Derek pointed at Hondo and me, “We’ll go together, then split up and work it on foot.”
It didn’t take long to get to the Casa Loma area, a depressed neighborhood of crime and gangs. Hondo and I got out on foot, and we didn’t see Troy and TJ as we walked the streets. People saw us and pulled their curtains closed, or went back inside and closed their doors. It was quiet except for the occasional noise of airplanes taking off and landing at the nearby airport.
I moved two blocks south and west of Hondo into an area of houses with torn screens and abandoned cars in yards. At a house on my left someone had two pit bulls, chained to iron stakes driven deep in the front yard. The chains looked long enough to allow the dogs to reach anyone going for the front door. They didn’t bark, but they eyed me as I went by, making me feel like a tall dog biscuit.
I talked to a dozen people as I made my way along the streets, getting answers like, “No”, or “No hablo ingles”, or “Get the hell off my lawn.” No one shot at me, though, so I had that going for me. Twenty minutes later, and closer to the municipal airport, I stopped to call Hondo. Before I did, a young kid on a bike slid to a stop beside me.
He said, “You lookin’ for some girls?”
“Women,” I said, and pulled out the photos of Bodhi and Amber. “Seen ‘em?”
“Not them, but the others, the regular ones.”
“Do you remember where?”
He looked disgusted, “I’m not a retard-o, mister. Sure I remember. They’re two blocks over and down some, the gray house with the blue van in the drive.”
I put my hand in my pocket, pulled out a crumpled twenty and pitched it at him as I trotted off. He said, “Hope you find them.”
Five seconds later I heard a muffled shot coming from the direction of the gray house. Two more shots sounded, followed by the sounds of vehicles squealing tires and racing away from that area, first one, then a second vehicle a minute later.
I raced two blocks and looked, spotting a gray house, but no van. As I passed a tall hedge that partially blocked my vision, I saw a body sprawled halfway out of the front door. I pulled my Sig and started to call Hondo, then spied him coming fast, gun in hand.
We approached at a quick trot. A woman across the street poked her head out of the door and I pantomimed calling on a phone and said, “Policia.” She disappeared and the door slammed shut.
We reached the body. It was TJ, and two red, wet stains like spilled strawberry syrup showed on the silk blouse. Hondo checked for a pulse on TJ’s neck. He shook his head. I called Troy’s number but got no answer. His car wasn’t in sight, either.
Hondo went in the door first, going left as I went right. We found no one, only evidence of hasty departures from every room, but nothing that identified the women we hunted.
We returned to the cluttered living room as Derek arrived. Before he asked, I said, “They took off again.” We heard sirens in the distance, and I wanted out of the house, so I edged by TJ’s body and stood in the yard. Hondo and Derek joined me.
I saw someone short speed around the street corner towards us and realized it was the boy I had talked to earlier. He slid the bike to a stop at the curb, and his mouth opened when he noticed the body. I said, “You need to leave, the police are coming.”
He said, “That van with all those girls in
it, they left and I followed them on my bike. They turned left on Watts Drive. I couldn’t see them after that, but it just happened.”
“The van that was here?”
“Are you hard of hearing?” He said it like he thought I really might be deaf. He continued, “You all need to hurry. Those girls are nice, but those men aren’t.”
I reached in my pocket and only brought out a dollar bill. Before I could reach for my wallet, he waved my offer away, “You already paid me enough.” He glanced beyond me to Hondo and Derek again, “You need to go or those girls will be in big trouble.”
“You’re pretty smart for a kid.”
“I turned eleven last week. I’m not a baby.” He took off on his bike and I told Derek and Hondo what the boy said.
Derek said, “Somebody has to stay here and talk to the police.” He tossed me the keys to the Navigator, “Go. I’ll talk to them. Keep me posted. I’ll get a rental and come later.”
We boogied out of there and far in the distance we caught a glimpse of a blue van moving through traffic. The van didn’t speed, but didn’t go slow, either. I pushed the accelerator and worked my way through the cars, trying not to be obvious to anyone in the van.
The van turned left at an intersection and the red light caught us. I looked left, right, left, right, and Hondo said, “Do it.”
Squealing the tires, I cut into traffic and caused a few slight skids and several honks, but was back to where we could see the van. I gradually closed the distance to two hundred yards, and kept that space as we followed them into the miles of green agricultural fields south of Bakersfield. I tried Troy’s phone again but got nothing.
Five minutes later, the van turned left again and drove East in thinning traffic. Hondo said, “Don’t three lefts make a right?”
I squinted my eyes and looked at him. I said, “That was such a useful bit of information. Remind me to thank your geometry teacher.”