No cars parked nearby, so if Leon was waiting for her, he had no simple flight plan.
Mac reviewed strategy. Clipped, businesslike, that combat-sergeant manner of his. Petra would cross Ventura on rubber-soled shoes, approaching the stand from the north, her gun out but keeping it close to her body so as not to attract attention from the occasional motorist. Once at the building, she’d press herself up against the white stucco walls before announcing herself. Anyone behind the stand would have to slip around, show himself at least partially. The three other detectives, approaching simultaneously from east and west would be ready for trouble.
No rescue word. There’d be no time to scream.
The big question mark, as she saw it, was a drive-by from Ventura. Eric knew that and she could tell it bothered him. He kept quiet. She felt better knowing he’d be scoping out the boulevard.
“You okay?” Mac asked her.
“Let’s do it.”
Feeling cool and competent, she walked briskly toward the kiosk. Before she got there a man stepped out from behind the building, arms in the air, fingers wiggling. Spreading his legs, he leaned against an outdoor table.
Mac and Montoya swarmed him and Eric did the initial pat down.
The guy said “A welcoming party” in that same smooth phone voice. “It’s so nice to be appreciated.”
After the guy was cuffed, Eric patted him down again. That was Eric.
Same long, craggy face as the mug shot.
She said, “It’s him.”
Lyle Leon wore a maroon Jacquard silk shirt tucked into baggy, cinch-waisted, black nylon cargo pants and lace-up boots with healthy heels. Like pirates used to wear…
The eraserhead coif had been mowed down to a conservative bristle. No more soul patch and a little dark hole centered his right earlobe where the earring had once sparkled.
The shirt was a work of art. Petra checked the label. Stefano Ricci. She’d spotted one of those in a Melrose vintage boutique. Five hundred bucks used.
Leon smiled at her. Well-built and relatively clean cut. Bereft of cosmetic affectations, a good-looking guy.
Eric handed her the fat wallet he’d found in a pocket of the cargo pants. Inside was a Cal driver’s license that looked real and fifteen hundred dollars, in fifties and twenties. The address on the license was a Hollywood Boulevard number Petra knew to be a mail drop.
Leon said, “Can we talk now?”
CHAPTER 31
The five of them piled into Mac’s Caddy and drove around the corner, to a residential side street. Nice, well-kept houses, a hint of daylight turned everything lilac-gray, almost pretty.
Petra imagined some citizen spotting the old car, phoning it in, Hollywood D’s having to explain to a nervous Valley uniform.
Lyle Leon sat sandwiched in back, between her and Luc. Good cologne- clean, laced with cinnamon. Trying to smile but his mouth wasn’t buying it.
Definitely scared.
Motivation. She liked that. “Tell us your story, Mr. Leon.”
“Marcella was my niece. Sandra’s my third cousin. I was supposed to take care of both of them but it got out of control.”
“Where are their parents?” said Petra.
“Marcella’s father died years ago and her mother left.”
“Left the Players?”
Lyle said, “Can we keep them out of it?”
“That depends on how the story goes.”
“It doesn’t go there,” said Leon. “We’re thieves but we don’t hurt anyone.”
Petra said, “Why’d Marcella’s mother leave?”
“She said she needed space, ended up hooking in Vegas. Marcella was the youngest of four kids. One of my cousins took them all in. Later, it got to be too much and I got Marcella.”
“What Sandra’s story?”
“Sandra’s father’s in jail in Utah for another couple of years and her mother’s got mental problems. What’s the difference? I was put in charge of them and it got out of control. The problem was Venice. We went there last summer, then again this year. The deal was we’d be working Ocean Front walk a couple of hours a day, have the rest of the day to enjoy the beach. The girls loved it.”
“Working how?”
“Selling merchandise. Sunglasses, hats, tourist stuff.”
From the front, Mac said, “You sell tourist junk while they pick pockets?”
Petra felt Leon tense up against her shoulder. Mac was a vet but he was approaching this wrong. Challenging the guy. Leon was a con, maybe worse, but let him talk.
She said, “So you moved to Venice last summer?”
Leon stayed tight. “Picking pockets is crude, sir. We practiced a time-honored American tradition. Buy low, sell high.”
He’d been busted for selling useless house products to old people. Petra pictured fake gold chains that disintegrated into dust, sunglasses that melted in the summer heat.
She said, “The girls loved Venice but it turned out to be a problem.”
“Marcella met a person.” A beat later: “She got pregnant.”
“And had an abortion,” said Petra.
“You know about that.”
“The autopsy showed it.”
“I didn’t know an autopsy could do that… okay, so you know I’m telling the truth.”
“About Marcella getting pregnant? Sure.”
“The abortion,” said Leon, “was what started the problem. Supposedly. That’s not what he said the first time around. Just the opposite, he was furious she hadn’t taken precautions. I had to pay him off, he seemed fine with that. Then he showed up this summer, wanting to know where the baby is. I told him there was no baby and he went nuts.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Omar Selden. A seriously bad person. Gangbanger, though you wouldn’t know to look at him. Half white, half Mexican, something like that. You’ll have him in your records, he did some time for robbery. But never for what he really did.”
“Which was?”
“Killing people,” said Leon. “Lots of them, according to what he told Marcella. Even if half true, he’s a monster.”
“He bragged about killing to Marcella?”
“It impressed her,” said Leon. “Stupid girl.”
“Who’d this Selden kill?”
“He claimed to be the head hit man for his gang- VVO. Said he’d also done freelance work in prison. A hundred bucks and he’d hit someone. I told Marcella it was bullshit ’cause that’s what I thought at the time. I was wrong.”
VVO was Venice Vatos Oakwood. Tight band of low-grade psychopaths, supposedly inactive until last year when they’d resumed shooting people in broad daylight.
Petra remembered one case Milo Sturgis had worked. Family man, clerk at a Good Guys store, mistaken for a VVO dropout and hit while strolling his two-year-old near Ocean Park. The baby spattered with blood, wide-eyed, mute. The shooter, a fourteen-year-old turned out to be learning disabled. Nearsighted, never taken in for a damn eye checkup.
Lyle Leon said, “Once I paid him off, I thought we were free of him. The whole year I never heard from him again so I figured it was okay to return to Venice- the girls had really enjoyed the summer. Then stupid Marcella spots Selden on the walkway. I turn my head for a second and she’s winking at him. And he’s winking back, soon they’re off on the sand, talking. Couple of days later- couple of nights later- he drops by.”
Leon shook his head. “You saw Marcella. Fat, dumpy, those stupid shoes she insisted on wearing. Sandra’s a hard-body, put her in a thong bikini, some Rollerblades, she’d turn heads. So who does Selden develop a thing for? Marcella. And Marcella falls for it.”
Teenagers, thought Petra. Even scam artists couldn’t control them.
Then she flashed on Leon’s leering description of Sandra and wondered where his head was at. Hepatitis A. Unhealthy sexual practices.