The key to the whole mess was now in my hands and I didn't want to waste it. It was obvious that Lorena GarciaâElena Gonzales or whoever told de la Peña about me and he had, once again, overreacted. To me, it was good news. I'd lost a cigar, but gained a clue. It confirmed the closing of the circle.
I punched the numbers on the car phone. It was dark, but not yet five o'clock, and I hoped people would still be working.
“Esparza.”
“This is Caine, back from Mexico. Had no trouble until I got back to the good old USA.” I described my detention.
“Border weenies apologize?”
“One guy did, his way.”
“They stop us from time to time. Don't take it personally.”
“They got a tip from a Mexican law-enforcement officer.”
“De la Peña?”
“Apparently. Customs was waiting for me. Tore my car apart. Even got strip-searched. De la Peña told them I had dope.”
“I can see why they'd want to search.”
“You find out about that address?”
“I sure did. Property's owned by a Delaware Corporation. Stevenson and Stapleton handled the transaction. Their address was all over the paperwork at county records.”
“Thank you. You know what that means?”
“I was certain you would tell me.”
“Means Stevenson is in this.”
“In what?”
“Tomorrow. Give me until tomorrow. Then I can tell you.”
“Well, I don't really have anything else to do right now. The president's coming out here in a couple of weeks to press the flesh, so I've got eighteen or thirty Secret Service agents hanging off the edge of my desk, but that doesn't add much to my workload, plus I've got sixty or seventy other major crimes I'm working. I guess I can wait until tomorrow, considering I'm not working on this as a crime in the first place.”
“Oh, it's a crime.”
“Thanks.”
“Think of it as job security.”
“I worry about running out of things to do.”
“I'll call you.”
“I'll wait breathlessly.”
I'd forgotten to ask about Tyrone Crenshaw, and Esparza hadn't volunteered the information. It would have to wait. I hung up and punched in a new set of numbers.
“Law offices of Stevenson and Stapleton. How may I direct your call?” The receptionist's voice, quiet and peaceful like an FM classical music station announcer, had a slight British accent. I wondered if it was real.
“This is John Caine. I'd like to speak with Mr. Stevenson.”
“Would Mr. Stevenson know what this is regarding, Mr. Caine?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Our mutual client is Mrs. Claire Peters.”
“Oh, certainly. One moment, please.”
She put me on hold. I listened to Kenny Rogers for five seconds, an oldie, something from the seventies, bringing back pleasant memories that vanished when Stevenson picked up the line.
“I'll give you thirty seconds to tell me where you've got Claire Peters.”
“That's not a professional way to open a conversation between colleagues.”
“Caine! Where the hell are you?”
“Heading north on I-Five,” I said, “approaching downtown.”
“You kidnapped my client!”
“She's hiding. You know why.”
There was silence on the line. I moved over a couple of lanes. The Balboa Park exit was getting closer.
“I'm not certain I like the implications of that remark.”
“I'm not certain I give a shit. Like 'em or don't, it stands. I'm hiding Mrs. Peters from everyone. You, too, Joe, until I know who can be trusted and who cannot. You lied to me more than once. I'm not sure you can be trusted.”
“That suggests I might have had something to do with the break-in. Am I included in your list of suspects?”
“Don't know. Can't take the risk.”
There was more silence. He was thinking, digesting what I had said. The only thing he had now was my legal status. If he was involved, he'd bring that in. I took the freeway exit and went up the long, shallow grade toward Sixth Street.
“I fired you. You're no longer on this case.”
“There's a licensed PI working for Mrs. Peters. I'm affiliated with him.”
“I see.”
“No, Joe, you don't. You're missing the obvious.”
“And that is?”
“How is your ex-Treasury agent getting along? Has he found the money yet?”
“You are no longer involved. I cannot divulge information that belongs to my client. That would be unethical.”
“Claire called you yesterday. She asked the same question.”
“I refuse to discuss my client's situation with you.”
“I'll bet he doesn't exist. Does he exist?”
“I'm hanging up. You should find your own attorney. You've gone too far.”
“If you were going to hang up, you would have done it. And it's privileged communication, Counselor. You and me. Nothing actionable about that. You hired me to find the money. I did.”
“What?”
“I found the money. Couldn't find the husband, but I found the money.”
“You've got it?”
“Nope. But I know where it is.”
“No!”
“Yep. And I know about you and your friends. What are you going to do now?”
More silence. He hadn't been prepared for this. I turned left on Sixth Street and drove down the hill into the grove of skyscrapers that was San Diego's financial district.
“I don't believe you.”
“That so bad? The guy from out of town breaks the case in a week? You find that so hard to believe?”
“It's ⦔ Miracles sometimes do happen. How often is it when a lawyer can't think of something to say?
I stopped in a yellow zone across from Stevenson's building, wedging the Range Rover between UPS and FedEx delivery vans. The brightly lit exit from the underground parking garage was about twenty yards south on the other side of the street, giving me an unobstructed view.
“You haven't been truthful with the police,” I said. “You'll probably have a lot more to say once we've spoken with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tyrone Crenshaw, for one. Remember him? Your old client? The police might want to reopen the case. Call it what it really was. Seems there was a sultry Latin lady seen coming out of his hotel room just before he committed suicide. The police couldn't put two and two together back then because they didn't have the whole picture. They will now. They may want to talk with you.”
“That's absurd!”
“There may be a few more, too, depending on what they find. You've been a busy boy, Joey.”
“You fantasize.”
He hung up. Well, there are ways of learning things by hard work and sweat, and then there's the direct route, tell your subject what you believe to be the truth as if it were fact and see where it gets you. Of course, it's an all-or-nothing technique. It can be pretty embarrassing when you're wrong.
If I was wrong, Stevenson would stay in his office, make some phone calls, file some legal action against me, get a restraining order, drop the system on top of me like a hammer hitting an anvil. If I was wrong, that would be the right thing to do. If I was right, he would be coming out of the underground parking garage any time.
Norm had told me the other night that Stevenson drove a big gold Lexus sedan. There were a lot of luxury cars in the financial district, but few gold ones, and even fewer gold Lexus sedans. There was a chance I'd miss him, but it was the only thing I had and it seemed worth the effort.
Six minutes after he hung up, a top-of-the-line gold Lexus exited the building into Sixth Street and busted a red light heading south. I hadn't planned on that, so I pulled out, waited briefly for traffic to clear, and followed him across.
Satisfaction bloomed. It's good to be right once in a while. I got close enough to confirm that it was the lawyer and drifted back again. No sense spooking him. So far my plan was working. I wished I knew where it was going from here. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I only knew that the more you stirred the muck, the more stuff floated to the surface. Stevenson, it seemed, was floating merrily along.
The Lexus got onto the southbound interstate toward Mexico, stayed on the freeway all the way to Chula Vista, and exited on a familiar off-ramp. It wasn't the smartest thing to do, but it was predictable. That helped, because I could follow at a discreet distance.
The gold sedan turned exactly where it was supposed to and stopped in front of the apartment where the gang-bangers lived. I remained at the end of the street and watched the lawyer get out and run to the gate. It was locked, the place deserted. He banged on the wrought-iron bars but no one answered. Shaking his head, he returned to his car.
I thought I heard the power locks engage from half a block away.
Stevenson gave me everything I needed to know. Somehow, Paul Peters had fallen victim to a honey trap. The attorney was the finger man. He would find the targets, even
warehouse them as clients for years before siccing the lovely Latin lady on them. She was the bait. I didn't know how yet, but she wooed the target away from wife and family, getting him to cash out huge sums of money, betraying trust, responsibility, and wedding vows all at the same time. If the victim got out of line, there were the enforcers. How de la Peña fit into the picture, I didn't know, but since they worked both sides of the border, they would need protection in Mexico. I had seen de la Peña as the master of the play. Seen through a different lens now, he was only a minor player.
The lawyer held the other keys. He was the front man. He would know everything there was to know. There were two ways of getting that information. I could turn over what I knew to the police, they would question him with an attorney present, and he would deny everything and be released. The cops might or might not investigate further. I tended to doubt it. Stevenson would scream foul and sue everyone involved. It would accomplish nothing.
There was another way.
The Lexus passed me at a good rate of speed. I turned around and followed.
This time he led me to a place that used to be known as Logan Heights but nowadays the local paper hinted at a cultural change and referred to the area as Barrio Logan. On a narrow side street, Stevenson stopped at a wood-framed house that had been converted into a duplex. Three young black men sat on the front porch, one with a full cast on his right arm from wrist to shoulder. When he stood to talk to Stevenson, he was shorter in stature than his companions. I knew who he was.
I noted the address and wrote it down on a receipt I found in my pocket. The odds were that the lawyer owned this place, too.
The door opened and the junkie, the taller of the two thieves I'd thrown out of my room, came out and stood watching Stevenson as if he were an exhibit in the zoo. Well, what do you know? Reunion day.
Stevenson did the gang handshakes as if he were an honorary honky member. So he had a brown gang and a black one, too. Good to know multiculturalism had reached the criminal class. I guess he thought it was a boon to the community to spread opportunity around like that.
The lawyer conferred with the young men, reached into his coat, and handed one of them something that looked like folded bills. He repeated the fanciful handshakes and hurried to his car.
That presented me with a conundrum: Follow Stevenson or find out what the gangsters would do? I chose the gang-bangers because they presented a more immediate danger.
I knew I could find the lawyer when I needed him.
Surveilling the gang was about as exciting as watching concrete harden. I expected them to go somewhere and do something after Stevenson left. They didn't. They kept busy sitting on the porch doing nothing. They were excellent at doing nothing. They elaborated on all the themes.
The longer I sat and watched them, the more conspicuous I became. A big, white, bearded honky in a new four-wheel-drive luxury car stood out in this neighborhood, and it wasn't long before I had a visitor.
He was polite. He used his knuckle to tap on the window. I rolled it down.
“You a cop?” A big man in a clean white T-shirt and designer jeans. He wore no belt, didn't need one. He was about my age, but harder, his upper body sharply defined beneath the light cotton.
“No.”
“What you want wit' those boys?”
“No offense, sir,” I said, acting on instinct, “but is this any of your business?” He wasn't bracing me for sport. His demeanor was of a man who seriously wanted information. There was something paternalistic about him.
“This my neighborhood. It all be my business.” He fixed me with a hard stare.
“I'm going to do this carefully, so you don't think I'm going for a weapon,” I said, reaching into my jacket. I pulled out my Hawaii investigator's license and held it up so he could see it. He held out his hand but I shook my head. “Read it from there.”
“You a cop.”
“Not like that. Those boys are involved in a case I'm investigating.
They've just made contact with a suspect I was following. The man paid them. I wanted to see what they would do for the money.”
“You don't know what you doin', do you?”
“That's often the case.”
He shook his head, as if he had just discovered a new strain of stupidity. “You know those boys?”
“I met two of them.”
“You know those boys?”
“I know what they're about,” I said, hoping he wouldn't repeat the question again.
“You know those boys,” he said. “They be bad boys. They don't like you, just because you different.”
“How,” I asked, “am I different?”
“You white.”
“Oh.”
“You say you met two? Which two?”
“I gave the broken elbow to the short one.”
“That was you? You that white tourist they tried to rob at the hotel?”
“You know about that?”
“Man, they tol' everybody. Course I know about that.” He pointed to my forehead. “They give you that?”
“Yes.”
“That all they do?”
“Yes.”
“I bet they got lucky, getting that far with you. You look tough.”
“I was surprised to see them,” I said.
“They be more surprised, they see you.”
“You think I should leave?”
“Let's you and me go talk wit' them.”
“What?”
“Come on. This be my neighborhood. They respect me. They respect you a little, too, I think. Let's go talk wit' them. You can ask the questions you want.”
“Who,” I asked, “are you?”
“Name's Lucius, but everybody call me Lucifer.”
“That's because ⦔
“Because I'm baaaad. Those boys, they won't hassle you, you wit' me.”
I got out of the car. I was about to lock it, but I saw Lucius watching and smiling and decided that as long as I was under his flag, the Range Rover would be safe. If he decided I was no longer worthy of his protection, it wouldn't matter if I locked it or not.
“You smart man,” he said. “You know things.”
“Thank you, Lucius.”
“Call me Lucifer.”
“Not if my life depended on it.”
He chuckled. “May come to that.”
The four young men saw us coming and their postures changed to poses. I realized there was a certain amount of calculation going on. If Lucius was as bad as he said, they would want to impress, yet at the same time they would not want to appear weak. And then there was me.
They already knew everything they needed to know about me.
I saw the moment the little fireplug recognized me. His expression went unreadable, but he blinked, caught himself, and looked stonier.
“This be Caine,” said Lucius. “He a private detective, come all the way from Hawaii to talk wit' you. What you boys done to make that happen?”
“We ain't done nothing, Lucifer,” said one of the boys I didn't know. The taller of the two who had been in my hotel room stared, his mouth slack, as if trying to put me into some frame of context. The fireplug wore an expression that reminded me of a deer caught in headlights.
“Now he say he knows you, Tyrell.”
“We met,” Fireplug mumbled, looking at a crack in the sidewalk as if he wished he could squeeze down into it and disappear.
“This that man that break your arm?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He pretty tough, fighting you and your brother.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You think you pretty tough, too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think you pretty tough. I also think you pretty stupid. What you take money for?”
“I didn't take no money.”
“From Joseph Stevenson. A lawyer,” I added, my only contribution. Lucius glared at me. He didn't need my help.
“She-it, man. You take money from a honky lawyer?”
Fireplug didn't say anything. He stared at the sidewalk. Lucius grabbed him behind the neck and straightened his posture. “You take money from a honky lawyer? Huh? What you trying to do?”
“I didn't take no money.”
“Empty your pockets!”
“Wha?”
“Empty your pockets! I wanna see what's in your pockets!”
“Oh, man, Iâ”
The punch didn't travel far, probably less than a foot, but it hit the boy on the point of his chin and laid him out on the grass. He didn't move. His immobilized arm lay on the sidewalk. I wasn't sure, but I thought his elbow hit the concrete when he fell.
“Anybody else want to tell me they didn't take no money from a honky lawyer?”
None of the boys responded. On closer inspection, I realized they
were
just boys, not yet out of their teens. The only time I'd seen any of them before had been a time of intense stress. You don't always make the best observations in times of intense stress. I started feeling a little guilty about the punishment I'd inflicted, until I felt the bump on my forehead.
Tyrell stirred. He opened his eyes.
“You gonna help me now?” Lucius stood over the kid, his body poised to help or to punish.
“Uh-huh.”
Lucius extended his hand and hauled the boy to his feet. “Show me the money,” he said. Tyrell complied. Lucius took
the wad of bills and counted it. “There's a thousand dollars here. What that white man want you to do with a thousand dollars?”
When there was no response, Lucius closed his fist. The kid flinched. “He want us to burn a house down tonight.”
“Ah, hell.” Lucius looked at me, his expression bleak. “You know which house they gonna burn down?”
“Yes,” I said. “They would all have been killed. The place is rigged with lights on motion sensors. There's a gunman staying there, a killer, not just a watchman. They never would have made it across the yard before he cut them down.”
Lucius shook his head in disbelief, then turned back toward the four boys. “Why you wanna do that?”
“He paid us to do it, just like he paid us to go to this man's room and rob him.”
“That didn't work out.”
“Uh-uh.”
“You think this would have worked out, too?”
“Don't know. He said the house was empty.”
“He tell you this some old fat tourist?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He wrong there, too. Tomorrow you be just another black criminal shot by a honky. You be in the papers. Your mama's gonna like that, you bein' dead and all.” Lucius looked at me again. “You get what you want?”
I nodded. “More.”
“You finished here?”
“Yes.”
“I'll walk back to your car.” He turned, stuffing the roll of bills into the back pocket of his jeans. “You boys stay put. I want to talk wit' you some more.”
We went back to the Range Rover.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Didn't do it for you. Did it for those boys. They not really bad. Oh, they bad enough, but they don't need to get any worse. This my neighborhood. Those my boys. Watched them grow up, watched their daddies leave and their mamas try an' cope. I stay. Been here all my life. Work two jobs.
Support my kids through college. Try to be the man in the neighborhood. It's too easy for those boys to be gang-bangers, dope dealers, do that shit. There ain't much else, as far as they know. But I know there is.”
“You're a role model.”
“I'm not much a role model, but it's me or the gang-bangers. You understand?”
I nodded. “Thank you again.”
He shrugged. “One of these days those boys will get tired of me messin' up their fun. Probably shoot me. Then they'll have nobody lookin' after them. Just hope it's after I get my own kids out of here.”
I offered my hand.
“Nah. Like I said. It wasn't for you.” He put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stepped away from the curb.
I drove away thinking that some people were luckier than they knew and hoping that the man at least got his wish. I didn't have much faith in the boys, but as long as they had Lucifer watching out for them, they might even make it. Someday they might shoot him, not knowing they were killing themselves as certain as they were killing him.