The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3)

by Richard Levesque

  At 11:20, the phone rang, its bell making me jump in my seat. I flipped open the phone’s lid and pressed the button to answer the call with one hand while holding the receiver to my ear with the other.

  “Carmelita?” I asked.

  “Yes,” I heard my assistant say, her voice hushed and a little harder to understand than earlier, but not lost in the ether either.

  “Did something happen?”

  “Yes. Jeanie just came out and put something on the parkway between a tree and her trashcan.”

  “Did she go back inside?”

  “I think so.”

  “She didn’t see you, did she?”

  “No. She never even looked this way.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “Anything at your end?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know.”

  We hung up. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes later when I saw another set of headlights in my rearview mirror. Sinking down in my seat, I reached up to adjust the mirror so I could still monitor the car’s approach. It slowed as it got closer.

  Looking for a spot, I thought. The driver wouldn’t find one, and I expected that if this was the blackmailer, I’d see the car stop in front of Leonora’s, double-parking to let the driver take care of business and get away quickly.

  The car stopped, but not where I thought it would. It was behind my car. I watched in the mirror as it sat there idling, and then I cursed as I realized my luck had run out. Someone needed the driveway I was blocking. I scooted up in the seat and moved to start rolling down the window, intent on waving an apology before starting the car and getting out of this person’s way.

  My hand stopped halfway to the window crank, however. The other driver, possibly having seen movement inside my car, gunned the engine, and the car leapt forward, driving far faster than was recommended on the narrow winding road lined with parked cars. As quick as it was, though, it wasn’t quick enough to keep me from seeing that the other car had been a station wagon with oddly curved fenders. It was gone before I could register any of the numbers or letters on the license plate.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered.

  Torn between giving chase and waiting to see what would happen with Leonora’s blackmailer, I did nothing, just watched the wagon’s taillights disappear around a sharp corner.

  It was maybe five minutes after the car made its getaway that the phone rang again.

  “Carmelita?” I said after going through all the elaborate steps to answer the call in the dark. “What’s happening?”

  “Lobo!” came the voice through the receiver.

  “Guillermo?” I asked.

  “Si, si. You’ve got to come. Now!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  The old man’s voice sounded near to panic. “It’s Osvaldo,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Osvaldo, Osvaldo!”

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked, annoyed that the strange young man had found a way to insert himself into my life at the moment when I expected my case to break wide open.

  “He’s gone!” he said.

  “Gone?”

  “Si, si! He was asleep on the couch. I went out for a walk and when I came back, there was a car driving away, and Osvaldo was gone.”

  “Is that really a problem, Guillermo? Maybe he has friends who came and picked up.”

  “No, no, that’s not what happened!” My aged friend’s panic seemed to crank up a little higher with every word he spoke.

  “Take a few deep breaths, Guillermo. Then tell me what you think happened.”

  “No time. The lock on the workshop is cut. By burglars, I think.”

  Juvenile delinquents, I thought, recalling the newspaper story from the day before.

  “Joaquin scared them off, I think. But it looks like they got into the house, too. If they startled Osvaldo, maybe he made a noise. Maybe they hurt him. Maybe they took him with them.”

  It didn’t make sense. A band of trouble-making teenagers wouldn’t be concerned about leaving a witness, nor would a burglar.

  “Was anything at all stolen?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. I don’t think so, though. They just took Osvaldo.”

  “All right,” I said. Looking at my watch in the dark, I saw that it was 11:30 now. The blackmailer would be coming for the money any minute. I’d be all right if I could get a license plate on the blackmailer’s car, but there was a part of me that knew I’d want to tail him—or her—once the car left Leonora’s with the money. But still…Guillermo was distraught, and I couldn’t just leave him on his own. Weighing the situation, I said, “I’ll be there in…half an hour. No more than that.”

  “All right,” he said. “I think I should call the police.”

  “If you really think he was abducted, then yes. Go ahead. But Guillermo?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell Carmelita. Not yet.” I needed her to continue her stakeout at Jeanie Palmer’s for just a little longer, and if she knew something had happened to Osvaldo, there’d be no keeping her still.

  “Carmelita?” he asked, his tone suggesting confusion.

  “Yes. I don’t want her to know. Not until this job is finished.”

  There was a pause, and then Guillermo said, “I’m sorry, lobo. It’s too late. I didn’t know which phone you had, so I called her first by mistake. She said she’d be here right away.”

  Damn! I thought and impulsively turned my head to look down into the city through the space between the houses, knowing Carmelita had been among all those lights minutes ago and was now racing to get back to Chavez Ravine, all thoughts of impressing me and working toward her promotion abandoned. And as I looked, I saw what appeared to be a set of lights that moved differently from all the others in the city below—not twinkling streetlights or moving headlights on vehicles. These lights were going up into the air. I saw them for only a second and then the wall before me blocked them from my view, but I knew well enough what I’d seen. Carmelita wasn’t content to drive back to Guillermo’s; she was cutting the time down to a fraction of what it would have been by flying the pick-up truck back to Chavez Ravine.

  “I have to go, Guillermo,” I said. “When Carmelita gets there, don’t let her leave again. Do you understand?”

  “Si, lobo,” I heard him say, and then the line went dead.

  “Damn!” I said aloud this time and turned the Winslow’s key. Pulling away from the driveway I’d been blocking, I told myself that Leonora was going to get her wish. Whoever had blackmailed her wasn’t going to be spotted by Carmelita or me tonight. And, frustrated though I was by this, I knew there were far more important things on my plate now.

  Recalling how the station wagon had taken the first turn after Leonora’s a little too fast, I followed suit, possibly hitting the accelerator even harder than the other driver had. I felt the old Winslow’s tires grip the road a bit more tenuously than I was comfortable with, but I held the wheel and got through the turn without fishtailing, and then I gunned it for a few hundred yards before having to brake again. The trip down to Hollywood Boulevard was like that—bursts of speed on the short straightaways and then slowing barely enough to make the tight turns; my tires squealed with each successful maneuver, and I was grateful when I got down onto flat land that I’d made it without meeting any oncoming traffic on the narrow, winding roads.

  Racing down to Sunset and then hanging a left to point me toward Chavez Ravine, I fumbled with the portable phone beside me and was able to dial Carmelita while sitting at a red light. The phone rang and rang despite my imploring her to pick up. After the twentieth ring, I gave up. There was a good chance, I realized, that she’d already made it to Guillermo’s and was inside the house, the mobile phone ringing impotently in the Patterson’s empty cab.

  That, or the truck’s shaky flight mechanism had failed yet again, and Carmelita was a collection of parts spread out over Echo Park.

  As I drove, I repla
yed what Guillermo had told me on the phone, trying to think of a reasonable explanation for what had happened with Osvaldo. While Guillermo’s theory seemed possible, it also struck me as improbable. If a burglar—or a gang of them—had targeted Garcia Industries for some reason and Osvaldo had somehow gotten injured after getting in the way, I doubted that the perpetrator would take the risk of adding abduction to the list of crimes for the night. Most criminals would just run instead.

  But what if it hadn’t gone that way? Waiting at another red light, the uneasy feelings I’d had about Osvaldo resurfaced. Their source now had nothing to do with my need to watch out for Carmelita’s emotional well-being, absurd as that might be. Instead, I was thinking about Guillermo, and wondering if the old man had been played by his socially awkward assistant. What if the awkwardness had all been an act? Or, if not completely fabricated, then maybe played up for nefarious purposes? It seemed likely to me that during his time in the state hospital, Osvaldo could have run into some unsavory types who’d taught him some of the less pleasant ways of the world. If he’d gotten in touch with them and spilled information about the fabulous inventions hidden away in Guillermo’s workshop, then a night when Carmelita and Guillermo were both out of the house would have made a perfect opportunity for a “break in.” Only the burglars hadn’t been counting on Joaquin Murrieta, Jr. to be guarding Garcia Industries, and they’d panicked upon being confronted. Maybe Osvaldo had run with them. Or maybe Guillermo’s hunch had been right and Osvaldo was being held against his will, maybe in retaliation for the botched job. If that was the case, it was an abduction he’d set himself up for rather than one he’d just stumbled into, and he’d get no pity from me. Instead, I found myself feeling far more sympathetic toward Guillermo and Carmelita as the light turned green again.

  When I got to Chavez Ravine, I saw that Guillermo had definitely called the police. It was either a slow night for blue crew or Guillermo had spun a pretty serious story when he’d made the call. There were three police cruisers and one more unmarked car in front of Guillermo’s little house. Red lights flashed from the tops of the cruisers, acting like beacons that called all of Guillermo’s neighbors onto their front porches despite the late hour.

  What I didn’t see, however, was the Patterson. Immediately, I considered the possibility again that it had crashed, that the night was going to be doubly tragic for all concerned.

  I parked my car behind one of the cruisers and trotted up to Guillermo’s house, hopping over his stone wall to get to the sparse lawn and then the front door. As I went, I looked up more than once, scanning the sky in hopes of seeing the Patterson coming in for a landing, but there was no sign of the flying truck.

  Inside the house, I heard crying and knew right away that it wasn’t Guillermo. It was a woman’s sobs. When I passed through the living room and into the kitchen, I saw Guillermo sitting at the table. He was surrounded by three uniformed policemen, a lone policewoman, and a man in a brown suit whom I assumed was the detective who’d caught the case. At the moment, Guillermo was paying the police no mind, as he was busy trying to console a gray-haired woman who was crying on his shoulder. Osvaldo’s mother, I told myself. Guillermo had one arm around her and was speaking quietly to her in Spanish while the police officers stood mutely by.

  When one of the cops noticed me, he said, “Sir, do you live here?”

  Instantly, all the authorities in the room turned their eyes toward me, and I noticed the officer who’d addressed me dropped his hand to his side, his thumb resting on the butt of his gun.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t live here. I’m Guillermo’s friend. He called me before he called you.”

  The detective tipped his chin to indicate the living room. I paused a moment before complying with his silent request, giving Guillermo another glance and waiting until he made eye contact with me. It’s okay, his eyes said, so I turned away, noticing that the zealous police officer had only now started taking his hand away from his gun.

  “Detective Merwyn,” the brown-suited man said as soon as he joined me in the living room, flashing his badge for just a moment. In a deft move, he slipped the badge wallet back into his coat pocket and his hand came out with a tablet and pencil.

  “Jed Strait,” I said.

  “Got any ID on you?”

  I showed him my driver’s license and private investigator’s license. This last he eyed incredulously until I said, “I’ve worked closely with Detective O’Neal out of the downtown station. She can vouch for me if you need that sort of thing.”

  Merwyn gave me an annoyed look then. He clearly didn’t like my telling him how to do his job, but he didn’t say anything in direct response to what I’d just offered him.

  “How do you know the old man?” he asked.

  His characterization of Guillermo as “the old man” struck me as dismissive, and it annoyed me. There are some people in law enforcement who’ve been lied to so many times, they start treating everything they see and hear as a fabrication no matter how much evidence there might be to the contrary. Merwyn struck me as this type.

  “Guillermo is a friend of mine. His niece works for me. I’ve known him since I came to LA last fall.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Merwyn said, sounding as though he’d just chalked that whole statement up as a pack of lies. “And what do you know about this Oswald character?”

  Character, I thought. Toxically suspicious or not, Merwyn seemed to have an opinion of Osvaldo that was similar to mine. In my case, the feeling was based on observation and instinct; in Merwyn’s, it was pure prejudice. It made me like his attitude even less. It also made me realize that, whether I thought Osvaldo was a bad guy or not, my job now was to help Guillermo and Carmelita get through the nightmare they were dealing with. That meant giving Osvaldo the benefit of the doubt.

  “Osvaldo,” I offered, correcting the detective in my best Spanish accent. “He’s Guillermo’s hired help.”

  “Doing?”

  I shrugged. One thing I didn’t want was for the investigation to turn into undue scrutiny of Guillermo—and, most of all, his inventions. I found myself hoping very much that Guillermo had put another padlock on the workshop to prevent any other police officers on the premises from going in and poking around. It wouldn’t do to have a stray cop step through into another world. The paperwork alone on that would be life changing.

  “Guillermo’s a tinkerer,” I said. “He makes little things and sells them to the people in the community here. He’s getting old, though, so he needed someone to help out. That’s where Osvaldo came in.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He scratched a few notes in his tablet. “Do you know anything about this abduction the old man’s talking about?”

  “Only that it happened. Guillermo said he saw a car speeding away after an attempted burglary. He figures Osvaldo surprised the burglars and maybe he got hurt, so they took him rather than leave him behind as a witness.”

  “Mm-hmm. That’s the story the old man’s spinning. Sounds like he believes it.”

  “But you don’t?”

  He ignored the question. “This Osvaldo…he have any other enemies you know of?”

  “No.”

  “Friends? Girlfriend? Someone he might have fallen out with?”

  “No,” I said, even more determined to keep Osvaldo’s relationship with Carmelita out of the detective’s tablet.

  Then, almost as though Merwyn had just read my mind, he asked, “And this niece you mentioned? Your assistant? Think she might know anything? She and this Osvaldo maybe have a little thing going?”

  “I highly doubt it,” I lied.

  He raised an eyebrow, questioningly. “And why is that?”

  Time spent with Leonora and Jeanie over the last week must have worked things into my subconscious, as I was able to answer Merwyn without missing a beat. “Carmelita prefers other women,” I said. “Not men.”

  Merwyn rolled his eyes at this, made a quick note, and said, “Carmelita. That’s her na
me?”

  “Yes. Carmelita Garcia.”

  “You know where she is now?”

  “Not at all,” I said, which was about the most truthful thing I said during the whole interview.

  He closed his tablet and tucked it into his jacket pocket with his pencil. “Well, we’re going to have Officer Middleton tend to the old lady so we can talk to the old man a little more. And that’ll be it for tonight.” He slipped me a business card. “You call me straightaway if you think of anything else. And, uh, have this Carmelita give me a call tomorrow, too. Just so I can ask her a few questions.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I do mean call me, you understand?” he said with a warning wag of his index finger. “Not Detective O’Neal.”

  “Understood,” I said. He looked satisfied, and I told myself that maybe all the time I’d been spending around Hollywood types might have been rubbing off on me. I was getting to be a better and better liar all the time.

  He told me to wait in the living room, so I did—although I didn’t like being kept away from Guillermo. Moments after Merwyn left me, I heard Officer Middleton start speaking—most likely at Merwyn’s suggestion. It was a bit of a surprise to hear the woman start addressing Osvaldo’s mother in Spanish, possibly of the high school variety, but still a nice gesture. Soon, the crying stopped, and I heard male voices coming from the kitchen, Merwyn and Guillermo talking quietly. It was easy to imagine the tablet and pencil out again, and I caught the detective’s condescending, incredulous tone more than once in his automatic responses to Guillermo’s statements.

  When Merwyn was finished, the male officers and the detective filed out, passing me without a word or a glance. Officer Middleton had remained in the kitchen, and I heard her speaking Spanish again. I couldn’t get every word but grasped enough to understand that she was offering to walk Mrs. Marquez back home. Moments later, I heard the kitchen door open and close.