Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,113

to a pickup, unless it has thirty-five-inch tires.”

They continued down the street, past a humble Toyota Tacoma: “That’s our lookout,” Ochoa said, as they passed the truck. “Stuck in a taco. Don’t tell anyone I called it that.”

“What? Why not?”

“Sorta racist,” Ochoa said. “That’s the truck driven by every Mexican gardener in California, which is a lot of Mexican gardeners.”

“Could be short for ‘Tacoma,’” Lucas said.

“Yeah, but it ain’t, at least not in California,” Ochoa said. “Wanna go around the block?”

“Sure, but let’s go down the side instead of the front.”

They did that. A tall, heavy hedge ran down the side yard, but Lucas could see a blue crescent above the hedge and said, “Aboveground pool. Big one. Wonder if the kids are still with him? Or if there’s a grandchild?”

“Could be, but we haven’t seen any young people coming or going—nobody but Curry and his wife. We don’t know enough about Sansone’s people. Even after watching them for a month. They won’t tell you this back at the task force, but Sansone was never really billed as a heavy hitter. The OC guys were kind of surprised that he could wrangle this much heroin. Anyway, that’s what I’m told. Sansone’s gang isn’t an old-line Mafia outfit. Most of them have some college—Sansone’s got a degree in finance—and you don’t have to be Italian to be a boss. Curry, I don’t know what kind of name that is, but it’s not Italian.”

“Sounds kind of British,” Lucas said.

“Fuckin’ British drug dealers,” Ochoa said.

“Almost as bad as the fuckin’ Canadians,” Lucas agreed. “Scum, the whole queen ass-kissing bunch of them.”

* * *

When Ochoa dropped Lucas back at the hotel, Orish asked, “You got it figured out?”

“Grab him the first chance we get, put the screws to him. Taking Pruitt to Manhattan sucked up a lot of time—would it be possible to do the first interview with Curry here at the hotel?”

“Could blow our cover, bringing a cuffed guy through the lobby,” Kerry said.

“How about some other place? A motel somewhere? How about the post office or some other federal office? We need to get a quick read on him. If he’s like Pruitt and tells us to go fuck ourselves, I need to warn off Virgil and Rae. If Sansone tries to get in touch with Pruitt and can’t, and starts to wonder, and then calls Curry, and can’t get him, we could have a problem. They killed at least three people in South Florida just cleaning up, not counting the shooters who died, or Bob, or the Coast Guardsmen. If they decide they need to clean up Virgil and Rae . . .”

Orish scratched her forehead, wandered over to the window and looked out, thinking, then said, “Curry’s at his house. Why don’t I get a warrant and a couple of uniforms from National Grid Gas? And a truck. We’d need a gas truck. We’d need somebody with serious weight to get the truck, to ask for it . . .”

“That’s what an AIC is for,” Devlin said.

“It’s an hour from Manhattan to here,” Orish said. “We could do preliminary interrogation and the offer right at his house.”

Devlin looked at Lucas, who said, “Six hours to dark. What would it take to organize a gas truck? Two or three hours? Let’s try that. Have somebody get us the uniforms and the truck. I’d take an extra large. Devlin, what, a large?”

“Yeah. Large. Maybe we could get some kind of technical-looking tool box,” Devlin said.

Orish looked at Kerry, her second, and asked, “What do you think?”

“I like it,” Kerry said. “We would need to put some SSG guys right there, on the block, when Davenport and Devlin go through the front door, to make sure nobody runs out the back.”

Orish said, “Let’s plan on this, figure out what else we need to do. Get a satellite picture of that block up on one of our screens . . . I’ll call the AIC.”

* * *

After some discussion, the Manhattan agent in charge agreed to the daylight pickup and search. Warrants had been prepared for all the homes of the identified prime distributors, and the warrant for Curry’s house was printed out in a half hour.

National Grid agreed, after some persuasion, to loan a van, uniforms, and tool bags for what they were told was a surveillance operation in Pleasantville, which was in the opposite direction from Staten Island.

The AIC was getting involved: “You kick the door, or whatever you do,” he said