“I’m trying to get you back there.”
Twenty minutes later I said hello to the Las Vegas Metro detectives, then I circled the lime, orange, and red Hullabaloo van while they watched. I had a hard time concentrating, but they had already done their search of the van. They had other information after talking with Hullabaloo. The driver, Juan Menderes, had texted the Hullabaloo bakery office after making the cake delivery to Bar Alagara. That was confirmed. That was Hullabaloo’s protocol. You deliver then communicate the delivery was made.
Menderes had made two more deliveries after Alagara yet in the van was a lone red, white, and blue Fourth of July cake with the address of one of the last scheduled deliveries taped to it. Las Vegas detectives and FBI agents were at the Hullabaloo bakery building and had verified that the recipients of the final two deliveries had received their cakes. One was at home and the other out watching fireworks but could be reached on her cell phone. So either the cake still there was an extra that got mistakenly made or something else was going on.
I called the woman whose name was on the tag and identified myself. She confirmed her cake had been delivered and asked what anyone would ask: Why was the FBI interested in her Fourth of July cake? I heard nervousness in her voice and leaned through the van door and looked at the address on the cake in the van again. It was her address. So there was that to figure out. I thanked her and said good-bye.
The LVPD detectives also had witnesses who could put the Hullabaloo van in the neighborhoods of the final two delivery locations, one on Bonanza and the other a mile and a half from Bar Alagara on North Torrey Pines. It was the North Torrey Pines cake that was still in the van. I could read the address on that one but didn’t climb in to avoid contaminating evidence should there be any. The van would go from here to the FBI yard, and a bomb dog would get in first. I looked at the Metro detectives, and one asked me, “What do you think?”
“I think somebody has a side business.”
“That’s what we’re guessing too.”
Menderes’s girlfriend lived on the third floor of the apartment building over a parking garage and was home when the detectives and Metro officers had knocked on her fourth floor door. She was in a Metro detective’s car on her way to a station to be interviewed, but so far she was claiming she’d had no contact with Menderes tonight.
After the van was loaded onto a tow truck, I followed the detectives to where Menderes lived. As I drove, the office texted me a photo of Menderes’s driver’s license. Looking at it, I confirmed that Menderes was the Hullabaloo driver I had seen talking on his phone at the stoplight just before the bomb exploded. Who was he talking to then? I wanted that answer tonight.
7
Menderes lived with two roommates in a drab three-bedroom house with tan paint and a concrete tile roof, same as all the houses on the block. Four Metro patrol cars and an unmarked sat nose-to-tail on the street in front of the house. I skirted those but paused at a Ford Taurus with bald tires and flecked paint dying in the driveway.
Inside, Menderes’s two roommates, Enrique Vasco and Jaime Cordova, worked hard to separate themselves from Juan. Yes, he was their roommate. No, they didn’t know him well. Cordova hadn’t met him until after he’d moved in. Vasco had once worked at the same casino as Menderes but barely knew him then. When they were looking for a roommate, his name had come up and now they lived with him, but everybody had different schedules so nobody ever talked or hung out together. I had heard it all before.
“It’s not that big of a deal we don’t know him that well,” Vasco said.
“Maybe not,” I answered. “Which of you heard he needed a room?”
Vasco looked puzzled. Hadn’t he just explained this? He tapped his chest.
“I did.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“From this chica. I don’t know how she knew.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rosamar something.”
“Rosamar what?”
“Don’t know, dude.”
“My name is Paul Grale.”
I got out my FBI cards and gave one to each of them. I expected Venuti to redirect me to the bomb scene, but I’d follow this until Menderes was found.
“None of this is going away until we find Juan.”
Vasco shrugged and said, “Juan is a quiet dude and always wearing headphones. He’s into soccer and music.”
“You know his hobbies, but you don’t know him.”
“I didn’t say I don’t know him. Just when he’s here he’s got his headphones on.”