“She’s one of Rindo’s bitches, a kept woman.”
Raylan followed Bobby up the steps to the front door. Bobby knocked and it opened as if she was expecting them.
“Deputy US Marshals. Are you Ms. Elliott?”
“What’s this about?”
“Your Jeep that was stolen.”
She brought them into a designer room with a giant flat screen and furniture neither of them could afford. Raylan and Bobby sat next to each other on a leather couch opposite Caroline Elliott, a tall, blue-eyed blonde with a small, cute nose, and a knockout body. She was done up, Raylan looking at her red-painted nails and bracelets clanging on skinny wrists.
“Did you find it?”
“Ohio State Police have the vehicle impounded in Columbus,” Bobby said.
She frowned, trying to think of what to say.
Raylan said, “Know who was driving?”
“Whoever stole it.”
“Jose Rindo,” Raylan said, watching her face, expecting a reaction, but not getting one—not getting anything. She was poised and relaxed.
“This is a nice home you have,” Bobby said, eyes sweeping across the room. “You don’t mind my asking, what’s your occupation?”
“I’m between jobs at the moment.” She paused. “I worked in retail for years and then I was a personal shopper.”
Bobby said, “What’s that all about?”
“I helped my clients find the right clothes. Most men have difficulty deciding what looks good on them, styles and colors that flatter them.”
Raylan said, “How long have you been seeing Jose Rindo?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
He could see a little concern creeping into her expression now.
Bobby said, “Who’s been calling you from Toledo?”
“I don’t know. It was probably a solicitor.”
“You’re saying you don’t know Jose Rindo, also known as Pepe,” Bobby said, “is that correct?”
“I’ve never heard of this person.” Caroline picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights off the glass coffee table, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, lit it with a silver Zippo.
“Let me show you something.” Bobby got up, took a DVD out of his sport coat pocket, and handed it to her. “Put this on, will you?”
“What is it?”
“Movies. I think you’ll like them. You’ve got a starring role in one.”
Caroline Elliott hesitated for a beat, walked over to the player that was on a shelf under the flat screen, slid the disk in, and turned on the TV. It was grainy footage from a surveillance camera inside a parking garage. A man was walking behind a row of cars. A minivan with its lights on came up behind him. He turned, squinting into the glare of the headlights, and now in close up Raylan could see the man was Rindo. The car passed him and he was standing next to a dark SUV, unlocked the door with a key fob, got in, and backed out of the space. As the vehicle moved toward the camera, Raylan could see it was a Jeep.
Bobby said, “How you suppose he got the key to your car?”
“How do you know it’s mine?”
Another camera picked up the Jeep as it drove out of the garage into sunlight, Jose Rindo behind the wheel, and then a shot of the rear deck of the Jeep showing the license plate number: BBQ 6069.
“According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the car is registered to you,” Bobby said. “Now what do you have to say?”
She glanced from Bobby to Raylan but didn’t open her mouth.
“Check this out,” Bobby said. “You and this person you’ve never heard of.”
The footage was sharp and clean, showing Caroline trying on sandals, boxes piled up on the floor next to the saleslady, and Rindo, cap on backward, a bored expression, sitting next to her.
Caroline Elliott looked worried now. Bobby got up, pushed a button on the remote, and the TV screen went black.
Raylan said, “So what do you think, you want to go to jail, or you gonna help us?”
“I think I should call a lawyer.”
Bobby said, “Where’s Rindo?”
“You found the Jeep, you must know. Why you asking me?”
Raylan could see Bobby wasn’t expecting that. He took the handcuffs off his duty belt. “All right then. Put your hands behind your back.” She did, and he cuffed her. “Like bologna and mayo? I hope so, cause that’s what you gonna have for lunch and dinner every day.” Bobby put his hand around her biceps and led her toward the front door.
Raylan, flanking her on the other side, said, “I see you like to get dressed up, fix your hair, look nice. In county you wear an outfit smells like the con wore it before you.”
At the front door, a worried look on her face, Caroline said, “The Knights Inn, East Columbus. I talked to him just before you came here. And you didn’t find the Jeep, that’s bullshit.”
Bobby Torres said, “Let me have your cell phone.”
“It’s in my purse, in the kitchen.”
Bobby went to get it.
Raylan, next to Caroline, smelling her perfume, looking at her fine features and perfect complexion, said, “Tell me something. What do you see in this thug?”
“You don’t know how it works, I can see that.” She smiled, showing perfect teeth, loosening up a little.
“You sit around this place he bought you, waiting for him to show up.”
“If it wasn’t him, it would be someone else.”
“Doesn’t make any difference, huh? They’re all the same?”
“In the dark, whether it’s Jose doing me or some other dude, I can’t tell.”
Bobby walked up to them. “Okay, I checked your phone. It’s the same number.”
“I’ve cooperated, done what you asked, now let me go.”
“We will,” Bobby said. “But first we have to hold you for a while.”
Five
You gonna tell me what we’re doing here?” Raylan said, looking across the church parking lot filled with cars. “We going to services, you going to pray for me?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Bobby said.
“What is this?”
“St. Anne de Detroit, part of it built in 1701. The oldest church in the city.”
“What’re we doing here? This part of the tour?”
“Waiting. You’ll see in a few minutes.”
A white, full-size van drove into the lot and parked, man behind the wheel, engine idling. A few minutes later, a Trailways Motor Coach pulled in. The van moved close to the bus as the passengers, four couples, were getting off. The driver met the couples and transferred their luggage, nine suitcases, into the back of the van.
Raylan said, “What’s next, we gonna watch em play bingo, have the blue plate special?”
“One couple, we’re not sure who, works for Rindo, been talking to him. Lot of chatter, lot of noise, lot of people involved. They just drove in from Tucson. They take cash on the way out, bring Grade-A Mexican heroin on the way back. Tucson Marshals kept tabs, told us when they were on their way. What Rindo is doing, man, is smart. These old people are under the radar.”
“Think they know what’s going on?” Raylan said. “They’re doing it, but do they understand what they’re doing? You see any sign any of them throwing money around?”
“Not yet.”
They followed the van to the first stop, a well-kept, two-story house with a front porch on Campbell Street. The couple got out with their hand luggage. The driver opened the rear doors of the van, carried three suitcases up the porch steps and into the house. The van took off and Raylan could see Jim Tom following it to the next stop.
Bobby drove slow past the house. There was a Chevy sedan in the driveway. “Can you read the tag?”
“QRM 2280.”
Bobby punched it into t
he laptop that was angled on a metal stand to the right of the steering wheel and waited for it to download. “Okay, the car is owned by Eladio Martinez, age fifty-seven.”
“Got a warrant against him?”
Bobby checked NCIC as he went around the block and parked across the street from the Martinez house. “Nothing shows up, man appears to be clean.”
The radio crackled. “Jim Tom on Ferdinand Street, couple number two, same drill as before, driver carried two suitcases into the house.”
“Hang tight,” Bobby said. “Grab a slab, let’s see what happens.”
Conlon followed couple number three to Morrell, and Street had couple number four on Christiancy.
Bobby pulled up a Google map of Mexicantown on the laptop and swiveled the screen toward Raylan. “We’re here, the other houses are within a couple blocks of each other.”
Now a commercial van with ACME Carpet Cleaning on the side pulled into the Martinez driveway. “Go on vacation, come home, have your carpeting cleaned, that the way you do it?” Raylan watched two men get out of the van, open the side door, bring out a big carpet-cleaning machine, carry it to the porch and up the steps into the house. Ten minutes later, the two men came back out with the machine, put it in the van, and drove away.
“They work fast, huh?”
“Or maybe they don’t work at all,” Bobby said.
Raylan wondered if the cleaners were going to stop at the houses of the other couples. Instead, the carpet cleaners drove to a building on Franklin Street near the Detroit River. The team met a couple blocks away in an empty lot with grass growing through cracks in an old concrete foundation, Raylan looking at flat, vacant land all the way to the GM Building in the distance.
As Bobby laid out the plan, Raylan watched a homeless dude, a raggedy figure, pushing a shopping cart filled with his meager possessions along the street. “Okay, we set up a perimeter around the building, I knock on the door, tell them US Marshals have em surrounded so tight—”
“They couldn’t squeeze out a popcorn fart,” Jim Tom said, cutting him off.
Raylan said, “Why don’t I take a look, see what we’re up against?”
“They got cameras all around the place,” Bobby said. “How you gonna get close without being seen?”
•••
Armando was watching the monitors, seeing an occasional car pass by on the street in front of the warehouse, and on another was el tío sin hogar pushing the cart, wearing a plastic garbage bag like a poncho. He stopped like he was talking to someone, but no one was there. He took a drink from a liquor bottle and shook his head. It was funny to watch this hombre loco coming close the building now.
•••
“Get me outta here,” Jill Conlon said in the basket of the shopping cart under a pile of the homeless dude’s clothes and plastic bags full of empty cans and bottles. Raylan had given him eighty dollars—
all he had in his wallet—to borrow the rig.
When they were next to the wall under the cameras, Raylan tossed off the clothes and bags, tilted the cart forward, and Jill came out feetfirst with a Glock in her hand. “I was suffocating,” she said in a whisper, glancing up at the open second-story windows.
Raylan led the way along the south wall of the warehouse to the end of the building and heard voices. He peeked around the corner and saw two dudes wearing shoulder holsters standing on the loading dock. The one closest to him had a mustache and goatee. The second one was a big man, heavyset. He didn’t see anyone else.
•••
Armando saw the hombre loco again behind the building, talking to Molina and Calderon, who were smoking a blunt. They stepped down from the loading platform, both grinning, talking to the homeless dude. He saw Molina offer the blunt to the man, saying, “Want some of this? It fuck you up.”
Calderon said, “Look at him, man. He already is.”
Armando, ready for a break, walked out to the loading dock and lit a cigarette.
•••
Raylan waited till he got closer to the one with the goatee, till he could see into the building, shafts of light angling in from the upstairs windows, but not much else. The man with the goatee, the one closest to him, offered Raylan the joint, reached to give it to him, and as Raylan tried to take it, the dude pulled his hand back. The men laughed. “You have to be quicker,” the one with the goatee said. “Let’s try again.”
To complicate things, another man came out of the building. He said, “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Watch this,” the one with the goatee said. The man reached to give Raylan the joint again, and this time Raylan grabbed his wrist, hit him in the face with a sweeping right hand, and pulled his Glock, first holding it on the heavyset dude with the shoulder holster and then the man smoking on the loading dock. Conlon appeared now, coming around the side of the building, running into the scene with her weapon.
Raylan crouched inside the loading gate, looking down at the production line of workers weighing and packaging cocaine or heroin at a long table on the warehouse floor. The workers, young women in their underwear, wore surgical masks and rubber gloves. Two guards with shotguns kept an eye on things at ground level. Two more with automatic weapons stood at the railing of a second-floor catwalk.
One of the guards on the warehouse floor glanced toward the loading dock, looked at his watch, and started moving in Raylan’s direction. Raylan crouched behind a Hi-Lo as the man approached and walked past him. After taking off his Luccheses, Raylan followed him outside in his socks, and when the guard aimed his shotgun at McGraw, Raylan put the barrel of his Glock in the man’s ear and said, “Take your finger off the trigger and do it slow.” The guard did. “Now lay the scatter gun on the deck.”
Raylan cuffed the man, walked him down the stairs to the driveway, and sat him on the cracked concrete. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, four of you’re gonna stay right where you’re at, don’t move a muscle or Boom Boom will tase you, and that don’t get it done she’ll shoot you.”
The task force arrived in five mismatched vehicles, reminding Raylan of a scene from Mad Max, and formed a perimeter around the building. Standing on the loading dock and amplifying his voice with a megaphone, Bobby Torres said, “US Marshals. We have you surrounded. Put your guns down and come out with your hands up.”
That’s how they busted Jose Rindo’s heroin operation. The Task Force confiscated ninety-six pounds of pure uncut heroin, $1.7 million in cash, four AK-47s, six Mossberg 500 Tactical shotguns, and arrested twelve people with intent to distribute or sell a Schedule 1 drug.
“Rindo and his crew are slinging big time,” Bobby said. “Moving some weight.”
After the arrests, Raylan drove to his apartment in Royal Oak that was still filled with boxes from the move. He’d towed a U-Haul trailer behind his Durango 4X4 from Kentucky, the trailer packed with all of his worldly possessions, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. Took him eleven hours to drive the seven-hundred-plus miles to an apartment he’d never seen, in a town he’d never been to that was described as lively, full of restaurants, bars, and nightlife.
He heard loud voices next door; sounded like the neighbors he still hadn’t met were having an argument. He left the apartment, walked down Main Street in the early evening, looking in storefronts, stopping to study menus that were posted. Raylan wandered farther and went into Mr. B’s. He found a seat at the crowded bar, had a couple beers, feeling relaxed for the first time since he woke up.
He heard his phone ring and dug it out of his jeans. It was Bobby. “What’s up?”
“Ohio State Police just arrested Rindo. We gotta go pick him up.”
“What time you want to leave?”
Six
Six in the morning, still dark out, Bobby met Raylan in front of the Federal Building on Lafayette. Bobby got out of the transport vehicle, a Dodge Charger with a 370-horse
power Hemi V8 under the hood and a steel cage in back, and walked to Raylan’s G-ride. Raylan was getting his vest and long gun out of the trunk.
“There’s a change in the plan. FBI fucking things up again,” Bobby said. “Chief wants you to go with the girl, the special agent. Remember her? The one kickstarts her vibrator.”
“This’s a joke. You’re putting me on, right?”
“I wish.”
“Why am I going? You’re the case agent. We’ve got to make sure this gets done right.”
“I’ve got faith in you, so does the chief. I guess she insisted on going and asked for you,” Bobby said. “Pick up Rindo, she’s gonna interview him, wants to show you how the professionals do it.”
“That’s her talking, or you?”
“Chief said cooperate, get it over with. Maybe she’s not so bad. Maybe you can loosen her up.”
“It’s only a three-and-a-half-hour drive.” Raylan paused. “Know anything about her? She any good?”
“You’ll find out,” Bobby said, staring at the Stetson. “Jesus, bringing the hat back.”
“I missed wearing it, didn’t feel right.”
“I guess you can get away with it in Ohio. You’re gonna pick Jose Rindo up at the Franklin County Jail in Columbus.”
“Anyone from the warehouse bust talking yet?”
“It takes time to get through the pile. At first everyone thinks they’re tough. Nobody’s gonna say nothing. Give em a couple months in a federal holding facility, they’re gonna be begging you to talk.” Bobby took a business card out of his shirt pocket. “One more thing, you’re supposed to pick up Special Agent Sanchez at the Bureau field office, Four Seven Seven Michigan Avenue.”
“Why doesn’t she come here?”
“You can ask her.”
“What time she gonna be ready?”
Bobby glanced at his watch. “Six fifteen, you better get going.”
Raylan handed Bobby the keys to his G-ride. Bobby’d park it on Griswold next to the courthouse, leave the keys under the mat.
Raylan Goes to Detroit Page 4