Lynn looked confused. “I thought her name was Ripley.”
“It was, Ellen Ripley.”
“He named you after a movie character?” Lynn blurted out.
“He said he was even happier about it when he saw Aliens, the sequel,” Ellen confirmed. “It could have been worse. He liked the character Vasquez better. If she would have been in the first movie, God knows what he would have called me.”
“I heard the name Ellen and liked the sound of it,” Sotello said defensively. “Your Mom didn’t think it was crazy.”
“She would do anything you wanted.”
“Oh, you are so out of line,” Sotello said indignantly. “Anyway, as much fun as this biased attack, Lynn and I have to get over to the police station.”
Sotello stood up and kissed his daughter. “If I don’t see you before you leave, remember to be careful and call me when you get there on the case.”
“I will Dad,” Ellen promised. “Nice meeting you Lynn.”
Lynn held out her hand and Ellen shook it. “Thanks for everything Ellen. I hope to work with you in the future.”
“We’ll see. In any case, my brother and I will hunt up a next step for my Dad to look into. Are you thinking of making a deal with Bennet?”
“You are getting much too smart for your own good,” Sotello conceded. “I thought I might be able to see if he would be more interested in Phillips, than Lynn here. I think we have to get one step over Bennet, to whomever he answers to. If we can convince them Lynn was taken in too, she can set Phillips up if we can find him. That may put the right parties together. You know the drill, Miss Smarty.”
“Find everyone in his life who still lives in the states, and see if he contacts any of them. He will have a lot less of their money by the time we locate him Dad, if we ever do.”
“I do not believe they only want their money back. I am not entirely convinced they even care about it. They want to make an example of Mr. Phillips.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“Thanks Honey, tell Craig to call me when he gets in and fill me in on your progress. Tell him I will call the Websters right after I get back from the range.”
“I will Dad. See you later.”
Chapter 4
Craig
In the Dodge on the way to the police station, Gillingham waited for Sotello to explain what he had been outlining to his daughter. Sotello turned on the radio instead, singing and humming along with the oldies on a local rock station. She waited another five minutes, and then cut into his musical interlude.
“What did you mean about a deal Jim?”
“Look Lynn,” Sotello said reasonably. “You know we can’t stop all of these people if they get upset enough to really get to you. Bennet may be just the lead scout for a war party, if the people pulling his strings get impatient. I think he has them convinced Phillips will be getting back in touch with you.”
“I told him I got taken. He just said he didn’t care.”
“I want you to get all of your transactions with Phillips together,” Sotello instructed. “Then I will go over, and sell Ramon’s bosses on letting me help them locate Phillips.”
“If he will tell you who he works for.”
“I don’t plan on asking him. Ellen will find out who his connections are. We’ll go over his head. I’m betting Mr. Bennet leaves a slime trail wherever he goes.”
“You’ll never find Phillips if they haven’t found him,” Lynn replied, somewhat nervously.
“I have more resources than they do,” Sotello replied, watching her with interest. “If Phillips were trying to hide inside the country, they would probably already have him, but they don’t have people all over the world. These people are patient. They know guys like Phillips will make a mistake and turn up somewhere. They just make sure they are in position when he does.”
“Then why would they need you?”
“Because he might still have some of their assets left if I find him,” Sotello explained. “Phillips would have to be broke for him to gamble on coming back somewhere within their reach, not to mention Ramon getting the police involved now. They do not like messy situations, and Ramon will appear to be creating exactly that to them. If I can convince them I am able to achieve the results they want quickly and quietly, they might agree to forget about you, and call Ramon off.”
“And if they don’t?” Lynn asked, looking straight ahead.
Sotello shrugged. “Then we will have to find Phillips with them on our backs. The solution still remains, if you don’t want to go into hiding: we need to find Phillips.”
“I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “You will still have to find out who they are though.”
“Yes, but we have Ramon’s name, and Phillips’ name. The paths connect somewhere. If we find the outfit both men have ties with, I will go see the head man.”
“Just like that?”
“Unless you have some better suggestion,” Sotello said. “Of course it would help if we go to see them before Ramon makes his next report. After we get back and meet up with my son, you can gather together all the paper links you have with Phillips. We will keep them handy in case my two offspring can come up with someone’s name we can present them to.”
“Who does your skip tracing?”
“I do,” Sotello stated firmly. “I have shown Ellen and Craig the danger in skip traces, using the problems I have run into on a few of them. I think they understand why I do not send them out on any. The money’s there, in some cases, to make it worthwhile, but we do very well with the more investigative part of the business. The two of them together, if they throw away all their college education to come into the business, will probably insist on doing what they consider to be the adventurous aspect. Ellen has more common sense, but Craig wants to do it now.”
“You must worry about them constantly when they go out to work a case like your son did.”
“No doubt about that,” Sotello admitted. “I just have to prepare them, and keep them alive until I can get some experience into them. If Ellen eventually gets her law license, I may be able to just do her legwork and case prep for her. Craig still looks to be getting his accounting degree, and a real estate license. He loves looking at houses. My wife had a real estate license, and he loved it when she took him around with her sometimes. He learned a lot about coordinating the loans, building inspections, and the nuts and bolts of the real estate market from her. We can really branch out here if they stay in the area.”
“It sounds like you really have it all Jim. I envy you.”
“I have nothing you cannot get Lynn, but my lifestyle does not appeal to everyone. The kids make the difference. I lucked out and found things around me to constantly interest them. If not, they would have already taken off.”
“I cannot wait to meet your son. I bet he looks like you.”
“The resemblance ends there however. You heard Ellen and I laughing about him. Craig can mimic voices or mannerisms instantly after meeting someone. He notices everything about a person, from their shoes to the curl in their hair. It comes in very handy, but he can be a bit too adventuresome when he gets out in the field. I would bet the little run in at the Webster girl’s house made an impression. He can handle himself, but as I have tried many times to explain to him, the whackos do not always want a fistfight. They may try to plunge a knife into your chest, or simply blow you apart with a shotgun blast. We can avoid confrontations in at least ninety-five percent of our cases, with a little logic and common sense.”
“What will you do about the girl he found?” Lynn asked.
“Call her parents, and explain their options.”
“What if they want her extracted?”
“We do not do that,” Sotello replied. “I will try to give them some things they can try right away. We have the phone number, and the address for them. Our job actually ended when we found her, but I want to make sure they think over their options carefully before they take any acti
on. The girl just turned nineteen. They may be able to reel her back in a bit.”
Sotello parked the car, and led the way into the police station. Lynn was surprised at how many people Sotello knew on a first name basis. He had something to say to almost everyone. The process went smoothly, which she was sure did not happen regularly. They were back in his Dodge, and on the way to the Castro Valley Firing Range inside of an hour.
At the firing range, Lynn found out most of the shooters there knew Sotello too, as did the man who checked them in. She had the earplugs he had given her already in place, and they were both wearing the eye protection Sotello had taken out of his bag. Sotello explained what he wanted to do, and the man handed him a couple of targets. He sent them out to the far edge of the range, a bit further down from where they were shooting skeet. Sotello pinned the target up in the little area about fifty feet from them. He returned and took out the shotgun. He spent the next twenty minutes going over the basic operation, and safety aspects, of handling a shotgun.
Sotello shot it first. Lynn found out why someone did not just buy a shotgun, and load it up to use on a housebreaker, without first getting thoroughly acquainted with the weapon. Besides the noise, she could see how dangerous it could be to fire it without practice. She picked up more tips from him over the next hour in the course of firing, from things as simple as never turning to talk to someone while holding a weapon, to how to flip off the safety and when. Even with the pad he had given her, she could feel her shoulder growing sore. Most of their time, Sotello spent teaching, so she could give her shoulder a break.
He taught her how to clean the shotgun, and they did it right at the old wooden table near where they were. Sotello loaded the cleaned shotgun back into the bag, and took out a small chrome colored handgun with a very solid looking black handle. Before heading over to the pistol range, he showed her basic handling and firing techniques with the twenty-two caliber automatic, including loading a clip and clearing a jam safely. She learned how to hand a weapon to someone safely, and why she should always check the chamber on an automatic, even though she had taken out the clip.
They finished an hour later, when he was satisfied she could hit a target consistently, and could clear a jam while firing. She loved the feel of the solid little twenty-two, which hardly felt like she was firing anything after the shotgun. Sotello showed her how to clean it, which she found to be a much more intricate task than with the shotgun.
“I know how tedious cleaning this twenty-two must seem,” Sotello said, “but if you want to cut down on jams, an automatic must be clean.”
“This doesn’t have much stopping power does it?”
“No, but you needed to start somewhere. The shotgun should be your protector at home, but you can have your hand on this little .22, while keeping it in your purse at your side. The stun gun I gave you will work great, but you may not want to be that close, especially if you know who happens to be coming at you. The final item I need you to understand about a gun: do not warn them. When you take it out, shoot them; otherwise, leave it in your purse. The same advice applies to the stun gun and pepper spray. Hide it until you use it. Surprise will save your life.”
__
Sotello drove her back to her car. She led him to her house, a two-story structure on a slight incline, with a front porch and a swing. Tinker met them at the door. The dog took an instant liking to Sotello, who knelt down next to Tinker, and shook her proffered paw. He stood up and snapped his fingers. Tinker sat down. Sotello knelt down again, and patted the carpet next to her sharply. Tinker lay down with her head on her paws.
“What in the hell did you do to my dog?” Lynn asked in amazement.
Sotello laughed as he stroked Tinker’s head. “I am good with animals, always have been.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if anything exists you are not any good at. You seem to know the entire police force of Oakland on a first name basis too. It looks like I could do worse for a partner after this all ends.”
“Better watch what you say. I may have to raise my contract demands.”
“I have a feeling you would be worth it,” Lynn replied. “How did you meet your wife, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The FBI agreed to take me right out of law school,” Sotello began, “after I passed the BAR exam. I had been doing volunteer deputy sheriff work. When an opening came up, I landed a full time position with the Alameda County Sheriff’s department. They made my hours flexible while I attended college. I kept applying to the FBI, and writing letters listing my qualifications. They accepted me in 1976.”
“My wife Cynthia attended Berkeley at the same time as I did. We took an accounting class together in my junior year. Ellen looks almost exactly like her. Needless to say, I was stunned when she introduced herself after our second class. Most of the scars I have, I had then too. We shared some of the same background. I grew up in an orphanage back in the Midwest, and she was raised in foster homes after her parents died in a car accident.”
“I’ll make us some coffee while you tell me the rest.” Lynn led him through the house, with Tinker in tow behind. In the kitchen, she started the coffee maker. While the coffee maker completed its task, she took him through the rest of the house. Sotello made notes on the access points both upstairs and downstairs. Fifteen minutes later they were drinking their coffee at the kitchen table with Tinker lying contentedly next to Sotello’s feet.
“So,” Lynn said. “Tell me the rest about your wife.”
“Nothing much more to tell,” he replied.
“Oh come on Jim. Interracial marriages, even in the seventies, would have caused quite a stir.”
“I was raised in an orphanage,” Sotello replied. “At least three quarters of the foster homes my wife grew up in were white. We were attending Berkeley. I had a scholarship and the GI bill. She had applied and received three different scholarships. Berkeley never did have a reputation for bias in any form, although they have earned a reputation for producing some of the most left wing whackos in the country. The only racial prejudice they have been guilty of concerns their implementation of affirmative action, at least until Ward Connerly got them to adopt Martin Luther King’s creed of judging someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.”
“So, are you telling me you two never experienced racial prejudice?” Lynn persisted.
“Not anything we couldn’t handle with logic and common sense. We were in California, not Alabama in the fifties,” Sotello reminded her. “We simply did not associate with people who did not want to associate with us. When the FBI passed me over with their own affirmative action program, I applied, and was accepted into the Secret Service, which paid more than where I was in the FBI. We settled into the Bay Area after the Secret Service became more than I cared to deal with.”
“And what about Cynthia?”
“What about her? You mean did we come home, and compare notes on our perceived slights by the establishment, or society in general, every night over dinner? Hell no,” Sotello retorted, answering his own question. “We had kids to raise, and we were doing work we loved. You seem more concerned about it than we ever were. Are you on some kind of white European guilt trip? Cynthia hated being referred to as a hyphenated American.”
“Sorry, I just wondered about your background, and how your kids felt about having parents of different races.”
Sotello laughed. “They thought of me as Dad, and Cynthia as Mom. We both believed in the same God, and the same right and wrong, which we instilled in our kids. They learned to deal with people, as they themselves would wish to be dealt with. They never spent time with friends who did not want to spend time with them.”
“That almost seems too simple,” Lynn observed.
“Yea, well most things in real life are,” Sotello replied. “Enough about me, let’s go see if Craig and Ellen were able to turn up anything. I will give you an alarm company to call today, so you can get a security syste
m installed tomorrow. I will leave you the shotgun with ammunition, and you can carry the twenty-two caliber auto with you, until you decide on what you want.”
“Will you still have dinner with me later?”
“Sure,” Sotello agreed. “I never pass up a free meal. My friends will call me if Ramon makes bail. I have to call the Websters about their daughter after I talk to Craig. You can hang around with me over at my place while I take care of business, and then we can come back here later so you can cook me a meal.”
“How about we just pick up some Chinese food on the way over here?” Lynn suggested.
“That sounds good to me. Go get your records on your dealings with Adrian while I keep Tinker here entertained.”
“Okay,” Lynn agreed, “but you have to promise not to make fun of me, after you find out how much he took me for.”
“No promises.”
Lynn sighed and started back up the stairs to get the records.
__
As they walked into Sotello’s office, the door to the back swung open, and a tall young man walked out through the doorway. Except for the darker colored skin tone, he was a younger double of Sotello, only slightly smaller in build and height. Sotello’s son had his hair shaved on the sides and back, with only a quarter of an inch on top. His dark blue, three piece suit fit him perfectly. Lynn thought he was as striking as his sister. He approached them; and offered his hand to Lynn, who grasped it, noticing Sotello’s son also controlled his grip, as his hands were almost as large as his Father’s.
“Hi Ms. Gillingham, I’m Craig,” he smiled warmly at her, and she could understand why he could get any information he wanted out of any college coed, or any other woman for that matter. “I heard from my sister you were spending the day with my Dad here while we looked into your case. How you doin’ Pop?” he acknowledged his Father.
“I heard about your approach with the Webster girl, butthead,” Sotello said in reply. “I sprouted another ten or fifteen gray hairs, thinking about all the things that could have happened to you.”
Sotello: Detective, ex-FBI, ex-Secret Service (DeLeo's Action Thriller Singles Book 1) Page 4