“I have bad news,” said Carmen.
“That figures,” said Lock, staring at the picture of her that had come up on his phone when she called. He glanced at the two patrol cars sitting outside the house. Ty was busy talking to one of the cops as a small group of people from the block gathered on the sidewalk. Carl Galante had called him and Ty a half-hour before to say that something else had gone down at the house where it was believed Emily and Charlie had been held. Something bad. The body of a young Hispanic man who matched the description of the second male kidnapper. The third kidnapper, the female, was still unaccounted for.
“Yeah, I went down to see if I could speak with the kid they’d arrested, but it’s a no-go.”
That wasn’t too bad, thought Lock. A gang-appointed attorney had likely beaten them to the punch. It was one thing you could count on with criminals: they had their attorney on speed dial. In all probability they would have wanted their attorney to speak with the kid to make sure he didn’t say anything.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” said Lock. “Let me guess, he already had a lawyer?”
“No,” said Carmen. “He’s dead.”
That was what she had meant by bad news. Lock should have guessed from the way she’d said it. “They saying what happened?” he asked.
“Argument with one of his cellies.”
Lock rubbed his temple. Ty was still deep in discussion with the patrol cop. A van pulled up behind the cars: a crime-scene investigator got out and began unpacking their gear.
Arguments happened in jail. They often ended in assault, sometimes in one party dying. All it took was looking the wrong way at someone, and sometimes not even that. A person’s mere existence could be enough for someone to throw down on the paint.
It was rarer with gang members. More accurately it was rarer that they came off worst. They tended to be more predator than prey. When they were victims it was usually because they had ended up in close quarters with someone from a rival group. It was something that shouldn’t happen but did. The system was way past capacity, which made proper segregation tricky.
“Let me guess. Crip?”
The predominantly African-American Crips and Bloods gangs had an ongoing war against most of the major Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles and beyond. They vied for the same territory and drug markets. As the city’s racial demographics had shifted, so had the face of organized crime.
“That’s what I figured. But Galante asked around. The dude who stabbed him was an MS-13 OG.”
OG stood for original gangster, and was a term applied to an older gang member with rank. They didn’t necessarily have to be one of the founding members, so much as someone who had stuck around long enough to earn senior rank. The theory behind it was simple. Only the best, most durable and luckiest gang members survived long enough to earn OG status.
The kid who’d just been shanked was more the rule than the exception. Most gang members’ luck ran out long before their thirtieth birthday. In the crime trade, forty was a venerable age, the equivalent of a seventy-year-old still going strong in a regular profession.
Lock reflected on the news. “So, they really didn’t want him talking.”
“Or,” said Carmen, “he messed up.”
“Using the bank cards?” suggested Lock.
“Could be that, or something else. Maybe they didn’t like the fact he went out to steal some cars and came back with two bodies.”
One thing was for sure. Pony wasn’t about to provide any answers as to what had sealed his fate. Not to Carmen. Not to Lock. Not to anyone.
His death gave Lock no measure of satisfaction. Looking around the block from where he stood, Lock figured that growing up there made a kid’s journey into a gang if not inevitable then certainly likely. Some people, like Ty, could escape their circumstances, but it took a lot more determination than most kids possessed not to be sucked into a gang.
“What about Orzana? Any word?”
Lock had kept Carmen and Galante up to speed with his and Ty’s visit to the chop shop and his offer to Orzana. “Nada,” said Lock. “But I wasn’t expecting to hear anything this fast.”
Ty had wrapped up his conversation with the patrol and had moved down the block to talk with some residents, at least one of whom, a teen mom with a kid in a stroller and one in her arms, seemed to be getting unusually chatty. Ty could offer something in return for information that the cops couldn’t. Something that pretty much anyone could understand. Cold, hard cash.
Carmen didn’t say anything to that. There wasn’t much to say. Finally, she said, “You think they’ll be okay?”
“You mean are we going to get them back safe?”
“Yeah, that, and . . .”
Lock knew immediately what she was asking. Carmen had herself been abducted and held captive. Not so long ago. The ordeal didn’t end when you were rescued or freed. In some ways that was merely the end of the first stage. Carmen, with Lock’s support, was still talking to a therapist about the experience and its aftermath. No doubt that was why she was so eager to see this case resolved. A crime always hit closer to home when you had also been a victim.
“I think the first job is to get them back to their family. We can work on the rest from there.”
Ty opened the passenger door and got in.
“Anything?” said Lock.
“Yeah, but I don’t know what the hell to think about it.”
“Run it past me.”
Ty took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“This must be good,” said Lock.
“Don’t know if good’s the right word,” said Ty, flattening two huge hands on the dashboard. “Lady I spoke with saw something.”
Lock waited for him to continue.
“She was walking past when she heard the two gunshots from inside.”
So far that was nothing earth-shattering. It tallied with the information the LAPD had been willing to share: one male homicide vic with what looked like two gunshot wounds.
“Then she saw someone come out.”
That had to be the perp. But Ty’s delivery told Lock there was some kind of twist in the tale here.
“She get a good look?”
“She did, but that wasn’t all.”
Ty paused for dramatic effect. He lived for stuff like this.
“You going to tell me what it was or am I going to die of old age?”
“He had the girl with him. Y’know, the third perp from the kidnap. Lady says her street name is Princess.”
“Good work,” said Lock. They’d share the information with the LAPD, but not now and not here where people might see them. It was never a good idea to look like you were too close to those who many people in a neighborhood like this regarded as the enemy. “And the shooter?”
“Late forties, early fifties, five ten, five eleven, two hundred pounds. No tats that she could see. Cat was wearing a suit and tie.”
So far, so predictable, thought Lock. The age alone suggested a professional or at a minimum someone who was trusted to take on such a task. Add in the way he was dressed and that supported the likelihood he was a pro. Run-of-the-mill gunmen didn’t show up to work in a suit and tie.
“But that’s not the best part,” said Ty. “The dude wasn’t Latino. He was Asian.”