Pike said, “I took this from across the street through a chain-link fence. My guess, it’s a private hangar. This is them.”
Two headshots arrived. The meatball showed a hazy profile. The scarecrow had been walking when Pike got the shot. Part of her face was masked by her hair and part by the shadow her hair cast.
“This is them in the car?”
“Yes.”
“What are they doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Oh.”
“They waited for one hour and sixteen minutes. Then this happened.”
In the next picture, a large white private jet sat in the light outside the hangar. A door on its side was open and its stairway was down. A black limo sat by the aircraft’s nose with its driver nearby. A thin female figure and a burly male figure appeared to be greeting a balding man in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt who had just emerged from the jet. Another female waited in the background with what appeared to be a briefcase and a purple wheelie travel bag.
Pike said, “They were waiting for this guy.”
The next photo showed a round-faced man with a wide jaw and thinning hair. The image was hazy from poor light and distance, and slightly pixelated, but much better than the shots of the scarecrow and the meatball.
Pike said, “He huddled up with the meatball for a few minutes, then he left with the thin woman and the woman with the bags.”
“The meatball didn’t go?”
“Stayed at the hangar. I followed the limo.”
A new photo arrived, showing the limo outside the sleek front entrance of a hotel. It was probably three-thirty in the morning, so the street and the sidewalk were deserted. The boss and the two women were entering.
Pike said, “The Crystal Emperor Hotel.”
“This is downtown.”
“Yes.”
“We have to figure out who this guy is.”
“We will. Look at the plane again.”
I scrolled back to the photo of the jet.
“I’m looking at it.”
“Enlarge the tail number.”
I expanded the tail number until it was readable.
All civil aircraft operating anywhere in the world were required to display a registration number. A unique alphanumeric code was assigned to each airplane, same as a license plate number was unique to a specific car. These numbers were almost always painted on the tail, so people called them tail numbers. Since airplanes could pretty much fly all over the world, each number began with a code indicating the aircraft’s country of origin. In the U.S., tail numbers began with the letter N. In the UK, a G. In Mexico, an XA. I had never seen a tail number like this and I didn’t know what it meant.
“It begins with a B.”
Pike said, “China.”
“China?”
“The People’s Republic of China.”
I studied the number. I went back to the wider shot and studied the jet.
“The plane came from China.”
“It bears a Chinese registration.”
It seemed silly. A jet from China.
“Wait. What you’re saying is, the people who bugged Josh Schumacher’s little bungalow—the same Josh with a podcast about aliens and pornstars who gets an allowance from his mother—the people bugging his bungalow came all the way from China?”
“The People’s Republic. Jon has questions about Josh.”
“Because the jet came from China?”
“Because of the equipment they use. The jet came later.”
“You know what I know. Tell him.”
“May I tell him who hired you?”
Jon Stone’s concern bothered me.
“Yes. Tell him. He can call me if he wants, and I’ll tell him.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“What’s Jon going to do?”
“Spooks spook.”
The line went dead.
“Joe?”
Dead.
I lowered the phone and thought about Josh and Adele and a jet from the far side of the world delivering a balding gentleman to the Crystal Emperor Hotel. The Crystal Emperor was an excellent hotel. I’d been there for drinks. It was new and very, very expensive.
I scrolled through Pike’s photos and copied the license numbers from the limo and the sedan. I phoned a guy I know at the DMV.
Spooks spook.
Detectives detect.
25
Jerry Leff traded DMV information for Dodgers tickets. A former client I helped in a big way had primo tickets in the Dodgers Dugout Club and sent a few my way each season. When I told him I used them to buy information, he sent more.
Jerry said, “Hey, man! I hope you need something!”