“Tyson?”
She gave me the phone.
TYSON: I am sorry I’m so much trouble. Don’t text or call coz I am tossing this phone. I will send U a new number when I can. I luv U. U are the best Mom. I will figure this out. Bye.
I didn’t know she was crying until she trembled.
I said, “You okay?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
I put my arms around her, and held her until the trembling stopped.
Devon phoned Carl’s mother. She learned Carl was still living at home, and asked if I could speak with him. Carl’s mother said that was up to Carl.
Devon copied Carl’s address, and tore off the page.
“Good luck.”
12
HARVEY AND STEMMS
STEMMS AND HARVEY searched for house numbers as they eased along the street, Stemms privately clocking the dismal surroundings. Old people walking mongrel dogs, housekeepers trudging to work. The occasional Jet Ski tarped to a trailer, an unwanted RV plopped in a yard like an oversized turd. FOR SALE. The Valley.
Harvey said, “You should’ve stopped me, is all I’m saying. I ate too much.”
“You shoveled it in fast enough.”
“I was hungry.”
They dropped off the phone and the prints just before two that morning, and had to kill time while the geniuses cracked the phone. The Chrysler sucked as a bed, so they tossed and turned for a couple of hours, then threw in the towel and decided to eat. Being downtown, they went to The Original Pantry, which had been open 24/7/365 since 1924. Stemms and Harvey had eaten there dozens of times.
Stemms ordered tuna on white with a side of coleslaw. Harvey got the country fried steak with gravy, hash browns, two eggs over easy, sourdough toast, and a double side of salsa. All Stemms could do was shake his head. Harvey had enough food on his plate to feed a family of four, but he fell to like a blood-crazy wolf and didn’t look up until the plate was clean. Dessert was black coffee, vanilla ice cream, and Adderall.
The eastern sky was turning gold when the genius called. Stemms copied the names and addresses, and grinned at his partner.
“Yippee-ki-yi-yay. Cash in the bank.”
Harvey loosened his belt.
“I gotta poop.”
One poop later, they rolled up to the Valley, and looked for the first address. One block, two blocks, three blocks. Stemms slowed the car.
Harvey said, “This one.”
A neat little ranch house. The garage door was up, revealing an Audi sedan. Blue.
Stemms craned his head.
“You see the Volvo?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Brown. A four-door sedan.”
“Take it easy.”
They drove another two blocks, turned around, and stopped a half block shy of the house. Stemms shut the engine.
“I don’t see the Volvo.”
“Maybe he’s out getting coffee. Maybe he shacked with the girl. Relax.”
“I wonder who drives the Audi.”
“Who gives a shit? Run the plate, you care so much.”
“You don’t have to snap at me.”
Harvey sighed.
“My bowels. Sorry.”
The front door opened, and a man stepped out. Stemms called him at six feet, one ninety. Looked fit. A brightly colored, unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt hung loose over his Walking Dead T-shirt. Stemms liked the shirt.
Harvey sat up and leaned forward.
“That’s him.”
“That’s a grown-ass man, Harvey. He isn’t the kid.”
Harvey squinted. Focus problems.
A woman appeared behind the man. They spoke for a few minutes, then the man turned away and walked down the drive. The woman went back into the house and closed the door.
Harvey said, “What, she’s the mother, he’s the father?”
“No idea. Could be anyone.”
“Looks the right age.”
When Harvey got a notion, he worked it like a bulldog worked a bone. Harvey could wear you out.
“This kid steals so much money, she’s probably the goddamned maid. Let it go.”
“The mother. The guy? Her boyfriend. Dropped by for a hummer.”
“Quit.”
“Sniff, sniff. What’s that, tuna?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
Their information was limited. The kid was tied to this address through the DMV, but they had no way of knowing whether the address was current, and who else, if anyone, resided at the address. The kid could have moved. He might use the house for a crash pad, and they’d find it crawling with burned-out tweakers, Aryan bikers, or Russian whores. Limited information was frustrating.
The man in the shirt crossed the street, and climbed into a dirty Corvette convertible.
Harvey brightened when he saw the car.
“Hey. What’s that, a ’65, ’66?”
“It’s a maintenance hog.”
“Shut up, Stemms. It’s a Chevrolet Corvette Stingray classic. All it needs is a wash.”
The Stingray pulled out, and drove toward them. Stemms hunkered low, trying to hide, but Harvey peeked over the dash.
“’66.”
Stemms wondered if Tyson Connor and Amber Reed were inside the house. They could be shacked up right here, right now, snorting blow and sucking bongs, lying around all day so they’d be rested and ready to rob more houses that night. Stemms wanted to make entry. He wanted to crash in so bad his rectum cramped, but the woman and God knew who else was inside. Stemms didn’t want to run up the body count. If the Volvo was here, he would have pressed it, but the Volvo was missing. Pressing it now and piling up more bodies could blow their shot at the score. Stemms wasn’t going to blow it.
He fired up the Chrysler.
Harvey said, “We’re leaving?”
“For now.”
“The barfer might be home.”
“Maybe.”
“Alec isn’t home. It’s too late for Alec.”
Stemms glanced at Harvey.
Harvey was waiting for the glance. He made a sad face.
“Poor Alec. Boo-hoo.”
“Jesus.”
“Boo-hoo-hoo.”
“You’re really an asshole.”
Harvey grinned.
“Yeah. But I’m your asshole.”
Stemms turned toward the freeway. They had Alec’s address. That’s where they went. Just to spite Harvey.
Boo-hoo-hoo.
13
ELVIS COLE
CARL RIGGENS AND HIS FAMILY lived a few minutes north of the Connors, not far from the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Orange groves once covered their part of the Valley. The groves were bulldozed to make way for houses, but a few of the original trees still dotted the yards. The old trees were gnarled and dark, with twisted trunks, but still proud with brilliant green leaves and bright orange fruit. They made me think of aging veterans dressed for a VFW parade. I guess they were veterans of their own special war.
A young woman wearing a tank top and tights answered the door, and stifled a yawn.
I said, “Elvis Cole. I’m here to see Carl.”
She closed the door a few inches.
“Are you here to arrest him?”
“I’m here about one of his friends. Your mother said I could talk to him.”
“He’s in back. He doesn’t open until ten.”
“Open?”
“Are you a federal agent?”
“No.”
“In back. Down the drive.”
The door closed, and she threw the dead bolt.
I walked down the drive and through a gate onto a concrete deck surrounding a kidney-shaped pool. The garage had been converted into a pool house. The side facing the poo
l had been replaced by a sliding glass door so people inside could admire the pool, but paper now covered the glass on the inside, blocking the view. Two kids in shorts and T-shirts were seated on the concrete with a couple of skateboards. They looked to be thirteen or fourteen, and should have been in school, but weren’t.
I said, “Carl?”
They pointed at the slider.
I went to the slider, and knocked. Explosions and gunfire came from the pool house, so I knocked again.
“Carl?”
The gunfire stopped, a hatch in the paper lifted, and eyes peered out.
“Elvis Cole. I spoke to your mother.”
The slider opened. The kids with the skateboards scrambled to their feet, but Carl froze them with an imperious glare.
“Scrubs must wait.”
They slumped, and resumed their positions.
Carl Riggens was fleshy and soft, with a bulbous nose and small eyes. A minefield of scarlet eruptions cratered his chin. Despite the pool house and skateboards, he wore a black business suit, a white dress shirt, and a bright red bow tie. The suit whiffed of body odor.
Carl locked the slider behind us.
“May I see some identification, please?”
He made a little hand-it-over gesture with his fingers. Carl was sixteen, looked like an overgrown twelve, and acted like he was forty-six.
“Sure.”
I gave him my license.
The pool house that was once a garage had been converted into a video game man cave. An oversized monitor hung on the wall, bracketed by studio speakers. A computer-generated soldier firing a next-gen assault rifle was frozen on the monitor, surrounded by metal shelves stacked with video games, gaming consoles, and boxes of controllers. A table and swivel chairs sat beneath the monitor. A towel covered the table, rising with the peaks and valleys of a mountain range from the hidden things beneath.
Carl finished inspecting my license, and handed it back with a sneer.
“You’re interrupting my work, but my idiot mother demanded I see you.”
Idiot mother. Man.
“Thanks for making the time. What kind of work do you do?”
Carl ignored my question.
“Something about Tyson? Tyson’s a dick.”
So much for them being friends.
“He’s missing. His mother asked me to find him.”
Carl’s face pinched with annoyance.
“I don’t know where he is. Why would I know?”
“His mom said you guys were tight.”
The pinch grew deeper.
“Were, as in hasta la vista, dickhead. His level of play depressed me. I dismissed him. The Carl moved on.”
He burst into a loud, honking laugh. Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.
“Maybe he went to Dickland.”
Devon was right. Carl was odd. And annoying.
“This was last year, before he left for the new school?”
“They expelled him. I quit. He wanted to quit, but his mommy wouldn’t let him. He calls his mother mommy.”
The Carl made a condescending sneer.
Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.
“Got it. Have you heard from him since?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Know who he hangs out with now?”
“Who would hang out with a loser like Tyson? Another dickhead, maybe.”
He tried to sneer, but the sneer collapsed. He dropped into a swivel chair, and studied the frozen soldier.
“Why is Tyson the dickhead missing?”
“He’s in trouble. Tyson and a couple of friends.”
Carl stared at the soldier. Powerful, armed, yet trapped by forces beyond his control.
I said, “Carl? Do you know something?”
Carl didn’t answer.
“If you know who he’s with, or anything about this, you can help.”
The kids outside knocked on the glass. I shouted.
“SCRUBS MUST WAIT.”
Carl fingered the edge of the towel, and kept his eyes on the soldier.
“I don’t want to get into trouble.”
I lifted the towel, and folded it away. Game consoles with exposed circuit boards were hardwired to laptop computers and featureless black boxes bearing labels printed in Chinese and Russian. Incomprehensible software code scrolled endlessly on the laptops, coming from a place I didn’t understand, on its way to a place I couldn’t imagine. Carl was a hacker, but he didn’t hack email accounts or database systems. He hacked video games. Game hackers hacked into software kernels, where they uncovered hidden secrets, modified games, or programmed home-brewed games of their own design to run on existing hardware. All of which was illegal, and frowned upon by the manufacturer.
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“I don’t care about your work.”
“Not my work, Tyson. I didn’t believe him. If I didn’t believe him, I’m not an accomplice, am I?”
“What did he tell you?”
“He showed up one day. He didn’t text first, or call. He just showed up, and flashed this deck of cash, and said who’s the loser now, loser, you’re just a loser jerking a joystick.”
“Must’ve hurt.”
“I wasn’t hurt.”
I nodded.
“I said fuck you, dickhead, I’m The Carl, and you’re not, game over, so he starts making up bullshit about his hot new girlfriend, and these cool clubs he goes to with his cool new friends, and them sneaking into houses like ninjas, and stealing all this stuff, and I’m like, really, dude, new girlfriend, you never had an old girlfriend, so do not expect me to believe you took a badass ninja pill.”
Carl was lost in the moment, and made the laugh. Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.
I said, “I wouldn’t have believed him, either.”
Carl glanced up, and seemed sad.
“But now you’re here. He told the truth?”
“Not the part about being a ninja, but, more or less, yeah.”
Carl shook his head.
“Damn.”
“Did he tell you their names?”
“Amber. I mean, really, Amber?”
“What about the boy?”
His face pinched. Thinking.
“Alex, maybe. I think it was Alex.”
“Alec?”
“Yeah.”
“What about their last names, or where they work, or go to school?”
Carl seemed even more miserable.
“He said she’s a model. A smokin’-hot sex freak. Did she really make pornos?”
“He probably lied about that part, too.”
Carl seemed relieved.
“I knew it. I said, you’re lying, dickhead. Bring over your smokin’-hot Amber porn freak, and prove she’s real. Prove it, and I’ll give you my Atari 2600, new in the box, never been opened.”
“That Atari was something.”
“Right???”
“Did he?”
Carl smirked.
“No. He sent a picture.”
My heart beat faster.
“You still have it?”
“Sure.”
Carl found the pic on his phone, and showed me. It was a selfie of Tyson with a young woman and man in a bar. The lighting was poor, but their faces were clear. Tyson was wearing the black sport coat with velvet lapels. The female held a wide fan of cash.
I said, “Amber?”
“So he says.”
“This is Alec?”
“Yeah. If this is the friend he was bragging about.”
Tyson and Amber were about the same size, and about the same age. Amber was pretty, and dressed to draw eyes. Alec was a good-looking guy with a lean face, dimples, and the darker beard of a man in his early to mid-twenties. It was easy to imagine how an ins
ecure boy like Tyson could be influenced by Alec and Amber. Their relative heights and builds matched pretty well with the three unknown subjects I’d seen in the Slauson video.
“Can I have this, please?”
“Sure.”
Carl texted the picture to me, and also printed a hard copy. I tried to think of other questions as the printer hummed.
“Did Tyson say what they did with the stuff they steal?”
“They sell it.”
“Through a fence?”
“At the flea market.”
“A flea market.”
“Dude, you don’t know. Flea markets are money. When Tyson got his license, we hit this flea market in Venice every Saturday. We scored games, consoles, controllers, analog joysticks, digital joysticks, touch screens, sound cards, graphics cards, memory cards, CPUs, speakers—”
“Carl.”
“What?”
“Over my pay grade.”
“Okay.”
“Which flea market did you guys hit?”
If Tyson knew a particular flea market, he would probably return to it.
Carl didn’t know the address, but he gave me directions. When we opened the door, the two kids jumped to their feet. Anxious to spend time with The Carl.
I thanked The Carl, shook his hand, and glanced at the equipment on his workbench. I wondered why he wore the suit, but I didn’t ask. I wondered if he had friends, and hoped he did. I thought about his sister, asking if I’d come to arrest him. She hadn’t seemed concerned.
I said, “Anyone who can do what you do doesn’t need a badass pill. You aren’t a loser, Carl. People like you own the world.”
The Carl blinked, and suddenly laughed. Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.
I left him with the scrubs, and followed his directions.
14
THE WEEKDAY DRIVE to Venice went quickly. Traffic on the 405 was light, construction slowdowns were absent, and the usual multi-car pileups were running behind schedule. I phoned Devon’s cell as I climbed the Sepulveda Pass.
“Has he called?”
“No. And you were right about the cell company. They haven’t posted his calls from this period.”
“Call. Speak to a human.”
“I will.”
“Okay. I’m texting a picture to you.”
I explained about Carl and the picture as I sent it. Her phone buzzed when the picture arrived, and her voice was low when she finally spoke.