“Not exactly.” She pushed her chair back from the table. “We’re going to go ahead and charge you with lying to the authorities at the checkpoint.”
“What?” I raised my voice, forgetting where I was for a moment. “But I cooperated!”
“Yes, you did. And I appreciate it very much. But this is a big case, Mr. Strait.” She nodded toward the folder. “It’s going to blow wide open today with media coverage and scandal rags sniffing around every bit of it. I’d prefer it if we keep any information about you and Miss Blaylock out of the press.”
“I’m not going to talk to anybody.”
“The press have their ways of finding things out. They’ll come at you unless you’re good and hidden. On top of that, I want to keep you around as a witness. If I let you walk out of here now, it’s not going to be so easy to find you again. Don’t worry, though. We’ll drop the charges in a couple of days—a week at the most—so you’ll come out of this fine.”
This didn’t appease me at all. Recalling the surprise I’d felt at finding out about the checkpoint, I told myself that breaking a ridiculous and probably unconstitutional law was something I could get out of if talked my way through it forcefully enough. “That whole thing with the checkpoint,” I said. “You can’t really do that, can you? Keep people out of this state?”
“Mr. Strait, I hate to tell you this, but we’re the LAPD. We can do anything we want to.”
She didn’t blink or smile as she said it. Just straight, serious delivery of an unvarnished truth. I tried another tack. “I’ve only got the room in the hotel for one more night. They’re going to toss my things or lock everything up if I’m not back there by tomorrow morning.”
She was unfazed. “I didn’t see much that could have been yours in that room, Mr. Strait. But if it makes you feel any better, when this is over, I’ll pay your overdue bill at the hotel myself. And if they’ve tossed your things, I’ll get you another beat up suitcase and…what else? A few pairs of socks?”
I nodded, seeing how it was going to go. She had all the cards right now. For the time being, I could do nothing but be dealt to.
Chapter Eight
She passed me off to uniform cops who booked and fingerprinted me. O’Neal must have neglected to tell them I was a special case, as they offered me my one phone call, which I didn’t take them up on. I could have called the press and made a stink, but I decided that would have been the wrong move. It would have made me more enemies than friends and would have gotten me more caught up in this mess than I already was. All I wanted was to bide my time and get back to looking for Annabelle.
They put in me in a cell after taking my belt and shoelaces. Then I waited. The boredom got to me pretty quickly. It was maybe three hours later—when I was in my eighty-fourth rotation of counting all the bars I could see in my cell door and the ones across the corridor—when a jailer came for me.
Hope welled up in me, as I thought that maybe they’d found Gemma and didn’t need me anymore, or that O’Neal had changed her mind for some other reason, but it was nothing like that. They walked me down corridors and through hallways and dropped me into a tiny courtroom with scarred benches and an ancient judge.
O’Neal, as arresting officer, was present. When the judge tried to set my bail at twenty bucks, O’Neal argued I was a flight risk and pushed for five hundred. This made me angry but I held it in. The judge scoffed at her request but must have seen her way of thinking, as he ended up putting a $75 price tag on my immediate freedom. O’Neal looked unhappy about it but left the little courtroom without a word.
As I was being taken back to my cell, I slipped into a mode of thinking that doesn’t usually plague me—regret. I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself, but I was wishing that I hadn’t been so stupid as to draw that star and triangle pattern on the stationery the night before. Sure, there was still a chance O’Neal would have hauled me in for safe keeping, but it might have been easier to talk my way out of it if we’d done the whole interview in my hotel room. And if the detectives hadn’t seen that symbol, they wouldn’t have had reason to think there was more to me than my story. There was nothing for it now, of course.
Still, the thought of my scribbling on that sheet of paper got me thinking about what else I’d written, and before my jailers had gotten me all the way back to my cell, I had an idea.
“Can I still get that phone call?” I asked.
“You didn’t already get it?” said one of my escorts.
“It was offered, but I didn’t take it. Now I’d like it if that’s still possible.”
The guards consulted each other. One shrugged. I took that as a good sign. A few minutes later, I was back in the booking room, a phone in my hand.
I called the operator and asked for the number for Garcia Industries.
The phone rang four times before anyone picked it up.
“Bueno?” said a gruff voice on the other end. It wasn’t the professional sounding secretary I’d been expecting. And I didn’t know how to respond to what I’d just heard.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but is this Garcia Industries?”
“Garcia Industries?” the gruff voice returned. It sounded like I was talking to an old man. “Yes, I suppose. Who is this?”
You suppose? I wanted to ask, but I kept the question to myself.
“My name is Jed Strait, sir,” I said instead, trying to sound as professional as possible. “Is there someone there I could talk to about possibly purchasing an item that I think came from your factory?”
“Que?”
I narrowed my eyes, still wondering if I’d been given the right number. “Sir, I’ve come into possession of something your factory produced, and…well, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d want loose out in the marketplace just yet if you know what I mean. I was hoping someone there would be able to buy it back from me.”
Only silence answered me for several seconds. Then the man said, “What kind of thing are you talking about, mister…what was your name?”
“Strait. And it’s, uh…” I looked around, wanting to make sure no cops were within easy earshot. “It looks like a weapon, sir. But it doesn’t act like any weapon that I’ve ever been around.”
“You found my gun!” he said, and the gruffness evaporated as high-pitched excitement took over his voice. “And Carmelita?”
“Excuse me? I don’t know any Carmelita, sir.” This was a new ingredient in the confusion cocktail I was drinking, but at least I knew now that I had someone on the line who knew what I was talking about. “But, yes, I do have that item you just mentioned.”
“And you want money for it?”
“Well…it’s like this. It’s not that I want the money. It’s more a question of need.”
“How much?”
“Seventy-five dollars, sir. I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need at least that much to get out of it.”
“Seventy-five,” he said. “I’ll have to call you back.”
“I’m afraid I can’t be reached that easily. You see, the money is for my bail. I’m in the jail at police headquarters downtown.”
“You want me to bail you out?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded incredulous.
“Or…wire me the money somehow.”
There was a long silence, then, “Let me think about it.”
I was afraid he was about to hang up. “Wait!” I said. “I’m not going to be able to make another call.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Strait,” I said. “Jed Strait.” Then I spelled out my last name for good measure.
“All right, Señor Strait. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay. Uh…I don’t even know who I’m speaking to. Are you the one who makes these kinds of decisions?”
“I am,” he said. “My name is Guillermo Garcia.”
I was still picturing a massive manufacturing plant with a glassed-in office where the boss man made important calls. “Are you the…man in charge?” I asked
.
“You could say that,” he said. Then the line clicked off.
* * * * *
More than four hours passed before the guards came to get me from my cell. More walks down long hallways followed, and eventually I made it to a desk where I was given back my wallet and papers, my belt and shoelaces. There were papers to sign, and then they showed me the door. I walked out a free man, at least for now. My assumption was that O’Neal had no idea I’d made bail. If she’d known, I was sure she’d have done something to put the brakes on the wheels of justice. The downside, of course, was that once she found out I’d slipped out of her grasp, she’d probably renege on the promise of dropping the charges against me. When all was said and done, I might still end up in jail or with a stiff fine; I might even be escorted to the state’s eastern border and told not to come back. Any of those punishments would be okay with me as long as I had a little window of time to look for Annabelle, and that was what Guillermo Garcia had just bought me.
The sun had set by this time, and the man from Garcia Industries waited for me on the brightly lit stairs outside of police headquarters, a man older and stouter than I’d imagined a manufacturing magnate to be. Probably pushing eighty, he had thick white hair and lots of smile lines around his eyes. He had a little white mustache, and two pairs of glasses hung from cords around his neck. His general appearance and laborer’s clothes made me wonder if I’d really gotten the man in charge of making decisions at Garcia Industries, and when he shook my hand his firm grip and stony callouses made me seriously doubt his status as an executive.
“Mr. Strait,” he said, his face cracking into a smile.
“Mr. Garcia,” I responded. “Thank you for agreeing to do this. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“It’s all right as long as it works out for both of us, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then I guess it’s a bargain for me…even though I had to stand in line to get the money out of the bank. And I lost some time on my projects, but…if I can get my gun back, that’s something, yes?”
His mentioning the gun here on the steps of police headquarters made me look around to see if we’d been overheard. It was dusk, and though there were a few people around on the steps of the building, none wore blue uniforms. Even so, I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, imagining O’Neal getting the news that I’d made bail and racing out the doors to re-arrest me on some other charge. Being in possession of the weird little gun might be enough.
“Yes,” I said. “But maybe we should talk about that somewhere else.”
“You’ll take me to it now?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Let’s go.”
He had parked on the street half a block away. I told myself not to expect anything fancy; given his clothes and mannerisms, I had come to reevaluate the man’s status at Garcia Industries and figured he wouldn’t be driving the kind of flashy vehicle that might suit an executive. When he stopped walking, though, I couldn’t help being surprised, my conscious lowering of expectations not having been sufficient. He went around to the driver’s side of an old Patterson pick-up truck, something from the early thirties that looked barely held together. The Meteor I’d wrecked in the desert would have given the Patterson good competition if one were comparing disasters on wheels. The windshield was cracked and the fenders rusted; there were holes in the running board on the passenger side. Piled in the back of the truck were an assortment of tools and boxes, spools of thick insulated wire, and what looked like a heavy-duty fishing pole. The old man pushed the passenger door open from the inside, and when I pulled on the handle the hinges gave a terrible squeak.
He laughed a little as I got in. “This old truck doesn’t look like much,” he said as I pulled the door shut, having to slam it three times before the latch caught. “But listen.”
He turned the key and the diesel kicked over. It ran so smoothly that I thought for a moment the engine had failed. But then the old man put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb, and I had to reevaluate him one more time.
“Impressive,” I said.
“Si,” he said and patted the dashboard affectionately. “Where are we going, Mr. Strait?”
“You can call me Jed. And we need to go down Hill Street. I think it’s behind us.”
“That’s right.” He threw a U-turn in the middle of the street, seemingly without pausing to check for oncoming traffic. “And you can call me Guillermo, by the way,” he added.
“Thank you. I don’t mean to sound rude, but are you really the man in charge at Garcia Industries?”
“Me? Of course. Who else?”
“I don’t know. I just thought…”
The old truck made a sharp turn onto Hill.
“Don’t let the Garcia Industries thing fool you,” he said. “I’m a one-man operation.”
“Ah,” I said. The possibility had not occurred to me, so sure had I been that something as unheard of as a gun that didn’t shoot anything but—what? energy?—had to come from a major manufacturing outfit. But here was this old man in his battered pick-up telling me that he was Garcia Industries, end of story. I immediately felt guilty about having put the touch to him for the bail money. If he wasn’t using profits from his business to do things like maintain this truck, then he probably couldn’t have afforded the seventy-five dollars.
“So, how did you come to possess my gun?” he asked as the truck rolled almost silently down Hill Street toward Pershing Square.
“Well, it was in a car that gave me a ride into town. When the driver let me out—”
Guillermo interrupted me, asking, “What are the chances we’re being followed?”
“Followed?” I turned in my seat to look out the rear window, but it was difficult to tell what vehicle might be behind the Patterson with all the junk piled in its bed, blocking my view. “I don’t think anyone would be following us. Why?”
“Car pulled out when we did. Made a U the same as us. And turned down Hill, too.”
I craned my neck to look past the truck’s cargo and was able to make out headlights not too far back. “Can you tell what kind of car?”
“No. Just round headlights.”
“Do Peregrines have round headlights?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Yes, but so do lots of others. Why a Peregrine?”
“The cops who pulled me in were driving one.”
“They want something else from you?”
He didn’t sound suspicious, the way I would have sounded if someone had just dragged me into this mess and then seemed like they were going to get hauled back into jail again—maybe taking me with them this time. No, the smile the old man had worn when he’d met me on the steps hadn’t faded, despite the insertion of drama into our drive.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
The truck stopped at a light and the tail car got pretty close. The headlights shining at us eliminated whatever view I might have had of the driver.
“Where are we going?” Guillermo asked.
“The Hotel Dorado. It’s just a couple more blocks.”
“And when we get there, I park. You go up and come back down with the gun. Or I go up with you and come back. Do the police pull me over and search for it?”
“I can’t imagine why. They’ve got nothing on you, no reason to do that.”
“Cops in this town…they don’t need a reason.”
The light turned green, and the Patterson rolled forward.
“Point taken,” I said. “Is that gun of yours illegal?”
“Not exactly.”
“And not exactly legal either, though. Is that right?”
“You could say.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t stop at the hotel. Not right away. Could we go someplace and talk for a bit? Wait them out?”
The old man shrugged. “I guess.”
He turned off Hill without seeming to have given the maneuver a second thought. I looked back to see if th
e tail car followed but couldn’t tell with my limited view. Guillermo could see better with his mirrors. “Did they follow?” I asked.
“Si.”
I let out a long breath. “I don’t want to drag you into anything here. Maybe you should pull over and let me out. If they’re going to grab me up again, let them do it out here on the street. That way your gun isn’t involved, and neither are you.”
“But I want the gun back. And there’s a few other things I want to ask you about. We stick together for now, I think.”
“If you’re sure,” I said. “Where should we go?”
“We’ll go back to my place. They won’t get you there. Not without a warrant.”
“You think they’ll stick to the law on that?”
“We’ll find out.”
The truck soon left the tall buildings of downtown behind, and in a few minutes, we were driving along a less traveled road with no streetlights.
“Is he still back there?” I asked.
“Farther back,” Guillermo answered. “He’s keeping an eye on us.”
At the base of a hill, he turned off the road onto a narrower street and kept going into the darkness. I could see we were in a little neighborhood with small houses dotting the land and emerging out of the gloom. There was a bump after a few hundred feet, and I could tell the road was no longer paved.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked, not trying to hide the doubt in my voice.
“Chavez Ravine,” he said. Then he pointed into the darkness. “My place is just over there.”
He parked the Patterson in a narrow gravel driveway that was no longer than the truck’s body. As he pulled in, the pick-up’s headlights illuminated a small house behind a stout rock wall, and beyond the house was a little outbuilding with a hand painted sign on the wall that faced the street. It read “Garcia Industries.”
“That’s Garcia Industries?” I asked as he shut off the engine and the headlights.
“Si,” he said, opening his door. “My little empire.”
He was right about it being little. I had to work the passenger side door handle a few times before the rusty mechanism gave up its hold on the truck’s frame, and then I had to put my shoulder into it before the door moved on its hinges with a terrible groan. But then I was out and following Guillermo through an opening in the rock wall and up a dirt path to the outbuilding. I glanced back once but could not see the tail car.
The Blacktop Blues: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 1) Page 9