I soon forgot about Alice and the morgue as I thought about Kay’s corpse airlifted to Switzerland. The move implied the Shop. Did the Chief first ship the body to Geneva so he could later send it by train to Milan? It looked like the Chief was one step ahead of me.
Why hide the body?
If Kay had new abilities, if her corpse showed those abilities, that was reason to hide it. It made me wonder if the Shop or Polarity Magnetics had tried to recreate the accident in Geneva. Were they attempting to make more…super-people? It was looking more and more likely.
The heat coming off the street and the pollution stinging my nose made me power up the window. It was hotter in Long Beach than in San Francisco, much more than the four hundred miles should have warranted. One of the things I loved about the Bay Area was its cooler summer weather. Mark Twain had said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” The nearly constant breeze in Frisco swept away the pollution better than here.
As I cruised through the streets, I noticed that the women here showed more skin. Many wore pink or white shorts and had ultra-tanned legs. Everyone wore sunglasses, so I fit in perfectly. Well, maybe not perfectly. I passed some used car lots and noticed names like Hernandez and Reyes. There were more taco shops than burger joints.
It was midmorning already and I passed lowriders with mariachi music blaring, or rap with its rhythmic drone. The colors were brighter in Long Beach, the shops a bit more rundown like a Latin American country. Too many had iron bars over the windows. As compensation, perhaps, the faces were friendlier and there was a sense of life. The graffiti on various walls was stylish and often artistic. Sometimes, however, it reminded me of a bear scratching a territorial tree in the woods.
My cell buzzed. I looked around to see if there were any cops. Finding none, I took it out, checked and answered.
“How goes it, Blake?”
“Good enough,” he said. “The police were cooperative; they answered all my questions.”
Maybe I should have let him handle Alice. “Did you learn anything interesting?” I asked.
“Everything happened just as the newspaper described it,” Blake said. “It was strictly by the numbers.”
I frowned. “Were the police lying to you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“They were hiding something?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Do you know what?”
“No.”
“They weren’t cooperative then,” I said.
“They answered all my questions.”
“With lies,” I said.
“No. I’m sure they laced the lies with the truth, which is quite different from lying outright.”
“Sure,” I said. Why had the cops lied to Blake? Had the Chief pulled some strings?
“The one bright spot is that I did discover the witness to Kay’s death,” Blake said. “Mr. Juan Ortega told the police he heard a squeal of tires and the thud of the car’s impact. It seems Mr. Ortega had just left a movie theater with his wife. He works at a Midas shop on Hunter Street.”
“Do you have the address?”
Blake rattled it off.
I told him what I’d learned at the morgue.
“Switzerland?” he asked.
“I want you to go to the airport and check out the story,” I said. “I’ll speak with Mr. Ortega.”
“Give me that information again,” he said.
I took out my recorder, pressed play and shoved the speaker against the cell phone.
“Got it,” Blake said when I came back on. “Talk to you later.”
“Be careful,” I said.
He paused. “Is there any reason I should worry?”
“I don’t know. This shipping to Switzerland—just be careful.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I will. Talk to you later.”
“Later,” I said. Then I began searching for Hunter Street.
-9-
After taking a wrong turn and detouring too far because of several one-way streets, I pulled into a Midas parking lot.
I heard the whirl of a pneumatic wrench. A blue Mustang in the shop was up on a lift as a mechanic rotated its tires. Oil, gas and grease mingled in a familiar odor, one that always reminded me of Afghanistan and military truck parks where I’d spent too much of my life waiting.
I asked for Juan Ortega.
The mechanic grunted as he yanked the tire and let it drop, controlling the bounce and then rolling it to the front. He let the tire plop onto its side, wiped his oil-stained hands with a rag and stared at me.
“Juan Ortega,” I said.
He shrugged and turned away.
I looked around and spied a beefy man with a Pancho Villa mustache and ponytail. He wore a blue Midas shirt with the name “Ortega” on the front.
“Juan Ortega?” I asked, as I approached.
He nodded curtly.
I held out my hand. He hesitated and then shook hands. He was shorter than I was by a couple inches, in his thirties and had a weightlifter’s arms and chest.
“I’m Gavin Kiel,” I said. “I was a friend of the…of the dead woman.”
His manner cooled so it almost became outright hostility.
I took off my sunglasses, wondering if that had made me too standoffish. I had to squint because of the bright light, even though we were in the depths of the Midas Shop.
“I already told you people all I know,” Ortega said in heavily accented English. “Next time I just walk away.”
“I’m not with the police.”
He sneered. “Polarity Magnetics, I know,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m from San Francisco. I read about Kay’s death yesterday and came as quickly as I could. We were friends, close friends. She came to me a week ago, in some kind of trouble. Now she’s dead.”
Juan Ortega searched my eyes and his frown deepened. It made him seem villainous. He glanced around the shop and then nodded, indicating I should come with him.
We passed a gray-haired mechanic clattering sockets in his giant red toolbox. He glanced at Ortega, at me and with a jingle of metal opened a drawer. I followed Ortega through a door into the reception area where a fan rotated lazily overhead and then followed him into an office, his probably.
As he turned around, sitting on the corner of his desk, I noticed the pictures on the wall. Several were of him and a pretty, dark-haired woman in a lowrider convertible. One showed him as a young Marine with others just like him. They held M-16s and pistols. I knew the background of the picture all too well, big familiar mountains.
“You were in Afghanistan?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow and turned around, glancing over his shoulder at the picture. “Marines,” he said.
“Tough hombres,” I said.
His squint tightened. “You?”
“Green Beret.”
“Almost as tough as Marines,” he said.
I laughed, nodding.
He breathed through his nose and he studied me a third time. “You were in Afghanistan?”
“In the Khasra Region during the Holy Prayer attacks.”
“That was before my time, but I heard about them.” He cocked his head. “Did they really skin our soldiers like the stories said?”
“It was a grim time.” The way he watched me, it seemed he wanted details. “A very nasty time,” I said. “Tribesmen slit the belly of a soldier and peeled until they tied the skin over his head. It was my bad luck to see their handiwork twice.”
“You pay them bastards back?” he asked.
“Unofficially?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“We pinpointed the particular tribe. Then we brought cash, had a midnight talk with the village chief and showed him the greenbacks. Trouble was, the money didn’t work.” I shrugged, remembering. That had been a bitter time and very nasty. “We used option B to get him to talk. Later, we found the three culprits, the three who did the skinning. We paid them back all right in a coin they would understand.” It still gave me nightmares what we had done to them.
Juan Ortega gave me a hard smile. Too many on our A-Team had been like that. They had definitely been men any sane person would not want to cross. I think my time with the Shop had burned some of that hardness out of me. It cost a lot to be tough like that. It dries out the soul.
“Polarity Magnetics was interested in your friend,” Ortega said. “They send a man to ask me questions. He asked too much, fanned some bills in my face and then made threats. I told him go to Hell. I tell you the same thing if I think you lying to me.”
“Fair enough.”
“The newspaper said I work at Midas on Hunter Street. I don’t work here. I
own
the shop. You understand?”
“Yes.”
His nostrils flared. “I watch the latest Tom Cruise film with my woman. It’s in Spanish on Center Street. I liked the movie, although my woman don’t care for his smile. Cruise think too highly of himself.” Ortega shrugged. “The movie was over and we come out last. I like to watch all the credits, see who did what. I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I’m not sure what I saw. But then somebody jumps out from between two parked cars. There’s a squeal and a thud. It’s the kind of sound you know someone is hit. The first thing I think is, ‘Oh no, my wife is pregnant. I don’t want her to hear someone die.’ Then I hear a scream. You know what I do?”
I shook my head.
“I pull out my cell and call 9-1-1. The operator says she knows all about the accident, that I’m the third person to call. There were people out there, but I didn’t see anyone else with cell phones. It doesn’t matter. That happened to me before on the freeway. I see a car wreck right in front of me. I call 9-1-1 right away, but I’m the second person the operator tells me. How can people phone so fast? Are they waiting for an accident to happen?”
“Did you notice anything strange?”
Ortega studied me. “I heard another scream. It was the man driving the laundry trunk. He jumped out. Then he was vomiting, probably sick at killing someone. I see that happen in Afghanistan. I bet you have too.”
I nodded.
“I wanted to get my woman out of there. It couldn’t be good for the baby in her. But she grabs my arm and says, ‘Juan, we have to help.’ So, we hurried over. There’s a crowd just like in high school during a fight. Everyone is staring. I bull through and kneel by the woman. She was hit bad, with blood everywhere, and her legs sticking at the wrong angles. Then I see she’s blinking, her mouth trying to work. I lean my head over her mouth. She says something like ‘ark’ or ‘arse.’ I’m not trying to be crude.”
“No offense taken, Mr. Ortega. I’m grateful for you remembering so well.”
“The police didn’t care about any last words from her. They just wanted to know what I saw. The one I talk too had an arrogant attitude, reminded me of one colonel I know in the Marines.” Ortega’s eyes tightened, giving him that villainous look again. “She was still alive, struggling to breathe when the ambulance came.”
“Do you think she ran into traffic?” I asked.
“What else?”
“Nobody pushed her?”
“From between parked cars?” He shook his head. “I would have seen someone running away, or someone would have seen that.”
“Was she crouching down there, do you think? Waiting for the right time to leap in front a car?”
He shrugged.
I glanced at the Marine picture again. According to Ortega, Kay had still been alive after the laundry truck had hit her. “How fast do you think the truck was going?”
“Twenty, twenty-five, I’m not sure.”
“Mr. Ortega, you’ve been very helpful. Do think it’s possible to show me where it happened?”
“That’s on Center Street.”
“I realize it’s an inconvenience.”
A wary look entered his eyes. I might almost have said fear, but Juan Ortega didn’t look like the type that scared easily.
“What do you know about Polarity Magnetics?” he asked.
“Kay—my friend worked for them. They’re into government contracts, maybe military.”
“The bastard threatened me,” Ortega said. Then he grinned so his Pancho Villa mustache suited him. “Yeah, I’ll show you, but you’ve have to wait until lunchtime.”
“No problem.”
“I don’t like to be threatened.”
“You’re a Marine,” I said.
The slightest grin showed. “Semper Fi,” he said, his way of telling me Marines were the best in the world. He thumped himself on the chest to prove it.
***
I drove him later after he had finished a huge burrito and beer.
“Your car needs new brakes,” he said as they squealed at a stoplight.
“It’s a rental.”
“It still needs new brakes,” he said.
I followed his directions and we soon parked on Center Street near the movie theater, El Toro Grande. The block had old buildings from the Forties, two under renovation, with their crews finishing lunch. As we walked past the buildings, I smelled the fresh sawdust and saw piles of two-by-fours and plywood sheets inside. It was a typical dying, downtown Californian shopping area. One the city planners had decided to try to breathe some life back into it. There were red cobblestones instead of cement sidewalks and there were freshly painted trash receptacles. I spotted a Sanchez Jewelers, a shoe store and tucked away between them a small comic-and-used-video-game store.
We slammed our car doors shut and walked under old palm trees.
“I came out over there,” Ortega said, pointing at the theater.
A teenager with his pants hanging lower than seemed reasonable had a bucket and squeegee. He was washing the marquee glass, where Tom Cruise grinned at us with his trademark smile. The words were all in Spanish. By the looks, El Toro Grande ran four movies at a time.
“It was dark,” Ortega said. “That light is broken.” He pointed at a streetlamp, an old towering kind. Somehow, it had failed to be renovated. Or maybe the city council hadn’t gotten around to paying for lights yet.
“That’s right,” Ortega said, nodding to himself. “The cars were parked under that broken light. So it was even darker there.”
We approach the lamp. There were meters, with several cars and a motorcycle parked in the slots. The motorcycle’s meter showed red, but the police hadn’t ticketed him yet. The vehicles were parked diagonally, not parallel, giving more hidden area between them and ensuring more dings over time from car doors opened too far.
“There’s where she was hit,” Ortega said.
I glanced both ways and waited until a truck carrying lumber revved past. Then I walked out and squatted on the street, with Ortega beside me.
“Right here,” he said, squatting beside me, patting the blacktop.
I squinted behind my sunglasses and spied darker spots. I rubbed one and sniffed my finger. It smelled like oil.
“Look out,” Ortega said, standing. He grabbed my shoulder and tugged, and his eyebrows lifted when I didn’t budge.
I finally got the idea and hurried back as traffic advanced toward us.
“You must be all muscle.” Ortega flicked his hand against my arm. “You’re heavier than you look. What do you weigh?”
I ignored his question. “Did she stumble out from between these two parking spots?” I asked.
Ortega frowned, glanced at the movie theater, up at the broken light and nodded.
“No one hurried away?” I asked.
“I wasn’t looking for that.”
“Did anything strike you as unusual?”
“What are you hunting for?” he asked.
“I’m just trying to help jog your memory,” I said. “We all see more than we realize. I know you know that. It’s something your drill instructors probably taught you.”
“There is one thing,” he said, looking angry. “I’ll tell you, but you’re probably not going to believe me.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I try to tell the police about it and he never believe me.”
“What did you see?”
Ortega kept scowling as he said, “The car that had been right here on that night was big like a lowrider, but it was a limo. I noticed because I’m always fixing up big cars at home. My wife kept tugging my arm, distracting me. But I realized it was a foreign job, Mercedes Benz. When I ran to the girl, I tripped. My foot kicked against the tire. That tire was rock solid.”
“A lot of air pressure?”
Ortega shook his head. “I used to drive a colonel around in Afghanistan. He was a cold man. He never yelled. He just stared right through you, made you nervous, your palms sweaty. I hated him. He was a cold stone killer if ever there was one. So, even though I hated him, I admired him. Know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“I was the best driver in our unit. We had a heavy-duty car the colonel liked to drive around, ride around in. He never drove. It had reinforced tires, special armor plating and plate glass for the windows you wouldn’t believe. The tire I accidently kicked the other night, it was just like the colonel’s car. It was bulletproof.”
“Just the tire?” I asked.