The First Rule jp-2

by Robert Crais

  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 again. 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.<
br />
  “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?”

  “Si. 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?”

  “Si. 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.

  People who rented space drove through a security gate that required a swipe card. Behind the gate, storage units ran along the eight-foot wall like soundstages at a film studio. Some were long and low to house cars and boats, but the largest was a three-story block building at the rear of the site.

  Pike clipped on his.357 Python and his.45 Kimber, pulled off his sweatshirt, then strapped into his vest. He left his Jeep at the street, scaled the gate, and trotted along the storage units built against the wall. Two older men unloading a pickup watched him pass, but Pike ignored them. He would be over the wall before they could report him.

  When he was beyond the corrugated building next door, Pike hoisted himself up onto the low shed roof, then peered over the wall. Parts and pieces of deconstructed vehicles dotted the ground like squares on a checkerboard, crossed and crisscrossed by narrow paths-fenders, tops, hoods, and trunks; chassis, driveshafts, and towering stacks of wheels. Giant spools of wire were overgrown by dead weeds, sprouted during the most recent rain only to die.

  Pike saw no guards or workmen, so he moved along the top of the wall to inspect the building. A single door and several casement windows were cut into the back of the corrugated building, but the windows were too high to reach and the door was so caked with dust and debris it probably would not be usable. Pike chose a path through the scrap that would allow him a view of the opposite side of the building, then dropped over the wall. He drew his Python, then slipped between the stacks of scrap, and followed the path to the far side of the yard.

  From his new position, Pike saw the office, part of the gravel parking area with the chain across the drive, and the long side of the corrugated building. A row of windows ran along the upper half of the building, suggesting a series of rooms on the second floor. A single large overhead garage door was open near the rear of the building, revealing a large service bay outfitted with tools, hoists, and bins. This would be where salvaged cars and trucks were broken down into their component parts. A man sat on a lawn chair in the open door. Wires dripped from his ears to an iPod, and he was reading a newspaper. A black shotgun leaned against the wall beside him.

  Pike slipped behind a row of fenders overgrown by dead weeds as tall as scarecrows. When he had a view of the service bay again, the man in the chair was now on his feet. A second man had appeared at a door, and the two were talking. The chair man picked up his shotgun to join him, and the two of them disappeared.

  Pike moved fast to the building. He pressed his back flat to the wall outside the big door, then cleared the service bay and saw it was empty. Darko would either be in the rooms beyond the door or upstairs, but Pike didn’t necessarily want Darko. He would have taken the chair man if the chair man had stayed, then worked his way up. Someone close to Darko would do if they could tell him what he wanted to know.

  Pike stepped into the service bay when he heard the baby crying. The hiccup-y wail babies make was lost in the building, echoing through the cavernous room. Pike thought it might be coming through the far door or the walls, but the
n he realized it was coming from one of the windows overhead.

  Pike thought through his moves. Making for Darko was the play to make, but the kid was upstairs. Crying.

  Pike made his decision.

  A metal stairway at the back corner of the service bay led up to the second floor. Pike made for the stairs.

  37

  The stairwell opened to a long, narrow hall that let Pike see the length of the building. The first door in the hall was open, and the baby sounds were loud, but now Pike heard a woman’s irritated voice. Pike couldn’t understand her language, but he caught the harsh irritation, as if the woman had been tasked with a job she resented. Male voices came from the far end of the hall.

  Pike took a breath, then slowly entered the room, moving so quietly the woman did not hear.

  The woman was bouncing a baby with wispy red hair, trying to quiet him. She was facing the window, and trying to get the baby interested in something outside. A bassinet was against the wall, along with a small table spread with a sky blue blanket and a battered wooden desk. Disposable diapers and jars of baby food were stacked on the desk, along with baby wipes, cotton, and the other things babies required.

  Pike made a ss-ss-ss sound to draw the woman’s attention. When she turned, Pike touched the gun to his lips.

  “Sh.”

  The woman was so still she might have stopped breathing, and her white skin paled to a sickly blue.

  Pike whispered.

  “Whose baby is this?”

  “Milos Jakovich. Please do not kill me. I have not harmed this child. I care for him.”

  She thought he was working for Jakovich, come to kill the child.

  Pike said, “Don’t speak. Don’t move.”

  The baby frowned at Pike, its snow-white brow scrunching like a crumpled handkerchief. Its red hair was wispy and fine, and its blue eyes seemed large for its head.

  Pike moved past the woman to look out the window. The drop was about fourteen feet. The impact would be similar to a hard parachute landing, but Pike could make the drop with the baby. He could cushion their impact, then make his way back over the wall.