“Thank you.”
Sean put the phone back in his pocket. “You know, for three hundred dollars an hour, they could check their addresses every six months. That wouldn’t be too much to ask, would it?”
They got back in the car and plotted a course to the next address, a red-brick apartment box in Falls Church, on the edge of “Little Saigon.” There was no grass on the lawn, only dirt, rocks, and glass. The one tree was long dead. A number of windows had broken panes. The chain-link fence lacked only a razor-wire frosting to complete the detention-center look of the place. The boys walked through the graffitied door and looked at the mailboxes. There wasn’t a name on a single one.
“You take the top floor and work down. I’ll go up,” Matt said.
They met on the second floor at the only door that was opened to them. Inside was an elderly Vietnamese woman, her streaked gray hair pulled into a tight bun. She had a young child on her hip and two others behind her. All three children were in diapers with fingers in their mouths.
“Uh, ma’am, we’re looking for Mr. Vu Tran Nguyen. Can you tell us what apartment is his?” Sean asked.
Her face was utterly impassive, an appropriate reaction when assailed by gibberish.
Sean proceeded, “Do you speak English?”
Nothing.
“I thought so. So if I tell you I’m going to rip this child out of your arms and eat him, your eyes won’t widen and you won’t slam the door in my face, will you? Of course not, and so you haven’t. Have a nice day. Welcome to America.”
They turned away and trotted down the stairs. “Didn’t I tell you to take Vietnamese as your foreign-language elective, Matt? No, you had to take French. Have you noticed any place called ‘Little Paris’ around here?”
“Let me think. No, I don’t think so.”
“Me neither. Who’s next?”
“Lorelei Petty over in McLean. Good bet she speaks English.”
“Lucky you, Matt.”
They drove slowly through Falls Church towards Tysons Corner and McLean. Tysons Corner was the largest commercial center in America not located in the heart of a city. Falls Church sat between Washington D.C. and Tysons, and its one main thoroughfare was always distended with traffic, a perpetual aneurysm.
Forty-five minutes later they pulled up in front of Lorelei Petty’s townhouse on the Tysons-McLean frontier, where the proper zip code could mean a twenty thousand dollar difference from the other side of the street.
Matt read the paper. “This is a notice of deposition, so the shit’s been hitting the fan for quite a while. We don’t have the advantage of surprise here.”
“So, call her. See if she’s here. Do we have a description?”
“Yeah, five feet six inches, hundred forty-five pounds, light brown hair, wears glasses.”
Matt dialed directory assistance, got the number for an L. Petty, and then dialed that.
“Hello?”
“Lorelei Petty?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, my name is Matt Ellis. I’m a process server. I have a subpoena for you in the Wings matter. I’m on my way over. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes, is that okay with you?”
“Uh, sure, whatever.”
Matt set the phone down. “What do you think, Sean?”
“A guy, he’d be outa there three minutes tops. A woman, I’d say six.”
They looked down at their watches. The adjacent townhouse had a contractor’s sign hung from the front porch railing. It proclaimed: “Another fine project from the master craftsmen at DNT Contractors. Call Burle Hitchens at (703) 555-9400.”
Five minutes later, Matt rolled up the paper, stuck it in his back pocket, and got out of the car. He was going up the stairs when the front door opened. A woman stepped out and turned back to lock the deadbolt. Matt closed ground.
“Lorelei, is that you?” he asked, eagerly but uncertain.
“Yes,” she said and turned to face her caller.
Matt whipped out the papers and handed them to her.
“You’ve been served, ma’am.”
She backed away, waving her hands at the paper like it was an angry insect.
“No, I haven’t. I haven’t taken these.”
“That’s TV, ma’am. You answered to the name, you match the description, you live at the right address. You’ve been served.”
Matt dropped them at her feet. “I’d advise you to read them and call a lawyer. Have a nice day.”
“I hope your dick falls off, you miserable little bastard.”
“Duly noted, ma’am, and my affidavit of service will include your kind words.”
Matt jumped into the car and it pulled away. “What next?” he asked.
“Our Latino lady-killer, over in Arlington.”
“Where are we serving him?”
“Work. He’s a janitor at a motel in Arlington.”
Their cell phone rang.
“Hello?” Sean said.
“Sean, is that you? It’s Chuck Pruitt. You and your brother want to do some surveillance?”
“Hold on, Chuck, I’ll ask him.”
He covered the mouthpiece, “Matt, it’s Chuck Pruitt, he wants us to do surveillance. What do you say?”
“I say no. He hasn’t paid us for our last two jobs. Working for him is working for free. It’s been over two months he’s owed us.”
“You sure? It’s work.”
“Work? It’s charity. Slow pay is no pay. You can do it. I’ll pass.”
“Uh, Chuck, we’ll pass. You still owe us about two hundred and fifty bucks for work we did in May.”
“Hey, guys, it’s not me. I bill the clients. I’ve gotta chase them to pay me so I can pay you. Every check I get that you’re owed a piece of, I pass it straight on.”
“Chuck, I’m not saying you’re stiffing us. But none of this is gonna pay my tuition bill. Summer’s almost over. I need money now. The school could give a damn. It’s due when it’s due. Sorry.”
“I hate being the asshole of the food chain. The pate’s at the other end, down here it’s all bullshit,” Sean snapped.
“Well, we’ve got two more chances for today. Let’s make ’em count.”
Gustavo Martin was a janitor at the Arlington Inn, which operated on the same principle as its neighbor the Pentagon: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
“You take the front desk, Matt. I’ll find a maid, see if she knows where he is.”
“Wait for me if you find him. He might think twice about going off.”
“Sure.” They exited the car, Matt going to the office, Sean heading upstairs where he had seen a maid’s cart in the hallway. He went up the stairs three at a time, grabbed the rusting metal railing, and swung up and around onto the second floor. The ice machine had its bin door open and a sign taped to the front that said Broken. He walked down to the maid’s cart and looked into the room it was parked outside of.
“Excuse me, can I talk to you?” he said into the darkened room.
“¿Si, quién es?” a woman replied. She was bent over, making the bed.
“¿Dónde está Gustavo Martin?”
“No entiendes ni jota.”
“I know he works here. Just tell me where he is?”
“He’s around. I don’t know.”
“Okay. What does he look like?”
“He’s short, curly black hair, moustache...”
As she spoke, her words coalesced in the space at the end of the hall. The man looked at Sean, saw him take a step towards him, turned, and started down the stairs. Sean leaned over the railing and saw his brother step out of the motel office.
“That’s him, Matt.”
Glancing over his shoulder at his second pursuer, the man ran across the parking lot towards the high grass along the railroad tracks. There were no trains in sight. He would have to run all the way to El Salvador. Matt took off after him. The guy was wind-milling his arms through the high grass, bobbing back and forth above his churning bowlegs. Matt had no speed to speak of, but he and his brother ran five miles a night through their neighborhood. The longer Gustavo ran, the better Matt’s chances of catching him. He heard the slap of footsteps behind him, each one louder than the last. He came out on the dusty path alongside the tracks.