“Did Tarlow pay you at the door?” asks Mendez. “Or did he invite you in?”
“Always he invited me in.”
“Was he alone?” asks Gale.
“No. Jeff was there. The white van was his. When the van was at Mr. Bennet’s, so was Jeff.”
“Last name?” asks Mendez.
Amanda shakes her head. “I don’t know his last name.”
“Describe him,” says Mendez.
“Big man,” says Amanda. “Tall and wide. Muscles. Red hair. Red beard and mustache. Tan eyes. Jeans and Metro Gym T-shirts.”
“Tell me about that face,” says Gale.
A beat of silence. Amanda looks away, Gale watching her eyes revert to some other place for counsel and, probably, judgment.
“A big face, like the rest of him. He looked as if he owned me and expected to... do whatever he want to me. These are feelings I had. He never threatened or touched. He said almost nothing. But he spoke through his eyes. The first time I was there with both men, Mr. Tarlow tipped me fifty dollars. Always fifty. The next time, Jeff gave me seventy-five. And the next also. New scratchy bills, like from a bank.”
Gale pictures the big red man looming over petite Amanda, boring into her with his tan cat eyes and pressing the crisp bills into her small pale hand.
“Amanda,” says Mendez. “What relationship do you think the men had?”
“I wondered from the first time. Mr. Tarlow? Nice clothes. Always good hair and shaved. A black tuxedo once. But Jeff? Jeans loose and he always pulling them up. Always the black Metro Gym T-shirts. Motorcycle boots scuffed, with those big brass rings.”
“How did they act toward each other?” asks Mendez.
Amanda nods. “Like when I was there, I was interrupting something important. They seemed like men getting ready to do something after they ate. There was a feeling of... purpose.”
“Not friends?”
“No. Different. Maybe like... on the same team.”
“Who seemed in charge?”
“Mr. Bennet.”
“Why didn’t you call the police when you learned that Mr. Tarlow was murdered the night you saw him and Jeff?” asks Gale.
She looks away, through one of the Coast Highway windows.
“ICE. And I thought you would contact me. Maybe find the Bamboo bag and the delivery bill.”
“We don’t care about your legal status, Amanda,” says Gale. “We’re not even allowed to ask.”
A small, slightly embarrassed smile. “Thank you, Detectives.”
“Thank you,” they both say.
Gale and Mendez sit together in Gale’s SUV while he runs a warrants check on Jeff Vern. The Explorer’s department computer screen is clear and bright.
Gale makes sure his Warrants Department knows he’s on the Tarlow murder and needs this information soon, like, right now. Wants it sent to Mendez’s email also.
A moment later, six Jeff Verns come onscreen, but none of them are Amanda’s burly, bearded redhead.
Not close.
Next, Gale receives two Jeff Vernes and a Jeff Vern — firm nos.
Flips it to Vern Jeff and strikes out completely.
Same with Verne Jeff.
Vernon Jeff is a strikeout, too, as is Jeff Vernon.
Gale and Mendez sit in pissed-off silence. Gale starts the SUV to run the AC and they turn the vents into their faces.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I played Little League with a guy named Jeffs,” says Gale. “Burt Jeffs. Scrappy guy, third base, big ears.”
“You know,” says Mendez. “The ‘s’ might be easy for a Chinese immigrant to miss.”
Vern Jeffs gets Gale exactly nowhere with Warrants, but he redirects to Vernon Jeffs.
A moment later, Mendez gives her screen a hard-faced smile.
Vernon Jeffs is a ringer for the man described by Amanda Cho.
Age fifty.
Six-four, 260 pounds.
Gale’s heart thumps like a dryer on tumble.
He’s got a DUI from five years back, a school-zone firearms violation from ten years ago, dismissed, and a battery charge that got him six months when he was twenty-one.
Mendez grabs her phone, throws open the door of the Explorer, and slams it shut.
Gale’s eyes are still on the computer screen. The California DMV Law Enforcement database says Jeffs owns a fifteen-year-old Ford Econoline. DMV has the VIN but doesn’t specify color.
Gale checks the Federal Firearms Registry, then ATF, but neither has firearms registered in his name.
Mendez swings back into the SUV, a small smile on her face. “Amanda says it’s him. Absolutely no doubt. She got his face perfectly. Just like the trafficked girls and boys in Vice. They remembered every last detail of the people who sold and raped them.”
Gale calls the Costa Mesa Metro Gym on Harbor, gets the day manager, and asks for Vernon Jeffs.
Never heard of him, so Gale calls the other five Metro Gyms in Orange County, but none of the employees have heard of him either.
It’s almost two o’clock by now, and Gale and Mendez are both starved, so they go back inside and get a couple of #25s — spicy beef chow mein.
A small flickering light goes on in Gale’s racing brain. “The Econoline had a Bear Cave sticker on the bumper, according to Vito Pesco. It’s a biker bar. I knew a guy from Sangin who liked the place. Michael Kobila. We drowned ourselves there, on occasion. Mike used a gun to finish the job.”
“We took down a pedo there last year,” says Mendez. “He was dumb enough to meet our plant there, and the bikers were that close to beating him to death. Which I was kind of pulling for. Funny place for Bennet Tarlow III.”
Gale checks the Bear Cave hours — one P.M. to two A.M. — then calls on speaker.
“Vern Jeffs there?” he asks.
“Who in the hell are you?”
“Lew Gale. Friend of Michael Kobila.”
“Oh, Mikey. Shame. Yeah, Vern’s on nights.”
“I’ll meet you there at nine,” says Daniela.
“Good.”
Gale has a few hours to kill and knows where to kill them. So does Mendez.
14
As a member of the Acjacheme tribal council, Lew Gale’s mother, Sally, runs the monthly Juaneño Nation Market, which falls on this sunny October afternoon on the Capistrano Mission grounds.
He spots her at her usual table, a handsome woman, black-with-gray hair worn long, jeans, and a long-sleeved blouse, red, with a shell-and-glass bead necklace that ends in a white clam half shell.
She rises from her basket-piled table to give her son a hug. She’s tall and lithe, sixty.
“You were out early this morning,” she says. “Any breaking news on Mr. Tarlow?”
“None, Mom.”
“Well, your brother is here and he’ll want an update.”
“Wish I had one.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Have a couple hours off.”
Gale follows her gaze to his younger brother, striding across the courtyard in jeans, a tucked-in white shirt, a bead-and-clam necklace like his mom’s, and cowboy boots.
They shake hands, crunching hard for a power squeeze — always in competition. Franklin takes his brother by the arm and leads him into the shade of a big pepper tree.
“Do you have a suspect yet?”
“No, Frank.”
“Tarlow was desecrating sacred ground with his goddamned Wildcoast,” says Frank.
“Someone shot him in the head, brother.”
Frank shrugs.
“The Tarlow Company has owned that land for over a hundred years,” says Gale.
“You don’t own the land,” says Frank. “The land owns you. It was ours for thousands of years before Tarlow got here. And that’s not all they’re doing to us.”