“Check the vehicle.”
Stone trotted to the Escalade as Pike tipped his pistol toward the bodies in the cut.
“These people from India?”
“Yes.”
“Who killed them?”
“We did. Me and Orlato and Ruiz. It is what we do when they cannot pay.”
This was an honest answer. Bajadores were bandits who kidnapped people who were trying to enter the country illegally. The kidnappers would then demand ransom payments from their families or employers. This continued until the families could or would no longer pay, then the victims were murdered. Dead victims could not bear witness.
“Elvis Cole. You know who I’m talking about?”
“The man who came for the boy and the girl.”
“A young Latina. Krista Morales. An Anglo boy named Berman.”
“Yes, the boy and the girl.”
“Are they alive?”
“I believe so, yes, but I cannot be sure. My job was with these Indians.”
“Why were they taken?”
“They were with pollos a Tijuana crew brought north. No one knew they were Americans.”
“Korean pollos?”
Haddad looked surprised.
“How do you know these things?”
Pike struck him with his open palm on the forehead before Haddad finished the sentence. This was not a two-way conversation.
“Yes! Koreans. The Sinaloas stole them from the Tijuanas. The Syrian, he stole them from the Sinaloas.”
Pike felt Haddad was telling the truth. Tijuana, Sinaloa, Zeta, La Familia, on and on-if the U.S. side of the border was a hot zone of law enforcement agencies, the Mexican side was a war zone controlled by cartel factions who fought and stole from each other like rabid dogs. Pike was good with war zones, too. He felt at home.
“Is Cole alive?”
“This morning, yes. He was brought to our house for the Syrian.”
“Your house?”
“Where we kept the Indians.”
Pike hammered back the. 357, and held it to Haddad as he had held it to Orlato.
“What happened to him?”
Haddad cringed, but Pike held him close. Haddad did not want to see what Orlato had seen. He did not want to see his death coming.
“Did the Syrian kill him?”
“I don’t know! Orlato and Ruiz and I, we left with the bodies. The others, they were to hold him for the Syrian.”
Pike pressed the gun hard into Haddad’s forehead.
“A prisoner?”
“Yes!”
“Was the Syrian going to kill him?”
“I don’t know! These men, they told me the Syrian thinks your friend is a federal agent.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Three hours! Maybe four!”
“When was the Syrian coming?”
“I don’t know!”
“Five minutes? Five hours?”
“I don’t know! I can take you to the house! Maybe they still wait!”
Pike studied Haddad, then lowered the gun.
“Yes.”
Stone returned, and shook his head.
“No IDs or credit cards on the stiffs. Thirty-two hundred in cash. I took it. Registration shows the Caddy belongs to a Joan Harrell of San Diego. None of these shitbirds looks like a Joan.”
Haddad said, “Everything is stolen. He has thieves who get cars and trucks for him.”
“Keys?”
Stone held up the keys.
“Yeah, man. Good to go.”
“Drive.”
“We’re taking Mr. Green Teeth?”
“He knows the way.”
Stone ran hard for the Escalade.
Pike clipped the plastic binding Haddad’s ankles, but left his wrists bound. Pike pulled him to his feet.
Haddad said, “You are not killing me?”
“Not yet.”
The big Escalade thundered up in a cloud of dust. Pike pushed Haddad into the back seat, and climbed in behind him.
Stone powered away even as Pike closed the door. Driving hard. Pushing. They bounced over brush and rocks, and neither of them gave a damn if they tore the Escalade apart.
Haddad said, “This is not the way.”
Stone said, “Shut up.”
Pike said, “Faster.”
They ran hard toward the mountains, driving without lights. They had to move fast or Cole would be lost.
5
It was full-on dark when they reached Pike’s Jeep, covered by brush in a low wash, two-point-two miles away. Pike pulled Haddad from the Escalade, proned him in the dirt, and wiped their prints from the Caddy while Stone cleared the brush. They rolled on in less than three minutes, Pike driving the Jeep, Stone in back with Haddad, the Escalade abandoned. They crept across the desert by starlight and moonglow that made the brush glisten.
Thirty-eight minutes later, they approached a small ranch-style home on a street of similar homes at the outskirts of Coachella, California, the most eastern of the desert communities. Two-car garages, rock lawns, clean sidewalks, streetlights.
Haddad said, “This one. On the right.”
“Cole is inside?”
“When I left.”
Stone said, “You better not be lyin’.”
It was nine-oh-five P.M. Early. Every house on the street showed light and life except this one. It looked like a corpse.
Stone said, “Shit, it’s fucking deserted. That place is black.”
“The windows are covered with dark plastic and wood.”
“So every light in the house could be lit, and we wouldn’t see it?”
“Yes. Or hear what goes on. The windows are all like this. We screw them shut so the pollos can’t open them, then cover them with the plastic and wood.”
