“This is not just another one of your cases,” she said. “The sitting and waiting is killing me.” I hesitated too long for decisiveness to tip things in my favor. She asked, “Are you going to the Sandpiper?”
This was not unlike the effect of a body slam. “How do you know about the Sandpiper Motel? I said. “I just found out about it myself.”
She said, “I used to follow Allison when she was on the street.” I took a moment to imagine what that must have been like for a parent. She added, “I never stopped worrying about her safety.”
I asked, “You ever go in?”
“No,” she said.
“Allison ever know you followed her?” I said.
“I never tried to hide,” she said. “We never talked about it.”
“So,” I said, “Allison must have been stabled there along with the others run by Mister.”
“It operates like a consortium of pimps,” said Adrienne. “They each have their own territory. The prostitutes have circuits in their pimps’ territories.”
I said, “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
Adrienne said, “It wasn’t your business until now.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You turned off to us,” she said, “to me. I got that loud and clear. After the custody business, I figured I didn’t want to lose your friendship completely, so I played it close. You don’t know the half of it.”
What I thought I had done was to put some distance between us. I said, “I didn’t turn off to you.”
She waved me off and said, “I over-stepped the friendship. I had to make that right. I do not expect you to find my daughter’s killer while I sit safely at home. My mother’s agreed to stay on for as long as I need her. I’m free to do my share of the heavy lifting. I can take care of myself, and you know that.”
That cleared up what had concerned me about Adrienne’s having asked her mother to stay on. I rankled at the thought that I might have, as she had said, turned off to her. “I’ve got to find a guy known as The Russian,” I said.
“Stefan Reznikov,” said Adrienne.
And now The Russian had a name. Not only had I been worked over by Constance Davenport, I continued to be slammed by Adrienne, as well as being seduced by Grace, who was on the floor and walked, precariously, lurching from my outstretched hands to Adrienne’s. I said, “Maybe you should let me tag along with you sometime. I might actually learn something.”
“I know what he looks like,” she said. “He operates on the move out of a customized van. We stay dead into downtown long enough, we’ll spot it.”
If I stuck with a refusal to allow her to accompany me, my arrogance would have been a problem for both of us. “Let’s go,” I said.
Adrienne picked up Grace. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ve got to skate on some thin ice in the kitchen.”
I gave her a two-fingered salute off my brow. As soon as she left the room, I thought it best to wait in the car. I doubted anyone heard me open the front door, nor my pulling it quietly to after me. By the time I slid in behind the wheel at the curb, I had absorbed the fact that I was not running the show, as I liked to think I did. This time, I was merely one of the players. The motives of those even on my side had, indeed, become suspect, including my own.
Six
Business on the street was brisk in service to the after-work trade. Later, after dark, it would become robust in service to the multitudes on the prowl.
“What did you say to my mother?” said Adrienne.
“As little as possible,” I said.
“Anything I need to know?” she asked.
I had not yet decided to what extent I should intercede between mother and daughter, given Mrs. Davenport’s stunning performances at the restaurant and in Adrienne’s living room. That in addition to what Reed Thomas had dropped before he left town made me think I had better be politic about warning Adrienne against those with whom she had just re-established a connection. “Mothers will be mothers,” I said.
We headed south on Fannin, having just covered Main Street from the bottom of downtown at Elgin to the top by the bayou. We would head north again on Austin. Downtown was a grid of fairly straight streets which we had undertaken to cruise slowly first on the north-south axes and then the east-west.
Adrienne said, “I don’t think she liked the idea of my going out with you tonight.”
“Perhaps as I was initially,” I said, “she is concerned about your safety.”
“Maybe,” she said. Something didn’t sit right with her about it, and I decided to leave it alone to grow into whatever doubts might make themselves known. Better that way than...I told you so.
I was alert for the sighting of a black, Ford E150, customized van and kept my eyes moving in all directions via rearview and side view mirrors. I had perfected the art of vehicular trolling; I adopted a slow and steady speed that allowed me to glide through most, though not all, intersections on a green or yellow light. Go to a new city where the rhythms are different and you are held hostage to every traffic signal.
Moreover, in another city, a black van might hide in plain sight. While not unheard of in Houston, neither would it be common. Black is not an intelligent color for clothing, structure, or vehicle in the Bayou City, as it is a sponge to heat. It would be over an hour before dark. I had accepted that nothing would break until the sun had set. The temperature downtown strangely intensified after dark, when all that concrete began to release the accumulated heat from the long day’s absorption of sunlight. Dark of night, intense heat, and the unrelenting humidity in Houston tend to drive behavior.
At Elgin again, we took a left, and another at Austin and headed back up town, slow and steady. The sex trade was active and would remain on the move until dawn. The obvious ones, dressed for exposure, were easy to spot. Those who adopted roles began to show up on the radar after repeated passes―clean-cut twinks, uniformed catholic school girls, all American athletes, scouts, military, business suits, housewife drab―leather and ink were common commodities.
“I used to prowl these streets,” said Adrienne, “trying to find Allison.”
“And did you?” I said.
“Most of the time,” she said
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“It never got easy,” she said.
I asked, “Did she ever spot you?”
“Yes,” said Adrienne.
I said, “How did that play out?”
“She showed no shame,” she said. It was easy to come up with that image of Allison. “I finally had to stop,” added Adrienne. “There was no point.”
I pulled to the curb and pushed the gear-selector into the park position. Sometimes, when trolling, it felt right to let the current move past me instead of my constantly moving through it. A tap on the passenger door window startled Adrienne. A young Asian couple with spiked hair had crouched down and spoke through the glass. “Looking to party?” said the young man. I shook my head and waved them off. “She’s cute,” said the girl. They bounced down the sidewalk undiscouraged.
As dusk thickened, all available flesh turned up the provocative behavior proportionate to the liberating effect of diminishing light. Law enforcement was a presence, and whenever a cruiser passed by, the sidewalk sank into banal pedestrian traffic until the cruiser passed well beyond the field of play, at which point commerce returned, and quickened.
I spotted a black Ford E150 in the far left lane in the driver’s rearview mirror. “Hello,” I said.
Adrienne knew not to turn around. She adjusted the passenger’s rearview mirror. We watched without a word. I dropped the gear selector into the drive position and pulled away from the curb after the van had passed. It moved at the same speed as the flank of traffic in which it was embedded, giving the impression that it was the flag ship at the center of a huge convoy.
We hung back at the tail-end of the formation, the van being taller and more prominent than the vehicles surrounding it
. At the corner of West Gray, it maneuvered to the curb and―hesitated would be more correct than to say it had actually stopped―for a man in slacks and an open-collared shirt over a choker at his throat that had caught the light. He had dropped a cell phone into a pocket and had stepped up into the van that had paused only long enough for him to do so before pulling out into traffic and migrating once more to the flag ship position at the center of the flotilla. Smooth.
We followed on the periphery as it circled to the right in a six-square-block return to the same corner, where it slowed so the same fellow could step back down onto the curb, walk away from the drop-off as he retrieved the cell phone from his pocket. He was fit and trim, and wore his hair cropped close to his head, with plenty of scalp showing at the sides. I filed him away as being not young, not necessarily swarthy, and not white, though one does well to ask anymore―what the heck is white?
We picked up speed as we headed up Louisiana onto I-10 and then quickly onto I-45 North in thick freeway traffic for about twenty minutes, past the airport turn-off, to the 1960 Exit, where we headed east onto a heavily wooded boulevard of tattoo parlors, adult book stores, massage emporia, mobile home parks, and strip malls of convenience stores, nail studios, and pay-day loan establishments. No shortage of entrepreneurial spirit in these piney woods. You had to wonder if breathing the air in that zip code might taint a blood test into results requiring intra-venous penicillin.
“Allison worked up here for a while too,” said Adrienne. Her voice carried the punch-drunk thickness that accompanied acceptance of things unsavory.
I turned my head in her direction and said, “You followed her up here?”
She said, “Hunted for her would be more apt. This was before she was on the street down town. Those were dark days. She was dancing at a club located up here a couple of blocks down, off behind a fence topped with razor.” My imagination set a scene that made me cringe inside. “If there was in fact any dancing,” said Adrienne, “I’m sure a brass pole was involved.”
Brass would have elevated such a venue out of the level on which the surrounding businesses appeared to operate. Adrienne turned to meet my glance. With nothing more to say, I nodded and we both turned front again as the van up ahead prepared to turn left into a compound of RVs and mobile homes behind a fortress fence each slat of which was sharpened to a point on top. There was coiled wire above that. “Very much like this,” she said, “but up farther and more remote in the pines. This whole corridor is loaded with places like that. And this.”
“How were you able to find her?” I said.
“I had staked it out,” said Adrienne, “and waited. She was determined to ruin my ability to sleep at night, and I played into it with a need to see how far we had sunk.”
I turned right into a strip mall on the opposing side of the street, as the van waited for oncoming traffic to clear in order to make its left-hand-turn. The anchor to this row of establishments was a Quick Cash Trading Center which was, in fact, a pawn shop whose bounty of medical equipment was on display on the sidewalk; wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, oxygen tanks, motorized shopping carts, and adjustable hospital beds. Not sure I would want my life-support technology to have come from such surroundings. While we were not directly across from where the van was turning, we were close enough to monitor comings and goings and, it was hoped, remain inconspicuous to boot.
“What do you think that place is?” said Adrienne.
“A going concern,” I said, “with a need for security.”
A gate opened to receive the van and closed again as soon as the vehicle had cleared it. The power behind the gate was likely mechanical, as its movement was regular despite the terrain it covered being uneven. I had spotted several dogs loose on the premises through the opened gate. They were not lap dogs. “Okay,” I said, “what it’s saying to me is there is an operation here, maybe on the order of franchise, you know, satellite locations. Connected.”
“Cell phones,” said Adrienne.
“And computers,” I said.
“Not idiots,” said Adrienne.
“Orchestration, “I said.
“Coordination,” said Adrienne.
“So, let’s play with this,” I said, “while we wait. I’m going to go with an in-out turn-around on the van in terms of minutes. This beast is amorphous, constantly moving, shape-shifting.”
“Networked,” said Adrienne.
“Good word,” I said, “networked.”
“Connected,” repeated Adrienne. Connected, I repeated to myself. How connected? How big? “I keep cycling back to that guy with the cell phone,” continued Adrienne, “and the faultless way he turned and hopped up into the van, like he’d been talking with someone in the van to coordinate the pick-up.”
“We like that,” I said. “Good. So, perhaps everybody’s connected to the van.”
“Right,” said Adrienne.
“Very mobile,” I said. And suddenly there was Bumper in my mind again, and the moment parked in the dark behind the pickup truck wherein he’d had to make it look like he was providing curb service in something less than ten minutes…Never know who’s going to drive by.
Adrienne sensed my making connections and asked, “What?”
“The van,” I said, “it’s the hub. Head quarters. Command Center.”
She said, “The van?”
We both gazed at the gate up a ways and across the street.
“Like water down a drain,” I said.
Adrienne said, “Excuse me?”
“Most operations,” I said, “the frontline people, the drones, are brought to whoever wields the power―a status thing.”
“Chain of command,” said Adrienne.
“This Russian,” I said. “What if he has built his franchise in the opposite direction? He remains completely mobile, constantly on the move. He monitors the front lines. You never know when or where he might show up.”
“Everyone’s on their toes,” said Adrienne.
“Savvy,” I said. “Very savvy. You got the power, you don’t need the status.”
“He’s got to have a place somewhere,” said Adrienne.
“What if he doesn’t?” I said. “What if we have just been following his place?”
“He lives in the van?” said Adrienne. “I don’t know.”
“I’m liking it,” I said. “He’s everywhere. He is not stationary.”
After a minute, Adrienne asked, “Does he own the van?”
“He controls the van,” I said. “This guy is off the grid. He’s invisible.”
“Nice movie,” said Adrienne.
“It’s an idea,” I said. “We are nowhere without an idea. We would be paralyzed in a parking lot full of used medical equipment with no direction or momentum without an idea.”
Adrienne shook her head, chuckled, and asked, “You ever get carried away with this kind of thinking?”
I said, “It’s happened.” The gate opened and the van eased out onto the street and headed back toward I-45. “If the idea is going to dead-end,” I said, “let’s find it out sooner rather than later.” I allowed the van to assemble another convoy of vehicles around itself before moving out to resume the tail. Stasis, like all things, is good in moderation, but I never failed to thrive on the generative―the indefinable impulse that sparked forward movement.
The van headed south again, and when we passed under 610, the highway bypass around the city, where my native skills tended to be at their best, an outrageous gambit had fully galvanized, in my mind, into a plan.
The van made for the downtown area with dispatch and we ended up on Main Street. The light rail train had just passed us on its way south toward the Astrodome. The van pulled to the curb at McGowen long enough to eject two young ladies in scant skirts, with endless bare legs and stiletto heels, who were handed off to another fellow with a cell phone. He ushered them quickly into a crowd of pedestrians, and the van moved out again. We had been tailing it now for over an hour. �
��Unless those ladies have been inside that van since before we picked it up,” I said, “they were delivered to the street from the 1960 location.”
“I was just thinking about those dogs,” said Adrienne. “Allison did not like dogs, and she was afraid of big ones.”
“This interests me,” I said.
“Which is why it’s still the world’s oldest profession,” she said.
“Not the life,” I said, “the elegance of the operation.”
“Excuse me,” she said, “elegance?”
I said, “That vehicle has been on the move since we first spotted it. The longest it’s been stationary was waiting for that rolling gate to open, and even then I’m not sure it wasn’t slowly inching forward.”
Adrienne made an announcement, “He’s fortifying his Mountain to Mohammed theory.”
“We work it unless and until it derails,” I said. “So far so good.”
She said, “Feels like a stretch to me.”
“That’s why I generally prefer to work alone,” I said.
“So,” she went on, “you create a scenario and then disprove it.”
“I construct a possible mode of operation,” I said, “based on what little I see or have, and then I follow it to the end of the line.”
She offered, drolly, “CSI Laredo.”
“It’s what I’ve got,” I said.
“I thought this stuff was all DNA,” she said, “G-gnomes, and computers.”
“It is,” I said, “for those with means.”
“How can you compete?” she said.
I said, “I don’t?”
“How do you stay in business?” she asked.
“Imagination,” I said.
“Okay,” said Adrienne, “for the record, I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “It dead-ends more times than not. But it beats clueless without a paddle.”
“Still,” she said, “I am.”
I added, “Never was a big fan of stop.”
“I’m getting it now,” she said, “as to why you never were at home in the dojang.”
Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4) Page 4