He looked at the picture. They weren’t kids. Megan Orlato was younger than Dennis, but he appeared only a few years younger than he had when Pike shot him. The picture was taken no more than six or eight years ago, which meant the marriage was recent.
Megan Orlato was an attractive woman. She was taller than her husband, and slim, with high cheekbones, a long nose, and almond-shaped eyes. Looking at her now, Pike remembered something Orlato said before he died.
The Syrian will trade for me. I’m married to his sister.
Pike checked his watch again. Four minutes fifty seconds.
Pike hadn’t believed it at the time, but now he wondered if it was true.
He glanced at the posters. Desert Gold Realty. Serving the Desert Communities for 13 GOLDen Years! Longer than her marriage to Dennis Orlato.
Pike turned to the first drawer, and took out the file labeled License amp; Fees. Copies of her real estate license and business license were the first two items in the file. The licenses dated from long before Dennis Orlato, and so did her name. Both had been issued to Maysan al-Diri.
Pike took out the files labeled Autos and Medical. The auto file contained receipts for repairs, two of which had been mailed to Megan Orlato at 2717 Croydon Avenue in Indio. The medical file contained insurance forms mailed to Megan Orlato at the same address. Megan Orlato’s home.
The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched for the second time that day. He had something better than a list of locations.
He had Ghazi al-Diri’s sister. the date farm
42
Elvis Cole
Two men carried a body wrapped in thick plastic and duct tape to the garage. I watched from the floor with my wrists plasticuffed behind my back.
When they passed with the second body, I pushed to my feet and charged with my head down like a bull. Their faces were bright with surprise when they dropped the body. I hit the first man with a front kick to the center of his chest, then spun low into the second man with a come-around roundhouse sweep that cut off his legs, but by then the dude with the bad cleft lip shoulder-cocked me from behind.
I woke up back in my spot by the lamp, dreaming that Krista Morales was watching me through a peephole and laughing it up with the Syrian because I was such a lousy detective. I had found her for all of five minutes, and lost her in record time. Now I didn’t know where she was or I was, or even if she was still alive. I tried to get up, but someone had cuffed my ankles.
The third body went out. The third body was small. The woman with the bindi. I tried to remember if I thanked her for the water. I couldn’t remember. Had I thanked her? Was her last memory of me one of rudeness?
Tears dripped off my nose. I looked down, and the tears were blood. I worked the Jiminy Nita Morales gave me out of my pocket, and wedged it under the lamp.
I said, “Bread crumbs.”
Somewhere between Burger King and now, the Syrian’s sleight-of-hand security system worked. Pike wasn’t here. I never doubted, not once, he would find me. My task was to stay alive until it happened or I could escape on my own. The United States Army sent me to something called Ranger School. The Ranger motto was sua sponte. It meant you’re on your own, asshole.
Okay.
Bring it.
We do not quit.
Four hours later, Washington and Pinetta clipped the ankle strap, bagged my head, and took me for another ride. Pavement changed to gravel, we slowed, entered another garage, and stopped. Only this time when Washington pulled off the hood, we were in a large, dirty room the size of six garages. A sliding door half the width of the wall had been pushed open so we could drive inside. Three SUVs and five off-road pickups with knobby tires were parked around us. Trucks like these had left skid marks and tracks at the crash site where they hunted down Sanchez.
I said, “What is this place?”
“Old date farm. This building here is where they used to box up the shit and load it onto trucks.”
Rows of long-dead date palms were visible through the big door. The trunks were thick and tall, and plated with diamond-shaped scales. The sun was setting, and cast the trunks with coppery light. They would have been beautiful when they were topped with green fronds, but now the dead, topless trunks looked like forlorn totem poles. I wondered if Krista and Jack Berman were here, or if they had been taken somewhere else.
“Are these the new digs?”
“For you.”
We passed from the packing shed into a building split between offices and a small commissary. Three guards were hooking up a gas range while two more rigged a power cable, and four others carried sheets of thick plywood. There were more guards here than in the earlier two houses, and none I recognized.
Washington and Pinetta guided me to a small office with a reinforced door. A bottle of water and yellow bucket were on the concrete floor, but nothing else.
Washington said, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the snakebugs bite.”
Pinetta laughed, and I turned to show my wrists.
“You want to cut these off so I can pee?”
“No.”
They left and locked the door. I heard screw guns, saws, and hammers throughout the night, and sat on the dirty concrete but did not sleep. I managed to rub my pants down so I could pee, then rub them up again.
Late the next day, a hunched Latin guard with a big Adam’s apple and an overweight Anglo skinhead with a Texas drawl opened the door.
I said, “Where’s Washington and Pinetta? They were bringing Starbucks.”
The skinhead said, “On your feet, dickhead.”
Glib.
Ghazi al-Diri was waiting when they pulled me from the room, and didn’t look happy.
I said, “How long does it take to check me out? This is getting ridiculous.”
“The girl tells me this boy is worse. You have medical training?”
Everything shifted with his question. Ten seconds earlier, I had not known if I would see Krista Morales and Jack Berman again. Now they were here.
“I’ve handled injuries and health problems with my crews. You want me to look at the kid, I’ll look at him. I can probably help.”
They led me across the commissary and along a short hall into the next building. The skinhead was named Royce, and Royce liked to bitch. He and most of the other guards had arrived yesterday, and didn’t like busting their asses all night to put up the plywood. He went on about it until the Syrian told him to shut up. Then he shut, and we passed more guards. Most carried shock prods and clubs, but some had short black shotguns and one had a Chinese Kalashnikov. They looked tense and anxious, and their silence and weapons made me wonder what the Syrian was expecting.
The next building was split down the center by a single long hall running the length of the building. Two doors were on each side of the hall with another door at the end, but the door at the end and the two far doors were now blocked with plywood. More guards lingered in the hall.
The gawky guard unlocked the door to our left, and let us into a long room that ran the length of the building. It had probably been used as a storage room or lunch room, but was now stripped to bare concrete, and its windows were covered with plywood. Men and women were seated along the walls and huddled in small groups across the floor. There were more prisoners now than at the earlier house. More Latins. More black people and
