Taken

29

Wander Lawrence Gomez drove a midnight blue Audi coupe with dark smoky windows and mag wheels, which was what I told Pike and Jon Stone to expect, only he pulled up beside me at the Cathedral City Burger King driving a sun-bleached gray panel van. No plan of action ever survives the first contact with the enemy.

Wander peered over with his terrible rolling eye. A blank smile twisted across his face like a snake crossing a road.

“Les go. Doan want to keep him waitin’.”

“What about my car?”

“We ain’t gonna be that long.”

Pike and Stone were in separate vehicles somewhere nearby, but I did not know where and did not look for them. I had arrived at the Burger King an hour before Wander. Pike and Stone set up an hour before me.

I walked around to the van’s passenger side, and got in. The van was a rolling desert tragedy, but the AC worked well.

“What happened to the Audi?”

“The man gimme this. So you can’t see where we goin’. You left your phone in your car?”

“Yeah. Like you said.”

I wasn’t to bring a phone, watch, pager, or anything electronic. He had warned me I would be searched. The man had rules, and there were no exceptions.

“I find somethin’, we’re gonna toss it or you goin’ home.”

“I heard you. I paid attention.”

“Okay. It’s on you if you blow the deal.”

Wander Gomez was six feet two, part Salvadoran and part African-American. He was the color of strong latte except where his father had caved in his right cheek with a cinder block when he was twelve years old. The orbital bones circling his right eye had been crushed, which left his cheek sunken and the surrounding skin scaled with black and pink dots. The eye looked like a coddled egg. It had been cast free to go its own way, and wandered endlessly in a permanent glare, sightless and angry. That’s where he got the name. Wander. He called it his magic eye. Said it could see the truth.

Two days earlier, Fredo pointed him out leaning against the Audi across from a bar not far from Echo Lake. The bar was a gathering place for undocumented Salvadorans to share news and information from home. It was also frequented by newly arrived coyotes, who drummed up business before heading south by handing out contact info to anyone who had friends or relatives back home. Wander used his Salvadoran background and magic eye to pick up information about inbound pollos, which he then sold to the Syrian or other bajadores. Feasting on his own.

I approached him, floated my story, and did not mention the Syrian or suggest where Wander might find a ready-made workforce. My only rule was I would not do business with the Sinaloas. By suggesting there was bad blood between me and the cartel, I had given the Syrian something to check. He did, and decided I looked good in the business department.

Two days later, Wander and I met at the Burger King. One and three-quarter miles after I got into his van, we turned off the highway into an undeveloped area near Rancho Mirage and stopped on the service road.

“Get out. Easier than doin’ it in here.”

“Right here?”

“Sure, here. These people can’t see shit.”

We were in open view of the passing cars, but Wander passed an RF wand over me. He did a professional job, which suggested he had scanned people before.

“All right. Get back in, and I’ll check the shoes.”

I climbed into my seat and started to pull off my shoes, but Wander stopped me.

“In back. Climb between the seats here, ’fore you take off your shoes. You gotta ride back there anyway.”

I twisted between the seats, pulled off my shoes, and handed them forward.

Panel vans were working vans. There were no windows behind the front seats, and the rear bay was a dirty metal box smelling of pesticide and grease. Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi had used an identical van as a place to torture and murder their victims, and record their screams.

Wander checked my shoes as thoroughly as he scanned me-searched inside, removed the insoles, and examined the soles and laces. He checked each shoe by hand, and also inserted the wand. Then he handed them back, and held out a black pillowcase.

“Put this on.”

When he called that morning, Wander told me I would have to wear a bag so I couldn’t see where we were going. I had agreed, but now I was in a dark van that smelled of pesticide and reminded me of the Hillside Stranglers.

“How about we forgo the bag? I can’t see anything from back here.”

“You kiddin’ me, startin’ this shit now?”

The angry eye glared at me, then drifted away, then returned before rolling up into his head. The eye looked furious as it came and went, and I wondered what it saw through its rage.

Wander shook the pillowcase.

“Put on the bag. I warned you, an’ you said you was cool. Put on the bag or we goin’ back to the Burger King.”

I took the pillowcase and pulled it over my head. It smelled clean, and might have been Egyptian cotton.

“How does it look?”

“Learn to love it, ’cause you gonna wear it a couple of times today.”

“What couple of times?”

“There’s never a straight line to the man. That’s how he stays safe. You got a couple of rides ’fore you get where you goin’.”

Wander started the engine, and guided us back to the highway. Even with the bag over my head, I felt his eye on me, angry and glaring. His magic eye.

I felt trapped in the bag, and easy to kill, and hoped Joe and Jon Stone were close.

Joe Pike: the day Elvis Cole is taken