“Cold,” said Dilbeck. “Very cold. Okay, time to check the entire system, state and federal pens, even county jails.”
“Who’s going to do it?”
“You mind?”
“I’m doing it solo?”
“Well,” said Mac, “Montoya’s already been assigned a fresh case and the rest of my day is committed: meeting with the hotshots downtown. Gonna sit there while they explain why they’re so much smarter than we are. Course, if you want to trade places…”
“No, thanks,” said Petra. “I’ll go fetch my magic wand.”
She ran cons named Leon through NCIC and the rest of the data banks, came up with way too many hits. Time for a little logic. Sandra Leon had brought Katzman a letter from a clinic in Oakland, meaning she, or someone she knew, had spent some time there.
She focused on Bay Area Leons, which narrowed the search to twelve.
Two inmates- John B., twenty-five, Charles C., twenty-four- fit the brother age-range. Both were from Oakland and when she pulled up their stats, she knew she’d earned her share of the taxpayers’ money.
John’s middle name was “Barrymore,” and Charles’s was “Chaplin.”
Katzman’s take on Sandra: She’s a pretty good actress.
Then she learned that the men were brothers and allowed herself a grin.
A passing detective said, “You’re sure happy.”
Petra said, “Once in a while.”
John Barrymore Leon was serving a five-year sentence at Norco for mail fraud and Charlie Chaplin Leon had earned himself two years at Chino for theft- breaking into vending machines in an Oakland arcade.
The wardens at Norco were unavailable and the guard supervisor was new on the job. But his counterpart at Chino turned out to be a font of information. The Leons were members of an Oakland-based crime group called The Players, and several of their cousins had done penitentiary time. His estimate of their membership was fifty to sixty, most related by blood, but some who’d married in or had been informally adopted. The majority were Hispanic- Guatemalan Americans- but there were plenty of whites and blacks and at least two Asians.
Petra said, “Diversity in the workplace.”
The Chino guard laughed.
“They use violence?” she asked him.
“Not that I’ve heard. They concentrate on scams, run a lot of welfare schemes. They like to think of themselves as actors because the boss tried to be one.”
The boss was a failed actor with a forty-year history of property crimes. Robert Leroy Leon, sixty-three, aka The Director. Currently residing at Lompoc. Lots of visitors but no Sandra.
Mac had been dead-on: The girl had slipped, blurted out a partial truth.
Petra pressed the Chino guy for everything he knew about The Players. He gave her the names of some possible members but not much more. She wrote down copious notes and booted up her computer.
Logging on to Google, she plugged in “The Players” and came up with 1,640,000 hits. “Players scams” pulled up exactly one website, a protest against corporate malfeasance.
It was nearly seven P.M. and she was suddenly tired and overwhelmed. She was staring at the screen and wondering where to go next when Isaac’s voice drew her away from all those zeros.
“Hi,” he said.
Her eyes shot to the bruise on his cheek. Faded- no, covered up. He’d tried to mask it with makeup. The result was clumsy, a flaking splotch.
“Hey,” she said. “I hope the other guy came out of it worse.”
CHAPTER 22
Isaac blushed through the makeup.
“No big deal,” he said, too casually. “The hallway was dark when I got home and I bumped into the wall.”
“Oh,” said Petra.
A few flakes of makeup had landed on the shoulder of his blue shirt. He saw her looking at them and flicked them away. “I was wondering if there was anything I could do for you.”
It was seven thirty-two P.M. “Working late?” said Petra.
“I had obligations on campus all day, figured I’d come by here, see if you needed me.”
One million six hundred forty thousand hits.
Petra smiled. “As a matter of fact…”
She gave him the info on Sandra Leon and The Players and watched him hurry over to his laptop.
Thrilled to be busy.
She was worn-out and hungry.
She returned to Shannons, took the same stool at the bar and ordered a Bud and a corned beef sandwich. The flat screen was tuned to an infomercial. None of the boozers at the bar were interested in buying cubic zirconium mystical bracelets.
New bartender on shift, a woman, and she didn’t squawk when Petra asked her to put on Fox News and format it so the running border was visible.
“Yeah, it’s annoying,” the woman said. “You want to read something and it cuts everything in half.”
Three other boozers nodded agreement. Older guys, grizzled, in wrinkled work uniforms. The bar smelled of their sweat. The color in their faces said St. Patrick’s Day had started early.
One looked at Petra and smiled. Not a lecherous leer, paternal. Crazily, she thought about her dad, the shockingly rapid Alzheimer’s fade.
She chewed on her sandwich, drank her beer, ordered another, shot her eyes to the TV when she heard “Tel Aviv.”
Charred and twisted outdoor furniture, ambulance howls, Hasidic types cleaning up body parts. The death toll had risen to three- one of the wounded had succumbed to “injuries suffered in the blast.” The number of wounded was now precise: twenty-six.
Hamas and one of Arafat’s groups were each claiming credit.
Credit.
Fuck them.
The sandwich steamed up at her. Her nose filled with brine and her stomach began churning. She threw money on the bar and left.
The female bartender called out, “Everything okay, honey?”
When Petra reached the door, the woman shouted: “Can I at least wrap it to go?”
She drove around the city, aimlessly, recklessly. Listening to the horn blares of those she’d offended and not giving a damn.
Spaced out, she pushed the Accord through traffic as if it was on tracks. Not looking at people the way she usually did. Off the job- a job that never really ended.
But tonight, it had. Tonight, she wanted nothing to do with cons, scumbags, felons, and miscreants. Had no patience to look for furtive glances, suspicious moves, the sudden popcorn-burst of violence that changed everything.
Twenty-six injured.
Eric had phoned her, so he had to be okay.
But Eric was stoic about pain. After the stabbing, when he’d come to, he’d refused analgesics. Perforated, and he claimed he didn’t feel a thing. The doctors couldn’t believe he could tolerate it.
Propped up in that hospital bed, so pale…
His parents and her and the bimbo waiting silently.
Bye bye blondie, I won.
What was the prize?
She made it home without causing a collision and painted like a demon for four hours straight, working till her eyes crossed. Just after midnight, without stopping to appraise her progress, she switched off the lights, stumbled to bed, stripped off her clothes while lying down. Asleep before she took three breaths.
At four-fourteen A.M., she was jolted awake by the phone.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, stupidly. Clearing her head. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“You’re not hurt? Thank God- ”
“It’s minor- ”
“You- oh, God- ”
“Tiny piece of shrapnel in the calf. Your basic flesh wound.”
“Oh, God, Eric- ”
“In and out, it’s really no big deal.”
Now she was sitting up, heart racing, hands frigid. “Shrapnel in your leg is no big deal!”
“I was lucky,” he said. “The first asshole had packed his vest with nuts and bolts and ragged sheet metal. The second used ball bearings and they passed straight through.”