Lizardskin (42 page)

By the time he got something to eat and had made his way back to the freeway, the traffic was rock solid and unmoving. He sat in traffic for an hour, and it was after eight that evening by the time he got into the general territory. The streets got uglier and narrower as he made his way south, and the greenery faded. The sound of sirens was everywhere in the thickening air, and all the stores looked like armored bunkers. The people in the streets were furtive or loud, full of herky-jerky motion and sudden dashes. Now and then, a piece of fruit or a beer can would hit the windshield. The street-corner music from the boom boxes was rap—bragging and violent, coarse and brutal music, the chant of mindless threat.

Two-Twenty Ditman was in another part of the forest entirely.

Down in the flats, it gets dark early. The sun was well down in the western sky, and long shadows made a zebra-striped landscape out of the warehouses and tenement blocks. Cars had their lights on early in the failing light. A tall steel pylon held a billboard up out of the ruined neighborhood, like a buoy marking a sunken ship, high enough for the traffic on the interstate to read it. The billboard showed an arc of pink sand shading into a cobalt sea dotted with white sails and a couple, barefoot in evening clothes, walking along the shoreline.

BERMUDA … YOU DESERVE IT
.

At the base of the pylon, in the shadow of the rotting bulk of the overpass, down in the underworld, six small black children were eating pomegranates and watching a barefoot black girl in a party frock using a long stick to shove a flaming can of Sterno under the gas tank of an idling taxi. The driver, a skinny Chicano in a head scarf, was reading
Variety
and talking into a cellular phone. There was a pile of cigarette butts on the crumbling pavement under his window. The taxi was pink, an old Checker, and it had a large illuminated sign on the hood advertising
THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
.

The roar from the overpass was not strong enough to drown out the music coming from the long line of crawling cars and trucks. They were bumper to bumper in the smoky twilight, cruising the lanes and talking deals with the languid black and Hispanic boys who leaned in the passenger windows, shaking
packets of rock or weed. The streets reeked of rotting fruit and gasoline. The stores were fortified bunkers where nervous Iranians behind bulletproof plastic sold groceries or package liquor.

Above it all, the ghastly blue glow of the street lamps and the thunder and boom of the overpass.… Beau sat in the car and watched the action outside for another hour, fascinated by it.

Just another day in paradise, thought Beau, checking his grid map again by the maplight in the dash, his windows rolled up tight and the air conditioning on, his Smith on the passenger seat, his lights off, parked in an alley across the street from 220 Ditman, Earl Black Elk’s last known address.

There was, however, a small problem.

The problem was, 220 Ditman was a blocklong warehouse, shuttered in steel and separated from the street by a high Lundy fence topped with razor wire. There was a gatehouse, dark and apparently empty, behind the locked gates, and a few tractor-trailers were parked well back from the fence, close to the building, under yellow lights. The loading dock ran the length of the warehouse, but there were several different company names above the huge doors:

So 220 Ditman was a shipping center for produce and frozen beef from the Midwest. Beau had worked out of similar places in Provo and Ukiah. It was odd that the place was shut down like this. A lot of times, you had a driver coming in, redball, running on pills, off the interstate at three in the morning, you’d always find a guard on the gate to let him into the
lockyard and sign for the trailer. Otherwise, you’d have a $200,000 load of produce sitting unguarded behind a Motel Six while the exhausted driver caught up on his sleep inside.

So there’d be a guard around somewhere, in spite of the deserted look to the place. Beau checked his watch—a little after nine. Maybe the guard was off on a break. Beau started up the Town Car and drove slowly past the rundown houses, feeling eyes on him, knowing he was made as a cop, wondering where the local vice cops had their observation van parked, filming the dealers, maybe running a street crew, doing stop-and-chokes on the hypes, taking down the license plate numbers of all the valley cars full of white teens. Maybe he should find them, or at least contact this Rufus Calder guy in the LAPD Detective Division.

Sure, and get the usual treatment city cops reserve for out-of-state troopers from cowboy country. Call you Tex and get your last name wrong. Screw that. If he ran into a vice guy, he’d tin him and work it out. Otherwise, it was easier just to work it alone.

Whatever
it
was.

Now why the hell was Earl Black Elk showing this place as his address?

He couldn’t have been living here. Beau knew enough about shipping centers to know that no insurance company would let a company bunk someone in a commercial facility, because someone living in meant someone cooking in, and that meant fires, and anyway, things like that were a big security risk. They’d never let it happen.

Well, Earl had a military background. Maybe he was a guard here, using the work address as a mail drop because he was living rough in various flophouse hotels.

Beau pulled up by the locked gate. The street action was slower down here—most of the dealing and socializing was concentrated around the houses at the far end of Ditman. Down here by the warehouse, Ditman faded into a warren of storehouses and fenced-off lots and small-time commercial factories doing mill work or transmission repair or engine rebuilds.

He got out and walked up to the gate. There was a small sign wired to the fencing.

Okay. Where’s the buzzer?

Beau found it up higher, about where a man driving a tractor-trailer would see it. He reached up and pressed the buzzer hard, holding it down long enough to wake up whoever was at the other end of the wire. He heard, faintly, the sound of a bell ringing inside the warehouse.

A light came on in the second floor, over the sign for United Fruit. A flashlight beam snapped on and jerked around until it found Beau and the white Town Car.

“Whatcherwan?” An old man’s voice, thick with sleep.

Beau held up his tin. “Police. Open up.”

The light flicked from Beau across to his rented Lincoln and back again. “Ain’t no squad car there.”

Christ.

“You see the badge, friend?”

“I see it.”

“You want to argue this here, or do we come back with your boss and you can explain to him why the gatehouse is empty and you’re up there sleeping on boxes?”

There was a silence. The light flicked off.

“Gimme a minute. I gotta get dressed.”

Five minutes later, one of the loading-dock doors rolled up, sending a hard square of yellow light across the dark yard. A black silhouette of a man climbed down off the dock and walked over toward the gatehouse. As he came into the light at the gates, Beau could see he was carrying an Ithaca riot shotgun, the muzzle more or less directed at Beau’s chest. The man carrying it was white, in his late sixties, in a rumpled Intertec Security uniform, white-haired, red-faced, his face in a permanent knot.

“Get that piece off my chest, friend.”

The muzzle dropped away.

The old man reached the fence and said, “Let’s see that badge again, buddy.”

Beau held it up, but out of the man’s reach.

“That’s no LAPD badge.”

“State troopers. Let’s see your ID.”

When on shaky ground, shake up the other guy. Cop rules.

The old man dug around in his breast pocket, found a plastic-coated card, held it up for Beau to see, a look of soured virtue spreading across his red face. “It’s Drinaw. You can call me Jimmy.”

“Okay—Jimmy. Open up the gate. I’m not leaving this car out here for the homies.”

“You got that right. Fuckin’ nigras, fuckin’ greasers, oughta take the lot of them and send ’em—”

“The gates.”

Jimmy went over to the gatehouse, opened the door, and leaned in to press a button. The big gates slid back on tracks, and Beau wheeled the Lincoln inside, driving it right up to the open loading dock. Jimmy shut the gates and trotted after him.

“What’s the deal, sir?”

It was “sir” now. The guy was hiding some small hustle, or a bottle, or some minor sin in which Beau had no interest. Beau locked the car and pulled out his notebook. That always made the citizens nervous.

“Just a couple of questions, Jimmy. You’re employed by Intertec, right?”

Jimmy looked at his uniform as if it had just materialized on his body. “Yes, sir. Nine years. Before that, I was on the city force up in Oxnard.”

“Ex-cop, Jimmy?”

“Yeah. Well, auxiliary force.”

“Okay. You worked this warehouse long?”

“Two years. Nights and weekends.”

“How come it’s all closed down?”

“Recession. Most of the place is empty. Don’t get much in here now. United’s using the place to store sugar. Most of the others are pulling out. Neighborhood’s too iffy, you know?”

“Yeah. Who’s in here now? Other than United Fruit.”

“You got Pomodoro. They do olive oil, canned stuff. And Kellerman Cold Haulers. They use the refrigerated section. So does Farwest. Armour emptied out about six months ago, and Idaho’s into frozen stuff now—they keep that out in San Pedro, by the tracks there. This whole thing’ll be shut down in a year, maybe less.”

“Mind if I look around, Jimmy?”

He needed an invitation inside, just to cover the search rules. Jimmy seemed surprised by the request—not that Beau wanted to go inside, but that he’d bothered to ask.

“No, sir. Go on ahead. Not much going on anyway. I gotta go with you, though.”

“Sure. Come on.”

The loading door led into a vast darkened hall reeking of old fruit and mold. Steel pillars marched away into the surrounding darkness. On the far side of the vast hall, a few scattered boxes and crates gathered dust and cobwebs. To the right, a huge pile of boxes lay under plastic wrapping carrying the United Fruit pineapple. The floor was smooth cement marked with black streaks from the forklift trucks that now sat idle in a row fifty feet away. At the far end of the hall, a new-looking partition blocked off a section of the warehouse. There was a green light above the locked door, and the sound of a machine running came from somewhere in the darkened roof above it.

Jimmy had a little trouble getting back up onto the dock. Beau reached for his hand and lifted him up. Jimmy didn’t like the show of strength. It ruffled his dignity.

“So whaddya wanna see?”

“You worked here for how long?”

“Two years.”

“You get to know any of the day workers?”

“Nah. Coons and spics. Got no use for them. Spoiled Oxnard, those people.”

“Yeah? How could you tell?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. So they’re all black or Chicano?”

“Yeah, like everywhere.”

“You ever see an Indian?”

“A what?”

“An Indian. A Native American.”

“You
sure
you’re a cop?”

“Why?”

“You don’t talk like one. Up in Oxnard, we don’t call ’em no African-Americans or that shit. We call a spade a spade up in Oxnard. You one a them new lawyer-cops? Gotta degree and all that?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Guess you gotta talk like that, eh? Polite, like. You don’t haveta talk like that with me. I’m a cop, too.”

“Yeah, Jimmy. I guess I forgot. So, no Indians?”

“None I can remember. Now, I don’t see much of the day guys. I check in at six, see some of them off around nine or ten. Close up and patrol the grounds.”

“Like tonight?”

“Well, got a bit of the flu there. Thought I’d just get a quick lie-down. Conserve my strength. Gotta be on your toes around this neighborhood.”

They were walking now, Beau leading him down toward the big walled-off section. The partition was stainless steel, and it looked brand new. The door was made of heavy steel slats, locked with a sliding bar and a Magnum deadbolt.

“You ever see the employment lists?”

“Sure. Got a complete list in the gatehouse. You wanna see it?”

“Yeah, if you could do that.”

“What’re we after, anyway?”

No false statements here. Guy’s on the stand next year at the trial—God knows
what
trial, but anyway—and Ballard says to him, So, Mr. Drinaw, just what
did
Sergeant McAllister say to you that convinced you he really was from the Central Intelligence Agency?

“Background work, in connection with a shooting.”

“Anybody killed?”

“Yeah. Four people.” Maybe five. Beau hoped she was still alive, holding on up there in Sweetwater General. Jimmy
looked inflated, taking a vicarious hit of violence. “A gun call, eh? Sure, hold on. I’ll be right back.”

Jimmy hustled off toward the loading dock, his oversize black shoes making earnest little slapping sounds on the cement floor. Beau walked up to the stainless-steel wall and put his hand on it. He felt a deep resonating murmur, and warmth. He went up the short flight of steps and looked at the door. There was a sign on it, in three languages.

The sign carried no other marking and offered no clues about the activities behind the wall.

Odd sign, too.

No Spanish. And French where you couldn’t find a true Frenchman in a thousand yards, unless it was a headwaiter in a borrowed Porsche trying to score some coke for a favored customer back uptown.

Nothing significant there. Just … odd.

The Magnum deadbolt looked as solid as Meagher’s skull. Maybe thicker. Only way Beau was going through that was with a key. Maybe Jimmy had one.