“They got in one of the limos. There was one waiting right there.”
Heat concentrated on trying to sound detached even though she could feel her pulse rate rising. “Whose limo was it, Morris? The one Soleil came in or Reed Wakefield’s, do you know?”
“Neither, I saw them come in cabs.”
She tried not to get ahead of herself, although the temptation was strong. She told herself to keep the slate blank, just listen, not project, ask simple questions.
“So it was just there and they flagged it?”
“No.”
“What, they helped themselves to someone else’s limo?”
“Not at all. He invited them and they got in with him.”
Heat pretended to be perusing her notes to keep the gravity out of her next question. The one she had been waiting to ask. She wanted to make it sound offhand so he didn’t go defensive on her. “Who invited them for a ride?”
Pablo drank the last swallow of the electric-blue energy drink and set the empty bottle on the interrogation room table. Because of his age, Roach wouldn’t make the boy sit through the interrogation but had strategically allowed him to have his snack in there to let the stakes sink in on Esteban Padilla’s cousin Victor. Raley set the teenager up with an officer from Juvenile to watch TV in the outer area and returned to Interrogation 1.
He could tell by how Victor looked at him when he sat down across the table that Raley and his partner had been right when they planned their strategy. Victor’s concern for the boy was their wedge. “Happy as a clam,” said Raley.
“Bueno,” said Ochoa, and then he continued in Spanish. “Victor, I don’t get it, man, why won’t you talk to me?”
Victor Padilla wasn’t as self-assured outside of his neighborhood or his home. He said the words, but they sounded like they were losing steam. “You know how it is. You don’t talk, you don’t snitch.”
“That’s noble, man. Stand by some code that protects bangers while some dude that carved up your cousin walks free. I checked you out, Homes, you’re not part of that world anyway. Or are you some kind of wannabe?”
Victor wagged his head. “Not me. That’s not my life.”
“So don’t pretend it is.”
“Code’s the code.”
“Bullshit, it’s a pose.”
The man looked away from Ochoa to Raley and then back to Ochoa. “Sure, you’re going to say that.”
The detective let that comment rest, and when the air was sufficiently cleansed of innuendo, he head-nodded to the Tumi duffel of money on the table. “Too bad Pablo can’t hang on to that while you go away.”
The guest chair scraped on the linoleum as Victor slid back an inch and sat upright. His eyes lost their cool remoteness and he said, “Why should I go away anywhere? I haven’t done anything.”
“Dude, you’re a day laborer sitting on almost a hundred Gs in greenbacks. You think you’re not going to get dirt on you?”
“I said I haven’t done anything.”
“Better tell me where this came from is all I can say.” He waited him out, watching the knot of muscle flex on Victor’s jaw. “Here it is straight up. I can ask the DA about making this problem go away if you just cooperate.” Ochoa let that sink in and then added, “Unless you’d rather tell the kid that you’re going away but, hey, at least you were loyal to the code.”
And when Victor Padilla bowed his head, even Detective Raley could tell that they had him.
Twenty minutes later Raley and Ochoa stood up when Detective Heat came into the bull pen. “We did it,” they said in an accidental chorus.
She read their excitement and said, “Congratulations, you two. Nice work. I scored a hit, too. In fact, I’m getting a warrant cut right now.”
“For who?” asked Raley.