Loomis nodded as he thought about it, then grinned and nodded harder. “I get it.” He looked at me and said, “You got a card?” I gave him my card. He read it and frowned again, “Baca? You don’t look like these gangbangers around here.”
I pointed at Hondo and Hunter and said, “My brother and sister and I were orphans in Bolognia, you know, over in Europe, close to Mayonasia.”
Loomis nodded and said, “Yeah, I think I saw something about it on CNN.”
“You probably did,” I said. “We all were adopted by different families over here.”
“So your names are different. Makes sense. I knew you weren’t really Mexican.”
I nodded and said, “You got it.”
We left, with Hunter whispering, “God-o-mighty.”
**
At the office, we opened a bag of Julio’s and a jar of salsa and put it on Hondo’s desk. We talked about things between bites.
Hunter said, “I’m going to make a few calls, see if I can run down the mother in Durango. From the address, she doesn’t have a phone so I’ll need to get somebody to find the colonia she lives in; get them to help her call me.”
I said, “What about the club? Is it even in Los Angeles? How are we going to narrow that down?”
“The journey begins with a single step.” Hondo held up his fingers in a V and said, “Peace, my brother.”
I rolled my eyes. “You weren’t even born in the sixties.”
Hondo said, “The sixties are a state of mind.” Hunter leaned back in her chair to watch us.
I said, “Aren’t you the one who told me last month that people back then were too innocent?”
“They’ve been having Sixties week on the History Channel. Some pretty good stuff. Makes you appreciate events back then a little better.”
“Good grief.”
“They talked a lot about the Soviet Union, and later, on Court TV they had a special on the Russian Mafia.”
That Hondo, sometimes he had a way of getting to the point that defied all logic. I said, “So, you’re making a statement here?”
“Sure. The first step’s got to be from where we are now.”
I thought a moment and said, “So, where we are is...?”
Hondo looked at me as if he was a teacher and I was a third grader who just missed two plus two.
“What?” I said.
He made a small sigh, “We have Bond and Frank Meadows, Carl Rakes the ex-convict who’s probably served time in a Russian prison, then Bob Landman and a painter from the Volga. Then there are undocumented Mexican women — strawberry blonde Mexican women, Landman’s yellow bike, and another strawberry blond Mexican woman in the Camino Real. All with Landman and a bunch of others that sound like Rakes and some Mexican bad boys. We find a note about danger and clubs and finally, Loomis telling us what he saw.”
I thought of Loomis also telling us about Elvis, but didn’t interrupt.
Hunter dipped some salsa with a chip and ate as she thought. She let her chair down and said, “Yeah, I think I see where you’re going.”
Going? I started to argue, and then something clicked. “Russians, Siberia on Sunset. If they’re tied to the Mafia and have one club in Los Angeles, then they’ve got others.”
Hunter said, “The way they launder money in Florida, is mixing it with legitimate income from strip bars and gentlemen’s clubs, all the places where women dance nude. They control it all, from picking the women to picking the toilet paper.”
I said, “We check out the probable ones, see if we find some blond Mexican women working there and we’ve got a connection, which might lead us to Landman.”
Hondo nodded, “That’s what I said.” He glanced across the office at the door and quickly placed the chips and salsa under his desk.