Sanders and buffers and other bodywork tools lay on the floor plugged in to electrical outlets. The painting booths were filled with cars and the air compressors were working. Exhaust blowers hummed. But no one was at work. And there was still no sign of Torres or the orange Caddy.
“Weird!” said Jupe.
“My dad always says no one works in garages except when a customer is watching,” Pete said.
“Your dad may be right, but mechanics were working here very recently,” Jupiter said. “They’ve gone, and so has Torres. We’d better try to find out where.”
“You mean go out there?”
“There’s no one around.”
“What if they come back?”
“We have to take the risk,” Jupiter insisted. “Torres and that Cadillac must be somewhere in the building.
Jupiter led the way around the large room. They stayed close to cars, using them as cover in case anyone came back suddenly. But no one did, and they were able to circle the whole room back to the stairwell. They found no doors and no other stairs. The elevator was up on this floor, but it hadn’t been used while they were in the building. Neither had the ramp.
“No car came past us,” Pete said. “We must have missed the orange Caddy on one of the floors.”
Jupiter was doubtful. “I don’t see how, but we’d better go back down and look again.”
They tiptoed down the stairs to the second floor. They didn’t spot the orange Cadillac anywhere, but there was a mechanic at work now! “Where’d he come from?” Pete whispered “I don’t know,” Jupiter whispered back. “But we didn’t walk around this floor, remember? We’ll have to look here, too.”
“You mean go out there on this floor? There’s a guy out there!”
“We’ve got to be sure the Cadillac isn’t here.” Jupiter and Pete slipped out of the stairwell. They walked quietly, keeping to the shadows and behind the cars. The solitary mechanic could discover them at any moment, but he was making noise that helped cover them. He also seemed intent on his work, as if trying to catch up. He never even looked up as the two Investigators slipped from car to car through the gloom.
They found no trace of the orange Cadillac.
“I guess we missed it on the first floor,” Pete said when they finally made it back to the cover of the stairwell.
“Unless,” Jupiter said, and stopped. His eyes were thoughtful and a little excited. “Come on, let’s look at the first floor again.”
In his sudden excitement Jupiter moved too fast down the steel stairs. He slipped near the bottom and slid down the last three steps with a clatter.
Both guys froze. They held their breath and listened.
One, two, three minutes passed.
Jupiter stood up carefully.
There was only silence on the ground floor — and the faint sounds from above where the mechanic worked.
“Whew,” Pete said. “That could have been close!”
Jupiter nodded, a little pale. He led the way out into the dimness of the ground floor parking garage. There was still no light behind any of the half-glass doors on the far side of the echoing room.
And there was no orange Cadillac.
They searched the entire floor, walking among the rows of cars.
“Let’s face it, Jupe,” Pete said. “It’s just not here.”
“No,” Jupiter said, his voice almost eager. “And I think I know — ”
A sudden hissing and rattling sound seemed to fill the room. Startled, they looked frantically around for the source of the sound.
Then they saw it. The car elevator was coming down on its hydraulic piston. The platform was already emerging from the second floor!
“Hey! What are you doing in here?”
A dark-haired man leaned out of a black Buick sedan on the elevator. He pointed at Jupiter, who was directly under one of the lights. Joe Torres leaned out of the passenger window.
“It’s that fat kid from the bodega, Max!”
“You, kid! Stop!”
Jupiter jumped back out of the light and crouched in the shadows beside Pete. The two quickly ducked behind a station wagon. The elevator gates opened, and the Buick roared down the narrow lanes between the rows of cars to cut them off from the front door. It screeched to a stop at the exit. Torres got out, followed by the squat, muscular, bearlike driver.
“Torres was here all along!” Pete whispered.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Jupiter said in a low voice. “Right now we’ve got to get out of here.”
“They don’t look so tough,” Pete said. “You already handled Torres with your judo. I can take that short guy with my karate.”
At the door the two men stood and peered all around into the shadows.
“You can’t get away, kid,” the short, squat one called out.
“Watch him, Max,” Torres said. “The kid’s pretty good with that judo stuff.”
Max pulled an ugly-looking pistol from his belt. “He ain’t gonna play judo with this.”
Peeking past the station wagon, the guys saw the gun appear in the stubby man’s hand.
Pete gulped. “Now they look tougher.”
“But they don’t know you’re here,” Jupiter whispered. “That gives us an edge. I’ll try to lead them past where you’re hiding. You use your karate on the one with the gun. Then we’ll both get the other one before he knows what hit him.”
Jupiter stood up calmly and stepped out into the weak light.
It was a moment before they saw him. Then Torres yelled: “There he is! Hold it right there, kid, if you know what’s good for you.”
Jupiter walked rapidly away from the front door among the parked cars as if trying to escape toward the ramp. The two men fell into the trap.
“Cut him off, Joe,” the gunman, Max, shouted.
“I’ll cover this side.” He headed down the aisle to Jupiter’s left.
Torres, on the right, began running to get in front of Jupiter. The squat gunman moved to box Jupiter in from the other side. Jupiter quickly reversed direction toward the side offices. Torres had to circle in an arc through the cars to catch up with Jupiter, as the gunman angled toward them.
Jupiter had both men moving toward the spot where Pete crouched, ready and waiting to attack.
Jupiter zigged and zagged, drawing the two pursuers closer and closer to Pete. He acted as if he were hemmed in and trapped by the cleverness of Max and Torres.
He passed Pete. The two pursuers closed in, all their attention on the “trapped” Jupiter. Jupiter zigged one last time to draw Max the gunman to Pete first, then acted shocked to find Max almost on top of him.
“That’s it, fat boy,” Max said, the ugly gun pointed directly at Jupiter. “Hold it right there.”
Pete leaped up, his right foot lashing out in a yoko-geri-kekomi thrust kick that sent the gunman’s pistol flying into the dimness of the garage. He instantly smashed a backhand shuto-uchi against the side of Max’s neck. The gunman dropped like a stone from the blow to his carotid artery.
Torres lunged around a car to attack Pete. Then he saw Jupiter coming at him and whirled to face the enemy who had thrown him earlier.
This gave Pete an opening, and he knocked Torres out cold with a massive mawashi-geri roundhouse kick from behind.
“Let’s get out of here!” Pete cried.
The guys raced for the door.
