Jimmy rubbed one of his cheeks with the palm of his hand. Thinking. Feeling the stubble that was already coming through the skin at eight in the morning. He was the kind of guy who had to shave again in the evening if he was going out. “That’s not so strange. I mean, what do you know about anybody really?”
“Where would you guess he was from?”
Jimmy thought it over. “Back east, I guess. New York … New Jersey. Looks like a guy from Brooklyn. Not that I’ve ever been there. But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.” Mickey squinted and shook his head. “But he told me he moved here from Houston, for a job at Monarch, driving a forklift.”
Jimmy laughed. “Man, times must be hard in Houston.”
“That’s just it. I’m not so sure they are. It’s not like he’s an oil rig guy or something like that. He’s a forklift driver. There weren’t any jobs driving forklift in all of Houston?”
Jimmy took another gulp of coffee and smiled. “What’s got into you, Chief? Maybe the guy likes peace and quiet. All kinds of weirdoes end up out here.” Jimmy motioned toward Mickey with his chin and smiled. “Hell Chief, you’re living proof of that.”
Mickey chuckled and turned to leave. “Fuck you, Jimmy. And stay near a radio in case I call. I’m going to check out our friend Grimaldi a little more. Something’s not right.”
It was a twenty minute drive out to Monarch and Mickey tried to piece it together, but couldn’t. Why would it be Grimaldi? What reason could there possibly be? So a guy moves from Houston to the desert and drives a forklift. So what? It was like Jimmy said, lots of strange people ended up in Nickelback.
He pulled into the big parking lot and drove up and down the rows of parked cars. He found Grimaldi’s truck on the far edge of the lot, parked up against the fence, facing out at the wide desert, like a prisoner staring freedom in the face. Mickey pulled up behind it, blocking it into the parking space, as though the empty truck might somehow make a break for it.
And then he sat, staring at the back of the truck, thinking through the implications of what he was about to do. It was the same problem police officers around the country faced every time they had a hunch. Every time intuition suggested something they just couldn’t shake, they were confronted with one simple fact: intuition wasn’t evidence. Probable cause to do a search required evidence and the evidence couldn’t be gathered without the search. The policeman’s Catch-22.
Mickey tried to come up with something. He studied the tread on the tires. It could be the same tread he saw in the dust in the desert. But how many other trucks in this same parking lot had the same tires? Half of them? Hell, they all bought their tires at the same place.
He thought about the stack of baseball bats near Grimaldi’s door. He thought about moving across the country for a job driving a forklift. Speculation. Nothing more. Intuition wasn’t evidence, it was only a suspicious guess. Mickey knew he didn’t have probable cause to search the truck. He knew if he found anything inside it, he wouldn’t be able to use it in court.
Mickey looked through the chain link fence, out across the desert. It was a big place. A lot of things could happen to people out there. He thought it through again. There were ways to deal with evidentiary problems. This wouldn’t be the first time he had to deal with something like that. Justice came in many forms in the desert. “Fuck it,” he whispered under his breath. Then he opened the door and got out.
He jimmied Ron’s door and had it open in about five seconds. He did a quick visual survey of the inside of the cab. Nothing on the bench seat. A little trash on the passenger side floor. A map and some other papers on the dash. All the surfaces were coated with a film of dust, which was normal in the desert. Most people made little effort to keep their cars clean. There was no point.
Mickey leaned in across the seat and opened the glove box. It was crammed with typical stuff, a stained owner’s manual, a wad of napkins, nothing of interest. Then Mickey ducked his head under the steering