Parker’s phone dinged a couple of minutes later.
“It’s clean,” came a voice from the speaker, “but there’s a dog, Parker. A big son of a bitch. Good luck.”
“Gee, thanks,” Parker said, hanging up.
“Infrared?” I said.
“Close,” Parker said. “That was the LA office’s portable X-ray van. We use it at the ports sometimes, and on presidential visits. Two techs in the back of it work equipment that can see right through just about anything.”
“Like a TSA team on wheels? I take it that’s a pretty much all-male detail. Tell me, Parker. Can federal contractors apply for the job, and what’s the waiting list like?”
Parker raised one of her auburn eyebrows.
“You’d be surprised how many female agents are in the unit, Bennett.”
I blinked at her.
“Well, in that case, remind me to head to the supermarket before we go back to the hotel. I need to make a supply of tinfoil boxers for my stay here in LA.”
Though Parker tried to hide it, I noticed she actually laughed a little at that one. My war of attrition was taking its toll. As usual, I was wearing her down with my charm.
“Now, if Scanlon isn’t home trying not to let the bed-bugs bite at this time of night, where do you think he is, Mike?”
“That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, isn’t it?” I said. “If I were an international fugitive sneaking into an unfriendly country, I’d probably want to keep everyone who knew about it on a tight leash. At least until I left. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it that Scanlon is chilling with the big boss for the duration of his trip.”
“Which means, if we find Scanlon, we find Perrine,” she said.
“We can only hope and pray,” I said.
CHAPTER 50
After it was determined that Scanlon wasn’t home, phase two of the operation was put into play.
Parker got on the horn again, and then, twenty minutes later, a beat-up Dodge Ram pickup with a camper bed pulled up behind us.
“More friends of yours, Parker?” I said. “What does this truck do? Test your cholesterol?”
As she shushed me, I noticed that the two men who got out of it were dressed head to toe in black. I also noticed that the cabin light in the pickup failed to go on when the men opened the doors.
Parker zipped down her window as they approached. One of the agents was stocky and older, with a dark mustache. The other one was blond and looked like he’d just started shaving. I thought they looked like a father-and-son team of American ninjas.
“Which is it?” Junior wanted to know.
“The one with the gate,” Parker told him. “There’s a dog, apparently.”
“No problem,” said Senior, patting the bag he was holding with an evil grin. “We love puppies.”
Junior kept his eyes on the house as he put a chaw of chewing tobacco between his cheek and gum. There was a light jingle of metal on metal when he tightened the knapsack on his back. He checked his watch.
“We’ll call you in … seven minutes?” he said, cocking his head at his partner.
“Six,” the older partner said with a nod before they walked off.
“The wheels of justice are moving so much faster than I remember. This must be some sort of land-speed record for a search warrant,” I said, watching the FBI agents scale the driveway gate like squirrels.
Parker ignored me. I’d only said it to tease her. This was an illegal, unauthorized black-bag job if there ever was one.
One I thoroughly approved of, actually. Following the letter of the law when Perrine was out there wiping out families and cops would be like obeying the traffic laws while driving a dying relative to the emergency room. In a word, stupid.
We needed information, the faster the better. We needed to be on Scanlon, on his phone, neck deep in his life, before he had the slightest inkling of what was what. My eyes were locked firmly on the prize, namely, a world without Manuel Perrine. I’d cut more corners than a miter saw to take out the son of a bitch who was still out there on the loose, trying to kill my family.
It was actually only five minutes from when the FBI Watergate plumber guys hopped the fence until it slowly started opening. The older agent opened the door formally, like a butler, as we came up the drive.
“Where’s Fido?” Parker asked.
“Out like a light. After we picked the lock and tossed him a treat, he got real sleepy all of a sudden. Funny, huh?”
CHAPTER 51
Parker handed me some gloves and night-vision goggles from a bag of goodies she had brought with her, and we proceeded to toss the house. We were careful not to disturb anything. Not just because we didn’t want Scanlon to know, but because there were guns everywhere. A Taurus.380 in the bathroom cabinet, a.45 M1911 under the sink in the kitchen. A locked-and-loaded, fully automatic MAC-10 was taped to the underside of the night table in the master bedroom.
“Mr. Scanlon seems like a fairly cautious individual,” I whispered as I showed it to Agent Parker.
The treasure trove we found was in the closet of a bedroom that Scanlon used for an office.
On top of a case of printer paper, we found a dozen boxes of portable disposable cell phones. Half of them were empty.
The phones were the unregistered kind that narcotics dealers liked to use and throw away. What got our blood pumping was that the boxes with the missing phones still had the serial numbers on them. Our techs could contact the company, and we could put a trace out on every single one of them. If Scanlon had one in his pocket, we could find him, even if it was off.
“Please let this work,” Parker said as she snapped picture after picture of the boxes.
We spotted some guy crossing the street toward the house just as we were about to go out.
“Is it Scanlon?” Parker asked.
I quickly checked the passport photograph we had. The guy coming toward the gate looked young and was too dark and thin to resemble the blond, bearlike Scanlon.
We fished out our Glocks as the guy punched a code into the keypad beside the gate. It was evident that the guy was in his early twenties as he came through the buzzing gate and up the driveway. He was wearing white iPod earbuds.
“Whoever this guy is, he doesn’t seem to have a care in the world,” I whispered.
We stepped back as the guy keyed open the door.
As he closed the door behind him, I put my Glock to his brain stem. He bolted forward like he’d been Tasered and head-butted the door. A hiss of N-word-laced rap drivel cut the silence as I pulled out his earbuds for him.
“Don’t move,” I said.
“What is this? Who the hell are you?” the young man said.
“Who the hell are we?” I shot back, full of attitude. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Donny Pearson, from up the street. Tommy just called and said he’d be out of town for a few days and asked if I’d feed Christobel, man.”
Parker took out his wallet and nodded. I showed the guy my badge and holstered the gun.
“I got nothing to do with anything illegal. I swear to God!” Pearson said.
“Just listen to me, Mr. Pearson,” I said. “Did he call you on your cell or your house phone?”
“My cell,” he said, taking out his iPhone.
Parker took it and quickly compared the phone number Scanlon had phoned in on with the ones we’d found in the closet. Then she gave me a palm-stinging high five.
“Bingo was his name-o,” she said.
CHAPTER 52
We were homing in on Perrine now. We could feel it.
On the way back to the hotel, I drove while Emily disseminated the intel to just about every card in the multi-jurisdictional Rolodex. The LAPD phone people got a call, as did the FBI, CIA, NSA, and even Gray Fox, the army Special Ops communication specialists.