Then She Vanished

by T. Jefferson Parker

“Just a minute, hoss,” said Hazzard. “Were you up in the Palomar Mountains yesterday with Dalton’s sister?”

  “I was.”

  “What was your takeaway?”

  “A warning to Tola from the New Generation.”

  “With Kirby in the dirt, that’s one less Strait we have to worry about,” said Hazzard. “They’re vermin, you know.”

  “Vermin come in all shapes and sizes,” I said.

  A shrug and a stare.

  Proetto walked me into the bright morning.

  “I don’t know what’s between you and Haz, but you seem to bring out the asshole in him.”

  “It’s the shot I didn’t take that day in Imperial Beach.”

  Proetto went quiet for a moment. Then, “Hazzard wants it to be Dalton—the abusive, cheating, self-centered male. An elected official, no less. It’s the narrative of the day.”

  He had a point. I still wasn’t buying in on Dalton, but said nothing. Proetto had steered me away from Hazzard for a reason.

  “Dalton never got on that Sacramento flight, the morning Natalie was abducted,” he said. “He flew to Orange County instead. Then headed up to Sacramento that night. When the dealership and campaign people and her own sons started wondering where she was, Dalton didn’t answer or return their calls.”

  My first thought was: Orange County, home of Asclepia Pharmaceutical and McKenzie Doyle.

  “You’re not throwing in with Hazzard on Dalton, are you?”

  “Not all the way. But why did he lie about where he was that morning?”

  “Something about a blonde.”

  “The rumors are true?”

  “At least one of them is,” I said. “Dalton is reckless and contradictory, but I don’t think he mailed that blouse and letter to himself. He didn’t have her abducted. But I’m losing traction here, Tony. Can you get me some? I’m doing my best to help you out.”

  Proetto gave me a long look. “Brock Weld’s alibi just got worse. The neighbors say his dog barked all day, which it only does when he’s gone. He says he was home the morning Natalie disappeared, laid low by the flu and with headphones on. Didn’t hear the dog. And get this: Brock Weld is a Tourmaline Casino security employee. Also known as Brock Weld by the Strait Reelection Committee. But his real name is Brock Holland. He did a year for hacking into a credit rating database and assaulting the cops who arrested him. Maybe there’s a harmless reason for an aka and a bad alibi. Maybe there isn’t. He’s currently on a two-week paid vacation. We don’t know where he’s gone. Let me know if he comes up in your net.”

  Holland had a nice portfolio, I thought. Tech and violence. He’d been bold enough to proposition his boss as he volunteered on her husband’s assembly campaign. While consorting with a casino coworker. A sexual opportunist? Maybe. Natalie had refused him. Maybe he just wasn’t smart enough to fool her into bed. Time to deploy his violent side?

  * * *

  Back in my truck, I consulted the Vigilant 4000 for the real-time location of Brock Holland’s white Suburban. It was currently still in the same Casa del Zorro parking spot, where I had last “seen” it on Friday night. Which made sense if Holland had chosen Casa del Zorro for his two-week vacation. Fun in the sun with your beloved. Play tennis, read by the pool, a good restaurant. Bike around the desert in the cool early mornings on complimentary Casa del Zorro bicycles.

  However, during those four days, the SUV had made three round trips to the same address in San Ysidro, California, a district of San Diego that lies on the border with Mexico. Rough and hectic San Ysidro—not a place associated with romantic getaways, poolside hours, fine dining. Yet Brock Holland—or at least his vehicle—had spent almost eighteen hours there.

  A few minutes on Google Maps and a brief talk with a Realtor friend and I learned that the address in question was the National Allied Building, a fourteen-thousand-square-foot, two-story building in the warehouse district. Legal ownership in dispute; number of tenants and lease arrangements, if any, unknown. Not currently listed on CoStar, LoopNet, or CityFeet.

  “Not unusual for that part of the border,” said my friend. “Watch your step.”

  In my downtown Fallbrook office I dug out Brock Holland on IvarDuggans.com.

  Like his alias, Holland was thirty-one and a native of Miami. And he had done security work in local San Diego hotels, two cruise lines, and casinos in Las Vegas, as claimed by Weld. Holland had no degrees but he was crafty enough to fool IvarDuggans.com and his Tourmaline employers into believing he was someone else.

  Instead of college, he graduated through a series of lesser crimes—mail fraud, impersonating a city official, malfeasance. Minor jail time, community service, and fines. But finally upped his game by hacking into a credit rating company with criminal intent, and assault-upon-an-officer charges. Followed by the year in Chino Men’s. He’d been clean since his release in 2015 and had been off the radar ever since, hiding behind Weld’s cover.

  I thought about telling Proetto where to find his man, but decided not to. I wanted to keep Brock Holland’s secrets to myself for now.

  And get a look at another one of Holland’s secrets—the National Allied Building—where he’d been spending so much of his hard-earned vacation time.

  THIRTY-TWO

  San Ysidro was bustling that afternoon, retaining its title as the busiest land border crossing in the world. The warehouse district sprawled low and metallic within sight of the border itself, two high fences of chain link with tangles of concertina overflowing the top, shining in the spring sun.

  The National Allied Building was two-story I-beam steel construction, with vertically corrugated walls. Sparsely windowed and—according to the graying white paint—fifty years old. Three roll-up doors that I could see, one at ramp level and two to the ground. The domed acrylic skylights of decades past. An office door. All huddled under a sagging crisscross of power lines.

  I parked and checked the phone. The Vigilant 4000 had Brock Holland’s white Suburban still parked back at La Casa del Zorro in Borrego Springs, a two-hour drive away. If I was going to be observed while making my professional rounds here in San Ysidro, it wouldn’t likely be by him.

  I locked up my truck, grabbed my briefcase, and headed toward the building. I was resplendent in a blue blazer, a white shirt, and a yellow necktie. Business cards in the jacket pocket. The briefcase contained booklets of various boilerplate lease agreements, pencils and legal pads, a measuring tape, a calculator, and my permitted .45 Colt Gold Cup, tucked into the laptop slot. I was Robert Franklin, Century Group Brokers, Commercial Realty Division, Los Angeles, license #396248.

  I pressed the front door buzzer. The door was sun-blasted bronze-toned glass and the built-in intercom speaker grille was rusty. The camera screwed into the metal wall above it was newer and clean. The company names and their suite numbers were framed in an acrylic directory, the letters severely faded. Some had fallen off altogether. The lid of the mail slot was rusty, too, and the general air of the place was vacancy.

  Wrong.

  A man’s voice through the speaker asked me who I was here to see. I said I was a broker looking at warehouse space for clients from L.A. Held a business card up to the camera.

  Then a buzz and the clank of a dead bolt obeying orders.

  “Come in.”

  I pushed through the heavy door and into an industrial lobby: a wall-to-wall counter with a double-wide pass-through and a stout, block-faced man standing behind it, hands on the counter, expression doubtful. Dark hair and eyes. He wore a black T-shirt with a graphic of a woody full of surfboards and a palm tree on the front. We introduced ourselves and shook hands and I handed him the card. His name was Pete Giakas.

  “There’s nothing for lease here,” he said, looking up from the card.

  “I need something private and secure,” I said, setting the briefcase on the counter as m
ight a man with patience and time to burn. “My clients don’t deal directly with the public.”

  “Neither do most of us,” said Giakas. “Special-order stuff. Not much public coming and going. We have a mold maker, a dune buggy welder, a direct-mail printer, two telemarketers, and some others on the first floor. Second floor is a guitar teacher, printed circuit boards, and import-export.”

  “Long-time tenants?”

  “Depends what you mean by long. The PCB and import-export have only been here a couple of years.”

  “And you?”

  “Going on twelve. I’m the senior tenant and the underpaid receptionist. I collect the mail off the floor and pile it on this counter. I tell the other tenants if someone comes by when they’re at lunch or away.”

  “What is your business, Mr. Giakas?”

  “T-shirts. I do the silk screens, sell them at swap meets. Surf culture always sells in San Diego.”

  “I surfed once upon a time.”

  “I fish off the pier.”

  “What’s the square-foot rate here?” I asked.

  “Ten-eighty on a one-year lease. But that was two years ago.”

  “And who is the building owner? It’s not on any of the listing services.”

  “I’ve never met the owner and I have no name for him or her. Very private. I have an email address and that’s all. Don’t ask me for it.”

  “No, I understand.”

  I took a moment to look around the unkempt lobby: ancient nicks and scratches on the counter, a battered linoleum floor circa 1960, a half-filled wastebasket in one corner, the sun-reflecting bronze windows giving it all a faint butterscotch cast.

  “Mr. Giakas, may I speak briefly to the tenants working today? With an eye for a future vacancy? This place really does seem right for my clients. I won’t be a nuisance.”

  Giakas studied me.

  “Only some of the tenants are here today. The direct-mail printer in unit six is hell on wheels. Maria. And the second-floor people aren’t in today. I’ll be in unit four if you need me.”

  He lifted the pass-through and held it up as I took up my briefcase and entered a warren of hallways and suites.

  I heard parakeets shrieking in their happy way. Smelled someone’s lunch, heard the steady thump of music from First Class Molds, paused outside the Direct Solutions Mail Company, from behind the glass front door of which a large Medusa-haired woman stared at me.

  I nodded and continued on. Sand King Welders had a cardboard clock set to three o’clock dangling at eye level on the glass window insert. Beyond it I saw the simple reception area: a gray metal desk with a gray metal chair on either side, colorful posters of tricked-out dune buggies, ATVs, and off-road three-wheelers on the walls.

  The telemarketers were both in, doing business in offices that faced each other across the hall. Of course they were on their phones. It took me a moment to surmise that they were sisters—almost certainly twins—running two similar companies headquartered not twenty feet away from each other. Same Vietnamese faces, same dark eyes, same bangs. They offered identical smiles and similar waves of hand as I passed by.

  “May I help you,” a woman’s voice demanded.

  I turned to see Maria, the Medusa-haired direct-mail printer, standing in the hall behind me, hands on her hips. A short, wide woman. Black lipstick, heavy eyeliner and makeup, a sequined black pantsuit and bright white running shoes.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a commercial broker. Trying to find a unit here for an L.A. client.”

  “No space available now. That’s why there’s no sign out.”

  “I was looking for October of this year.”

  She shook her head. “Not possible. All the tenants are very good here. We like the rates and the building. No crime. No one bothers us. Upstairs are the new people. Very unfriendly. Talk to them if you want. It might be good if they’re leaving.”

  “Are the upstairs PCB company and the import-export companies one and the same, or two different tenants?” I asked.

  “The same unfriendly faces. They turn away. Won’t look at me. Men and women.”

  “How many?”

  “Four men and three women.”

  “Is there a couple? The man is well built and likes Hawaiian shirts. The woman is blond and pretty.”

  “Who are you?”

  “If so, they’re my clients,” I backfilled. “I thought they might come down here and try to strike a deal on their own. Thereby cutting me out of my commission.”

  “They come and go,” she said.

  “White Suburban and a yellow sports car?”

  She nodded, eyeing me hard.

  “Mr. Giakas seems like a reasonable manager,” I said, hunting as always but not sure exactly what for.

  “Calls himself the manager,” said Maria. “Throws the mail behind the counter. Might or might not tell you if you’ve had a customer come in while you’re gone. I’ll tell you something about him. He makes good T-shirts and keeps parakeets in his shop. And he has the same thing for lunch every day: Better Burger. Are you interested in direct mail for your company? You’re a good-looking man. I can get your face in front of a hundred thousand potential customers for a lot less than you think. I know how to target. I design and write and print, even post, if you want. Flyers aren’t like those online ads that get blocked and deleted. They stay right in front of people, right up to the time they have to pick them up and throw them out. Then there you are, smiling at them from beside the coffee cup stain, giving them one last chance.”

  “I’m interested. Do you have a card?”

  She drew the card from I know not where, held it toward me between two extended fingers. Black nail polish, fingers glittering with jewels set in silver.

  I gave her one of my own cards, thanked her and meandered down the hall and around the corner.

  The mold maker briefly looked up at me through a glass door. I saw that the thumping music came from a boom box set on the office floor beside him. He sat on a folding chair next to a floor heater, a large wooden easel on his lap and a pencil in one hand.

  Past a sculptor working in clay.

  And a wholesaler of Mexican guitars, which hung from his ceiling.

  Then onward to a glass office door on which an image of Jesús Malverde—patron saint of narcos—had been skillfully etched. Malverde wore his usual neat Sinaloan mustache, knotted scarf, and stony gaze.

  Above him, in frosty letters:

  Raul Santo

  Private Investigator

  And below Malverde’s etched gaze, just a few yards from me, clearly visible through the door glass, sat a man with his boots up on a desk, eyeing me knowingly.

  I’d been made and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but close the door behind me.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Mr. Roland Ford, what a pleasure to meet you.”

  “All mine, Mr. Santo.”

  He stood and we shook hands. He was thickly built, medium height, with a head of black curly hair falling to his shoulders and a trim mustache. Malverde in need of a haircut, I thought. He wore a black guayabera with white embroidery, jeans, and a gold bracelet of interlocked serpents on each wrist.

  “What brings you here?” he asked, plopping back into his chair. “Please, sit.”

  I didn’t. “A tip on a stolen identity case. It fizzled, so I’m on my way out.”

  “But out is that way,” he said with a smile, pointing vaguely toward the lobby. “Which of my fine neighbors here had your interest?”

  “Please, Mr. Santo.”

  “Of course, of course. Our curse is our curiosity.”

  “Well said. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my real name to yourself. Today I’m Robert Franklin, a commercial real estate broker. Like I said, it was a dead end anyway.”

  I handed hi
m a card.

  “And you must be looking for industrial space here on behalf of a client in Los Angeles,” he said.

  “Good guess.”

  “When I work in Los Angeles, I am sometimes the Realtor Ron Montero representing clients from San Diego.”

  “We PI’s are a cagey crew,” I said.

  “Judging by your presence at his press conference, I’d say you’ve been hired by Assemblyman Strait,” said Santo. “My wife is addicted to missing-persons stories, so she forwards the highlights to me almost every day.”

  I nodded.

  “Natalie Strait is still missing?”

  And nodded again. Santo sat back and crossed his thick fingers over his ample gut. “I am saddened by the slaughter in the Palomars yesterday. Dalton Strait must feel surrounded.”

  “By?”

  “Misfortune. Natalie. Kirby. His many legal troubles.”

  “Have you worked for the Straits?”

  “No, never.”

  A quick flash in which I understood much. Tempted as I was to show Santo a picture of Brock Holland and Gretchen Deuzler, such a gamble could sink me if this PI with the narco-saint emblem on his door was in any way tied to them. They could be friendly, for all I knew. Certainly the opportunity was good, right here in this strange building. And in the larger sense, the New Generation Cartel had hundreds of eyes, ears, and guns in this jammed quarter of the border. El Chapo’s splintered Sinaloans did, too. And all the meth freebooters. A Malverdean PI would certainly be a temptation to any of them. Even if Santo was independent of Holland and the killers who had taken five lives in the Palomar Mountains, a report of my presence here in the National Allied Building might be valuable to someone.

  “You have had some big adventures,” said Santo. “I saw you on the news when the terrorists hit San Diego. When the FBI woman was killed. And before that, when the helicopter was shot out of the sky and crashed on your property! You are the only celebrity PI I know who is not a TV character.”

  “I liked it better when I could waddle around the world in secret,” I said.