Three shirt deal

Chapter 16

It was well after midnight by the time we drove back to Bel Air. I dropped Scout at her car, which was parked on Madrono, two blocks from the Wyatt estate. We agreed to meet for breakfast in the morning. In the meantime I intended to find out more about the North Van Nuys Transit Authority. If I could get an address I would run over there in the morning and check it out.

She got out of the Caddie, but hesitated before saying goodbye. "Listen, I agreed to do this stakeout with you because we weren't gonna touch anything, just watch. But we ended up pulling another guy over and drawing our guns. A police commissioner, yet."

"We must be good," I said. "We're peeling an onion here. I want these guys."

"My grandmother used to tell me an old Mexican story about that," she said. "It's about wanting too much."

"Oh, boy."

"The way the story goes, this little boy is on a beach and finds an oyster with a huge pearl the size of a robin's egg inside. He shows it to the village elders, and they know it will feed and clothe the town for years. But there is a tiny, dark spot on the side.

They call the pearl doctor, who comes from another village and examines the treasure. He says he can sand the pearl and maybe the spot goes away, but maybe it gets bigger, making the pearl less valuable. The townspeople tell the pearl doctor to sand the pearl. But as he sands, the spot gets bigger. Now the pearl doctor explains that with more sanding the spot might get smaller again and the value of the pear will be restored. They decide to keep sanding until it's worth only a few pesos as pearl dust. They ended up with nothing."

"What's your point?"

"That's what this case feels like. It started with a murder over a six-pack of beer, but things didn't seem right. A tiny dark spot. We've been sanding and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And now we're in major trouble and if we're not careful, we're both gonna end up getting sacked with nothing to show for it."

"Except we aren't after money, we're after truth," I reminded her. "Didn't you tell me just yesterday that you gotta take on the shitty ones a case at a time?"

She just grinned.

When I woke the next morning, Alexa was already gone. She left me a note.

Shane, got up at three A. M. Went to work.

Tony gets home in two days. Gotta be ready.

Love, A.

I went into the kitchen and sat at the table drinking burnt coffee, then called the Fiscal Crimes Division at Parker Center. One of their jobs is checking out business ownerships and incorporation papers. I asked the civilian assistant to run a check on the North Van Nuys Transit Authority.

She quickly came up with the NVNTA's operations charter and read it to me. The little Valley bus company was a nonprofit that was created to shuttle the elderly and people with disabilities to their jobs in the morning and pick them up at night. The bus service had its own transit police department that had been certified by Homeland Security. The transit line currently operated five buses. I asked for a list of the police commissioners and the officers of the company.

I was put on hold while she went on Nexis-Lexis to locate the information. A few minutes later she came back on the line.

"Okay, here it is," she said. "The address is six-three-five-eight Midline Drive in North Van Nuys."

I leaned over and grabbed the phone book, which still lay open on the counter displaying the ad for the Church of Destruction.

"You sure? That's a towing service and body shop," I told her.

"According to their corporation filings, it's also the legal address for NVNTA."

"Okay, give me the names of the officers and commissioners."

"There're five. In no order of importance: Tyler Cisneros, Enrico Palomino, and Jose Diego are all police commissioners. Wade Wyatt and Michael Church are commissioners and transit authority officers."

Most of the people I'd been messing with for the past three days turned out to be part of this little transit authority police department in North Van Nuys.

The more I sanded this pearl, the larger the black spot grew.