“That’s too complex. Much smarter to just destroy her phone and have no trail at all. Also, he was driving a stolen car. Not worth the risk of getting caught with a broken taillight or an out-of-date registration sticker. Or just having some ambitious local cop run the plates.”
“What if he’s not there?”
“I’ll ransack his apartment and see what I can find that might lead me to Alexa. Bills, scraps of papers, computer files, anything.”
“Well, if he is there? Don’t forget, rich boy or not, he’s a dealer. He’s gonna be armed. Please don’t get yourself killed before our ten o’clock.”
“Ten o’clock?”
“The governor? Hello? You wanted me around in case they had technical questions you couldn’t answer because you’re only the ‘big picture’ guy?”
She was talking about a long-scheduled meeting with a former governor of a large state who’d been forced to resign over a bribery scandal. Everyone on the inside knew he’d been set up.
“Tell Jillian to cancel it,” I said.
“Cancel it?” she said incredulously. “These lawyers flew up from New York for this meeting. You can’t just cancel it.”
“Last I checked, I’m still the boss. Tell Jillian to cancel it. And ask her to clear my calendar for the rest of the week. Everything. I’m not doing anything else until I get this girl home.”
“The rest of the week?” she said. “You think this is only gonna take you a couple of days, you got your head up your butt. Anyway—”
“Talk later,” I interrupted, and I clicked off and got out of the car. Walked around to the side of the apartment building where Mauricio Perreira lived.
Drug dealers tend to live in a state of permanent paranoia. He probably had a gun close to the bed. Not under the pillow, which isn’t very comfortable. But under the bed or behind the headboard.
The only workable plan was to take him by surprise.
39.
Unless you pick locks for a living, knowing how doesn’t mean doing it well. I once hired a professional locksmith to give me lessons, though I’d already learned the basics from a repo man I’d met as a teenager, hanging out at the body shop of Norman Lang Motors in Malden.
I also kept an assortment of tools in my car’s glove box, including a professional locksmith’s set of lock picks and tension wrenches. But an old-fashioned lock-pick set requires finesse, time, and patience. And I was short on all three. I grabbed my SouthOrd electric pick gun, a sleek stainless-steel instrument the size of an electric toothbrush, which is quicker and easier, though noisier, than any hand tool. But the batteries were dead. So I reached for the EZ snap gun, a good old manual lock pick, originally developed for police officers who didn’t have time to learn the fine, slow art of lockpicking.
Unfortunately, lock-pick guns aren’t particularly quiet. They make a fairly loud snap. But they’re quick.
I mounted the apartment building’s side stairs, which provided exterior entry to the separate units. A short cement flight of steps led to a narrow porch with a gray-painted wooden railing. From there on up, the stairs were painted wood. Keeping my tread light, I ascended to the top level, sidled along the railing for a few feet, and assessed.
A small window, curtains drawn, next to the apartment door. A simple pin tumbler lock. Not Schlage or some high-security brand, which would have been a challenge. Some no-name brand. That was a relief.
And a pinpoint LED light: a security system.
But the light was dark. He probably disarmed the system when he was at home.
So maybe he was here. Good.
I didn’t even look around. In case one of the neighbors was up early and happened to see me, I wanted to look like I was supposed to be there.
I worked quickly but casually. First I inserted the tension tool, roughly the size of a straightened paper clip, into the keyhole and worked it a bit. Grasping the snap gun in my right hand, I poked its needle into the keyhole beside the tension tool, careful not to touch the pins, and squeezed the handle.
A loud snap.
I had to snap it ten or eleven more times. The sound echoed in the gulley between the houses. Unless Perreira was a sound sleeper, he must have heard it.
Finally I felt the lock turn.
And I was in.
40.
The air was cold. An air conditioner was on somewhere, in another room. I was hit at once by the fetid, festering-swamp stench of old bong water.