'You know I followed you a few weeks ago.'
'Right. Several times'
'I was doing a job for the Carwood Family. They hired me to do a surveillance of Melanie's house. Suspected some brother was selling her information on the family's operations, and she was passing it on to Kim Soo.'
'Was she?'
'Not that I could see. But I saw you go in, so Roman hired me to follow you and see what I could learn. About what you were working on. No big deal, but you got him curious, and he likes to know. It seemed to me you were doing something on the Gnosties, but I couldn't be sure. I told him you were on to me, and he said let it cool.
'Not long after that I heard he had Melanie picked up, questioned her about stuff and let her go. No profit gettin' in a war with the Soong Family. And he never did say to get back on you. I figured maybe he found out what he wanted.'
'So what happened this morning?'
'I got a different car, and I'd been busy in Beverly Hills last night. You know how it is; a guy's got to make a living. And I was driving by your place of occupation and thought I'd stop a few minutes and see if you came out. If you did, I was going to follow you. See if you'd spot me this time.'
I stared at him. He was still spread, looking at me from the corner of his eye. It sounded unlikely as hell, him just happening to stop. He'd had no reason to expect me.
He must have read my mind. 'See!' he said. 'I told you you wouldn't believe me!'
The funny thing was, I decided I did. I didn't like him, didn't trust him. He'd tried to kill me twice, and come close. His first bullet would probably have hit either Tuuli or me, if it hadn't hit that iron railing. And apparently he'd spent last night burgling. But somehow I believed him.
And he'd been lucky for me that other time: His trying to kill me had given me the leverage I needed to complete the Ashkenazi murder case. I stepped back and lowered my gun. 'I believe you,' I told him. 'Just don't ask me why. But do us both a favor, O'Connell. Don't try me again.' Not that I'd have shot him there in cold blood, but he didn't know that.
He stared at me a couple of seconds, then nodded and got in his car. We both stood watching him, guns in our hands, as he jockeyed around and left, squeezing past Ernie's car.
Ernie looked at me. 'We should have looked in his luggage space,' he said. 'Then held him here till the police came. He's probably got a couple months' pay worth of loot in there.'
I nodded. That's what policy said we should have done. It's what the law would have us do. And it would have been a point for Prudential with the LAPD.
'I'll call them,' Ernie said.
'No,' I told him. 'Let him go.'
Ernie peered at me, then shrugged. I didn't know why I said what I had, and neither did he. But it seemed to me like the right thing to do.
29
PULLING THREADS
Carlos was in Ensenada for four days. It turned out that SVI occupied a rented floor of offices over a large clothing store. Across from it was a big furniture store with a warehouse upstairs, and Carlos managed to rent a dusty upstairs corner with two windows, pretty much screened from the rest of the loft by furniture. His cover was, he'd been hired by an absent partner in SVI, who wanted to know what went on across the street. Carlos dropped a vague hint that gun-running might be involved, but didn't make clear whether with or without the partner's approval. In any case, it could obviously be dangerous for the furniture store owner to snoop or talk.
The SVI offices seemed to be three good-sized rooms in front, with maybe two rooms and a lavatory in back. Masters' office was the smallest front room, located in a corner.
Carlos had already learned, through his PEF connection, that SVI also leased four hectares of land from a dairy farm twelve kilometers out of town. He drove past on the day they arrived. Mostly it was an equipment park. Either they didn't have a lot of equipment, or most of it was out; there was more than room to spare. It also had a big Plastosil shed where they maintained their ground- and aircraft, and maybe drilled their operations.
The farm buildings were a kilometer farther up the road, which was known as
The next day, Carlos and Miguel got up well before dawn and drove out the Pottery Road to a jeep trail Carlos had noticed the day before, maybe a kilometer short of the pottery and on the same side of the road. They drove back in out of sight and parked. Then they walked to the pottery, which was on a little slope, giving them a view of the equipment park and its shed.
They spent the morning watching, careful not to be seen themselves. At one point after daylight, Carlos nosed around in the building and noticed a sizeable but inconspicuous brown stain on the coarse concrete floor, pale from washing. Basically the stain existed in the pits in the concrete, and it could have been anything. Including old blood. He also noticed a mop in the restroom and, checking it out, found the mop strings stained pale brown. With his pocketknife, he trimmed about half an inch off the strings, and bagged the trimmings.
All they learned from watching the shed and equipment was that the four men there didn't have much to do, that day at least. A resonance scanner, aimed at a window of the shed's office, found them playing cards most of the morning. A skyvan came in at 10:25, carrying two men who left for town after giving instructions about a skytruck they'd be taking out that evening.
Back in town that afternoon, Carlos called his connection in Mexicali, and Miguel was able to pick up a kit from the PEF's Ensenada office for collecting samples of bloodstains—in this case from the pits in the concrete. He drove out again at dawn the next day and collected his sample as soon as it was light enough.
Between he and Miguel, they also got telephoto footage of people arriving at and leaving the SVI offices over two-plus days. And eavesdropped on conversations in Kelly Masters' office. Mostly what they heard didn't mean much to them because it lacked context. But they did hear Masters' half of a phone conversation with 'Dave.' Masters was interested in 'Seppanen,' with whom Dave worked. There was no doubt at all now that Steinhorn was part of SVI.
