V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone 22)

I tried to clear my mind of chatter. I remembered Pinky mentioning something in the course of his morbid ramblings the night Dodie was shot. What had he said? That Cappi couldn’t find a job so he’d been reduced to working in his brother’s warehouse, which was how he was able to leak Dante’s business to the cops. I’d been to a warehouse in Colgate that I surmised was associated with the retail-theft ring. I roused myself and returned to my car.

I merged with traffic on the 101. Time must have skipped six beats, because I couldn’t remember traveling on surface streets to reach the access ramp. My impulse was to jam the gas pedal to the floor, which with a Mustang is the equivalent of being shot out of a cannon. However, as I pressed down with my foot, I caught sight of a black-and-white passing on my left. I eased off, marveling at my good luck. Nothing worse than peeling out when you’ve got a cop car next to yours, equipped with radar. I stuck to the middle lane, so bound by good behavior that I almost missed the appearance of a second black-and-white sailing by on my right. Neither patrol car was traveling at great speed, but the driver closest to me was intent. There was something purposeful in his posture, as though he didn’t want to be late for festivities I hadn’t been told about. A party, parade, some coplike activity requiring him to be punctual.

The two patrol units left the highway at the Fairdale exit, with me bringing up the rear. What was the deal here? When I spotted a third patrol car coming up on my tail, I pulled into the right-hand lane and let them catch up with one another. I reached the intersection, where the red traffic light inspired a stop on my part while the police cars slowed briefly and slid through. By the time I turned right, the three patrol cars seemed to have vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. I continued half a mile until I passed the oversize screen of the now-defunct drive-in theater, popular when I was a kid. I turned right onto the adjacent side road. The orchard of speakers on stands had been removed. I glanced at the empty acres of cracked asphalt and nearly ran off the road. The entire lot was being used as a staging area for patrol cars and unmarked vehicles. Two dozen uniformed officers were milling around, law-enforcement personnel in an assortment of jackets reading FBI, POLICE, and SHERIFF. I was guessing all wore Kevlar vests under their shirts. I jerked my gaze back to the road, but I knew the significance of what I’d seen. Diana had heard something big was going down and this had to be it. No wonder Cheney had been short with me. The only location of significance in the area was the Allied Distributors warehouse. The joint police agencies had to be gearing up for a raid. Whatever intelligence gathering they’d done over the previous months and years had now culminated in an armed response. My heart was thunking and a rush of adrenaline coursed through my frame, making me feel electric. Pinky, the gunslinger, if he managed to catch up with Cappi here, would find himself in the midst of a cadre of officers and FBI agents more hyped up than he was.

A quarter of a mile farther down the road, the warehouse appeared at the end of the cul-de-sac. Crisscrossing lines of railroad tracks ran behind the building. It was possible in times past, goods were moved from the warehouse by train, a miniterminal devoted to the business of commercial transport. Now the tracks were the sole domain of the Amtrak freight and passenger trains that went through town three and four times a day. Abruptly, I put my foot on the brake. To my right, Dodie’s yellow Cadillac sat at an angle, wheels off the side of the road and slightly sunk in the grass. Pinky hadn’t bothered to park carefully. Then again, he was on his way to shoot a man, so perhaps the finer points of roadside etiquette had escaped him.

The wide metal gates to the warehouse property stood open. The employee parking lot appeared on my right with the warehouse itself on the left. Six tractor-trailers had been backed up to the loading docks and all the rolling metal doors stood open. Five or six guys seemed to be enjoying a smoke while two forklift operators wheeled in and out of the warehouse with loads. At the far end of the building, two white panel trucks sat side by side, back doors open while men shifted boxes from the pallets on a flatbed and into the interiors. I scanned for Cappi but didn’t see anyone with his build and body type. I didn’t see Pinky either, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Dante’s employees were caught up in an ordinary day at work, no urgency, no threat, no cause for alarm.

I parked in the employee lot and crossed to the main building. The two-story structure was a quirky blend of the old and the new. Parts of the building were aging brick and frame, with a newer steel addition affixed to the front. The whole of it was probably twenty-five thousand square feet of space. I entered by way of a side door, avoiding the receiving area, which had to be hazardous if you didn’t know what you were doing. At the mezzanine level, I could see the business offices. Around the perimeter, catwalks were affixed to the ceiling by a series of cables and steel posts. The offices overlooked the storage blocks that were separated by wide aisles. I spotted zigzagging sets of stairs every hundred feet or so, like fire escapes in a tenement. The place seemed well organized, with a system at work that only the practiced eye could assimilate.