Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation

by A. W. Hill

  “Nice car,” said Agent Djapper. “I haven’t seen one of these in years. Is this the original leather?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Raszer. “I bought it at an estate sale. An old guy from Mar Vista who never took it out of the garage. I don’t treat it quite so delicately.”

  Djapper ran his large hand over the doorpost. “I think I’d have repainted it,” he said. “Cream yellow’s a little soft for a guy’s car.”

  “I like to think of my cars as girlfriends,” Raszer came back. “I’m not sure I’d feel the same about a guy color. Anyway, it was a gift from the old fellow to his wife. The story was, he bought it for her on the day she left him, and it never clocked a mile. When there’s a story connected to something, I leave the color alone.”

  “Hmm,” Djapper grunted, and leaned farther in, resting his arms on the door. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t mean to cramp your style in there. Some of that was for show. I didn’t know about your connection with Borges. You worked MP with him?”

  All the while, Raszer had kept one eye trained on the revolving door, but here was what seemed to be an olive branch, maybe even a prelude to an offer of help.

  “Just long enough to get my license,” Raszer said. “But I learned a lot. He’s a very sharp cop.”

  “Yeah, well, listen . . . he says you’ve got a gift. And, frankly, we could use one on this case. It’s been stone cold since Katy Endicott disappeared. As clean as a mob hit. Now, I don’t know what connection this Darrell kid has to the Coronado, or exactly where you fit in, but—”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Raszer, putting his palm up. There was an after-image in his brain, a black blur. He’d let his focus drift for a moment, but in that tick, a sleek form had passed in front of the alley, headed southeast. A black limo, the least unusual sight in L.A., on the edge of his vision. But what was it that had raised his pulse?

  “So, anyhow,” Djapper continued. “I was hoping we could—”

  “Hold that thought,” said Raszer, a little more firmly, his hand still raised. He closed his eyes. The transient smear of an image would remain on his visual cortex for only an instant longer. What? What?

  “Oh,” said Djapper, fingering the leather upholstery. “Yeah. Borges’s guys told me about this. You’re having one of those visions, or whatever. Those things you—”

  Blue license plates. Blue plates with few numbers. Diplomatic plates.

  “I gotta go, Agent Djapper,” Raszer said, as calmly as he could. “Do you have a card? I’ll call you.” He glanced across the street and saw a flash of yellow refracted through the spinning door, cursed, and dropped the gearshift into first. He gunned the engine, holding the clutch just below the break point. Djapper lazily peeled a business card from his billfold and held it out to Raszer. His upper lip drew back from his teeth in what was supposed to be a grin but looked instead like a lapdog’s snarl.

  “In a hurry?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Raszer, snatching the card and nearly taking the man’s arm off as he tore out of the alley. “I am.” He wasn’t sure that Djapper had heard the last part.

  But for the constant stream of traffic, Raszer would have cut a wide arc across the one-way street and swung around to the curb. For an instant, he remained perpendicular, straddling two lanes, horns blaring, weighing the risk of plunging into the face of the stampede. Layla had now exited the building and stood on the top step, scanning the busy street, her yellow scarf waving like a racing flag on the stiff breeze. Raszer made his move, carving a reckless diagonal across four southbound lanes and maneuvering himself into the right turn lane as quickly as he could. The limo, if it was bound for Layla, already had a good half block on him.

  Chrissake, Raszer, he told himself. It’s probably an airport limo. The plates might’ve been livery plates, the driver some out-of-work actor hoping to pick up a mogul and schmooze him all the way to the Palisades. They wouldn’t risk snatching Layla in broad daylight, here in the midst of the law enforcement sector, in snarled traffic, with motorcycle cops and helicopters deployable on a moment’s notice. And yet Raszer had a physical certainty, trickling like a cold stream of mercury down the back of his throat, that this was precisely what they intended to do.

  Los Angeles was not New York, not a fortress island whose bridges and tunnels could be blockaded, whose teeming sidewalks would furnish a thousand witnesses. In spite of the all-seeking sun, or maybe because of it, it was a city of shadows, and a long black car could slip into any one of them.

  He raced around the long block, onto Main, then First, then Broadway, hugging the curb, never leaving second gear, laying on the Avanti’s reedy, bipitched horn. But even so, the circuit could not be made in less than three minutes, and by the time he made the right turn back onto Temple, there was no more yellow dress at the top of the stairs. He pulled over to the curb, threw on his emergency flashers, and leapt out of the car, sprinting to the top of the steps to survey the congested street.

  Amid the Infinitis and Lexuses and the odd, cratered Nissan belching burned oil, Raszer spotted no less than four limos. Two of them were Town Cars, but neither bore the distinctive blue plates. Traffic was piling up behind the flashing Avanti, causing cacophonous havoc in the two right lanes. Turning on his heel, he pushed through the revolving doors without much hope, calling her name into the reverberant lobby with its marble steps and drab oil paintings of past mayors and DA’s. Nothing. Raszer exited the building and shot a glance across the street. Agent Djapper had left. That got him thinking, until something way off in the distance caught his eye.

  Raszer took the long steps two at a time and scrambled into his car, all the while trying to keep what he’d seen in focus. Nearly a block and a half down Temple, highlighted only because a ray of the setting sun had nicked the corner of a skyscaper’s glass facade and been diffracted down to the busy street: the tail of a yellow silk scarf, caught in the rolled-up window of a black Town Car and flapping at thirty miles per hour. Goddamnit! Raszer hammered the steering wheel as he squealed away from the curb, boxed in on all sides. He cursed because it was all so obvious now. Of course these people could not allow Layla Faj-Ta’wil to provide testimony, and probably the only reason they hadn’t killed her was that they wanted her back in their employ, if indeed she had ever left it.

  A couple of blocks ahead, Temple Street crossed Alameda and narrowed as it entered a residential section of Little Tokyo. A left turn would take them north into Chinatown, a right would steer them into South Central, but Raszer guessed that the driver would avoid broad thoroughfares and instead jog south onto First Street and head across the river into East L.A., where things got confusing and there were a thousand places to duck out of sight. At least, that’s what he would do. Racing to catch up, Raszer weaved roughly in and out of traffic, hearing the engine whine in protest as the tachometer hit 6,000 rpm.

  He got close enough to see the Lincoln make the first right turn, but after that, it was all intuition, because the car had disappeared from sight. At the junction of Alameda and First, Raszer waited at the light, gunning the engine and switching his left turn signal on and off. Indecision was excruciatingly unpleasant for him. His mind skittered over the possibilities.

  A double-back into the city and a quick trip to LAX?

  No, they wouldn’t risk passport control just yet.

  A detour to the westside diplomatic sector?

  No, the license plates had to be a ruse. These men were not agents of any state, though states might well have reason to fear or protect them.

  A stop at some faceless safehouse in the barrio, where they could conduct their own interrogation of the prisoner?

  The third possibility seemed the least unlikely, and so Raszer made the left and crossed over into East L.A., where the buildings were smaller and humbler and English was a decidedly second language. The Los Angeles River, printed as an undulating blue band on city maps, had long been nothing but a concrete-walled drainage channel, coursing with run
off only during the rainy season. A good four feet of water was left from the most recent downpour; the rest had been washed to sea, along with the leavings of a city with no public trash pickup. In spite of fencing and locked gates, the river had remained—as rivers do—stubbornly in the public domain. Poor children picnicked on its steep cement banks and played perilously close to its retaining walls; their elders breached the fences to dump in things they didn’t need but couldn’t afford to have hauled away: sofas, TV sets, and the occasional corpse. The ocean claimed them all.

  Boyle Heights was the central city’s most vibrant Latino district, and home to its best Mexican food. The air was soon filled with the smell of newly griddled tortillas, and Raszer became aware that he was ferociously hungry. As he cruised north on Sotto Street, looking left and right down the residential side streets with their parched but well-tended squares of lawn, his hope of finding Layla began slowly to lose out to his appetite.

  A plaintive trumpet solo drew his ear left to Mariachi Square, the hub of the neighborhood. There, the best of the local musicians displayed their skills in a ceaseless competition for wedding and birthday gigs. A dozen versions of “Santa Lucia” vied and congealed into a sound collage of Latin brass and string. Young girls danced in frilly whites and black patent leather as old women nodded their heads in time.

  Raszer pulled up to the light and rolled down his window. On the nearest corner of the square, a man was grilling flour tortillas and spooning in carne asada.

  The aroma drifted into the car, displacing all others, and Raszer closed his eyes for just a moment. When he opened them, the light had turned green, and the thought of food temporarily fled. On the far side of the wide intersection, on a gravel lot adver-tised as Estevez Fleet Service, sat the black Town Car, distinguishable from dozens of other Lincolns, Caddies, and pimped-out stretch Hummers only by the yellow scarf whose tail hung limply from its right rear window. Raszer rolled across the six-way intersection, growing more aware with each yard that he had no weapon, no backup, and no law enforcement authority.

  It was a situation peculiar to his trade. He had to make the best of it. He also had to ask for help when he needed it.

  He flipped open his phone as he pulled alongside the lot and began to punch in Borges’s pager number. Two young mestizo men, armed with whisk brooms and minivacs, appeared at the Lincoln’s rear doors and revealed it to be empty. Raszer turned into the lot, drove up to within six feet of the Lincoln’s bumper, and turned off the ignition.

  “Buenas noches,” he called out to the cleaning men, for the dusk had come down. “Hello.” He walked toward them at a measured pace with both palms open.

  One of them, dark-skinned and wiry, ducked out of the backseat at the sound of Raszer’s voice and froze. From the look in his eyes, he might have been just one night over the border. He shot a nervous glance at the office kiosk in the center of the lot, from which there protruded the massive paunch of an older man, wearing a gray suit and a bolo.

  “Con permiso,” Raszer said, directing his words to the less antsy of the two. “Una pregunta.” He indicated the Lincoln. “La limusina. Donde esta—”

  “They’re not going to understand you, amigo,” called the fat man with the bolo, who had the look of an owner, or at least the owner’s man. “They barely understand me. They’re Indians. Good workers, though.” The man extended his meaty hand, the engraved silver-and-turquoise buckle on his size 44 belt preceding him like a hood ornament. “Diego Estevez,” he said. “I run this lot. And a few others.”

  “Stephen Raszer.” He displayed his license. “I’m a private investigator.” Raszer noticed that Estevez had a glass eye that skewed right, but the other one was squarely on the ID.

  Estevez grunted. “I guess it’s real. I wouldn’t really know. You have an interest in this automobile?”

  “In the men who just got out of it,” Raszer replied. “Regular customers?”

  “No,” said Estevez. “First-timers, in fact.”

  “Is that so?” said Raszer. “How long did they have it?”

  On the boss’s nod, the mestizos had gone back to work.

  “Two days,” Estevez answered. “Guess they wanted to impress somebody. That’s most of my business. Company functions. Conventions. Out-of-town big shots. Or sometimes,” he chuckled wetly, “somebody just wants to get laid.”

  “Two days, you say?” Raszer aimed a finger at the blue license plates. “What’s with the diplo plates?” he asked. “Do you have contracts with the consulates?”

  “Take a look around,” said Estevez. He pointed out a white stretch with the same plates, and three more Town Cars similarly outfitted. “And take a closer look. They’re just livery plates made to look like diplomatics. They cost me thirty bucks extra per car, but I mark up the rental a hundred. Some customers want them. Adds to the prestige, you know. They figure they can double-park without getting a ticket.”

  Raszer smiled and hiked up an eyebrow. “Are they legal?”

  “Sure, they’re legal. Everything’s legal in Los Angeles.” He pronounced Angeles with a hard g. “Until it isn’t.”

  Raszer scanned the lot and turned back to Estevez. “Your customers got out of here in a hurry. Five minutes ago, I was on their tail.”

  “They were all paid up. All I ask is the cars come back with a full tank and no new dents. What they do with them or in them is their business.”

  “Even kidnapping, Mr. Estevez?”

  Estevez lowered his head, and the glass eye rolled toward the sky. “Look, Mister Raszer. I get lots of turnover. I don’t run background checks. They’re bad for business.”

  “But I’ll bet you do take a driver’s license and credit info.”

  “Not to give out to any Columbo who comes cruising by.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Raszer. He took a $100 bill out of his wallet. “You don’t want LAPD Homicide and the FBI poking around here. I’ll pay for a day’s rental if you—”

  “Homicide?”

  “That’s right,” said Raszer. “You might want to have your employees check for blood on the seats. And that yellow scarf—”

  The fat man waved off his money and began to walk away.

  “I don’t need your business, Mr. Raszer. And I can handle the police.”

  “How many lots like this do you have, Mr. Estevez?” Raszer called out.

  Estevez turned halfway, giving Raszer his good eye. “Five,“ he said. “Two in the city, two in the Inland Empire, and one in Palm Desert. Why?”

  “And how many undocumented workers do you employ?”

  Estevez lumbered a few steps back in Raszer’s direction. “You come to Boyle Heights making threats, Mr. Raszer, and you might not make it back to Beverly Hills.”

  “I don’t live in Beverly Hills, Mr Estevez. And I don’t make threats, only promises. I’m looking for a missing girl who could be your own daughter. Think about that.”

  Estevez nodded toward the yellow tassels dangling from the rear window. “The lady with the scarf?”

  “Not her,” said Raszer. “But she is a material witness in a murder investigation.”

  The big man reached over and snatched Raszer’s $100.

  “I’ll let you take a look at the rental contract,” he said. “And then I want you to leave. You’re upsetting my employees.”

  Estevez led Raszer to the kiosk and stepped up into it with effort. There was no room inside for a second person. He flipped through a sheaf of carbons on a clipboard and handed it to Raszer, who scanned it quickly, then looked up.

  “Where’s the top copy?” he asked. “I can barely make this out.”

  “The customer gets that. Once I’m paid, I don’t care much about the details.”

  The limo had been rented to a “Mr. A. Bacus,” whose company was listed as Southeastern Supply Corp. in Sofia, Bulgaria. There was no street address, no phone, and under “Driver’s License,” it said simply, “Honduras.”

  The contract wa
s marked “paid,” and Estevez had added “cash” in a scrawl.

  Raszer looked up. “Jesus. You let a $60,000 car go on this?”

  “They left a deposit,” Estevez said, smiling.

  “How did they leave here?”

  “In another Lincoln,” said Estevez. “Just like the one they came in.”

  Raszer squinted. “One of yours?”

  “No. They were picked up. All four of them. And the woman, too.”

  “The woman,” said Raszer. “How did she look?”

  “Good,” said the fat man, and licked his lips.

  “You know what I mean, Mr. Estevez. Did she look frightened?”

  “She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look kidnapped, either.”

  “Right,” said Raszer, and handed back the clipboard. “First-timers, you said?” Estevez nodded. “And none of your lots ever rented a limo to Southeastern Supply Corp. before this?” Estevez shook his head. “Well, then,” said Raszer. “I’ll be on my way. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take the lady’s yellow scarf with me. Hasta luego.”