Robert Crais - Taken

Sixty-five seconds later, I parked on the street across from the gate, and no one except the hat man paid attention as I walked to the little office. The young guy washing the wrecker kept washing while an older man I hadn’t seen before climbed aboard a light wheel-lifter, and backed past me toward the street. Off to help a stranded motorist. I couldn’t see Pike and didn’t know where he was, but neither did they. Especially the hat in the Subaru.

Cold air hit like a meat cooler when I entered the office. Two men were seated at a desk, one behind it with his chair rocked back, and the other beside it with his legs stretched out. They turned when I entered. The younger was in his late twenties and the man behind the desk was in his early thirties. The younger wore a blue work shirt with Eddie stitched on his left chest. The older wore a bright green Islander decorated with yellow palm trees and pink flamingos. This was probably Rudy Junior. Both had bruised eyes, lumps on their cheeks, and Rudy’s upper lip was swollen. I could see the resemblance even under the bruises.

I said, “Hey.”

The older guy said, “Hey. Can I help you?”

“I spoke with Eddie here earlier. You Rudy Junior?”

Rudy arched his eyebrows at his brother, who recognized my voice.

“This is the guy who called. He knew the old man.”

I looked from Eddie to his brother.

“My condolences.”

“Eddie said you had business with our dad?”

“That’s right. I’m looking for Krista Morales. Either of you know her?”

They glanced at each other, with Eddie shaking his head.

Rudy Junior said, “Sorry, friend. Should we?”

“I’m pretty sure your father knew her, or at least spoke with her. I was hoping one of you might know what they talked about. Here, she wrote this-”

I took out the note and held it so they could see. While they looked, I noticed a black-and-white picture on the wall showing Eddie and Rudy J with the young guy washing the wrecker outside, and a much older man. The older man would be their father. All of them were smiling.

Eddie read the note aloud.

“Q coy Sanchez. What’s it mean?”

“It means ask the coyote Sanchez. She wanted to know about bringing people up from the south. Your dad say anything about it?”

I watched Rudy J when I said it, trying to gauge his reaction. Eddie stood first, but Rudy Junior followed, moving with measured purpose.

“Who are you?”

“The man who’s looking for Krista Morales. She’s my interest here. Nothing else.”

Eddie said, “He’s a federal fucking agent.”

Rudy Junior shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter what he is. He’s got the wrong Sanchezes. There’s a lot of us. We’re like Smith and Jones, only brown.”

I said, “Why don’t we ask your other brother? Maybe he knows something.”

Rudy Junior pointed at a round clock on the wall. It wasn’t Pinocchio.

“It’s six. We’re closed. You need to leave, or I’ll call the police.”

Eddie said, “Asshole fed.”

They were glaring at me when Eddie suddenly focused on something behind me, and his face sagged.

“Oh shit.”

I turned as Rudy J reached behind his desk for a baseball bat, and then the door opened.

A tough-looking Asian man in a nice suit and sunglasses swaggered in first. He had been born with a thick neck and large bones, but time in a gym gave him sharp cuts and rude angles. He grinned when he saw the baseball bat, then stepped aside as two more Asian men pushed the third brother inside ahead of them. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. They were lean and hard with no-bullshit expressions, and something told me they weren’t police officers.

The second man held the youngest brother by the upper arm, and spoke to Rudy J as if I wasn’t present, even though I was only three feet away.

“We gave you much time. Now you pay.”

He barked the words in a heavy accent, each word a separate explosion.

Rudy J dipped his head toward me. He was afraid, but he was more afraid of what they would do to his brother than what I might overhear.

“Let him the hell go. Don’t you see we got people here? We’re doing business.”

The three men glanced at me as if I had been invisible until that moment, then the man holding the kid barked a broken-English command.

“Leave now. Come back tomorrow.”

I looked from him to the brothers, and wondered what was between them. I didn’t like the way they held the kid, or the way they assumed I would leave, or how they wore suits in the hundred-degree heat.

He barked again, louder.

“Leave now.”

I said, “I’m from the government. I’m here to ruin your day.”

Now he barked in a language I didn’t understand, and the big man reached for my arm. He was heavier and probably stronger, but he didn’t have time to use his weight or strength. I rolled his hand away, stepped into him with my left foot, and brought my right knee up into his liver. He went down as Joe Pike came through the door, kicked the legs from beneath the last man, and slammed him facedown into the floor. Then Pike’s gun was out, and up, and on the talker, and so was mine. Start to finish, three-quarters of one second.

I smiled at the talker.

“Nice suit.”

He let the boy go, and the boy scurried to his brothers. Then the man said something else I didn’t understand.

Pike said, “Korean.”

The Korean didn’t look scared.

“You should go. Go now.”

Pike took small pistols off each of them, and slipped them into his pockets.

I looked at the brothers behind their desk. They didn’t look like banditos or criminal coyotes. They looked like three rabbits pinned by the headlights.

I tipped my gun toward the suits.

“Who are these people?”

Rudy J wet his lips, then shook his head. Too scared to speak.

I said, “Want to call the police?”

Rudy J shook his head again, but it wasn’t good enough for the Korean.

“They owe us money. You should not be involved.”

Rudy J said, “Man, we don’t. I told you. The Syrian took’m. I don’t know what else to say.”

He was pleading.

The big guy was moving like he might try to get up. I cocked my pistol, pointed it at his head, but spoke to the talker.

“If he gets up too fast, I’ll hurt him.”

The talker stared at me as if deciding whether to continue, then kicked the big man hard in the back, shouting in more Korean. He kicked him twice more, and then we all heard a loud buzzing. The talker reached into his pocket, came out with a vibrating cell phone, and looked outside through the glass. Everyone else looked, too.

Three men climbed from a dark gray four-door sedan. Short-sleeved Arrow shirts and ties, carrying their jackets like men who didn’t want to put them on. A lanky African-American and a bald, pale Anglo got out of the front. A trim, well-built man with crew-cut red hair climbed from the back. They moved slowly, scanning their surroundings like they were getting the lay of the land, or maybe they wanted to make sure no one was going to shoot them. It was obvious they were cops even before the black cop took a holstered snub-nose from the car and clipped it to his belt beside a badge.

Rudy J said, “That’s the police. The black guy, that’s Detective Spurlow.”

The head Korean glanced at me, then pulled his two friends to their feet as Rudy J continued.

“That bald guy is Lance. They’re the ones told us about the old man. I don’t know that other guy.”

Eddie said, “Lange. It was Lange, not Lance.”

Outside, the officers slipped into their jackets, shaking themselves because the cloth stuck to their skin.

The head Korean stepped close, and looked like he wanted to rip out my heart.