where he is. Asked you to call, and left a card.”
“Why are they looking for Elvis?”
“They want to ask him about an old client or something.”
Ronnie was still speaking when Jon Stone touched Pike’s shoulder, and Pike cut Ronnie off.
“Gotta go.”
Pike put away his phone as a dark Toyota SUV approached the murder house from the far end of the street.
Stone pulled Haddad upright. When the Toyota turned into the drive, the passenger window was down, revealing an African-American male with jerry-curl hair.
Haddad said, “This is Washington. Pinetta is driving.”
The garage swallowed the Toyota, then closed.
Pike said, “These two always break down the houses?”
“Yes. They prepare the houses before, and clean the houses after. Everyone has their job.”
Pike remembered the heavy plywood screwed over the windows, and how the screw holes left in the Mecca house had been filled with putty.
“They take down the plywood, too?”
“Yes.”
Stone said, “What’s your job?”
“Pardon?”
“Everyone has a job. What’s yours?”
“To speak with people from my part of the world. We take pollos who have no other language.”
Stone said, “So your job is to fuck over your own people.”
Haddad was silent.
Pike glanced at the rearview, but saw neither man. He was thinking about the houses.
“You use a different house for each group of pollos?”
“Yes. Sometimes more than one if we have to change.”
Stone said, “That’s a lot of fucking houses. Where do you get them?”
“I do not know. Orlato, he gives us the address, we go.”
They were still talking when the garage opened, and the Toyota backed out. Pike checked the time. Washington and Pinetta had been inside the house for only sixteen minutes.
Stone said, “Look at this shit. They sure as hell didn’t clean very much.”
Haddad shrugged, and appeared confused.
“I cannot know. They may need something. They may be going to the desert to look for us. Orlato would have spoken with the Syrian by now. The Syrian must know something is not right.”
Pike waited until the Toyota turned the corner, then followed them south through the late-night traffic of Coachella to Mecca, and on to the empty darkness of the irrigated farmland west of the Salton Sea. Traffic thinned until Pike realized his headlights were the only headlights in the Toyota’s mirror, so he dropped farther back and turned off the Jeep’s lights.
They reached a small area of feed stores, gas stations, and local businesses, and then the Toyota’s brakes flared, and it pulled into a small parking lot surrounding a bar.
Pike shot past the bar, turned hard, and wheeled around to park on the opposite side. Pike was out before the Jeep stopped rocking.
“You drive. Be ready to go.”
“Always.”
Pike entered through a side door, and went to a pay phone.
The bar was brightly lit, with maybe ten people spread between the bar and a few shabby tables. Pinetta was at the bar, but Washington had stayed in their car. Pinetta and the bartender were talking like they knew each other. The bartender slipped a bottle of Crown Royal into a brown bag, put it on the bar, and Pinetta paid. Then Pinetta tucked the bag under his arm like a football, and smiled his way out the front door.
Pike hurried out the side, where Stone picked him up on the roll. The Toyota cruised past five seconds later. Stone gave it another five, and nosed out onto the road.
“What happened?”
“He bought booze.”
“Booze?”
“Crown Royal.”
The Toyota led them into a mixed residential area of small homes and apartments, where Stone was forced to turn off the lights.
Haddad said, “This may be where Pinetta lives. I hear him say he has a woman on the west shore of the lake.”
Stone glanced in the mirror.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Why would I kid about such thing?”
The Toyota was four long blocks ahead when its brake lights flashed again, and it turned into the poorly lit parking lot of a small, two-story apartment building. Stone immediately pulled off the street into a building’s shadow.
The Toyota parked at the base of the stairs. The interior light came on as Pinetta got out, then went off when he closed the door. Washington remained in the vehicle.
Jon groaned.
“Are you kidding me? We’re following this asshole all over the desert for a fuckin’ conjugal visit?”
Pinetta and his Crown Royal were halfway up the stairs when blue flashers exploded from behind a building one block ahead of them. The radio car jumped out of nowhere, and roared toward the Toyota as more blue flashers converged from every possible direction. Pike knew this was a major tactical event, and they were in trouble.
“Back out, Jon. Slow. No lights.”
“I’m backing.”
The units screeched into the parking lot and blocked the Toyota as an amplified voice identified them as the police.
Pinetta was caught on the stairs. He dropped the bottle and froze, hands open and away from his body, but something bright flashed twice inside the Toyota, and Stone muttered a single word.
“Loser.”
Flashes and loud cracks erupted from the surrounding radio cars, speckling the Toyota’s windows and fenders like furious hammers. Washington’s pistol flashed twice more, then three fast times-flashflashflash-but the officers’ fire pocked the Toyota until the amplified voice ordered a cease-fire.
As the firing stopped, Pike saw an oversized white SUV on the far side of the parking lot, only this SUV wasn’t an ordinary police vehicle. The blue lettering and insignia on the side were difficult to see in the dim light, but visible. ATF. SPECIAL RESPONSE TEAM. The Special Response Team was the ATF version of SWAT.
“Jon. See the van?”
“I did. The big boys came to play.”
They were creeping backward across the dark yards and had almost reached the cross street when the rear of the Jeep was suddenly splashed with white light. A siren whooped, and more flashing radio cars cut off the street behind them.
They were trapped. When the officers saw Haddad and Stone’s M4, their search for Cole would end.
Pike said, “On foot. We gotta jam it on foot.”
“I hear you.”
Stone cut a hard tight turn going backward, then dropped the tranny into drive, and hit the gas hard, digging with all four tires toward the narrow space between the two nearest houses.
Pike braced.
“Too narrow.”
Stone said, “Just right.”
