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  “It’s about your guest, sir,” Vida said delicately. “I … I think she’s an impostor.”

  “What do you mean? An impostor?”

  “They sent a transvestite, Manuel,” she said. “I just frisked her, him, whatever. She is a definite he.”

  The cartel king laughed as he shut off the TV. He shook his head at Vida affectionately as he stood and squeezed her cheek.

  “Thank you, Vida, my innocent little country girl, but everything is completely in order,” he said as he spanked her playfully on the rump. “Now, be a love and go blindfold that vision of loveliness and send her in with the champagne.”

  CHAPTER 74

  In the aftermath of the horrific attack on Agent Mara, the entire task force began to work fourteen-hour days.

  We interviewed every witness at the pool where she’d been grabbed that morning-the lifeguards, the parents of the other kids. We had spoken to her soul-broken husband, who simply told us that he had been talking to his wife when there was a loud machine sound and the screen blurred. Emily even interviewed her poor little son Ian, who was overwrought with grief.

  But there was nothing. We hadn’t even found her stolen truck yet. One second, the agent had been watching her kid in the SUV, and the next, the SUV was gone, with only a pile of broken glass in its place.

  The following day, another two dozen new FBI agents were flown in to bolster our ranks. Also, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s LA office, John Downey, was put at the helm of the task force.

  It was obvious that the female agent’s mutilation and murder had rung every bell and whistle at FBI HQ. As well it should have. Some were saying that the stakes for the bureau hadn’t been this enormous since the unparalleled spree of bank robberies that had plagued the country during the Great Depression.

  Put simply, Perrine was calling into question law enforcement’s ability to deal with him. That could not be allowed to stand, especially on our own soil.

  If I had any last doubts about the feds’ commitment, they were thoroughly extinguished when FBI Director Joseph J. Rohr himself attended the task force’s morning briefing via Skype. Instead of micromanaging the meeting, Rohr surprised me by listening intently and asking pointed but intelligent questions about logistics and manpower.

  He seemed determined that we have every resource we needed. Moreover, instead of harping on ass-covering attention to protocol, the surprisingly witty former marine fighter pilot practically begged us to think as creatively as we could in tracking down Perrine.

  After a few false starts, it was decided that the task force’s new prime directive would be to laser-focus on the gangs in LA who were known to be closest to Perrine’s Los Salvajes organization. That meant going with both barrels after MS-13.

  So on the second morning after the murder, Emily and I were teamed up with a short, extremely intense bullnecked cop named John Diaz, who was a ten-year-veteran detective of the LAPD’s Gangs and Narcotics Division. After the briefing, Diaz took us immediately from Olympic Station to a place called Langer’s Deli, in the MacArthur Park area of Westlake. Though it was a pretty gritty inner-city neighborhood, as we sat at a window booth above the palm trees, I spotted a grand, white prewar building.

  “Why does that look familiar?” I said to Diaz, pointing at it.

  “That’s the Bryson Apartment Hotel,” Diaz said with a nod. “It’s the building Fred MacMurray drives past in the beginning of Double Indemnity.”

  “Right,” I said excitedly. “With a couple of slugs in his belly.”

  “Exactly,” Diaz said, nodding again. “Actually, MacArthur Park has a long history of gunshot wounds in real life, too. A lot of drugs, a lot of gangs. They drained the lake back in the seventies, and you wouldn’t believe the number of guns they found. They say this is where MS-Thirteen was started in the eighties by Salvadoran immigrants.

  “Speaking of which, I called a guy who might be able to help us on an MS-Thirteen lead. He’s a friend, so I’ve been reluctant to ask him for any info. The worst insult you can make to these guys is to ask them to be a snitch. But after what happened to that lady agent, this shit is obviously not business as usual. He’s on his way here now.”

  We were ordering pastrami sandwiches when a UPS truck pulled up outside. The brown-uniformed Hispanic driver who stepped out and lit a cigarette had a goatee and more than a few tats.

  “And here he is now,” Diaz said, standing.

  “That’s your source? The UPS guy?”

  “Oh, yeah. Me and Pepe go way back to my old neighborhood. My uncle’s a district manager at UPS, and I actually pulled some strings to get him the job when he got out of jail a few years ago.”

  “Is he MS-Thirteen?” I said.

  “No, Pepe’s Eighteenth Street, MS-Thirteen’s rival. But don’t let the uniform fool you. Pepe’s in the game up to his tattooed neck. He knows everybody. You guys sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  Diaz went out and hopped into the truck, and we watched as it pulled out. The sandwiches had just hit the table when the truck hit the curb again. Diaz came back in, smiling. He clapped his hands and rubbed them as he sat back down.

  “OK, the suspense is killing me,” I said. “What can Brown do for us?”

  Diaz spread a napkin on his lap.

  “We need to speak to a guy named Tomás Neves. He’s an MS-Thirteen shot caller who’s done quite well for himself, apparently. In addition to moving a lot of weight, he’s a partner in one of those custom car shops down in Manhattan Beach where the rich people live. Pepe said something this big would have to go through Neves. He usually rolls into his fancy car joint late in the afternoon.”

  “Excellent,” I said, lifting my massive sandwich. “First lunch, then it’s time for an episode of Pimp My G-Car.”

  CHAPTER 75

  Beach City Customs was south of LAX on the Pacific Coast Highway, in a commercial section of Manhattan Beach known as the Sepulveda Strip.

  Diaz quickly tapped me on the shoulder as we were about to pull into its parking lot.

  “What’s up, John?” I said.

  “Wait a sec. Drive around the block, would you?”

  “OK,” I said, continuing on and taking the corner past the body shop.

  “How much do you want to find this guy Perrine?” Diaz said. “I mean, how much, really?”

  “He put out a hit on my family, John,” I said, looking at the LAPD cop in the rearview. “I want him as badly as humanly possible.”

  “I figured,” Diaz said. “See, this guy Tomás is going to be hard-core and definitely not stupid. If he’s helping out Perrine, there’s no way he’s going to voluntarily come with us to be questioned. There’s no way he’s going to cooperate.”

  “I take it you have another idea?” Emily said.

  Diaz nodded.

  “Back in the late nineties, we had a scandal out here with a gang unit called CRASH. These CRASH cops went off the rails. They framed gang members, beat up on them. The sergeants used to give out awards if a gang member was shot.”

  “Your point being?”

  “These gang guys remember CRASH. In fact, more often than not, during an arrest they and their defense lawyers claim we’re up to our old tricks. I’m just thinking we might be able to use the rep of these crazy CRASH guys to put a little pressure on our friend Tomás.”

  “What do you mean? You want to frame him or something?” Emily said.

  “No, of course not,” Diaz said. “But what if we … I don’t know … pretended to?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Emily said.

  I smiled.

  “I don’t know, either, Emily. But the director did tell us to get creative, to think outside the box. Besides, we need information, not evidence. It would never make it into court.”

  “Exactly,” Diaz said. “It would be a bluff all the way, but at this point, that’s all we got. We need to do something.”

  “Fine,” Emily said. �
��You’re right. This is beyond everything at this point. Count me in. I think.”

  “What do we have to do, Diaz?” I said.

  Diaz pointed at a CVS pharmacy on the corner to our left.

  “Pull in here,” he said. “I need to pick up a few things.”

  CHAPTER 76

  Death Metal was chugging from one of the garage’s four bays when we pulled into Beach City Customs’ parking lot.

  Inside, there was a man in coveralls down on one knee, tack welding at the tailgate of a Toyota pickup truck, blue electric sparks crackling in time to the head-banging blast beats. Through the window of the paint room behind him, a guy in a full filter-breathing mask was airbrushing flames onto the gas tank on a large Japanese motorcycle.

  Parker and I exchanged a glance when we saw the bike. The shooters who had taken down the LA County cops had escaped on big-bore Japanese motorcycles.

  Without any ado, Diaz stuck his head inside the door of the Tacoma and killed the deafening devil tunes.

  The welder stood and flipped up his mask, his pudgy brown face scrunched in wonder.

  “You kidding me?” he said.

  Diaz flipped his badge as he slammed the truck’s door. There was a tire iron on the ground beside the vehicle. It made a musical bing-bong off the concrete as Diaz kicked it across the garage.

  “Let me answer your question with a question. Does it look like I’m kidding you? Get Tomás now,” Diaz said.

  A broad-shouldered middleweight of a Hispanic man bounced out a door a split second later. He wore a tailored shirt and jacket over expensive jeans and had scar tissue over his eyes and cheekbones like ax cuts on a totem pole.

  “Señor Neves, I presume?” Diaz said.

  “Yeah? What?” he said with a stunned look on his malevolent face.

  Tomás shrugged as we showed our tin.

  “And?” he said.

  “Señor Neves,” Diaz said with a courtly little bow, “I know you’re a busy man, but do you think it might be possible to speak with you for five minutes about a stolen car? If now’s not good for you, we could always come back later with a search warrant and put you out of business.”

  “Why don’t you come back to my office?” Tomás finally said.

  “Señor Neves, I thought you’d never ask,” Diaz said.

  We followed him up the stairs, into a room with a spotless desk and a phone on it. There was a window in one wall and the cracked door to a bathroom in another.

  “OK, here we are. Happy? So what the hell is this about? A stolen car?” Neves demanded.

  “Jeez, dog. What is it with you? Could you be ruder?” Diaz cried. “This ain’t the hood. This is Manhattan Beach. You’re supposed to say shit like, Would you like a seat, Officer? Can I get you a cold drink, Officer? I mean, if you want to be a businessman, you should watch an episode of Martha Stewart or something.”

  “Fine. Would you like a seat?” Neves said.

  “There you go. No seat, man, but do you mind if I use your facilities to freshen up a little?” Diaz said, holding up his palms like a magician about to do a trick.

  “Whatever,” Neves said.

  “Thanks,” Diaz said, heading into the can. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know.”

  Diaz wasn’t two steps in when he stopped and turned. Emily and I had to suppress our laughter.

  “What the-?” Diaz said loudly.

  There was a loud scraping sound, and a moment later, Diaz came out with a stunned look on his face and something dripping in his hand. It was the bar of soap he had wrapped in red cellophane in the parking lot of the CVS. A small package that had a strong resemblance to a kilo of cocaine.

  “What have we here, Tomás?” Diaz said, shaking his head in dismay. “Little advice, señor. When you hide something from the cops in a toilet tank, you should really remember to put the lid all the way back on.”

  “Whoa,” Tomás said, stunned. He blinked a few times, then shook his lean face vigorously. “This ain’t happening. This is a joke, right? You’re putting me on, yo?”

  “Yep,” said Diaz, throwing him up against the wall and ratcheting handcuffs around his wrists. “Wanna hear the punch line? You have the right to remain silent.”

  “You planted that shit there! You planted that shit!”

  “Yes, I did, Tomás,” Diaz whispered to him. “Want to know a little secret? Planting shit on scum like you is, like, my favorite hobby. Guess what? There ain’t no stolen car, and the gloves are off, bitch. Just got the word from up top, and I couldn’t be happier. CRASH times are here again!”

  “You crazy, man. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your buddy Manuel offed an FBI agent, and you think it’s not going to come on you? What did you think was going to happen?”

  “But I don’t know any Manuel! What are you talking about? I want my lawyer. Yo, get Terrence! Go next door and get Terrence!” he started yelling.

  Through the window, I saw the welder run out of the garage.

  “John?” I said.

  “It’s OK. I got this,” Diaz said.

  Diaz grabbed the gangbanger and kicked out his legs as he body slammed him onto the desk.

  “Listen to me, and listen to me good,” he said. “Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to help you when I toss you in MacArthur Park Lake with these cuffs on, maricón. Now start talking.”

  Tomás said something in Spanish then. Diaz said something back.

  We all jumped when there was a sudden pounding on the door behind us.

  CHAPTER 77

  Emily and I immediately took out our guns.

  “What is this? What’s going on in there? Tomás, are you OK? What’s going on in there? Open this door!”

  “This is a police interview!” I yelled as I ripped the door open behind my gun. “Put your hands up now!”

  I was surprised when I saw that the shocked-looking man standing in the doorway wasn’t a Hispanic gangbanger but a petite Asian guy wearing golf clothes and Clark Kent glasses.

  “How dare you point a gun at me! I’m Terrence Che, Mr. Neves’s lawyer. Now, I demand that you tell me what’s going on this instant!”

  “They’re framing me, is what’s going on!” Neves yelled. “They’re framing me, Terrence!”

  Diaz rolled his eyes. “Shit,” he mumbled as he reluctantly uncuffed Tomás.

  “Who are you people? Why are you harassing my client?” Che said as I put my gun away.

  “Well, it’s kind of a long story,” Diaz said, handing the lawyer the wet bar of cellophane-wrapped soap as he gently pushed him to the side.

  “And wouldn’t you know it? We’re late for a meeting,” Emily said as we exited the room.

  “Wait, I’m not done with you. This is illegal,” the feisty, pocket-sized lawyer said, following us down the stairs, into the garage. “You can’t just go around assaulting people. What’s your badge number?”

  “Oh, my badge number,” Diaz said, turning and giving him the finger. “LAPD Badge Number One. Got it? Super. Bye, now.”

  “Well, that went well,” Emily said as we screeched out of the lot, hopefully before the lawyer could get the plates.

  “It did go well, actually,” Diaz said, lazing in the backseat.

  “What do you mean? What did Tomás say to you?”

  “He said, ‘Please, man. Don’t do this. He’ll kill my family.’ ”

  “So Tomás does know something,” Parker said.

  Diaz nodded.

  “Apparently,” he said.

  CHAPTER 78

  After we returned to HQ and relayed the info about Neves’s connection to Perrine, the reaction up the chain of command was impressive and immediate.

  FBI Assistant Director Dressler personally got on the phone to a senior intelligence analyst at none other than the NSA for a full Homeland Security Total Information Awareness workup on the gangbanger.

  TIA was an NSA supercomputer-fueled data-mining tool that apparently could de
-encrypt and scour each and every data source on the planet to find out about an individual. There were no warrants involved, not even any formal requests to phone or credit card companies that could be turned down. The NSA hackers just went in wherever they needed to go and took what they wanted.

  It was supposed to have been shut down after a hue and cry by the ACLU about privacy, but apparently it wasn’t as shut down as the ACLU thought. Which was fine by me. At least in this instance. Bending and even breaking rules was the least we could do in stopping the utter savagery that Perrine was waging on American citizens.

  I admired the heck out of Dressler’s get-her-done attitude. He was even smart enough not to ask us how we came across our info. All he wanted was progress so he could nail Perrine’s ass to the floorboards. Perrine had made a bad mistake when he had killed Agent Mara. The FBI was very, very pissed.

  I admired Diaz’s attitude just as much. The Charles Bronson look-alike had certainly stepped up and taken charge of Neves back at the garage. He was a throwback, one of those all-in all-the-time cops who knew the cold, brutal truth that sometimes the solution to a situation comes at the business end of a billy club.

  “Tell me something, John,” I said as we put our feet up with a cup of coffee at the back of the command center. “This CRASH-unit scandal thing. You didn’t, perchance, have some personal experience concerning that situation, did you?”

  Diaz squinted pensively at his coffee.

  “You know, Mike, now that I think about it,” Diaz said with a wink, “perchance I did.”

  CHAPTER 79

  It was noon when he left San Francisco and going on three by the time the Tailor saw the first sign for Susanville on 395.

  He passed a thin cow, a dilapidated barn, some rusting machinery. The land beyond the open window, the washed-out sand and scrub grass, had a lunar quality to it, the awesome mountains in the distance like something from the cover of a cheap sci-fi paperback. The wind whistled in through the window as the sun glinted off the gold wire of his aviator sunglasses. He drove at a steady five miles over the limit and left the radio off.