Joel Goldman - No way out
Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Joel Goldman - No way out» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Триллер, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.
- Название:No way out
- Автор:
- Жанр:
- Год:неизвестен
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:5 / 5. Голосов: 1
-
Избранное:Добавить в избранное
- Отзывы:
-
Ваша оценка:
- 100
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
No way out: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «No way out»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.
No way out — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком
Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «No way out», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.
Интервал:
Закладка:
“End of story?”
“Beginning. The guy lasted twelve hours when he got back on the street. We found his body and his mother’s tied one on top of another, both of them naked.”
“Where can I find him?” I asked.
“You have to be kidding.”
“I don’t shake and kid at the same time. Where does he hang out?”
“You’re crazy. I’m not going to tell you.”
“I’ll find out one way or the other.”
“Well, it won’t be from me. I won’t have that on my conscience.”
Kate drove two blocks after I finished talking to Ammara, biting her lower lip, glancing at me, giving up.
“You can’t go after Mendez.”
“Look, I’m not delusional, and I’m not suicidal. I’m not going to take him on one-on-one or walk into his house and shoot everyone in sight, pat myself on the back, declare victory, and go home.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“The more I know, the more options I have. Knowing where he lives, where he goes, and who goes with him is all part of that.”
“Then why didn’t you tell that to Ammara? She might have told you what you wanted to know.”
I looked at Kate, smiling. “She wouldn’t have believed me.”
Kate studied me, taking snapshots. “I don’t blame her.”
I called Simon to avoid telling Kate another lie. “I want you to find Cesar Mendez.”
“Of course you do. How about I send him a friend request on Facebook?”
“And if that doesn’t work, do something creative, like check property and utility records. The guy has to live somewhere.”
“Gang leaders aren’t like the rest of us taxpayers. They don’t own, rent, buy, sell, or trade. They have people who do that for them.”
“Then find one of them and follow the trail but find him.”
“Which is more important, finding Mendez or doing something brilliant? Because I’m getting close on the brilliant thing. I can drop it if you want me to. Your call.”
Simon didn’t like being left behind at the office, even though he knew that was where he did his best work. When pressed, he admitted that Lucy and I had the edge in the field, but that didn’t satisfy his desire to be on the front lines until I reminded him that his best weapon was sarcasm and sarcasm never stopped a bullet or a bad guy.
“Give me a taste of brilliant, and I’ll let you know.”
“We wanted the police files on the missing-kid cases so we could look for similarities and evaluate whether those crimes were part of a serial killer’s pattern. We didn’t find a pattern, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong to look for it. The brain appreciates patterns. It’s how we organize, process, and understand our experiences.”
Simon’s other favorite weapon was the long explanation. “I remember. Get to the point.”
“So just because there wasn’t a pattern of child kidnappings didn’t mean there wasn’t some other pattern at work here.”
“And you found one.”
He couldn’t disguise his pleasure. “Indeed I did, robberies of gun dealers. I searched for other reports of gun dealers being held up especially after leaving gun shows. That’s when they’re the most vulnerable. They’ve got their inventories in the trunk of their cars or the back of their trucks. They’re usually alone and tired after a couple of days at a show, especially these victims, who were all seventy years old or older, guys that can’t wait to get home, put their feet up, have a beer, and recite the Second Amendment until they fall asleep.”
“Simon, I’m getting old.”
“Okay, okay. Here it is. Five gun dealers have been robbed in the last three months after coming home from gun shows. Eldon Fowler was one of them.”
“Wasn’t he the guy who lived at Lake Perry and died when he hit a deer?”
“Right. He was the fourth one. Numbers one, two, and three occurred in Lincoln Nebraska; Ames, Iowa; and Edwardsville, Illinois. The last victim, a guy named Joe Rosenthal, lives in Kansas City. The thieves followed the victims from the gun shows all the way into their garages and grabbed their guns. Fowler didn’t make it that far.”
“Any of the other victims hurt?”
“The guy in Iowa went for his gun. One of the thieves shot him in the leg, but he’s okay. They tied Rosenthal up and left him in the garage. His wife didn’t find him until she took the trash out the next day.”
“Every one of those towns is within half a day’s drive of Kansas City.”
“If KC was the hub, the others would be spokes in the wheel,” Simon added.
“Any arrests?”
“All open investigations. Each robbery made the local press, and the papers quote the same ATF agent who says all the usual bullshit that they’re making progress.”
“Braylon Jennings?”
“His Eminence.”
“How many guns total?” I asked.
“More than five hundred split roughly sixty/forty between semiautomatic handguns and assault rifles. Ballpark retail value is close to seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“Eldon Fowler’s wife told you that he called her from the gun show, said someone stole his Ruger Redhawk. Has that gun surfaced?”
“Not yet. The only gun that’s been traced to the thefts is the one Frank Crenshaw used to kill his wife.”
“Anything else on the driver that passed Eldon Fowler on the highway, the one who called the Highway Patrol and said a crazy man was aiming a shotgun at them? Did you find out what he was driving?”
“I did. It was a Dodge Ram pickup truck. That’s not all. Fowler was driving a Ford F-150. CSI found paint scraped against a tree at the accident scene, but it wasn’t from the Ford. It was from a Dodge Ram.”
“That’s why Fowler had his shotgun in the window. He must have seen the thieves earlier that night, and they must have been driving a Dodge Ram. Find out if any of the people we’re looking at own one.”
“Make up your mind. You want me to do that or look for Cesar Mendez?”
“I want you to do both.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
I’d been to a lot of gun shows; long lines of tables stretched wall-to-wall, offering everything from replicas of 1842 U.S. black powder percussion muskets to World War II Japanese bayonets, to the latest in easily concealed personal protection handguns and assault rifles, plus ammunition for all occasions. I’d seen Scientologists recruit people who had just snapped up a complete collection of John Wayne western DVDs, an army surplus camouflage wardrobe, and a six-month supply of dried survival meals. And I’d watched fathers instruct sons on the finer points of gun safety, duck blinds, and birdcalls.
The gun dealers were mostly white, mostly older, and mostly scared that the government was going to knock on their doors in the middle of the night and take their guns, none of them worried for a minute that thieves would strip them of their weapons in their garages. But there it was, proof that we’re often so afraid of one thing that is so terrible and unlikely to imagine that we dismiss the real likelihood of everyday evil, certain that it will always be the other guy who gets hit over the head.
Five robberies in three months in five different states was not a casual undertaking. It required planning, personnel, and precision by a team of trained people dedicated to the mission, disciplined, and trustworthy. They had to spend enough time at each gun show to identify their target without attracting attention, probably even following the victim home on a dry run one night, doing it for real the next. Cesar Mendez had the people and the balls to make sure they did their job.
Storage of the guns was another problem. It required either a number of secure locations or one extremely secure location that was above suspicion and beyond detection. A gang that dealt in drugs first and guns second operated on street corners and in crack houses. Mendez needed someplace else to store the guns, a place that he could control but that couldn’t be traced to him. That meant he’d have to rely on someone outside the gang who could front for him.
Читать дальшеИнтервал:
Закладка:
Похожие книги на «No way out»
Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «No way out» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.
Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «No way out» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.