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  “Congrats.”

  Hondo grinned, “I bet that hurt to say.”

  “No more than swallowing a tack.”

  “That’s all? Wow, you must really mean it. I thought I felt a lot of emotion there.”

  “Very funny, ha-ha. Did you read for the comedy part, because you are a funny, funny man.”

  We reached our vehicles and I said, “I’m going to check something out before I come to the office. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Hondo said, “Should I give you a…callback if you’re running late?” He laughed and drove off. My friends, they can be so cruel.

  **

  I took a slow drive in heavy traffic to the car lot where our mystery girl stole the Firebird.

  It was early and only a couple of salesmen were there. The lot was a moderate sized one with a good number of neat and clean cars and pickups. There were little colored banners flying from lines running overhead and their flapping noises were constant but not irritating.

  One salesman was talking with three of the employees as they washed and wiped down a row of sport cars, including several Firebirds, so I walked over to them. The salesman was Hispanic, as were the washers. He turned to me and smiled, “Morning, I’m Mike Fernandez. You’re our first customer today. Is there anything in particular I can show you?”

  He was a little shorter than me, but had good shoulders and wore his brown summer weight suit so that it hung just right. I said, “Were you working here five days ago?”

  He looked at me a moment, then said, “Yes, was I supposed to show you a car then? If so, I’m sorry-“

  “No, I was just wondering how that girl drove off with one of your Firebirds without someone noticing.”

  “You a cop?”

  “Private. My name’s Ronny Baca.”

  One of the car wash guys said, “Baca? Man, you don’t look Latino, ese.”

  “Parents were from Bolognia. Its west of Spain.”

  One of them got it, but one of the others said, “I heard of it, yeah. It was on the Discovery channel a couple weeks back.”

  I showed the salesman my license, “I’m trying to get an angle on her and this seemed like a good place to start.”

  “Well, if you find her let me know. She totaled that car, and it was the best one on the lot.”

  “That’s sure what I’d tell the insurance company if I were you.”

  “We told them that because it was the best car. Low miles, had the big engine, ran like a bat out of hell.”

  “Any idea when she stole it?”

  “It must have been around one, one-thirty. Half the people go to lunch between one and two and the others cover for them. Same from twelve to one.”

  “You fellows see anything?” I asked the washers.

  “Just soap and water, man. It’s our life, you know?”

  There are always jokers around. I asked Miguel, “Which lunch shift do you take?”

  “Twelve to one.”

  “And you didn’t notice her on the lot?”

  “Nope. I was talking to a husband and wife about one-fifteen over by the pickups, but I never saw anybody around the Birds here.”

  “And nobody here noticed it was missing until after it was wrecked, is that right?”

  “Yeah, the cops called us around two-thirty or so about it.”

  I looked at the lot and spied several security cameras. “Could I look at your security tapes for that day?”

  “Sure. The cops already looked, so they’re still out. We use one for each twenty-four hours. Come on, you can use the meeting room. The TV and player are set up.”

  **

  He gave me directions on how to use the remote to fast forward, reverse and freeze any part of the tape, and then he left me alone in the room. It took me a minute to locate the Firebirds, then I fast-forwarded the tapes until I saw people near them. The camera took images about every two seconds so the people and passing cars seemed to jerk across the screen in little jumps.

  Several times, there were people by the Firebirds but none of them got in and drove one away. I almost missed the car when it moved and had to rewind the tape and look again.

  No one was near it, but I saw a small hand reach up from between the cars and open the passenger door. A shadowy figure moved across the console and into the driver’s seat. I got one flash of a long braided ponytail and a glimpse of a young, pretty face, then the engine started and the Firebird drove off the lot and into traffic.

  I backed up the tape again until I was a good five minutes before the theft. I watched every angle and never saw her. I did it again, this time rewinding even further, but there was no image of her anywhere. Wherever she had crawled from, it had started out of camera range.

  I went out of the room and saw Miguel, “Thanks,” I said.

  “You do any good?”

  “No, I never even saw her, just her hand, then the car was gone.”

  “Yeah, she was a sneaky one. Let me know if you catch her. We have a reward for it.”

  I shook his hand, “I’ll keep that in mind.” As I went out of the building, I saw the car wash guys over by my pickup. They were laughing and carrying on like it was a fiesta.

  When I got closer I could see that one held an old fishing rod and had hooked his line under Shamu’s large, welded pipe front bumper and was acting like he’d hooked a big one.

  One of them said, “Give him line!” The fisherman acted like he was letting off the drag, then he jerked again like he was re-setting the hook and the fight was on again.

  “It’s a big one, hombre. Looks like two tons!”

  The fisherman said in a mock strained voice, “Captain, what kind of fish is it?”

  The one who told him to give it line said, “It’s a guppy!”

  I reached them and said, “Very funny.” They collapsed in hysterics. When they finally caught their breath I asked, “Have you seen the security tape of the car theft?”

  They shook their heads no. The fisherman said, “They told us about it, but that’s all.”

  “You have any idea which way that woman could have crawled from to get to the Firebird without being seen?”

  They all pointed to the southwest corner of the lot. The fisherman said, “Had to be from there. Only place you can’t see real easy, and she could sneak by the wash rack there before she ducked down.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. We got to have a little fun with Jaws here,” he patted the hood of my pickup.

  “It’s not a shark, it’s a killer whale.”

  The fisherman said, “It’s a truck, amigo. What kind of mushrooms you been eating?” They all thought that was a riot. He added, “Next time you come by, bring it in and we’ll wash it. Won’t cost you nothing.”

  **

  I drove toward the office and thought about the woman. From the few images I’d seen on the news tape and the one glimpse of her face on the security cameras, I agreed with Archie’s estimate of her being around nineteen or twenty.

  Somebody that young and that good a thief and escape artist is rare. Odds were she had a record, so we might be able to find her through the LAPD or County Sheriff’s department. It was something Hondo and I could discuss.

  The only problem with the Sheriff’s department was that we still owed our contact there. Sergeant Vick Best was as good as they come, but he was a bit testy with us right now.

  I finally reached Venice, pulled into the gym parking lot, and found a space in front of our office. Hondo had the DVD of the news footage loaded in the player. He had two mugs of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee ready for us, along with a half-dozen donuts. I grabbed a donut and sat down. I said, “Have you watched it already?”

  “Just once. I didn’t pick up anything, but I thought with both of us we might get lucky.”

  I took a bite of donut and sipped some coffee, “Roll it when you’re ready.”

  I ate three donuts and Hondo ate two as we watched the events three times.
I finished my second cup of coffee and said, “Let’s watch it once more.” Hondo started it again. This time I concentrated on another vehicle that the pickup passed after banging into the Firebird. It was a white stakebed truck hauling mirrors. The mirrors were strapped to the outside of the truck bed on racks. I caught a flash of a reflected face in profile as the pickup passed the stakebed. “Stop it and rewind a little bit,” I said.

  Hondo did and I pointed the stakebed out to him as I filched the last donut. He stopped the film as the face came into the mirror.

  It was blurry, but we could make out that it was a black man with a gunfighter’s moustache and a black cowboy hat that was shaped and curled and fit him like he was the real deal. Hondo inched the footage forward but we were at the end of the film and unable to make out anything else.

  I popped the last of the donut into my mouth as he turned off the tape and looked in the donut box. “Didn’t you leave me half of that last one?”

  I chewed and swallowed, “I thought you wanted me to eat it so it wouldn’t sit around and attract ants.”

  “You ate four donuts.”

  “I figured you probably had a couple when you bought these, sort of like an appetizer, and that was why you only had two.”

  Hondo shook his head and poured us some more coffee. While we drank, I told him about visiting the car dealership.

  Hondo said, “She’s about half ghost the way she can move around in broad daylight and nobody sees her.”

  “I’m going back to the car lot later,” I said. “Look around behind the place and see where she came from.”

  “I think I’ll call up Vick and see if our African American cowboy rings any bells with the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Don’t forget, Vick’s still put out with us.”

  “He won’t be much longer. Hunter called right before you got here and said she’d mailed us a care package of Julios.”

  Hunter is Hunter Kincaid, our beautiful, tough, straight shooting Border Patrol Agent friend who lives in Texas. Julios are some fabulous tortilla chips made near San Antonio. We were all addicted to them and Hondo and I ate the last bag we had. It was one of the big bags too, almost the size of a pillowcase. Vick knew it was his and that we had it because Hunter called and told him she’d sent it to us.

  Vick caught us when he came to the office that day and opened the door without knocking. I had the bag tilted up and was pouring the last tiny pieces of chips into my mouth when he yelled, “Vandals! You’re a couple of vandals!”

  He scared me so bad I jerked the bag, and salt and chili powder and all the other spices left in the bag found their way into my eyes and nose. It felt like someone poured fire into my sinuses. Tears flowed and my nose ran clear liquid as I hacked and sneezed and wiped my face.

  When I could see again, Vick said, “Serves you right,” and he left. He never did tell us what he wanted that day.

  Anyhow, since then he’s been a little testy.

  ~~***~~