by Sean Black
The only consolation he had was that kidnappers didn’t snatch people they wanted to kill. It took too much in the way of resources and planning. Not to mention risk. A murder, or for that matter an assassination, was almost always far easier to execute than a kidnapping.
That didn’t mean kidnap victims never ended up dead. They did. All the time. It was why negotiating a release from a kidnap-and-ransom situation called for specialist skills.
From years of experience, Lock knew that the outcome to a kidnapping rested on a number of factors. Part of it was a straight equation that was balanced, on either side, with the stability of the kidnappers and the guile of the negotiators. Kidnap for ransom demanded a level of trust from a situation that inherently promoted suspicion. After all, who would trust someone who had done something as egregious as abduct, often violently, a family member, colleague, friend, or other loved one?
Successfully extracting someone alive from a kidnap-for-ransom situation involved a whole set of skills and psychological insights that most people simply didn’t possess. It was also regarded as a rookie mistake for someone very close to the victim to become directly involved in their release. But what was he going to do? Leave Carmen to the experts? He had seen how that could go. No, one way or another, this was on him.
Ty’s car drew glances as they reached Marina Del Rey. One of the least diverse areas of Los Angeles, about the only brown people the locals saw were foreign flight crew who used the hotels there as their layover base before they flew back out of nearby LAX. And, like the rest of upscale Los Angeles, domestic staff: maintenance guys, maids, and security guards. Actual brown and black residents? Not so much.
They turned into the driveway of Lock’s apartment building. Ty pulled up front, waving away the valet-parking attendant who sprang from behind his station. Lock had gotten to know the young man well since he’d moved in. He was a good kid, and bat-shit crazy about cars. One day Lock had even allowed him to take the Audi to pick up his girlfriend. That small piece of generosity had earned him platinum-level service from then on in.
“Morning, Mr. Lock,” the valet said, holding the door open for him, and doing his best not to react to what a sight he must have looked.
If he knew that Lock had been in the middle of events downtown, he wasn’t about to let that knowledge slip. Discretion was one of the first lessons learned working at a place like this. That included keeping your mouth shut.
“Morning, Luis.”
Ty got out and joined Lock on the forecourt. A Lexus pulled up behind them and Luis went to attend to the elderly white couple who got out. They both kept throwing horrified sideways glances at the purple Tymobile.
Lock heard the woman whisper to her husband. “I’m telling you, he’s one of those rappers.”
Her husband mumbled back, “If he moves in then I’m going to speak to the building management.”
They scuttled past as Luis climbed into their Lexus and deftly eased it round the Lincoln. He lowered the window. “Just let me know if you need anything, Mr. Lock.”
“Thanks, Luis. I will.”
“You going to be okay on your own?” Ty asked him.
Lock shot him a grim smile. “I’ll cope.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he replied. “They might come looking for you here.”
Lock glanced around at the white marble entrance, the perfect azure sky, and the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of boats bobbing gently in the marina. “Not here they won’t.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“I’m not going to let my guard down, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he told his partner.
“Good.”
“Listen, I’m going to get cleaned up and grab some food. Then I’m going to pick up a rental car and head on over to Carmen’s place.” She had given him a key only a few weeks before. It had marked a definite shift in their relationship. A tilt toward domesticity, signifying something longer-term between them. They were no longer just dating.
“Why you need a rental?” said Ty, mock-offended. “You can use my whip if you need a car.”
“Thanks, but I’ll get my own.”
“Okay. You need me for anything drop me a message,” said Ty, getting back into his car. “I’m going to shake some branches. See if I can’t get us some fresh intel on this crew that snatched up Carmen.”
That was good to hear. Ty’s sources were a little different from those Lock or the LAPD could access: his world tended to run more to the fringes of society, and that was a good place to pick up whispers about something like this.
Ty reached a huge hand toward him through his open window. The two men bumped fists. “Be safe,” he said.
“You too.”
“Badass motherfuckers like me don’t need to worry, but I’ll watch my back. How about that?”
“Sounds good.” Lock watched him drive away, then headed into the air-conditioned lobby of the building. The concierge greeted him with a jaunty “Good morning, Mr. Lock.”
His world might just have come to a screeching halt, but here in Paradise, life went on as normal. One day the same as the next. A bath-warm seventy-five degrees and sunny.
As he rode up in the elevator, he did his best not to think of Carmen. Where she might be. How she might be feeling. How scared she was. He did his best to blot out all of that. But, like the persistent ringing in his ears, those thoughts he couldn’t will away.
19
Keen to get a start, Lock was in and out of his apartment in under forty minutes. Shaved, showered and as patched up as he was going to get, he headed back down to the lobby and signed the paperwork for the rental car that was waiting for him out front. His credit card and insurance details noted, he took the key and headed out to his new ride. It wasn’t his zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds Audi RS, but it would get him from A to B until he could prize his own car back from the LAPD.
Luis looked a little crestfallen as he saw Lock ease himself behind the wheel of the Saturn. “Don’t worry, Luis, it’s temporary.”
“Okay, Mr. Lock.”
“Do me a favor, Luis. If anyone comes round asking for me, or there’s anyone just hanging about, let me know. If you can, grab a quick photograph or note down what they look like and what they’re driving. Don’t go getting in trouble, but keep an eye out.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Lock.”
He palmed Luis a twenty with his business card. “Text me if you see anything.”
He got into the rental car and took a few moments to adjust the seat position and mirrors, then check the brakes before he pulled out onto Via Marina and headed for Carmen’s apartment in Culver City.
On the drive he thought about her behavior in the previous few weeks. She’d been tired, a little readier to be irritated or to overreact, but he’d put that down to her crushing workload. The truth was, no matter how fast they’d fallen for each other, he hadn’t known her that long. Not enough to have a true baseline he could use to judge whether she’d been upset by something or had had any inkling of what was going to happen.
As realizations went about the woman you loved, it didn’t feel that great. Then again, among much else, he’d been attracted to her by her apparent self-containment. She could be fun and flirty, but had an inner strength that drew people toward her.
She’d told him on an early date that one of the reasons she was such a good attorney was that people opened up to her in a way they wouldn’t with others. It was more than that, though. They trusted her because there was a genuine goodness in her. He could see it in her eyes when she spoke. Sincerity wasn’t much prized in these cynical times, but for a man like himself there were no greater qualities in a woman than truth and goodness.
He parked the Saturn on Duquesne Avenue and walked around the corner to the front of Carmen’s building on Lucerne Avenue. Her building didn’t have valet parking or a concierge. Instead it had two dead plant pots in the lobby and a row of mailboxes. He used the keys she
’d given him to open her mailbox and flicked through it quickly, feeling a little guilty for the intrusion. The mail was mostly flyers and menus. He imagined her bank and credit-card statements were all accessed online.
Junkmail in hand, and the SIG on his hip obscured by his jacket, he headed up to Carmen’s apartment. He was greeted at the door by the mewing of her cat, a ginger she’d found abandoned on the street. It rubbed itself against his legs as he made his way into the kitchen via the living room.
The apartment didn’t appear to have been broken into. There were no jimmy or pick marks on the door and everything was how he imagined she had left it.
He opened the refrigerator, found a fresh pouch of cat food, and put it into a bowl. He didn’t know if he’d be able to check back in again later today so he also found some dried food in a cupboard, put it into another bowl and refilled the cat’s water bowl to the brim from a jug of filtered water on the counter. He was more of a dog guy than a cat person, but he knew Carmen doted on the ginger fur ball.
Moving into the bathroom, Lock held his breath and used the scoop to shovel out a couple of small brown presents in the litter tray, dropped them into the toilet, flushed and put fresh litter into the tray. Having tossed back its meal in record time, the cat appeared behind him and started with the leg-rubbing again.
He put the bag of litter on the floor, reached down and picked it up. “Let me tell you, if I’d been around to have a say, you’d still be out there.”
The cat put its paws around his neck, claws digging into the tear in his shoulder. Gently, Lock reached up and pulled it away and set the animal on the floor. “See? That’s the kind of behavior I’m talking about.”
The cat followed him back into the living room. Carmen’s laptop, a MacBook Pro, lay open on the coffee table. This really felt like an intrusion, but extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures.
A password screen came up. He took a shot and typed in the cat’s name, Merlin.
Voilà.
No wonder hackers had such an easy time of it. He was in. He scanned the desktop screen, his finger drifting over the pad to open Carmen’s mail program. It was linked to her work account and there were hundreds of emails that she had received over the past day, never mind the past week.
He clicked on the sent folder. There were way less of them, which made them easier to check. Plus, he figured that something she had sent herself was more likely to contain a flag for any concerns she’d had.
He worked backwards, skimming anything that jumped out. The cat settled next to him on the couch. Lock guessed he missed Carmen too. They had that much in common.
Twenty or so emails in, his eyes were glazing over. Apart from a couple to her sister, everything was work-related and there was no mention of any personal concerns.
Her sister.
Even though her sister lived with her husband and kids in Arizona, she and Carmen were close. He found a number online and made the call. Carmen’s sister picked up almost immediately, her voice tense and concerned.
Lock explained who he was and that he didn’t have any fresh news, but he assumed she’d heard. She had. She was beside herself. How was she going to tell the kids about their aunt?
“Don’t tell them anything for now. There’s no point worrying them until we know more.”
She asked him what had happened. He told her as best he could, leaving out the more graphic details of what he’d seen and learned subsequently.
“Listen, I was wondering if maybe Carmen had mentioned something to you. Perhaps she was worried about something or someone. I have a feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d been followed.”
“I’m really sorry, Ryan. She seemed stressed, but she didn’t say anything about being followed or anyone watching her. The only thing she seemed bothered about was this new client of hers and how much of an asshole he was.”
“Wait. Hold on. Which client was this?”
“She never mentioned that she’d been asked to represent Servando Guilen?”
“We tried not to talk about work if we could.”
“Okay, I get that. Well, maybe you should look him up. Although I can’t see how he’d be involved in doing this to Carmen. She was pretty much his best hope of ever being a free man again.”
As he wrapped up the call with Carmen’s sister, Lock ran a quick Google search on Servando Guilen. His blood chilled as the first results appeared on the screen in front of him.
Carmen’s sister had been correct. He had no interest in harming Carmen, but his criminal history suggested plenty of people out there would have a score to settle. And if the only way they could hurt him was via his attorney, well, that was exactly what they’d do.
Guilen was a career criminal from across the border in Mexico. He styled himself as a businessman but he’d carved out his multi-million-dollar drug and racketeering empire through raw fear, terror and lots of dead bodies. Men, women, children, police officers, politicians, he didn’t care whom he took out.
It was a thought that offered Lock small comfort, but at least he could see why someone might go after Carmen if they thought it would hurt a man like that. Or was it someone else? Maybe a disgruntled client—or a victim of someone she had helped acquit.
He knew a man who could help him with the former. Someone who, despite his good character, had multiple connections in the world of gangs, both out on the streets and within the penal system.
As Merlin snuggled in tighter, dozing, he made a call to Ty.
“What’s up, Ryan?”
“She was defending a guy called Servando Guilen.”
“Oh, yeah, Mexican cartel guy, only he ain’t Mexican.”
That titbit of information hadn’t featured on his internet search results. “Really?”
“No, he’s from Honduras or Guatemala, somewhere like that. Operates out of Mexico, though. You want me to take a look into whether he was satisfied with his legal representation or not?”
“No, I’ll cover that angle. I want your net to go a little wider. I was thinking that maybe it could be a former client holding a grudge. Maybe they decided they didn’t like the deal Carmen cut for them. Something along those lines.”
“Okay, I’ll look, but I doubt it’s that,” said Ty.
“How come?”
“Well, a dude she messed up is gonna be cooling his heels inside. And if they’re on the outside she must have done something right so they ain’t a problem.”
It was a valid point. But it had a hole in it. Prisoners, especially those affiliated to gangs and organized crime, had a reach outside prison. They could put out the word via an array of communication channels and have someone killed or kidnapped on the street without ever taking a single step outside their cell.
He put that to Ty.
“I hear ya,” he said, after a moment’s contemplation. “I’ll make a few calls, see if there’s any word out.”
20
The parking structure, primary scene of the previous evening’s gun battle, was already back in business. Lock guessed that the LAPD had gathered whatever forensics they needed. He hoped they’d be as speedy with the work on his car, although he suspected not. He imagined the building management had made some phone calls to expedite matters and keep the money flowing.
He rolled on up to level four. He was hoping that seeing it again would jog some small detail from his fragmented memories of what had gone down. He parked as close as he could to where he had before.
The view was completely different than it had been. Where before the place had been close to empty, now almost every space was taken.
Had that factored into the two men’s decision to react as they had done? Would they have been quite so brazen and aggressive if it had been a weekday and the parking structure had been busy with office workers? It would certainly have made life more difficult for the kidnappers. All those people and vehicles would have made high-speed maneuvers next to impossible.
Getting to C
armen, then extracting her would have been much harder. There would have been more LAPD units in the area. Response time would have been faster on a workday in downtown.
Maybe it hadn’t been a simple surveillance operation after all. Maybe they had been lying in wait for Carmen to return to her car.
He suddenly remembered something. Carmen’s late night, and unscheduled return to the office, had been prompted by a message she had received. He had assumed it had been a text that had gone to her phone, but perhaps it had been an email. He should have checked when he’d been looking at her inbox on the laptop. He made a note to look again at her emails when he headed back later to see Merlin.
The front of the office building was still boarded up where the glass had been shot out. Apart from that, there was no sign that anything had happened. Two cops prowled the area between the walkway and the entrance. They checked him out, but didn’t say anything as he stepped into the lobby
Inside, more repair work was going on. A temporary reception area had been set up. He wondered about the security guard who’d been slain in cold blood. He hadn’t stood a chance. There had been no hesitation from the gunmen when it had come time to kill him. The more Lock thought about it, the more he was convinced they were former military. Or at least that they’d had military training.
At the temporary reception desk, he gave them his details and the reason for his visit. No, he didn’t have an appointment, but if they could let Mike Mazarovitch, the head of Carmen’s law firm, know he was there he’d very much appreciate it.
A few minutes later, he was given a visitor’s badge to pin to his jacket, and directed toward the elevators.
The atmosphere in the suite of law offices was somber but businesslike. People seemed to speak in whispers. That didn’t chime with the impression of the firm he’d gotten from Carmen.