“Not yet. I gotta go, Starkey. Thanks.”
“Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Gotta go.”
The three officers came out to their car as I put away the phone. I thought they would bring one or more of the brothers in handcuffs, but the brothers stayed in the office. Twelve minutes later, the youngest brother, James, came out, mounted a motorcycle parked beside the office, and buzzed through the gate. Eight minutes later, Eddie and Rudy Junior came out together, but went to separate cars. Eddie drove away first. Rudy J eased through the gate, but stopped in the street, pulled the gate closed, and locked it with a padlock. By the time he locked the gate and got back into his car, I pulled around the side of the taco stand, and turned out behind him.
Three-quarters of a mile later, Rudy Sanchez Junior pulled into the Ralphs where Pike had waited for me. Coincidence.
He was out of his car and heading inside when I pulled up alongside him.
“Get in.”
He started around me, so I tapped the gas, cutting him off.
“I’ll be here when you come out, Rudy. Get in.”
“I’m not getting in there with you.”
“All we’re going to do is talk.”
He started the other way, but I squeaked the rear end, cutting him off again.
“Talk, Rudy. I’m not going to lump up your face or arrest you. I might be able to help.”
He studied me.
“You’re not a federal agent?”
“I’m looking for Krista Morales.”
“I don’t know who she is.”
“That’s okay. It’s enough that I know. C’mon. Get in the car.”
Rudy stared at me for five heartbeats, then walked around the front of my car and got in. I drove to the far side of the Ralphs, and parked in a pool of shadow. He sat quietly, staring straight ahead as if an enormous weight was crushing him and he didn’t know how to stop it.
“Are you and your brothers part of this?”
He shook his head.
“No. The old man kept us out. It was his thing, not ours. He didn’t want us involved.”
“Bringing people north.”
“Yeah. North. He started when he was a kid, bringing up his cousins. He was born here. They weren’t. I guess he liked doing it.”
“Who were the Korean guys?”
“People with guns.”
“Gangsters?”
“Jesus, look at my face. I don’t know who they are. I never saw those guys before a few days ago.”
“Did they kill your father?”
“Not them. They paid to have people brought up, and their people didn’t get here. Two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred. Now they want their money or their people, and they sure as hell aren’t paying a ransom to get them.”
I flashed on Nita Morales, getting the ransom demand.
“The people your father brought up that night were kidnapped?”
“That’s what bajadores do. They steal people, then milk their families. The old man was hijacked.”
“How do you know a bajadore took them?”
“Some cartel assholes came to see us. They told us a bajadore ripped off the pollos.”
The feds had told Starkey Rudy J’s father was involved with the Sinaloa cartel.
“He worked for Sinaloa?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I know stuff. I’m a swami.”
“Not by choice, man. Those Sinaloa pricks stole his business.”
This fit with what Thomas Locano had told me.
“So he wasn’t a freelance coyote? The Koreans gave their money to the Sinaloas?”
“Hell, yeah. Shit, we didn’t even know the old man went out that night. Then some kids found him in the lake. That’s when Spurlow and Lange came to see us. That’s how we found out. Then the Sinaloas came around and told us the bajadore got him-some guy called the Syrian.”
Starkey was right. It was beginning to sound like the United Nations.
“A Syrian from Syria?”
Rudy J rubbed his face with both hands.
“Who the fuck knows? They made it sound like this guy rips them off all the time. Mostly, they told us they’d kill us if we talked to the police.”
“And let you hang with the Koreans?”
Rudy J slumped, and shook his head.
“They said they’d take care of it, but you saw. I think Sinaloa is scared of those guys, but they ain’t giving out refunds.”
“So the Koreans are looking to you.”
Rudy blinked hard, and I knew he was blinking back tears. He suddenly shouted.
“FUCK!”
I watched him there in the shadows, and believed him. Rudy J and his brothers had not known what their father was doing that night, were not part of his father’s business, but were now held hostage by the events of that night like Nita and Krista Morales.
I said, “You know the old crash site where a drug runner’s plane went down, south of here in the desert?”
Rudy J slowly looked at me.
“I used to go out there when I was a kid. All of us did.”
“Did your father use it as a transfer point?”
Rudy J frowned, but I could see he was thinking.
“Sometimes. Coyotes and smugglers used that old wreck all the time, then no one used it for years. I remember him saying, man, why waste a good spot?”
“What about the night he was killed?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he told us his routes or anything, but he liked that spot. He said it was easy to find.”
Maybe too easy.
I could see Rudy Senior’s big truck lumbering out of the desert, and a man called the Syrian moving in fast to hijack his human cargo. It was easy to see Krista and Jack being caught in the Syrian’s net.
“Maybe we can help each other, Rudy. The Sinaloas who came to see you, can you reach them if you have to?”
“You’re not a fed?”
“Would it matter if I were?”
He studied me a moment longer, then turned away as if he was embarrassed to admit the truth.
“Not at this point. No. I just want to get out of this nightmare.”
“If I need to talk to them, will you set it up?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll set it up. They gave me a number.”
I brought him back to his car, dropped him off, then drove home to the city. Everyone had a story, and the stories were fitting together, but I needed more, and I wanted it fast.
Krista and Jack had been taken. They had been taken by a bajadore the Sinaloa cartel called the Syrian. I had done good work that day.
I gazed into the black landscape beyond the freeway lights, and knew Krista and Jack were out in the darkness. If I found the Syrian, I would find them.
