Robert Crais: Taken

“They gotta be illegals.”

“Shh.”

Krista shifted position, and Jack cringed with a fresh burst of fear. She was taking pictures with her cell phone.

“Stop. They’ll see us.”

“No one can see.”

The people emerging stayed near the truck as if they were confused. So many people appeared Jack did not see how they had all fit inside. As many as thirty people stood uneasily in the brush, speaking in low murmurs with alien accents that Jack strained to identify.

“That isn’t Spanish. What are they speaking, Chinese?”

Krista lowered her phone and strained to listen, too.

“A few Spanish speakers, but most of them sound Asian. Something else, too. Is that Arabic?”

The man who opened the truck returned to the driver, and spoke clearly in Spanish. Jack figured these two were the coyotes-guides who were hired to sneak people illegally into the U.S. He leaned closer to Krista, who was fluent in Spanish.

“What did he say?”

“‘Where in hell are they? Those bastards are supposed to be here.’”

The driver mumbled something neither Jack nor Krista understood, then visibly jumped when three sets of headlights topped by roll-bar lamps snapped on a hundred yards behind the box truck, lighting the desert between in stark relief. Three off-road trucks roared forward, bouncing high on their oversized tires. The two coyotes shouted, and a scrambled chatter rose from the milling people. The driver ran into the desert, and his partner ran back to their truck. He emerged with a shotgun, and ran after his friend even as two of the incoming pickups skidded in a loose circle around the box truck, kicking up murky clouds of dust. The third chased after the fleeing men, and gunfire flashed in the dark. The crowd broke in every direction, some crying, some screaming, some scrambling back into the box truck as if they could hide.

Jack pulled Krista backward, then jumped up and ran.

“Run! C’mon, run!”

He ran hard toward his Mustang, then realized Krista wasn’t with him. Men with clubs and shotguns jumped from the pickups to chase down fleeing people. Krista was still between the cactus, taking pictures.

Jack started to shout for her, but stopped himself, not wanting to draw attention. He and Krista were outside the light, and hidden by darkness. He risked a sharp hiss instead.

“Kris-”

She shook her head, telling him she was fine, and resumed taking pictures. Jack ran back to her, and grabbed her arm. Hard.

“Let’s go!”

“All right. Okay-”

They started to rise as four Asian women came around the plane’s tail and ran past less than ten yards away.

A man with a shotgun came around the tail after them, shouting in Spanish, and Jack wondered if these poor women could even understand what he said. Then the man stopped, and stood absolutely still as if he were a cardboard cutout against the night sky.

Jack held his breath, and prayed. He wondered why the man was standing so still, then saw the man was wearing night-vision goggles.

The man was looking at them.

There in the starlit desert landscape where no one could hear the shots, the man lifted his shotgun, and aimed at Jack Berman.

Elvis Cole: six days after they were taken

When people call a private investigator because someone they love is missing, especially a child, the fear bubbles in their voice like boiling lard. When Nita Morales called that morning about her missing adult daughter, she didn’t sound afraid. She was irritated. Ms. Morales phoned because the Sunday Los Angeles Times Magazine published a story about me eight weeks ago, rehashing a case where I cleared an innocent man who had been convicted of multiple homicides. The magazine people came to my office, took a couple of pretty good pictures, and made me sound like a cross between Philip Marlowe and Batman. If I were Nita Morales, I would have called me, too.

Her business, Hector Sports amp; Promotions, was on the east side of the Los Angeles River near the Sixth Street Bridge, not far from where giant radioactive ants boiled up from the sewer to be roasted by James Arness in the 1954 classic, Them! It was a warehouse area now, but no less dangerous. Buildings were layered with gang tags and graffiti, and signs warned employees to lock their cars. Steel bars covered windows and concertina wire lined roofs, but not to keep out the ants.

That spring morning, 8:55 A.M., a low haze filled the sky with a glare so bright I squinted behind the Wayfarers as I found the address. Hector Sports amp; Promotions was in a newer building with a gated, ten-foot chain-link fence enclosing their parking lot.

A young Latin guy with thick shoulders and dull eyes came out when I stopped, as if he had been waiting.

“You the magazine guy?”

The magazine guy.

“That’s right. Elvis Cole. I have a ten o’clock with Ms. Morales.”

“I gotta unlock the gate. See the empty spot where it says Delivery? Park there. You might want to put up the top and lock it.”

“Think it’ll be safe?”

That would be me, flashing the ironic smile at their overkill battlestar security.

“For sure. They only steal clean cars.”

That would be him, putting me in my place.

He shook his head sadly as I drove past.

“I had an old Vette like this, I’d show some love. I’d pop those dents, for sure.”

That would be him, rubbing it in. My Jamaica yellow 1966 Corvette Stingray convertible is a classic. It’s also dirty.

He locked the parking gate behind us, told me he was Nita Morales’s assistant, and led me inside. We passed through an outer office with a counter for customers, and a man and woman at separate desks. The man and woman both looked over, and the man held up the Sunday magazine issue with my story. Embarrassing.

We passed through a door onto the shop floor where fifteen or twenty people were operating machines that sewed logos on baseball caps and photo-inked mugs. Nita Morales had a glass office on the far side of the shop where she could see the floor and everything happening there. She saw us coming, and stepped from behind her desk to greet the magazine guy when we entered. Tight smile. Dry hand. All business.

“Hi, Mr. Cole, I’m Nita. You look like your picture.”

“The one where I look stupid or the one where I look confused?”

“The one where you look like a smart, determined detective who gets the job done.”

I liked her immediately.

“Would you like something? Coffee or a soft drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“Jerry, where’s the swag bag? You left it in here, right?”

She explained as Jerry the Assistant handed me a white plastic bag.

“We made a little gift for you this morning. Here, take a look.”

A large white T-shirt and a matching baseball cap were in the bag. I smiled at the cap, then held up the T-shirt. “Elvis Cole Detective Agency” had been silk-screened onto the front in black and red letters, with “world’s greatest detective” in smaller letters below it. An emblem saying the same had been sewn on the front of the cap.

“You like them?”

“I like them a lot.”

I put them back in the bag.

“This is very cool, but I haven’t agreed to help you. You understand that, don’t you?”

“You will. You’re going to find her. It won’t be hard for the World’s Greatest Detective.”

She got that from the magazine.

“The ‘world’s greatest’ thing was a joke, Ms. Morales. The guy who wrote the article put it in the story like I meant it. I didn’t. It was a joke.”

“I have some things to show you. Give me a second. I have to get them together.”