Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 102

The van was a late-model Ford transport, white with vegetables painted on it, two doors and a slider on each side, cargo doors at the back, tinted glass all the way around.

It was parked fifty feet away from and facing the roll-up doors at the far end of the warehouse. Whoever had parked the thing had meant to hide it. The driver’s side and rear were against the corner walls of the warehouse. The other two sides were hemmed in by metal racks of flowerpots two deep and seven feet high.

Del Rio squeezed around to the driver’s-side door and tried the handle, but the door was locked. So were all of the others.

Fucking A.

He had a short crowbar in his bag. He took it out, staved in the passenger-side window, reached in, and pulled up the handle. He brushed the glass off the seat with his gloved hand, threw his bag into the passenger-side foot well, and slid behind the wheel.

After flipping on the dome light, Del Rio looked at the ignition. He wanted to see a key dangling there. That would have been nice, but no, the only thing on the ignition was blood spatter. It was on the wheel too, sprayed all inside the windshield, and there were some bits of bone and brain matter too.

Noccia’s wheelman’s remains.

Del Rio looked for the keys under the mats and up under the visors. No luck. He called out to Scotty to check the tops of the tires, just in case, and when Scotty said, “Nope. Nothing,” Del Rio opened all the doors with the lock release.

He got out of the van and squeezed past the racks of flowerpots, hitting one of them with his shoulder. The rack shimmied as if it weren’t sure if it was going to fall, giving him a shot of adrenaline he didn’t need.

He imagined Cruz calling Jack: “Jack. Ricky had a heart attack, man. What should I do?”

Cruz called out, “You okay, Rick?”

“Fine. Fine. Emilio, let’s see how quick you can start this engine.”

Cruz squeezed along the racks, got into the van, and used the screwdriver attachment on his knife to remove the guard plate from the ignition tumbler. While he stripped the wires, Del Rio groped his way to the rear of the van and checked the cargo.

He counted the stacks of cartons, did the math, came up with four hundred cartons, all but one of them still sealed. Each carton was marked with the number of bottles per carton, so many pills per bottle, so many milligrams per pill. He took out one of the bottles, shook it, put it back.

This was a ton of Oxy. If there wasn’t thirty million in this van, it wasn’t his fault.

Scotty called to him, “Houston. We’ve got ignition.”

Del Rio closed the cargo doors, came out from behind the van, and got in the passenger side. Scotty wedged himself between the seats.

Cruz put the transmission into drive and turned on the headlights. At that moment, there was the loud, brassy roar of a motor coming from outside the building. The lights in the warehouse flickered and then they came on. It was like daylight inside the Red Cat Pottery.

Fucking A, for sure.