“You tell me,” whispered Jake.
Trey maintained a vise grip on the other bodyguard as Jake continued the questioning. “A woman and little girl got kidnapped. You and your friends know anything about that?”
Don Ho struggled to turn his face, trying to get a look at his assailants, forcing Jake to lean in even harder, increasing the pressure.
“I don’t know who was behind the kidnapping or the murder,” mumbled the man.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because it is the truth.” He tried to shout the answer, but with his face planted in the wall it was difficult.
Trey stabbed his gun closer and pressed it against the ear of the man in black. “You want me to kill Johnny Cash? It might encourage your friend to open up and help us.”
Jake knew Trey was bluffing but liked the way he was getting into the role.
“Not yet but the night is young.”
Trey tugged a little harder on the bodyguard’s hair, pulling the neck back ever so slightly, enough to be painful but not enough to cut off the air supply and crush the trachea. He whispered, “You speak English? Maybe you want to answer some questions.”
The man maintained his silence as Trey shifted his weight, leaning into him, using body weight to secure the man’s detention.
Jake whispered, “So you don’t know anything?”
“We had nothing to do with it. I swear.”
“Tell me one more time.”
“I swear. We had nothing to do with the kidnapping and if we knew anything we’d tell Park.”
Confident he couldn’t be recognized, Jake tacked to a different subject: “You know Gabe Chong.” It was a statement, not a question.
Don Ho mumbled, “Yes. He works security for Mr. Yeong.”
“When and where was the last time you saw him?”
“Two days ago, here at the restaurant.”
“Where is he right now?”
“I don’t know.”
With that Jake flipped the man around, kneed him in the groin, and, as he folded, threw him to the filthy pavement, facedown. After he placed his foot on the back of the henchman’s neck, securing him to the ground, he turned his attention to Trey’s captive.
When Johnny Cash struggled to eyeball his attackers, Jake threw two quick left elbows, which snapped the henchman’s head, disorienting him and weakening his resolve. Blood poured from his nose.
Ordered to the ground, he quickly complied, proning himself out in a puddle of scum. Trey bent over and twisted the man’s face away from the two FBI agents, then reached into the thug’s left back pocket and removed his wallet.
Searching the contents, Trey said, “I’ve got a driver’s license but it’s fake. There’s no hologram and the lamination is sloppy. Can’t find a green card but he does have a Blockbuster video rental card and plenty of cash. This guy isn’t legal.”
Jake said, “Take the DL and video card; at least we’ve got a name and we’ll ruin his date night if he can’t rent a movie.”
Jake reached down, picked up the cell phone, and tossed it to Trey. “Check to see his recent calls and take a look at his directory.”
Trey scrolled through the phone, calling out names, almost all Asian.
“Who were they just talking with?” asked Jake.
Trey punched up that feature and reported the results. “No name but a 310 area code, five minutes, thirty-five seconds.”
Jake pressed harder, the man’s face buried in the ground. “Who were you just talking to?”
The man said nothing.
Jake dug his heel hard into the man’s neck and repeated the question.
“Mohammed,” he croaked.
“This isn’t a knock-knock joke. Mohammed who?”
“I just know him as Mohammed.”
“What was the call about?”
“He’s looking to buy some stuff.”
“What stuff?” said Jake, grinding his foot deeper into the man’s neck.
“Counterfeit stuff — watches, clothes, cigarettes. He’s a regular. He sometimes makes small purchases of meth. I swear that’s all I know. It’s the truth,” said the man, struggling to speak and breathe.
Jake said to Trey, “Keep the phone.” Then, whispering in his best Clint Eastwood imitation to the two men on the ground, he said, “You two, keep your eyes on the street. If you lift your head or turn toward us, I promise you will both have closed-casket funerals because I will blow your faces into Beverly Hills.”
With that Jake and Trey rushed to the van. Jake jumped into the driver’s seat. The engine kicked over on the first attempt and he goosed the accelerator, squealing out of the alley toward Wilshire Boulevard as the two FBI agents removed the stockings from their heads. The four women who had been at the end of the alley when the altercation began were nowhere to be seen.
“That went well. You’re kind of fun to play with when you aren’t cranky,” said Trey with a broad grin. “Where’d that elbow come from? Is that legal?”
“Marquis of Queensberry rules only count in the ring. You always cheat on the street,” Jake said, laughing.
“What do you expect me to do with this cell phone? Given the way we obtained it, the U.S. Attorney is never going to allow us to use anything we get from it as evidence at trial.”
“Let’s worry about the rules of evidence after we rescue two kidnap victims. Ask the tech guys to dump the SIM card for previous calls and check the names in his directory against our files. We need to find out who this Mohammed is. At least one of the attackers at Park’s house was Middle Eastern and we had the Iranian broadcaster’s plates. Maybe they’re somehow involved in this,” said Jake.
Trey thought for a moment and said, “If Korean mobsters are working with Iranian-connected Middle Eastern bangers, this case will be one for the record books.”
As Jake ran a yellow light on Wilshire, he glanced toward Trey and said, “Stranger things have happened. Remember we had that mafia gang two years ago that teamed up with the Mexican drug cartel to deliver khat from Uganda to the Somali expat community?”
“Yeah,” Trey replied. “That was the stuff that was tainted with some kind of chemical, killing seven of the buyers — and the ACLU sued the Bureau and the DEA for not stopping the shipment before the stuff hit the streets.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen here,” said Jake. “By the way, did you notice neither of the two guys we took down tonight seemed to know how to defend himself? I thought they all knew karate.”
Trey laughed. “I think that’s Japanese.”
“Whatever.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jake arranged with his ICE contacts for a two-man FBI undercover truck-driving team to pick up Park’s container at the Otay Mesa border crossing at ten in the morning. Unlike his nighttime antics with the two border thieves a week ago, this pickup was uneventful.
Jake’s UC budget for this operation included rented space at an offload transit facility in the Valley. The shipment would arrive there at about two. Instead of shadowing the delivery, Jake was en route to a “cloth-napkined” Studio City restaurant.
He parked on the street to avoid the valet, saving himself the paperwork hassle of trying to get reimbursed for a tip. Though it really wasn’t necessary, he entered the restaurant through the rear door and made a quick stop at the restroom before heading for his noon appointment.
While washing his hands, Jake questioned why Olivia Knox, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s L.A. office, had arranged for this hastily called meeting. He assumed it had to do with his nocturnal confrontation with ASAC Hafner and/or the psych eval Trey had mentioned. That had to be why she had set the meeting for a very public venue, where he was less likely to go postal.