“It will be obvious, Ballard. We’re the only car in the lot. Just get in here.”
He disconnected. Ballard looked at the glowing red light in the traffic signal. She acknowledged to herself that Bosch had spooked her. She checked the gas station on the corner and the supermarket parking lot beyond it and didn’t see Bosch’s old Cherokee. There was no way he could have gotten here from his house so quickly.
The light changed to green and she crossed into the parking lot. The arm was up on the ticket dispenser because it was after hours. She drove toward the car parked in the middle of the lot at an angle that put her headlights through the driver’s-side window. As she got close, she recognized Davenport behind the wheel. She then made a looping turn and saw his passenger was in the front seat. She pulled her car up alongside so they could speak window to window and dropped the transmission into park. Before she killed the engine she took out her mini-recorder, turned it on, and started recording. She slid it into the side air-conditioning vent, where it would not be seen by the informant but would catch every word. She then held the rover up and called in her location to the com center so there would be a record of her last location should anything go wrong.
She lowered her window and killed the engine.
The woman sitting three feet away in Davenport’s undercover ride was Latina and maybe forty years old. She had heavy eye makeup, long brown hair, and a high collar on her blouse that Ballard thought probably hid tattoos or the scars left by their removal.
Davenport leaned forward so he could see around his passenger to Ballard.
“What’s with the cloak-and-dagger, Ballard? And you called this in? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Robinson-Reynolds told me to.”
“You shouldn’t even have told him about this.”
“I had to. You pull me forty minutes out of the division and I had to tell someone. He told me to tell coms when I — ”
“Yeah, well, he’s a fuckhead. You’ve got twenty minutes, Ballard. Ask your questions.”
Ballard looked at the woman. She seemed put out by the shouting coming from Davenport beside her.
“Okay, what’s your name?” Ballard asked.
“No names!” Davenport yelled. “Jesus Christ, Ballard, I told you. No. Names.”
“Okay, okay, what do you want me to call you?” Ballard asked. “I want this to be a conversation and I’d like to have a name for the person I’m talking to.”
“How about Jane Doe?” Davenport yelled.
He pronounced the J like an H.
“Okay, never mind,” Ballard said. “Let’s start with what your association was with Las Palmas Thirteen.”
“My fiancé — at least the man I thought was my fiancé — was a leader at the time I was with him,” the woman said. “A shot caller.”
“And you were an informant at that time?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Why?”
The woman spoke without hesitation or trace of an accent. She spoke matter-of-factly about the potentially deadly double life she had led.
“He started fucking around on me. Stepping out with other girls. Gang whores. And nobody does that to me.”
“So you didn’t leave him. You became an informant.”
“That’s right. And I was paid too. My information was good.”
She glanced back at Davenport as if to get confirmation. Davenport said nothing. Ballard had to guess that the fiancé she was talking about was Humberto Viera, who Davenport said went away to Pelican Bay and was never coming back. Ballard was talking to the living embodiment of the scorned-woman warning. Hell hath no fury.
“Fifteen minutes,” Davenport helpfully called out.
“You told your LAPD handler about fourteen years ago that Javier Raffa bought his way out of Las Palmas,” Ballard said. “He paid twenty-five thousand dollars to Humberto Viera. Do you remember that?”
“I do,” the woman said.
“How did you come up with that piece of intel at the time?”
“I saw the money. I saw him deliver it.”
Her seeing the transaction seemed to further confirm that Viera was her fiancé and that his sentence to Pelican Bay was in part due to her vengeance.
“How did that deal come about?” Ballard asked. “Did Raffa just make the offer?”
“It was negotiated,” the informant said. “Raffa wanted out and knew there was only one way — in a box. But my man was greedy. He always thought about himself before the gang. And before me. He told Raffa he could pay his way out. He set the price and helped Raffa get it.”
“Chopping cars?”
“No, Raffa was already doing that. That was his job. He was even called El Chopo by them. Like a joke.”
“So then, where did he get the money?”
“He had to get a loan.”
“Where do you get a loan to get out of a gang?”
“There was a man. People knew him. A banquero callejero. He went to him.”
“A street banker.”
“Yes, he got the money from him. The banquero knew people to get it from. People who wanted to make a loan.”
“Do you remember his name or who he was?”
“I heard he was a cop.”
Davenport flung his door open and came around the front end of the car to Ballard’s window.
“What are you doing?” Ballard said.
His arm came at her and she ducked back. He reached in and pulled her key out of her car’s ignition.
“That’s it,” he said. “No more.”
“What are you talking about, Davenport?” she said. “This is an investigation.”
“And I didn’t sign up to drag no cop into this. Not on my fucking watch.”
“Give me my key.”
Davenport was already moving around his car again, back to his open door.
“I’ll bring it back after I get her where you can’t fucking find her.”
“Davenport, give me the key. I will fucking one-twenty-eight you on this if you — ”
“Fuck you, Ballard. I’ll one-twenty-eight you right back. We’ll see who they believe. You are one beef from the fucking door.”
He jumped back in the car and slammed the door. Ballard focused on the woman.
“Who was the cop?” Ballard asked.
“Don’t you fucking answer,” Davenport yelled.
He looked down at his left, and the passenger window started going up.
“Who was it?” Ballard asked again.
Davenport started the car. The informant just stared at Ballard as her window closed. The car took off, racing across the parking lot to the exit.
“Goddammit!” Ballard yelled. “Shit!”
Then her phone started to buzz and she saw Bosch’s name on the screen.
“Harry!”
“What just happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Where are you? Can you see them?”
“You mean the other car? Yeah, he just blew the light and started up the PCH toward Malibu.”
“Can you follow him? He grabbed my key and I’m stuck. He’s taking her home and I need to know who she is and where she lives.”
“I’m on it.”
Ballard heard the phone clunk into the center console as Bosch fired up his car and took off. Ballard jumped out of her car and scanned the businesses and parking lots along Pacific Coast Highway. She saw the squared-off Jeep Cherokee coming out of the supermarket lot onto the PCH and heading through the light at Sunset and toward Malibu.
“Get ’im, Harry,” she said out loud.
24
Davenport didn’t come back for nearly forty minutes. Ballard was leaning against the side of her car with her arms crossed as she watched his car come across the lot to her. He held his arm out the car window, the key to Ballard’s car dangling from his hand. He wasn’t staying. He kept his eyes cast forward through the windshield as he spoke.
“Had to do it, Ballard.”
Ballard grabbed the key out of his hand.
“Why?”
“Because we’re sinking, Ballard. All we need is to drag another cop into another scandal. Don’t you get that?”
“No, Davenport, I don’t get it. Who’s the cop you’re protecting?”
Now he turned his face to her.