Hot Wire (2 page)

A door opened on the other side of the warehouse fence. Barbed wire glinted and a rectangle of yellow light spread across the lot, glistening on rows of windshields. A couple shadows appeared in the door. They checked us out, bumped heads, then one of them waddled over to the gate with a flashlight. He was huge – a beer keg with legs. The other guy stayed by the door, talking on a cell phone. When he stepped out of the glare, I saw it was Castel, Heberto's crew boss, and I clenched up a little. He was this sneering thug with a glass eye, a nasty, violent greaseball who liked to come on to me just to watch me squirm. I put the Jeep in neutral and got out, shivering in the damp air while something that felt like a big spider crawled down my back. Beer Keg checked the street, opened the gate, then Arn climbed into the Jeep and drove it onto the lot.

I was alone with Boss
Loco
.

Castel swaggered over with a drunken smile, his fake eye glinting under the streetlight. A lanky
moreno
with jet-black hair, he used to be a coke dealer in Argentina, but he got mixed up with some faction crap and had to leave the country. I heard that a Columbian had tried to take over his territory – put out his eye with a knife, messed him up bad – but Castel tracked him down after he got out of the hospital, raped the guy's wife in front of him, then chopped their heads off with a machete and stuck them on a fence. That was the story, anyway. Heberto got him a green card – they were cousins or something – then stuck him in Zulu, Oakland to run their distribution network. Castel was smarter than the rest of his crew, which wasn't saying much, but he had a hair-trigger temper and you never knew what he was going to do. They were all like that. Crazy Mestizos. None of them had ever bothered me, though. Nothing major, anyway. Deacon had warned them off and they all treated me like a poison toad.

"Hey,
Conchita
." Castel showed me some teeth. "I hear you fucked up again and we got to bail you out."

"You got a car for us?"

"Yeah, we got a car. A good car. What else? Just make sure you don't wreck it or scratch the paint job like you did the last time, all right?"

"You want me to go get it?"

"Your
cholo
can do it better."

"Arn's not my
cholo
, OK?"

"OK, Emma." His good eye twitched, oozing over my body like a snail. "You want a drink?" he asked, switching gears just to screw with my head. "We're locked down for the fire, but I guess it's done now. The pigs split about twenty minutes ago."

"We got to get going."

He nodded, bored, his glass eye lifeless as a marble while his good one flickered over the street. One of these nights, the cops were going to follow a shipment back to the warehouse and stage a mad-dog SWAT assault. It was just a matter of time.

"You should of seen the fire," he said, cracking his knuckles. "It was a big motherfucker – one of those companies down by the yards. You could see the flames from here. Bunch of pigs, a couple ladder trucks – it was like a war zone down there." He laughed. "I guess somebody couldn't pay their taxes."

"We saw it from the highway."

"I love fires, baby." He was staring at the zipper on my jeans. "They give me a big chubby."

Just then, Beer Keg walked out of the shadows in the lot and came over to where we were standing. He looked nasty under the streetlight: head like a Toltec statue, scars and pockmarks, a snake tattoo down his right arm. He checked me out, his eyes like knife wounds, then his lips split apart in a grin.

"
Emma esta fleteando por las calles hoy
."

Castel snickered, then he got in my face.

"Heberto's confused," he said, licking at me with his voice. "He can't figure the deal with you. Understand? If something happens, you come see me, OK? I'll take good care of that sweet little
bolo
."

He squeezed my arm, grinning when I flinched, then he turned away to gabble at Beer Keg in Spanish. A couple centuries dragged by, then Arn came back, driving a black Corolla with tinted windows and California plates. It was about time. He pulled up beside me and leaned out the window.

"You OK?" he whispered.

"Yeah. What's going on?"

"They're fried, man. Twenty or thirty of them back in the warehouse. Let's get the hell out of here."

"How's the car?"

"Looks clean, I guess."

Castel was watching us, hands in his pockets, grinning at me like a lizard. He said something to Beer Keg, then walked over to send us off.

"Papers in the glove box." He was all business now. "You get pulled over, tell them to call the warehouse and ask for me. Got it? It's registered to the company and insured for co-drivers, but you got to drop it off with Buster tomorrow morning. It's going out on the next shipment."

"OK." I was more than ready to leave. "Thanks."

"Try not to fuck it up this time."

"We'll be careful." I walked around to the driver's side and leaned over to talk to Arn. "You care if I keep driving for a while? We can switch in a couple hours."

"Knock yourself out."

He slid over into the passenger seat, leaned back and closed his eyes. I got in behind the wheel, closed the door and locked it.

"We'll call it in," Castel said, then headed back to the office, Beer Keg lumbering after him like some kind of trained gorilla. Arn opened his eyes again, watching them leave, then he let out his breath like he'd been holding it in ever since we left the highway.

"Weird guy," he said as we drove away. "That big fucker? Couldn't speak a word of English and he was watching everything I did like I'm going to steal the car again or something. Made me nervous, man. I think he was strapped."

"They all make me nervous."

"Except Castel, I guess. He's more Americanized or something."

"Yeah, he'll sing the Star Spangled Banner while he cuts your throat."

I pulled up to a stop sign about a block from West Grand. The streetlight was out – busted or blown away – and somebody had used the sign for target practice. We were on the far edge of stomping turf – a gang war border zone. Waves of immigrants had slopped over Oakland: Vietnamese, Fillipinos, border-hoppers from Mexico. They fought each other like rats and the bangers made war on everybody, sold crack, ran whores, staged riots and died like flies over a couple blocks of slums and blacktop. We were a mile from the Hood, back in the warehouse district, but anything could happen.

"Check it out," Arn said, pointing down the street as I pulled up to a stop sign next to a junk yard by the tracks. A car had just turned off Maritime onto West Grand and we watched it go by, heading for the highway. It was a black Lexus ES300, a beautiful machine, way out of place this time of night.

That's when I made a big mistake.

The Lexus passed under a streetlight, black and glossy, a stream of reflections flowing over the lines of its swept-back roof and glistening on its windows. The driver touched his brakes and the wraparound tail lamps flashed like the eyes on a devil's mask, sleek and elegant. Watching the car glide towards the highway, I got this idea that sent chill bumps crawling up my arms.

"Sweet," Arn said. "Forty-five grand easy. Some of them hit six figures with all the accessories."

"What's he doing down here?" I asked.

"Who knows?" Arn lit up and propped his boots on the dash. "Some pimp, most likely."

"Down in the bottoms?"

"Why not?" He grinned. "Even dock workers need some poon now and then."

"And you need a brain, but you're not going to find it down here."

"Not with you driving, anyway."

I put the car in gear and took off, bouncing over pot holes and buckled blacktop.

"Did you get a look at the driver?"

"Sort of. Not much."

"Looked white to me," I said. "Maybe he works at the port. Some manager."

"Maybe."

"You see anybody else in the car?"

"Nah." He yawned. "Couldn't see in the back, though. Why?"

I made West Grand just in time to see the Lexus turn onto a side street a couple blocks from the highway. A truck clattered by and I pulled out behind it, tightening my grip on the wheel.

"Nothing," I said. "Just curious."

I reached the street where the Lexus had turned off. Its tail lights winked two blocks away, down a stretch of dark buildings. The street was crowded with dumpsters and truck trailers – a strange place to go. I made the turn and followed, switching off my headlights.

Arn sat up, rolling his eyes.

"You got to be kidding."

#

We weren't carjackers, but we followed cars now and then if we saw the right model passing on the street. It paid off sometimes. Saved a lot of effort cruising around with our target list. We didn't have any cover traffic that time of night, but it was so dark in the bottoms, I figured the driver would never see us if I hung back with my lights off and took it easy.

The Lexus turned a corner up ahead and I touched the gas, driving half-blind at five miles per hour. The tires slopped through puddles. Garages crowded the narrow street. We were in some kind of cul-de-sac: machine shops, storage lots, scrap yards, cranes. The air smelled of canal water and rotting leaves.

"What're you doing?" Arn took a nervous drag, twisting around to look out the rear window. "There's no traffic. He's going to spot us."

"I just want to see where he's going," I said, keeping my voice down. "Maybe he'll park somewhere."

The highway overpass rumbled to the north, a sweep of concrete blocking the glow of the city. Hunched over the wheel, I drove around an industrial dumpster and a pile of cinderblocks, watching for broken glass. Rat eyes glowed by the curb. A train whistled in the yards.

"That's a Lexus," Arn said. "It's got an immobilizer. We can't start it without a key."

"I know that already."

"So what's the point?"

"He looks like he's going to park." I made the corner and spotted the Lexus two blocks ahead of us. Its tail lights flared as the driver touched his brakes, then he turned again, leaving us alone in the dark alley. "If we can get it, that's a lot of money. Ten or fifteen grand – maybe more."

"It's five-hundred commission. Same as all the rest."

"Not if we sell it ourselves."

"What?" He gaped at me. "You're crazy."

"Store it in long-term. Try to find a buyer."

"What about Deacon? What do you think he's going to do when he finds out we're working freelance?"

"I need a stash, OK? Heberto's trying to push me out and they can't just let me walk away. You know he wants to get rid of me."

"Jesus Christ, you're paranoid." He shook his head, smoke dribbling through his nose. "You're scared of Castel, that's all, and now you're flipping out because of the deal with the Camry. So we had a close call. So what? Nobody made our plates, but even if they did, it doesn't matter any more. Castel just likes to screw with your head."

He shut up when we reached the next corner. I slowed down and leaned over the wheel.

"See anything?"

"Hell, no. Let's get out of here."

"Hang on a minute."

I made the turn. Nice and slow.

"Fuck," Arn said. "There he is."

The street came to a dead end a block away, cut off by a chain-link fence and a vacant lot under the highway. The Lexus had turned around and parked on the left in front of a cinderblock building. The windshield glistened under a streetlight on the corner.

I pulled in behind a trailer rig at the curb. No telling if anyone had seen us.

"He pulled over," I whispered. "What's he doing down here?"

"Who cares? Let's go."

"If he gets out, we've got a shot."

"You're crazy."

"Let's just see what happens."

#

The driver got out of the Lexus.

He was a big mother: six-two easy, pumped up, bald, dressed in a suit that made him look like some kind of fed. He left the door open, lumbered around to the other side of the car, checked the street in both directions, then he opened the rear passenger door with one hand inside his jacket.

A short, fat guy got out of the Lexus and almost fell down. He wore a white shirt that looked ripped or stained or something and his hands had been cuffed behind his back. Baldy grabbed his arm and another suit climbed out of the back seat – crewcut, huge, all chest and biceps. He grabbed the fat guy by his other arm and they hustled him over to the building. Crewcut unlocked a windowless door and they shoved him inside. A light came on. Baldy checked the street again, then closed the door behind them.

Traffic drummed on the overpass. Rail cars ticked through a switch in the distance, fading into the noise of the city.

Baldy had left the Lexus door open.

"What the hell was that?" Arn whispered.

"I don't know."

"I don't like this. Let's get out of here."