Then circled back to National Allied near sunset, parked away from the lot and watched through my binoculars as the tenants left the building for the day. Watched a white-and-green Badge Security car make its round. When Pete Giakas came out and locked up I checked my Vigilant 4000 app and saw that the white Suburban had left La Casa del Zorro and was on its way southwest on Highway 78, headed in the general direction of San Ysidro.
After dark I parked in the empty National Allied lot. Waited for Badge Security to complete its next drive-by. Twice around the building, a two-hour patrol. Easy money.
When it turned out of sight, I got into the big storage box in my truck and donned my black Rolling Thunder Security windbreaker. The jacket boasts threatening yellow letters across the back, federal style: RTS. I put on good leather gloves, a black RTS ball cap, and a hiker’s headlight, which I left off for now. Then took up my new extension ladder. Battle rattle, baby. Let’s do this.
I unhurriedly carried the ladder around to the rear of the National Allied Building. Rolling Thunder Security just doing its job. In the good darkness of the building’s back side I scaled the new ladder to the rusting built-in and continued up, not wasting a second. The broken rib from last year lodged a complaint, as did the torn tendons in my calves, but not enough to slow me down.
I paused at the security electrical line but the odds were with me that I shouldn’t cut it. I knew that there would be sensors wired to the building’s exterior doors and windows, but not likely the rooftop skylights, where any pigeon or seagull could set one off.
Once on the roof I stood, got my balance, and used the headlight to follow the insulated metal screws toward my destination — the old domed skylights near the peak. The screws are the only way to safely walk a metal roof: walk on them and you’ll stay positioned on the strong steel purlins inside. If you stray, you’ll get a dented roof or worse, depending on your weight and how fast you’re moving.
I settled on both knees in front of the old acrylic skylight. Pulse up; vision clear. Turned off the hiker’s headlight. Checked the Vigilant 4000: white Suburban still possibly on its way here, a little less than an hour out. Looked down on San Ysidro from two stories up, the lights and cars, the signs and pedestrians, Interstate 5 jammed with traffic.
Let my eyes get used to the near dark — there’s never quite full dark in a city with a million people in it.
Then leaned forward to the acrylic skylight, cupped my hands around my eyes and gazed down into the heart of this unusual enterprise.
Of course the decades of weather had dulled the acrylic to an opaque window. The surface hadn’t been washed in some time. And the domed shape distorted the contents below. I was surely looking down on the Sandpit PCB side of the space: two long workbenches set up in a V, with two backed stools near the apex. The surfaces of the benches appeared neatly kept but sparsely furnished. Bench vises. Articulating lights and magnifying lights. Toolboxes, lids down. A soldering gun with its power cord wrapped around its handle. Screw clamps large and small fastened here and there along the inside edges of the benches. Glue guns. Spools of wire. And of course boxes of printed circuit boards, lined up and easy to see like vinyl 33s in ancient record stores. It was too blurry to see what stage of completion they might be in, or for what application they were being created or modified.
Still on my knees, I straightened, looked out at the twinkling city, then did my best to rub some clarity into the worn skylight. The leather gloves helped but no amount of elbow grease could increase the visibility much at all.
Once again I leaned forward. Went macro: small kitchen and dining area in one corner, a bathroom with the door open, a television mounted on a wall arm, cables neatly bundled down to the outlet.
I rocked upright again and, recalling the lobby layout, looked out across the roof and tried to calculate where the skylights over Native World Import-Export might be. Pretty straightforward: the import-export business was east of Sandpit PCB, which meant to my right. Twenty feet? Thirty? Not far from where I was, but how best to get there by following the internal beams of the building?
I stood and let the blood back into my legs, calves burning with old pain, rib aching. Turned the hiker’s headlamp on and followed the screws back downslope to the roofline, across approximately twenty-five feet of I-beam truss just beneath my feet — arms out for balance, the delicate metal skin of the roof to my left and thirty feet of free fall to the parking lot on my right. With the city lights blinking all around me I followed another line of screws, nimbly and lightly as I could, leading me safely back up to the desired skylight.
I knelt again and rubbed the time-frosted dome with my gloves. Squinted down at the murky tableau: an attempted retail showroom, perhaps, with what looked like rustic wooden flooring and walls. There were various display cases, set out without apparent order, arranged willy-nilly, some windowed and others not. A few looked empty, others filled with brightly colored items — dolls, toys, carvings maybe? One had fallen over to spill what looked like colorful pillows to the floor. Then, an entire wall of slouching bookshelves, the titles impossible to read. Paintings on another wall, hanging crookedly, maybe primitive in style. And a rack of elaborate spears, points upright, festooned with feathers and leather straps, amulets and gewgaws I could not identify. Rugs, possibly African; a semicircle of large stone heads, possibly Mesoamerican; animal hides piled high like carpets in a Persian rug store.
The wall farthest away from me was dense with rustic wooden ladders festooned with what looked like rugs and weavings. I couldn’t even guess the cultural or ethnic origin, not through smoky acrylic and the poor light. A small congregation of totems looked out from the far corner.
Native World Import-Export indeed.
I stood and checked the Vigilant 4000. Brock Holland’s clean white Suburban was still on course for San Ysidro, about ten minutes away.
Arms out for balance, I stepped carefully along the eave strut to the emergency ladder and back down to the extension. Hit solid ground, which felt sure and dependable after thin metal. Retracted the new ladder and headed for my truck. Parked again, half a block down, with a good view of the National Allied lot.
Eight minutes later the white Suburban swung into the lot and took a space right in front of the lobby.
Brock Holland and Gretchen Deuzler took their time getting out, locking up and letting themselves into the dark building.
I sat and pondered my options. I knew my chances of scaling National Allied quietly enough to spy on them through the murky skylights were slim. Metal is noisy. One slip or misstep and I’d be cooked. On the other hand…
But they saved me my decision. Just ten minutes after going in, they came out, Gretchen holding open the door for Brock, who carried a large pasteboard box in both hands. It didn’t look heavy but it was big, and appeared to be sealed with packaging tape.
The Vigilant 4000 made my tail easy and safe. The moon was a waxing crescent and the night was dark around it. The fun couple headed back up State 78. At first, plenty of traffic for cover, then thinning as we dropped down into Borrego Valley.
But they didn’t head to their love nest at La Casa del Zorro. Instead they headed off on Palm Canyon and turned into the Bighorn Motel. I pulled onto the Palm Canyon shoulder a hundred yards farther on, cut my lights, and parked facing the motel.
In the eerie green tincture of my night vision binoculars I watched the Suburban park in front of the last bungalow, nineteen, where Harris Broadman had received Dalton and me. Only four other cars in the lot. I noted that Broadman’s silver Tahoe was parked outside the office, on the far side of the motel, where I’d seen it before. As was an aging white Corolla with a dented driver’s door. I remembered the words of the young caballero I’d talked to out in Pala, where Natalie’s Bimmer had been discovered and he had seen a woman in a dented white car examining the abandoned vehicle: Sunglass big. Woman no big.