you. You will put me together with your informant.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Walsh. This isn’t lost on me.”
“That isn’t the right answer.”
“I told you I would talk to my source. I will, but there’s a risk. I didn’t know about these guns. If I bring it up now, and word gets to Darko, you’re in the weeds.”
Walsh glared, but only for a moment, as Pike went on.
“There are people in the EOC community who know I’m on the hunt, and they know why. They won’t be spooked by a civilian working out a grudge. It’s something they understand.”
Walsh showed her palms, shaking her head to stop him.
“Don’t even think about it, Pike. Don’t go there. I am not going to allow you to murder this man.”
“I suddenly stop, the people who know are left hanging. They want things in this, too. That’s why they’re helping me. If I go back with this gun thing, and tell them I’m talking to you, they’ll disappear as fast as your guns.”
Now Walsh didn’t seem so confident.
“What are you saying?”
“You don’t have someone inside-I do. They’re inside-and they want me to find Darko-badly. Whatever I learn, I will pass back to you, and I can start by giving you something right now-Darko is going back to Europe.”
She stared at him, and now her tanned face paled. Pike read her apprehension in how she shifted, a subtle step to the side as if she felt her own private earthquake. She glanced at her watch as if she wanted to note the time she learned this thing for the official record.
“Is this bullshit?”
“It’s what I was told.”
She shifted again.
“When?”
“ Don’t know.”
“Why is he going back?”
“Don’t know. Maybe his deal is closing. Maybe he wants to go back after it’s finished.”
Pike decided he could not mention the child, or Rina, or the true reason Darko sent his killers to Frank Meyer’s home. Not without Rina’s permission.
Walsh’s face hardened as she struggled with the new information. She stared through him as she wrestled with her options, not liking any of them. When she spoke again, her voice was soft.
“I can take you out of the play. You don’t want that.”
“No. I want Darko.”
Her eyes refocused. On him.
“I’ve got three thousand weapons being brought into this country by a foreign national. That’s a terrorist act. By the law as written in the Home-land Security Act, I could make you disappear. No trial, no lawyers, no bail-just gone. Look me in the eye, Pike-”
She stared at him, letting him see.
“If I lose those weapons because I couldn’t find them, I can live with it, but I am not going to trade the guns for Darko. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“I want him, but on my terms, not yours, alive, so I can testify against him in open court. So Jordie Brant’s wife can sit in the front row, and watch this piece of shit squirm. So she can take the stand during sentencing, and tell this piece of shit how much he hurt her, and how much he took from their child. I want that, Pike, just like you want what you want, and I will have it. Guns or not, the only way you’re leaving here is if you agree.”
Pike studied her face, and knew she meant it. He nodded.
“Okay.”
“You agree? Darko is mine?”
“Yes.”
She put out her hand, he took it, and, for a moment, she did not let go.
She said, “If you kill him, I swear to God I will devote the rest of my life to putting you in jail.”
“I won’t kill him.”
She walked him downstairs herself. His Jeep was waiting. So were his weapons.
PIKE TURNED OFF HIS CELL PHONE as soon as he was alone. He stopped at the first large shopping mall he reached, cruised up to the top floor of the parking structure, then down, looking for tails. He found none, but he had found none before. He still didn’t understand how they followed him.
Pike left the parking lot the way he entered, and backtracked three blocks. He reversed course again, clocking the cars he passed, but found nothing suspicious.
Returning to the mall, he parked on the second floor of the parking structure, then inspected the underside of the Jeep. He found nothing, but still wasn’t satisfied.
He cleaned himself as best he could, then went into the mall. He bought a throwaway cell phone, extra batteries, and a prepaid calling card good for two hours. Seated on a bench outside a kitchen store, Pike spent ten minutes activating the phone and loading the prepaid calling time, then called Elvis Cole.
Cole’s phone rang four times, a long time for Cole because he didn’t recognize the incoming number.
“Elvis Cole.”
“It’s me. Where’s Rina?”
“With Yanni. I brought her back after our tour.”
“Do me a favor, and go get them. The ATF knows I was at their building, and suspects I was seeing a source. They want the source.”
Cole made a soft whistle.
“How do you know?”
“I just spent three hours with them.”
Pike sketched out what he found at Willowbrook, what happened when Walsh had him picked him up, and the information she gave him about Darko.
“This is no longer about some gangster murdering people in their homes-they’re bringing three thousand Kalashnikovs into the country. That’s why the Feds are involved.”
Cole said, “I’ll get them. You want me to bring them to my place?”
“For now. I’ll have a place for them by the time I get there.”
Pike phoned Jon Stone next. Stone’s phone rang five times before his voice mail answered, and Pike waited for the beep.
“It’s Pike. You there?”
Stone answered, talking loud over Nine Inch Nails.
“Fuck, man, I didn’t recognize the number.”
“Someone’s been able to find me without following me, Jon. That’s why I’m using a different phone. I think the Jeep might be bad.”
Nine Inch Nails vanished.
“You driving it now?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t come here. I’ll meet you.”
Twenty minutes later, Pike arrived at a car wash on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, and pulled around back to the detailing bays as Stone had instructed. In the rear of the car wash, they couldn’t be seen from the street.
Stone’s black Rover was in one of the bays, and two young Latin men were detailing a black Porsche in another. Stone was with them, laughing about something when he saw Pike arrive. He pointed at the empty bay on the far side of his Rover, and that’s where Pike parked. One of the young men was sleeved out with gang tats. Neither looked over as Pike climbed from his Jeep.
Stone opened the back of his Rover and took out a long aluminum tube with a movable mirror jointed to a pod containing sensors and antennas. Jon’s security work often required him to scan for explosives and multiplatform surveillance devices. Jon was a pro, and had the equipment to accomplish his mission.
He swept the pod under the Jeep, talking to Pike as he watched a dial in the handle.
“You find these fucks?”
“Found the crew. They were dead.”
“No shit. Who bagged them?”
“Their boss.”
“No honor among scumbags. What was the butcher’s bill?”
“Three. Their boss is still up, but these three are down. One more to go.”
Stone paused between the Jeep’s headlights, and studied the dial. After a moment, he continued on around the Jeep, making a full sweep of the vehicle until he returned to the front end. Then he put the pole aside, and wiggled under the engine.
“Here you go.”
He rolled to his feet, and showed Pike a small gray box the size of a pack of cigarettes.
“GPS locator. High-end piece made by Raytheon under an NSA contract. This is top-dollar equipment. Federal?”
“ATF.”
Stone grinned.
“Right now, there’s an agent with a laptop staring at a real-time map overlay. X marks the spot, bro-right here at the car wash on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
He tossed it to Pike.
“Three choices-kill it, toss it, or-my personal favorite-tack it to a FedEx truck and let’m watch it roll all over town.”
Pike didn’t want Walsh to know he found it or had even thought to look for it, but he didn’t want her watching his path. If he put it on another vehicle, she would realize what he had done within a matter of hours. Pike tossed it back.
“Kill it, and I need you to do something else.”
“For Frank?”
“Yes.”
“I’m there.”
Pike told him about the guns-three thousand Chinese AKs stolen from the North Koreans.
Pike said, “Jakovich didn’t steal them. He bought them from someone. See what you can find out.”
Stone hesitated.
“About Frank?”
“About the guns. Frank didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Stone hesitated again, but made a slow nod.
“I know a guy who knows a guy, but I want a piece of the hunt. I’ll help, but I want some trigger time. For Frank.”
“You got it.”
PIKE DROVE TO COLE’S HOUSE when he left the car wash, climbing the narrow canyon roads to the top of the hills, then along Woodrow Wil son Drive through a heavily wooded canyon. He decided Walsh had planted the locator on his Jeep the day they stopped him at Runyon Canyon. Maybe that was why they stopped him the way they did, to keep him clear of the Jeep until they finished installing the locator.
Pike wondered now if she bugged him to follow his own investigation, or because she believed Frank was involved with the guns. There would have been no reason for her to believe Pike was involved in an arms deal, but maybe she knew something Pike didn’t yet know.
The sky was deep purple when Pike pulled up in front of Cole’s A-frame and let himself into the kitchen. Pike liked Cole’s home, and had helped Cole maintain it over the years whenever Cole needed a hand painting, roofing, or staining the deck. Perched high in the canyons where it was surrounded by trees, Cole’s rustic A-frame felt removed from the city. Pike took a bottle of water from Cole’s fridge. A dish of cat food sat on the floor beside a small bowl of water. The house smelled of eucalyptus, wild fennel, and the flora that grew on the canyon’s steep slopes.
Cole, Rina, and Yanni were in the living room, watching the news. Rina’s bag was on the floor at her feet, along with a bag that probably belonged to Yanni. They glanced over when Pike entered, and Cole muted the sound. Yanni’s face was purple where Pike hit him.
Rina squinted at Pike as if she were sizing him up for target practice, then waved toward Cole.
“We are not going to stay here. It smells like cats.”
Cole arched his eyebrows, the arch saying, You see what it’s like?
Pike motioned Cole over.
“See you a minute?”
When Cole joined him, Pike lowered his voice.
“You were going to check out her story. What do you think?”
Cole glanced at Rina and Yanni to make sure they couldn’t hear, then shrugged.
“I located one of Ana’s friends, and have a call into another. Everything checked. Rina spent the 90210 years protecting her sister. Kept Ana completely away from this stuff, just like she said.”
Rina stood, then raised her voice.
“I don’t like this whispering. I told you already once. Yanni and I, we are going to go.”
Pike said, “Yanni’s building is being watched by the police. You shouldn’t go back.”
Yanni mumbled something in Serbian, and Rina chattered something back.
She said, “The police don’t care about Yanni. Why would they watch?”
“They followed me earlier today. They know I’m trying to find Darko, so now they believe someone in Yanni’s complex has information about him. They will look for that person.”
Rina and Yanni launched into more Serbian, and Yanni didn’t look happy. Cole turned away as if he had heard enough foreign-language conversations to last a lifetime.
“You want something to eat?”
“Not yet. Did you find anything running the check on Darko’s condominiums?”
“Yeah. They’re not his condos-not in his name or any name I’ve been able to connect to him. This guy is hidden, man-he does not exist, so he’s almost certainly here illegally.”
Cole ticked off the points.
“No one named Michael Darko appears in the DMV, the Social Security rolls, or the California state tax rolls. No one by that name has an account with any of the major credit card companies, the public utilities here in Los Angeles County, the telephone company, or any of the major cell service providers. Michael Darko has no criminal record that I’ve been able to find.”
Rina said, “In Serbia. In Serbia, he was arrested. This I know.”
Pike thought over what George told him about how the old-school Serb gangsters tried to instill fear by creating a myth for themselves. The Shark. Here, then gone, like an imagined man. A monster his men talked about, but never saw.
Pike shrugged.
“He’s just another turd.”
Cole said, “A smart turd. His hookers rent their condos in their own names. Darko supplies them with a credit and rental history so they look good on the application, and kicks back cash to cover their rent, but they have to write the checks. Same with their phones, and other expenses. Everything is in their names, and they pay the bills. That way he avoids a paper trail to the girls.”
Rina said, “Yes. That is why we follow the money. The money will give us the man.”
Cole nodded.
“He has women spread from Glendale to Sherman Oaks. A collector stops by every day to pick up their cash.”
Pike glanced at Rina.
“You know the man who picks up the money?”
“I will know him to see him unless the man change. He will be there between four and six. This is always the way. The girls, they have their money from the night before, but their money from the day is better.”
Pike said, “Will he know how to find Darko?”
She shook her head, making the expression she made when she thought Pike was a moron.
“No, no, no. He is an outcast.”
Pike and Cole traded a look, not understanding.
“Why is he an outcast? He’s being punished?”
Rina had a brief conversation with Yanni. When they stopped speaking Serbian, she tried to explain.
“Outcast is like someone learning.”
Cole said, “Starting at the bottom?”
“Yes! The men who want to be accepted, but must prove themselves. The pakhan is the boss-that is Michael. Below him, his close friends are what we call the authorities. These are the men who make sure everyone do what Michael say.”
Pike said, “Enforcers.”
“Yes. They make the men obey. The men, they are the ones who do the work and earn the money. The outcasts help the men.”
“Okay, so the guy who collects the money, he’s an errand boy. He brings the money to Michael?”
“He brings it to his boss. Michael does not touch the money.”
Cole said, “Then how do we find Michael?”
She thought for a moment, then glanced at Yanni. Yanni mumbled some more, and Rina shrugged.
“Depends on who the boss is. If boss is authority man, then maybe he know. If boss is only one of the men, then no. We won’t know until we see. Is like a sergeant, and Michael is a colonel. The sergeant does not talk to the colonel. He talks to the captain.”
Pike looked at Cole.
“Maybe there’s a way to turn this around. Maybe we can make Darko find us.”
“Steal the money?”
“Follow these people from business to business, and hit him. Hit him so hard he has no other choice.”
Cole thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Sounds like a plan. You ready for something to eat?”
Cole stepped past him into the kitchen. Pike looked at Rina and Yanni. They whispered to each other in Serbian, and then Rina glanced over.
“We will go to motel. Here smells like cats. It is making me ill.”
Pike said, “Eat. I have a place you can stay. We’ll go after dinner.”
He took his new phone and stepped out onto Cole’s deck.
THE NIGHT AIR WAS CLEAR, and chill, and the canyon below Cole’s home was quiet of man-made sounds. A wooden deck jutted from the back of Cole’s house, hanging out over the night-filled canyon like a diving board to nowhere. Pike went to the rail. The air felt good, and its clarity seemed to magnify the lights that fell away to the city. Out here on the deck, at the edge of the glow from within Cole’s home, Pike enjoyed the solitude.
He turned to face Cole’s home, and leaned into the rail, the wide glass face of the house an invisible wall. Rina and Yanni were still huddled together on the couch, and occasionally glancing outside. Cole was in the kitchen, busy with cooking.
Pike fished out the new phone, and called George Smith. He did not want to call, but he had to warn George about Walsh.
George answered on the first ring, his voice as American as a Modesto car salesman.
“This is George. Who’s calling, please?”
“Williams was dead. Williams, and two of his crew. Jamal Johnson and Samuel Renfro.”
George laughed.
“Well, there you go. Justice is swift.”
“Wasn’t me. Someone killed them the same night they murdered Frank.”
“Ah, are you asking if I knew? I did not.”
“Not asking. I thought you should know in case your friends in Odessa ask.”
“Then muchas gracias.”
“Something else you should know. The ATF was tracking my vehicle when I came by this morning. They might come around, knocking on doors.”
George was silent for several seconds, and when he spoke, the Modesto tone was edged with something dark.
“You brought them to my store?”
“I don’t know. They were tracking my vehicle. They know where I parked, and how long I parked there. I don’t know if they had eyeballs on me or not.”
Another moment’s silence.
“Where did you park?”
“A block north.”
Another moment.
“There are many shops within a block of my place.”
Pike didn’t bother to say anything. George was shaking the facts to see if he could live with them, just as a terrier shakes a rat.
Inside, Rina stood. She peered outside, trying to find Pike at the edge of the light, then said something to Yanni. Yanni gestured as if he were getting impatient with her, and wanted to leave.
George said, “Why might they knock on doors, Joseph?”
“Darko. They know I have inside information on the Serbians. They want my source. They’ll probably retrace my route today, trying to locate everyone I spoke with.”
George suddenly laughed, giving it his best Modesto twang.
“Why, hell, George Smith ain’t some Bosnian refugee. If they come around, I’ll tell’m you wanted a lamp. I’ll bet I can sell them a nice little sconce. Might even give them a discount.”
George laughed again, and now Rina came around the couch and was heading for the deck. Pike would have to go, but he needed a favor from George.
“One more thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to hit Darko’s business, and I want him to know it’s me. Maybe some people at Odessa can drop my name in the Eastern Bloc neighborhoods.”
“This would put a target on your chest.”
“Yes.”
George made a little sigh.
“Well, we do what we do.”
George hung up as Rina opened the door. She stepped out onto the deck as Pike put away his phone.
She said, “It’s dark out here. Why do you stand in the dark?”
Pike hesitated, wondering whether he should tell her what he had found in Willowbrook, and finally decided he should. He had been feeling the bib in his pocket as if it were a living thing, alive and pulsing, and wanting to come out.
“Darko’s crew is dead.”
She visibly stiffened, then joined him at the rail.
“You found them?”
“Yes. Men named Jamal Johnson and Moon Williams. Have you heard of them?”
She shook her head.
“Samuel Renfro?”
She shook her head again.
“They were killed the same night they took your son and murdered my friends.”
Her mouth shrunk to a tight knot, and her eyes turned watchful.
“Were Michael or my boy with them?”
“No. But I found this.”
Pike took the bib from his pocket, and once more marveled at its softness. As soon as he opened it, he smelled the apricots, even in the rich night air.
Rina took it, and seemed to marvel at it just as Pike had marveled at it.
“But nothing to say where’s the baby?”
“No. I’m sorry, but no.”
Her face folded into a frown, and she turned to face the canyon. Pike decided to feel her out about Jakovich.
“I found another line I can follow-a man named Milos Jakovich. Do you know who he is?”
She stared into the dark for a moment, then shrugged.
“The old one. Michael, he work for him.”
“Do they have business together?”
“I do not know. The blood is not good.”
“They don’t like each other?”
“I don’t think so. Michael never tell me these things, but I hear. Like with his business. I am just whore.”
She turned back toward the canyon, and Pike felt uncomfortable.
“Maybe Jakovich or someone who works for Jakovich knows how to find Michael.”
“I don’t know those people.”
“Is there someone you could ask?”
She worried the inside of her cheek, then shrugged again.
“It is like a different family. I would be scared, I think.”
Pike let it go, thinking she was probably right in being scared. If Jakovich and Darko were in some kind of war, she might find herself in jeopardy from both sides.
Pike said, “It’s okay. Forget it.”
“I will do it if you wish.”
“Forget it.”
They stood in silence, then she leaned over the rail to peer down into the black canyon.
She said, “It is so dark.”
Pike didn’t answer.
“Do you have children?”
Pike shook his head.
“You should have children. You should make plenty of babies, and be a strong father.”
Pike didn’t answer again.
Rina held the bib to her nose, and Pike could feel her draw in the deep apricot smell and the scent of her child. She touched her belly where the knife wounds had scarred, as if the pain she felt then and now were linked, and he wanted to touch that place, too, but didn’t.
Pike said, “We’ll find him.”
“Yes. I know we will find him.”
Rina leaned into him, and gazed up with shadowed eyes that seemed to be searching.
“I would be with you. It is okay.”
“You don’t have to be with me.”
“Whatever you like, I will do.”
Pike turned away.
“Get your bag. I have a place where the two of you can stay.”
Pike went out without eating, and took them away.
THE NEXT MORNING, Pike had Cole take him to check out the building in Sherman Oaks. It was a modern, three-story structure a few blocks south of Ventura Boulevard, across from a gourmet food store.
Pike said, “How many prostitutes does he have in there?”
“She says he had four, two on the top floor and two on the second, but that could have changed.”
“The pickup happens between four and six?”
“Yeah, but that’s only approximate. These people aren’t running an airline. We should set up early, plan on staying late, and be ready to wait a few days.”
Pike expected no less.
“It’s hunting.”
“Yes. It’s hunting.”
They circled the building to see the surrounding residential streets, and finished their tour in the food store’s parking lot. Pike noted the proximity to entrance and exit ramps for both the San Diego and Ventura Freeways. The location had been chosen so customers could be given easy directions. The prostitutes who worked here saw customers who came to them, and were known as in-call girls. Safer for the girls, and with a lower overhead for Darko. Out-call girls needed drivers and bodyguards.
Pike said, “How many stops does he make before here?”
“Three. Darko has buildings in Glendale, Valley Village, and this one. This was always the last stop.”
“So he should be carrying the full day’s take.”
“Should be. If this is still the last stop.”
Pike was going to steal the money. That was the plan. He was going to steal Darko’s money, and leave the pickup man so scared he would run straight to his bosses. Then Pike would take whatever his bosses had, too.
Pike said, “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”
They would need Rina to identify the bag man, so Pike picked her up a little while later. He had brought them to an empty guesthouse a few blocks south of the Sunset Strip the night before. It was small, but nice, with a lovely courtyard and neighbors who wouldn’t pry. Pike had used it before.
Rina was waiting on the street when he arrived. Yanni’s truck was parked at the curb.
She said, “Yanni want to come.”
Pike looked past her, and saw Yanni in the courtyard.
“No Yanni. Forget it.”
She barked something in Serbian, and Yanni gave Pike the finger.
Pike brought her to Cole’s, where they reviewed the plans and maps of the location with Jon Stone. When Stone first arrived, Rina squinted at him, and tugged at Pike’s arm.
“Who is this?”
“A friend. He was a friend of Frank’s, too.”
“I don’t trust these people I don’t know. I would rather have Yanni.”
“Not for this, you wouldn’t.”
At one-thirty that afternoon, they climbed into their cars and returned to Sherman Oaks, Pike and Rina in his Jeep, Cole in his Corvette, and Stone in his Rover. They looked like a caravan winding their way along the spine of the mountains.
When they reached the market, Pike and Cole turned into the parking lot, but Stone continued past, moving to set up on one of the nearby residential streets. Pike found a parking spot in one of the middle rows facing the apartment building’s entry, and Cole parked three spaces away.
Pike said, “You need to use the bathroom?”
“No, I am fine.”
“The guy who’s coming to pick up the money, does he know you?”
“I don’t know. Probably he would know me, yes.”
“Then let’s get squared away. Get in the backseat. You won’t be as easy to see in back.”
She looked at him as if he was an idiot.
“It’s only two o’clock.”
“I know. But we want to be prepared in case he comes early.”
She gripped her big purse. The one with the gun.
“I don’t care if he see me or not.”
“I care. Get in the back.”
She scowled again, but got out, and climbed into the backseat. Pike adjusted the mirror so he could see her.
“Can you see the entry?”
“Yes.”
“Watch.”
“It’s only two o’clock. Will be hours before he come.”
“Watch.”
He expected her to fidget or try to make conversation, but she didn’t. She sat behind him, a second presence in the car, quiet and still, watching.
They watched for an hour and ten minutes, silent, as people came and went around them, parking, backing out, pushing buggies filled high with groceries. Rina did not move or speak for the entire time, but then she suddenly pulled herself forward, and pointed past his chin.
“That window on the top floor, on the side there away from the freeway. That was mine.”
Then she settled back and said nothing more.
Pike studied her in the rearview, but only for a moment. He didn’t want her to catch him staring.
An hour and twenty minutes later, she abruptly pulled herself forward again.
“That girl. She is one of the girls there. In the green.”
A young woman in black spandex shorts and a lime green top came around the corner and went to the glass door. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and a large gym bag was slung over her shoulder. On her way back from the gym. She was lean and fit, but her breasts were too large to be natural. She looked very young.
Rina said, “You see? I know this girl when they bring her here. They make her waitress, and then she dance.”
“Stripper.”
“Yes. And this.”
The girl let herself into the lobby, then pushed a button for the elevator.
Fifteen minutes later, Rina pulled forward again.
“There. In the black car.”
A black BMW convertible turned off Sepulveda and crept past the building as if looking for a parking place. The driver was a white male in his twenties with a thick neck and long, limp hair. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled, a day-old beard, and mirrored sunglasses.
Pike hit the speed dial for Cole.
Three cars away, Cole glanced over as he raised his phone.
“What’s up?”
“The black convertible.”
Cole glanced at the street.
“I’ll get Jon.”
Pike lowered the phone, but didn’t end the call. Cole was using a second phone to put Stone in the loop. They had planned on multiple phones to maintain constant contact.
The BMW reached the stop sign, but instead of circling the building to park on the street, the driver turned into the parking lot.
“Get down.”
Rina slumped down in her seat without question, but lifted her head enough to see.
The Beemer passed behind Pike’s Jeep and Cole’s Corvette, then turned onto the next row and parked by the sidewalk. The driver got out, stepped over a low hedge, then crossed the street. Pike made him for his late twenties, maybe average in height but with a heavy frame. He looked like a hitter, and probably thought he was good at it. He let himself into the building with his own key.
Pike said, “Here’s where you leave.”
Rina went directly to Cole’s Corvette, and got in as they had planned. She did not dawdle, stare, or draw attention to herself. Pike liked that about her.
Cole’s voice came from the phone.
“You want Jon to come in?”
“I’m good. Get her gone.”
Cole backed away, and cruised out of the parking lot.
The bagman was inside for less than ten minutes. For him, picking up cash from four prostitutes was just another stop in a day filled with stops-something to be accomplished quickly, and without wasted energy. The girls probably felt the same.
When the man merged from the building, Pike stepped out of the Jeep, but hung back to be sure he was returning to his car. When the man angled toward the Beemer, Pike made as if he was heading for a nearby car, but Darko’s boy never once looked at him. He passed in front of Pike within ten feet and swung around the Beemer’s rear end. As he opened the door, Pike closed the gap. When the bagman slid in behind the wheel, Pike came up along the passenger’s side, and lifted himself over the door and into the passenger’s seat.
The man lurched in surprise, but by then it was too late. Pike showed him the.357, down low so no one could see.
“Sh.”
The man’s eyes went wide as oncoming headlights, but he was a burly guy who was used to muscling people. He lunged for Pike’s gun, but Pike rolled his hands down and away with a minor wing chun deflection, and snapped the Python up hard into the bottom of the man’s chin, popping his jaw like a rat trap. The Python flicked again, and this time Pike hit him in the Adam’s apple.
The bagman clutched at his throat, choking. His face turned bright red.
Pike took the key from his hand, fit it into the ignition, the convertible top. He had to keep the button depressed throughout the process, but that was okay. His arm was a steel bar with his tattoo in the bagman’s face. Pike wanted him to see the red arrow.
Pike didn’t move or speak until the top was in place and the windows were closed, and neither did the bagman. He was too busy trying to breathe.
Pike said, “Grab the wheel. Both hands.”
He grabbed the wheel.
“Try to escape, I’ll kill you. Try to grab this weapon again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“This is a mistake, my man. I don’t know what you-”
Pike backfisted him hard on his temple, striking so fast the man had no time to react. His head bounced off the window, and Pike caught him again on the rebound. The second backfist made his eyes flag.
Pike jerked him upright, then dug his thumb into a nerve bundle between the man’s ribs. The man moaned, and pushed weakly at Pike’s hand, so Pike hit him again. The man covered his head.
Pike said, “Grab the wheel. Grab it.”
The man grabbed the wheel with both hands.
“Try to escape, I’ll kill you. Try to take this weapon again, I will kill you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Jesus, stop hitting me. Please-”
“If you let go of the wheel again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The man’s knuckles turned white as he tightened his grip. Blood from his mouth dripped onto his shirt, and the corner of his eye at his temple was swelling.
Pike said, “What’s your name?”
“Vasa.”
“I’m going to search you, Vasa. Don’t let go of the wheel. Do not r esist.”
Pike went through Vasa’s pockets, finding a black ostrich wallet, a Nokia cell phone, and four thin vinyl billfolds.
Pike said, “One from each girl?”
“Yes.”
“They have the money ready? You stop by, they give it to you?”
“You know who this belongs to?”
“Me.”
Pike thumbed through the bills, mostly hundreds and twenties, and counted out thirty-eight hundred. He tucked the money into his pocket.
“Where’s the rest?”
Vasa blinked at him.
“What rest? That’s it.”
Pike stared into Vasa’s eyes, and finally Vasa sighed.
“Under the seat.”
Pike found another seventy-three hundred dollars under the seat, and added it to the cash in his pocket. That made eleven thousand, one hundred dollars of Darko’s money.
Pike studied Vasa. He stared at Vasa so long, the man turned away.
“Why are you staring at me? Who are you?”
“My name is Pike. Say it.”
“You are Pike?”
“Say the name. Say it.”
“Pike. I say it. You are Pike.”
“Look at me.”
Vasa cringed as if he was certain Pike would hit him again.
Pike touched the arrow on the outside of his arm.
“See this?”
Vasa nodded.
“Tell me you see it.”
“I see it.”
“Where is Michael Darko?”
Vasa’s eyes grew into saucers again.
“I don’t know. How would I know?”
“Call him.”
“I don’t have his number. He is the boss. Why are you taking his money? This is crazy. He will kill you for taking his money.”
Pike studied Vasa a moment longer.
“Tell Darko I’m coming.”
Pike got out, taking the money, the wallet, the keys, and the cell phone.
Vasa said, “What am I supposed to do without my keys?”
Pike returned to his Jeep, and circled the parking lot until he pulled up behind the Beemer. He wanted Vasa to see his Jeep, too. He motioned for Vasa to roll down his window.
Inside the BMW, Vasa couldn’t roll down the window without the keys, so he opened the door.
Pike tossed out his keys, then drove away.
Pike drove exactly two blocks, then pulled to the curb, and lifted his cell phone.
“What’s he doing?”
“Getting on the freeway. Jon’s three cars behind him, and I’m behind Jon.”
Pike pushed hard to catch up.
THEY FOLLOWED THE BEEMER east across the bottom of the San Fernando Valley, Pike watching Cole and Jon Stone take turns behind the Beemer. The BMW drove steadily, in no great hurry to get where it was going. Vasa probably wasn’t looking forward to explaining what happened to Darko’s money.
They stayed on the Ventura Freeway past the Hollywood split, but took the first exit, climbing up Vineland past the aging shopping centers and strip malls of North Hollywood. Cole tightened up on the Beemer when they left the freeway, and Jon fell back. Ten minutes later, Cole once more spoke in Pike’s ear.
“Blinker. We’re turning up ahead on Victory.”
Neither Pike nor Stone responded.
Three minutes later, Cole spoke again.
“Turning again. A place called the Glo-Room. We’re going past to the first cross street.”
Jon Stone said, “Sweet. Strippers.”
Two blocks ahead, Pike caught a glimpse of the BMW turning, and spoke to Cole.
“Does she know the place?”
“She’s heard of it, but never been here. It’s one of the places she told me about.”
When Pike passed, he glimpsed Vasa’s convertible parked in a narrow parking lot alongside a black single-story building. A marquee sign jutted out from the front of the building, saying GLO-ROOM GENTLEMEN’S CLUB-AMATEUR NITE WED. Pike continued past to the first cross street, where the other two cars were waiting. Cole and Rina were already waiting in Stone’s Rover. Pike pulled in behind them, parked, then climbed into the Rover’s front passenger seat. Stone immediately turned down an alley to circle around behind the bar. The alley ran between the shops and stores that lined the main street and a long row of additional parking spaces and Dumpster bins.
Pike said, “Stop short.”
Stone stopped three doors away, parking behind a pet store. A white delivery van was parked behind the Glo-Room, though the only person they saw was a middle-aged Latin man in a stained white T-shirt. He was standing between the truck and the building, smoking.
Pike turned in his seat so he could see Rina.
“Darko owns this place?”
“One of his men own it, but, yes, it will belong to Michael. The other men run it, but Michael he get the money.”
“You know the people who work here?”
She shook her head, then shrugged.
“No, I don’t think so. I know of this place, but I never been here. Michael, he have three or four places like this. Maybe more.”
They started rolling again, and drifted past the delivery truck. They drove all the way to the next cross street, turned around, and came back from the opposite direction. They stopped with an easy view of the side lot and delivery truck. A back door used for deliveries and service help was cracked open on the alley, but the white van blocked the building’s interior from view. The BMW was parked outside a door on the side of the building, which appeared to be the bar’s main entrance. A dark gray Audi sedan and a silver Mercedes were parked near the Beemer, and now three men were standing outside the door. Two of the three were large guys wearing loose shirts that hung over their bellies. The third man was younger, with hard, muscular shoulders.
Pike turned enough to see Rina.
“Know them?”
“That one in the middle, maybe I seen him before, but maybe not. Other two, no, for sure.”
The one in the middle wore gold chains, and appeared to be the focus of attention.
Stone said, “You see it?”
Pike nodded.
Rina said, “See what?”
Cole said, “The muscle has a gun in his belt.”
The three men finished their conversation, then the two big men went into the bar, and the muscular guy walked back to the delivery van. He slapped the side twice, then stepped away as the van’s rear door opened. A burly guy with a monumental belly climbed out, showing a mat of dark hair on his arms and neck. He hoisted three cases of Budweiser, and brought them into the bar. The muscular guy leaned into the van, came out with three more cases, and followed him inside.
Rina said, “They steal the beer to sell, you see? He buy some, but he have people who steal.”
This fit with what George described. Darko resold merchandise stolen by hijack crews. Alcohol went to his clubs. Everything else went to fences and flea markets.
Pike tapped Jon’s leg, and Jon rolled on, cruising back to their cars. Everything moved quickly after their brief reconnoiter, which was how Pike liked it. Speed was good. In armed confrontations, speed was the difference between life and death.
Cole immediately put Rina in his car and left the area. Stone motored away, but would circle the block to approach from the front. Pike returned to his Jeep, immediately pulled into the alley, and parked behind the bar. By the time he got back, the van and the back door were both closed, but the door was unlocked.
Pike hit the speed dial on his phone for Jon Stone, and Stone answered with a single word.
“Go.”
Pike closed his phone, stepped inside, and found himself in a hall crowded with stacked boxes. A larder to his left was filled with more beer, tap kegs, booze, and other supplies, and a tiny food and dishwashing area was to his right. The Latin guy who had been smoking out in the alley glanced at him with tired eyes from an industrial-sized dishwasher. Pike stepped into the door, and spoke quietly.
“Police. We’re going to arrest everyone here, but you can go. Walk away now.”
One look at Pike, the man did not hesitate. He put down his towel, squeezed past, and immediately left the building. Pike locked the door behind him.
Farther along the hall was a small dressing room for the dancers, a couple of restrooms, and a swinging door. The restrooms and dressing room were all empty. The dressing room smelled of mildew. Pike heard voices coming from the front of the club, but no music or other sounds.
Pike pushed through the swinging door. The lights were on, the stage was empty, and the music was off. The three men from the parking lot were crowded around a bar table with a fourth man and Vasa, who was holding a wet towel to his face. The furry man was behind the bar, maneuvering a beer keg into place. Pike had entered so quietly the men at the tables did not hear him, but the furry man caught the movement, and stood.
He said, “We’re closed. You’ll have to leave.”
The men at the tables all looked over, and Vasa saw Pike. He lurched to his feet as if someone had kicked him.
“That’s him. The fuckin’ guy-”
The four men at the tables didn’t move. The muscular guy didn’t reach for his gun. They sat perfectly still.
Pike said, “I’m looking for Michael Darko.”
The oldest was a heavy man with large bones, thick wrists, and small eyes. Three of the four wore short-sleeved shirts, two showing skin that had been inked up with Eastern Bloc prison tats back in the old country.
The oldest man said, “I have never heard of this man. You have come to the wrong place.”
Two vinyl billfolds identical to the ones Pike took from Vasa were on the bar, along with a brown leather briefcase. Just sitting there, as if someone was in the middle of business when Vasa rushed in to tell his story. Pike moved toward the bar, and the muscular man stood.
He said, “Get the fuck out of here.”
When Pike reached the end of the bar, the furry man behind the bar shoved the beer keg aside and charged. He threw up his forearms like an offensive lineman blocking a defensive back, but Pike slipped to the side, pushed the man’s elbow down and away, caught his head, and rolled him into the floor. Third of a second once contact was made, and Pike was on his feet, watching the muscular man rush toward him in slow motion as the three other men, even more slowly, jumped to their feet.
The muscular man reached under his shirt even as he pushed past the tables. Pike did not try to stop the gun; he rolled his hand under the man’s wrist, drove the man’s arm over and back, and pulled him backward and down. Pike had the gun before the man slammed into the floor, and hit him on the forehead with it two hard times, even as Jon Stone’s voice cut through the gloom.
“Freeze, motherfuckers!”
The three men at the tables, on their feet now, raised their hands.
Jon stood just inside the door with an M4 carbine, painted up nicely in desert camo. Never taking his eyes from the men, Stone closed and locked the door, sealing the building. He grinned at Pike.
“Always wanted to say that.”
Pike checked the man’s pistol, then went through his pockets.
The man with the gold chains said, “What is it you want?”
Stone stepped forward, the grin suddenly gone, all fierce lines in full-on combat mode.
“Shut it, bitch. You will not speak unless spoken to.”
Pike found a wallet, keys, and cell phone, then stood away. He waved toward the floor with the pistol.
“Knees. Fingers laced behind your head.”
Stone kicked the nearest man down, and the others hurried into position.
Pike returned to the man with the enormous belly. His eyes were open, but unfocused, and he made no move to rise. Pike came away with a neat little.40-caliber pistol. He put everything on the bar with the vinyl billfolds, then returned to Stone’s prisoners, and searched them as well. None were armed, and none spoke while he went through their pockets, collecting their things.
When Pike finished, he returned to the bar and checked the vinyl billfolds. They were filled with cash. He opened the briefcase. More cash, a metal skimmer used to steal credit card information, and what looked like business papers. He put the two pistols and the other things he had taken from the men into the briefcase, closed it, then carried it back to the men. They watched him the way a cat trapped by a window watches a bird.
Pike said, “Darko?”
The older man shook his head.
“You are making a mistake.”
Behind them, Stone’s voice was soft.
“Maybe these fuckers were there that night. Maybe one of them gunned Frank.”
Pike said, “Vasa, do you remember my name?”
“You are Pike.”
The older man said, “You are dead man.”
Stone snapped the M4 into the back of his head. The man fell like a bag of wet towels and did not move. Vasa and the other man stared at his unconscious form for a moment, and now their eyes were frightened.
Pike dangled the briefcase, showing them.
“Everything Darko owns is mine. Darko is mine. This bar is mine. If you’re here when I come back, I’ll kill you.”
The other big man, the one still awake, squinted as if Pike was hidden by fog.
“You are insane.”
“Close this place now. Lock it. Tell him I’m coming.”
Pike left with the briefcase, and Stone followed him out. They went directly to Pike’s Jeep, then drove around the corner to Stone’s Rover. When they stopped, Stone opened the briefcase. He pushed the cash packs aside, and frowned.
“Hey, what is this shit?”
Pike fingered through the pages, clocking the columns of numbers organized by business, and realized what they had.
“Our next targets.”
He opened his phone to call Cole.
THEY MET BACK AT Cole’s house to go through the papers. Rina recog nized them immediately.
“They are gas stations.”
Stone said, “What the fuck?”
Cole thought the pages were bookkeeping ledgers, accounting for income from All-American Best Price Gas, Down Home Petroleum, and Super Star Service.
Cole said, “Super Star Service is right down the hill in Hollywood. One of those indie places.”
Rina nodded.
“You see? He make much money there. Very much. Maybe more than anywhere else.”
Stone said, “Bullshit. How much dough can he make selling gas?”
“You are an idiot. He not make the money selling gas. He steals the credit card information.”
Cole said, “It’s a skimmer rip-off. He’s doing credit card fraud.”
Cole explained how it worked. Darko’s people connected a skimmer sleeve to the card reader inside each gas pump, along with an altered keypad over the pump’s actual keypad. This allowed them to collect credit card and PIN information every time a customer swiped a credit card or used a debit card to pay for gas. Darko’s fraud crew then used this information to create new credit and debit cards, with which they could drain the victims’ debit accounts or run up huge charges before the victims or credit card companies froze the accounts.
“Each of these skimmers is worth anywhere from a hundred thousand to one-fifty a month in goods and cash, times however many skimmers he has in the three stations.”
Now Jon Stone made a little whistle, and laughed.
“Pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Then he frowned.
“But waitaminute-if there’s no cash, what are we gonna steal?”
Pike said, “His machines.”
Cole nodded.
“Bust them right out of the pumps. Pop out the skimmers and keypads, he’s bleeding way bigger money than he earns from his prostitutes.”
Stone said, “Busting shit up. Now you’re talking, bro. Let’s get it going.”
Pike stopped him.
“Tomorrow. We want to pace it out, give him time to hear about what happened today, let him get angry about it. Tomorrow, we take him down one by one, pace it out over the day.”
“And sooner or later the enforcers show up.”
“That’s the idea.”
This was called baiting the enemy-Pike would pattern his actions to create an expectation, forcing the enemy to act on that expectation.
Later, Pike drove Rina back to the guesthouse. They rode in silence most of the way, she on her side of the Jeep, he on his. Up on Sunset, the kids were already lined up outside the Roxy, but Rina didn’t look. She stared out the window, thoughtful.
Yanni’s truck was at the curb when they pulled up.
Pike said, “You’re not coming tomorrow. No need for it. I’ll let you know what happened after.”
He thought she would object, but she didn’t. She studied him for a moment, and made no move to open the door.
“This is very much that you do. For this, I thank you.”
“Not just for you. For Frank and for myself, too.”
“Yes, I know.”
She wet her lips. She stared down the length of the street into the dark. Two people walked along the broken sidewalk, enjoying an after-dinner stroll.
Pike said, “You should go in.”
“Come in with me. I would like it.”
“No.”
“Yanni will leave. I will tell him. He doesn’t care.”
“No.”
The hurt came to her eyes.
“You don’t want to lay with a whore.”
“Go in, Rina.”
She considered him for a moment, then leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek. It was a quick kiss, and then she was gone.
Pike didn’t go home. He cruised the length of the Strip, taking it slow, then turned up Fairfax to Hollywood, then up again into the residential streets at the base of the canyon.
The park was closed at night, but Pike left his Jeep and walked up the quiet streets. The air was rich with winter jasmine, and cold, and grew even colder as Pike squeezed around the gate and entered the park.
The canyon was his. Nothing and no one else moved.
Pike climbed the steep fire road, rising above the city, walking, then walking faster, then jogging. The ravines were pooled with ink shadows, and the shadows enveloped him, but Pike did not slow. The brittle walls above him, the ragged brush and withered trees beside him, and the plunging slope below were sensed more than seen, but the invisible brush teamed with moving life.
Coyotes sang in the ridges, and eyes watched him. Eyes that blinked, and vanished, and reappeared, pacing him in the scrub.
Pike followed the road up, winding along the ravine to the end of the ridge where the lights of the city spread out before him. Pike listened, and enjoyed the crisp air. He smelled the rough earth, and jasmine and sage, but the strong scent of apricot overpowered everything else, and was sweet in the raw night.
He heard a whisper of movement, and metallic red eyes hovered in space, watching. A second pair of eyes joined the first. Pike ignored them.
The canyon was his. He did not reach home until just after sunrise, but even then did not sleep.
ALL-AMERICAN BEST PRICE GAS was a ragged dump in Tarzana. Six pumps, no service bays, little mini-mart with a middle-aged Latina holed up behind a wall of bulletproof glass.
Cole and Stone went in first, Cole scouting the surroundings, Stone pretending to put air in his tires while he checked out the people in and around the station. Pike waited two blocks away until they called. Pike heard them through his Bluetooth earbud, which he would wear while he did what he had to do, Cole and Stone providing security.
Cole told him about the woman.
“One female. Strictly counter personnel.”
Pike didn’t like the idea of terrorizing an innocent woman.
“Will we have a problem with her calling the police?”
“Rina said no. These places get held up like any other gas station, so the employees are schooled to call their manager, not the police. That’s the front man who runs it for Darko.”
Stone, who was conferenced in, spoke up.
“That’s all well and good, but what if she’s got a shotgun behind the counter?”
“Rina said no. Listen, they’re selling diluted gas and they have skimmers on all the pumps. They don’t want the police sniffing around.”
Stone said, “Maybe Rina should rob the place.”
Pike said, “I’m rolling.”
Pike pulled up to the pumps outside the mini-mart, giving the woman inside a clear view of his Jeep. He wanted her able to describe it accurately.
Pike went inside, and immediately saw a security camera hanging from the ceiling behind the glass. He wondered if it worked, then decided this didn’t matter. He gave the woman his name and told her he was there to give Mr. Darko a message.
She looked confused.
“Who’s Mr. Darko?”
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll still get the message.”
“You don’t want gas?”
“No. I’m going to adjust the pumps.”
“They didn’t tell me about this.”
“Mr. Darko will explain.”
The emergency cutoff switch for the pumps was on the wall outside the door. Pike cut the power, then pry-barred the cover off each pump register. They didn’t come easily, leaving the metal bent. The woman behind the glass expressed no surprise when she saw what he was doing. She simply picked up her phone as if something like this happened three or four times each day, and made a calm call.
Six pumps, two sides to each pump, twelve card readers.
The skimmer sleeves were obvious, having been fixed around the white plastic reader track with duct tape. Every time a customer slipped a credit or debit card into the reader, the card also tracked through the skimmer, which read all the same information, storing it in a green circuit board wired to the sleeve. Pike tore off the sleeves and circuit boards, and stowed them in a plastic bag. He left the pump registers broken and open.
A woman driving a silver Lexus SUV pulled up while Pike was working.
He said, “The pumps are being serviced.”
She drove away.
Eight minutes later, the skimmers were stripped from the pumps and Pike was finished.
They could wait around to see who would show up, but Pike wanted to maintain the pressure. He wanted to flush them into his sights.
They took a long break for breakfast, and hit the next station three hours later. Down Home Petroleum (proudly independent!) was a cheesy little station in North Hollywood that was older and smaller than the All-American Best Price, and so dirty it looked like a smudge.
Cole and Stone rolled in first, just as they had before, and this time it was Stone who spoke in his ear.
“Two dudes inside, bro.”
“Soldiers?”
“Dunno. Young, white, and skinny, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t packing.”
Cole, listening in on the conference, said, “Surrounding streets clear.”
“I’m in.”
Pike rolled, once more pulling up to the pumps.
The Down Home was too low-rent for a glass barrier. A tall Anglo kid sat behind a counter, unshaven, shaggy, and looking as if he’d rather be having surgery. Had a friend keeping him company. A shorter, stockier guy about the same age kicked back in a chair propped against the wall. Pike heard them talking when he entered, and recognized accents similar to Rina’s, though not as pronounced. A flicker of recognition flashed in their eyes when he mentioned Darko, and the kid behind the counter raised his hands.
“Hey, man, I just work here.”
His friend smiled stupidly, incredulous.
“Dude. Are you robbing us?”
The counter kid glared lasers at the friend.
“Shut up before you get us killed.”
Civilians, or so far out of the loop they might as well have been.
Six pumps, twelve skimmers, eight keypads rigged to steal PIN numbers. Pike figured they knew the pumps were rigged, or knew enough to guess, but neither tried to interfere. Pike was gone in seven minutes, and met up with Cole and Stone at the Studio City park.
When Stone saw the number of skimmers Pike had collected, he whistled.
“Man, we should bill LAPD for this.”
They killed the next two hours at Cole’s house, then rolled down through the canyons to Hollywood. Super Star Service was located on a seedy part of Western Avenue, just north of Sunset. It was smaller than the Tarzana station, having only four pumps split between two pump islands, and shared its property with a taco stand. The stand was doing a vigorous business.
As Pike waited for Cole and Stone to recon the area, it occurred to him this was their last target. If Darko’s enforcers didn’t show, they would have to come up with something else. That’s when Cole spoke in his ear.
“Well, Joseph, I think we have company.”
“What do you see?”
“Dark blue Navigator parked across the street and a silver BMW alongside a little taco stand they have here.”
Stone’s voice came in.
“I make two men in the Beemer, and at least two in the Nav.”
Pike said, “What about the station personnel?”
Cole again.
“One male at the counter, but he’s nothing like the last kids. This guy’s all sharp corners. I don’t think you get out of the car this time.”
“No?”
“These boys are ready. I don’t know if they’ll try to take you here or follow you out, but I say we don’t give them the chance. Come in. Let them see you. Then leave. Make them follow you. Don’t give them another choice.”
“Rog. I’m rolling.”
Pike slipped his.357 from its holster, and set it between his legs.
Pike approached the station slowly, seeing both the Navigator and the BMW in his peripheral vision without looking directly at them. They had to believe he did not suspect they were waiting.
Elvis said, “Looking good.”
Stone echoed him.
“All good.”
Pike eased into the station, but stopped short of the pumps. He counted to ten, then slowly turned back to the street and out into traffic. He didn’t speed away, didn’t punch it, and never once looked in his mirror.
Cole said, “Here we go. Nav’s pulling out.”
Pike glanced in his rearview and saw the dark blue Navigator swing through a hard one-eighty, looping into the gas station and out, jumping into traffic four or five cars behind him. The BMW followed the Navigator, cutting across oncoming traffic as the oncoming cars jammed their brakes and fired off their horns.
Stone said, “Groovy. This is gonna be like shooting fish, bro.”
Pike’s mouth twitched.
“Shoot them later. Right now, watch them.”
PIKE DIDN’T WANT THEM to realize he knew they were behind him, so he didn’t speed up when he decided to lose them, he slowed down. Pike led them into a bottleneck where construction had forced three lanes of traffic into two. When Pike popped out the other side, they were trapped by the quicksand of congestion. Pike simply drove away, and waited at a nearby IHOP.
A few minutes later, Cole reported.
“The one dude jumped out and chased after you on foot. That didn’t work so well.”
“What are they doing?”
“They split up. I’m with the Navigator, northbound on Vine. Jon’s with the Beemer.”
Stone said, “Beemer’s north on Gower. We’re probably heading for the same place.”
Pike said, “I’ll catch up.”
This was what Pike wanted. The authority men had sent the enforcers, and now the enforcers had to explain how they blew it. They would lead Pike to an authority man, and might even lead him to Darko.
Pike caught sight of Stone’s Rover at the bottom of Laurel Canyon, just as it turned past a pair of pretentious Greek columns to enter the Mount Olympus planned development.
Cole, three cars ahead of Stone and already climbing the side of the canyon, called again to warn that their caravan would stand out in the residential neighborhood.
Cole said, “I’m approaching a construction site here on the right. Let’s dump two of these cars.”
“Rog.”
Pike sped up, trying to close the distance. He and Cole left their cars at the construction site and jumped into Stone’s Rover. Stone barreled away, hurrying to make up lost ground before they lost their targets.
Palatial homes of dubious architecture lined the steep streets, none of them worthy of the Greek gods the streets were named for. Mount Olympus led to Oceanus, then to Hercules and Achilles. They climbed hard, catching glimpses of the cars they followed higher on the mountain.
They reached the crest of the ridge, rounded a tight curve, and saw the Navigator and Beemer parked outside a dark gray home on the downhill side of the street. The cars were empty, suggesting the occupants were inside the house. Like every other home in Mount Olympus, the house was set on the curb with almost no setback. Low-slung and contemporary, the face of the house was a windowless, monolithic wall with a buffed-steel entry and a matching three-car garage. Gates and walls on either side of the house blocked any view to the rear.
Stone said, “Darko, baby. I can smell him.”
“Drive past, and drop me in front of the next house.”
Jon slowed enough for Pike to slide out. Pike glanced at the surrounding houses to see if anyone was watching, but all of the homes were still, and closed to the world.
Pike walked back to the gray house’s mailbox and found a thin stack of magazines and envelopes. He shuffled through, and saw that everything was addressed to someone named Emile Grebner.
Pike returned the mail, then set off after the Rover. It had turned around at the far intersection and was waiting at the curb.
As he walked, Pike phoned George Smith. George recognized the incoming number this time, and answered right away.
“My friends tell me you’re a one-man wrecking crew.”
“Your KGB friends?”
“Odessa is loving this. One of the brothers has a competing service station business with Mr. Darko’s operation.”
“I’m not doing this for Odessa.”
“It never hurts to be liked, my friend.”
“What does the KGB know about Emile Grebner?”
“Grebner-”
George thought for a moment.
“If this is the same Grebner, he works with Darko, yes. I do not recall his first name.”
“An authority man?”
George laughed.
“That’s what they call them. You’ll be speaking Serbian soon. Maybe Russian.”
“Meaning Grebner and Darko are tight?”
“Darko will have three or four like Grebner, each running three or four cells of their own down at the street level-the people who do the crime. Secrecy is everything with people from our part of the world, my man. They may not even know each other.”
The old KGB and Communist Party had been organized the same way as far back as Lenin, and Pike knew the earliest Soviet gangs had adopted the same system when the Party tried unsuccessfully to put them out of business. The Soviet gangs had outlasted the old Party members, and had spread their system throughout Eastern Europe and, now, America.
“A cell system.”
“Yes. Like these gas stations you hammered-they’re probably Grebner’s responsibility, so you’re his problem to handle. Is that how you know him? He sent people for you?”
“That’s how I know him.”
“Pity for them.”
Pike put away his phone as he reached the Rover.
Stone said, “Casa Darko?”
“Not Darko.”
Pike slipped into the Rover, and filled them in on what he had learned from George Smith. As he went through it, the front door opened and the two big men from the Navigator came out. They didn’t look happy, with the guy in front bitching out his friend, probably blaming him for their troubles. The Navigator squealed away in a wide, screaming U-turn.
Stone laughed.
“I guess those boys need their assholes stitched.”
Pike said, “How many were in the Beemer, Jon?”
“Two. Coupla pussies. I could tell by the way they drove.”
Stone said things like that.
Pike wondered if Darko was holed up with Grebner. Pike thought this unlikely, but knew it was possible. There might be only one or two men inside, but there could be a dozen, or a family with children.
Cole said, “So what are we going to do?”
“Take a look. Me and you. Jon, you’re outta here. Let us know if some one comes.”
As Cole and Pike slipped out, Stone said, “Want the M4? It’s ideal for urban assault.”
Cole frowned at Stone.
“You have an M4?”
“Shit, yeah, man. Suppressed. Frangible bullets so you don’t kill a buncha people in the next house. Straight from the Delta Armory.”
Cole looked at Pike.
“Is he kidding?”
“Let’s go.”
Pike jogged away, and Cole fell in behind him. They slowed as they neared the house, then lingered at the nearest side gate to let a car pass. Neither spoke, and neither needed to. Pike had been on missions as long as a week, and never uttered a word.
Pike went over first. He landed softly, then slipped along the side of the house without waiting. When he reached the corner, Cole was at his shoulder.
The backyard was small, but designed for sophisticated entertaining, with an outdoor bar, cabana seating around an elevated fire pit, and an infinity pool that stretched into space. The view past the pool encompassed the entire Los Angeles basin from downtown to the Pacific, and south all the way to Long Beach. The waterline at the edge of the pool seemed to simply stop, hanging at the edge of the sky. Views like this were why they called the development Mount Olympus.
Pike heard the steady drone of faraway voices, and realized he was hearing the television. ESPN, someone going on about the Lakers.
Cole touched Pike’s shoulder, and pointed. The service walk ran behind the bar to an area walled off for the pool equipment. Cole touched his shoulder again, then pointed at his own eyes, telling Pike the pool equipment would be a good vantage point.
Pike slipped past the bar to the pool, and squeezed in behind the pool equipment. Cole joined him a moment later.
The entire back of Emile Grebner’s house was open. Floor-to-ceiling glass sliders had been pushed into pockets, erasing the line between inside and out, and opening the house to air and light. Two younger men and a shorter, bulky man in his fifties were in the living room, but none of them were Michael Darko. The older man wore only baggy sweatpants cut at the knee, exposing a chest and back matted with gray hair. He was doing all the talking, so Pike decided he was Grebner. Grebner was angry, and making a big production of waving his hands.
One of the younger men made the mistake of speaking, and Grebner slapped him. The slap almost knocked him down, and the younger man scurried away. He came outside, where he lit a cigarette, and leaned against the bar. Sullen.
Grebner finally ran out of gas. He picked up a phone to make a call, and the other young man hurried into the kitchen. Grebner threw down the phone, then stalked into a bathroom off the living room. He slammed the door.
When the door slammed, the man at the bar held up his middle finger. Pike touched Cole, then pointed at the man in the kitchen-that man is yours. He touched himself, then pointed at the man by the bar-that one is mine.
Cole nodded, Pike returned his nod, and both moved without hesitation, Pike moving first to clear a path for Cole.
Pike slipped up behind the man at the bar, hooked his left arm around the man’s neck, and lifted.
Pike said, “Sh.”
A shape flickered at the edge of Pike’s peripheral vision as Cole passed, but Pike was focused on his target. The man struggled, but Pike lifted him higher, compressing the carotid artery to cut off the blood to his brain, and in a few seconds the man went to sleep. Pike laid him behind the bar, and bound his hands behind his back with a plasti-cuff.
Pike glimpsed Cole putting the other man down as he moved for the living room. He reached the bathroom and placed himself behind the door only a second before it opened, and Grebner stepped out.
Pike slapped him behind the right ear with the.357, and Grebner pitched forward. He hit the terrazzo hard on his hip, but didn’t go all the way down, crabbing away on his ass until he bumped into the wall. Pike hadn’t wanted him out. Pike wanted him awake.
Cole stepped out of the kitchen, glancing at Grebner but otherwise ignoring him.
“I’ll clear the house.”
Cole disappeared, leaving Grebner to Pike. You never knew-someone could be hiding in a closet.
Pike looked at Grebner. Grebner’s eyes went to the Python, to Pike’s arms, to Pike.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Pike opened his phone.
“ We’re good.”
Stone said, “I’m here if you need me, cocked and locked, brother man.”
Pike returned the phone to his pocket.
Grebner said, “I’m talkin’ to you, you better stop this.”
Pike could see he was scared, which was good. Outside, Cole dragged the man behind the bar out into the open. He tied the man’s ankles, then headed toward the kitchen.
Grebner shook his head.
“You got no idea, I am telling you. No idea what kind of hell you have unleashed.”
Pike said, “Stand up.”
Grebner shuffled warily to his feet. Pike turned him around, tied off his hands, then pushed him back to the floor. Grebner squinted at Pike, trying to read him, but saw only the mirrored surface of Pike’s sunglasses-blue bug eyes in an expressionless face. Pike knew Grebner would find this unnerving. Like Walsh when she had him at Parker Center, he was psyching the edge.
“Where’s Darko?”
“Kiss my ass.”
Pike hit him again. The barrel of the.357 caught him high on the temple and split the skin.
“Darko?”
Grebner made a low growling sound, and shook his head, spreading blood over his face.
“I know you want Darko. You been telling everyone you want Darko. Here, you can call him-”
Grebner tipped his head toward the couch.
“Get the phone. You see the phone there on the couch? Get it. Scroll for Michael. Call him.”
Pike saw the phone. He picked it up, then scrolled through the directory until he found the name.
Grebner said, “Go ahead. You see the number there? Write it down, you want. Call him.”
Outside, Cole dragged the man from the kitchen next to his friend. Both men were now awake, and bound hand and foot. Cole hurried away to another part of the house, his gun out and ready.
Pike called the number, and reached a female computer voice.
“Enter your callback number at the tone, followed by the pound sign.”
A paging system. Pike hung up when the tone sounded, and brought up the phone’s call list. The call list revealed the same number had been dialed a few minutes earlier, which would have been the call Grebner placed before he went to the bathroom. Grebner was telling the truth.
Pike slipped the phone into his pocket, then went back to Grebner.
“Where is he?”
Grebner glanced at the pocket.
“There. This is where Michael is. You page him, and he calls. He lives there in the phone. He’s in your pocket.”
Pike holstered the.357, then squatted so he and Grebner were only a few inches apart.
Pike said, “This will hurt.”
Pike dug the point of his thumb behind Grebner’s right collarbone, probing for a bundle of nerves. He found it, and pinched the bundle into the bone. Grebner flinched, and tightened against the wall. Pike pinched harder, crushing the bundle. Grebner’s entire body stiffened like a drawn bow, and he made the low growl again, straining to stand up to the pain.
Pike let go.
“It will hurt worse the next time.”
Grebner sucked deep breaths, and shook his head to gather himself. A spray of fine blood speckled the wall.
“I know you want Darko, but what are you doing here, man? You want some money? I can give you money.”
Pike dug at the nerve again, and this time Grebner screamed. His face went bloodred to purple, and he kicked spastically, but Pike held him down. And then released the pressure.
“Not money. Darko.”
Grebner sobbed, still shaking his head.
“I do not know. I call him. I call the number. That is all I know. He tells no one his whereabouts for this very reason. You can beat me all you like, but I cannot say. You are not the first who wants to find him.”
“Jakovich?”
Grebner’s eyes narrowed as if Pike had finally surprised him. He glanced at his men and then toward the front door, almost as if he couldn’t believe he was in this position and if he only pretended hard enough Pike would go away.
“You got no idea what you are saying.”
“How about if I say, ‘Kalashnikov’?”
Grebner slowly opened his mouth, staring as if Pike were mystical.
“How can you know these things?”
“Are the rifles in Los Angeles?”
Grebner did not answer. He was still trying to figure out how Pike knew.
Pike reached for his shoulder, and Grebner jerked.
“Yes! Yes, this is what I hear. I don’t know this-I don’t see them-but this is what I am told.”
As Grebner answered, Cole reappeared, now carrying a grocery bag tucked under his arm. He motioned Pike over, and spoke so Grebner couldn’t hear.
“The guns are here?”
“That’s what he says.”
“How about Darko? He have a location?”
“He has a pager number. That’s it.”
Cole patted the bag.
“I scooped some billing records and files, but it’s lame. I don’t know if this will help.”
Pike and Cole returned to Grebner, who was watching them like a cornered rat would watch circling dogs.
Pike said, “Where are the guns?”
“How would I know? The old one. He has them.”
“Jakovich.”
“You do this for the guns? You want to steal them, buy them, what? Who are you working for?”
“Frank Meyer.”
“I don’t know a Frank Meyer. Who’s that?”
“Darko sent a crew to a house in Westwood almost a week ago. Do you know about that?”
“Of course, I know. This was Frank Meyer’s house?”
“Frank, his wife Cindy, their two little boys. Darko’s crew murdered them after his son was snatched.”
Now Grebner’s eyes narrowed again.
“Michael’s son?”
Pike nodded, but this seemed to confuse Grebner even more.
“Michael has no children. This was the old man’s child he took.”
Cole and Pike shared a glance, then Cole took the picture of Rina’s son from his pocket and held it out. The baby with the wispy red hair.
“Peter. Petar. Is this the kid you’re talking about?”
“I have not seen the child. All I know is what Michael tell me.”
“Which is what?”
“Michael took the child to get the guns. He thinks he can force the old man to make a deal, but the old man is crazy like these old fucks back home. He went insane.”
“So now they’re at war.”
Grebner laughed.
“You would have to be Serbian to understand. This is beyond war. The old man, he tells Michael he will kill the child himself. The old one will kill his own child to show he has no weakness, and cannot be threatened, and he will kill Michael. Do you understand what I am telling you? This whole mess has blown up in Michael’s face.”
Cole said, “Jakovich’s child? Not Michael’s.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the mother?”
“Who can say? I don’t know these people.”
“How many children does Michael have?”
“Some? Many? None? You think we go on picnics? I never see Michael with anyone but whores.”
The phone in Pike’s pocket rang with a high-pitched jangle that made Grebner jump. Grebner’s phone.
Pike glanced at the incoming number, but it was only a number and meant nothing. Pike answered, but said nothing. The person on the other side was silent. Pike heard breathing, then the person hung up.
Pike slipped the phone into his pocket, and saw that Grebner was smiling, his teeth filmed with blood.
Grebner said, “This will be Michael, yes?”
“Probably.”
“I am sorry for your friend, Frank Meyer, but he should not have involved himself in our affairs. Neither should you. We are terrible enemies.”
Pike studied him for a moment, then glanced at Cole, whose eyes were wide, the eyes saying, What in hell just happened here?
Pike said, “We’re done. I’ll be right behind you.”
Cole headed for the front door, and Pike turned back to Grebner. When Cole was gone, Pike drew the.357 and thumbed back the hammer. The locking steel spring was a breaking bone in the quiet house. Grebner, eyebrows lurching, wet his lips and breathed faster.
Pike touched the muzzle to Grebner’s head. Grebner clenched his eyes, then opened them, wide and glistening, dancing like moths trying to escape a glass.
Pike said, “Where did Jakovich get the guns?”
“I got no idea. I don’t know.”
“Was Frank involved?”
“What? Who?”
Grebner was so scared he had already lost the name.
“The man who owned the house. Frank Meyer. Was he involved in the deal for the guns?”
“I don’t know. How could I know?”
“What did Darko tell you?”
“He said nothing about this Frank Meyer. He told me he knew where the old man had his son. That’s all he said.”
Pike pressed the muzzle into Grebner’s head. It would leave a perfect, circular mark.
“Did he tell you why the child was with the Meyers?”
“No, just he was going to get the old man’s boy. That is what he say.”
“Darko went with the crew to the Westwood house?”
“That’s what he say. To make sure they not fuck it up. Please-” Pike looked out over the white terrazzo floor and the fine white furniture and beyond the two trussed men with their frightened, watching eyes, to the infinite, hazy sky. Knowing was good.
“Deliver a message.”
Grebner opened his eyes. He had expected Pike to kill him.
“Tell Michael nothing he does or can do will stop me.”
Grebner slowly nodded, staring into Pike’s invisible eyes.
“I think maybe you are a terrible enemy, too.”
Pike holstered his gun and left.
PIKE FLAGGED JON TO pick them up, Cole tugging his arm as soon as they were out of the house.
“Refresh my memory. Whose kid is this we’ve been trying to find?”
“Your memory’s fine. She said Darko is the father.”
“Only Darko tells this guy that Jakovich is the father.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it. Everything she told us checked out when I spoke with Ana’s friend.”
In the car, Pike explained about Grebner as they drove down the hill, and asked Jon to stay at the scene to follow Grebner in case he left for a face-to-face with Darko. Stone told him it would be no problem, then had a few questions.
Stone said, “This guy Grebner, was he in on killing Frank?”
“No. Says he knew about it, but it was Darko’s play.”
“So he didn’t know if Frank was involved?”
Pike realized Stone was staring at him, and realized why.
“He doesn’t know if Frank had anything to do with the guns or not. He doesn’t think so, but he doesn’t know.”
Cole said, “The guns are in Los Angeles, and Jakovich has them. Way these people keep secrets, Darko may not even know how he got them. He just wants them.”
Stone didn’t say any more. They drove the rest of the way down in silence, but Stone was likely thinking much the same things as Pike. The field of fire was growing confused. Rina hid her baby with her sister to keep him from Michael, or Jakovich hid his child with Ana or Frank for the same reason, which meant Jakovich had a relationship with Rina’s sister or with Frank. Frank and his family were either innocent collateral damage, or Frank was somehow involved with Jakovich in the acquisition of three thousand automatic weapons. Pike thought about these things, but didn’t try to get his head around everything at once. Pike knew how to remain calm during the chaos of combat. He had been trained for it, and had survived withering fire in overwhelming combat situations dozens of times. He had learned to keep his head by thinking about one thing at a time. Access the situation, plan a single action, then commit yourself to that action. A war is won one maneuver at a time.
Pike said, “Let’s talk to Rina again.”
They took their own vehicles to the guesthouse while Jon Stone returned to Grebner’s. The drive to the guesthouse at the far end of the Sunset Strip took only minutes, and then they cruised along the narrow, sun-dappled street to the rental property. Yanni’s truck was gone, and Pike immediately sensed they would find the house empty.
Pike waited for Cole at the gate, then eased along the stubby drive past the front home into the tiny courtyard. All of it vibed deserted and creepy, and when Pike glanced at Cole again, saw that Cole had his gun out, dangling along his leg.
Pike tried the knob, found it unlocked, and went in with Cole behind him. The little guesthouse was cool and pleasant, and smelled of the vining roses.
The single studio was empty. The bathroom door was open, but the light within it out. Pike called anyway.
“Rina?”
“They’re gone. Look. Their things are gone.”
Cole set the bag on the dinette table.
“I’ll see if this stuff gives us anything.”
Cole dumped the contents of the bag, then began organizing a jumble of phones, wallets, and papers.
Pike phoned Walsh as Cole worked, putting the phone on speaker so Cole could hear. When Walsh realized the call was from Pike, she seemed distant and wary.
“Where are you?”
“Doing what I told you I’d do.”
“You were supposed to keep me advised. I want to know what you’re doing.”
Pike knew she was trying to bait him into admitting he found the bug, so he ignored her.
“The guns are in Los Angeles.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know, but the deal is close. I have some information I need to confirm.”
“Don’t just leave me hanging. Where are those guns?”
“Jakovich has them. That’s all I know. You want me to leave it at that?”
“No.”
She sounded defeated, as if needing Pike’s help left her depressed.
“Does Jakovich have any children?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Michael Darko caused a one-year-old male child to be kidnapped, and I have conflicting information about the child’s identity.”
“Jakovich is an old man.”
“Doesn’t mean he can’t have a baby.”
“Jesus, Pike, I don’t know. So what if he does?”
“One of my sources tells me the child is Darko’s child. The other says Jakovich is the father. If Darko kidnapped this kid to force the old man’s hand, it’s blown up in his face. This source tells me the old man has ramped up the war, which means he could unload the guns faster just to get rid of them.”
“Okay, wait-how has he ramped up the war?”
“He’s vowed to kill the kid himself. This takes the child off the table as a bargaining chip, and sends a message to the other Serb sets. The source told me they’re big on messages.”
Pike heard Walsh take a deep breath.
“Is this source reliable?”
“I had a gun to his head, Walsh. How reliable could he be? That’s why I’m calling you-to see if any of this is possible.”
She breathed again, and then her voice was thoughtful.
“Vorovskoy Zakon. You know what that is?”
Pike glanced at Cole, but Cole shook his head.
“No.”
“Started with the Russian gangs back in the old Soviet Union, but it’s all through the East European gangs now.”
“What is it?”
“It translates as ‘thieves in law.’ Vory v Zakone. What they call the thieves code. These people live by eighteen rules, Pike-actual written rules, kind of like a guidebook for assholes. The first rule-rule number one-is that their families don’t matter. Mom, dad, the brother, sis-those people do not matter. They are not supposed to have wives or children. It’s actually written like that, Pike. I’ve read it with my own eyes.”
Pike thought about Rina.
“What about girlfriends?”
“Girlfriends are fine. Have all the girlfriends you want, but marriage is out. These guys swear a blood oath on this crap, and I have interrogated enough of them to tell you they mean it. So if you’re asking me whether Jakovich would sacrifice his own child, I have to say yes. They have these rules, and the rules are enforced. If the rules are broken, the punishment is death. I’m not shitting you. The old pakhans take this stuff seriously.”
Pike nodded, thinking about a man who could do such a thing, and then he continued.
“I need to know about Darko, too. If the child is Darko’s, then my other source is solid. If not, then not, and that business I told you about Darko leaving the country is probably wrong.”
“I’ll check with Interpol. They might have something on Jakovich, but I can already tell you we don’t have the information on Darko. You’re on your own with Darko.”
“Okay. Let me know.”
She said, “Pike?”
Pike waited.
“Don’t get second thoughts about killing him. Don’t make that mistake. Darko is mine.”
Pike said, “Sh.”
He hung up as Cole glanced up from the things he had spread on the table.
Cole said, “I think we have something.”
Pike went to see, thinking he had rules of his own.
Jon Stone
JON STONE DROPPED OFF Pike and his buddy at their cars, then drove back up the hill, but he didn’t return to his observation point. He would in a few minutes, but he wanted to take care of something first.
He parked outside Grebner’s house, noting that half the vehicles at the surrounding homes were Rovers just like his, and that almost all of them were black, also like his. He counted two white Rovers, and a silver, but all the others were black. Parking in this neighborhood was like hiding a tree in the forest.
Jon got out, went around to the rear, and opened the hatch. He dug around in his gearbox, selecting a sweet little nine-millimeter Sig he had rebuilt himself, along with its matching suppressor tube, which he had also built. He screwed the suppressor in place, checked to make sure no one was watching, then closed up his Rover and let himself into Grebner’s house.
Stone figured the three turds Pike described would still be trying to get loose, and, sure enough, there they were, the two outside, and the older turd there in the living room-Grebner.
Grebner was on his feet, stumbling around in a circle as he tried to see his back in a mirror. He had scored a pair of scissors, and was trying to cut the plastic ties binding his wrists.
When Jon walked in, Grebner looked over, saw the Sig, and froze like a stiff.
Jon said, “That guy who was here, with the dark glasses? He’s the nice one.”
Stone stripped the scissors from Grebner’s hand, kicked his legs out from under him, and dropped him to the terrazzo.
Stone said, “Watch.”
The two men outside saw him coming and tried to roll away, over and over like a couple of glowworms. One of them was barking in Serbian, but the other just kept rolling. Jon had to hand it to the guy.
Jon grabbed the barker by the feet, dragged him to the pool, and pushed him in. The other one managed to wedge himself against the bar by the time Jon caught him. Jon dragged him back to the pool, and tossed him in, too. They were splashing around like a couple of beached fish, and breathing about as well.
Grebner managed to gain his feet again, and ran to the front door, but lost a lot of time fumbling with the lock. Jon had locked it when he entered. Jon caught him at the door, dropped him to the ground again, then dragged him back to the living room. Dude slid easily across the terrazzo.
Jon said, “This is a lovely home, by the way. Wonderful view. Nice clean design. I have an interest in residential architecture.”
Jon bellied him out, then lifted his head by the hair so he could see the splashing.
“See that? They’re drowning. If those boys had the proper training, if they were true elite killers, they’d know what to do. That boy who was just in here? Sunglasses? He’d know what to do. Me, you could drop me in there like that, wouldn’t be a problem.”
Jon watched the splashing for a moment, and decided there wasn’t as much now as a few moments ago.
“Only you couldn’t drop me.”
Grebner said, “I told the other one everything I know.”
“I know. I just didn’t want him to have all the fun. You wanna go for a swim?”
“No!”
Jon smiled. Jon wasn’t going to throw him in.
But then Jon stopped smiling.
“You got a message to deliver. I just wanted to make sure you’ll deliver it in a timely fashion. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
“Yes!”
“I thought you might. Now let me ask you a question-does Jakovich have a buyer?”
“I don’t know. Michael say no, but I don’t know.”
“How about Michael? Why’s he hot for so much heavy metal?”
Grebner glanced away, which meant he was thinking. Thinking was bad. Stone snapped a hard right fist into his nose. He punched him again, then a third time.
Grebner snorted out streamers of blood, now spitting the words.
“He has a deal with the Armenians. Way over market price. He can make much. Way over much.”
“How much over much?”
“Three million dollars. He think maybe more.”
Stone dropped Grebner’s head. He admired the distant view for a moment, and thought, briefly, that he should probably drag those two assholes out of the pool, but then decided against it. He patted Grebner’s head.
“You boys truly fucked up this time.”
Jon left the lovely house, broke down and stored his weapon, then resumed his position at the end of the street.
He took out his cell phone, and called a friend of his who often dealt in illegal arms.
“Hey, bruddah-man! What’s the word on those AKs?”
Sitting there, he reminisced about the good times he had with Frank Meyer in foreign lands, and waited for something to happen.
COLE WENT THROUGH THE call log on Grebner’s phone, examining both the incoming and outgoing calls, and made notes in a spiral notebook. When he finished, Cole brought up the most recent incoming call number on Grebner’s phone, and held it out. Pike saw a number in the 818 area code.
Cole said, “This is the call you answered when the caller hung up. The incoming number.”
“Darko.”
“I think so. This is the last outgoing call, which is the pager number programmed to Darko’s name.”
Cole showed him a number with a 323 area code, then scrolled back through the outgoing call log.
“The second to last outgoing call went to the same number, which is the call we saw Grebner make before he threw the phone.”
“That’s why I think it was Darko. Grebner paged him, so he was probably answering the page.”
“Uh-huh, so check it out. This particular phone only retains the most recent twenty incoming calls and outgoing calls-”
Cole turned the tablet so Pike could see. Cole had listed the call numbers in two columns, along with the times and dates the calls were made or received. Cole had drawn an X next to almost half of the incoming numbers, indicating the calls were received from blocked numbers. Cole had drawn lines connecting three of the outgoing calls with three incoming calls. He pointed out the outgoing calls.
“Here’s Grebner paging Darko. See the times?”
“Yeah.”
Cole pointed out the corresponding incoming calls.
“Okay, over here he receives an incoming call within twenty minutes of making the page. One of the callbacks was from a restricted number, but two come from the same number as the call you answered up at the house.”
“Different locations?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. But why use a listed number? Twice?”
“No cell service. Nothing else available.”
Cole stared at the call lists for a moment, then picked up his phone.
“Let’s see what we get.”
Cole dialed the number, then listened. He listened for a very long time before he ended the call.
“No answer. I counted twenty rings, but nada. That usually means a phone is unplugged.”
Pike said, “Can you get an address?”
Two calls and twelve minutes later, Cole had an address. The phone number was listed to something called Diamond Reclamations in Lake View Terrace, up in the San Fernando Valley. When Cole lowered his phone, he nodded at Pike.
“It fits. Lake View is in the foothills up by Angeles Crest. Mountains mean bad cell service, so landlines are the way to go.”
Pike said, “Good start. How about I check out Lake View, and you see what you can get from the rest of this?”
Cole pushed the papers back into the grocery bag.
“How about I try to find Rina and Yanni? There are way too many conflicting stories here-”
Cole was still talking when they heard the outside gate, and Pike went to the door. Rina stopped when she saw him, shielding the sun from her eyes with a hand. She was wearing a black T-shirt over the same jeans, the big purse slung over one shoulder, her bag slung over the opposite shoulder.
She said, “What you find?”
“Where’s Yanni?”
She scowled at him for not answering her question, then pushed past him into the guesthouse. She glanced at Cole as she put her bag on the table.
“He work for a living. They don’t give him time off to help find stolen children.”
Cole said, “Where were you?”
She upended her bag, dumping out freshly washed clothes.
“I went to wash. My clothes, they smelled like feet.”
Pike said, “You know Emile Grebner?”
“Of course, I know. He has fucked me many times.”
She said it as matter-of-factly as if she had told them her eyes were blue or her hair black, and refolded her laundry without pausing, as if this statement had no meaning. Pike thought maybe, for her, it had none.
Cole said, “How do you know him?”
“He have the big house in the hills, and would have girls for the parties. This was before Michael, when I was first here, fifteen, sixteen years old, I think. He like only Serbian girls, not American or Russian. He trust the Serb girls, and we speak like back home. That is where Michael first see me, up there. Why you want to know?”
“So you know he’s one of Darko’s authority men-a close associate?”
“I just tell you I know him. Are you not listening?”
Pike said, “Grebner told us the baby’s father is Milos Jakovich, not Darko.”
Pike watched her carefully to read her reaction. A deep frown cut lines between her eyebrows as if she was struggling with the language problem. She glanced at Cole, who was watching her just as carefully, then turned back to Pike.
“You are making this up?”
Cole said, “We’re not making it up. Are you?”
“Fuck you. You and the dog you walked in on.”
She turned back to Pike.
“This is bullshit. I know who the father is and Michael know, too. Grebner, he lies. Why he say this? Where you see him?”
Pike said, “Grebner believes it. Darko and Jakovich are at war over some illegal arms. Rifles. Do you know anything about that?”
“Michael hate the old man, this I know, but I don’t know nothing about this other thing. Why he say Michael not father?”
“Probably because this is what Michael told him. Is Jakovich the f ather?”
“No.”
“Could he think he’s the father?”
She drew herself up and gazed at Cole as if he was the scum of the earth.
“His dick has never been in me.”
Cole turned red, but Rina looked back at Pike, and Pike thought her eyes were growing wet.
“This is what Michael is telling his men, that he is not the father?”
“Yes.”
“This makes no sense. Michael tells me he will take Petar back to Serbia, and will not take me. Michael is father, not this old man I have never seen. I am mother. Petar is mine.”
Cole frowned at Pike.
“This is making my head hurt.”
Rina ignored him.
“He say Michael say this terrible thing?”
“Yes.”
Her face folded as she thought about it, and she looked forlorn.
“I don’t know. Maybe he tell them this to hide his shame.”
Cole crossed his arms, and leaned back, his eyes growing distant and cool.
“That the boy’s mother is a whore?”
“Why else? All men are weak. You would do the same.”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“Big talk. So maybe you make me pregnant, then we’ll see how big you talk, here is the mother, she is a whore.”
Cole simply stared at her, and Rina turned back to Pike.
“Does Grebner say where is my boy?”
“No.”
“Men are so weak. Take me to him. I make him say.”
“He doesn’t know, but we might have a lead on Darko. Have you heard of Diamond Reclamations?”
Her face scrunched as she thought, but then she shook her head.
“No. This is a jewelry store?”
Pike said, “We’re going to find out.”
Rina shoved her clothes aside, and started for the door.
“Good. Let’s find out.”
Pike stopped her.
“Not you. Me.”
Rina launched into a stream of Serbian, and kept it up as they left.
Outside, Cole said, “What do you think she’s saying?”
“No idea.”
“We probably wouldn’t like it.”
“No. Probably not.”
Pike left Cole at his car, and headed for the Valley.
Elvis Cole
COLE THOUGHT ABOUT YANNI as he left the guesthouse.
Janic “Yanni” Pevich had come back clean. When Cole checked the plate Pike gave him from Yanni’s F-150 pickup truck, he had learned the vehicle was registered to a Janic Pevich. The leasing office at Yanni’s building confirmed the apartment was being leased to a Janic Pevich, and reported that Mr. Pevich had been an excellent tenant. Cole had then checked with a friend at LAPD’s Hollywood Station, who reported that Pevich had no criminal record. Cole had related all this to Joe Pike, and let it go, but after leaving Grebner, he had begun to have second thoughts.
They now had two divergent and different stories, which meant one of the principals was lying.
Cole worked his way up Coldwater Canyon to Studio City, and returned to Yanni’s apartment. Rina had said he was at work, but Cole didn’t know if he was working, or care. The F-150 was missing. Cole parked in the visitors’ parking lot and made his way back to Yanni’s apartment.
He knocked first, then rang the bell. When no one answered, he slipped the dead bolt and let himself inside.
He said, “Hey, Yanni, Rina’s out in the car.”
Just in case.
No one answered and no one was home.
Cole locked the door behind himself, then made a quick search of Yanni’s bedroom. The apartment was small, with only one bedroom, but it looked lived-in, and real. Cole searched through the bathroom, the dresser drawers, the bedroom closet, and under the bed. He found nothing unusual or incriminating, and nothing to suggest Yanni had lied. He also found nothing of a particularly personal nature, which he found odd-no pictures of family or friends, no souvenirs, and nothing to anchor a personal history. Ana Markovic had a yearbook and snapshots of her friends, but Yanni had nothing.
Cole returned to the living room, then went into the kitchen. The counter and sink were cluttered with unwashed dishes. Cole found a box of plastic baggies under the sink, then selected a glass tumbler, placed it in the bag, and let himself out. Yanni Pevich had no record, but maybe Yanni Pevich was someone else.
Cole phoned John Chen from his car, and explained the situation.
Chen said, “How am I going to sneak it in with everyone here?”
“You’ll think of something. I’m already on my way.”
“ You’re coming here?! Don’t come here!”
“Meet me outside.”
The trip down to SID took only fifteen minutes, and John Chen had probably been waiting out front for the entire time. When Cole pulled up, Chen was hopping from foot to foot like a kid who had to pee. He relaxed when he saw the glass.
“Hey, that’s a pretty good sample.”
The fingerprints were clearly defined on the glass.
“Yeah. You won’t have to glue it or do anything fancy. Just tape off the prints and see what you get.”
“You want an Interpol check, too?”
“Yeah, Interpol. I’ll be in my car.”
“You’re going to wait?”
“I’m going to wait. How long could it take, John? Just see what you get.”
Chen scurried away. All he would have to do is dust the glass with latent powder, lift the prints with tape, then scan them into the Live Scan system. He would have a hit, or not, in minutes.
When Cole reached his car, he phoned Sarah Manning. He had not heard from the girl with the purple hair, and wished now he’d gotten her phone number. He was disappointed when Sarah’s voice mail picked up.
“Hey, Sarah, it’s Elvis Cole. I never heard from Lisa Topping. Would you please reconsider giving me her number? Thanks.”
Cole left his cell number, and hung up. He checked the time. He had been waiting for only eight minutes, and Chen might get hung up forever.
Cole couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he thought about Grebner. Grebner had really blindsided them with that business about Jakovich, which seemed all the more believable because Rina had so readily admitted she knew him. They both seemed believable, but Cole knew from experience the best liars are always believable, and the very best lies were mostly the truth. Here was Grebner with his party house in the hills, and here was Rina, who claimed to have attended his parties along with other Serbian prostitutes so Grebner and his gang-set buddies could boogie with girls they trusted.
Cole wondered if there was a way he could find out if this was true, and thought he might be able to get the information from one of the other prostitutes.
Cole didn’t have the files, but he had his notebook. He had copied the dates of Rina’s arrests, and now he phoned the district attorney’s general administration office. He worked his way through three clerks and spent almost twenty minutes on the phone before he found someone to look up the case number and identify the deputy district attorney who handled the case.
“That would be Elizabeth Sanchez.”
“Could I have her current posting and number, please?”
Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Sanchez was currently posted to the Airport Courthouse in Playa del Rey, south of the Los Angeles International Airport.
Cole thought he would likely get a voice mail, but a woman picked up the call.
“Lauren Craig.”
“Sorry. I’m calling for Elizabeth Sanchez.”
“Hang on, I think I can-”
Cole heard her call out, then the muffled clunks of the phone being handled, and a different voice came on the line.
“Liz Sanchez.”
Cole identified himself, gave her the date and the case number, and told her he needed the names of the other prostitutes scooped up in the sting.
Sanchez laughed.
“That was almost six years ago. Wow, I was still a Grade Two. You can’t really expect me to remember their names.”
“I thought it might stand out because of the nature of the arrest.”
“A vice sting?”
“A Serbian sex ring. They worked for a Serb gang set.”
“Ah. Okay, that sounds familiar. NoHo Vice took down thirteen or fourteen girls over by CBS Studio Center. A joint task force deal with OCTF.”
Organized Crime Task Force.
“That’s it.”
“Serbians. Okay, sure. They had cribs all through those complexes. They had so many hookers around the pool over there it looked like the Playboy Mansion. Not that I’ve ever seen the mansion.”
“That’s the one. I want to talk to them about events occurring on or about that time.”
Sanchez said, “You mind if I ask what this is about?”
“A gang pakhan named Michael Darko. Darko heads up the set that owned these particular girls.”
Sanchez said, “Darko.”
“Yeah. One of his lieutenants probably ran the operation, but Darko was the man. The pakhan. I have some questions about Darko these girls might be able to answer.”
The silence from Sanchez was thoughtful.
“I don’t think that was it. I don’t think that was the name.”
Now it was Cole’s turn to hesitate.
“Darko?”
“Well, I’m thinking.”
“Was it Grebner? Might have been Grebner.”
“Hold on. The OC guys weren’t happy with the way it turned out. The Vice coppers were fine-they took down thirteen hookers-but the OC dicks were pissed. They wanted to move up the food chain, but none of the girls would roll. I remember because the OC dicks were totally pissed off. They couldn’t get the girls to roll.”
“Yeah, that would be Darko, or maybe a guy named Grebner.”
“No, I remember it now-his name was Jakovich. That’s who they wanted. His set ran the girls.”
“Jakovich.”
“That’s him. The OC dicks just murdered his name. Everything was Jakoffovich, Jerkoffovich, Jakobitch, like that.”
“You’re telling me these prostitutes worked for Milos Jakovich.”
“Absolutely. That’s why OC planned the sting. They wanted Jakovich. We had thirteen prostitutes coming out of a prelim, and none of them-not one-would roll.”
“Thanks, Liz. You’ve been a big help.”
Cole put down the phone. He stared at the empty sky, and knew, once more, how well some people could lie.
His phone rang, and he answered, feeling dull and slow.
A young woman’s voice came from far away.
“Mr. Cole? This is Lisa Topping. Sarah Manning called. She said you want to speak with me?”
Lisa Topping was Ana’s very best friend, and knew things no one else knew.
PIKE FOUND THE ADDRESS for Diamond Reclamations on his Thomas Guide map, then wedged the picture of the red-haired baby on his dash. He drove north on the Hollywood Freeway in silence. The creaks and whistles made by the speeding vehicle were faraway reminders of his progress. He studied the baby in brief glimpses. The kid looked nothing like Rina or Darko, but Pike had never been good at that kind of thing. Pike saw a baby, he thought the baby was either cute or not, and this kid was not a cute baby. Looking at the picture, he couldn’t even tell if the child was male or female. He wondered if it would turn out to look like Jakovich.
Pike followed the Hollywood Freeway into the northeast part of the Valley, joined up with the Golden State, and dropped off less than a mile later into a flat landscape where low buildings stood guard over empty lots veined by dried weeds and crumbling concrete. Rows of faceless buildings lined the larger streets, surrounded by equally faceless tract homes, all of which were bleached by the hazy light, and perpetually powdered by dust blown down from the mountains. Telephone poles lining the streets were strung with so many cables and wires they cut the sky like spiderwebs, as if to snare the people who lived there.
Pike did not have to check the Thomas Guide again. Having seen it once, he knew the route, and skirted around the Hansen Dam Park past nurseries, outdoor storage facilities, and row after row of sun-bleached, dusty homes. He found Diamond Reclamations on a four-lane boulevard at the foot of Little Tujunga Canyon, fenced between a Mom’s Basement public storage location and a stone yard where Bobcat loaders were moving slabs of limestone and marble. A huge Do-It-Yourself home improvement center sat directly across, surrounded by acres of parking and a couple of hundred parked cars. Dozens of sturdy brown men were clustered at the entrances to the Do-It-Yourself, come up from Mexico and Central America, ready and willing to work.
Pike pulled into the Do-It-Yourself center, hiding his Jeep in plain sight among the parked cars and trucks. Diamond Reclamations was a scrap-metal yard. A yellow single-story building sat at the street with eight-foot red letters painted across the front: SCRAP METAL WANTED SALVAGE AUTO PARTS STEEL. A gravel drive ran past the front building to a small parking lot.
Behind the parking lot was a larger, two-story corrugated-steel building. The front building blocked most of what lay behind it from view, but Pike could see that the grounds were crowded with stacked auto chassis, rusting pipes, and other types of scrap metal. Two new sedans were parked out front on the street, and two more sedans and a large truck were in the parking lot, but the gravel drive was chained off, and a sign in the front office window read CLOSED. As Pike watched, a man in a blue shirt came out of the front office building, and crunched across the parking lot to the corrugated building. As he reached the door, he spoke to someone Pike didn’t see, and then that man stepped out from behind the parked truck. He was a big man with a big gut, and thick legs to carry it. The two men laughed about something, then the man in the blue shirt went into the building. The big man studied the passing traffic, then slowly returned to his place behind the truck.
Everything about the man’s body language defined him. Guard. Darko probably traveled with bodyguards, and this man was likely one of his guards. Pike wondered how many more guards were inside and around the building.
Pike decided against calling their phone number again. He wondered if the phone rang in the smaller front building or the large corrugated building. Darko might be in one or the other. The man who murdered Frank and Cindy Meyer, Little Frank, and Joey.
Pike said, “Almost there, bud.”
Three of the Latin workmen broke away from the group by the entrance, and came toward Pike across the parking lot. They had probably been waiting for work since early that morning, and were taking a bathroom break or going for a piece of fruit.
Pike rolled down his window and motioned them over. Pike spoke Spanish pretty well, along with French, gutter German, a little Vietnamese, a little Arabic, and enough Swahili to make himself understood to most Bantu speakers.
“Excuse me. May I ask you a question?”
The three men exchanged glances before they approached, and the youngest man answered in English.
“My cousin is a very good mason, but we can also work with pipes and rough carpentry. I have three years’ experience with painting and dry wall.”
They had mistaken Pike for a contractor.
Pike said, “I’m sorry, but I am not looking for workmen. I have a question about the business across the street.”
He pointed, and all three men followed his finger.
“The scrap yard?”
“Yes. I see people and cars, but the entrance is chained. I have metal to sell, but the sign says closed. How long has it been like this?”
The three men spoke among themselves in Spanish. Pike understood most of their conversation, and gathered that all three were regulars at the home improvement center. He knew this to be true at home improvement centers, paint stores, and hardware stores throughout Los Angeles. The same workers gathered daily at the same locations, and were often met by the same contractors, landscapers, and construction foremen.
The three men reached a consensus, and the younger man finally answered.
“The people are there, but the chain is up. It has been like this three or four days.”
Since the murders in Westwood.
“Before that, the chain was down and the business open?”
“Yes, sir. Before the chain, the trucks come to bring or take the metal, but now, they no longer come. My cousin and I, we go there to see if they need good workers, but they tell us to leave. Now the chain is always up, and the trucks do not come, just the men in their nice cars.”
“The men you spoke with, they were here in the front? The little building is the office?”
Pike pointed again, and the men nodded.
“Yes, the men in there. They are not friendly.”
“This was the man in the blue shirt? I just saw him. He was the rude one?”
“There were two men, and both were rude. We see other men in the back, but we were scared to ask them.”
“Did they have Americano accents?”
“No, sir. They speak with a different flavor.”
“One more question. In the evening, do these men leave for the day?”
They had another discussion, this time with the older man doing most of the talking. Then the younger man answered.
“We cannot know. If we have no job when lunch ends, we go, but we arrive before seven in the morning, and the men are always there with cars in the lot. They must come with the sun to be here before us, but they are.”
“The nice cars?”
“Sí. Yes. They are very nice.”
“And they come and go during the day?”
“Sometimes. Mostly no, but sometimes. The man will take down the chain, and they go in or come out, but mostly no.”
“Sometimes different cars?”
“Sí. Sometimes.”
“Muchas gracias, mis amigos.”
Pike offered a twenty-dollar bill for their help, but the men refused and continued on their way. As they were leaving, the man in the blue shirt reappeared and returned to the front building.
Pike thought about dialing the number again to see if anyone answered, but then it occurred to him to see if the business had a second number. He opened his cell phone to call Information, but his phone could not find a signal. This confirmed the reason behind the landline.
Pike brought a handful of quarters to a pay phone hanging beside the center’s entrance to make the call, and asked if they had a listing for Diamond Reclamations in Lake View Terrace. They did, and a computer voice gave him the listing. It was different from the number he had.
Pike copied the new number, then called Information again for the same listing, and asked if Diamond had more than one number. The operator now read off two numbers, and the second number was the number from Grebner’s phone.
Pike thumbed in more money, and dialed the newest number. He watched the office as he dialed.
A male voice answered on the second ring, and Pike wondered if he was the man in the blue shirt. East European accent, but the accent was light.
The man was careful when he answered, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
“Hello.”
“Is this Diamond Reclamations?”
“Yes, but we are closed.”
“I have ten Crown Victorias for sale. I need to get rid of them, and I will let you have them cheap. Is there someone I can speak with about this?”
“No, I am sorry. We are closed.”
“The sign says you want metal.”
The man hung up before Pike could say more.
Pike counted to one hundred, then dialed the number again, but this time an answering machine picked up.
Pike was returning to his Jeep when a tan Ford Explorer turned onto the gravel drive, stopped at the chain, and beeped. The man in blue came out of the front building, unhooked the chain, and the Explorer pulled into the parking lot. A blond woman and a man in a black T-shirt got out of the Explorer. She was chunky and middle-aged, with hair so blond it was almost white. The man was younger, with lean muscles. He lifted a case of bottled water from the Explorer’s backseat, and the woman took out a grocery bag. The groceries and water suggested people were spending much time in the building.
They were heading for the corrugated building when three men came out. The last man out held the door, but the first man was a big man who moved like he wanted to knock the woman out of his way.
The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched.
The big man was Michael Darko.
PIKE KEPT DARKO IN sight at all times. Crossing the parking lot, moving between and around the parked vehicles, Pike did not look at anyone or anything else. Pike was locked on.
Pike slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep, lowered the sun visor, then started the engine. None of the three men looked toward the enormous Do-It-Yourself parking lot across the street. They would have seen nothing if they had. The Jeep was just another tree in a two-hundred-tree forest.
Pike used a pair of Zeiss binoculars to confirm the man was Darko. He was. Darko was thinner than in the picture Walsh showed Pike, and looked in better shape, as if he had been working out. His mustache was gone, and his hair was shorter, but the wide eyes and sharp sideburns were unmistakable. As Pike watched, Darko lit a cigarette, then waved the cigarette angrily, pacing with stop-and-go bursts in front of the two men.
Pike wondered if Darko had spoken with Grebner, and if he was preparing to change locations. If so, Pike would have to act quickly. Pike studied the three men and gauged the range at a hundred forty yards. At one hundred yards, the bullet from his.357 would drop about three and a half inches. At one-forty, the bullet would be down almost eight inches. Pike could make a center-of-mass shot, but he wasn’t going to shoot. Pike wanted Rina’s kid, and he wanted the truth about Frank. Darko knew the answer to these things, and Pike was certain he could make Darko talk.
Darko flicked away his cigarette and stalked back into the corrugated building. The other two men followed. Pike pulled out of the Do-It-Yourself lot like any other customer, drove two blocks, then swung around and went back to the Mom’s Basement, where an eight-foot cinder-block wall separated the storage location from the scrap yard.
People who rented space drove through a security gate that required a swipe card. Behind the gate, storage units ran along the eight-foot wall like soundstages at a film studio. Some were long and low to house cars and boats, but the largest was a three-story block building at the rear of the site.
Pike clipped on his.357 Python and his.45 Kimber, pulled off his sweatshirt, then strapped into his vest. He left his Jeep at the street, scaled the gate, and trotted along the storage units built against the wall. Two older men unloading a pickup watched him pass, but Pike ignored them. He would be over the wall before they could report him.
When he was beyond the corrugated building next door, Pike hoisted himself up onto the low shed roof, then peered over the wall. Parts and pieces of deconstructed vehicles dotted the ground like squares on a checkerboard, crossed and crisscrossed by narrow paths-fenders, tops, hoods, and trunks; chassis, driveshafts, and towering stacks of wheels. Giant spools of wire were overgrown by dead weeds, sprouted during the most recent rain only to die.
Pike saw no guards or workmen, so he moved along the top of the wall to inspect the building. A single door and several casement windows were cut into the back of the corrugated building, but the windows were too high to reach and the door was so caked with dust and debris it probably would not be usable. Pike chose a path through the scrap that would allow him a view of the opposite side of the building, then dropped over the wall. He drew his Python, then slipped between the stacks of scrap, and followed the path to the far side of the yard.
From his new position, Pike saw the office, part of the gravel parking area with the chain across the drive, and the long side of the corrugated building. A row of windows ran along the upper half of the building, suggesting a series of rooms on the second floor. A single large overhead garage door was open near the rear of the building, revealing a large service bay outfitted with tools, hoists, and bins. This would be where salvaged cars and trucks were broken down into their component parts. A man sat on a lawn chair in the open door. Wires dripped from his ears to an iPod, and he was reading a newspaper. A black shotgun leaned against the wall beside him.
Pike slipped behind a row of fenders overgrown by dead weeds as tall as scarecrows. When he had a view of the service bay again, the man in the chair was now on his feet. A second man had appeared at a door, and the two were talking. The chair man picked up his shotgun to join him, and the two of them disappeared.
Pike moved fast to the building. He pressed his back flat to the wall outside the big door, then cleared the service bay and saw it was empty. Darko would either be in the rooms beyond the door or upstairs, but Pike didn’t necessarily want Darko. He would have taken the chair man if the chair man had stayed, then worked his way up. Someone close to Darko would do if they could tell him what he wanted to know.
Pike stepped into the service bay when he heard the baby crying. The hiccup-y wail babies make was lost in the building, echoing through the cavernous room. Pike thought it might be coming through the far door or the walls, but then he realized it was coming from one of the windows overhead.
Pike thought through his moves. Making for Darko was the play to make, but the kid was upstairs. Crying.
Pike made his decision.
A metal stairway at the back corner of the service bay led up to the second floor. Pike made for the stairs.
THE STAIRWELL OPENED TO a long, narrow hall that let Pike see the length of the building. The first door in the hall was open, and the baby sounds were loud, but now Pike heard a woman’s irritated voice. Pike couldn’t understand her language, but he caught the harsh irritation, as if the woman had been tasked with a job she resented. Male voices came from the far end of the hall.
Pike took a breath, then slowly entered the room, moving so quietly the woman did not hear.
The woman was bouncing a baby with wispy red hair, trying to quiet him. She was facing the window, and trying to get the baby interested in something outside. A bassinet was against the wall, along with a small table spread with a sky blue blanket and a battered wooden desk. Disposable diapers and jars of baby food were stacked on the desk, along with baby wipes, cotton, and the other things babies required.
Pike made a ss-ss-ss sound to draw the woman’s attention. When she turned, Pike touched the gun to his lips.
“Sh.”
The woman was so still she might have stopped breathing, and her white skin paled to a sickly blue.
Pike whispered.
“Whose baby is this?”
“Milos Jakovich. Please do not kill me. I have not harmed this child. I care for him.”
She thought he was working for Jakovich, come to kill the child.
Pike said, “Don’t speak. Don’t move.”
The baby frowned at Pike, its snow-white brow scrunching like a crumpled handkerchief. Its red hair was wispy and fine, and its blue eyes seemed large for its head.
Pike moved past the woman to look out the window. The drop was about fourteen feet. The impact would be similar to a hard parachute landing, but Pike could make the drop with the baby. He could cushion their impact, then make his way back over the wall.
Pike holstered the Python. He was opening the window when something thumped in the hall, and the same man who summoned the chair guard appeared, and saw him.
The man shouted, and was pulling a pistol when Pike crushed his larynx and snapped his neck.
The woman was shouting out the window, and now the baby was screaming, too, its face a vivid red. Pike pulled her backward by the hair, but he didn’t have to fight her for the baby. She shoved it into his arms, and ran, stumbling down the hall. Pike took the baby back to the window, but now three men were running toward them, one of them pointing up at the window.
Pike stepped back and listened. He heard footsteps, voices, and a slam ming door, but nothing on the stairs. This meant they were talking to the woman. They would spend a few minutes trying to figure out who he was and whether he was alone, and then they would come. Men would be outside to cover the window, one team would come up the far stair, and another team would come up the near stair. Then they would fight.
The baby was screaming, tiny legs kicking, miniature fists clenched for battle, tears squeezed from eyes clenched tightly closed.
Pike held up the baby so they were face-to-face.
“Boy.”
The screaming stopped, and the angry blue eyes opened to nasty slits.
The close-quarters fight would be loud and vicious, and it occurred to Pike he had to protect the kid’s ears. He spotted the cotton in the baby supplies, pinched off two bits, and pushed a plug into each of the baby’s ears. The baby fought fiercely and screamed even louder.
“Gonna be loud, boy. Suck it up.”
Pike heard movement in other parts of the building, and knew the fight was approaching. When it came, they would shoot to kill him, which meant he couldn’t stand around with the kid. Pike jerked a blanket from the bassinet, wrapped it around the baby, then pulled a bottom drawer from the desk. He scooped out old files and paper, and placed the baby inside. The baby immediately stopped crying.
“You good?”
The baby blinked.
“Good.”
Pike closed the drawer with the baby inside, and hurried back to the door. Shooters were probably in both stairwells by now, and only seconds from making their move. They would have listened to the blond woman, made some kind of plan, and now felt confident they had Pike trapped. They were wrong. Pike attacked.
Pike crushed the near stairwell door from its jamb like a breaching charge. The two men on the stairs were caught off guard, and did not react quickly enough. Pike shot them in place, single-tapping each man in his center of mass, and immediately heard shouting below in the service bay.
Pike did not continue down because that was what the men below expected. They would cover the bottom door, thinking that Pike was trying to fight his way out. The men at the far end of the second floor would likely advance, believing they could trap Pike on the stairs.
They couldn’t. Pike was already gone.
Pike did not have to think these things through because he already had. He knew the plays even before he tucked the kid in the drawer, ten steps ahead of the curve.
Bang, bang, two down, and Pike blew back up the stairs. He was braced in the doorway and ready when the door at the far end of the hall opened, and two more men charged out. Pike shot the first man, and the other fell back, kicking the door closed, leaving his partner moaning. Pike put three fast rounds into the door to keep it closed, then popped the Python’s wheel and fed it a speed-loader. He didn’t wait, and didn’t check the downed man. He ducked through the baby’s room and swung out the window. The three men seen earlier were gone, drawn inside by the gunshots and shouting.
Pike hit sand, then ran, always moving forward. Speed was everything. The men inside were confused. They didn’t know where he was or how many people they faced, so Pike increased the pressure.
He slipped into the same service bay he entered earlier, only now four men were jammed at the base of the far stairwell, focused on the door. Pike shot the nearest man in the back, moved to cover, and shot a second. The remaining men fired blindly into the walls and ceiling as they fled. Pike heard fading shouts and engines rev.
A short hall led toward the front. Pike worked his way along the hall, hearing more engines, and came to a room filled with standing metal shelves, and an open door. He paused for the first time, but heard only silence, then approached the open door. The gravel parking lot was empty. Darko and his people were gone.
Pike found the front stair and hurried up to the second floor. He stepped over the dead man at the top of the stairs and moved toward the screaming. He worked his way down the hall, clearing each doorway until he was back where he started, then put away his gun and opened the drawer.
The baby looked angry as hell. The little fists swung and the legs pumped, and the red face was slick with tears.
Pike said, “You good?”
He lifted the baby out, and snuggled it to his chest. He took out the cotton plugs. The crying and screaming stopped. The baby settled against him. Pike rubbed its back.
“That’s it, buddy. I got you.”
Pike headed back along the hall to the front stair, then down, and into the parts room. Someone would have called the police, and the police would be rolling.
Pike was only five feet from the door when Rina Markovic came in from the service bay. She was holding her little black pistol, but it was her eyes that gave her away, and he knew she was Jakovich’s killer. They were cold, and dull, like the eyes of fish on ice.
She said, “You find him. Good. There is Petar. Yanni, he have Petar.” Yanni stepped in from the gravel, muttering something in Serbian. Yanni’s gun was stainless steel, and found Pike as if it could see him.
Pike knew his best chance was now, in the opening second, before they got to the killing. And as before, Pike took immediate action.
Pike spun to the left as he went for his gun, shielding the baby with his body. Pike thought he would take at least two bullets in the back before he could return fire, and either the vest would save him or it wouldn’t. If those first two shots didn’t kill or cripple him, he thought he could beat them even if he had to fight wounded.
Pike did not hear the shot when Yanni fired, but the bullet hit his back like a big man throwing a good hook. Pike staggered with the impact, but still managed to draw his weapon, and turned to fire when Jon Stone appeared in the door. Jon forearmed the M4 into Yanni’s head, and the big man dropped as Cole hit the woman from behind, stripped her weapon, then rode her down, his own gun out, eyes crazy and wide.
Cole said, “You all right?”
Pike checked the kid, who was screaming so hard he might have a stroke.
Petar was fine.
“We’re good.”
Stone said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”