"The nickname?"
"Apparently got it here, I suppose because of the English accent and the way he dresses and talks. This guy is scary, okay? He may be physically small, but he's got a well-hung rap sheet."
"What kinds of charges?"
"Assault and battery, pandering, armed robbery. There's a lot more in the file, but nothing they could make stick. He has some kind of deal with the Crips, but nobody knows exactly what. Maybe he pays them for protection. We know he is deep into the porn business, too, production and distribution. This dude is way wrong."
"Fields said he ticked off the mob at one point."
"They drove him out of L.A. after a brief, bloody war. Both sides lost a few soldiers. Different detectives at different times have been on his ass for everything from robbery and assault to murder one. You'd best be careful."
"I didn't plan on inviting him over any time soon, but thanks for your concern."
"And last but not least . . ." She rustled some papers. "The stagnant investigation into the disappearance of one Manuel Garcia, a/k/a Loco, age nine has just resumed. I happen to know the D2 who originally caught the case, so I asked him to move it back to the top of his slush pile. Like I said, you owe me."
"Big time. And what about the chances the missing kid has anything to do with Fancy."
"All I can see is we certainly can't rule it out." She chuckled. "And on a personal note, thank you for getting my Italian cousin out of the topless bars. He's completely smitten with your friend Suzanne."
"Peanut."
"Larry just won't shut up about her. Now, Donato has been a dog for years, so it's fun watching him get some of his own. She won't hurt the poor child, will she?"
"Not a chance. She's the best."
"That's cool. And how's our newly sober girl doing?"
I sat down at the kitchen table, sipped some coffee. "Mary? She got up before me. I think she went out for a morning run."
"Sounds like you've been a pretty positive influence."
"She had a pretty positive influence on my life. She allowed me to continue breathing."
"You're a decent guy, Callahan. I didn't grow up around decent guys. It's kind of a nice surprise to meet one."
"It sounds like there is a story there."
"Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime."
"Okay, I'd like that."
After a beat, Darlene said: "I never asked you. Is she attractive?"
I blinked and then smiled. I'll be damned, she likes me. "Not really, and she's like a client, Darlene. I wouldn't notice anyway."
She laughed. "Bullshit, counselor. You might not do anything about it, but you'd still notice."
"Point taken. Darlene?"
A little hitch in her voice? "Yes?"
"I think I owe you dinner, or something."
"You don't owe me anything," she said, briskly.
Oops, that sounded terrible. "What I meant to say is that I would like to take you out to dinner. Or lunch. Or something."
"Or something sounds nice," she said. "I have some vacation time coming."
I was stunned. "So, let's do it. Where were you thinking of going?"
Darlene Hernandez laughed. "Don't sound so enthusiastic, Callahan. I was just kidding. Dinner would be fine."
"Oh."
"For a therapist, you sure don't know much about women, do you?"
"No, I suppose I don't, not outside of therapy rooms."
"Maybe you should try practicing what you preach."
"Let's not get carried away."
She chuckled. "This may surprise you, but we occasionally have discovered an alcoholic or two in the police department."
"You don't say?"
"Once they sober up they seem to all be clueless about dating and sex," she said, teasingly. "Why do you suppose that is?"
"Somehow, I have lost control of this conversation. I think I had best hang up, now."
"Why, Mick Callahan, you're a total coward!"
"I resemble that remark. Thanks a bunch."
"Bye."
I put the phone down gently, smiling to myself. I whistled as I washed the coffee cup and fished the car keys from the pocket of my jeans. The telephone rang again.
"Total coward speaking."
"Mick, they're going to kill me."
I sat up so quickly, my chair slapped the floor. My mind went into high gear, gathering bits of information. I think I hear a freeway. She is on a cell phone, keeps cutting in and out.
"Black," she said.
"What?"
"Tent" came through the static, and then what sounded like the word "city." The reception was terrible. Mary was somewhere else, not nearby. She was frightened and in pain. It sounded like she was trying to whisper, moan, and sob all at the same time. "Please come get me," Mary said. "Please."
And then the phone went dead.
THIRTEEN
"Why didn't you call me before?" Jerry stood in the living room, twisting a dark Yankee baseball cap in his small, sunburned hands. The ugly, triangular burn scar that covered the side of his face was pulsing, dark with angry blood. He paced in concentric circles, and the wooden floor squeaked in syncopated rhythm. "You knew I'd been looking for her for months, man. You knew that."
"Mary asked me not to call you. She said she wanted to have it together before she saw you again. She was protecting you. I'm sorry."
"Maybe she doesn't care about seeing me again," Jerry said.
"I doubt that."
"Look, we have to find her, Mick." His voice broke.
"I know."
Jerry looked away. He went into the den. "I love your little house, but why do you still have such a piece-of-shit computer setup?" He ran his experienced hands over the entire system, his thick black eyebrows twitching wildly. He wore dirty blue jeans and a red cowboy shirt. He adjusted the baseball cap and turned it backwards. I could see his obsessive mind working. He was happy to see me, but still angry and upset.
"Jerry, listen . . . I'm really sorry."
Jerry ignored me. "You need to pop for a better system, dude."
"Money can be a finite thing, Jerry. Those of us who come by it honestly tend to run out now and then."
He shook his head and grinned. "Then you need to find another way to make it, man. Anyhow, I have elected to take pity upon your sorry ass. I come bearing gifts."
"Say what?"
"Like I said, we have to find her. I assume we'll be working with old Hal again? We will have to video-conference with him from time to time?"
"I suppose, but I already have a . . ."
"Good," Jerry said, blithely interrupting. "That's why I asked you what you had humming around in here before I drove on down. I just happen to have a few cool upgrades out in the bed of my truck."
"Jerry . . ."
"I brought a few items, things that got lost on their way to the warehouse, if you know what I mean."
"But . . ."
"No buts about it," Jerry said. He rubbed his scar absently. "This shit is way cool. It will synch the picture up to the sound almost perfect, and it can store what he sends us without jamming up your files. All I gotta do is stick a satellite receiver on the roof and run a few cables, and then outboard a piece or three and we're in business."
"Jerry, we won't even be staying here, except for tonight. I figured to take off first thing in the morning."
"So? Won't take me but a couple of hours, good buddy," Jerry said. He was already opening his toolbox. "You'll be in business for real. We'll just take my bad-ass laptop with us for everything else."
"Can I get a word in, here?"
Jerry didn't look up. "Sure."
"Don't you want to know what's going on?"
"Oh, you're finally ready to tell me?"
"Touché. Now, sit."
Jerry folded up the toolbox, sat on the small sofa beneath the window. He peered out into the smoggy red sunset and closed the drapes, slid the toolbox under the computer desk and spread his hands. His
thick eyebrows twitched like caterpillars. "So fill me in."
"What did I tell you so far?" I sat down. "I don't remember."
"You said Mary called and you took her in," Jerry said. "You gave me some line of shit that she didn't want you to tell me she was here."
"She didn't want me to call you, Jerry. You think I'd make that up?"
Jerry shrugged casually, but his lips were thin. "Mary's a pretty girl, man. You never know."
"That's bullshit."
A long silence followed. My face reddened. I turned away to gather myself. You are lower than whale shit, Callahan . . .
Jerry said: "Then after a couple of weeks she went missing on you, like all of a sudden. You told me to get my sorry ass down here and that maybe there's this pimp involved, and some missing kid named Loco."
"My housekeeper's nephew."
"Right. And then you said I should get my hands on a top-notch digital camera and a pro sound boom."
"You did that? Good."
"I had the store call Hal Solomon and he covered it." Jerry seemed to pull himself back together. "That camera set him back nearly five large, man. It's one hell of a piece of gear. I haven't even had time to screw around with it yet. Mick?"
"Yeah?"
"It is awful good to see you."
I shook his hand. "It's good to see you too, Jerry. I screwed up, and now I'm damned sorry. I should have just called right away and told you Mary was here."
"She really asked you not to?"
"Yes."
"I guess it don't matter now," Jerry said. "Because here we are. What do you need me to do?"
I eyed Jerry carefully. "We went through a lot the last time we were together. We almost got ourselves killed. This one could end up even worse. Are you sure you're up for it?"
"I'm up for anything, Mick," Jerry said. "I want to find Mary. You know that I had a thing for that girl, even before she saved our butts. And I owe you something, too."
"You don't owe me." A sense of déjà vu followed; memory reminded me that Darlene had used the same phrase. "But I do think we both owe Mary a great deal."
"I heard that. What do you need me to do?"
I booted up my computer. "I want you to take a look at this footage of the Burning Man Festival. You've heard of it, right?"
"Sure. Hal emailed me some shit and I answered him. I don't think I copied you on that."
"Well?"
"Well, the thing of it is that I didn't know anything, except that it happens every year. No offense, Mick, but what the hell?"
"Bear with me, Jerry. Take a look at this video then, and we'll talk. Look, I was at this thing once, years ago, in a drugged stupor. That may or may not have something to do with what happened to Mary. What I know so far is that this festival, or someone who is planning on being there, has something to do with why she vanished."
"So it really matters that I see it. Okay."
"Jerry, get on it. We don't have much time."
Jerry looked puzzled. "And the camera . . . ?"
I stood, hooked my thumbs in the belt of my black jeans and leaned against the wall. "I'm taking some vacation time. The station will play reruns. You and I are going to pretend to make a documentary about that festival. That way if anybody recognizes me, it will make sense why we're there."
"Okay."
"You're now a camera operator."
"Cool."
"It will also give us some cover with the local law, or even a badass FBI agent, if we happen to run into him. Don't ask, I'll explain later. But what we're really going to try to do is find out what the hell happened to Mary."
"Dumb question?"
"Shoot."
"I assume you already called the cops?"
"Of course I did, both officially and unofficially."
"And?"
"Officially, they told me that people go missing every day. That Mary may not have even given me her real name. That there wasn't anything they could do, especially since I didn't even have a photograph to give them. They said both she and the little boy were probably gone for good."
"And unofficially?"
Someone knocked on the front door. Jerry jumped, startled. He wriggled his thick eyebrows. "Who's that?"
"'Unofficially' just got here."
Larry Donato stood under the porch light, wearing my old L.A. Rams sweatshirt. "You look great in that," I said, with a straight face. "Do you plan on returning it any time soon?"
Donato grinned. "I'll wash it first." With feigned innocence, "You do know my lovely cousin, don't you?"
"Hello, Darlene."
Darlene Hernandez seemed to be wearing larger ear rings and a bit more makeup. She wore a neat beige pants suit and flat shoes. For my part, I was glad to see her, even under these circumstances. I saw her dark eyes widen slightly at the burn scar on Jerry's face, and admired her for how well she concealed the reaction.
For his part, Jerry didn't much care for cops. He forced a feeble smile, introduced himself, and then headed straight for his truck to collect my new gear. He never looked Larry Donato in the eye, which was probably a good thing.
"Damn," Donato said quietly, once Jerry was gone, "what the hell happened to that kid's face?"
"He was in a foster home when he was a boy. A psychotic woman burned him with an iron."
"Christ."
"Anyway, come in."
"Mick, how the hell are you?" Donato asked. "Peanut said you sounded like you were in a world of hurt. It took me fifteen minutes to talk her into staying behind at my place. What's up?"
"What's up is that I'm going to get Mary back, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to track down and talk to Frederick Newton Wainwright."
"Oh, shit," Darlene said.
"Fred is actually a pimp and porn maker known as Fancy."
Donato sagged. "Fancy? You've got to be out of your fucking mind."
Darlene began pacing the room, hands behind her back. "You're not telling us this, you realize that."
"Of course not, I would never tell two sworn officers of the law that I was about to embark on a dangerous and probably highly illegal rescue mission and spill a drop of blood or two. I would never say that, if that's what you mean."
"Good," Darlene said, "because we would be in all kinds of trouble if you told us something like that and we failed to report it."
I went to the icebox for sodas, called back over my shoulder: "All I am telling you is that I am taking some vacation time to shoot two privately funded documentaries with the help of my old friend Jerry."
"Documentaries?" Donato was baffled.
"Yes. That's the kind of work I used to do, back when I did television instead of radio."
"Two documentaries," Darlene said. She was already with me. You had to love this woman.
I brought two colas and popped the cans. Darlene shook her head 'no.'
"Two documentaries. One about prostitution, actually a certain group of streetwalkers out in Pomona, to be exact."
"The other?"
"The other will be on the next Burning Man Festival out there in the flats of Nevada."
"Okay," Donato said. He took a drink. "I think I get you now. What does the Burning Man have to do with any of this?"
I sprawled on the couch, boots up on the coffee table. "I'll be damned if I know, but somebody keeps sending me messages that point that way. First, someone called my show and brought it up. Mary said something about burning and then a tent city when she called."
Donato nodded. "And then there was that burned spot on the ground, with the black rock in the middle."
"Same as that guy's tattoo."
Darlene sat next to me. I told her more about the night I first met Larry, and about the assailant and his tattoo. She put her drink down on the table and hunched forward. "Mick, in all seriousness, why the hell are you telling us all this?"
"Because I want you to help me, because I need to find Mary, and to see if any of this leads to the missing boy."
"No?"
"Not on the books."
I smiled. "You told me you had to do some undercover stuff as a hooker once, right?"
Darlene shrugged. "So?"
"So take your vacation time. Hal will pay you to come along with me, under the guise of helping me to shoot these documentaries."
"How much?" Darlene asked, a bit mischievously.
"Oh, come on," Donato said.
"No, really. How much?"
"Five grand a week."
"Five grand?"
"You will be an official advisor to the two productions, and also provide security. One thousand five hundred per project. We will keep it all aboveboard, do a letter agreement for your records, and pay IRS on your behalf, the whole deal."
Darlene wavered. "That's a nice sounding number, and I would like to help you find the girl, but—"
Donato interrupted her. "It isn't worth throwing away your career. Come on, Darlene think for a minute. What's going to fall on your head if this all blows up in a big way, if there's some shooting involved?"
Darlene nodded. "He's right, Mick. No can do."
Jerry came back with some cardboard boxes. He was pale, except for the rippled scar. He looked straight ahead as he passed Donato and Darlene on his way to the office. I waited, but neither cop spoke again.
After a few moments, I sighed. "No way, huh?"
"No way, Mick."
"I understand, but what can you do to help me out, then? Anything?"
"I'm screwed either way," Larry Donato said. "If I help you I could get nailed, and if I don't Peanut won't ever speak to me again."
"Or sleep with you, anyway," Darlene said.
Larry stuck out his tongue. "Okay, I can feed you information, off the record. I can call in a couple of favors on the sly, maybe run some license numbers, petty shit like that, but don't put me in any worse position than that."
"Fair enough, and I want you to know I really appreciate everything you've done since my date and I got jumped that night."
"Just who was this date, by the way?" Darlene purred.
"Right now, Larry," I said, acting as if I hadn't heard her, "the best thing you can do for us is just nose around about Fancy's porn business. I know where he keeps some of his girls, but that's about it."
Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) Page 14