by Dave Stanton
They swung open the door and disappeared into the eatery. We were thirty yards away in a diagonal direction.
“What’s that writing?” Cody said. “It doesn’t look like Hindi.”
“I don’t know. Arabic, I think.”
“You know what? I’m getting hungry.” He unbuckled his seatbelt. “You want anything?”
“What do they have?”
“Like the sign says, Mediterranean food. Hang tight.” He got out of the Camry and strode toward the restaurant.
After he went in, I pointed my cell phone at Abdul’s Mediterranean Cuisine and took a couple snapshots. I waited a minute, watching occasional patrons of the various stores come and go. Then I slid from the car into the late afternoon sun and, as discreetly as I could, took pictures of every car and license plate in the immediate area.
I returned to the Camry and five minutes later, Cody strolled out of Abdul’s holding a white plastic bag.
“How’d it go?”
“Had a beer and ordered some shish kabobs. Try one.”
“What about Tucker and Suggs?”
“Never saw them. They must have gone into the back.”
“Really,” I said, my eyes glued to the front of the place.
“It does seem strange, don’t it? Check it out—I got a picture of the dude who served me.” He handed me his phone. The image on the screen was of a man with a scraggly beard, wire-rimmed glasses, and a white turban.
“What do you think?” Cody asked.
“I think I’d like to know who they’re talking to in the back room, and why.”
“No, I mean what do you think of this scroungy-looking douchebag?” He held his phone up so I could again look at the picture.
“I don’t know. What am I supposed to think?”
“Let’s play a little free association, okay, Dirt? What’s your immediate impression of this guy? Don’t think, just answer.”
“All right,” I said. “He looks like the Taliban.”
“Right. A terrorist. Exactly the same thing occurred to me.”
“Come on. You could probably say the majority of Arabs remind you of terrorists. But only a tiny percentage are.”
“Well, that was certainly a politically correct response.”
I turned and looked at Cody. “I’m not trying to be politically correct. I’m just stating a fact.”
“Very proud of you. But here’s our situation. Two ghetto thugs who’d probably slit their own mothers’ throats for a hundred bucks drive through rush hour traffic to a dumpy strip mall and go straight to the back room of an Arab restaurant. Now, call me suspicious, but I start drawing conclusions.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s not a social call. So it’s business. It’s about money. And whoever was behind the disappearance of Tucker’s DNA probably laid out plenty of money to make it happen. So, somehow, there’s a connection.”
“Okay, fine. But what does that have to do with terrorism?”
“What’s the most common crime Arabs are involved in?”
“Here in the US? None, that I know of.”
“You never heard of nine-eleven?”
“That was an isolated incident.”
“Wrong answer. Since nine-eleven, there’s been over twenty planned large-scale jihadist attacks busted by the FBI before they could strike. Terrorist cells are active in almost every state. The FBI and CIA are all over it.”
“I didn’t know you were such an expert. But based on that, you assume every turban-wearing Mideasterner is a terrorist?”
“Nope. Only the ones meeting with known criminals.”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they’re plotting to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.” I took a foil-wrapped shish kabob from the bag Cody had set on the center console and pulled a square of chicken off a stick with my teeth. It was tough and stringy and tasted stale.
“Anything’s possible,” he said. “There they are.”
Tucker and Suggs came out of the restaurant and headed toward their ride. In Tucker’s hand was a plastic to-go bag. A middle-aged white couple had just parked next to the SUV, and when they saw the two black men approaching, they walked out of their way to give them a wide berth.
Tucker glared at the couple as if to let them know their trepidation was justified. Either that or maybe it was just raw hatred on his part. I didn’t know much about Tucker except that he had a ghetto upbringing and had viciously raped a white woman. Was that enough to assume he hated whites? Maybe he hated blacks too, and Arabs and everyone else. What was definitely clear was that, like all rapists, he hated women.
I watched the two men. They were nearly the same height, but Suggs was about thirty pounds heavier. Tucker, despite his slighter build, struck me as the more physically dangerous of the two. He wore a tank top, his long arms rippled with veins, and his hands were freakishly large. For a moment I imagined how terrified Lindsey Addison must have been, tied up and alone with him.
Suggs said something, and Tucker responded, and I could see an angry tension in Tucker’s frame. Suggs had no reaction other than a brief curl of his lip. They climbed into the GMC and drove toward the boulevard. We waited until they’d merged into traffic, then we followed them back in the direction of the freeway.
“Exactly the kind of guys you don’t want to meet in a dark alley,” I muttered. “My mom used to say that.”
We stopped at a light, three cars behind the GMC. “She’s speaking for the law-abiding, white middleclass,” Cody said. “What scares the common citizen is that lowlifes like these would rob and kill you, and they really don’t give a shit if they go to prison.”
“Not far from the truth.”
“Fuckin’ A. Life’s cheap for their kind.”
“They learn it in the ghettos. Crime is the only way out.”
“That’s bullshit.” Cody accelerated onto the freeway. “There’s all sort of cases where ghetto blacks became successful members of society.”
“But most don’t.”
The traffic ground to a stop. “Crap,” he said. “We’re gonna be crawling all the way back. Give me one of those shish kabobs, would you?”
I unwrapped the tin foil and handed him a skewer. He took a bite and made a face. “This sucks. Seriously.” He lowered his window and flipped the shish kabob out onto the freeway. “Fuckin’ dog food.”
“Hard to imagine they would have driven up here just for takeout,” I said.
“Excellent deduction, Dr. Watson.”
• • •
Young whites in BMWs and Porsches. Chinese businessmen in older Mercedes sedans. Mexicans in work trucks, Indians in Pontiacs and liberals in hybrid cars. A freeway packed with workers heading home, a sign of a recovering economy. Unemployment rates falling and technology companies growing again. The newspapers said all signs indicated the great recession was over. 2013 promised to be the beginning of a new prosperity.
It took forty-five minutes to get back to downtown San Jose. Suggs took the Saint James exit and followed the one-way streets to the front of the Skyscape building. Cody slowed, and from the corner we saw the GMC stop. Tucker got out and went into the front lobby. He was not carrying the white bag he held when he left Abdul’s Mediterranean Cuisine.
Suggs drove off, and we followed him back onto the freeway for another fifteen minutes, until he got off on Tully Road. I assumed he’d head straight back to his house, but instead he turned into a Del Taco drive-through. We drove past it and parked in the strip mall lot next door, facing the busy street, ready to pull out as soon as Suggs appeared from the drive-through.
“Something else must be in that to-go bag,” I said.
“Like heroin.”
“How do you figure?”
“The Taliban and al-Qaida are into heroin big time. Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of opium. Their economy would collapse without it.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “You think our boys just scored, huh?
Theories. In any investigation, theories are natural and necessary, and when they’re right, they can provide a direct path to solving a case. But you have to be careful. Following a wrong theory can blind you to the true motivations at play, and in the process, drain your time and energy. Best to keep an open mind until you really know what you’re dealing with.
I moved the windshield visor to the passenger side to shield my face from the sun’s glare. Cody lit a cigarette and sat with his arm hanging out the window. We had worked plenty of cases together, and I’d learned to not discount his instincts, despite my skeptical tendencies. His experience as a cop couldn’t be underestimated, but I believed what made Cody a great investigator were the teenage years he spent scraping to survive. He didn’t speak much of those days, but every so often, usually when we were drinking, he’d bring up an incident or two. Like the time he tried to steal a safe from a bar. He broke into the bar in the predawn, but was surprised to find the safe weighed at least two hundred pounds. Regardless, he dead-lifted it to his chest and tried to shove it through the window he’d broken, but it wouldn’t fit. So instead he took twenty bottles of liquor and sold them at our high school for lunch money.
There were darker episodes after that, things he’d only recently told me. In our senior year, he had found work with the Scarpa family, whose involvement in organized crime was well-known. His financial problems vanished, he bought a new wardrobe and moved into his own apartment. The day after we graduated from high school, he left town and hitchhiked to Utah. I thought it was because he’d broken up with his girlfriend, but I later learned he’d bashed in a car windshield with the face of one of the Scarpa boys.
• • •
The black SUV rolled by, and I caught a glimpse of Suggs drinking from a straw. We had to wait for a number of cars, and by the time we merged into the lane I couldn’t see his vehicle.
“Get over to the left,” I said. “He’s probably headed home.”
We made a yellow light, and Cody cut into the left lane. “There he is,” he said. Suggs was waiting in the turn lane at the next signal.
The light turned green, and we hung back and gave him some distance. When he turned right into his neighborhood, we went straight and came around the block to approach his house from the opposite direction. Suggs had parked in the driveway, and we saw him going in the front door.
Cody found a spot two houses down, behind a lowered Chevy Impala with chrome rims. It was almost six o’clock, but the sun was still high and it was about eighty degrees.
“Tucker’s chillin’ at the high-rise, and Suggs is back at the shithole,” Cody said. “You got any theories?”
“Tucker’s unemployed and doesn’t own a car. Someone’s taking care of him.”
“Like who?”
“Pull up that picture you took of Suggs on the balcony.”
He worked his phone, then held it low so we could both see the screen. The picture had been taken at too far a distance to make out much other than two black men, one in a white shirt.
“Can you zoom in any more?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t help. The resolution’s too grainy.”
I looked back toward Suggs’s house. “We have the address. We’ll find out who lives there tomorrow.”
A fly buzzed into the car. At the far end of the street, two fat women were having a conversation that seemed to be escalating into an argument.
“How long you want to wait here?” Cody said.
“I don’t know. Until something happens.”
“I could use a bite.”
“Have a shish kabob.”
Half an hour passed. Cars came and went, and residents appeared on shaded porches and took places on ratty couches or metal chairs. Teenagers began congregating on the corner, first in twos or threes, then the groups grew larger.
“We’re gonna get made, we stay here much longer,” Cody said.
“Yeah, it’s time to boogie,” I said. Then I paused and pointed down the street. “I think that’s the bent-nose cholo we met before.”
Cody started his car. “Hold up a second,” I said. The cholo and two younger gangbangers came up the opposite side of the street, but before reaching us, they stopped in front of Suggs’s house. Bent Nose walked up to the door, and the pit bulls raced from the back and jumped at the cyclone fencing. The front door opened, and Bent Nose went inside, leaving the other two Latinos waiting on the sidewalk. The dogs barked and snapped and rolled their eyes.
Five minutes later Bent Nose stepped out the doorway, his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans. He nodded at his underlings, and they walked back the way they’d come.
“Drug buy,” Cody said. “Let’s roll.”
We hung a U-turn, and when we slowed at the corner a group of Mexican teenagers looked at us expectantly. Cody pulled over to the curb.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He rolled down the window, and two brown-faced youngsters approached.
“Whatchu looking’ for, man?”
“How about a twenty bag of H?” Cody held a twenty-dollar bill between his fingers. In a second the bill was gone, and in Cody’s palm rested a small, tied-off ball of black plastic.
“Gracias,” Cody said, and hit the gas.
• • •
Our next stop was a place Cody described as “one of the only decent bars left in San Jose.” It was a stand-alone building, the sole structure on a street running next to the last remaining orchard in the valley. For years, both the city and private real estate developers had been trying to convince the owner of the seven-acre parcel to sell out. The land was worth tens of millions. It belonged to an eighty-eight-year-old man with no surviving family members. He had rejected all offers and had made public that his will specified the orchard be granted to an organization that would preserve it after he died.
When I was a kid, the bar had been called Gerhard’s Garden Room. It was a hardcore biker hangout, and the ABC eventually revoked its liquor license and forced the owners to sell out. A retired narco officer named Ed Schneider had bought the place and run it for the last fifteen years. It had been one of my favorite haunts back when I thought there was something noble and romantic about swilling whiskey until I blacked out.
The interior was as I remembered, fuzzy as those memories were. Ceiling fans turned lazily above the scarred tables. Dim yellow lights were set in the soffit over the bar. The room was square and lined with dart boards, neon beer signs, a jukebox, and an unlit pinball machine. The barstools were occupied by men huddled over drinks.
“Kitchen still open?” I asked Cody.
“Best burgers in town,” he said.
We waited for the bartender. She was a tall woman with sandy hair, tight shorts, and a T-shirt that looked as if the collar had been cut low with a pair of scissors. When she finished pouring drinks, she came to our end of the bar.
“Hi, Cody,” she said, smiling. Her face was peppered with freckles, her breasts long, her fingers yellow with nicotine. “Who’s your friend?”
“My partner, Dirty Dan. Dan, Lana.”
She looked at me with dancing eyes that plainly suggested she might be available for some backroom fun if I was inclined. “Hi, Dirty Dan. I didn’t know Cody had such good-looking friends.”
“He doesn’t. It’s an optical illusion,” I said, but felt my face growing red. I also felt an electric jolt in my groin and a nostalgic yearning over certain transgressions in my past.
“Forget it, Lana. He’s in a committed relationship,” Cody said. “Did I say that right?”
“So?” Lana smiled and put a finger on her lips.
“How about some grub?” Cody motioned at a whiteboard behind the bar. “Double cheeseburger for me and a basket of fries.”
“Single burger, no cheese,” I said. “Coleslaw, no fries.”
“And a pitcher of Bud,” Cody added.
/> She scrawled our order on a pad and stepped away with a wink and a swing of her hips.
“I got to take a leak,” Cody said, and walked off toward the back reaches of the room. I went to a table near the dartboards and dialed Candi’s number.
“Hi there,” she said. “I’m sorry I missed your calls.”
“I’m sorry I missed yours. How’s Houston?”
“Hot and dusty. Do you miss me?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What are you up to? Behaving yourself, I hope?”
“Yes, doll. Actually, I’m in San Jose with Cody. We’re working a case together.”
“A case? With Cody?”
“Uh-huh. Have you heard of Ryan Addison, the actor?”
“I think so. Why?”
“His daughter was attacked. He’s hired Cody and me to look into it.”
“Oh. Both of you?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” I said. “Very routine stuff. How are your parents?”
“They’re doing fine. They insist you come next time.”
“I promise I will.”
“Dan?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Be safe. Promise me that.”
“I promise.”
We hung up as Cody came back with the pitcher and took a seat. “Your old lady?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything copacetic?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“That’s good to hear.”
A woman’s laughter erupted from the bar, and we turned to look. In the light I caught a certain wistfulness on Cody’s profile. It took a long moment to pass, and I wondered about his quiet nights alone in his house or the hungover mornings waking up with someone like Lana. I wondered how long he would immerse himself in wild women and wanton violence as a salve to the emptiness in his heart. We were alike in many ways, except that my father had been taken from me, while his willingly abandoned him. But when my old man died, my mother was there for me. Cody’s was not—she was as absent as his father, and I knew for a fact that Cody had not spoken to either of his parents since he was forced from their home as a teenager.