Hot Wheels (4 page)

Early the next morning, Pete threw on his Bop Til You Drop T-shirt and drove to the salvage yard. He wanted to make amends for missing the action the night before — and to find out what had happened. He found the big iron gates locked, and headed across the street to the house.

Jupiter was still at breakfast with his aunt and uncle. He was eating grapefruit and cottage cheese. He didn’t look too happy, and it wasn’t only the diet.

“We still can’t get Ty out of jail!” Jupe said.

Aunt Mathilda fumed. “The judge still hasn’t set bail! My lawyer is throwing a fit, but there’s almost nothing you can do to hurry a judge. The prosecutor is insisting that Ty is a suspect in this case. He’s afraid Ty will run away. My lawyer is almost sure we’ll get a ruling today, but he isn’t at all sure it’ll be in our favor.”

Uncle Titus, a short, slim man with a huge mustache, looked at his wife. “You sure this cousin is on the level?” he asked. “That’s a pretty shaky story.”

“We’re sure, Uncle Titus,” Jupiter said. “We’ve uncovered enough facts already to make us almost certain his story is true.”

“Now all we have to do is prove it,” Pete said.

Uncle Titus frowned. “You be careful, you hear? Car thieves are nothing to fool with.”

“We’ll be careful, Uncle Titus.” Jupiter finished his cottage cheese. “I’ll go and open up the yard. We’ll be over in Headquarters, then we’re going out. Aunt M, if Ty gets his bail set, would you leave a message on our answering machine? We’ll call in every hour or so and get our messages.”

“All right, Jupiter. I’ll just call the lawyer again, then be right over to open the office.”

Pete and Jupiter crossed to the gates and opened the electronic lock with Jupiter’s belt control. In HQ, Jupe told Pete what had happened last night. Pete laughed at the description of El Tiburon and the Piranhas in the tiny and almost empty cafe. He was excited when Jupiter got to the appearance of Joe Torres at the car wash.

“So Torres did know someone named Tiburon!”

“Clearly.” Jupiter nodded. “Now all we have to do is prove it’s the same Tiburon who asked Ty to drive the Mercedes down from Oxnard, and that he knew the car was stolen.”

“That’s all?” Pete said. “So where do we start?”

“We take what we’ve found, make a hypothesis, and work from there as if it were true.”

“Make a what? Give it to me in English, Jupe.”

“A hypothesis, an assumption, a theory, Pete. In this case we’ll assume that Joe Torres is a member of a gang of car thieves. Then the best way to prove Tiburon’s involvement is to watch Torres and see where he leads us.”

“Sounds good,” Pete agreed. “When do we go back to that bodega?”

“As soon as Bob gets here.”

“I’ll do some work on the Corvair for a while.”

“Which reminds me, when do we find me a car?”

“I told you. As soon as I get the Corvair in shape. That won’t be long. Anyway, now we’ve got to wait here for Bob, right?”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“Okay, okay! We’ll go now. I know a lot where people sell their own cars. We’ll start there.”

“We can’t go yet.” Jupiter sighed. “Bob should be here any moment.”

Pete left HQ muttering to himself. Something about people making up their dumb minds.

Alone, Jupiter opened the bottom drawer of his desk, reached all the way into the back, and took out a candy bar. He munched it eagerly, with one eye watching the door for Bob to appear any second.

Bob did not appear.

Not that second or the next minute or the next half hour.

Jupiter went outside and looked into the workshop. No one was there. He continued on around HQ to where Pete was once again buried inside the engine of the Corvair.

“He’s late,” Jupiter said.

“So what else is new,” Pete answered from inside the engine.

“It’s that job,” Jupiter decided. “He likes working for Sax too much to keep his mind on the Investigators. ”

“It’s those girls,” Pete’s muffled voice corrected him. “He likes all the girls after him too much to keep his mind on anything.”

“Girls can’t be that important,” Jupiter said.

Pete’s head emerged from the engine to stare at Jupiter — just as the girl with the VW Rabbit, Karen, drove into the yard. She called out, “Is Bobby here?”

Jupiter shook his head. Pete said, “Sorry, we haven’t seen him.”

Karen drove out with a smile and a wave. Moments later a Honda drove in. This was the short girl who had talked to Jupiter the day before.

“Have you seen Bob this morning, Jupiter? It is Jupiter, right?” She smiled at him.

This time Jupiter couldn’t even shake his head. “We haven’t seen him, Ruthie.” Pete smiled back at the blond girl.

Ruthie looked at Jupiter once more before she drove out of the yard.

“She likes you, Jupe,” Pete said. “Why don’t you ask her for a date?”

Jupiter stared after the Honda. “You really think she likes me?”

“She couldn’t show it more unless she asked you out herself, and most girls won’t do — that.”

“I know,” Jupiter said. “Why won’t they? Then it’d be easy.”

“Well, they won’t. You’ll have to do it.”

Jupiter groaned. “Maybe later. Now, as soon as Bob — ”

A third girl drove into the yard. It was the redhead, Lisa. She wasn’t smiling. “Bob sent me to tell you Sax did come back and he has to work. We’re going out later, so he’ll be busy all day.”

She turned the car and left without looking at the guys again. Pete shook his head as he watched Lisa leave.

“She doesn’t like us, you know? Thinks Bob hangs around with us too much. She’s gonna be a problem.”

“Bob’s the problem,” Jupiter said. “We’ll have to go to the bodega and watch Torres without him.”

They checked with Aunt Mathilda, but she had heard nothing from her lawyer. Then they drove in Pete’s Fiero to the barrio and parked around the corner from Torres’s bodega.

“We stand out too much,” said Jupe as they approached the grocery. “Where can we hole up?”

He didn’t feel noticeable just because they were Anglo. The Rocky Beach barrio wasn’t like the large barrios of Los Angeles or New York or other big cities, where everyone was Latino. Here, while there were mostly Latino people — many from families that had been here since the days when California was Spanish and Mexican — there were also many Anglos.

But Jupe and Pete were strangers in the neighborhood. Sooner or later they’d be noticed if they stood in the open.

Pete pointed. “There’s a doorway that’ll hide us. We can still see the bodega.”

“Perfect,” Jupiter agreed. “The building even looks empty.”

In the shadows of the doorway they settled to watch. The morning passed. This was the hard part of detective work — the dull, slow, boring watching and waiting for something to happen. But it was a big part of being a detective.

At noon Jupiter came alert. “Pete!”

Three of the Piranhas had driven up in a lowrider, raised now for highway driving. They went into the bodega.

“They could be buying groceries,” Pete said.

But when the three came out half an hour later, they carried no groceries.

“It sure looks like Torres and the Piranhas are in something together,” Pete said.

“It could be just neighborhood stuff,” Jupiter cautioned, but his voice was more excited now.

Another two hours passed.

Then a bright orange Cadillac appeared and parked in front of the bodega. The driver hurried inside. Seconds later Joe Torres came out and got into the Cadillac.

“Come on!” Jupiter cried.

They ran from the doorway to Pete’s Fiero and scrambled in. Pete started the motor just as the orange Caddy passed them at the corner. Pete pulled away and turned into the cross street to follow.

The orange Caddy was two blocks ahead and driving slowly. Pete hung as far back as he could. Torres had seen the Fiero yesterday, before Jupiter had thrown him.

After leaving the barrio, the Caddy turned left and entered a maze of dusty streets behind the freeway. There it drove among construction material yards, warehouses, automobile body shops, and other commercial buildings. Pete followed, hanging even farther back, now that there were few cars on the narrow streets.

Up ahead, the Caddy turned right. Pete reached the corner just in time to see the Caddy stop in front of a large three-story red-brick building down the block. It was almost under the freeway and was close to a better section of office buildings.

“We’d better park,” Jupiter said, “and walk.”

Pete turned the corner and slid into a parking spot. They heard the Cadillac honk. It was an odd honking: one long, two short, a long, and a short. They saw large doors swing open, and the Caddy drove into the building.

The guys approached warily. The building was the last of a row of buildings on the block. It had no windows on the ground floor, and the windows on the next two floors had been painted over. There were the large double garage doors the Caddy had driven through and a smaller regular-size door set in one of the large doors.

A large sign over the garage doors read:

A smaller sign said:

Pete and Jupe walked around the building along the side street to the next block. Another row of brick buildings stood backed up right against those on the first block. The building directly behind and touching the garage seemed to be three floors of small offices with a single main entrance. There was no other entrance to the garage building, and all the side windows were painted over too.

“Well,” Pete said, “at least Torres can’t see us out here.”

“And we can’t see him in there. We’ll have to go inside.” Pete hesitated. “I don’t know, Jupe. We don’t know what’s in there. We could walk into a mess.”

“You have any better idea how to look inside?”

Pete shrugged. “No, but I don’t like it.”

“We’ll be as careful as possible,” Jupiter said as they walked back to the front of the garage. “You go in first and look around before we go any farther.”

“Oh, great,” Pete said.

“We can’t both go through that small door at the same time,” Jupiter said. “And Torres never saw you. He’d recognize me at once.”

Pete groaned. “How come logic always says I go first?”

“Gee,” Jupiter said innocently, “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what. You go in first. I’ll be right behind you. We’ll look everything over before we move a foot from the door. How’s that?”

“Better,” Pete said. “Let’s go.”

He took a deep breath, pushed the small door open, jumped over the raised sill, and flattened himself against the right of the door. Jupiter came in behind him and flattened left.

In the dark there was nothing but silence.

Slowly their eyes became accustomed to the dim light.

They were in an enormous room with thick pillars and a few feeble lights-shining down from the ceiling. Rows of cars stood parked among the pillars. At the right a wide ramp led up to the second floor. Up against the rear wall was a large automobile elevator. Its shaft was enclosed on the sides by wiremesh and in front by slatted wooden gates.

There were doors at the far right side of the room, next to the ramp. At the left were half-glass doors leading to offices. There were no lights behind the office doors, and no sign of Torres or anyone else.

Nothing moved anywhere.

“You think they’re all stolen?” Pete whispered as he looked at the rows of cars.

Jupiter shook his head. “This seems to be a regular parking garage. See, the pillars and wall sections are all numbered.”

“So where’s the parking attendant? And the service shop and body work?”

“Good question.”

In the dimness, among the rows of ghostly cars, they listened. After a moment, they heard small sounds somewhere above.

“It doesn’t sound like much,” Pete said.

“It’s an old building,” Jupiter replied. “The walls and floors are thick enough to absorb sounds. Someone is definitely upstairs.”

“If we’re going up there,” Pete said, “I sure hope that elevator and the car ramp aren’t the only ways up.

“There must be stairs. Let’s try that door at the foot of the ramp.”

They walked over to the unmarked door and Pete pulled it open. Inside was a dusty stairway. The sounds from above were clearer in the dimly lit, echoing stairwell. But the guys couldn’t hear any footsteps or voices. Cautiously they crept up the steel stairs to the second floor. Jupe opened the door on the landing and the guys peered out.

Here the cavernous space among the pillars was better lighted. The room contained cars in various stages of repair. Most of them were standing there like forgotten skeletons. Three had electronic instruments attached, to analyze cylinder compression, fuel injection, spark-plug operation, and other electrical functions. The instruments were bleeping and flashing, but no one was in sight.

“The mechanics must have gone somewhere in a hurry,” Pete said. “They left those instruments still working.”

“Well, they didn’t go down. No one passed us as we came in.”

“So where did they go?” Pete said. “And where’s Torres and that orange Cadillac?”

“Must be on the third floor.”

They continued silently up the stairs.

This time the large open area was even better lighted, with cars scattered all through the spaces between the pillars. There were more cars here than on the second floor, but still far fewer than on the first. Here the cars were having bodywork and painting done.

But no one was in sight on this floor either!

Sanders and buffers and other bodywork tools lay on the floor plugged in to electrical outlets. The painting booths were filled with cars and the air compressors were working. Exhaust blowers hummed. But no one was at work. And there was still no sign of Torres or the orange Caddy.

“Weird!” said Jupe.

“My dad always says no one works in garages except when a customer is watching,” Pete said.

“Your dad may be right, but mechanics were working here very recently,” Jupiter said. “They’ve gone, and so has Torres. We’d better try to find out where.”

“You mean go out there?”

“There’s no one around.”

“What if they come back?”

“We have to take the risk,” Jupiter insisted. “Torres and that Cadillac must be somewhere in the building.

Jupiter led the way around the large room. They stayed close to cars, using them as cover in case anyone came back suddenly. But no one did, and they were able to circle the whole room back to the stairwell. They found no doors and no other stairs. The elevator was up on this floor, but it hadn’t been used while they were in the building. Neither had the ramp.

“No car came past us,” Pete said. “We must have missed the orange Caddy on one of the floors.”

Jupiter was doubtful. “I don’t see how, but we’d better go back down and look again.”

They tiptoed down the stairs to the second floor. They didn’t spot the orange Cadillac anywhere, but there was a mechanic at work now! “Where’d he come from?” Pete whispered “I don’t know,” Jupiter whispered back. “But we didn’t walk around this floor, remember? We’ll have to look here, too.”

“You mean go out there on this floor? There’s a guy out there!”

“We’ve got to be sure the Cadillac isn’t here.” Jupiter and Pete slipped out of the stairwell. They walked quietly, keeping to the shadows and behind the cars. The solitary mechanic could discover them at any moment, but he was making noise that helped cover them. He also seemed intent on his work, as if trying to catch up. He never even looked up as the two Investigators slipped from car to car through the gloom.

They found no trace of the orange Cadillac.

“I guess we missed it on the first floor,” Pete said when they finally made it back to the cover of the stairwell.

“Unless,” Jupiter said, and stopped. His eyes were thoughtful and a little excited. “Come on, let’s look at the first floor again.”

In his sudden excitement Jupiter moved too fast down the steel stairs. He slipped near the bottom and slid down the last three steps with a clatter.

Both guys froze. They held their breath and listened.

One, two, three minutes passed.

Jupiter stood up carefully.

There was only silence on the ground floor — and the faint sounds from above where the mechanic worked.

“Whew,” Pete said. “That could have been close!”

Jupiter nodded, a little pale. He led the way out into the dimness of the ground floor parking garage. There was still no light behind any of the half-glass doors on the far side of the echoing room.

And there was no orange Cadillac.

They searched the entire floor, walking among the rows of cars.

“Let’s face it, Jupe,” Pete said. “It’s just not here.”

“No,” Jupiter said, his voice almost eager. “And I think I know — ”

A sudden hissing and rattling sound seemed to fill the room. Startled, they looked frantically around for the source of the sound.

Then they saw it. The car elevator was coming down on its hydraulic piston. The platform was already emerging from the second floor!

“Hey! What are you doing in here?”

A dark-haired man leaned out of a black Buick sedan on the elevator. He pointed at Jupiter, who was directly under one of the lights. Joe Torres leaned out of the passenger window.

“It’s that fat kid from the bodega, Max!”

“You, kid! Stop!”

Jupiter jumped back out of the light and crouched in the shadows beside Pete. The two quickly ducked behind a station wagon. The elevator gates opened, and the Buick roared down the narrow lanes between the rows of cars to cut them off from the front door. It screeched to a stop at the exit. Torres got out, followed by the squat, muscular, bearlike driver.

“Torres was here all along!” Pete whispered.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Jupiter said in a low voice. “Right now we’ve got to get out of here.”

“They don’t look so tough,” Pete said. “You already handled Torres with your judo. I can take that short guy with my karate.”

At the door the two men stood and peered all around into the shadows.

“You can’t get away, kid,” the short, squat one called out.

“Watch him, Max,” Torres said. “The kid’s pretty good with that judo stuff.”

Max pulled an ugly-looking pistol from his belt. “He ain’t gonna play judo with this.”

Peeking past the station wagon, the guys saw the gun appear in the stubby man’s hand.

Pete gulped. “Now they look tougher.”

“But they don’t know you’re here,” Jupiter whispered. “That gives us an edge. I’ll try to lead them past where you’re hiding. You use your karate on the one with the gun. Then we’ll both get the other one before he knows what hit him.”

Jupiter stood up calmly and stepped out into the weak light.

It was a moment before they saw him. Then Torres yelled: “There he is! Hold it right there, kid, if you know what’s good for you.”

Jupiter walked rapidly away from the front door among the parked cars as if trying to escape toward the ramp. The two men fell into the trap.

“Cut him off, Joe,” the gunman, Max, shouted.

“I’ll cover this side.” He headed down the aisle to Jupiter’s left.

Torres, on the right, began running to get in front of Jupiter. The squat gunman moved to box Jupiter in from the other side. Jupiter quickly reversed direction toward the side offices. Torres had to circle in an arc through the cars to catch up with Jupiter, as the gunman angled toward them.

Jupiter had both men moving toward the spot where Pete crouched, ready and waiting to attack.

Jupiter zigged and zagged, drawing the two pursuers closer and closer to Pete. He acted as if he were hemmed in and trapped by the cleverness of Max and Torres.

He passed Pete. The two pursuers closed in, all their attention on the “trapped” Jupiter. Jupiter zigged one last time to draw Max the gunman to Pete first, then acted shocked to find Max almost on top of him.

“That’s it, fat boy,” Max said, the ugly gun pointed directly at Jupiter. “Hold it right there.”

Pete leaped up, his right foot lashing out in a yoko-geri-kekomi thrust kick that sent the gunman’s pistol flying into the dimness of the garage. He instantly smashed a backhand shuto-uchi against the side of Max’s neck. The gunman dropped like a stone from the blow to his carotid artery.

Torres lunged around a car to attack Pete. Then he saw Jupiter coming at him and whirled to face the enemy who had thrown him earlier.

This gave Pete an opening, and he knocked Torres out cold with a massive mawashi-geri roundhouse kick from behind.

“Let’s get out of here!” Pete cried.

The guys raced for the door.