Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (31 page)

    
“They’re not going to understand you, amigo,”
called the fat man with the bolo, who had the look of an owner, or at least the
owner’s man. “They barely understand me. They’re Indians. Good workers,
though.” The man extended his meaty hand, the engraved silver-and-turquoise
buckle on his size 44 belt preceding him like a hood ornament. “Diego Estevez,”
he said. “I run this lot. And a few others.”

    
“Stephen
Raszer.” He displayed his license. “I’m a private investigator.” Raszer noticed
that Estevez had a glass eye that skewed right, but the other one was squarely
on the ID.

    
Estevez
grunted. “I guess it’s real. I wouldn’t really know. You have an interest in
this automobile?”

    
“In the
men who just got out of it,” Raszer replied. “Regular customers?”

    
“No,”
said Estevez. “First-timers, in fact.”

    
“Is that
so?” said Raszer. “How long did they have it?”

    
On the
boss’s nod, the mestizos had gone back to work.

    
“Two
days,” Estevez answered. “Guess they wanted to impress somebody. That’s most of
my business. Company functions. Conventions. Out-of-town big shots. Or
sometimes,” he chuckled wetly, “somebody just wants to get laid.”

    
“Two
days, you say?” Raszer aimed a finger at the blue license plates. “What’s with
the diplo plates?” he asked. “Do you have contracts with the consulates?”

    
“Take a
look around,” said Estevez. He pointed out a white stretch with the same
plates, and three more Town Cars similarly outfitted. “And take a closer look.
They’re just livery plates made to look like diplomatics. They cost me thirty
bucks extra per car, but I mark up the rental a hundred. Some customers want
them. Adds to the prestige, you know. They figure they can double-park without
getting a ticket.”

    
Raszer
smiled and hiked up an eyebrow. “Are they legal?”

    
“Sure,
they’re legal. Everything’s legal in Los Angeles.” He pronounced
Angeles
with a hard
g
. “Until it isn’t.”

    
Raszer
scanned the lot and turned back to Estevez. “Your customers got out of here in
a hurry. Five minutes ago, I was on their tail.”

    
“They
were all paid up. All I ask is the cars come back with a full tank and no new
dents. What they do with them or in them is their business.”

    
“Even
kidnapping, Mr. Estevez?”

    
Estevez
lowered his head, and the glass eye rolled toward the sky. “Look, Mister
Raszer. I get lots of turnover. I don’t run background checks. They’re bad for
business.”

    
“But
I’ll bet you do take a driver’s license and credit info.”

    
“Not to
give out to any Columbo who comes cruising by.”

    
“I’ll
tell you what,” said Raszer. He took a $100 bill out of his wallet. “You don’t
want LAPD Homicide and the FBI poking around here. I’ll pay for a day’s rental
if you—”

    
“Homicide
?”

    
“That’s right,” said Raszer. “You might want to
have your employees check for blood on the seats. And that yellow scarf—”

    
The fat
man waved off his money and began to walk away.

    
“I don’t
need your business, Mr. Raszer. And I can handle the police
.”

    
“How many lots like this do you have, Mr.
Estevez?” Raszer called out.

    
Estevez
turned halfway, giving Raszer his good eye. “Five,“ he said. “Two in the city,
two in the Inland Empire, and one in Palm Desert. Why?”

    
“And how
many undocumented workers do you employ?”

    
Estevez
lumbered a few steps back in Raszer’s direction. “You come to Boyle Heights
making threats, Mr. Raszer, and you might not make it back to Beverly Hills.”

    
“I don’t
live in Beverly Hills, Mr Estevez. And I don’t make threats, only promises. I’m
looking for a missing girl who could be your own daughter. Think about that.”

    
Estevez
nodded toward the yellow tassels dangling from the rear window. “The lady with
the scarf?”

    
“Not
her,” said Raszer. “But she
is
a
material witness in a murder investigation.”

    
The big
man reached over and snatched Raszer’s $100.

    
“I’ll
let you take a look at the rental contract,” he said. “And then I want you to
leave. You’re upsetting my employees.”

    
Estevez
led Raszer to the kiosk and stepped up into it with effort. There was no room
inside for a second person. He flipped through a sheaf of carbons on a clipboard
and handed it to Raszer, who scanned it quickly, then looked up.

    
“Where’s
the top copy?” he asked. “I can barely make this out.”

    
“The
customer gets that. Once I’m paid, I don’t care much about the details.”

    
The limo
had been rented to a “Mr. A. Bacus,” whose company was listed as Southeastern
Supply Corp. in Sofia, Bulgaria. There was no street address, no phone, and
under “Driver’s License,” it said simply, “Honduras.”

    
The
contract was marked “paid,” and Estevez had added “cash” in a scrawl.

    
Raszer
looked up. “Jesus. You let a $60,000 car go on this?”

    
“They
left a deposit,” Estevez said, smiling.

    
“How did
they leave here?”

    
“In
another Lincoln,” said Estevez. “Just like the one they came in.”

    
Raszer
squinted. “One of yours?”

    
“No.
They were picked up. All four of them. And the woman, too.”

    
“The
woman,” said Raszer. “How did she look?”

    
“Good,”
said the fat man, and licked his lips.

    
“You
know what I mean, Mr. Estevez. Did she look frightened?”

    
“She
didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look kidnapped, either.”

    
“Right,”
said Raszer, and handed back the clipboard. “First-timers, you said?” Estevez
nodded. “And none of your lots ever rented a limo to Southeastern Supply Corp.
before this?” Estevez shook his head. “Well, then,” said Raszer. “I’ll be on my
way. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take the lady’s yellow scarf with me.
Hasta luego
.”

    
 
“What are
you going to do, mister? Follow her scent like a dog?” Estevez chortled, the
phlegm shaking in his throat like a snake’s rattle.

    
“Maybe,”
said Raszer, pulling Layla’s scarf free of the window.

    
“Shouldn’t
be too tough to sniff her out,” said Estevez with a grin. “I couldn’t help but
notice when she got out of the backseat . . . she wasn’t wearing any panties.”

    
Raszer
got back into his car, hung the scarf around his neck, and drove straight back
across the broad intersection to the tortilla stand. He hadn’t stopped thinking
about food since his first whiff.

    
As he
stood watching the old man drizzle sauce on his taco, Raszer considered how
starkly the events of the past eight hours had altered his own gameboard.
What’s more, the stakes had been raised again: another homicide, another
captive, and now the prospective involvement of the federal counterterrorism
sector. Whatever tale Scotty Darrell did have to tell was probably not the one
they wanted to hear or, in any event, made public. Far more convenient to label
him an “enemy combatant” and ship him off to some Eurasian gulag, where our
side could reshape the wet clay of his mind as effectively as the bad guys had.

    
A vague,
backlit outline of the beast was beginning to emerge: some massive,
transnational human-trafficking operation that snatched errant souls and then
sent them—retooled—back out into society to do its bidding.

    
But to
what larger purpose?

    
Raszer
didn’t sniff a conventional Islamist agenda, though there were superficial
resemblances to that family of zealots spawned by the Islamic Brotherhood. The
modus operandi of the Takfiri sect, the hardcore of the hardcore of Islamist
extremists, appeared to be in play. These were the men who drank beer at
barbecues and patronized lap dancers, whose children might go to school with
yours, whose backyards might border yours, but who could toss it all aside on a
single whispered command, climb into the cockpit of a DC-10, and steer it
straight into oblivion.

    
Al
Takfir Wal-Hijira—Anathema and Exile—practiced the most confounding form of
Oriental subterfuge, the art of
taqiyya
,
the absolute concealment of one’s true
belief and purpose, even to the point of denying one’s God. A thousand years
before Al Qaeda had found this practice useful in breaching Western defenses,
the Order of the Assassins and its mythical chief, the Old Man of the Mountain,
had embraced it.
    

    
Raszer
hadn’t yet had the time to brief Monica. Without her in the loop, he felt like
the sole carrier of both a lethal virus and its antidote. He decided he’d call
her as soon as he had eaten. Food was paramount. Food, and a moment’s rest in
the purple twilight of Mariachi Square, where the children in white still
danced and a man with a big guitar played “Malaguena.”
Life and joy abided here, and music summoned better angels, no
matter how sinister the backdrop. This, he had to remind himself of. He found a
bench, maneuvered the soft, dripping taco into position, and opened his mouth.
Then the cell phone burped.

    
He set
the taco down on the bench in its wet wrapping of wax tissue.

    
“Borges?”
he answered, without looking at the display.

    
“Daddy?”
replied his daughter.

    
“Oh,
hey, baby. Yeah, it’s me.” He recalled that he had left Brigit a message before
leaving the crime scene in Silver Lake. “I wanted to make sure you settled back
in out there. How are you?”

    
“I’m
okay,” she said. “It’s always a little weird coming from you to Mommy. You guys
are so totally different. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

    
“Yeah,
muffin, I’m all right. I’m on a case, that’s all.”

    
“That
missing girl? Katy?”

    
“Right.
Only it’s gotten a little more mysterious than that.”

    
“It
always does with you, Daddy. You’ll probably wind up in some place with snake
charmers and magic lamps.”

    
Raszer
paused, smiled to himself. “Have you been dreaming again?”

    
“Yeah,”
she said softly. “You were with a girl. Not Katy, though.”

    
“Do you
still have that big map of the world on your bedroom wall?”

    
“Uh-huh.
With blue tacks in every place you’ve been.”

    
“And
colored yarn stretched between them, right?”

    
“Yep,”
she said.

    
“Let
your eyes go lazy and tell me if the yarn makes any kind of design.”

    
She
thought for a moment. “It’s kind of like a bicycle wheel. Or a spider’s web.
’Cause everything always connects back to L.A.”

    
“So,
draw out the next spoke in the wheel, in your mind. Where does it go?”

    
“I
dunno, exactly. One of those weird countries with -
stan
at the end of it?”

    
“Your radar’s
pretty sharp, kiddo. I don’t know where I’ll wind up, but that part of the
world sounds like as good a bet as any. Wanna help me?”

    
“Sure.”

    
“How do
you think bad people get good people to do bad things?”

    
“Umm.”
The receiver went quiet as she thought. “Maybe by scaring them. Or by switching
bad and good around so you can’t tell the difference.”

    
“Like
how?”

    
“Well,
one time this girl Jordan asked me to lie for her. I said lying was wrong, and
she was like, ‘No, lying is okay when the person you’re lying to is a liar.’ It
kinda made sense, and for a few days, I was all upside-down about it. Then one
day my friend Kirsten came up to me and said, ‘Why did you tell that lie? Now
I’m in trouble.’ My one little lie grew into this big lie, and then I remembered
why it was wrong.”