Cutter came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Still frowning, thinking of his visitor.
Do I add him as a suspect? Do I go after him, too?
He dressed in his armor with a Tee over the top and tucked into his jeans, and fastened a belt around his waist. Applied the cheek pads and the false nose and put on the transparent glasses. Fastened the shoulder holster and inserted his Glock in it. Shrugged into his lightweight jacket. LAPD doesn’t know who the two gangs were that night. They knew about the rifle, nothing more.
No, he would stick to his plan. Find the rifle’s shooter and go up the chain. Which meant he had to carry out his next move without getting killed.
He took a cab to a children’s hospital in Boyle Heights and watched from the back window. No tails. There had been no shadowing the previous night, either. Looks like the cops have given up following me.
He paid the driver and waited till the vehicle turned a corner. Walked through the building’s parking lot, past anxious, hurrying parents, injured kids, paramedics and ambulances.
He went to the rear of the building, where the deliveries arrived. Spotted a line of ambulances parked against a wall. Their drivers are off-duty.
He checked each of them and got lucky with the third one. Its door opened and its keys were dangling from the rearview mirror. A paramedic’s coveralls were hanging from a hook in the cab.
He checked that there was no one around him, grabbed the uniform and went to the rear of the vehicle. Under its cover, he dressed in the coveralls. He tried the zip and left it partly open to allow for fast access to his gun.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, fired up the ambulance and rolled out of the hospital.
Forest Avenue was a residential street in Boyle Heights. Single-family homes, quiet roads, a few palm trees on the sidewalks, electric cables strung high on posts. Nothing to distinguish it from the thousands of family neighborhoods in the country. Nothing to show that the house on the corner of Forest and Malabar Street was a Street Front stash for drugs.
Nothing, except the men sitting in several cars on the street.
Cutter spotted them immediately. They aren’t hiding. They’re making their presence felt. Deterrence.
Looks like Ernesto’s told Covarra that he confessed.
He counted ten men on the street, all of them alone in their vehicles. Three of them on Forest, two on Malabar.
The house was a two-story one. Painted light brown. Lightly sloping roof, on which were two skylights. Chest-high fence around it. Brick pillars with iron railings running between them. A rolling metal gate on Forest Avenue that opened to a short driveway, in which were parked a Mazda and a Beemer. White entrance door facing that street. Lights turned up inside the residence.
Cutter drove to the end of Malabar, turned around and returned.
Yeah, there were two more upward-facing windows on the rear slope of the roof. A getaway gate on that street as well. An escape route. It looked like Street Front took over corner houses that had such exits, or built them on acquiring the properties.
Ten men on the street. Ernesto didn’t know how many would be inside. Covarra will expect me to hit the house. He’ll have flooded it with hitters. Will he move the drugs?
He debated that with himself as he parked and checked his phone. Covarra’s got an ego. He doesn’t like to back down. Another gang leader would have called me by now and suckered me into a trap. He doesn’t work like that. He won’t move the drugs. They’ll be there, inside.
But he couldn’t enter the house.
There was no way he could take on that many shooters.
He frowned as he checked out the house from a distance. I can’t pass up on this house. I have nothing else on Covarra. I’ve got to keep pressure on him—wait, what’s that?
It was a crane that had caught his attention. On a construction plot at the far end of Malabar. He had seen it but hadn’t given it any thought.
He turned his ambulance and drove back to the construction site. The developer seemed to have acquired three houses and was in the process of demolishing them to build something larger.
That boom is fifty feet high. Looks over all the houses in the neighborhood. It’s got to be telescopic, since the cab is at ground level.
He brought up a maps app on his phone and checked out distances. Calculated that the top of the boom was about three hundred and ninety feet from the target house. That residence was taller than surrounding houses.
A smile twisted his lips as he fired up the ambulance and headed back to the children’s hospital. Made a spare key before parking the vehicle in its bay.
He had his ride, means of entry as well as exfil.