Ryan Lock’s Apartment
Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles
Lock opened his fridge, grabbed a bottle of beer and handed it to Ty, who opened it using his Gerber and took a sip.
“That’s good.”
“German. They have a bunch of laws about purity.”
“Yeah, I’d heard,” said Ty.
“About what they can put in their beer,” said Lock. “Not the other kind of purity.”
The apartment buzzer sounded. “That’ll be Carmen and Galante,” said Lock, going to let them in. He had already spoken about the new case to Carmen as they’d driven to Los Angeles from the airport. He had asked her which of her law firm’s investigators was strong on organized car theft and street gangs.
Carmen had suggested Carl Galante. He was former San Diego PD but he mostly worked private investigations in Los Angeles. His help had proved invaluable to Lock when Carmen had been kidnapped. Lock trusted him.
Ty took another swig of pure German lager. “Man, first time she gets to see you since you’re back from New York, and she’s hanging out with us chumps. Shouldn’t you two be cozying up together all romantic?”
“There’s going to be plenty more time for that. Trust me.”
“What you say?” said Ty.
“We’re moving in together.”
The bottle stopped halfway to Ty’s lips. “For real?”
“Yeah, we just have to decide where that’s going to be. This is too far out, and her place is too small.”
“Damn,” said Ty. “Big step.”
“Not really. When you know, you know,” said Lock.
Ty raised his bottle in a salute as someone knocked at the door. “True dat.”
Lock opened the door to his lawyer girlfriend and Carl. He kissed Carmen and shook Carl’s hand. “Good to see you, Carl. Go grab yourself a beer.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Galante, loping past him in the same shorts and Dogtown T-shirt that Lock remembered him wearing the first time they had met.
Lock and Carmen kissed again. Carmen handed him two brown paper bags full of takeout. Lock held them up to his nose. “Smells good. Thanks. You want a glass of wine?”
“Sure. What you got?”
Lock laughed. “I have what you always drink. It’s chilling.”
“You’re the best,” she said, planting a fresh kiss on him. He never tired of her kisses. Couldn’t imagine that he ever would. He was a lucky man to have found a woman like her.
“I really am.” He smiled.
She walked past him, pinching his butt as she went. Lock put the food on the counter and brought out some plates and cutlery. Ty was on the balcony with Galante.
“You guys hungry?” he called.
“Sure,” said Galante.
Ty shot him a what-a-dumb-question look.
It was. Ty was pretty much always hungry. And, much to the annoyance of any woman he dated, Ty could eat a lot and maintain his six-pack. He had a freak metabolism. Plus, and it had taken Lock a while to figure this out, Ty didn’t eat very often. It was just that when he did, he ate everything in front of him.
As Lock and Carmen began to unpack the food containers and lay it all out on the island in the center of the kitchen, Ty and Galante wandered in from the balcony.
“Nice place you have here, Ryan,” said the investigator.
It was nice. It cost close to four thousand a month in rent, but it was large and airy with a nice open-plan layout, and it looked out over the Marina.
Ty stuck a nose into one of the containers. “Chinese, huh?”
“What? Did I mess up?” said Carmen. “I thought you ate everything.”
“Ty’s trying to be funny,” said Lock. “The kids who’ve been taken are from mainland China.”
“Parachute kids, huh?” said Galante. “I figured that’s who it would be when Carmen mentioned Arcadia.”
“Different kind of immigrants,” said Carmen. “My grandparents came here with nothing.”
“Hey,” said Ty. “Least it was their idea to come.”
Lock decided to call a halt to the game of My Family Had It Worse Than Yours. “Don’t go there, Carmen. Ty wins this one every time. Hey, but look at us all now, eating Chinese food, drinking expensive booze and looking out over the Pacific. Not too bad.”
They ate, with their plates on their laps, in front of Lock’s television screen, and watched the stream of security-camera footage from the USB drive. From time to time one of them would ask to slow something down, or freeze the frame, or full screen the angle from a particular camera.
“Kind of a weird choice for a movie night,” Carmen joked.
“Sure. I have a DVD with a Hugh Grant flick around here somewhere,” said Lock, and Carmen tossed a cushion at him.
“What do you think, Carl?” Ty asked Galante.
He took his time answering, reflecting for a moment on what they were watching. On screen Emily was waving the kitchen knife.
“I’d say she’s one tough kid for someone who grew up with a bunch of money,” he observed. He took a fresh pull of beer and burped. “Pardon me.”
“Anything else?” said Lock.
Carmen slid Galante a coaster as he went to put his beer bottle on the coffee-table.
“Motive seems fairly straightforward,” said Galante.
“The car,” said Lock.
“Exactly.”
“Aren’t they hard to move on?” said Carmen.
Ty had spent time talking to an old friend of his in the auto trade in Long Beach. His guy had served time for dealing in what he had termed “vehicles with an unclear provenance.” Ty had asked him to repeat it in English. “Stolen cars, bro,” he’d clarified.
“It’s classic risk and reward,” said Ty, passing on his newly gathered insight. “They’re tough to move, but a whip’s a whip. Takes the same time to steal a Ferrari as it does a Honda. I mean, the security’s usually tougher, they have trackers fitted, but there are workarounds for all of that.”
“It’s specialized, though, right?” said Lock.
“Not as much as you’d think,” said Ty. “The tough part is getting them back to the ’hood without being pulled over. Couple of kids driving a Lamborghini is an automatic stop. They’re either rappers or bangers, and they both dress the same.”
It was a good point, thought Lock. Cops got a lot of grief for pulling over certain people. But if you cultivated a look that was synonymous with criminal activity it shouldn’t be a surprise if you were treated accordingly. It might not be fair, but then life wasn’t exactly fair. As the people gathered in the apartment knew all too well.
“So, they scope out the car,” said Galante. “That’s easy enough.”
“Where you think they saw it?” said Carmen.
“Arcadia’s wealthy, lots of cars like that, but I doubt they’re prowling around the place. Too risky.”
“So how did they scope it?” said Lock.
“These kids go out to clubs?” asked Galante. “That would be my guess. Hang out on Sunset, you’re going to blend in. No one’s going to pay you no mind. Wait five minutes. You’ll see at least a couple of fancy rides. Follow them back, you got your car.”
Lock made a note to ask Li about Charlie and Emily’s social life. Friends. Places they went.
“Can you look into similar crimes for us, Carl?” Lock asked.
“Already did. Nothing popped. Cars like this get stolen. There were a lot of burglaries in Arcadia about six months ago, but the cops stepped up patrols and they went away.”
“They arrest anyone?” asked Carmen.
Galante shook his head. “Nope, I’m guessing the crew involved moved to fresher pastures when the heat got turned up. Burglaries dropped in Arcadia, and around the same time a couple of neighborhoods in Pasadena started getting hit.”
“Same kind of vics?” said Lock.
“Funnily enough, yeah. All wealthy Chinese, fresh off their Gulfstreams at Burbank.”
“What about kidnapping?” Ty asked.
“That’s where it gets interesting. You guys have heard of La Eme, right?”
They all had. La Eme stood for the Mexican Mafia. They were a street and prison gang. Although gang was too small a word for a multibillion-dollar organized-crime outfit with a vertical structure that would shame most Fortune 500 companies.
“They’re moving into kidnapping?” said Lock. This was news to him.
“They’ve always pulled K and Rs south of the border, but from what I’ve been hearing they’ve been targeting people on this side too. Rich Mexicans who’ve moved. Factory owners, business people. But I don’t think this was them.”
“They looked Hispanic,” said Ty.
“They did,” said Galante. “But they haven’t taken anyone who’s outside their ethnic group. And take a look at that. It’s pure opportunism. If they could have gotten in the house, they would have ripped off everything they could and probably left behind two dead bodies so there were no witnesses.”
“They could have shot them outside,” said Carmen.
Galante picked up the bottle and drained the dregs of his beer. “You have another one of these?” he said, flourishing the empty green bottle.
Lock took the empty, got up and wandered back to the kitchen area to get Galante a fresh beer.
“True,” said Galante. “And look at the body language. There’s a couple of times they’re real close to doing just that.”
“But they don’t,” said Ty. “How come?”
Galante shifted round so he was facing the six-foot-four former Marine. “You grew up in Long Beach, correct?”
“LB do or die,” said Ty.
“How many people you see shot?”
“A lot,” said Ty.
“And how many times did you see people almost get capped?”
“Most weeks,” said Ty.
“And the difference was what precisely?”
Ty sighed. “All kinds of reasons.”
“Someone’s gun jammed?” pressed Galante.
“Maybe saw that twice.”
“Someone said sorry and their sincere apology was accepted?”
Ty laughed. “Now you’re messing with me.”
“So it was random. The asshole with the gun just decided it was that person’s lucky day.”
“More like it,” said Ty, waving his beer bottle in the air.
“I think it was the same here,” said Galante, flapping a hand at the screen. “These idiots in those bandanas are chumps. They live moment to moment. It’s all about their feels. They couldn’t leave witnesses, so it was either kill or take with. Those two kids right there, they got lucky. They don’t know it, but they did.”
“But are they still lucky?” said Carmen.
Galante and Ty were four beers deep, watching the footage from the house for a third time, while Carmen was helping Lock clear up.
“So, what do you think?” said Lock, scraping a plate into the trash and handing it to her to load into the bottom rack of the dishwasher.
“I think it’s what Carl said. They saw an opportunity and took it.”
“Not about that. This place. Could you see yourself living here?”
Carmen smiled as he handed her another plate for the dishwasher. “You ever give up?” she said.
Lock feigned thought. “Not really, no. It’s kind of my trademark.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Carmen.
Ty stood up from the couch. “You want another beer?” he asked Galante.
“No, I’m good.”
Ty reached down to switch off the footage. Galante stopped him. “Let it play out.”
Ty shrugged.
Galante got up from the couch. “I need to hit the head.”
Lock pointed him towards the bathroom. “Front hallway, near where you came in.” Something on screen caught his eye. He stopped what he was doing and walked across to the television. He rewound. Galante had been right: they had watched up to a point where it was all over. Both cars had driven out of frame, leaving only an empty motorcourt.
But that wasn’t the final action. Lock hit pause.
Carmen walked over to stand behind him. Ty joined them.
One of the gang members had come back. He was standing facing the garage door. His face was still covered but he was staring straight up at the camera in a show of defiance. He raised his hands, his fingers splaying out.
“Carl, come see this,” Carmen called out.
“Let me pee first, okay?”
“What is that?” asked Lock.
“Gang sign,” said Ty.
All the major gangs had signs they made with one or both hands. It was a method of identification, and also of provocation. Like flipping someone the bird, only it carried a heavier menace. If, of course, you knew what you were looking at.
“Yeah, but which one?” said Lock. This was not his territory.
Carmen studied the image with a quiet deliberation. “Mara Salvatrucha,” she said. “MS-13.”