The Boys from Santa Cruz

Asmador had to wait a few seconds for Epstein’s car to pull away, then followed it at a discreet distance until it disappeared into the maw of a basement parking garage on Buchanan Street, with a sign that read PARKING BY PERMIT ONLY. Seeing no empty parking spots on either side of Buchanan, Asmador turned right into the Safeway lot and parked the Beemer head-on in an angled stall directly across the street from the underground ramp. Then he settled back to watch and wait, his hands folded across his chest and his eyes half-closed.

One hour later, almost to the minute, spotting the white-on-white grille of the Buick emerging from the darkness of the exit ramp across the street, Asmador starts up his engine, throws the Beemer into reverse-and nearly backs into some old beater of a Chevy that’s blocking him in. He jams on the brakes, hits the horn, sticks his head out the window. “Out of my way! Get out of my way!”

The driver, a forty-something female, smiles and holds up a polite wait-a-sec finger, points to the car backing out in front of her. Meanwhile the Buick is turning left on Buchanan, heading toward the bay. Asmador sounds the horn. The woman gives him a helpless what-can-I-do? shrug. Asmador pounds the steering wheel in frustration as the Buick turns left again onto Marina Boulevard.

When the way finally clears, Asmador burns rubber backing out. But when he reaches the Marina Green, the Buick is nowhere in sight, so he buys a Croissan’wich and coffee at the drive-thru window of the Burger King on Bay Street, then returns to Francisco, parks across the street from Epstein’s building, and settles in for what he expects will be another long wait.

But only a few minutes later, a Hispanic-looking woman in a green maid’s uniform shows up on Epstein’s doorstep and lets herself in with a key. Asmador gobbles down the rest of his Croissan’wich, then slips the gun, with the safety off and a round in the firing chamber, into the back of his jeans before crossing the street and ringing Epstein’s doorbell.

“Jess?” says the cleaning woman, opening the door.

Only nine days ago, Asmador had found himself stammering helplessly at the grandparents’ door, unable to remember the little speech he’d memorized. When the old man tried to slam the door in his face, he’d had to bull his way in and kill them both immediately to keep them from calling for help. And even though the vultures had eventually feasted, or at least snacked, on their bodies, all in all, the Council had not been pleased.

And only two days ago, although Asmador had successfully memorized the speech he’d prepared for his meeting with Judge Brobauer, his delivery had been so awkward it had alerted both the old man and his caddy.

But somehow, in the intervening forty-eight hours, Asmador’s communication skills have improved exponentially. “Hello there. Hola! I’m an old friend of Mr. Epstein-he said it’d be okay if I wait for him here until he gets back.” Without waiting for an answer, he shoulders his way past her into the hallway, baring his teeth in what is intended to be a reassuring smile. “It’ll be all right, I promise. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Hokay, but joo wait here. I call Mr. Skeep, tell heeng joo here.”

“Actually, I was hoping to surprise him.”

“Surprise heeng?” the woman parrots uncomprehendingly.

“Yeah, you know, like this.” Asmador draws the.38 from behind his back and shoots her twice, once in the chest as she backs away with both hands raised, and again in the head as her body lies twitching on the hardwood floor.

3

Pender’s early morning flight from Dulles to San Francisco was three-quarters empty, so flying coach was not the ordeal it might have been, and the landing went smoothly enough. The rent-a-car, however, turned out to be a generic white Toyota with all the legroom and power of a bumper car, and there wasn’t much in the way of scenery at first-Highway 101 was mostly industrial parks and shopping malls all the way from San Francisco to San Jose.

It wasn’t until he’d turned off onto Highway 17, a dappled, winding, two-lane mountain road lined with sharp-smelling eucalyptus and towering redwoods, that Pender felt he was really back in California. From 17, he followed a succession of narrow, winding roads that plunged deeper and deeper into the Santa Cruz Mountains, and as brightest noon turned to dusk in the canyons, Pender was forcibly reminded that it was in these dark and brooding hills that Kemper, Mullin, and Frazier had plied their bloody trade.

As it turned out, Pender could have saved himself the trip. There was nothing left of Meadows Road but a gatehouse at the bottom of the steep, narrow driveway and a vast, debris-filled hole in the ground at the top, currently being excavated by two scurrying backhoes and a queue of patient dump trucks.

But having come this far, Pender was determined to make the best of it. After parking the Toyota on the far side of the hole, next to a makeshift chainlink construction fence, he loosened his tie, took off his tomato-soup- colored sport jacket, and draped it across the back of the front passenger seat, then set out to explore the periphery of the blast, dime-store pocket notebook and tooth-marked pencil stub in hand.

The first thing he noticed was that the trees on the edge of the woods, some twenty yards from the edge of the building’s footprint, had either been stripped and scorched on the side facing the blast, or leveled entirely. Hard to believe anyone could have lived through that son of a bitch.

Yet many had. Was Little Luke one of them? If so, how had he managed to get away without anyone noticing? Of course, it must have been a real clusterfuck here after the explosion…

While Pender’s mind nattered on, his Hush Puppies carried him into the woods. Nearly two and a half weeks after the fire, there was still a light dusting of ash on some of the bushes. Behind this tame woodland loomed a forbidding-looking stone fence some ten feet high, topped with electrified wire. Pender jotted down a note, “Elec. fence: juice?” to remind himself to inquire whether the power had been knocked out immediately after the explosion, thereby making the fence, if not inviting, at least climbable.

Unless of course the juice was supplied at the gatehouse, and the gatehouse juice was on a separate line from the hospital. “Pwr source?” he wrote. Then, “Auto theft?” meaning that if Little Luke had gotten over the wall, it would be nice to know if any cars had been stolen within hiking distance of the hospital that day.

And so question led to question until Pender had filled a page of the notebook with one- or two-word entries. When he got back to his car, there was a late-model, white-on-white Buick parked next to it. A lanky guy with faded reddish brown hair leaned against the side of the Buick, surveying the ruins.

“Hey, how’s it going?” called Pender.

The guy gave him a wary nod. Suddenly Pender realized that with his jacket off, his shoulder holster was in plain sight. So much for staying undercover, he thought, sticking out his hand and smiling unthreateningly as he approached the other man.

“Ed Pender, FBI.”

“Epstein. Skip Epstein.”

Epstein waited for Pender to reach him, rather than coming forward to meet him halfway. Glancing downward as they shook hands, Pender noted the mismatched legs and built-up shoe. “Quite a mess,” he said, gesturing to the obscenely empty hole.

“No shit,” said Epstein.

“You here on business, or just having a look-see?”

“Little of both.”

“Meaning…?”

Epstein sighed. “I’m a licensed private investigator,” he said wearily, as if he were gearing up for a hassle.

But a hassle was the last thing Pender, who taught a daylong course in the art of affective interviewing at the Academy every year, had in mind. “Cool,” he said, in the vernacular of the natives. “Are you on a case?”

“A client asked me to look into a recent kidnapping in Pebble Beach.”

Pender’s turn to sigh. “Pebble Beach!” he said, in the same tone of voice Homer Simpson reserved for the word doughnuts.