Hot Wire (10 page)

When we drove off, I saw him standing on the sidewalk, yelling into his cell phone.

The cops drove me to the Emeryville station, a modern brick building on the peninsula by the city marina. The police lot had a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco, one of those postcard views that lured millions of suckers to the Golden State, then bogged them down in gridlock while the Lefties taxed them to death.

The cops seemed edgy. Maybe they knew who I worked for and they were worried about making a procedural error that would screw up the bust. Who knows? One way or another, they had to handle me with kid gloves because this was California and my lawyer could charge them with harassment if they didn't say "please" and "thank you." They helped me out of the squad car, nice and polite, then they walked me into the station and started to book me on the G.T.A., but they didn't get very far in the process.

I was a hot item, I guess. The minute we got there, a couple suits walked up, flashed their badges and started arguing with the cops and the sergeant sitting behind the front desk. The suits looked like feds, but I was too wasted to care anymore. Out of the frying pan and all that crap. Slouched on a bench with my hands cuffed behind my back, I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I guessed they were fighting over charges and jurisdiction. Finally, some Big Deal waddled out of his office and the cops went into a huddle while I tried not to pass out.

They decided to skip the booking – a weird thing to do – then they walked me down a hall and locked me into an interrogation room with my hand cuffed to a chair. It was all too familiar: the florescent lights and dead flies, the chair bolted to the floor, the table nicked with scratch marks like somebody had been gnawing on the wood. I could hear bells at the fire station next door and boat noises at the marina on the west side of the peninsula. The room smelled like Lysol and burnt coffee.

Time dragged by, then the door opened and Jacobo, of all people, walked into the room, followed by this Chinese dork in a gray-flannel suit and a muscle-bound dyke wearing a Highway Patrol uniform. It was a regular parade of Law Enforcement diversity: one bent cop and a couple of EEOC hires – what a laugh. Seeing Jacobo gave me a jolt, but I should've expected the sleaze bag. He was a dirty cop playing a double game, but he was still a detective on the Auto Theft Detail so he had to go through the motions. The three of them sat down at the table and took out some files and junk, then Jacobo broke the ice, his eyes bloodshot and trapped in their sockets.

"Well, well, Emma. Back again. Can't say I'm surprised or anything, but you got some problems, darling." He looked bad – worse than usual – and his casual act had an edge like a razor. He was still wearing the same white shirt and black tie from last night when he had collected his payoff from Deacon. "This is Agent Chang, U.S. Customs, and Officer Mellon, a special investigator for the California Highway Patrol. They've got some questions and there's another fed waiting to talk to you after we're done. Get the picture?"

Chang and Mellon checked me out while he was talking. They must've seen my mug shots already, but they still looked shocked to find Little Bo Peep cuffed to a chair with bruises all over her face. I didn't fit my profile and that screwed with their tiny brains. They should've been recording the session, just to protect themselves if nothing else, but I didn't see any cameras or tape recorders, so they probably wanted to cut a deal off the record.

"I've got nothing to say," I said, contradicting myself.

Jacobo gave me a deadpan, but it looked like it took some effort. He came off nervous, biting his lower lip, tapping a finger on the table, but the dyke from the C.H.P. and the suit from Customs didn't seem to notice. They were studying me like I was a lab rat that had just grown a second head.

"Miss Martin." Agent Chang cleared his throat. He was Americanized, no accent at all, a prissy-looking bureaucrat with a round head, glasses and black hair parted down the middle. "Six months ago, the California Highway Patrol, U.S. Customs, and the Emeryville and Oakland police departments formed a joint task force to investigate contraband smuggling through the Port of Oakland. Your name came up during the course of our investigation."

"I've got nothing to say."

"Do you know a Jeffrey Deacon, also known as Jiggles? He runs a service station in Emeryville called Deacon's Nite-N-Day which we have reason to believe is a front for a stolen-car ring operating throughout the Bay Area."

"I've got nothing to say."

Jacobo coughed into his fist. He had to be sweating. Chang's glasses reflected the florescent lights and made him look like one of those cyborgs on Star Trek.

"We know you work for him," he said. "And we also know that Deacon recently formed a partnership with a man named Heberto Gonzalez – a Mexican national who runs a drug operation in West Oakland and is a suspect in half a dozen drug-related murders. We have reason to believe that Gonzalez and Deacon ship stolen cars through the Port of Oakland to points in Central and South America, then use the profits to bring back large quantities of heroin, cocaine and marijuana."

"I've got nothing to say."

"Sure she knows them," Jacobo said. If he was acting, he was doing a good job of it. "Emma jacks cars for Deacon. We popped her two years ago, but they threw it out on a technicality."

Chang gave him a look that could have meant anything, then turned back to me. "You haven't been formally charged yet, but I'm told there are multiple federal and local charges pending against you and I can tell you now that it would be in your interest to cooperate with us before everyone starts piling on."

There it was. The big offer to snitch.

Jacobo snickered, but he came off scared. This Task Force had some kind of jurisdictional crap going on in the background and it was obvious they wanted to flip me before the other feds could grab their action. Jacobo knew I could rat him out and I knew everything I said would get back to Deacon. Jacobo was Deacon's bag man – if he wasn't a plant or some kind of informant. Maybe he'd been working for the feds all along and now he was worried about blowing his cover with Deacon. After last night, I was ready to believe anything.

"Ever see a fight at a baseball game?" he asked. "You know those brawls that clear the benches and everybody piles up on the mound? Well, you're the one on the bottom."

"That's an understatement." Mellon, the Highway Patrol dyke, consulted her notebook. She was a typical bull dyke: buffed up, square jaw, mean little eyes and a mullet haircut. "You've been getting sloppy, Emma. Two witnesses saw you trying to start a Camry in Piedmont last night and we have reason to believe you were also involved in the theft of another car – " She skimmed the notebook with a fingernail, moving her lips while she read. " – a 1999 Sentry that was apparently towed off by the Deacon tow truck after you reported it had been immobilized with wheel locks." She settled back in her chair and clasped her hands on her burly gut. "We've also got you on videotape stealing a Lexus in Oakland – you didn't spot that security camera on the roof, did you? Your partner told us all about it."

"Who's the partner?" Chang asked, like he didn't know.

"Arnold Willis," Jacobo said. "Another kid. We picked him up last night."

That rattled me out of my stupor, but I tried not to show it.

I didn't say a word. Didn't blink. Didn't move.

Somebody had told them everything we had done last night, but I knew it wasn't Arn. It couldn't have been Arn because Crewcut had snatched him and I didn't think Crewcut had anything to do with these clowns. He was surprised when the locals pulled me over and I couldn't see him working for Customs or the police, not to mention the Highway Patrol. The stuff about the security camera was probably another lie and that meant we had a rat somewhere. Somebody at the top.

Jesus Christ.

I tried to think it through. Nobody else knew about the Lexus except for Arn, Buster, Deacon and Heberto – and maybe Jacobo if Deacon had already told him about it. Deacon had said he was going to tell him after their meeting last night, so call it fifty-fifty Jacobo already knew. And he'd know about the other cars, too, because Deacon had to let him know what we were doing so he could side-track any investigations by the Auto Theft Detail. So it boiled down to a process of elimination. Crewcut was holding Arn and I was pretty sure Crewcut wasn't a cop. Buster would never talk to the police. No way. Deacon and Heberto were out of the question, so that left Jacobo, Mr. Washed-up Bag Man. I glanced over at him and he looked away, dodging my eyes like a guilty weasel.

I should’ve known.

#

The three of them watched me brood for a while, just waiting for me to crack up and spill my guts all over the table, I guess. They must've thought I was going to burst into tears and confess and beg them to let me snitch off my friends, but I had other things on my mind like that scummy rat Jacobo. When I didn't say anything, Chang cleared his throat, took off his glasses and polished them with his tie, frowning like a social worker who just wanted to help a troubled kid. The feds liked to help, all right. They'd helped a lot of kids when they burned them alive at Waco.

"We'll talk about particulars later," he said, "but we already have more than enough to charge you, personally, with at least one count of felony-one organized criminal activity. That's five-to-life, Emma, but we're prepared to deal on a reduction if you agree to testify against your employers."

"If they don't get to her first," the dyke added.

"Don't take the fall for them, Emma. You're nineteen years old, so you can be tried as an adult in this case, but you know what Deacon is going to do when he finds out about your arrest. I've got a daughter about your age. I've read your file. I don't know how you got mixed up with these characters, but you should be going to school, not jacking cars for a scumbag like Deacon. There's still time to turn your life around, but you've got to learn how to trust people again. We can help you if you help us. We can give you protection."

So that was it. They just wanted to protect me.

"I've got nothing to say."

Jacobo stared at me like he was hypnotized. Did Deacon know about him yet? Probably not – that's why he was sweating so much. He had to be the rat for this task force and now the bastards were jabbering at me about trust while they nailed me to the wall.

"Where were you last night?" Jacobo asked, but I got this feeling that his heart wasn't in it.

"I've got nothing to say."

"Do you know a Stephanie Telford?"

They were all watching me now. Jacobo gnawed at his lower lip.

"I've got nothing to say."

"What happened to your face?" the dyke asked. "Looks like you fell out of a window or something."

Their soft soap hadn't worked, so now they were back to the threats. I stuck to my five words, but they kept probing around the way they always do, rehashing all that crap about witnesses and security cameras and threatening to max me out if I didn't roll over and bark like a dog. They never followed up on the Steffy thing, but I got the picture. They'd probably let me stew in a holding cell for a while before they dropped that bomb.

"Time's up." Chang tapped his watch.

"You're a popular girl, Emma." The dyke started to collect her junk. "You know, Deacon and Gonzalez are probably going to find out you've been arrested sometime today, if they don't know already. So give it some thought, all right? We'll be back in a while."

They got up and left. Just like that. Jacobo gave me this look on his way out, but if he was trying to send a message, he should've mailed me a postcard.

#

They sent in a medic with some bandages and antiseptic to clean up my face, then they left me alone for a while to brood about their threats.

My wrists hurt from the cuffs and my head throbbed like a broken thumb. I felt like I'd been mummified and run over by a trolley full of tourists in Union Square. Fat tourists. The night flickered through my skull like a movie with missing frames: headlights in my rearview, Baldy and Crewcut, Arn rolling around on the pavement, Steffy sprawled on my bed, black SUVs and fog and spotlights. I tried to think, but I couldn't think. I knew I had to keep my mouth shut until I could get a lawyer to find out what was going on.

Fade out. Voices. The door opened and a different suit walked in, carrying a briefcase. He closed the door behind him and sat down at the far end of the table, staring at me with vague confusion like he'd been expecting somebody else. He was fifty or sixty, maybe, baggy and slouched with hooded eyes and these long, thin arms that made him look like a praying mantis. I recognized him from the hall – the big argument when they canceled my booking.

"Matthews," he said. "Louis Matthews. FBI."

I tried to keep him in focus. The name rang a bell.

"Excuse me," he said, breaking off his stare. "You don't look like your photograph somehow. You're shorter than I expected and I didn't realize you were so young."

"You got some ID?" I asked. The FBI usually worked in pairs.

That threw him a little, but he flipped open his wallet and showed me a badge that looked official enough, for all I knew about it. Matthews. Baldy had said something about Matthews. Then it came back to me: Crewcut thought two guys named Chase and
Matthews
had hired me to steal the Lexus.