Baca Read online

  “His tattoos, were they bright?”

  “I guess you’d call them that. They were dark ink, but showed real well, shiny, no fading anywhere.”

  “Those are Russian prison tattoos. They make the ink from shoe soles and urine.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, they take a shoe sole and burn it until it all turns into soot, then sift it through a handkerchief until it’s a very fine dust, then they mix urine with it. They prefer to use the urine of the person they’re going to work on.”

  “How the heck do you know that?”

  “The case I worked on in Florida, we had some guys with tattoos and we asked about them through the interpreter. Found out what some of the symbols and phrases meant, too. Skulls mean people they have murdered or killed in fights, a pirate means robbery. American money indicates they’re with the new order of Russian gangster, and those people are as smart and vicious as they come. They’re after quick money any way they can get it, and they take out anyone in their way. They’re good at money laundering, too.”

  “So you think Rakes is Russian Mafia?”

  “No doubt in my mind.”

  Hondo said, “Makes you wonder what he’s doing with Meadows.”

  I said, “Why don’t we drive down to Siberia and see if they’re there? It wouldn’t hurt to look them over a little closer now that we have our expert with us.”

  Hondo pointed at the clock that read 11:00AM and said, “Let’s grab an early lunch first. I need something besides chips to take me through the rest of the day.”

  As we got up to leave I moved beside Hunter and said, “You know, you being the Soviet expert and all, I’ve heard that Russian women have this technique they do with their tongues-”

  Hunter elbowed me so hard in the ribs a speedloader popped loose.

  **

  Siberia was busy when we entered. There were probably a hundred customers scattered around the room and the vents were barely keeping up with the cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke that hung against the ceiling in a layer a foot thick. Frank Meadows was holding court in the same place as before, and Carl Rakes was coming from the bar with two drinks, neither of which was a Tunguska Blast. The wuss. Rakes wore a skintight white tee shirt and his tattoos showed through like cloud shadow. He walked in front of us and I noticed he still had the meat tenderizer mark on his forehead.

  As he passed, Hondo said, “Hey, Wafflehead.”

  Rakes stopped, turned and recognized Hondo, then me, “You tink id is over? My turn vill come, and I ged you, your friend, then take my time with your pretty girl here.” He looked Hunter up and down and ran his tongue across his lips like he was tasting something.

  “We can dance anytime you want,” Hunter said. She was beautiful and feminine, with a healthy dose of tomboy, and people tended to underestimate her. Hunter had been in several gunfights down on the border and was a three-time State Champ in Combat Pistol. Carl had better be careful wishing for that.

  Frank Meadows came over and took one of the drinks from Rakes. He said, “The fuck you doing here, Baca? My wife fired you, remember?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Frankie, I don’t work for her anymore. Funny how you know Bond fired me. She went through a lot of trouble telling me she was scared you would find out. That’s a pretty good bullshit game you two play. But then again, she’s a good actor. You know, Frankie Boy, maybe you should use her in some of your flops.”

  “You want something, or you come down to run your mouth?”

  “We came down to go slumming.”

  Frank was an ass, but he wasn’t dumb. “Just stay out of my way, understand? I conduct business here and if you cost me a multi-million dollar deal, there’ll be more mad people banging on your door than you can count.”

  Hondo said, “He can count pretty high.”

  I noticed several men in the crowd work their way nearer to us. They had that tough look, but were acting uninterested in our little group. I said, “Nice talking to you Frank, it always makes me appreciate breathing outside air after we’ve been close.” I motioned to Hunter and Hondo and we turned to leave, but not before we saw Rakes toast us with his glass, bite a chunk out of it and grin as he chewed.

  **

  As we turned onto Sunset, Hunter said, “There were quite a few Russians in there, lots of tats.”

  “I thought that might be it,” I said. “Kind of a base of operations.”

  “That would be my guess. Did you notice the small tats on the side of Rakes’ neck?”

  Hondo said, “Yeah, looked like a couple of crooked knifes or something side by side.”

  “That’s a sign he’s an enforcer and one of their higher-ups, a lieutenant, something like that. He’s camouflaged real well, acting like he’s working class, even if it is for this Meadows guy.”

  “What you’re telling us is that he’s a boss of others.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  We thought on that as we drove to make our appointment with Loomis at the Camino Real Motel.

  Loomis was expecting us when we walked into the lobby. He held up a paper and shoved it at me when we reached the counter. “Here, I told you he signed it.”

  I looked at the photocopy of the sign-in paper and sure enough, Robert Landman had signed in a flowing script. I looked at the rest of it and it showed Number of Occupants as four.

  “He had four people with him?”

  “More than that. Must’ve been eight or ten when they all finally got here.”

  Hondo said, “You remember anything about them, what they looked like?”

  “They were different kinds. The man and woman who came in with him, then some hard, blocky looking men and two Mexican women, good looking, too. Had kinda strawberry colored hair, like that. There was a big-shouldered Mexican, came in, too. He’s the one who left with the two Mexican women. Lucky guy.”

  “Did they all come in together?”

  “No, the man and woman came with Landman, then the group of white guys with the two Mexican women, and the big Mexican came in solo. Hey, it wasn’t like they were crowded up there. That one is our premiere suite, really two rooms made into one big one. There are tables and a bar and three beds and fold out sofas, the works. You could probably keep twenty people there, no problem-o.”

  “You rent that out often?”

  “No, in fact nobody’s rented it since he did.”

  “You think we could go up for a look?”

  Loomis looked around, “I don’t know...”

  I laid out another hundred-dollar bill.

  He put it in his pocket and said, “Okay, I guess so. Don’t stay long, though. My manager comes back at two.” He slid the key to me and said, “It’s on the second floor, all the way to the end.”

  We entered the room and each of us took a different area. The maids had done a good job and the place smelled clean, the beds made without a wrinkle, and there was no trash left anywhere. Hondo checked the refrigerator and found nothing. I went into the bathroom and went through all the drawers. On a hunch, I lifted the lid off the toilet reservoir. Clear water and a few rust stains were along the sides, and nothing was in the bottom. As I started to put the lid on, I heard the faint sound of water leaking. I looked closer in the tank and saw a black thread tied to the flapper and going underneath it. I flushed the toilet and held the ball up. A string hung into the opening. When the water finished running, I held up the float and pulled on the string. At the end was a small baggie rolled like a loose cigarette. Papers were inside. I untied the string and took the baggie into the kitchen.

  Hondo and Hunter came over as I opened it and spread out the papers. They were in Spanish and Hunter looked them over and translated.

  “These are papers of a woman from Durango named Maria Sanchez de Mendoza. There’s also a note she wrote that says if something happens to her, to notify her mother. It gives the address. Her last sentence says she is scared but hopeful, that these people are very dangerous, but that her older si
ster said she can make lots of money in the club. She says, and I’m quoting here, ‘The star is protecting us for now.’ Then there’s a ‘Thanks to God’ and that’s it.” Hunter looked at me.

  I said, “I wonder what club, and how this ties in with Landman? Is he dangerous? Man, I can’t see that.”

  Hondo said, “I think star means Landman.”

  Hunter said, “If that’s true, then he’s not dangerous, he’s in danger.”

  “Or worse,” I said.

  We returned to the lobby and Loomis asked, “You find anything?”

  “Nah, but thanks for letting us look around.”

  “Sure thing,” he leaned closer and with his crossed eyes, I couldn’t tell if he was looking at Hondo or me when he said, “Anything coming up good in the rag I should keep an eye out for?”

  I got some control and said, “You bet, I don’t know what date yet, but you read it for the next couple months and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” I winked at him.

  Loomis grinned and winked back, his face pointed somewhere between Hondo and me. “All right!”

  Hondo said, “If any of those people show up, you give us a call.”

  He handed Loomis a card and he read it, then frowned, “Private Investigators? I thought you were with the Enquirer.”

  “It’s a cover,” Hondo said.

  Loomis nodded as he thought about it, then grinned and nodded harder. “I get it.” He looked at me and said, “You got a card?” I gave him my card. He read it and frowned again, “Baca? You don’t look like these gangbangers around here.”

  I pointed at Hondo and Hunter and said, “My brother and sister and I were orphans in Bolognia, you know, over in Europe, close to Mayonasia.”

  Loomis nodded and said, “Yeah, I think I saw something about it on CNN.”

  “You probably did,” I said. “We all were adopted by different families over here.”

  “So your names are different. Makes sense. I knew you weren’t really Mexican.”

  I nodded and said, “You got it.”

  We left, with Hunter whispering, “God-o-mighty.”

  **

  At the office, we opened a bag of Julio’s and a jar of salsa and put it on Hondo’s desk. We talked about things between bites.

  Hunter said, “I’m going to make a few calls, see if I can run down the mother in Durango. From the address, she doesn’t have a phone so I’ll need to get somebody to find the colonia she lives in; get them to help her call me.”

  I said, “What about the club? Is it even in Los Angeles? How are we going to narrow that down?”

  “The journey begins with a single step.” Hondo held up his fingers in a V and said, “Peace, my brother.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You weren’t even born in the sixties.”

  Hondo said, “The sixties are a state of mind.” Hunter leaned back in her chair to watch us.

  I said, “Aren’t you the one who told me last month that people back then were too innocent?”

  “They’ve been having Sixties week on the History Channel. Some pretty good stuff. Makes you appreciate events back then a little better.”

  “Good grief.”

  “They talked a lot about the Soviet Union, and later, on Court TV they had a special on the Russian Mafia.”

  That Hondo, sometimes he had a way of getting to the point that defied all logic. I said, “So, you’re making a statement here?”

  “Sure. The first step’s got to be from where we are now.”

  I thought a moment and said, “So, where we are is...?”

  Hondo looked at me as if he was a teacher and I was a third grader who just missed two plus two.

  “What?” I said.

  He made a small sigh, “We have Bond and Frank Meadows, Carl Rakes the ex-convict who’s probably served time in a Russian prison, then Bob Landman and a painter from the Volga. Then there are undocumented Mexican women — strawberry blonde Mexican women, Landman’s yellow bike, and another strawberry blond Mexican woman in the Camino Real. All with Landman and a bunch of others that sound like Rakes and some Mexican bad boys. We find a note about danger and clubs and finally, Loomis telling us what he saw.”

  I thought of Loomis also telling us about Elvis, but didn’t interrupt.

  Hunter dipped some salsa with a chip and ate as she thought. She let her chair down and said, “Yeah, I think I see where you’re going.”

  Going? I started to argue, and then something clicked. “Russians, Siberia on Sunset. If they’re tied to the Mafia and have one club in Los Angeles, then they’ve got others.”

  Hunter said, “The way they launder money in Florida, is mixing it with legitimate income from strip bars and gentlemen’s clubs, all the places where women dance nude. They control it all, from picking the women to picking the toilet paper.”

  I said, “We check out the probable ones, see if we find some blond Mexican women working there and we’ve got a connection, which might lead us to Landman.”

  Hondo nodded, “That’s what I said.” He glanced across the office at the door and quickly placed the chips and salsa under his desk.

  I started to say something when Sergeant Vick Best opened the door and walked in.

  “Baca, where’s that sperm whale pickup of yours? It is not in the lot. I wasn’t sure you were here.”

  I said, “It’s not a sperm whale, it’s...never mind. My pickup is in the shop, getting some body work done.”

  He moved his head back and forth, sniffing the air as he said, “What happened, they have to Bond-O all the harpoon marks? Hey, do I smell some chips?”

  Hondo reached into his desk and pulled out the last unopened bag of Julio’s. Hunter got the remaining jar of salsa out of the small refrigerator and placed it beside the chips.

  “Thank you, young lady.”

  She shook his hand and said, “A pleasure, Sergeant. My name’s Hunter Kincaid. I’ve heard a lot about you from Ronny and Hondo.”

  “Well, you be careful around these two. They tend to get friends into situations.” He rubbed at a point over his left hip as he talked.

  Hondo said, “That old bullet wound acting up, Sergeant? I didn’t think a twenty-two would take that long to heal.”

  Vick looked hard at me, “Yeah well, sometimes it acts up when it’s irritated.

  Vick was getting all stirred up and agitated and I could hear the chips breaking in the sack under his arm. I said, “What brings you down, or do you just like our company?”

  “They found a small shark this morning washed up on Malibu. Some tourist opened its mouth and saw a foot wedged in there.”

  I said, “Shark? You sure it wasn’t sole?”

  Vick half closed his eyes like he had a headache, “You are hopeless, you know that? What it is, they think it might be from Valdar because forensics found small flakes of paint on it. I thought if you knew that, you might stop snooping around and getting into trouble.” He was squeezing the bag of chips under his arm again.

  Hunter stood up and took them from him, “Let me carry these to the car for you, Sergeant. We’ll walk down together and get acquainted.”

  “Thank you, Miss.” Before Vick left, he walked over to me and leaned down to whisper, “You still owe me two bags of chips and two jars of salsa, don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  Hunter stayed outside with him for ten minutes before returning. When she returned, she shook her head at the empty bag of chips on Hondo’s desk. “He’s a nice man. He likes you two a lot, but doesn’t want you to know.”

  Hondo said, “You were out there a while. What’d you find out?”

  “I thought it might narrow down the search if I quizzed him about Russian crime in LA. He’s aware of the East European organizations moving in, works with an FBI task force that’s looking into the spread of the Russian Mafia in California and their partnerships with other criminal families. What Vick said, there are several factions working in Los Angeles, each bumping against the other for bigger pi
eces of the pie.”

  “He mention anything about Siberia?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t even have to prime him. He was telling me they’ve looked at several companies that run bars around the county, and he mentioned five or six names, but one is called the Sarana Corporation and it owns a piece of Siberia and a dozen or so other strip clubs scattered around town.”

  Hondo said, “That’ll help. I’ll go down to the county and city offices, check the abstracts and talk to a couple of people, see what I can find on Sarana.”

  Hunter said, “I’ll go with you. I can make my calls on the cell, and two people looking will go faster.”

  Hondo said to me, “How about you?”

  “I’ll make some calls, go check out a couple hunches,” I didn’t want to say in front of Hunter that I was heading straight to the strip bars. My ribs were still bruised from her last shot.

  When they were gone I pulled out the yellow pages and looked through the Nightclubs section for some ideas, got one that looked promising and went next door to borrow Archie’s Corvette.

  The Caspian Diamond Gentlemen’s Club was in West Hollywood in the center of the large Russian community. Thirty or so cars were in the lot when I arrived. I parked the Corvette and went to the smoked glass doors where a large, polite man in a dark suit and long blond ponytail opened the door to let me enter.

  The inside looked as black as a cave after being in the sun, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. There was a central stage with a dancing pole and two smaller stages and poles in two corners. In between them were round tables, chairs, and a circle of stools surrounding the dancing platforms. The half-circle bar took up the far wall and the shape allowed customers to swivel and see the shows without too much trouble.

  There was one g-stringed dancer on center stage doing a good number with the pole as Pink sang through the speakers. I sat down at a table against the wall so I could see the entire room. I ordered a beer from the waitress and watched the dancer some more. She hung upside down on the shiny pole using only her wrapped legs to grip as her arms waved free in snaky movements. Her head was five feet off the floor and she controlled her slide down the pole with her thigh muscles. My mind started wondering what a woman who could do that with her thighs would be able to do in...I tried to clear my thoughts and check out the customers.