Hard Exit, page 20
I’d crossed the border at Tijuana or Mexicali more than twenty times, and I’d always seen agents search large vehicles, either in front of their booths or at the secondary station. It seemed reasonable to assume that CBP would search the van. However, my original plan suddenly seemed impractical. The driver would spot us when it got light, and I didn’t know what he’d do after he knew he was being followed. Could he manage to shake us on the way to L.A.? Would he find somewhere to dump the kayaks if he thought he was being followed?
“New plan,” I said as I turned the key.
“Why?”
“The first pickup was too in-the-open to be illegal, and this pickup is being done in darkness. I think it’s safe to assume this isn’t a legal transaction. If I’m right, there’s no need to tail the van. We know it’s going to the Compton shop. I’d like you to drive.”
We switched positions, and after we’d gotten back on Mexico 5, heading to Mexicali, I said, “We would’ve been made following the van. We could’ve dumped the kayak to give the driver a different look, but this vehicle is going to stand out. I should’ve rented something inconspicuous. The kayak could still be useful to us, so we shouldn’t dump it. Even though Game overturned the apple cart, we can’t tip Milford off that we know how he’s importing the coke.”
“But we don’t know.”
“Not yet, but that’s why you’re driving. When I get service, I have research to do.”
“I’ve practically got bed sores from sitting so long. We haven’t eaten a real meal in days, I’ve hardly slept, and I missed a meeting on my third day of sobriety.”
“I’m sorry. We’ll get you back on track for thirty-in-thirty or ninety-in-ninety, I promise. But I can only keep that promise if we survive, so we have to catch these guys. We have nothing to take to law enforcement, so we’ll watch until watching proves to be ineffective, then we’ll poke the bear in the eye.”
“Okay, but I’m scared.”
“I know. We just need to get to the shop before the van does. Because we have to swing by the storage unit to get the gun, you need to drive quickly. Don’t break any records but go a little faster than the speed limit. I’m sure he’ll drive cautiously, considering his cargo.”
“You mean, considering his theoretical cargo. He may only have a van full of kayaks. Or it could be full of papayas.”
“The middle-of-the-night, illicit papaya trade doesn’t receive the media coverage it deserves.”
“Something’s wrong with me. How else can I explain why I love you?”
It took a long time to get through the border checkpoint because the morning commuter traffic slogged. We eventually made it through without being hassled. As the agent handed our passports back to Jen, he said, “Nice ride.”
A few minutes later, I punched in the gate code at Self Stor-It, retrieved the bag from the unit, and locked it. I heard a chime from my phone, meaning I had service. I had eight missed calls, four voicemails, and four texts. Jen made good time heading west on Interstate 8, and I read the texts. From Amanda: I’m at Malibu Serenity. Thought you should know. From Game: Left a message. Hope you’re good. From Mike: Sorry I couldn’t make the funeral. How was it? And another from Game: Should I do more James Bond shit to find you?
The first voicemail was from Frank Watson: “Hey, Jack. Hope you’re doing okay. Letting you know the obituary is up on the website of The Malibu Times. They said it will run in the paper, too. Basically, it says Dad didn’t commit suicide, and everyone knows it. Take care of yourself. See you at the funeral.”
The second voicemail was from Amanda: “Jack, I’m not sure why this doesn’t hurt more than it does. Probably because we were both going through the motions for a long time. I mean, I’m not saying I don’t care for you. I do, and I probably always will, but when I tracked down the baseball card for you, I really thought I was doing it because I want you to be happy. I didn’t have an ulterior motive. Or I didn’t think I did. Subconsciously, who knows? That’s between me and my blow. Ha-ha. That’s probably not funny. But, seriously, I’m letting you know I’m going to check into Malibu Serenity. Haven’t tried that one yet, and someday I might write a book: How Not to Get Sober on $60,000 a Month. Sorry. I shouldn’t joke. But maybe I should. Anyway, thought I’d let you know. Get your stuff whenever you need to. Bye.”
The third and fourth voicemails were from Game: “Shoulda seen me, brotha. I was smooth as silk, dropping lines like Denzel. The whole place was filled with white folk. I’m the only brother ’cept the security guard outside the chapel. Didn’t see anyone coulda been the van driver, don’t think. But I strolled up to Milford, after Chris in the ground and people are hanging ’round. Four dudes standing in a group, soft and middle-age. One of them is Milford, with his stupid red ponytail. I walk up from the side, so he don’t see me ’til I’m right next to him, and say, ‘Dude got jacked again, or he stealing from you, cuz he never show up. How we gonna get Amanda her blow if we ain’t got none? We doing business or what?’ His eyes go scared like he ’bout to get hit for the first time in his life. He finally says, ‘Do I know you?’ The other three stepped back by then. Just him and me, but they can still hear. I say, ‘Been slinging for you for years, but you busy what, sampling the product, instead a learning who the players be?’ I walked away. I know it ain’t what we agreed on, but it just came out. I looked back, and he’s on his phone, not looking happy. Hope that’s what you wanted. Car’s back where it was. Hope you and Jennifer staying safe.”
His second voicemail said: “I want another assignment, Jack. Holler back.”
Game’s call reminded me that I needed to call Rachelle. I called her, and after we exchanged hellos, I said, “You mentioned that Mike had an early tee time in Bel Air. There’s only one course there, the country club. Do you know who he was playing with?”
“No, sorry. He didn’t say. He only said he had an early tee time, and it was safe to go home.”
“Wait. You didn’t stay with him Saturday night?”
“No. Just Friday. He guaranteed I’d be safe at home.”
“Okay, thank you. Please take care of yourself.”
“I will. You, too.”
Jen turned north onto the 5, and we hit gridlock immediately, plodding along with the tens of thousands of work commuters. I felt confident we’d make it to the Wave Skimmer shop before the van did, but it’s difficult to feel confident about much when stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, mile after mile. During the drive, I watched videos on YouTube about how kayaks are made.
Based on the videos and Frank Watson’s comment about having watched powder enter the factory and kayaks leave it, I determined that Wave Skimmers are made through a process called rotomolding. It involves pouring linear polyethylene, also known as high-density polyethylene, which can be any color, into a mold, sealing the mold, then melting the polyethylene at a temperature of 550-degrees Fahrenheit in a large, sophisticated oven for about nineteen minutes. The mold is rotated in numerous directions to ensure even distribution of the polyethylene. The mold is moved to a cooling chamber, which decreases the temperature slowly, so the plastic holds its shape and doesn’t shrink. After the plastic has cooled, workers open the mold and remove the kayak. According to the video, workers outfit the kayaks with handles, seats, cargo nets, hatches, or fishing accessories, according to which model they’re creating.
In other words, the workspace attached to the shop in Compton technically had a reason to exist—I’d had my kayak repaired there—but was it really a front for illegal activity? If employees of other kayak manufacturers outfitted the kayaks in their factories, then shipped them directly to retailers, why did Wave Skimmer add another step? According to the videos, Pelican, Hobie, Wilderness Systems, and Ocean Kayak didn’t require a second factory visit. I was betting that was because those companies only made watercrafts and related accessories and didn’t smuggle coke.
I pulled up the UCLA faculty directory online and scrolled until I found the chemistry professors. I called three of them but got voicemails. I didn’t leave messages. I called a fourth.
“Hello,” said Paul Katz, a tenured professor of chemistry. He didn’t recognize my number, so his greeting was tentative.
“Hello, Dr. Katz. My name is Jack Drake. You don’t know me, but I graduated from UCLA a long time ago. I’m a private investigator, and I know I’m coming at you from left field.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I apologize. I know this is weird, but I’m not asking for anything but your opinion. I’m working on a case that involves kayaks. My question is, do you think it would be possible to add cocaine to the polyethylene powder that is melted around molds to create kayaks, bring those kayaks into the country, then extract the cocaine, probably by melting the plastic again?”
“Mr. Drake, I’m not in the habit of helping facilitate criminal enterprises.”
“Dr. Katz, I can show you my P.I. license when I get to L.A. Or I can take a picture of it and text it to you. My girlfriend and I are driving to L.A. now. I’m almost certain we’ve uncovered a cocaine distribution ring, and we know the big picture of how they’re doing it, but not the nitty-gritty.”
“First, my specialty is atmospheric chem, so petrochemicals are outside my field of expertise. But, second, based on my decades of experience, I feel comfortable speculating that what you’ve proposed sounds possible. How possible, I can’t say with any degree of certainty, but nothing about what you said sounds beyond the realm of possibility. After all, companies are turning recycled soda bottles into jackets and sneakers. I won’t testify as an expert witness, certainly, but I wish you luck in your investigation, and I hope you catch the dealers. My son died of a heroin overdose seven years ago. The bastards who sell those poisons are the worst kind of evil.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir. And I wish you all the best. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Catch the bastards.”
“I promise to do my best.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Listening to Rubber Soul and Revolver helped ease the traffic frustration a little, but I wasn’t paying much attention because my thoughts were bouncing around: Chris, Big Bill, Gilson, Amanda, Game, Mike, Jennifer, kayaks, cocaine, and burdens of proof.
And Jami. Once again, Jami.
She was in my head more than she had been in years. All my thoughts about her weren’t sad or guilt-filled, as they used to be, but she was present again because I was letting myself feel for the first time in nearly a decade, and bits of happiness were emerging like wildflowers repopulating a field in the spring.
Was she giving me permission to love again, or was I rationalizing, hoping she wasn’t judging me, condemning me? As the Serenity Prayer states, I needed to find the wisdom to know the difference between what I could change and what I couldn’t. I couldn’t change the fact she was gone, so I hoped I had the courage to change the part of me that felt guilty about her death, the part that clung to the past, the part that expected nothing more from the future than bleakness.
When we were two blocks from the Wave Skimmer shop, I said to Jen, “Let’s see how far we can stay from the shop and still see who enters. I probably missed another entrance at the back that would be big enough for the van to pull into.”
She drove down East Oaks Street and passed the front entrance to the shop. A yellow Camaro was parked in the space to the far left of the front door. She made a right on North Santa Fe Avenue, passing the side of the shop and workspace, but I didn’t see a large door. Just past the shop in the adjacent alley that Game had given chase in, I saw a white, beaten-up van that was probably the one he’d chased. It was facing away from us, so I could see the badly dented rear-end.
“Don’t stop, but I saw the van the dealer was driving the other day. The door we’re looking for is probably on that side, but I couldn’t see it because it’s flush. I think I saw a camera above it.”
“What should I do?” She kept driving, taking three lefts around Cesar Chavez Park, eventually putting us back on East Oaks, heading west.
“The van with the kayaks isn’t likely far behind because we stopped at the storage unit. We don’t know how long he was in the factory, but loading the van shouldn’t have taken long. How many could it fit, six, eight? To be safe, we have to assume he’s right behind us. Why don’t I get out and find a place that allows me to see the entrance to the alley?”
“Okay. I should just keep driving around?”
“No. Find a parking space a couple blocks from here.”
“Got it.”
“I don’t think they’ll wait until dark to pull the van inside because the alley provides cover. It’s a legitimate business, or part of it is, so a delivery van shouldn’t raise suspicions.”
“Okay, but what if he doesn’t show up?”
“Then I’ve totally blown it. He could’ve gone anywhere. We’ll have to tail him again, probably with rental cars. But let’s stay positive.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
I grabbed the camera bag, got out, and closed the door. Jen drove away, and I walked down the east side of Santa Fe to a large oak on the western edge of Cesar Chavez Park. I leaned against the trunk, took out the Canon, swapped the 50mm lens for a 100-400, slung the strap over my right shoulder, and set the bag at my feet. I took out my phone and held it in front of me as though I was looking at it, but I kept my eyes on the alley. From that angle, I couldn’t see both ends of the alley, but I could see past the large door and the white van, so if the black van entered from the other end, I’d still see it arrive and enter the shop. Every once in a while, I scrolled through my newsfeed, in case someone was watching me.
Thirty minutes later, the van hadn’t arrived. I texted Jen: He could’ve stayed longer than we thought he would, or he could’ve stopped for lunch because he hadn’t purchased one hundred dollars of junk food. She responded: It’s only junk food if you buy into the misinformation being disseminated by doctors, nutritionists, and the media. I responded: That assumes I was using the word junk as a pejorative. She responded: Keep waiting. But you owe me lunch at Versailles. I responded: Sure, but I owe you a lot more than that.
Fifteen minutes later, the black van stopped in front of me, waiting in the middle lane to turn left from North Santa Fe into the alley. I took multiple photos as the van turned, capturing the license plate in all of them. The van pulled up to the door. Within a minute, the door opened, and the van pulled in. Two minutes later, the white dude I expected turned the corner into the alley. He was wearing dirty tan work boots, torn jeans, and a brown, long-sleeved shirt. I took shots of him as he turned the corner and walked down the alley toward the white panel van. I grabbed my camera bag, looked left, waited for a pickup truck to pass, and stepped into the middle lane.
He’d been driving a long time, so he stretched, rotating his trunk left then right, and throwing his hands high over his head, tilting his torso back to increase the stretch. I photographed his actions in bursts. He got in the van, started it, and let it idle. It sounded awful and was probably hitting on only seven cylinders. A cloud of exhaust billowed as he hit the gas and pulled away.
He’d just emptied the other van of what I believed were cocaine-infused kayaks. If I asked Jen to follow him, and we confronted him, the only leverage we’d have was that some MLKs, posing as da Uptown Posse, said he intended to sell them cocaine—before they robbed him. Because I suspected that da Uptown Posse and the MLKs were receiving their cocaine from the same source, no one in either gang would testify. So, we didn’t have enough leverage on him to get him to turn on his bosses.
Even if law enforcement had stopped him with a van full of loaded kayaks, drug-sniffing dogs wouldn’t have responded to the drugs. CBP agents must’ve used dogs to explore the van on numerous trips north without triggering an arrest. I decided not to have Jen follow him. I texted her my location. She pulled up five minutes later.
“How’d it go?”
“The guy driving the black van was the guy who drives the white van, his personal vehicle. We don’t have anything on him that will stand up in court. Gang members won’t rat because if they do, they’ll be killed.”
“Damned if they do … I’m hungry, and you owe me a meal at Versailles.”
“We can’t, not now. Everything depends on our next move, or else we’ll have to start the process again.” I pulled out my phone and looked up nearby car-rental companies.
“What’s our next move?”
“After we eat more of these delicious, non-nutritious snacks, we have to continue to watch the shop. The kayaks have been delivered, so if we’re right, they’ll be chemically taken apart. Someone has to arrive, grab the coke, and leave with it to start the distribution process. I don’t know how many levels the organization has or how many times the coke gets stepped on before the white guy I just saw sells it to da Uptown Posse.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
“I know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life,” I said.
“Proving my point.”
“The guy I just saw was the one who delivered the threats.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He’s the right height and build, and look at this.” I pulled up the best shot of him on the camera with his arms overhead and showed it to her. The sleeves of his shirt had slid down his arms far enough for a yellow watchband on his right wrist to show.
“You did it,” she said. “How many lefties could commit the same crime against fashion?”
