The old blackness had come back to Herredia’s eyes. It was like shades being drawn on a window for the enactment of secrets inside.
A moment later Herredia rattled off a series of commands in Mexican Spanish bristling with obscenities. Draper had trouble making out the rapid phrases that involved a series of names he had never heard.
The old man listened, his face dark and wrinkled as a peach pit, his hair long and white, then he vanished.
“You will spend the night here and we will talk, Coleman. Tonight I want to talk.”
Draper was surprised to see the sadness in Herredia’s eyes.
In the black of early morning, Draper idled at the United States Customs booth in San Ysidro. He offered his badge holder and Sheriff’s Department ID and answered the usual questions: two days, friends at La Fonda, purchases of two bottles of Santo Tomas table wine and a silver bracelet inlaid with turquoise. These items, supplied by one of Herredia’s jolly cooks, sat in pasteboard boxes on the seat beside him. His fishing gear was piled in the back. His dollars were vacuum-wrapped and fitted into a bumper cavity.
“How many times a year do you cross this border?” asked the official.
“Six or eight,” said Draper. “I’ve never counted.”
“What do you do?”
“I fish.”
“For what?”
“Snapper. Bass. Jack. Tuna, if I’m lucky.”
The Customs man peered into the back. Draper saw the second Customs official appear at the passenger-side window and he rolled it down.
The inspector swung open a rear door and pulled one of the boxes across the seat and rummaged through it. He slammed the door and went around to the back of the vehicle and Draper popped the hatchback for him. In the rearview Draper watched the man paw through his fishing gear.
“Slow night?” he called back.
No answer. He knew these idiots wouldn’t find anything; even the dogs of secondary inspection would have a tough time with the vacuum-packed bills.
Then the hatchback slammed and the man to his left waved him through.
“Proceed, Deputy Draper.”
He drove the speed limit north on Interstate 5, but his mind was filled with Herredia’s proposal, its details and possibilities, its potential consequences.
When he hit Solana Beach he called Alexia. She answered on the first ring.
“I’ve been called,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
He heard the breath catch in her throat. Then she whispered, “Coleman, I love you.”
“I’ll come back to you and Brittany, alive and soon. You have my solemn promise.”
“I will pray and wait. And when you come back I will be alive again.”
“I’ll be alive again, too, Alexia.”
He clicked off and dialed Juliet in Laguna. He got her machine, said her name and waited.
“Coleman?”
“I’m home.”
“I don’t know why I do this.”
“Yes, you do. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”
She didn’t bother to get out of bed. He showered in the darkness and slipped in beside her. She pretended to be asleep, then vaguely receptive, then she greedily took Draper and fled to that place he couldn’t see or name, a place all hers, located somewhere behind or beyond her tightly closed eyes.
12
Hood’s phone rang early the next morning, not long after he’d let himself into the Hole.
“Latrenya changed her story,” said Bentley. “Now she says Londell was gone all night-business down in South Central. She didn’t see him until morning. She said she lied to us because Londell threatened to kill her if she told the truth. She got Tawna and Anton in on the plot, too. But Londell beat up Latrenya on an unrelated matter-something about her gaining weight. ER called us. Latrenya wouldn’t press charges but we sent two uniforms over to arrest Londell. He maced them. Now he’s in the wind and he looks a little better for Terry’s murder. We’re searching Londell’s Oasis pad in ten minutes. You are cordially invited.”
Hood, Bentley and Orr crammed into the small outer office of the Oasis manager, Sanjay. Sanjay was a young Indian man who smoked eagerly and said he wanted no trouble. He said Londell Dwayne was rude but always paid his rent, though never on time. And he played his music loud.
The men climbed the wobbly stairs and walked single file to the front door of Dwayne’s apartment. It was quiet now-no Londell and no Latrenya and no music. Orr knocked. Hood noted that the foil on the window had been tattered by the last storm.
Sanjay stomped out his cigarette, then unlocked the front door. When the lock disengaged, Bentley gently but firmly moved the manager back and away and told him to stay outside for now.
With his sport coat open and one hand on the butt of his automatic, Bentley turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Sheriffs,” he called out. “We’re coming in.”
The place was small and smelled of reefer and bacon. The carpet was dirty and there were yellow stains on the popcorn ceiling. The kitchen sink was piled with dishes and the refrigerator hummed loudly. There was a counter between the kitchen and the living room and on it were dinner plates with old food on them, and plenty of King Cobra empties.
Orr slipped down the hallway with his weapon drawn and went into a bedroom. Hood walked past him, gun at his side, went into the next room and flicked on the light.
It was a small room, with small windows up high. It was cold and it reminded Hood of the Hole. There was a mattress on the floor in one corner, with some sheets and blankets wadded up on top. There were dirty clothes in another corner. Hood spotted a Detroit Tigers hoodie. Down deeper in the pile were two red bandanas. Hood saw that one of them had been worn pirate-style, rolled on one edge and knotted, with a loose flap on top. He set them on the floor next to the black sweatshirt.
There was a chest slouching against one wall, drawers hanging open. On top of it were two empty cigarette hardpacks, four gun magazines and a blackened hash pipe. The closet doors hung askew but Hood got one open enough to see in: a few wire hangers, a few shirts, some beaten sneakers on the floor.
Hood went through the dresser looking for black gloves but didn’t find any. There was nothing under the bed. He stood looking down at the Detroit sweatshirt and the bandanas.
Then he heard Orr’s voice from the other bedroom. “Gentlemen, we have something here.”
The room was close and crowded by a king bed. The mattress had been swiveled out from the springs. Bentley and Orr stood in the cramped space between the bed and the closet. Hood joined them and looked down on the M249 SAW set into a crude cutout in the box spring. The mesh material had been cut open and a yard-long section of one of the slats had been broken out. The gun was jammed into the space. Orr replaced the flap that was cut in the cover material, hiding the weapon, then lifted it open again.
“Dead man,” he said.
13
By late morning Hood was standing on the Avenue M off-ramp of Highway 14, where Johnny Vasquez and Angel Lopes had been shot to death. The day was cool and the breeze came and went like a doubt.
He balanced Freeman’s murder book on his left arm and used the crime scene drawings and photographs to find where the van had been parked. Now there was nothing but sand and gravel.
According to Laws’s report, the van engine and lights had been off when they got there.
Detective Freeman had guessed the temperature at eighty degrees, and he wrote that the night was clear and windy. The moon was new on the twelfth of August, four days earlier, so there wasn’t much moonlight.
Hood flipped forward: in the impound yard the next day the van started up and idled without a problem. The tires were good. The gas tank was full. There was a second mention of the flats of strawberries found in the back of the van and the basket of them spilled up front.