Then She Vanished

Thirty-Three

“Mr. Roland Ford, what a pleasure to meet you.”

“All mine, Mr. Santo.”

He stood and we shook hands. He was thickly built, medium height, with a head of black curly hair falling to his shoulders and a trim mustache. Malverde in need of a haircut, I thought. He wore a black guayabera with white embroidery, jeans, and a gold bracelet of interlocked serpents on each wrist.

“What brings you here?” he asked, plopping back into his chair. “Please, sit.”

I didn’t. “A tip on a stolen identity case. It fizzled, so I’m on my way out.”

“But out is that way,” he said with a smile, pointing vaguely toward the lobby. “Which of my fine neighbors here had your interest?”

“Please, Mr. Santo.”

“Of course, of course. Our curse is our curiosity.”

“Well said. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my real name to yourself. Today I’m Robert Franklin, a commercial real estate broker. Like I said, it was a dead end anyway.”

I handed him a card.

“And you must be looking for industrial space here on behalf of a client in Los Angeles,” he said.

“Good guess.”

“When I work in Los Angeles, I am sometimes the Realtor Ron Montero representing clients from San Diego.”

“We PI’s are a cagey crew,” I said.

“Judging by your presence at his press conference, I’d say you’ve been hired by Assemblyman Strait,” said Santo. “My wife is addicted to missing-persons stories, so she forwards the highlights to me almost every day.”

I nodded.

“Natalie Strait is still missing?”

And nodded again. Santo sat back and crossed his thick fingers over his ample gut. “I am saddened by the slaughter in the Palomars yesterday. Dalton Strait must feel surrounded.”

“By?”

“Misfortune. Natalie. Kirby. His many legal troubles.”

“Have you worked for the Straits?”

“No, never.”

A quick flash in which I understood much. Tempted as I was to show Santo a picture of Brock Holland and Gretchen Deuzler, such a gamble could sink me if this PI with the narco-saint emblem on his door was in any way tied to them. They could be friendly, for all I knew. Certainly the opportunity was good, right here in this strange building. And in the larger sense, the New Generation Cartel had hundreds of eyes, ears, and guns in this jammed quarter of the border. El Chapo’s splintered Sinaloans did, too. And all the meth freebooters. A Malverdean PI would certainly be a temptation to any of them. Even if Santo was independent of Holland and the killers who had taken five lives in the Palomar Mountains, a report of my presence here in the National Allied Building might be valuable to someone.

“You have had some big adventures,” said Santo. “I saw you on the news when the terrorists hit San Diego. When the FBI woman was killed. And before that, when the helicopter was shot out of the sky and crashed on your property! You are the only celebrity PI I know who is not a TV character.”

“I liked it better when I could waddle around the world in secret,” I said.

“As a real estate agent or an insurance salesman! As a bird-watcher in naturalist’s clothing and the big binoculars strapped to your chest. As a Hollywood producer. Those are disguises I’ve used before. No one recognizes me, but I’ve never been famous.”

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Santo.”

“How did I help you?”

“By keeping this between us professionals.”

“Why not? What else would I do in this age of The Chaos Committee? Even we privateers must stick together.”

I toured the rest of the first floor with a leasing agent’s air of critical optimism. Caught a sharp glance from Maria, another disinterested look from the mold maker, then wandered to the far southeast part of National Allied. Aging elevators spook me so I took the stairs to the second floor. At the landing were double doors with glass windows.

The left window announced in crude stick-on letters:

And on the right:

The sandpit being a grunt nickname for Iraq.

The same unfriendly faces being Maria’s analysis of the people here.

No intercom. No surveillance camera visible. Two companies trying to be ignored. Not the business model I had come to know.

I moved closer to the glass and looked in. The lobby was lit by fluorescent tubes behind opaque plastic ceiling panels. Jittery light, yellowing plastic, dead flies. The room was spacious, and mostly empty. Three metal desks with little on them, chairs in tight. Another double door on the far wall, leading back to the guts of the operations.

I heard the distant rhythm of the mold maker’s music. The slamming of a door. Brakes whining outside. Tried the doors.

I sized things up. I wanted in. Santo was right: our curse is our curiosity. And so much of National Allied to be curious about, starting with Brock Holland’s presence here for extended hours over the last four days, very possibly right here in this upstairs Sandpit/Native World suite. Four men and three women. Unfriendly, making no eye contact. By appointment only, or just plain no admittance. Don’t forget Raul Santo, a narco-drawn PI who I saw as a fat black spider centered in a web and having his eight legs within reach of so many relevant things. Such as the drug trade that enamored him. Such as Brock Holland and Gretchen Deuzler. And other unfriendlies at whose door I now stood. And maybe even, through Brock Holland, Natalie Strait — about whom Santo had directly inquired.

Things sized up, I set my course.

Made sure to shake hands and say goodbye to Pete Giakas. Thanked him again for the tour. Took the scenic route to my truck, noting the old-school National Allied alarm system fed by a single 120 VAC line nailed high under the eaves of the metal wall with plastic fasteners. Saw the fire ladder, elevated eight feet off the ground to discourage the casual user.

Drove downtown for lunch at the Waterfront, one of my old haunts with Justine. Talked to Burt, Dalton, Lark, and Tola. Swung by a big-box store for an extension ladder.

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.

Holland and Deuzler got out of the Suburban, green-limned figures in the unlit lot. Holland opened the rear lift gate, handed his companion the key, leaned in and backed out with the big box in his arms.

Gretchen shut the door with the fob and the two of them walked to the bungalow.

Where, outside to hold the door open, stood Harris Broadman, spectral in white.

And beside him: Natalie Strait.

She was dressed in desert camouflage and combat boots, her black-green hair alive in the desert breeze.

Brock Holland carried the box in, followed by Gretchen.

Broadman followed Natalie back inside.

Then he came back out and looked around the lot as if he’d left something behind. Stared out in my direction while my heart thumped a steady rhythm.

Finally went in.

I’d found my missing person. And no matter what had happened to her, or whoever she had become, she was about to be mine.