Solitude Creek (4 page)

‘Would you?’ Foster said.

Overby bristled but said nothing in response to the condescension. Allerton cast a sharp glance Foster’s way. He said, ‘I’m just saying. I don’t trust him.’

Dance: ‘Again, Mr Serrano, there are many questions, things we don’t know. We have had reports that the man who shot Mr Mendoza met with Mr Guzman just before he drove to New Monterey. But they’re just reports. You can see how we have to check it out.’

‘Sure. Yeah.’

‘So you’re telling me you’re certain there was no BMW at his house that morning?’

‘That’s right, Agent Dancer – no, Dance, right? Agent Dance. And I’m almost just as sure there were no black cars. And at that time I was in the front of the property, near the driveway. I would have seen. I was planting hydrangeas. He likes the blue ones.’

‘Well, thanks for that. Now, one more thing. If I showed you a few pictures of some men, could you tell me if any of them came to Mr Guzman’s house while you were there? Ideally on the twenty-first, but if not, some other time.’

‘I try.’

Dance opened her notebook and extracted three pictures.

‘Hard to see. They’re taken with, what, a spy camera or something?’

‘That’s right, a surveillance camera.’

The young man was sitting forward, pulling the pictures closer. He seemed to notice his dirty nails and looked embarrassed. Once he’d positioned the pictures he slipped his hands into his lap.

He studied them for a long time.

Allerton said, ‘Looks like he’s giving it a real shot. Fingers crossed.’

But then the young man sat back. ‘No, I’m sure I never seen them. Though’ – he tapped one – ‘
he
look like that outfielder for the As.’

Dance smiled.

‘Who is that?’ Foster asked. ‘I can’t see.’

Allerton said, ‘I think it’s Contino.’

‘Now there’s a prick and a half,’ Foster snapped.

A triggerman for one of the Oakland crews.

Dance gathered the pictures. She put them away and said, ‘I think that’s it, Mr Serrano.’

He shook his head. ‘I wish I could help you, Agent Dance. I hate the gangs as much as you do, no, probably more.’ His voice grew firm. ‘It is
our
teenagers and children getting killed. In
our
streets.’

Now Dance was leaning forward and she spoke in a soft voice: ‘If you
did
happen to see anything at Mr Guzman’s house and tell me, we’d make sure you’re protected. You and your family.’

Now the young man looked away once more. This time it was a moment before he spoke. ‘I no think so. I think I no be working there any longer. I’ll tell my boss to give me other jobs. Even if I make less.’

Allerton said, ‘Boy doesn’t have the
cojones
to snitch.’

Foster muttered, ‘She didn’t offer him anything. Why would he—’

‘You know, Mr Serrano, we have a budget for people who help us eliminate the gang threats. It’s cash, so nobody knows.’

The young man rose, smiling. ‘There only one problem with what you said. “Eliminate”. If you could eliminate the gangs, then maybe I think about it. But what you mean is, you put a few of them in jail. That leave plenty of others to come pay me and my girlfriend and her family a visit. I gotta say no.’

She held out her hand. ‘Thank you for coming in.’

‘I’m sorry. Not so clean.’ He showed his palms, though not the nails.

‘That’s all right.’

They gripped hands and he walked out of the room. Dance flipped the lights off.

Dance stepped into the observation room and swung the door shut behind her. She walked to the table, set her notes down. She hit the button that shut off the recorder. Clicked her Glock back in its holster.

‘Well?’ Steve Foster asked. ‘Did something wonderful happen that I missed?’

‘What’s your assessment, Kathryn?’ Overby asked.

‘Very few variations from the baseline. I think he’s telling the truth,’ Dance announced. ‘He doesn’t know anything.’ She went on to explain that some people were masters of deception and could manipulate their behaviors – like the yoga experts who could slow their heart rate nearly to stopping – but Serrano didn’t strike her as that skilled.

‘Oh, I think he’s got a few skeletons. But nothing related to the CI or the gangs or Guzman. I’d guess he boosted a car when he was a kid or scores some weed from time to time. Got a ripple of evasion when we were talking about life on the Peninsula, never in trouble with the law. But it was small-time.’

‘You read that?’ Allerton said.

‘I inferred it. I think it’s accurate. But nothing we can use.’

‘Hell,’ Overby muttered. ‘Our one chance to nail Guzman.’

Dance corrected, ‘
A
chance. That didn’t pan out. That’s all. There’ll be others.’

‘Well, I don’t
see
a lot of others,’ Foster pointed out.

Carol Allerton said, ‘We’ve got that delivery boy.
He
knows something.’

Foster muttered, ‘The pizza kid? That’s a non-lead. It’s a dead lead. It’s a pushing-up-daisies lead.’ His face tightened. ‘There’s something about that asshole Serrano. I don’t like him. He was too slick. You learn anything in body-language school about slick?’

Dance didn’t answer.

Allerton: ‘It’s a pepper.’

‘What?’ Overby asked.

‘Serrano’s a pepper. Just saying.’

Foster read texts. Sent some.

Allerton thought for a moment, said, ‘I think we should try again – to turn him, I mean. Offer him more money.’

‘No interest,’ Dance said. ‘Serrano’s a dead end. I say we put better surveillance on Guzman. Get a team in place.’

‘What, Kathryn, twenty-four/seven? You know what that costs? Try the pizza boy, try the domestic staff in Guzman’s. Keep following up on the other leads.’ Overby looked at his watch. ‘I’ll leave it to you guys and gals to work it out.’ His body language suggested that he regretted using the second G-word. Political correctness, Dance reflected, could be so tedious. Overby rose and walked to the door.

And nearly got decked as TJ Scanlon pushed inside. He looked past them and into the observation room. Eyes wide. ‘Where’s Serrano?’

‘He just left,’ Dance told him.

The agent’s brow was furrowed. ‘Shit.’

‘What’s up, TJ?’ Overby asked sharply.

‘He’s gone?’ the young agent exclaimed.

Foster snapped, ‘
What?
’

‘Just got a call from Amy Grabe.’ FBI special agent in charge of the San Francisco office. ‘They busted this guy in Salinas for possession, major. He gave up Serrano.’

‘Gave him up?’ Foster’s brow furrowed deeply.

TJ nodded. ‘Boss, Serrano’s on Guzman’s
payroll
.’

‘
What?
’ Dance gasped.

‘He’s a shooter.
He
was the triggerman took out Sad Eyes. Serrano picked up the BMW at Guzman’s that afternoon, popped Sad, then went back and finished his shift planting daisies or pansies or whatever. He’s taken out four witnesses for Guzman in the last six months.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Foster raged. His eyes on Dance. ‘Outfielder for the As?’

‘Is it confirmed?’

‘They found the piece Serrano used. Ballistics check out. And it’s got Serrano’s prints all over it.’

‘No,’ Dance whispered harshly. She flung the door open and began sprinting down the hall.

He grabbed her before she got three feet into the parking lot behind CBI.

The tackle took Dance down hard and she sprawled on the concrete. She got her Glock out of her holster but, fast as a striking snake, he pulled the gun from her hand. He didn’t turn it her way, though. He saw that she was lying stunned on the ground and fled, a pounding sprint.

‘Serrano!’ she called. ‘Stop!’

He glanced at his car, realized he couldn’t get to it in time. He looked around and spotted, nearby, a slim redheaded woman in a black pantsuit – an employee of the CBI business office. She was climbing out of her Altima, which she’d just parked between two SUVs. He sprinted directly toward her, flung her to the ground. And ripped the keys from her hands. He leaped inside the SUV, started the engine and floored the accelerator.

The sounds of the squealing, smoking tires and the engine were loud. But they didn’t cover the next sound: a sickening crunch from the wheels. The woman’s screams stopped abruptly.

‘No!’ Dance muttered. ‘Oh, no.’ She rose to her feet, gripping her sore wrist, which had slammed into the concrete when he tackled her.

The others in the Guzman Connection task force ran to Dance.

‘I’ve called an ambulance and Sheriff’s Office,’ TJ Scanlon said, and raced to where the redhead was lying in the parking space.

Foster raised his Glock, aiming toward the vanishing Altima.

‘No!’ Dance said, and put a hand on his arm.

‘The fuck’re you doing, Agent?’

It was Overby who said, ‘Across the highway? There? On the other side of those trees. It’s a daycare center.’

Foster lowered the weapon reluctantly, as if insulted they’d questioned his shooting skill. He reholstered his Glock as the stolen car vanished from sight. Foster glanced toward Dance and, though he didn’t fling her words of the young man’s innocence back in her face, his body language clearly did.

What would the next few hours, next few days bring?

Kathryn Dance sat in Charles Overby’s office, alone. Her eyes slipped from pictures of the man with his family to those of him in tennis whites and in an outlandish plaid golf outfit to those with local officials and business executives. Overby, rumor was, had his eye on political office. The Peninsula or possibly, at a stretch, San Francisco. Not Sacramento: he’d never set his sights very high. There was also the issue that you could get to fairway or tennis court all year round here on the coast.

Two hours had passed since the incident in the parking lot.

She wondered again: And a few hours from now?

And days and weeks?

Noise outside the doorway. Overby and Steve Foster, the senior CBI agents here, continued their conversation as they walked inside.

‘… got surveillance on the feeders to Fresno, then the One-o-one and the Five, if he’s moving fast. CHP’s got Ninety-nine covered. And we’ve got One roadblocked.’

Foster said, ‘I’d go to Salinas, the One-oh-one, I was him. Then north. He’ll get, you know, safe passage in a lettuce truck. All the way to San Jose. The G-Forty-sevens’d pick him up there and he disappears into Oakland.’

Overby seemed to be considering this. ‘More chance to get lost in LA. But harder to get to, roadblocks and all. Think you’re right, Steve. I’ll tell Alameda and San Jose. Oh, Kathryn. Didn’t see you.’

Even though he’d asked her – no,
told
her – to come to his office ten minutes ago.

She nodded to them both but didn’t rise. A woman in law enforcement is constantly aware of the gossamer thread she negotiates in the job with her bosses and fellow officers. Excessive deference can derail respect, as can too little. ‘Charles, Steve.’

Foster sat beside her and the chair groaned.

‘What’s the latest?’

‘Not good, looks like.’

Overby said, ‘MSCO found the Altima in a residential part of Carmel, near the Barnyard.’

An old outdoor shopping center, with a number of lots for parking cars.

And for hijacking or stealing them too.

Overby said, ‘But if he’s got new wheels, nobody’s reported anything missing.’

‘Which may mean the person who
could
do the reporting’s dead and in the trunk,’ Foster offered. Implicitly blaming Dance for a potential death-to-be.

‘We’re just debating, would he go north or south? What do you think, Kathryn?’

‘What we know now, he’s associated with the Jacinto crew. They’ve got stronger ties south.’

‘Like I was saying,’ Foster reminded, speaking exclusively to Overby, ‘south is three hundred miles of relatively few roads and highways, versus north, with a lot more feeders. We can’t watch ’em all. And he can be in Oakland in two hours.’

Dance said, ‘Steve, airplanes. He flies to a private strip in LA, out in the county, and he’s in South Central in no time.’

‘Airplane? He’s not cartel level, Kathryn,’ Foster fired back. ‘He’s I’m-hiding-in-a-lettuce-truck level.’

Overby put on his consideration face. Then: ‘We can’t look everywhere and I think Steve’s is the more, you know, logical assessment.’

‘All right. North, then. I’ll talk to Amy Grabe. She’ll get eyes going in Oakland, the docks, the East Bay. And—’

‘Whoa, whoa, Kathryn.’ Overby’s face registered surprise, as if she’d just said, ‘I think I’ll swim to Santa Cruz.’

She looked at him with a critical furrow of brow. There had been a lacing of condescension in his tone.

She glanced at Foster, who had lost interest in her and was studying a golden golf ball on Overby’s desk, some award. He didn’t want to be seen gloating when she heard what she knew was coming. Better to look at small-time awards made of plastic masquerading as precious metal.

Overby said, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with Sacramento. With Peter.’

The director of the CBI. The boss of bosses.

‘We talked, I explained …’

‘What’s the bottom line, Charles?’

‘I did everything I could, Kathryn. I went to bat for you.’

‘I’m suspended.’

‘Not suspended, no, no, not at all.’ He beamed, as if she’d won a Caribbean cruise in a state fair draw. ‘Not completely. You lost your weapon, Kathryn. He’s got it now. That’s … Well, you know. It
is
leave-of-absence-without-pay suspendable. They’re not going to go there. But they want you in Civil Division for the time being.’

Civ Div would correspond to a traffic division in the city police department. No weapon and with all the power of anybody else to make a citizen’s arrest. It was the entry level into the Bureau of Investigation and involved such tasks as compiling information on non-criminal violations by citizens and corporations, like failure to follow building or revenue-collection regulations, improper signage in the workplace and even failure to remit soda-bottle deposits promptly. Agents tended to endure the overwhelming paperwork and crushing boredom for only so long. If they weren’t promoted out into Crim Div, they usually quit cold.