Loose Ends (13 page)

“Okay.” I shoved off the tree with my shoulder and sauntered across the shady asphalt, the two ogres behind me doing their best to look inconspicuous. We approached the target’s house and turned in.

Meat went around the back while Manson backed me up at the front door. I motioned him off to the side, out of sight, and then pulled out my P.I. badge and knocked. A moment later I saw movement behind the inset upper window. I spoke loudly. “Mister Lattimer? I’m Detective Jones from the San Rafael Police Department. Can I speak with you?” I waved my P.I. badge, and then closed the wallet with a decisive snap.

“What do you want?” he asked as he opened the door. A small man with short, mouse-brown hair, neatly dressed in slacks and button-down shirt, he didn’t seem to be any threat. I almost felt bad about what we were about to do until I remembered Bill lying dead, and Talia…

“It’s about your boss, Bill Clawson. May I come in?”

“Sure.” He stepped back to allow me to walk past.

Manson pushed in behind me and grabbed the little guy by the shoulders, hustling him over to throw him down on a nearby sofa while I shut the door. Lattimer gibbered on his back, hands up in front of him. I quickly let Meat in the back door and then returned.

“Listen to me, Lattimer.” I leaned over the terrified man while the M&Ms loomed behind me looking scary. “Bill Clawson is dead and you helped get him killed. Homicide will be here soon enough and you’ll be arrested for accessory to murder. You can talk to me or you can talk to them.”

“I…I…what?” His eyes fixed on the muscle behind me.

I slapped Lattimer across the face. “Look at me. What’s your first name?”

“
Ow
. It’s Phil.”

“So Phil, here’s the deal. Tell me everything or I turn these guys loose on you. After that, if you’re lucky the cops will take you to the hospital before they throw you in jail.”

“You said you were a cop!”

I slapped him again, drawing a whimper. “Focus, Phil. I lied. If I was a cop would I be threatening you with severe pain? Tell me about the heist?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“My mom is in a home. This guy who called me told me he would make her suffer if I didn’t do what they said.”

“That’s it?”

Lattimer looked away. I could see what Sal meant. Shifty.

“I guess a few slaps won’t be enough.”

I jerked my head at Meat, who reached down and grabbed the man’s left hand. Manson exhibited the teamwork the brothers were famous for by covering Lattimer’s mouth with one large paw. He tried to protest, but all that came out were muffled throat noises.

Meat bent Lattimer’s pinkie back until it almost folded against his hand. The man screamed and jerked beneath Manson’s gag of flesh, but the M&Ms held him effortlessly.

“That’s just the beginning of the hell you’ll experience if you don’t tell me everything. Your mom was the stick. What about the carrot?”

Manson lifted his palm enough to let Lattimer speak. “They promised me a hundred thousand dollars.”

“See? That was easy. When and where are they supposed to pay you?”

“Tomorrow. Said he’d call with the details.”

I cursed under my breath. Catching the bad guys after the fact was cop work. Nothing Lattimer had said was getting me any closer to Talia.

“Anything else you can tell us about the heist? You’re only helping yourself if we catch these guys and get the kid back.”

“The kid?”

“Yeah, didn’t you know? They kidnapped a ten-year-old girl for leverage.”

“Damn. I didn’t know. What could I do?” He actually had the decency to look distressed.

I shrugged again. “Water under the bridge. What did the guy who called you sound like?”

“Middle age. White American, probably.”

“Very helpful. Only a million of those around here. Anything else? Anything at all?”

Lattimer shook his head.

“You ever hear of someone called Houdini? A dealer, maybe?”

The little man’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, just a few whispers. Moves a lot of product, I hear.”

“Cartels? Mob?”

“I don’t know. Really, I don’t.”

I stared at him for a while but he didn’t flinch. “What about Luger?”

“Him I heard of.”

“Anything to do with this heist?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” I nodded to Meat, who prepared the next finger.

“Really, I don’t! I only know what I told you!”

I could see the naked fear in the man’s eyes so I decided to believe him.

“Okay. Let him up,” I said to Manson. “Let’s go. Cops could be here any minute.” Pointing a finger at Lattimer, I said, “The less you say about us the better. It will only complicate your life and it will piss my friends here off. When they get pissed off they like to break more than just a finger or two. Get it?”

“Yeah. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Not that I could tell,” I said.

“Cops don’t break fingers.”

“Some do.” Jay had.

A knock came at the front door, startling everyone in the room. Manson clamped down on Lattimer’s mug. I jerked my head at Meat, who looked carefully out the front window from the farthest edge, peering between the blinds and the frame. He held up a hand for silence.

The knock came again and Meat stood there, palm out, while I waited and Manson held Lattimer immobile. After a long minute, Meat dropped the hand and said, “He’s gone.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Slim white guy in expensive sunglasses. Long dark hair, light colored trench coat. Twenties.”

“Cop?”

“I doubt it. Besides, where’s his partner?”

“Around the back?”

Meat padded into the rear of the house to check. “Nobody.”

“Did you see a car?”

“Yeah. Dark green foreign job.”

I jumped to my feet and ran the several steps to the front window. I saw the back of a trench coat sauntering across the street and down a couple houses toward a green Audi. “Damn. You see that guy again, grab him.” I began moving toward the back door.

“Who is he?” Meat asked.

“No idea, but he’s involved,” I called as I walked. “Bill saw him the other evening when we were staking out the heist. I’m guessing he’s with the perps, tying up loose ends.” I turned at the kitchen door to look into Lattimer’s wide eyes. “If I were you, I’d forget about your hundred grand and lay low. Get out of town, maybe. If we hadn’t been here you might have joined Bill in the morgue.”

When Manson lifted his hand from Lattimer’s mouth he said, “I’m so screwed. Why does this shit always happen to me?”

I shrugged. “Some people got all the luck. Guys, let him go. I’ll call you later. I’m gonna try tailing this guy.” With that, I slipped out the back.

Chapter 10

I waited until I saw the back end of the Audi round the corner before I sprinted across the street and threw myself into Molly. I started her up and accelerated as fast as I could without laying rubber, all four tires pumping power into the pavement, hurling the lightweight car forward like an eager racehorse. Rounding the block, I spotted the Quattro’s distinctive tail pattern as it turned onto another residential street.

Turning one block early, I scrabbled to pull my racing harness on and snap the buckles while steering with my knees, a technique I’d learned, believe it or not, from a traveling pastor in my younger days. Once I was wedged in tight I goosed the throttle, and then slowed to take the next curve.

The Audi crossed in front me as I slowed and pulled over to the curb. I made sure to aim the dash-cam at it as it went by. Maybe Mickey could use electronic trickery to pull the number off the mud-smeared plate.

As my target rolled out of sight I picked up speed again to keep him in view. Whoever this guy was, I could hope he would lead me to something, anything, even if not Talia herself.

Or maybe I’d follow him right to her. Stranger things had happened. As every poker player knows, sometimes you have to get lucky, and winning was about putting yourself in a position to get lucky.

That’s what I was doing.

I followed the Audi out of the neighborhood and onto Andersen Drive, running southwestward through light industrial buildings and behind shopping centers. I thought for a moment he would head south toward the Golden Gate and the City, but instead he cut over to cross the long bridge to Richmond, a dense semi-suburban city jammed between the water on the north, west and south sides and the hills overlooking the San Pablo Reservoir to the east.

By trailing him at the limits of my vision I hoped not to spook him. He accelerated to over seventy on the bridge, but that wasn’t unusual. In fact, doing so was a routine precaution against surveillance, upping the stakes and forcing any watchers to work harder.

A one-car tail was hard to maintain. Law enforcement pros used at least three ground vehicles, one trying to stay in front and two rotating from the rear in order to minimize the footprint. A helicopter with a long-range stabilized camera, such as those used by TV news, was even better. Best of all was to plant a tracking device on the car itself, especially one of the new GPS-enabled ones, and stay out of sight entirely. But I didn’t have a tracker. I’d have to get Mickey to make me up one, though there was still the problem of planting it.

My quarry took the second exit into town, dumping onto Cutter and then turning north onto Harbour past the MLK memorial park into the midst of a bustling, mostly nonwhite neighborhood. Not a dangerous one by any means, just hardworking lower-middle-class folks relaxing after work.

Kids played on the sidewalks under the watchful eyes of mothers, squads of teenage boys sauntered here and there, tossing basketballs to each other and launching lustful looks at groups of girls in too-tight clothing, who sent the sizzle right back. I could almost smell the hormones wafting here and there on the late afternoon breeze.

I had to pull in closer, dodging bicycles and jaywalkers, but it appeared the Audi’s driver had slowed his frenetic pace as well. I got the impression he was searching for something. Eventually he reached Barrett and turned west toward the railroad cargo terminal, a major reason for Richmond’s existence.

Such operations needed large swaths of commercial buildings – warehouses, transloading facilities, unpretentious offices. Good places to hide out, I thought.

Through these demesnes I followed the Audi, turning onto Richmond Parkway, the artery carrying scores of big trucks to and from their appointments with the business of shipping. The driver meandered northward past the Richmond Country Club and its associated golf course.

Eventually the neighborhoods changed, becoming more white-collar and, frankly, white. The Audi turned onto Hilltop and headed for the eponymous Hilltop Mall, a suburban megachurch dedicated to the worship of consumerism, built in the mid-seventies on a former Chevron petroleum handling facility. I wondered if all the ladies getting their makeovers at Macy’s or Emporium knew about the spills beneath their feet, or cared.

On the other hand, these were people who applied toxic chemicals directly to their faces in order to conform to society’s standards of beauty.

Then again, I had to admit I used makeup too. My feeling consisted of sour grapes, I supposed, or perhaps envy aimed at those with nothing to hide more distracting than a pimple or two.

My mental diatribe on the ills of suburbia ended when the driver spotted me – or I assumed he did. Perhaps he just decided to test out the capabilities of his vehicle in the enormous oval mall parking lot. Most of the cars clustered inward toward the central complex, leaving the edges largely free of obstruction.

The Audi wove between concrete planters, orphaned vehicles and lightposts, probably hitting sixty. I cruised on the ring road trying to keep him in sight. After a minute of this, he slalomed around a speed bump and shot across the street a hundred yards in front of me, ignoring all traffic signs. Behind him I could see a mall guard with flashing yellow lights, vainly trying to keep up.

I laughed. The most that guy could do was chase him away and call the incident in. I wondered what caused the Audi driver to play that way, calling attention to himself. I sped up to follow. When I turned off the ring road I found myself back on Hilltop heading the other way. My quarry had made a circuit and reversed course.

I triggered the supercharger and punched Molly to catch up, blazing past Mercedes, BMWs and Escalades, but found I wasn’t overtaking him fast at all. Why became clear when we crossed San Pablo. I was pushing up on ninety, my foot glued to the floor and more than three hundred horses roaring behind my dashboard when I ran the red light just as the yellow faded.

He must have spotted me after all. If I hadn’t matched his acceleration he would have trapped me behind four lanes of traffic heavy with semis from the port. As it was, I hung onto him like a starving blue tick, all thought of stealth blown away like thistledown in a hurricane. The speed and risk vaulted me into the zone of concentration so welcome and familiar, the place I loved and lived whenever I could.

Now it’s on, you son of a bitch, I thought. You ever see one of those animal shows where the cheetah goes after the gazelle, following every twist and leap with utter concentration? That was me, my eyes fixed on the German sport sedan and my mind running every possible scenario at lightning speed.

I had to catch this guy. I had to beat Talia’s location out of him. That was all there was to it. Him or me is what it came down to. If I could make it happen, I’d run him down, drive him into a wall or a ditch, push him until he made a mistake. My rally skills should keep me close and my cop training should let me take his wheels out from under him.

The standard maneuver for this is called a PIT, for Pursuit Intervention Technique. In simplest terms it meant knocking the rear of a fleeing vehicle sideways, causing it to slide to an abrupt stop in a somewhat controlled manner if everything worked as planned. Then, several pursuing squad cars would surround the perp and block him in.

Of course, it could also cause the Audi to roll. That was okay by me, because I didn’t have the luxury of blocking vehicles. My best result would be him crashing, and then me with a boot on his broken wrist for five minutes of intensive interrogation before an ambulance showed up and I had to bug out.