Both guys froze. They held their breath and listened.
One, two, three minutes passed.
Jupiter stood up carefully.
There was only silence on the ground floor — and the faint sounds from above where the mechanic worked.
“Whew,” Pete said. “That could have been close!”
Jupiter nodded, a little pale. He led the way out into the dimness of the ground floor parking garage. There was still no light behind any of the half-glass doors on the far side of the echoing room.
And there was no orange Cadillac.
They searched the entire floor, walking among the rows of cars.
“Let’s face it, Jupe,” Pete said. “It’s just not here.”
“No,” Jupiter said, his voice almost eager. “And I think I know — ”
A sudden hissing and rattling sound seemed to fill the room. Startled, they looked frantically around for the source of the sound.
Then they saw it. The car elevator was coming down on its hydraulic piston. The platform was already emerging from the second floor!
“Hey! What are you doing in here?”
A dark-haired man leaned out of a black Buick sedan on the elevator. He pointed at Jupiter, who was directly under one of the lights. Joe Torres leaned out of the passenger window.
“It’s that fat kid from the bodega, Max!”
“You, kid! Stop!”
Jupiter jumped back out of the light and crouched in the shadows beside Pete. The two quickly ducked behind a station wagon. The elevator gates opened, and the Buick roared down the narrow lanes between the rows of cars to cut them off from the front door. It screeched to a stop at the exit. Torres got out, followed by the squat, muscular, bearlike driver.
“Torres was here all along!” Pete whispered.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Jupiter said in a low voice. “Right now we’ve got to get out of here.”
“They don’t look so tough,” Pete said. “You already handled Torres with your judo. I can take that short guy with my karate.”
At the door the two men stood and peered all around into the shadows.
“You can’t get away, kid,” the short, squat one called out.
“Watch him, Max,” Torres said. “The kid’s pretty good with that judo stuff.”
Max pulled an ugly-looking pistol from his belt. “He ain’t gonna play judo with this.”
Peeking past the station wagon, the guys saw the gun appear in the stubby man’s hand.
Pete gulped. “Now they look tougher.”
“But they don’t know you’re here,” Jupiter whispered. “That gives us an edge. I’ll try to lead them past where you’re hiding. You use your karate on the one with the gun. Then we’ll both get the other one before he knows what hit him.”
Jupiter stood up calmly and stepped out into the weak light.
It was a moment before they saw him. Then Torres yelled: “There he is! Hold it right there, kid, if you know what’s good for you.”
Jupiter walked rapidly away from the front door among the parked cars as if trying to escape toward the ramp. The two men fell into the trap.
“Cut him off, Joe,” the gunman, Max, shouted.
“I’ll cover this side.” He headed down the aisle to Jupiter’s left.
Torres, on the right, began running to get in front of Jupiter. The squat gunman moved to box Jupiter in from the other side. Jupiter quickly reversed direction toward the side offices. Torres had to circle in an arc through the cars to catch up with Jupiter, as the gunman angled toward them.
Jupiter had both men moving toward the spot where Pete crouched, ready and waiting to attack.
Jupiter zigged and zagged, drawing the two pursuers closer and closer to Pete. He acted as if he were hemmed in and trapped by the cleverness of Max and Torres.
He passed Pete. The two pursuers closed in, all their attention on the “trapped” Jupiter. Jupiter zigged one last time to draw Max the gunman to Pete first, then acted shocked to find Max almost on top of him.
“That’s it, fat boy,” Max said, the ugly gun pointed directly at Jupiter. “Hold it right there.”
Pete leaped up, his right foot lashing out in a yoko-geri-kekomi thrust kick that sent the gunman’s pistol flying into the dimness of the garage. He instantly smashed a backhand shuto-uchi against the side of Max’s neck. The gunman dropped like a stone from the blow to his carotid artery.
Torres lunged around a car to attack Pete. Then he saw Jupiter coming at him and whirled to face the enemy who had thrown him earlier.
This gave Pete an opening, and he knocked Torres out cold with a massive mawashi-geri roundhouse kick from behind.
“Let’s get out of here!” Pete cried.
The guys raced for the door.
9
Ty Untied!
Moments later, they were in Pete's car. Jupiter looked back as Pete drove away. Torres and the gunman stood in front of the garage, staring after the Fiero. They ran back inside.
“Your karate sensei won’t like it,” Jupiter said. “They got up too soon. They’ll be after us in the Buick.”
“I’ve barely got a black belt,” Pete protested as he gunned the Fiero toward the freeway. “What was that about you having a big idea back in there?”
“It’s more than an idea now,” Jupiter replied. “Did you see that Torres was being driven by that guy Max?”
“Sure I did. So what?”
Pete pulled onto the freeway and they relaxed. No one could catch up with them in time to see where they exited.
“My idea was that the orange Cadillac was a stolen car!” Jupiter said. “It was delivered to Torres, who drove it to the garage. That would mean he had to have someone drive him back to the bodega. And that’s just what Max was doing!”
“Then where’s the Caddy now?”
“The answer is that it’s still in there somewhere,” Jupiter said.
“That’s crazy. We saw all three floors. There weren’t any big doors going out anywhere.”
“Torres was in there, and we didn’t see him.”
“He can hide in an office. A Caddy can’t.”
“Maybe, but I’m convinced the Caddy was stolen, and that it’s still in the garage somewhere. The question is where?”
Both guys thought about the vanishing Cadillac as Pete got off at the exit nearest the salvage yard.
As soon as they drove into the yard, Aunt Mathilda came out of the office.
“The judge has finally set Ty’s bail. You can take me to the courthouse.”
Jupiter scrambled into the small backseat of the Fiero to give Aunt Mathilda the front. Pete drove more slowly, and it was past four p.m. by the time they reached the courthouse. Inside the courthouse lobby, Aunt Mathilda introduced the guys to a tall, serious-faced man who was waiting there.
“This is my lawyer, Steve Gilbar. Jupiter’s my nephew, Steve. This is his friend, Pete Crenshaw. They’re trying to clear Ty.”
Steve Gilbar shook hands with Jupe and Pete. “We’ll need all the help we can get on this. The police are convinced Ty is part of a ring of car thieves that have been operating up and down the coast, between Santa Monica and Ventura. They’ve persuaded the judge to set an unusually high bail.” He turned to Aunt Mathilda. “You brought the papers?” She nodded. “What is the bail, Steve?”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars. Outrageous, I call it, but the prosecutor made a strong case for Ty’s importance. They think there’s a clever chop-shop ring operating, and Ty is their first arrest.”
“A chop-shop!” exclaimed Jupe.
“What’s in heaven’s name is a chop-shop?” asked Aunt Mathilda.
“Instead of selling the stolen cars, the thieves take them apart and sell all the parts that aren’t marked with serial numbers,” explained Jupiter.