Steelie was unmoved. ‘Who cares what was behind it, so long as it wasn’t a tongue?’
DAY THREE
Thursday
NINE
Scott pulled into the curb in front of the next body shop on his list. Eric double-checked the sheet he was holding and suppressed a yawn. ‘Sepulveda Body Shop.’
Scott caught his yawn. ‘I shouldn’t have skipped lunch.’
They got out of the car and walked into the gated concrete yard, which was packed with cars reflecting the light and heat of the summer afternoon, while all four bays in the building were occupied with vehicles up on raised pallets, mechanics working beneath them. Scott and Eric threaded their way past the parked cars and walked into the small office. An unattended desk whose trays were filled with files was shoe-horned into what appeared to be a closet but the room was dominated by a larger desk closer to the window-mounted air conditioner, which was spewing frigid air.
The young man behind this desk was wearing a blue shirt smeared with grease where he’d wiped his hands on it. The nametag read Javier and he was on the phone.
‘If you bring it here before eight in the morning, I can get someone to have a look at it same day. But if it’s rotors, it’s gonna take a day to get ’em in.’
When he hung up the phone, the agents opened their badges, announced themselves and asked for Javier’s surname.
‘Ruiz.’
‘What’s your position here?’ Eric asked.
‘I’m the manager.’
‘OK. Were you working Monday?’
Ruiz took on a wary look. ‘Yes?’
‘You get a van in here that needed body work to the rear doors?’
Ruiz glanced away briefly. ‘Yeah.’
Eric restrained himself from looking at his partner. ‘You note the license plate?’
‘Well, I don’t know if—’ Something out the window caught his attention and he hurriedly got up from the desk, moving to the side just as an overweight man charged through the front door. He hardly glanced at Scott and Eric as he made his way around the desk. He only looked up after he’d sat down in the chair and put his head in line with the air conditioner.
‘What do you need? Ruiz taking care of you?’ He was rolling his neck around to expose all the folds to the air.
Before they could speak or take out their badges, Ruiz was saying, ‘Mr Malbandian, these gentlemen have a government vehicle that needs looking at.’ He shot a nervous glance at Eric.
‘Well, help them, Ruiz. Help them. Out there.’ He shooed them out with his hands.
Scott caught Eric’s eye and they didn’t pull out their badges. They followed Ruiz out into the hot forecourt. Ruiz went to a narrow area between two black SUVs liberally adorned with chrome accents and halted. It was like standing in a toaster oven.
‘Look,’ he said desperately. ‘That guy’s my boss. He doesn’t know about this and he’d fire me in a second.’
‘Because of something you did with this van?’ Scott wasn’t following.
‘No, because I took some money that maybe should’ve gone to the shop.’ Ruiz looked over Scott’s shoulder.
‘Take it from the top, Javier.’ Eric encouraged.
‘OK. This guy came in with a van. Looked like he’d been rear-ended. There was a lot of damage to the lower part of the back doors and it was stopping the handles from latching right. Nothing weird about it until he said he just wanted me to spray the van and do all the work from the outside. Under no circumstances could I touch the handles. I said, don’t you want me to fix the lock, but he said that the padlock he’d put on was just fine. He had a chain through it too. He paid me six hundred dollars extra to do everything the way he said. And it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. He was real particular.’
‘Describe the van.’ Scott had pulled out his pad.
Ruiz closed his eyes before recounting. ‘Light blue Chevy, old. Maybe a pretty old Astro but it didn’t have its model on the outside. Um . . . good tires, I noticed that.’
‘And what color did you spray it?’
‘Gold.’
‘License plate?’
Ruiz looked embarrassed. ‘That was part of what he paid me to not notice. But I know it was Georgia.’
The agents exchanged a look. ‘Georgia?’ Scott asked. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t look closely at it.’
‘You can’t remember anything else about it?’
‘No, honestly. I see a lot of plates and they don’t mean that much to me anymore. Especially from out of state because they’re a different layout to California plates.’
Eric cut across Scott’s emerging exasperation. ‘What about the man, Javier? What did he look like?’
‘He was Anglo. Kinda tall. A light-colored beard. But he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, so I didn’t see much more.’
‘What was his voice like?’
‘I guess you could say it was soft. I mean, it was American and all. Just . . . he didn’t speak loud. You’d do better asking Margarita about him.’
‘Margarita?’
‘Yeah, she does the filing. She’s not in today but I know she had some kind of problem with him.’
‘They spoke to each other?’
‘I don’t know. She just came walking back into the yard here and said something, like, about the guy being weird.’
Scott was at the ready. ‘Where can we find Margarita?’
‘Um, I know where she lives. Over by Birmingham High School.’ He gave Scott the address.
‘Let’s go back to the man,’ said Eric. ‘What time did he get here?’
‘He was here when I arrived to open up at six thirty.’
‘Just parked outside?’
‘Yeah, like he was waiting.’
‘Was anyone else with him?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘And what’d he say to you?’
‘Just said hi and that he needed some work done on his van, right away, and he was going to pay cash.’ He shrugged. ‘My boss wasn’t coming in for two days, so I just decided to take on the job myself.’
‘He say anything about where he’d come from or where he was going?’
Ruiz shook his head.
‘Did he wait here while you finished the work?’
‘No, the paint had to dry. He came back the next day, late in the afternoon.’
‘But he just walked away when he dropped if off? Did he ask you for directions or anything?’
‘No, he just walked. I figured he was going to the bus stop or something.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell us about him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘OK.’ Eric pulled a business card from his shirt pocket. ‘Here’s my card. If you remember anything more, call me right away, any time, day or night. Got it?’
‘So I’m not in trouble?’
‘No but we may need to take a formal statement later.’
Ruiz put the card in the back pocket of his pants. ‘And you’re not going to tell my boss?’
‘Nope.’ Scott shook his head.
It wasn’t until the agents were back in their vehicle, air-conditioner blowing, that Eric spoke. ‘We’re on to him, Houston. I can feel it.’
They drove directly to the address Ruiz had given them for Margarita, which was in a neighborhood of single-story ranch houses built in the 1940s and 1950s in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. The street they parked on was neat; dry lawns were cut short where only geranium and jade bushes held up against the heat. Margarita’s house didn’t have a car parked in the driveway but the swamp cooler on the roof suggested someone was home; its hum was audible to the agents as they walked up the front path.
The teenager who opened the door had a sullen expression. TV advertisements blared behind her.
‘Yes?’