by KG MacGregor
“I know, but it was those three words that mattered and I choked.”
“Judge Kaklis?” Detective Cooper appeared in the doorway with her keys in her hand. “We just caught a break. Peter was able to crack Serafina’s phone code and turn it on remotely. We tracked it to an address in Huntingdon Park and I’ve got two squads on their way to intercept. I’m heading over there now.”
Anna bolted around the bar. “Can we come?”
“No, I need you to sit tight here with Peter. There’s still an outside chance you’ll get a call.” With a promise to keep them in the loop, she raced off, blue lights flashing from the grill of her unmarked car.
* * *
Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the clock. The family would be landing soon. They’d see this through together, comforting and leaning on one another for support. With every passing minute, Andy was either closer to coming home—or further away.
Her father stretched across the kitchen table to give her forearm a gentle squeeze. “You can’t keep your kids in a bubble, you know. Especially when they get to be sixteen.”
She released a ragged breath. “I know, Dad. It’s just hard to think about my son needing me, and me not being there. Isn’t that the very definition of failing as a parent?” She couldn’t stop agonizing over her nightmare.
“We’ve all been there, darling. There are so many bastards in this world, crawling around like vermin in the dark. Whoever’s behind this business with Andy and Serafina, they better hope they’re never left alone in a room with me.”
Anna loved his bravado but she couldn’t imagine her father raising a hand to anyone. He’d always possessed such a kind and nurturing manner, a trait she’d sought to strengthen in herself as a parent. She’d fallen short so many times, especially with Andy. If only she could take back those times she’d lost her temper. Andy wanted so badly to please. All he’d ever needed from her was a gentle word of encouragement and a hug.
“Sweetheart.”
As he nudged his handkerchief across the table, she realized she was crying. “I’m worried about him, Dad. I just want him to know how much I love him.”
“He knows. He’s always known. I’ll never forget how he clung to you and Lily when he first came here to live.”
“Mostly Lily, but then one night we clicked and it was me too. He was scared to death at first.”
“Yeah, until he wasn’t. I never saw a happier kid in my life than that first year we had his birthday party out at the pool. And I guarantee you there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t think about how lucky he is to have you two as his moms.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me over these last few months. I’ve been hard on him. Too hard. Just ask Lily and Kim. Hell, ask Andy. His grades, his attitude.” The night they’d fought at this very table had seared her heart. “To top it all off, I’m selling the one thing he cares about most. He practically accused me of doing it just to hurt him.”
“Which isn’t true,” Lily said from the doorway. Fresh from a shower, her hair dripped around her collar. She slid into the breakfast nook and took Anna’s hand beneath the table. “If anything, you did it to keep from hurting him.”
George cocked his head. “How’s that?”
Filled with shame, Anna couldn’t bring herself to repeat it.
Lily said, “Unfortunately, Andy just doesn’t show the kind of aptitude it takes to run a business like Premier Motors, no matter how much he wants to. He’d need a whole team around him to take care of things that are over his head.”
“Isn’t that how we’ve always done it? You get somebody who knows parts, somebody else who knows service, a finance guy, a sales manager. Anna’s the only one who thought she had to do it all.” He shook his head. “Not me. I liked selling cars, period. The rest was somebody else’s headache.”
“That might have been true with one dealership, George. Now it’s twenty-two. She was afraid she’d be setting him up to fail.”
Anna swallowed hard, the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. Every word was one more indictment of how she’d wronged her son. “Which takes us back to where this whole miserable conversation started. I didn’t have confidence in my own kid.”
And if that weren’t bad enough, she hadn’t told him she loved him.
* * *
Lily delivered a sandwich to Peter just as Detective Cooper returned from chasing down Serafina’s phone. “Did you find it? Come to the kitchen. We have fresh coffee. You must be dead on your feet.”
Cooper joined them at the table and laid a mugshot of a young Latino man on the table. “Do you recognize this guy?”
“Never seen him before in my life.” Lily would have remembered his round face, distinctive with its wispy goatee and the heavy pewter stud drooping from his brow. “What do you think, Anna? Look familiar?”
“Mmm…no.” She held a hand over her stomach, as if her anxiety was making her sick.
“His name’s Bobby Gutierrez. No gang affiliations. His friends call him Banco because he sometimes lends them a little cash from his job stocking shelves. Strictly small change, but he makes like he’s some badass loan shark. Honestly, I don’t even think he knows what that means.”
“What’s he doing with Serafina’s phone?”
“He claimed someone gave it to him to settle a forty-dollar debt. He didn’t want to tell us who it was at first. That’s what took so long. He’s got a court date coming up for food stamp fraud and his public defender wanted us to make that go away.”
Lily threw up her hands. “Food stamp fraud for a potential kidnapper? Sounds like a no-brainer to me.”
“We had to get it through the DA’s office and make peace with the fraud squad, since they’re giving up a collar. So he gives us a name—Angel Martinez.” She snorted softly. “Any guesses how many Angel Martinezes there are in Greater LA?”
“A couple of thousand,” Lily said.
“At least. No address, no phone. Barely a description, except late teens and a Pitbull tattoo on his forearm. The rapper, not the dog. No joy from the photo lineup either, so this Angel’s not on our gang squad’s radar. I’ve got five patrols fanning out in Huntington Park and Maywood looking for him.”
Lily let out a frustrated sigh. “Even if you find him, it sounds like a dead end.”
“How do you figure?” Anna asked.
“If Andy and Serafina were taken, it wasn’t by a petty criminal who sells food stamps.”
The detective pursed her lips as if to concede the point. “But there’s always brothers and cousins and sisters’ boyfriends they look out for. We still need to untangle it and find out how Angel got his hands on that phone.”
Lily hadn’t meant to step on the detective’s toes. She knew from her own work that even the thinnest of threads could tie a case together—or unravel it completely.
* * *
The kids were surprisingly chill considering everyone’s stress levels were off the chart. Jonah, Alice and Georgie were in the family room mouthing the lines of a Jim Carrey movie they’d seen at least a dozen times. Eleanor was hanging out with Peter, who had shown her some of his technology tricks, including how he’d managed to turn on Serafina’s phone.
Though Lily had initially dreaded the chaos, she found herself glad to have the family back together. Sitting in the formal living room, she and Anna updated the others on all the avenues the police had pursued. They were on pins and needles awaiting word from Detective Cooper, who’d called earlier to say police had identified Angel Martinez and were staked out waiting for him to return home.
“These have been the longest two days of my entire life,” Anna said. “The only thing keeping me sane is knowing wherever they are, they’re together. Serafina’s always shown good judgment. She’ll make sure Andy does whatever he needs to do to stay safe.”
Everyone seemed to know intrinsically that worst-case scenarios were not to be discussed, not even in a whisper.
�
�I wish we’d hear something,” Kim said. “It’s been hours since she called. What the fuck have they been doing all this time?”
“Ma?” Heads turned to see Georgie in the doorway, looking sheepish.
Hal pulled out his wallet. “Sorry, bud. Here’s five bucks for the swear jar.”
“It’s ten for the F-word,” he stated firmly, holding his hand out for more. “Can we get some pizza, Ma?”
Lily had lost track of the time. “Of course! You and Grandpa find out what everyone wants and order from Johnnie’s. Be sure to ask Peter too.”
Anna hung her head. “Some parents we are, forgetting to feed our kids.”
“I can let you have Jonah,” Kim said. “He’ll remind you every thirty minutes that he needs to eat. But you have a teenager…you already know how that works.”
It was jarring to suddenly wonder what Andy was eating. His list of favorite foods was short—pizza, burritos, chips and mozzarella sticks—and he’d sooner starve than eat a vegetable. What would he do in the hands of captors?
“Mom!” Eleanor screamed from the top of the stairs. “Come see.”
Anna looked annoyed. “What’s she doing up there? I thought she was with Peter.”
“Mom!”
“I’ll go,” Lily said. She trudged upstairs to find Eleanor sitting on her bed with an iPad on her lap. “What is it, honey?”
“I did it. I turned on Andy’s phone like Peter showed me.”
“Oh my God, is that Andy’s iPad?”
“No, it’s mine but he borrowed it last week when his ran out of juice. He saved his password. And look, right here’s where his phone is. Alameda Street and…East Aliso Street.”
Lily snatched the device. With her heart pounding, she enlarged the map to show an entire city block downtown that included the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, which housed the federal courthouse. She’d argued a handful of cases there and happened to know it was connected via underground garages and tunnels to every building on the block.
This entire corner of downtown LA was the exclusive domain of the federal government. For the past several years, its plaza had been a frequent site of protest aimed at its most controversial tenant—Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Better known as ICE.
Chapter Twelve
“Puedo tener esto?” a girl of about twelve asked, reaching for the tiny box of raisins from Andy’s brownbag dinner. She must have noticed that he never ate them. They reminded him of dead bugs. Her brother though, who was only four or five, apparently loved them.
“Esto tambien,” he said, handing her the packaged cookie for her toddler sister, whose face lit up with a smile. He didn’t much like cinnamon, though he would have eaten it anyway had he not felt bad for the little girl. Surely he wouldn’t have to spend another night in this shithole, though it was already pretty late in the day. By now these ICE morons had to have realized they’d practically kidnapped a US citizen. What a story he’d have.
The man who’d delivered their dinner reappeared with a plastic bag and walked through the room to collect everyone’s trash. The meal itself was trash, Andy thought as he tossed his remnants in the bag. A baloney sandwich on stale white bread without even a drop of mustard or mayonnaise. There also was a bitter celery stalk, plus the raisins and cookie, all washed down with a tepid bottle of water. Same as yesterday, and probably tomorrow too if he was still here. The first thing he planned to do when he got out was order an extra-large all-meat pizza from Johnnie’s and eat every bite himself.
He’d tried to tell the officers at the park they were making a mistake, only to be told, “Shut the fuck up, José.” They’d sprung suddenly, dressed like Ninja Turtles and shouting in English and Spanish, demanding proof of residency from everyone there. In the ensuing scramble, Serafina had been knocked down and lost her purse with her green card. All Andy had was his learner’s permit, which was deemed “proof of jack shit,” since legal residence wasn’t required to drive in California. If only they’d allowed him a call before bagging his phone. Surely his moms would be working to get him out of here by now. One group of kids had been freed yesterday, but then six more had arrived last night. That made twenty-four in a cage with benches for half that many and flimsy mats on the floor.
“Eat it now or throw it in the bag,” the man barked, shaking the bag as he circled the room.
“Cómelo ahora,” he whispered to the children. Eat it now. His Spanish vocabulary was okay—reading and speaking—but his ear for it sucked. He barely understood a word of what the others around him were saying.
He’d counted fifty-one others on the windowless bus that brought them from the festival to this place after the stabbing on Saturday night. He’d been mostly chill on the short ride, thinking they’d straighten out who he and Serafina were once they got here and allowed them a phone call. That chill turned to panic upon arrival when the officers separated them, taking the men one way, and the women and infants another. Andy was sent with the other minors, a third group that included several teens with younger siblings, some of them still in diapers. Three guys in his group were apparent friends, close to Andy in age but with swagger that made them seem older. The only other kid on his own was a little boy named Ruben who’d cried and screamed pitifully as his father was led away. He’d continued to sob that first night until one of the teens invited him to sit with her siblings. Andy felt guilty he hadn’t done that, but he always expected to be released any minute.
As anxious as he was for his own wellbeing, he was physically sickened to see Ruben so upset. The poor boy was alone in a strange place with people he didn’t know or trust, and clearly gripped with fear over what would happen to him and his father. Andy didn’t have a lot of specific memories of his time in foster care, but he’d never forgotten those fretful feelings when he was moved to a new home. Ruben probably felt the same way.
“Casillas!” a gruff voice called out from the doorway. “Andres Casillas.”
When no one else moved, Andy realized the guard was calling for him. Finally. “It’s Kaklis. I’m Andres Kaklis. I was brought here with a woman named Serafina Casillas, but she’s not my mom.”
“Grab your gear and line up here.” From this man’s graying beard, Andy guessed him to be Hal’s age, maybe older. Like the others, he wore a black polo shirt and tactical vest with a patch identifying him as ICE Police.
Relieved at last to be getting out, Andy collected his meager “gear” and hurried to the door. He couldn’t imagine needing the cheap toothbrush, plastic comb and flimsy foil blanket ever again, unless it was to toss them in a bin on his way out.
“Ruben Ibarra,” the guard called next.
The boy eyed him warily, then looked to the girl who’d taken him in. “Esta bien,” she said.
“Let’s go…rápido, chico!” Most of the guards spoke only in English, leaving some of the kids at the mercy of someone who could translate. He then called Lucía, the girl who’d asked for his raisins, and ordered her to collect her siblings too. Last was a guy named Santos, one of the three friends.
At Andy’s count, that left eighteen in the small room to fight over whatever space his group had freed. Any minute they’d probably bring in six or eight more who were unlucky enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Here we go, single file.” The guard motioned with his arm to keep the line straight.
Stepping into the hallway, Andy blew out a triumphant breath. Which of his moms would be waiting on the other side of the door? Ma might have used her pull as a judge to get him out, but heaven help the poor sucker who’d had to tangle with Mom. She never took prisoners. Laughing to himself, he imagined their faces, their look of relief. They probably had freaked right out when he didn’t show up in Los Cabos. At least he’d paid them back for that refrigerator prank.
Expecting to retrace their steps from two nights ago, Andy was taken aback when the guard led them into a stairwell… and down. The reason became clear when they exi
ted into an underground parking garage, where a white GMC van waited, its side door standing open.
“In you go, all the way to the back.”
Andy wondered if the others understood his commands. It made no difference, since the guard steered each one aboard and into an assigned seat. Andy and Ruben had the back row to themselves, Lucía and her siblings had the center, and Santos sat alone in the row behind the driver.
Several guards playfully chatted outside the van until one came out and stowed a duffle bag in the back. Andy sifted through the gear they’d been issued. Where were their personal belongings? His phone, his wallet?
“A dónde vamos?” Lucía wondered aloud. Where were they going?
Santos shrugged in response. Away from his friends, he seemed less sure of himself.
The door rolled shut as the driver boarded and another guard slid into the passenger seat. They were young, in their twenties, but starkly different. The driver was boyish, with curly red hair and a face full of freckles. The other had a shaved head and full beard. “Buckle up,” the driver said. “Cinturón.”
When they rolled out of the garage onto a dark street, Andy realized they were downtown, just a few blocks from the courthouse where his ma worked. After a couple of turns they entered a freeway, the 101 according to the sign. The exits weren’t street names he recognized. The reason for that soon became clear—they were going in the opposite direction from Beverly Hills and Brentwood, heading east toward San Bernardino.
“Where are we going?” he called out.
The driver casually replied, “Relax, man. You’re going home.”
“I don’t think so…’cause my house is in the other direction.”
The guards shared a laugh, then the driver answered back in a mocking voice, “What, you thought this was an Uber?”
Andy drew a deep breath and felt his chest tighten, a reminder that getting excited or panicked could lead to an asthma attack. He needed to stay calm. On the other hand, if he didn’t speak up soon he’d be halfway to Mexico before somebody figured out he wasn’t even supposed to be there. “Look, there’s been a mix-up or something. I’m a US citizen. My mom’s a judge, I swear. Her name’s Lilian Kaklis. She works back there at the courthouse. You can look it up.”