James Patterson - Gone

“Señor Neves, I presume?” Diaz said.

“Yeah? What?” he said with a stunned look on his malevolent face.

Tomás shrugged as we showed our tin.

“And?” he said.

“Señor Neves,” Diaz said with a courtly little bow, “I know you’re a busy man, but do you think it might be possible to speak with you for five minutes about a stolen car? If now’s not good for you, we could always come back later with a search warrant and put you out of business.”

“Why don’t you come back to my office?” Tomás finally said.

“Señor Neves, I thought you’d never ask,” Diaz said.

We followed him up the stairs, into a room with a spotless desk and a phone on it. There was a window in one wall and the cracked door to a bathroom in another.

“OK, here we are. Happy? So what the hell is this about? A stolen car?” Neves demanded.

“Jeez, dog. What is it with you? Could you be ruder?” Diaz cried. “This ain’t the hood. This is Manhattan Beach. You’re supposed to say shit like, Would you like a seat, Officer? Can I get you a cold drink, Officer? I mean, if you want to be a businessman, you should watch an episode of Martha Stewart or something.”

“Fine. Would you like a seat?” Neves said.

“There you go. No seat, man, but do you mind if I use your facilities to freshen up a little?” Diaz said, holding up his palms like a magician about to do a trick.

“Whatever,” Neves said.

“Thanks,” Diaz said, heading into the can. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know.”

Diaz wasn’t two steps in when he stopped and turned. Emily and I had to suppress our laughter.

“What the-?” Diaz said loudly.

There was a loud scraping sound, and a moment later, Diaz came out with a stunned look on his face and something dripping in his hand. It was the bar of soap he had wrapped in red cellophane in the parking lot of the CVS. A small package that had a strong resemblance to a kilo of cocaine.

“What have we here, Tomás?” Diaz said, shaking his head in dismay. “Little advice, señor. When you hide something from the cops in a toilet tank, you should really remember to put the lid all the way back on.”

“Whoa,” Tomás said, stunned. He blinked a few times, then shook his lean face vigorously. “This ain’t happening. This is a joke, right? You’re putting me on, yo?”

“Yep,” said Diaz, throwing him up against the wall and ratcheting handcuffs around his wrists. “Wanna hear the punch line? You have the right to remain silent.”

“You planted that shit there! You planted that shit!”

“Yes, I did, Tomás,” Diaz whispered to him. “Want to know a little secret? Planting shit on scum like you is, like, my favorite hobby. Guess what? There ain’t no stolen car, and the gloves are off, bitch. Just got the word from up top, and I couldn’t be happier. CRASH times are here again!”

“You crazy, man. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your buddy Manuel offed an FBI agent, and you think it’s not going to come on you? What did you think was going to happen?”

“But I don’t know any Manuel! What are you talking about? I want my lawyer. Yo, get Terrence! Go next door and get Terrence!” he started yelling.

Through the window, I saw the welder run out of the garage.

“John?” I said.

“It’s OK. I got this,” Diaz said.

Diaz grabbed the gangbanger and kicked out his legs as he body slammed him onto the desk.

“Listen to me, and listen to me good,” he said. “Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to help you when I toss you in MacArthur Park Lake with these cuffs on, maricón. Now start talking.”

Tomás said something in Spanish then. Diaz said something back.

We all jumped when there was a sudden pounding on the door behind us.

Emily and I immediately took out our guns.

“What is this? What’s going on in there? Tomás, are you OK? What’s going on in there? Open this door!”

“This is a police interview!” I yelled as I ripped the door open behind my gun. “Put your hands up now!”

I was surprised when I saw that the shocked-looking man standing in the doorway wasn’t a Hispanic gangbanger but a petite Asian guy wearing golf clothes and Clark Kent glasses.

“How dare you point a gun at me! I’m Terrence Che, Mr. Neves’s lawyer. Now, I demand that you tell me what’s going on this instant!”

“They’re framing me, is what’s going on!” Neves yelled. “They’re framing me, Terrence!”

Diaz rolled his eyes. “Shit,” he mumbled as he reluctantly uncuffed Tomás.

“Who are you people? Why are you harassing my client?” Che said as I put my gun away.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story,” Diaz said, handing the lawyer the wet bar of cellophane-wrapped soap as he gently pushed him to the side.

“And wouldn’t you know it? We’re late for a meeting,” Emily said as we exited the room.

“Wait, I’m not done with you. This is illegal,” the feisty, pocket-sized lawyer said, following us down the stairs, into the garage. “You can’t just go around assaulting people. What’s your badge number?”

“Oh, my badge number,” Diaz said, turning and giving him the finger. “LAPD Badge Number One. Got it? Super. Bye, now.”

“Well, that went well,” Emily said as we screeched out of the lot, hopefully before the lawyer could get the plates.

“It did go well, actually,” Diaz said, lazing in the backseat.

“What do you mean? What did Tomás say to you?”

“He said, ‘Please, man. Don’t do this. He’ll kill my family.’ ”

“So Tomás does know something,” Parker said.

Diaz nodded.

“Apparently,” he said.

After we returned to HQ and relayed the info about Neves’s connection to Perrine, the reaction up the chain of command was impressive and immediate.

FBI Assistant Director Dressler personally got on the phone to a senior intelligence analyst at none other than the NSA for a full Homeland Security Total Information Awareness workup on the gangbanger.

TIA was an NSA supercomputer-fueled data-mining tool that apparently could de-encrypt and scour each and every data source on the planet to find out about an individual. There were no warrants involved, not even any formal requests to phone or credit card companies that could be turned down. The NSA hackers just went in wherever they needed to go and took what they wanted.

It was supposed to have been shut down after a hue and cry by the ACLU about privacy, but apparently it wasn’t as shut down as the ACLU thought. Which was fine by me. At least in this instance. Bending and even breaking rules was the least we could do in stopping the utter savagery that Perrine was waging on American citizens.

I admired the heck out of Dressler’s get-her-done attitude. He was even smart enough not to ask us how we came across our info. All he wanted was progress so he could nail Perrine’s ass to the floorboards. Perrine had made a bad mistake when he had killed Agent Mara. The FBI was very, very pissed.

I admired Diaz’s attitude just as much. The Charles Bronson look-alike had certainly stepped up and taken charge of Neves back at the garage. He was a throwback, one of those all-in all-the-time cops who knew the cold, brutal truth that sometimes the solution to a situation comes at the business end of a billy club.

“Tell me something, John,” I said as we put our feet up with a cup of coffee at the back of the command center. “This CRASH-unit scandal thing. You didn’t, perchance, have some personal experience concerning that situation, did you?”

Diaz squinted pensively at his coffee.