The elevator opened and Lock stepped into the hustle and bustle of the lobby.
“You know how you told me once that the only coincidences you believe in are the bad ones?” said Carmen.
Carmen had a habit of reciting Lock’s beliefs back at him, which admittedly tended toward the pessimistic, when the need arose.
“I only told you that once?”
“I was trying to be polite,” she said, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice.
“So, what you got?” said Lock, steeling himself.
“The biological father. He’s a badass, all right. Just maybe not the kind your client was telling you he was.”
“Go on.”
“His name’s Tang Bojun. From a poor family in a poor province. He got that part right.”
Carmen hesitated.
“And?” Lock prompted.
“So little Tang grows up and, just like here if you don’t have much going for you but want to change that, he joins the military.”
“Which is where he learns to kill?” said Lock.
“Which is where he learns that he’s very good at a lot of things. Doesn’t climb the ranks, but does win a bunch of military honors, and becomes a kind of go-to guy for the more dangerous missions. Then when he’s overseas his young daughter goes missing.”
“Emily?”
“Exactly. One day she just disappears into thin air. He’s stuck out somewhere in East Africa, doing who knows what for his government, and by the time he gets back, the trail is cold, and it wasn’t all that warm to begin with. His wife is bereft and takes her life, because she blames herself for what’s happened.”
Lock felt himself stiffen. Another lie.
“Tang’s a mess. His wife’s dead, his kid is gone. He hits the bottle and crashes out of the army. When he finally dries out, he starts helping other families who’ve had kids kidnapped. And there’s plenty of them. For the most part, the cops aren’t a lot of help, so he fills the vacuum. Gets pretty good at it, too, because in a way every case he takes on is personal. So let’s just say his methods aren’t exactly by the numbers.”
“Violent.”
“If he has to be. It’s a whatever-it-takes approach,” said Carmen.
“And no one stops him?”
“He has some friends in high places. Not high enough to find out what happened to his own child, but sufficient to keep him out of jail. Plus, he’s a highly decorated military veteran going after scumbags. The authorities turn a blind eye. And a lot of officials are pissed that their one-child policy is being made to look bad by infanticide of girls and all these abductions.” Carmen took a breath. “He’s like some kind of Chinese superhero. They even give him a name, the Red Tiger.”
“What about what’s happening now?”
“About a year ago Tang starts getting a lot closer to the truth of who has his child. Your client, Chow Yan, didn’t abduct her. He bought her from the people who did or, rather, the people who got her from the kidnappers. There was quite a complicated supply chain going on.”
“So, Chow Yan moves her out of the country,” said Lock, piecing it together.
“Might have done it anyway. Lots of wealthy Chinese send their kids here for education.”
“And the kidnapping?” said Lock. “This kidnapping?”
“Random, as far as Carl Galante has been able to tell. Okay, maybe not entirely random because the kids who took Emily and Charlie have been working robberies in Arcadia for months. This was just a step up.”
Lock took a breath. He was trying to figure out what, if anything, this changed. Chow Yan had been lying. Not much of a surprise there. He’d done what most people did and only revealed as much of the truth as he had to in order to keep Lock on board. It was unlikely, but possible, that he didn’t know how the people from whom he’d received Emily had come to possess her.
There were still two young people in the clutches of MS-13. That hadn’t changed. The task remained the same. Finish the job. Make the exchange. And after that?
Should they tell the LAPD what they knew? Probably.
But where did that leave Emily? Fresh from the trauma of having been kidnapped she’d discover that her life to this point had been one long abduction story. The man she’d thought was her father was a liar, and her real father was some kind of . . . Some kind of what? Lock didn’t know. Dumping a bunch of MS-13 muscle face down in a swimming pool might be considered a public service by some. It wasn’t anything that he or Ty would mourn.
“What are you going to do?” Carmen asked him.
It was a good question. One to which he didn’t have a complete answer. Not yet anyway. There was a lot to digest. “For now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to do my job.”