The Devil's Necktie (18 page)

33

The sky opened up, and the Mustang's windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the rain.

Jack wondered why Hector's name hadn't come up on any of the gang lists. He wasn't even sure he was an 18th Street Angel but decided to find out before moving forward with the investigation.

He also wanted to talk with Hector's mother before confronting her son. If he was his man, Jack didn't want to spook him. If his father was in Guadalajara, that's where Hector would jackrabbit to if pressed.

The physical description, the father's occupation, the connection to the knot used to hang up the last victim made Hector Junior a compelling lead. But that was all he was at this point. He knew better than anyone to never jump to conclusions.

It was getting late, and Jack didn't want to get caught sitting in the parking lot called the I-10 in rush-hour traffic, but he was on a roll. He cross-referenced the GPS map with his list, and saw that the last known address for Johnny Rodriguez was his mother's house. It was only two miles away and closer than the Lopez house.

When Jack arrived, an attractive twenty-something woman stood on the other side of the open doorway holding a chubby baby boy on her dungaree-clad hip. The baby, who couldn't have been more than six months old, held on to her white peasant blouse with bunched-up, dimpled fists.

The woman tossed back her shoulder-length brown hair, and her clear brown eyes eyed Jack suspiciously and then with fear.

“Is Johnny dead?” she asked. The first words out of her mouth.

She tightened her grip on the boy, who picked up on his mother's emotions and erupted, from serene to wailing in an instant.

Jack stood on the covered porch and wiped the rain that was dripping off his nose with the back of his hand. The brown-shingled house was welcoming, even in the rain, with green fabric-covered patio furniture and flower boxes filled with purple pansies. The woman shifted the boy onto her shoulder and rocked him.

“Why would he be dead?” Jack asked gently.

It didn't work.

“Who are you?” she asked accusingly. She glanced beyond Jack and could see the silver Mustang parked in front of the house. “You're not a cop.”

“My name's Jack Bertolino. I came to ask about one of Johnny's friends in the 18th Street Angels. Hector Lopez. Do you know him?”

“Johnny's all right?”

“As far as I know. Is he in any trouble?”

“He's nothing but trouble,” she said bitterly.

Jack would delve into Johnny's story later.

“What can you tell me about Hector?”

“Who are you?” she repeated.

The baby turned on a dime again and started cooing. One fist in his mouth, the other gripping his mother's neck.

“I'm a private investigator,” Jack said and pulled out his license, flipping it open for her to read.

There's a first time for everything, Jack thought.

“Why are you looking for Hector?”

“His father and Hector are estranged. Hector Senior hired me to make sure his son was all right. I'm just doing research for the preliminary report.”

Jack didn't particularly like lying, but sometimes it was the only way to get information. Especially when he wasn't standing behind the power of a shield.

“I thought his father was dead,” she said, puzzled.

“What makes you say that?” Jack asked, pretending to be amused by the notion.

“Just something I heard back in high school. So you're a private investigator?”

“Guilty.”

“I'm Diane.”

Jack extended his hand; Diane held the baby with one arm and gave Jack a firm handshake.

“I was a production assistant at Sony Studios. I got downsized as soon as I ballooned two dress sizes and they discovered I was pregnant.”

“Doesn't seem right,” Jack said, feeling a slight thaw in the ice flow.

“Johnny,” she said wistfully. “He could have been anything he wanted to be. My brother had it all. Looks, brains, personality—and then he met Hector.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“I don't know a thing about him except that he ruined my brother's life. He got Johnny involved in the gang.”

“Hector's a member of the Angels?”

“For sure. Nobody would even talk about Hector at John Burroughs, and he had dropped out by the time I moved over from middle school. Kids were afraid of him. I mean really terrified.”

“Why?”

Master of interrogation, he mused.

“Just teenage stuff mostly. Rumors, you know?”

“Humor me,” Jack smiled, laying on the charm.

“They said he killed someone.”

She let that hang in the air for a moment and stroked her baby's fine blond hair. “Doesn't sound like much now with everything that's going on, but they were only fifteen.”

“Any ideas?” Jack asked, prompting.

“It doesn't make any sense now, I mean, after what you've told me, but at the time his father had walked out on the family . . . or he hadn't.”

Interesting, Jack thought, hoping there was more.

“That's all I know. Johnny's breaking Mom's heart, but at this point there's nothing we can do. We talked about an intervention, but he won't listen to reason.”

“What does your brother do for a living, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Gang business, whatever that entails, and cars. My mother calls him a grease monkey. It's killing her. He could have been a lawyer, or whatever, now he works on cars,” she said like a question. “The Angels used to be a car club is what I hear.”

“Does he live here?”

Diane shook her head and shifted the boy to her other hip.

“Johnny moves around a lot. We don't even have an address for him. He calls us when he feels like it or needs his laundry done or wants a hot meal.”

“Would you be willing to give me his phone number?”

That got an instant shutdown. “No. He's still my brother.”

Jack liked this young woman. He even respected her misplaced loyalty.

“Listen, Diane. If you hear from Johnny or hear anything regarding Hector, you can call me day or night at this number. It's my cell. If Johnny needs help in any way, you can give him
my
number. I have some friends. I'll do what I can.”

“Why would you help?”

Jack looked beyond her into the living room and saw the pride Diane's mother took in the house. He observed the loving way Diane held her son, the pain she felt for her brother.

“He comes from solid people. He might be looking for a way out of a bad situation. Sometimes we make decisions early on in our lives that we'd change if given the opportunity.”

Jack handed Diane his card, another first.

“I still don't understand,” she said.

“Payback,” he informed her. “I had people in my life who lent a hand to help me. Simple as that.”

Diane remained skeptical, but Jack had given her something to think about.

“Let me give you my number in case you hear anything,” she offered.

She ripped off a piece of a junk mail envelope from the front table and scribbled a number with one hand while expertly juggling the baby on her hip with the other.

“Do you know if Hector still lives at his mother's address?” Jack asked.

“I wouldn't know. I wouldn't think so. He's a little old for that. It'd be queer. I don't even know where the house is. Other side of the tracks, if you know what I mean. I only know that he exists because he turned my brother's life to shit.”

That set the baby off again. Jack hadn't heard a set of lungs like that on a kid since his son, Chris, was born.

—

The rain didn't bother Hector. Nothing bothered him when he was behind the wheel of his blue Impala. He liked the thundering sound the heavy car produced under the floorboards as it powered through the flooded intersections, and the rooster tails his tires created that splashed oncoming cars and the occasional unlucky pedestrian.

Johnny was more moody than normal, Hector thought, and getting on his nerves. He should just make up with that cunt of a girlfriend of his and get on with it. They were building something large. No time for the weak.

The men had made a drop-off in Colton and now in Fontana, the last of the night.

Hector put on his right-turn signal and appreciated the click, click, rhythmic clicking sound it made as he pulled into the Speedway Garage on Eighteenth Street. He turned off the windshield wipers, shut the car down, and he and Johnny climbed out. “Yo, Hector, Johnny,
como está,
bros?”

The three men did sharp fist pops, and Frankie stood back and admired Hector's ride.

“You ever sell, you sell to me.”

“Right, I'll keep that in mind,
ese,
” Hector said, meaning over his dead body.

Frankie's wiry frame was tattooed from the neck down. His thin bare arms were two solid sleeves of colored ink. He was one of the best mechanics in this part of the state. He worked on the dragsters that frequented the NHRA-sanctioned Fontana Auto Club Speedway, a NASCAR track, and a drag racer's paradise.

There were two hydraulic lifts in the shop, which was designed like a man-cave garage. Spotless red enamel floors, every tool on the planet in custom-made shelving, surround sound stereo, three wide-screen televisions, a wet bar, rolled-and-tucked black leather couches, and large framed posters of drag-racing heroes of the past.

Hector loved to get loaded and watch the nitro funny cars spew flames out of their exhaust systems, like medieval dragons, hitting speeds of up to three hundred miles an hour. The smell of the spinning, smoking, burning rubber tires mixed with the nitrous oxide fumes, and then the launch of the twin rear-end parachutes—as the insane cars rocketed across the finish line at the end of the eighth-mile race—was like being in church. Not that Hector had many memories of church.

“Hey, they finally got that crazy Bin Laden fuck,” Frankie said, overly animated. He'd been dipping into his own product.

“Someone killed your father?” Johnny joked.

“Not funny.” Frankie was a vet and had done two tours of duty, one in Iraq, and then in Afghanistan, running the motor pool, and was no one to fuck with. He had come back to the States a full-blown drug addict. “Asshole wasn't waiting for any twenty-seven virgins. He was hooked into the same shit we were banging in Kabul.” He pronounced Kabul like “Kabool.”

Johnny laughed, knowing Frankie was referencing the pornography the Seals reportedly had found in the upper-floor room where Bin Laden had been killed.

Hector did a complete recon of the shop, making sure it was empty, and that the bathroom was clear, before he opened up the driver's-side door of the Impala. He turned over the engine and then inserted a special key under the dashboard.

The metal grille of the radio speaker rose up from the dash like a periscope, exposing the trap, and he pulled out a kilo brick of cocaine wrapped in green cellophane.

Frankie grabbed a brown paper bag from one of his red-enameled Craftsman toolboxes on wheels, and handed over sixteen thousand dollars in rubber-banded hundreds. No need to taste the drugs or count the money. The rules were clearly delineated. Death would follow a fuckup.

Hector added the bag to the rest of the cash in the trap, turned the key in the opposite direction, and watched with pride as it disappeared back down into the dash. Even if the cops stopped them—unless they knew the compartment was there—nobody would find the drugs or the money.

“I need quantity,” Frankie said, the businessman now. “I can triple sales. I'm controlling four colleges, and they've got the hunger and the means. I'm glad you're moving out of the crystal.”

“We've got something big in the works. Give us a few days, we'll change your life,” Johnny said.

Hector nodded to Johnny: enough said, let's fuckin' book.

And then a cell phone chirped and all three men reached down. It was Johnny's. He pulled it off his belt, checked the incoming number, walked to the far end of the shop, and answered.

He talked in hushed tones, longer than was comfortable in the present circumstance, and then clicked off. He could feel the two men burning holes in his back before he turned abruptly and caught them staring and wondering who was on the other end of the line. Fuck 'em. They couldn't read the growing panic he felt behind his mirrored sunglasses.

Johnny sauntered over to the Impala, slapped palms with Frankie, and got into the car. He stared straight ahead.

Hector gave Frankie a final nod, slid behind the wheel, and backed out of the custom shop.

The sound of the rain banging on the white hardtop almost drowned out the voices wreaking havoc in Johnny's head.

Frankie watched the blue Impala disappear into the stormy night before he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number.

34

“What else did she fucking say?” Hector demanded as he drove the Impala dangerously fast on the rain-slicked road. The wipers had given up the fight, and Johnny wasn't sure how Hector could see, let alone navigate through the pelting rain.

“That's it. That your father hired a private investigator because he was worried about you.”

“That would be one fucking great trick, wouldn't it?” Hector spoke with raw menace. “Be very careful now. What did she say about me?”

“First of all, don't tell me to fucking be careful. Second, she doesn't know shit about you, because nobody knows shit about you. There's nothing she could have said. He wanted to know where you lived. She doesn't have that answer. She doesn't even know where I fucking live.”

“What was this cop's name?”

“He wasn't a cop,” Johnny said, with a level of sarcasm he regretted. Johnny always tried to keep in mind who he was dealing with.

“What the fuck was his name?”

“He didn't give a name, he just asked a few questions and left.”

“Could it have been that guy we fucked with?”

“What guy?”

“Don't mess with me, Johnny. That place in the marina. The guy that braced Higueras.”

Johnny was still reacting to the terrifying news that someone had tracked down his mother's house. “I don't know.”

“Why is it you're always so smart, the expert in all things, and now you sound dim? Why is that,
ese
?”

Johnny didn't take the bait.

“If it was the marina guy, we'll have to kill him,” Hector went on matter-of-factly. “Mando has no say in it. When I told Mando we probably scared him off with the arrest, he said—oh . . . fuckin' Bertolino's the prick's name—Mando said he don't scare. He gets even.”

“If you had left the knife we used on the girl,” Johnny said, “he'd still be in jail.”

Hector's silence was chilling. Johnny's hand slid down to his gun, though it gave him no comfort.

Johnny wasn't about to give up any more information than was needed to keep Hector in line. This Bertolino guy knew where he grew up and his association with Hector. He was on their trail. It was only a matter of time before it all came slamming down on their heads. The man had also told his sister that he would help if help was needed.

Johnny had been doing some serious thinking. He had researched immunity and the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Nothing was off the table at this point. Hector was spinning out of control, and Johnny wasn't going down the drain with him. He hadn't lost all his common sense.

Hector pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial as he roared through a yellow light, sending thick plumes of water cascading onto opposing traffic.

—

Jack Bertolino decided to do a drive-by of the Lopez residence on his way back to the I-10. When he pulled up in front of the house, he decided that it gave the term “residence” a bad name. There was something bankrupt at the core of the California ranch. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it looked dry and neglected even in the wet storm.

It also looked deserted. He depressed the parking brake and stepped out of his Mustang into a hidden pothole full of muddy rainwater. He cursed as he ran up onto the stoop with an overhang so small, rain still slanted in on his back, drenching him. He knocked three times, hard, and was surprised when the front door swung open.

He could hear a phone ringing in the background and had to look down into the face of a slight woman with thinning home-permed hair, who he guessed was Hector Lopez's mother.

Being the king of improv, Jack came up with a snappy gambit. “Are you Mrs. Lopez?”

The woman nodded her head. Her intense brown, owlish eyes were unblinking. She didn't seem surprised by the intrusion.

“
No habla ingles,
” she said, and Jack half-believed her.

“
Hector Lopez, tu hijo,
your son, does he live here?”

“No. Hector no lives here.”

Jack made a mental note to learn how to speak Spanish. His mental notepad was so full, he couldn't read his mental writing anymore.

But he could smell a hot dinner cooking on the stove. His stomach churned, he was drenched to the bone, and he was really pissed off. Jack wanted his life back, pre-Mia.

“Do you want to get the phone, and then we'll talk?”

He mimed the telephone with a hand-to-his-ear bit, and raised his eyebrows. Marcel Marceau was rolling over in his French grave, Jack thought.

“Hector no lives here,” she repeated.

Mrs. Lopez started to slowly close the door. Jack hated to do it, but he wedged his foot into the doorjamb, like a traveling salesman, before the door was shut entirely.

“Do you know where I can find him?” he said through the five-inch opening.

“Hector no lives here.”

Jack pulled his foot out, feeling slightly embarrassed as the woman slammed it shut. He heard the bolt being thrown.

He understood the honest fear of cops felt by the immigrant population. He just wasn't sure if that's what was motivating this woman.

As long as Jack was here and already wet to the bone, he decided to do a little snooping. He walked a ways up the driveway on the side of the house and could see an unattached ramshackle garage that looked derelict. Off to the left was a large overgrown backyard that was separated from open county property by a barren fruit tree situated next to a rusted chain-link fence. Nice piece of land, he thought, if it wasn't for the high-tension electrical towers that loomed overhead.

A light in the house snapped on, and he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lopez staring out of the kitchen window with those crazy eyes. That woman needed to get some sleep, Jack thought as he waved in a friendly way and jogged back to his car before she called the police. He'd pick up a quarter-pounder and a hot cup of coffee on the road, and pay his dues on the I-10.

—

“Answer the phone, you dried-out old bitch,” Hector shouted, his voice filled with so much hatred for his mother it made Johnny want to puke.

Hector disconnected, hit Redial, and again pressed the cell phone to his ear. Then he checked the printout to make sure there was a connection, one hand on the steering wheel, not concentrating on the road. Johnny could see that the yellow light they were approaching was about to turn red. There was no way they were going to make it.

“We're gonna miss the light,” he said in measured tones.

“Answer the phone, bitch.”

Hector accelerated.

“Light's turning red, Hector. Slow down,” he said, sharper now.

“Shut the fuck up, Johnny.”

“It's a red fucking light!”

“Let them stop for me.”

Hector slammed his foot down, pedal to metal; the 315-horsepower V8 engine kicked in and rocketed toward the intersection.

Johnny tensed his body, prepared to die.

The pictures turned to slow motion. The hapless man in a Toyota Camry to Johnny's right realized he was about to T-bone Hector's car. His eyes went wide; his mouth contorted into a silent scream as he slammed on his brakes and went into a hydroplaning spin.

The sound of wrenching steel, breaking glass, and horns blasting was frightening and then receded into the background as the Impala sped safely through the intersection, leaving a three-car collision behind it.

The rain drummed onto the hardtop, keeping time with Johnny's beating heart.

“Answer the phone,
putana
!” Hector raged, red faced.

—

Hector and Johnny circled around the back of Royce Motors and blinked the Impala's lights at the entrance to the fenced-in lot. The chain-link fence was eight feet high with a green canvas liner to keep out prying eyes.

The large double gates swung open, and a pair of 180-pound brindle English mastiffs bared their teeth, drool flying as they swung their black-masked faces back and forth and glared at the new intruders with their devilish green eyes.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the large puddles throughout the vast dirt lot reflected the overhead amber security lights and gave the entire scene the look of a science fiction movie.

Roman Ortiz snapped his fingers, and the two massive guard dogs were stilled.

Hector motored in, being careful to avoid the muddy puddles. The doors swung shut behind him and were locked by a pair of Lil' Angels with AK-47s strung over their chests like bandoliers. He pulled up to a double-wide tan aluminum trailer, like one you might see at a construction site, and parked next to a row of tricked-out cars and gray primer specials.

Hector and Johnny exited the Impala and were greeted by Roman, who walked up and clapped them both on the back. He was in good spirits.

“What's up, boss?” Johnny asked Roman. “Looks like we're going to war.”

There were more Angels than normal, everyone was armed to the teeth, and the tension in the air was palpable.

“Just protecting what is ours and guaranteeing our future,” Roman said, exuding an aura of calm. And then as a subtle warning, “Arturo Delgado is here. Overseeing his investment.”

Their conversation was cut short as the door to the office swung open and Mando walked out of the trailer, his dead eyes probing, his palms raised skyward, demanding to see his team's results.

Hector just nodded his head. He knew the little man was putting on an act for Delgado. All was good.

Johnny wasn't thrilled to see Mexican Mafia Mando but nodded deferentially. He now understood the tension. It wasn't the stormy weather; it was the disruption in the energy field created by Arturo Delgado.

The half-acre lot was filled with the carcasses of rusting buses, cars, mobile homes, and trucks, all in different stages of disrepair, all cannibalized as needed for parts.

In one corner Johnny could see the police car that he had driven to kill the woman up on the hill in Sherman Oaks. A young man worked under a canvas tarp as he stripped off the last of the white 3M Controltac. The plastic wrap had been applied to make the car look like an authentic black-and-white. The Ford was almost entirely black now, and once the light bar was removed, it would never be identified and tied to the crime, a small favor.

At the far end of the lot were four extra-large orange roll-up steel doors that provided entrance to the rear of the Royce Motors building and two heavy-duty metal ramps to accommodate the buses.

Hector knew the drill; he walked back to the Impala and engaged the trap. He pulled out his bags of cash and followed Mando, Roman, and Johnny into the office.

Arturo Delgado was seated comfortably behind the wooden desk. It was the first time he had made a physical appearance at Royce Motors. There could be no mistakes now.

Hector nodded to the alpha male in a room filled with alphas before he dumped thirty-two thousand dollars onto the top of the desk, next to another neatly stacked group of banded bills, and moved away. He knew better than to speak unless he was spoken to.

The extra munitions now made sense to Johnny.

The bundles of hundreds never disappointed.

Johnny's friend David Reyes was manning the industrial vacuum sealer. He gave them a nervous glance but kept an eye on the task at hand. His face was still a mass of small red welts from when Jack Bertolino had shot out his windshield at seventy miles an hour.

Roman set up three shot glasses next to the money, like a poker dealer, and poured shots of Patr
ó
n. Arturo Delgado, Mando, and Roman clinked glasses while their soldiers looked away, not wanting to interfere with their leaders' ritual.

“To continued success,” Roman said, and then deferred to Delgado, a move not lost on Mando.

“The future is ours,” Delgado proclaimed.

The men slammed back their tequila.

The money disappeared as quickly as the liquor. It was vacuum-sealed and weighed on digital scales. A pound of hundreds, forty-eight thousand dollars. Two hundred seventy-five keys of coke equaled 4.4 million dollars.

A quarter million would go to the Angels; two hundred thousand would go into Manuel Alvarez's new account; Delgado would dip his beak, amount unspecified; and the rest would make its way, after being laundered, to the Dominican Republic and then back to Colombia.

The plastic-wrapped bags of money were loaded into military rucksacks. The 18th Street Angels each grabbed two apiece, and with Delgado and Mando leading the way, the men filed out of the office and made their way to the Royce Motors rear entrance.

The large dogs came up to Roman's waist and loped along, shadowing Roman and the new stranger step for step. They heeled dutifully, occasionally nuzzling Roman's hand, a silent warning to anyone foolish enough to challenge their master.

David Reyes leaned toward Johnny. “Raymond got fucked up good, man.”

“I heard.”

“His leg, it's bad, man. We gotta kill the fucker that done him. I think it was that dude from the car. I'm gonna personally make him pay for my face, bro. I used to be pretty. Now I'm all fucked up.”

It always amused Johnny when David started talking street. He had graduated from John Burroughs with a 3.5 grade average and did all of the Angels' accounting. College had been in both of their futures until they met up with Hector.

“Right.”

“That
pendejo'
s gonna pay. That's all I'm sayin'. ”

Roman used a key and one of the orange metal doors rolled up and open. He and Delgado were the first men up the ramp.

Mando waved Hector forward, and the two gangsters conferred in hushed tones as they walked through the cavernous structure down a long passageway created by new million-dollar buses waiting to be sold. The painted beauties were parked at angles, their custom artwork spotlit like runway models to entice rock groups, corporations, movie companies, and sports teams to pull out their checkbooks. Anyone who spent time on the road and could afford a luxury ride.