“And how about after he went away?” Ricci said. “He keep on playing by his own rules?”
Lathrop shook his head.
“My guess is this guy would tell you that’d be too simple,” he said. “He would have stepped off the board. Made up his own game, shoved its rule book in his back pocket, and left everybody else guessing. Their guesses get too close to suit his interests, I could see how he’d change the game on them. Or maybe even play a bunch of different games on different boards. All at the same time just to keep things jumping.”
Ricci looked around at Lathrop.
“This one of them?” he said.
Lathrop shrugged again and said nothing more for a long while.
“Remember the night we first crossed paths?” he said finally. “The Quiros and Salazar clans mixing it up in Balboa Park. Enrique and Lucio getting popped. You after information I’d got on Enrique Quiros.”
Ricci kept looking into his face. “You’re the person who brought me there,” he said. “Always figured it was the same thing for them, but that maybe they didn’t know it.”
Again Lathrop’s veiled expression showed neither confirmation nor denial.
“Lucio was an old school handler, used muscle and guts to keep his syndicate together,” he said. “When he died, it was over for them. But Enrique’s style was different. He had the personality of a pocket calculator, ran his business like any other corporation. His branch got clipped, the power just shifted over to another office. Juan Quiros, one of Enrique’s cousins, took charge, pretty much oversees operations from out in Modesto these days. Without Salazar’s competition, the Quiros bunch marked their territory all up and down the coast.”
“And?”
“There’s a girl, Marissa Vasquez,” Lathrop said. “She’s twenty years old, a college student. Sort of kid every father would want for a daughter. Her dad happens to be Esteban Vasquez, ever hear of him?”
“No.”
“He’s Enrique and Lucio rolled into one… the badges would call him an up-and-comer and they’d be wrong. Been on the scene for years giving cash subs to pot growers across the Rio Grande, uses his construction companies in Frisco as laundering fronts for his return on investments. Until lately, Vasquez kept his trade away from his own neighborhood, but that’s changed, maybe because he saw some openings after Balboa Park. Ecstasy, meth, smack — Vasquez has couriers moving stuff right through Quiros turf.” Lathrop flicked his eyes up to Ricci’s. “Quiros had Marissa kidnapped to get him to back off.”
Ricci held his gaze.
“Haven’t heard anything about that, either,” he said.
Lathrop nodded.
“You wouldn’t have,” he said. “Guys like Esteban try to avoid bringing their troubles to the cops.”
“So he came to you,” Ricci said.
“Right.”
“And you came to me.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
Their eyes remained locked. Lathrop raised his coffee cup and drank from it very slowly.
“Esteban Vasquez wants me to find his daughter,” he said. “I want your help.”
Ricci sat there, his face very still.
“I don’t do favors for drug dealers,” he said.
“We’d be in it for ourselves,” Lathrop said. “Working freelance.”
“Whatever word you use, my answer won’t change,” Ricci said. “It was my kid, I’d find a different place to run my business.”
Lathrop shook his head. “You aren’t Vasquez. If he gives in to the competition, it’ll make him look weak. They’ll devour him wherever he tries to migrate.”
“Then he’d get what he deserves.”
“And how about the girl?” Lathrop said. “The way these flesh eaters work there’s no guarantee Vazquez gets her back alive no matter what he does.”
Ricci was quiet a second.
“Might be true,” he said. “Still doesn’t make it my problem.”
Lathrop shifted around to look out the rain-streaked windshield, rested back in his seat.
“You ever been to the Sierra Nevada? Out there in the canyons along the mountains between Fresno and Yosemite?”
Ricci shook his head.
“Marissa Vasquez was baited by a slick operator name of Manuel Aguilera,” Lathrop said. “Didn’t know he was connected. He romanced her and set her up to be taken and now she’s somewhere in all that nothing with about eight to ten
A long silence spent itself between them. It was pouring outside now, raindrops dashing against the windows, beating erratically on the roof of the car.
“How do you know?” Ricci said.
“Where they brought her?”
“Where they brought her, how they did it, everything.”
Lathrop made a low sound in his throat.
“Got it from another Quiros relative. I crashed his party down in Baja three, four nights ago,” he said. “He’s tight with Juan and Aguilera and hooked them up. Pretty much told me everything.”
Ricci flashed a glance at him. “He give you any details about the abduction besides what you told me?”
Lathrop shrugged.
“Some,” he said. And paused. “Won’t be doing any more talking, though.”
Ricci watched the raindrops splash the windshield, slither down over it to further distort the red warning lights on the high towers across the slough. The coffee had succeeded in sharpening his thoughts, but while he was mostly sober now the feeling of inner grayness had persisted.
“I could find Marissa Vasquez on my own,” Lathrop said. “But the banditos would be a problem at ten-to-one odds.”
“Ten-to-two doesn’t sound much better,” Ricci said.
“It does if we’re the two and have each other’s back,” Lathrop said.
Ricci was silent staring out the windshield. The cup had cooled in his hand.
“We pull this thing off, Esteban’s reward would be hefty,” Lathrop said. “Three mil split right down the middle.”
Ricci was silent.
“And,” Lathrop went on, “we’d be saving a damsel in distress.”
Ricci held his silence, his eyes peering into the rainswept night. Then he turned to Lathrop.
“Play your games with me, you won’t have to worry about those mercs,” he said.
Lathrop smiled a little, put his cup into the holder beside him, reached for the key in his ignition.
“Anything else I need to be warned about?” he said.
Ricci shook his head.
“Then I’ll bring you back to your car before its spark plugs get soaked,” Lathrop said, and cranked up the Dodge’s engine.
Roger Gordian seemed pleased with himself as he pulled the Rover to a halt in front of his daughter’s garage. He also seemed braced for what was coming from her, and would be very determined to head it off.
“Mission accomplished,” he said, and shifted into Park. “The paintings have been hung. You’re back home safe and sound. And we managed to beat the rain.”
Julia sat quietly in the passenger seat watching him tick off his successes on his fingertips.
“But not the drizzle and fog,” she said.
Gordian poked a finger at the control panel on his dashboard.
“That’s why I’ve got fog lamps,” he said.
