by Robert Crais
Cole returned to the living room, then went into the kitchen. The counter and sink were cluttered with unwashed dishes. Cole found a box of plastic baggies under the sink, then selected a glass tumbler, placed it in the bag, and let himself out. Yanni Pevich had no record, but maybe Yanni Pevich was someone else.
Cole phoned John Chen from his car, and explained the situation.
Chen said, “How am I going to sneak it in with everyone here?”
“You’ll think of something. I’m already on my way.”
“ You’re coming here?! Don’t come here!”
“Meet me outside.”
The trip down to SID took only fifteen minutes, and John Chen had probably been waiting out front for the entire time. When Cole pulled up, Chen was hopping from foot to foot like a kid who had to pee. He relaxed when he saw the glass.
“Hey, that’s a pretty good sample.”
The fingerprints were clearly defined on the glass.
“Yeah. You won’t have to glue it or do anything fancy. Just tape off the prints and see what you get.”
“You want an Interpol check, too?”
“Yeah, Interpol. I’ll be in my car.”
“You’re going to wait?”
“I’m going to wait. How long could it take, John? Just see what you get.”
Chen scurried away. All he would have to do is dust the glass with latent powder, lift the prints with tape, then scan them into the Live Scan system. He would have a hit, or not, in minutes.
When Cole reached his car, he phoned Sarah Manning. He had not heard from the girl with the purple hair, and wished now he’d gotten her phone number. He was disappointed when Sarah’s voice mail picked up.
“Hey, Sarah, it’s Elvis Cole. I never heard from Lisa Topping. Would you please reconsider giving me her number? Thanks.”
Cole left his cell number, and hung up. He checked the time. He had been waiting for only eight minutes, and Chen might get hung up forever.
Cole couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he thought about Grebner. Grebner had really blindsided them with that business about Jakovich, which seemed all the more believable because Rina had so readily admitted she knew him. They both seemed believable, but Cole knew from experience the best liars are always believable, and the very best lies were mostly the truth. Here was Grebner with his party house in the hills, and here was Rina, who claimed to have attended his parties along with other Serbian prostitutes so Grebner and his gang-set buddies could boogie with girls they trusted.
Cole wondered if there was a way he could find out if this was true, and thought he might be able to get the information from one of the other prostitutes.
Cole didn’t have the files, but he had his notebook. He had copied the dates of Rina’s arrests, and now he phoned the district attorney’s general administration office. He worked his way through three clerks and spent almost twenty minutes on the phone before he found someone to look up the case number and identify the deputy district attorney who handled the case.
“That would be Elizabeth Sanchez.”
“Could I have her current posting and number, please?”
Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Sanchez was currently posted to the Airport Courthouse in Playa del Rey, south of the Los Angeles International Airport.
Cole thought he would likely get a voice mail, but a woman picked up the call.
“Lauren Craig.”
“Sorry. I’m calling for Elizabeth Sanchez.”
“Hang on, I think I can—”
Cole heard her call out, then the muffled clunks of the phone being handled, and a different voice came on the line.
“Liz Sanchez.”
Cole identified himself, gave her the date and the case number, and told her he needed the names of the other prostitutes scooped up in the sting.
Sanchez laughed.
“That was almost six years ago. Wow, I was still a Grade Two. You can’t really expect me to remember their names.”
“I thought it might stand out because of the nature of the arrest.”
“A vice sting?”
“A Serbian sex ring. They worked for a Serb gang set.”
“Ah. Okay, that sounds familiar. NoHo Vice took down thirteen or fourteen girls over by CBS Studio Center. A joint task force deal with OCTF.”
Organized Crime Task Force.
“That’s it.”
“Serbians. Okay, sure. They had cribs all through those complexes. They had so many hookers around the pool over there it looked like the Playboy Mansion. Not that I’ve ever seen the mansion.”
“That’s the one. I want to talk to them about events occurring on or about that time.”
Sanchez said, “You mind if I ask what this is about?”
“A gang pakhan named Michael Darko. Darko heads up the set that owned these particular girls.”
Sanchez said, “Darko.”
“Yeah. One of his lieutenants probably ran the operation, but Darko was the man. The pakhan. I have some questions about Darko these girls might be able to answer.”
The silence from Sanchez was thoughtful.
“I don’t think that was it. I don’t think that was the name.”
Now it was Cole’s turn to hesitate.
“Darko?”
“Well, I’m thinking.”
“Was it Grebner? Might have been Grebner.”
“Hold on. The OC guys weren’t happy with the way it turned out. The Vice coppers were fine—they took down thirteen hookers—but the OC dicks were pissed. They wanted to move up the food chain, but none of the girls would roll. I remember because the OC dicks were totally pissed off. They couldn’t get the girls to roll.”
“Yeah, that would be Darko, or maybe a guy named Grebner.”
“No, I remember it now—his name was Jakovich. That’s who they wanted. His set ran the girls.”
“Jakovich.”
“That’s him. The OC dicks just murdered his name. Everything was Jakoffovich, Jerkoffovich, Jakobitch, like that.”
“You’re telling me these prostitutes worked for Milos Jakovich.”
“Absolutely. That’s why OC planned the sting. They wanted Jakovich. We had thirteen prostitutes coming out of a prelim, and none of them—not one—would roll.”
“Thanks, Liz. You’ve been a big help.”
Cole put down the phone. He stared at the empty sky, and knew, once more, how well some people could lie.
His phone rang, and he answered, feeling dull and slow.
A young woman’s voice came from far away.
“Mr. Cole? This is Lisa Topping. Sarah Manning called. She said you want to speak with me?”
Lisa Topping was Ana’s very best friend, and knew things no one else knew.
35
PIKE FOUND THE ADDRESS for Diamond Reclamations on his Thomas Guide map, then wedged the picture of the red-haired baby on his dash. He drove north on the Hollywood Freeway in silence. The creaks and whistles made by the speeding vehicle were faraway reminders of his progress. He studied the baby in brief glimpses. The kid looked nothing like Rina or Darko, but Pike had never been good at that kind of thing. Pike saw a baby, he thought the baby was either cute or not, and this kid was not a cute baby. Looking at the picture, he couldn’t even tell if the child was male or female. He wondered if it would turn out to look like Jakovich.
Pike followed the Hollywood Freeway into the northeast part of the Valley, joined up with the Golden State, and dropped off less than a mile later into a flat landscape where low buildings stood guard over empty lots veined by dried weeds and crumbling concrete. Rows of faceless buildings lined the larger streets, surrounded by equally faceless tract homes, all of which were bleached by the hazy light, and perpetually powdered by dust blown down from the mountains. Telephone poles lining the streets were strung with so many cables and wires they cut the sky like spiderwebs, as if to snare the people who lived there.
Pike did not have to check the Thomas Guide ag
ain. Having seen it once, he knew the route, and skirted around the Hansen Dam Park past nurseries, outdoor storage facilities, and row after row of sun-bleached, dusty homes. He found Diamond Reclamations on a four-lane boulevard at the foot of Little Tujunga Canyon, fenced between a Mom’s Basement public storage location and a stone yard where Bobcat loaders were moving slabs of limestone and marble. A huge Do-It-Yourself home improvement center sat directly across, surrounded by acres of parking and a couple of hundred parked cars. Dozens of sturdy brown men were clustered at the entrances to the Do-It-Yourself, come up from Mexico and Central America, ready and willing to work.
Pike pulled into the Do-It-Yourself center, hiding his Jeep in plain sight among the parked cars and trucks. Diamond Reclamations was a scrap-metal yard. A yellow single-story building sat at the street with eight-foot red letters painted across the front: SCRAP METAL WANTED SALVAGE AUTO PARTS STEEL. A gravel drive ran past the front building to a small parking lot.
Behind the parking lot was a larger, two-story corrugated-steel building. The front building blocked most of what lay behind it from view, but Pike could see that the grounds were crowded with stacked auto chassis, rusting pipes, and other types of scrap metal. Two new sedans were parked out front on the street, and two more sedans and a large truck were in the parking lot, but the gravel drive was chained off, and a sign in the front office window read CLOSED. As Pike watched, a man in a blue shirt came out of the front office building, and crunched across the parking lot to the corrugated building. As he reached the door, he spoke to someone Pike didn’t see, and then that man stepped out from behind the parked truck. He was a big man with a big gut, and thick legs to carry it. The two men laughed about something, then the man in the blue shirt went into the building. The big man studied the passing traffic, then slowly returned to his place behind the truck.
Everything about the man’s body language defined him. Guard. Darko probably traveled with bodyguards, and this man was likely one of his guards. Pike wondered how many more guards were inside and around the building.
Pike decided against calling their phone number again. He wondered if the phone rang in the smaller front building or the large corrugated building. Darko might be in one or the other. The man who murdered Frank and Cindy Meyer, Little Frank, and Joey.
Pike said, “Almost there, bud.”
Three of the Latin workmen broke away from the group by the entrance, and came toward Pike across the parking lot. They had probably been waiting for work since early that morning, and were taking a bathroom break or going for a piece of fruit.
Pike rolled down his window and motioned them over. Pike spoke Spanish pretty well, along with French, gutter German, a little Vietnamese, a little Arabic, and enough Swahili to make himself understood to most Bantu speakers.
“Excuse me. May I ask you a question?”
The three men exchanged glances before they approached, and the youngest man answered in English.
“My cousin is a very good mason, but we can also work with pipes and rough carpentry. I have three years’ experience with painting and dry wall.”
They had mistaken Pike for a contractor.
Pike said, “I’m sorry, but I am not looking for workmen. I have a question about the business across the street.”
He pointed, and all three men followed his finger.
“The scrap yard?”
“Yes. I see people and cars, but the entrance is chained. I have metal to sell, but the sign says closed. How long has it been like this?”
The three men spoke among themselves in Spanish. Pike understood most of their conversation, and gathered that all three were regulars at the home improvement center. He knew this to be true at home improvement centers, paint stores, and hardware stores throughout Los Angeles. The same workers gathered daily at the same locations, and were often met by the same contractors, landscapers, and construction foremen.
The three men reached a consensus, and the younger man finally answered.
“The people are there, but the chain is up. It has been like this three or four days.”
Since the murders in Westwood.
“Before that, the chain was down and the business open?”
“Yes, sir. Before the chain, the trucks come to bring or take the metal, but now, they no longer come. My cousin and I, we go there to see if they need good workers, but they tell us to leave. Now the chain is always up, and the trucks do not come, just the men in their nice cars.”
“The men you spoke with, they were here in the front? The little building is the office?”
Pike pointed again, and the men nodded.
“Yes, the men in there. They are not friendly.”
“This was the man in the blue shirt? I just saw him. He was the rude one?”
“There were two men, and both were rude. We see other men in the back, but we were scared to ask them.”
“Did they have Americano accents?”
“No, sir. They speak with a different flavor.”
“One more question. In the evening, do these men leave for the day?”
They had another discussion, this time with the older man doing most of the talking. Then the younger man answered.
“We cannot know. If we have no job when lunch ends, we go, but we arrive before seven in the morning, and the men are always there with cars in the lot. They must come with the sun to be here before us, but they are.”
“The nice cars?”
“Sí. Yes. They are very nice.”
“And they come and go during the day?”
“Sometimes. Mostly no, but sometimes. The man will take down the chain, and they go in or come out, but mostly no.”
“Sometimes different cars?”
“Sí. Sometimes.”
“Muchas gracias, mis amigos.”
Pike offered a twenty-dollar bill for their help, but the men refused and continued on their way. As they were leaving, the man in the blue shirt reappeared and returned to the front building.
Pike thought about dialing the number again to see if anyone answered, but then it occurred to him to see if the business had a second number. He opened his cell phone to call Information, but his phone could not find a signal. This confirmed the reason behind the landline.
Pike brought a handful of quarters to a pay phone hanging beside the center’s entrance to make the call, and asked if they had a listing for Diamond Reclamations in Lake View Terrace. They did, and a computer voice gave him the listing. It was different from the number he had.
Pike copied the new number, then called Information again for the same listing, and asked if Diamond had more than one number. The operator now read off two numbers, and the second number was the number from Grebner’s phone.
Pike thumbed in more money, and dialed the newest number. He watched the office as he dialed.
A male voice answered on the second ring, and Pike wondered if he was the man in the blue shirt. East European accent, but the accent was light.
The man was careful when he answered, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
“Hello.”
“Is this Diamond Reclamations?”
“Yes, but we are closed.”
“I have ten Crown Victorias for sale. I need to get rid of them, and I will let you have them cheap. Is there someone I can speak with about this?”
“No, I am sorry. We are closed.”
“The sign says you want metal.”
The man hung up before Pike could say more.
Pike counted to one hundred, then dialed the number again, but this time an answering machine picked up.
Pike was returning to his Jeep when a tan Ford Explorer turned onto the gravel drive, stopped at the chain, and beeped. The man in blue came out of the front building, unhooked the chain, and the Explorer pulled into the parking lot. A blond woman and a man in a black T-shirt got out of the Explorer. She was chunky and middle-aged, with hair so blond it was almost white. The man was younger, with lean
muscles. He lifted a case of bottled water from the Explorer’s backseat, and the woman took out a grocery bag. The groceries and water suggested people were spending much time in the building.
They were heading for the corrugated building when three men came out. The last man out held the door, but the first man was a big man who moved like he wanted to knock the woman out of his way.
The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched.
The big man was Michael Darko.
36
PIKE KEPT DARKO IN sight at all times. Crossing the parking lot, moving between and around the parked vehicles, Pike did not look at anyone or anything else. Pike was locked on.
Pike slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep, lowered the sun visor, then started the engine. None of the three men looked toward the enormous Do-It-Yourself parking lot across the street. They would have seen nothing if they had. The Jeep was just another tree in a two-hundred-tree forest.
Pike used a pair of Zeiss binoculars to confirm the man was Darko. He was. Darko was thinner than in the picture Walsh showed Pike, and looked in better shape, as if he had been working out. His mustache was gone, and his hair was shorter, but the wide eyes and sharp sideburns were unmistakable. As Pike watched, Darko lit a cigarette, then waved the cigarette angrily, pacing with stop-and-go bursts in front of the two men.
Pike wondered if Darko had spoken with Grebner, and if he was preparing to change locations. If so, Pike would have to act quickly. Pike studied the three men and gauged the range at a hundred forty yards. At one hundred yards, the bullet from his .357 would drop about three and a half inches. At one-forty, the bullet would be down almost eight inches. Pike could make a center-of-mass shot, but he wasn’t going to shoot. Pike wanted Rina’s kid, and he wanted the truth about Frank. Darko knew the answer to these things, and Pike was certain he could make Darko talk.
Darko flicked away his cigarette and stalked back into the corrugated building. The other two men followed. Pike pulled out of the Do-It-Yourself lot like any other customer, drove two blocks, then swung around and went back to the Mom’s Basement, where an eight-foot cinder-block wall separated the storage location from the scrap yard.
