The consequences of that conflict were to be found in the endless busy cities of the coast, and as she came within sight of them, the truth of the valley’s—and her child’s—proximity to all the dangers of this troubled age couldn’t be denied.
She could only hope that Travis would be safe there until she might be able to understand the nature and intent of the conspiracy behind the country’s escalating suicides and obtain enough evidence to break the story to the public. Even in the darkest darkness, hope was a lifeline, though sometimes as thin as a thread.
10
* * *
FROM CAPISTRANO BEACH, Jane followed the Coast Highway north to Newport Beach, and then headed inland to the city of Santa Ana.
Although the Ford Escape was less likely to catch the eye of a passing cop now that the Canadian plates had been stripped off, the vehicle would draw even less attention if it wore California tags.
Stealing plates wasn’t an option. If the victim filed a police report, the number would be on a nationwide hot sheet in an hour.
The National Crime Information Center database maintained continuously updated lists of wanted persons with outstanding arrest warrants in all fifty states; missing persons; and stolen property that included cars, trucks, boats, aircraft, securities, guns, and license plates. Local, state, and national law-enforcement officers had access to the NCIC and used it regularly.
She intended to buy rather than steal plates. A seller was more likely to be found in Santa Ana than elsewhere in Orange County.
This once-prosperous city had long been in decline before recently undergoing some gentrification. In spite of the best efforts of those who would bring Santa Ana back to its glory days, there were many deteriorated neighborhoods, some of them dangerous.
Wherever decay and poverty flourished, there tended to be less money for public services. Where the police were not properly funded—and often disrespected—gangs thrived like mushrooms in any moist, dark place, and it was easier to obtain whatever you might want.
She cruised until she found a manufacturing district beaten down by foreign competition, bad economic policy, and regulators who acted with the best of intentions but never walked the streets where their destruction was manifest. Abandoned plants with stained and spalling stucco walls. Rusted metal roofs. Shattered windows.
Once filled with employees’ cars, parking lots stood empty, the blacktop swaled with depressions reminiscent of grave sites that sank when coffins and their contents moldered away.
A long building of slumpstone and corrugated steel had been divided into twelve double-wide garages, over which a roof-mounted sign offered SECURE GARAGE AND WORK SPACES FOR RENT. Five of the big doors were rolled up, and men were working on cars either inside those units or on the concrete apron in front of them.
They appeared to be young, mostly in their twenties, and Jane assumed that some of them were operating small car-repair shops without business licenses. Others might have been working on their own vehicles: all-stops-pulled street rods, low-riders with engines on steroids, and ordinary flash wheels.
She parked out of the way and chose a young Hispanic man who was kneeling on Velcroed joint protectors, using gel wax and a power buffer on a pearl-gray ’60 Cadillac convertible that had been fully restored and lightly customized. As she approached him, he switched off the buffer and got to his feet.
The guys at other units had turned from their work to watch her. Maybe because she looked good. Mostly because she didn’t look as though she belonged there, and people who looked as though they came from outside the neighborhood could be trouble.
The man with the Caddy had close-cropped hair and a Zapata mustache. He wore engineer boots, jeans, a tank tee, and an expression as impassive as a slab of concrete.
His muscular arms were sleeved with vivid tattoos, but the images weren’t prison work in either subject or style. On his right arm, a flight of angels swarmed up from the back of his hand to his biceps, where they gathered around a radiant depiction of the Holy Mother with child. An exquisitely depicted tiger climbed his left arm, its head turned at the top to look back; its fangs were not bared in a snarl, but its golden eyes conveyed a pointed warning.
“Sweet car,” she said, indicating the Caddy.
He said nothing.
“Those are Dayton wire wheels, huh? And radial tires made to look like bias ply, right for the period.”
His brown eyes with faint yellow striations had been flint on the verge of striking a spark. The threat of fire went out of them.
He said, “Coker Excelsior sport radials.”
“Your car?”
“I don’t steal.”
“That wasn’t my implication.”
“Stupid to think you could score anything in this place.”
“I don’t do drugs. And I don’t think everyone with Mexico in his family deals them.”
After a silence while he considered the flint in her eyes, he said of the car, “Yeah, she’s mine.”
“Beautiful job.”
When he didn’t reply, she looked around at the other guys, who were pretending to get back to work, then at the Caddy owner again. “I’m jammed in a corner. I can pay my way out. But I need help.”
He held her stare. “What do I smell?”
“You smell cop.”
“You’re a psychic lady, huh?”
She sensed that a pure lie would shut him down, that she needed to blend some truth in it. “I’m FBI on suspension.”
“Why’d they suspend you?”
“To pull my teeth while they set me up for a rap I didn’t do.”
“Maybe I’m the one bein’ set up.”
“Why you in all the world? No need to trick dudes to keep the prisons full when a million assholes are volunteering for a cell.”
After another silence during which they maintained eye contact, he said, “So I got to grope you.”
“I understand.”
He led her into the garage, to the shadowed back of the place.
He started at her ankles and worked his way up both legs, patting her down, searching for a wire. Inner thighs, buttocks, belt line, up the back, around the breasts, his strong hands exploring without apology, his face impassive and his manner businesslike.
When he found the pistol, he pulled aside her sport coat to examine rig and weapon, but he didn’t draw the .45 from the holster.
Taking a step back from her, he said, “So what is it?”
“I’ll give you five hundred for the license plates from the Caddy, and you don’t report them stolen for a week.”
He thought about it. “A thousand.”
Earlier, she had folded five hundred-dollar bills into each front pocket of her jeans. “Six hundred.”
“A thousand.”
“Seven hundred.”
“A thousand.”
“You’re cutting my throat here.”
“I didn’t come to you. You came to me.”
“Because you didn’t look like a pirate. Eight hundred.”
He considered and then said, “Count it out.”
She put eight bills in his open palm.
“I’ll bring my lady into the first bay. You pull your Ford into the second. We’ll do the swap in here.”
“Those guys out there are interested and hawk-eyed,” she said. “When I leave, they’ll see your plates on my wheels.”
“I’m not worried about them. They’re solid. But we don’t know who’s passin’ in the street.”
After the vehicles were in the garage, the big segmented door powered down, closing out fresh air, so the oil-grease-rubber odor intensified.
Jane felt isolated, wary but not alarmed.
When the owner of the Caddy switched the plates and the door groaned and rattled upward, he came to her. “I’ll keep her in here, drive my regular bucket instead. You want one week, I’ll give you two before I tell the cops the plates were ripped off.”
“Suddenly you’re generous, but I wonder…”
“I don’t lie about things this serious.”
“That wasn’t my implication. What I meant is, I know you can count to seven, but I’m not sure about fourteen.”
A surprised laugh escaped him. “Bonita chica, if I knew where they make them like you, I’d move there tomorrow.”
11
* * *