Troubleshooter

Chapter 1.5

The pages, maybe a hundred in all, were filled with type and red-stamped LAWYER-CLIENT MATERIALS. Between providing legal counsel and coordinating the drug-exchange and money-laundering operation, Dana was in constant touch with her number-one clients. And, Tim hoped, with Den Laurey.

"If there's one thing you can count on," Miller said, "it's that a lawyer will bill. Precisely and relentlessly."

Tim hit the speaker button on his phone and dialed the first number from the top page, letting it ring and ring. Finally a puzzled voice answered, "Hello?"

"This a pay phone?" Tim asked.

"Yeah?"

"Where?"

"I dunno." Confused pause. "Valencia."

"Look around. You see a sign?"

"Tipper's Liquors."

"Thanks."

As the deputies set about scrutinizing the records, they discovered that though plenty of the calls went into the mother chapter and Sinner-owned businesses, many were to pay phones. The pay-phone calls were most commonly made precisely at the hour or half hour, consistent with prearrangement. It was not uncommon for those numbers to repeat throughout, probably corresponding to pay phones convenient to Sinner haunts, operations, or safe houses. Dana had logged a lot of hours talking to Sinners who didn't want their locations known.

Nomads.

It took the entire Escape Team and half of the Probation/Parole Team nearly three hours to attach an address to each phone number and to cross-reference the locations on the maps bearing the data from Uncle Pete's sat-nav box. A profusion of purple dots now spread across the master street map, laid on a spaghetti bed of red-pen routes. They wound up with just over a hundred strong leads. Prioritizing the locations proved less time-consuming. Guerrera ranked them in rough order based on his feel for biker routes and habits, and the hottest overlaps-places where the black dots of Uncle Pete's destinations appeared to be within blocks of a Dana Lake-called pay phone. Tim put in a quick call to Malane, who promised three two-man teams for the first shift.

When he hung up, all the deputies were looking at him. "Okay, everyone takes eight leads. Me, Bear, and Guerrera'll take sixteen since we're a three-man team."

Jim cleared his throat uncomfortably, met Tim's eyes, then looked away. Light duty had been killing him; he seemed eager to hit the streets. The abrasions on his face from the shattered windshield glass had mostly healed, leaving slivers of scabs. His right ear had recovered nominal hearing.

"Gimme a sec, guys." Tim beckoned Guerrera out into the hall.

"What's up, socio?"

"You and Jim can give us another team. We need the numbers."

Guerrera's lower jaw slid out level with his top. A few days' worth of stubble darkened his face.

"You have a problem with that?"

"I'd rather stay with you and Bear."

"Why?"

"I don't need to baby-sit Jim."

"Maybe you do. Maybe not. But I need you to."

"Okay." Guerrera's eyes stayed on the floor tile. "Okay."

"You gonna be cool?"

"I'm gonna be cool."

"Unless you have to be not cool."

"Thass ride." The accent amped up with his defensiveness.

Tim headed back in and said to Jim, "We need you in the field, too."

Jim's face shifted. He nodded at Tim, took a deep breath, and rose. A few of the guys tugged on Kevlar vests beneath their shirts. The others rustled, checking their clips, their boot laces, the batteries in their flashlights.

Tim pulled Guerrera aside again. "We have to split our top sixteen. Me and Bear should take one through eight. I'm thinking the locations closest to the Sinner clubhouse." He indicated the scattering of numbers corresponding to pay phones on the outskirts of Fillmore and Simi. "That leaves you and Jim with the grouping around Kaner's safe house."

"How come Guerrera gets nine through sixteen?" Thomas asked sharply from across the room.

"Because Guerrera's been running the case with us from the gates," Tim said.

Guerrera touched Tim's elbow. "Listen, Rack, if you want the highest-odds locations, you should take the ones near Kaner's safe house. Den would want to hole up near another nomad."

"More than he'd want proximity to the mother chapter?"

"That's right."

Tim studied Guerrera closely, for the first time unable to read his dark eyes. "You're the expert."

The other deputies paired off and took their leads, and then everyone was silent for a moment beneath the quiet rasp of the heater.

Tannino, who'd appeared sometime in the past hour to lean cross-armed against the doorframe and watch with a sort of paternal pride, said, "You know who you're dealing with here. Watch your partner's back and use your judgment. I don't want to preside over another funeral."

The clock showed 9:14, but it might as well have been midnight for the silence in the rest of the building. No footsteps overhead, no doors shutting down the hall, no lit windows across the way.

"All right, guys," Tim said. "Let's fetch."

His mouth tight and his eyes on the carpet, Tannino kept his post in the doorway as they brushed past in groups of two.

Tim was one leg into the Explorer when Guerrera called his name. He paused, Bear grumbling impatiently from the passenger seat as Guerrera jogged across the underground parking lot.

The sheet containing the leads fluttered at Guerrera's side. Sweat from his hand had bled a half-moon into it. "Rack. I lied."

"About what?"

"The higher-probability locations. You were right. Nearer the mother chapter. Not Kaner's place." He offered the paper, looking uncomfortable under Tim's gaze. "Hey, they're just leads. Who knows. Maybe Thomas and Freed make the collar. Maybe none of us do. I just want to keep my backyard clean."

After a pause Tim swapped Guerrera's sheet for the one in his back pocket. "Why the change of heart?"

"I figure maybe Jim isn't the best guy to go through that door right now."

Tim arched an eyebrow. "Just Jim?"

A half grin. "Don't push your luck, white boy."