I slide the creds back into my bag. “I suppose you don’t, but you’ll definitely know the gun is real.”
He’s silent for several seconds, trying to figure out what to say, but his brain is shot. He’s not who he used to be. “You won’t find shit at my place.”
“Okay,” I say, standing. “So you’re going with the second option. Good luck with that.”
“No, no, no.” Panic rises in his voice. “Sit down.”
A big guy next to us in a Sharks jersey gives Travis a withering look. I can tell Travis wants to run, but he’s too scared to make any sudden moves. I sit back down.
“It’s possible your place is clean right now, Travis. It’s possible there’s no paraphernalia, no residue, no incriminating emails on your laptop, no text messages on your phone, no documents under your bed, no tax problems, no hair fiber, no DNA, no plants, no ashes, no cash, no weapons. It’s possible but unlikely. More importantly, did you pay for any part of that property with drug proceeds? I’d hate to see you lose it. Forfeiture is a bitch.”
He folds the tin foil from his burrito, hands shaking, and sips the last of his drink. He pulls at his shirt, scratches at his forearms and chest. A trail of red moves up his neck. Hives. “Go ahead. Ask your questions.”
“The missing boy. Who wanted you to return him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Good luck with the raid.” I scoot my chair back as if to leave. “Be sure you avoid any sudden moves. And maybe think about getting some slip-on shoes and elastic pants. They don’t allow ties and laces at Dublin. Federal prison is weird that way.”
“Whoa, lady.” He reaches across the table to grab my forearm. “Relax.”
The guy in the Sharks jersey jumps to his feet. He’s six five, at least three hundred pounds. “Is this guy bothering you?”
I look at Travis. “Are you bothering me, Travis?”
Travis puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Naw, man, just having a conversation.”
“I’m watching you,” the guy says. He sits down and returns to conversing in Spanish with his friends.
“I never even saw the kid.”
“What did you see?”
The hives are spreading to his face. “Someone asked me to take the kid from one guy, and, well, return him.”
“Return him? Like a pair of pants?”
“The guy said to do it however I wanted, just make sure the kid didn’t wind up dead. So, I asked a friend to do it. And then it was over, case closed. I never heard another word.”
I stare at him, waiting for more, but he is silent. “Yeah, Travis. That’s not really going to work.”
“It’s the truth, swear to God.”
“I need specifics. Who asked you to do it? Who gave you the boy? Where had he been? Who ‘returned’ him? Have you done similar things since then? Do you know where the girl is?”
“Whoa! I don’t know anything about a girl.” Like Ivy, he appears genuinely surprised at the mention of a girl. “No, no, no. I’m telling you: One time. I only did it once. I got that boy back where he was supposed to go. That was the beginning of it and the end of it. I’m no freak. I was asked to take the boy from some dude and return him. That’s all she wrote, man.”
“Who asked you?”
“Um,” he says. “Not a ‘who,’ but more of a ‘what.’”
“Okay.”
He leans forward, nearly whispering. “Let’s say a person needs to move a bit of product, okay, a lot of product. Here, there aren’t a lot of options when it comes to—”
“Distribution networks?”
“Right.”
“Who is your distribution network?”
“These people don’t exactly use first and last names,” he says. “One of their runners, when he’s picking up my shit, he passes me a note. A phone number, simple instructions, date, times, meet a guy, get a boy, return him safely. For some reason, the boy has to be left on a beach, alive. I’m telling you, it was clear we were sending the boy back home, not the other way around. All I knew was, we were getting a boy back to his parents. Guess I should have told them to fuck off.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to tell them to fuck off. And I’m being straight here. I doubt there’s any proper way to say no to these people.”
“So how did it go down?”
“I know this guy Murphy, owns a boat. I bought crab off him a few times, loaned him money here and there. I knew he was in a bad way, businesswise. He had two bad crab seasons, back to back. They wanted the kid returned to a beach, and it couldn’t be traced back to anyone, to any car, plates, address. So I’m like, how the hell do we get the kid there without a car? Are we supposed to hike? And the runner, some guy with a stupid haircut, says, ‘Just figure it the fuck out.’ Murphy needed money, and it didn’t hurt that he owed me. So I gave him a drop phone and the number.”
“What happened when Murphy called the number?”
“The guy on the other end arranged to meet him at Pillar Point Harbor. At four thirty in the morning, Murphy is sitting on his boat, waiting for a couple of Asian gangbangers. Instead, this white dude shows up. Six foot two and fleshy, wearing plaid pants and a pink Gucci shirt, thousand-dollar shoes. He walks up the pier, whistling, pushing a big wooden crate on a flatbed dolly. He heads straight for Murphy, gets up in his face, and whispers in his ear, ‘Hello, darling.’”
Travis cracks a smile for the first time, as if he still can’t quite believe the story.
“The guy is wearing latex gloves. He orders Murphy to help him load this heavy crate onto the boat. When they get it down below, the plaid guy pulls out a set of pocket tools and pops the top.”
I’m getting a sick feeling, listening to Travis. I don’t want this story to go where I know it’s going.
“Inside the crate, there’s this pale, skinny kid. Murphy thinks the kid is dead and starts freaking out. Plaid Man grabs him, pulls him in close, and says, ‘Please don’t tell me this is your first rodeo.’ The guy has Murphy’s head in his hands, so close Murphy can smell Cheetos on his breath. And the guy is huge. He looks Murphy straight in the eyes and says, ‘Can we maintain?’
“Murphy is scared shitless, blabbing, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Plaid Man puts his mouth on Murphy’s ear and says, ‘If you do not maintain your shit, I will burn this motherfucker down.’ Plaid Man, still in his gloves, pokes at the kid’s shoulder. The kid wakes up. Murphy is so relieved he almost pisses himself. The kid’s alive. But he’s groggy, not really there.”
“Had he been drugged?”
“Maybe.”
I think of Gray Stafford sitting beside me on the school lawn at the movie. Gray Stafford, a normal high school kid before all this happened, star athlete, a little cocky, well liked. It breaks my heart. It gets under my skin. Somebody’s got to deal with Plaid Man.
“What about his hair? What was the condition of the boy’s hair?”
“The kid was completely bald. Murphy asks Plaid Man why, and Plaid Man starts singing, ‘Not my first rodeo, dear, not my first rodeo.’ They lift the boy out of the box. He’s groaning. Murphy’s trying to be gentle. One thing you should know about Murphy, he loves kids. He wants to get the kid as far as possible from this dude.
“They get the kid out of the crate, and Murphy wants to make him comfortable, but Plaid Man has all these rules. He insists on laying the boy out on a plastic sheet. Murphy’s seen enough Law and Order to know a plastic sheet is not a good sign. Plaid Man tells Murphy to fetch the fire extinguisher, then he hoses the boy down.” Travis mimics a fire extinguisher with his hands. “Whoosh! While the boy lays there shivering, coughing, Plaid Man breaks down the entire crate, boom-boom-boom. Then he packs up all of his stuff in a giant vinyl zipper bag.”
The baldness, the fire
extinguisher, the vinyl bag, hosing it all down, Plaid Man’s methodical ways. He must have shaved their heads to eliminate hair fibers, DNA. He was covering his tracks.
“What happened next?”
“He orders Murphy back up to the deck. Plaid Man says, ‘You should know, Mr. Murphy, John Murphy, I am a very busy man, and I would hate to have to spend time burning this motherfucker down. I would hate to burn down your boat, your other boat, your condo, your house, your place up north, your wife, your sister’s kids.’”
Travis is lost in the story, imitating Plaid Man, almost enjoying it. The guys next to us have turned to stare.
“Plaid Man left with his big vinyl bag, Murphy took the boat out, and a little while later, he left the kid on the beach.”
“That’s it?”
“That. Is. It.” He throws his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I swear.”
“How did the boy get from the boat to the beach?” Of course, I know the answer, but I’m curious to know if Travis will rat Ivy out.
One blink, two, three. “Murphy had a blow-up raft.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah, he had one of those little boats with oars, and he put the kid in it, and he told the kid to row to shore.”
“The boy was in terrible shape. He couldn’t even stand on his own. How could he row himself to shore?”
“Don’t know, wasn’t there.” Interesting. He’s protecting Ivy. Is it possible Travis has a heart?
I switch gears. “When Murphy was at Pillar Point Harbor, did he see Plaid Man’s car?”
“No. Plaid Man materialized out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere. Murphy said he thought Plaid Man must’ve walked there with the crate on the dolly.”
“From where?”
“Don’t know. Anyway, as soon as Murphy dropped off the kid, he docked the boat and drove around for hours, trying to calm down.”
“When did you next see him?”
“That night, I promised him the cash as soon as the job was done.”
“And have you seen Murphy since then?”
Travis shakes his head. “Never. That was the end of it. I got paid, he got paid, case closed. Can I go? Are we good?”
I can tell he’s about to try to make a run for it, so I reach across the table and grab his wrist. “No.”
Travis winces. “I told you everything.”
“Who runs your distribution network? Who’s your contact?”
He tries to pull away. “Are you trying to get me killed?” He mumbles to himself: “Every decision I made was the right one, but now they’ve all added up to one big fucking mess.”
“Who does your distribution?”
Travis is quiet for a second, playing with the foil from his burrito. “I just have a phone number. It’s never the same runner. I call the number, someone shows up.”
“Name?”
“It’s a crew from Daly City. They call themselves the Kenji Boys. One of them hinted they’re connected to the Triads. Maybe he was blowing smoke, but they are connected to somebody. They fronted me a shit ton of start-up cash.”
“Okay, I need those phone numbers.” I let go of his wrist, take a notepad and pen out, and slide them across the table.
Travis sits several seconds, head in his hands. Then he pulls out his phone. He looks at it for nearly a minute, considering. He swipes the screen, scrolls through the contacts, and writes down two numbers, a K over the first and a PM over the second. He pushes the notebook toward me. “Can I go?”
“Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone we talked. And stop selling drugs. That shit destroys everything and everyone around you. You’re a smart man. You should know that.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” His eyes narrow, he looks directly at me, and I sense the focus he must have had back when he was a star student, the focus that landed him the fancy job and helped him buy the property.
“You remember what happened to Walter White?”
“Yes.”
“You want to end up like that?”
“It’s a little late to be asking that question, don’t you think?”
“Do yourself a favor and get a real job. You earned an engineering degree from Oregon. Act like it.”
He shakes his head. “Damn,” he chuckles.
“What?”
“If I had someone like you busting my ass every day, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“It’s not too late.”
“I don’t think you heard anything I said about the Kenji Boys. I hope you find the girl, whoever she is. I really do. Can I go?”
“Go.”
“One thing. Before you track those numbers, can you give me four hours to get the fuck out of Dodge?”
“Two.”
Without another word, he bolts from his chair.
43
Home ownership has long been a cornerstone of the American dream. Weighing the risks and rewards of home ownership, as well as the sociopolitical implications of class disparity, explain why we as a society should continue or dismantle this way of thinking.
The New York office comm center has nothing on either phone number. My public records search yields no clues. I open Confide and send Malia the numbers and the name Kenji Boys. Daly City connection, I type. May be connected to the Triads.
Nothing on the numbers, Malia messages back minutes later. As for the Kenji Boys, you’re right about the Asian OC. There’s a Daly City operation plus Chinatown connections. Despite the plucky name, they’ve got serious cash flow and even more serious muscle.
As I’m typing thanks, another message arrives from Malia: Don’t get yourself killed before you can go to Iceland.
I message Nicole on WhatsApp. You there?
She responds immediately. Howdy.
How’s your love life?
She replies with a thumbs-up emoji.
Can your relationship handle two additional phone numbers?
We’ll see.
I send the two numbers, adding: It’s urgent.
Under normal circumstances, I would file the paperwork, request the court order. But if Plaid Man has anything to do with Caroline’s disappearance, I can’t wait for the process to work its way through the courts.
Rory is in a surprisingly good mood when I pick him up from school. The student council president, Dave Randall, invited him to a swimming party at his house next Wednesday to celebrate the end of the Wonder Test.
“Isn’t it cold for swimming?”
“They have an indoor pool. But the important part is, Caroline will be there.”
“What?”
“Dave said she’ll be back on Wednesday.”
“How does he know?”
“Someone at lacrosse practice told him. Do you think we’ve just been paranoid all along?”
“Is Caroline friends with anyone on the lacrosse team?”
He frowns. “Well, no. But why would Dave lie?”
Rory has a point. Why would he?
“How did the test go today?”
“Hard to tell, but I think I’m in good shape. Dave’s mom, who’s on the school board, read the report from the first day of the test, and I had the top score for the school.”
“Wow, congratulations.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m not surprised you aced it. I’m surprised a member of the school board can access your scores.”
After dinner, my phone pings with a text from Nicole. That was fast. Only the second number was an Android. Registered to Leonard Blake. The phone was purchased a little over a year ago at a Best Buy in Windsor and hasn’t been powered on in 361 days. Final ping was from 20107 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville, California.
So, 361 days. The last time Leonard Blake, aka Plaid Man
, used the phone was just days before Gray Stafford showed up on the beach in Half Moon Bay. Which means there’s a good chance Leonard Blake was keeping Gray somewhere near Guerneville.
I need to go to Guerneville, but I don’t want to go alone. With George still out of the country and Kyle in Santa Cruz, I don’t have many options. I try a few other numbers, including two friends from my Quantico class, but no one is in the area. I try an old friend at the Palo Alto office, but from his outgoing message I realize he has moved on. Getting other agents involved is tricky. I’m in the gray area now, that period between your first hunch and the opening of the case. Between the two, there can be days or weeks of legwork, painstaking research to determine the validity of the lead. Once you open a case, start the official file, and put the machinery of the federal government into action, there’s no going back.
At 4:37 a.m. on Saturday, running on fumes but unable to sleep, I go down to the kitchen, make coffee, open Google Maps, and survey the area around 20107 Armstrong Woods Road. I compile a list of the properties within a three-hundred-yard radius: ownership, social media posts, taxes, crime records. Geographic pings have a variance of about one hundred yards due to complex rules involving national security. Still, the last ping on the phone could be a red herring. Leonard Blake could have taken a long drive and dumped the phone as a precaution.
Mister Fancy is in the driveway. He lifts his head and stares into the kitchen window. I pour milk into a saucer and set it on the front porch. He walks toward the bowl, sniffs, laps up a few drops, and loses interest. He rubs against my leg as he enters the house.
“Ah, coming inside, are you?”
In the kitchen, he jumps up on a chair and watches me pop a bagel in the toaster. I’m probably misreading his cat language, but I imagine he considers us to be fellow travelers, both of us on the outside, peering into the snow globe of this strange town.
On the map, Armstrong Woods Road stretches three miles, from the town of Guerneville to a sprawling state park known for its eight-hundred-year-old redwoods. There are two small resorts, a store that sells tables and clocks crafted from redwood burl, a church, a library, residential cul-de-sacs, and a trailer park. The redwood grove has more than fifty miles of trails, hundreds of acres of wilderness. The kind of place a person can hide . . . or be hidden.
The Wonder Test Page 19
