Flipping Out (27 page)

We watched as
Tony and the kid entered the parking lot.

'Big finale
coming up,' Muller said.

'Don't ruin the
ending for us,' Terry said.

They walked for
another thirty seconds, then stopped at a late-model Lexus sedan. The young
Mexican got in the back. Tony shut the rear door, and watched the car drive
off, as the camera zoomed in tight on the license plate. Muller froze the
picture, and I wrote it down.

'That's
basically it,' Muller said. 'There's another minute of Tony walking back to his
car and driving off in a different direction.'

'And Gaffney
made it sound like there was nothing interesting on the tape,' Terry said.

'From his
perspective, there really isn't,' I said. 'He was looking to catch Tony shacking
up with some woman. As far as he could tell, this was police business.'

'I went through
Gaffney's notes,' Muller said. 'He logged it in as "Target paying off an
informant.'"

'Since when does
LAPD pay off CIs by slipping them envelopes and picking them up in
sixty-thousand-dollar cars?' Terry said.

'Did you trace
the license plate?' I asked.

'Umm, that was a
little dicey,' Muller said. 'Since we're supposed to be flying under the radar,
I didn't want to do it from the office.'

'No problem,'
Terry said.

He took out his
cell and dialled. 'Yeah, good evening dispatch, this is Detective Terry Biggs.
My partner and I are in this real nasty neighbourhood in Compton, and there's a
car parked here that costs more than any of the houses on the block. It might
be stolen. Can you run the plates for me?'

He pushed the
speaker button on the phone, and we waited.

The dispatcher
came back a minute later. 'Well, you're right about one thing, Detective,' she
said, it doesn't belong to anyone in Compton. But so far, it's not reported
stolen. You might want to check with the owner to see if it's missing.'

'Good idea,'
Terry said. 'You got a name?'

'The car is
registered to a Dr Ford Jameson, Beverly Hills.'

The next morning
we called Wendy and told her we needed to take a personal day.

'Just stay in
touch in case all hell breaks loose,' she said.

We agreed, and
by 9:00 a.m. we were headed south on the 405 toward the Roadium.

Gaffney's video
didn't do it justice. It was much more vibrant and energetic than he had
captured on tape - a sprawling street bazaar with commerce happening in
multiple languages, all of them loud.

We parked and
went to the main office. Mike Romo, the director of operations, was eager to
cooperate.

We gave him the
date and the booth number where Tony had exchanged the envelope for the young
Mexican with the snake tattoo.

It only took him
a few seconds to type it into his computer and come up with a hit. 'The
vendor's name is

Raoul Castaneda,'
he said. 'I'll be right back.'

A few minutes
later he returned with a folder and handed it to us. Inside was a photocopy of
fat Raoul's driver's license.

'Jeez, he's only
thirty-eight years old,' Terry said. 'He could use a couple of salads and about
a year and a half on the treadmill.'

'Did you do a
background check on him?' I asked Romo.

A woman sitting
at a nearby desk blurted out an involuntary laugh. She quickly turned around
and apologised.

'We'll take that
as a no,' Terry said.

'It's more like
an impossibility,' Romo said. 'We have seven thousand different vendors selling
here over the course of the year, so background checks are out of the
question.'

'Is Castaneda
here today?' I asked. 'We'd like to talk to him.'

'No. It looks
like he mostly rents on weekends,' Romo said. 'And by the way, you're not the
first to come looking for him. According to the memo in his folder, an agent by
the name of Deborah Aronson was here asking about him six months ago.'

'What kind of an
agent?' I asked.

'She's with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She left her business card.' Romo handed
it to us, and we copied her name and number.

We thanked him,
went back to the parking lot, and I called ICE Agent Deborah Aronson.

She was not as
quick to cooperate as Romo.

'Are you looking
at him for an immigration or a customs violation, or is this something else?'
she said.

'Agent Aronson,'
I said, 'we barely have time to solve all the homicides that get thrown our
way, so LAPD is happy to leave immigration and customs issues to ICE, CPB,
USCIS, and the rest of the Homeland Security alphabet soup. Castaneda may or
may not have information on a case we're working on, and once we heard you were
asking about him, we thought we'd check and see what you have on him that you might
be willing to share with your local under-budgeted, overworked law enforcement
partners.'

That softened
her up. She laughed. 'OK, Detective Lomax, how can I help you?'

'What do you
have on Castaneda? And hopefully, it's more interesting than he's been peddling
illegal copies of Britney's latest CD.'

'He's a coyote,'
she said. 'Correction, he's only an alleged coyote, because we've never been
able to convict him, but we know that he's part of a thriving business smuggling
people across the border. He was born in Mexico, moved here thirty years ago,
and became a US citizen. He still has plenty of friends and family on the other
side who drive the illegals across. Castaneda waits on this side of the fence,
picks them up, and helps them find work here in the Land of Opportunity.'

'And then they
just blend into the fabric of LA?' I said.

'Only for about
a year or two,' Aronson said. 'He traffics in a lot of young men who are
looking to earn mucho American dollars, then go back to the wife and kids with
enough money to live extremely well. So not only does he pick up these border
jumpers after they sneak across, he drives them back to Tijuana, and they walk
back across the bridge to Mexico with a fistful of dollars.'

'You have all
this on him, but you can't convict him?' I asked.

'He's smart. The
one time we thought we nailed him, his lawyer beat the charge. Said that
Castaneda just drove down to the border town, met an old friend, and gave him a
ride to LA. The judge let him go.'

'What happens if
you convict?'

'His US
citizenship wouldn't save him,' she said. 'He'd wind up doing some jail time,
or at the very least get slapped with a fine, and then it would be
adios amigo.
We'd deport his
sorry ass. Of course, he'd probably wind up operating his coyote business on
the other side of the border, but that would be the Mexicans' problem, not
mine. Does any of this help?'

'All of it
helps,' I said. 'Thanks, Deborah. Crime- fighting is a two-way street, so if I
can ever reciprocate the favour, just ask.'

'Well, I do have
one question,' she said. 'You have a very charming way about you. In the
interest of interdepartmental relations, how would you like to get together for
a drink after work some evening?'

'Wow, that's not
the question I expected,' I said. 'But I can't. I'm in a serious relationship.'

'That's not the
answer I was hoping for, but it eliminates the need for any future questions.
Nice talking to you, Mike. I hope you get your man.'

'Thanks,
Deborah. And I hope you get yours.'

She hung up, and
I stared at the phone, a little dumbfounded.

'Y'know, Lomax,'
Terry said. 'I only get to hear one side of a lot of your phone conversations,
but I've got to tell you something. They are a hell of a lot more interesting
than both sides of mine.'

Even though we
knew Castaneda's address in East LA, finding his house required some basic math
skills. Most of the front doors had their numbers removed.

'Don't these people
know that stripping off their house numbers makes it hard for the cops to find
them?' Terry said. 'Not to mention the fact that it's totally confusing to your
average gang member on a drive-by shooting.'

We finally
zeroed in on a small olive-drab house on the corner of Hubbard and Sadler.

'Looks like the
cover of
Better Dumps and Gardens'
Terry
said.

We locked the
car and headed up the walk. Before we could ring the bell, Castaneda opened the
door. He was wearing a stained tank top and skivvies.

'You cops?' he
said.

'No,' Terry
said. 'We're the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol. Congratulations.
You're our big winner.'

'Fuck you, I
didn't do nothing,' he said.

'Then you won't
mind answering a few questions about someone who did,' Terry said. 'Get in the
house, or get in the police car. Your choice.'

Castaneda backed
in the door, and we followed.

Even when you
expect a pigsty, you can still be amazed by the creativity of some pigs. We stepped
into what was probably meant to be a living room, except that it was furnished
with four beds, all at odd angles. One of them had a table and a bunch of
chairs on top of the mattress. The other three were covered with dirty linens,
pizza boxes, beer cans, and on one bed, a partially inflated basketball. There
were dozens of plastic milk crates filled with CDs and albums on every inch of
floor space, and the entire room smelt of rancid food that probably didn't
smell all that terrific when it was fresh.

'I see you're a
big fan of Martha Stewart,' Terry said.

Like most slobs,
Castaneda felt the need to defend the mess. 'A friend of mine crashed here,' he
said.

'And what's your
friend's name?' Terry asked. 'Amtrak?'

Castaneda sat
down on a bed and took a can of Hormel chilli off a makeshift cinder block
nightstand. 'I was in the middle of breakfast. What do you want?' he said,
shoving a spoonful of brown glop into his face.

Terry reached
into one of the crates and pulled out a CD. 'What are you selling besides the
finest musical entertainment that ever fell off the back of a delivery truck?'
he said.

'
Nada
,' Castaneda
said. 'And it ain't stolen. They're all promotional shit that the music
companies throw away.' He took another spoonful of chilli.

Terry whirled
around and smacked the spoon and the can out of his hand. 'Put the fucking dog
food down and get off your fat, greasy ass, or we'll be back with a warrant,
and the music companies will throw you away for three to five.'

Castaneda stood
up. 'What do you want?'

Terry showed him
a screen shot of the young Mexican with the snake tattoo. 'Who is he, and don't
tell me you never saw him, because the next picture I've got is you and him
standing as close as prison shower buddies.'

'Keep cool, man.
I didn't say I don't know him,' Castaneda said. 'That's Esteban.'

'Last name?'

'That I really
don't know. I swear.'

'You turned him
over for a fistful of cash, and you don't know his name? Last chance to tell
the whole truth and nothing but, Raoul. Otherwise, you'll be trading in all
these luxurious accommodations for a triple-XL orange jumpsuit and twenty miles
of barbed wire.'

'OK, bro,'
Castaneda said. 'Chill. It just come to me. Benitez. Esteban Benitez.'

'Now let's hope
that the details of that little business transaction just come to you also,'
Terry said. 'Why did you get paid to deliver him?'

'It's for
medical science,' Castaneda said. 'Some doctor is doing research about a
disease that kills Mexican children.'

'Esteban was not
a child,' Terry said.