Inside Outt

Juan, Larison would watch his back even more carefully than usual just to make sure the rest of the gang, if there was a rest of the gang, wasn’t on his ass. Nothing happens, though, and anyway he’s only in San Jose sporadically. And all this was three years ago. So at some point, he figures these were the only two guys he had to worry about. And he doesn’t have to worry about them anymore.”
    “What did Taibbi mean when he said ‘whatever you’re planning to do’ with Larison?”
    Ben glanced at her, then back to the road. “He meant, what do you think happens to someone who tries to read the angel of death his rights?”
    “What are you going to do if we find him, then?”
    “I’m not going to wind up like Carlos and Juan, I’ll tell you that.”
    “What are you supposed to do?”
    “All I’m supposed to do is find Larison. So if we tree him, I hope you’re not going to try to arrest him, okay? You bring that mindset to the job, you’ll be at a lethal disadvantage. And I don’t want to fill out the paperwork.”
    “I’m touched that you care, really.”
    They drove in silence for a few minutes.
    Paula said, “Where’d you get that ID?”
    Ben glanced at her, then back to the road. “You knew there were other alphabet soup agencies involved in this. You said so yourself.”
    “I want to know which one you’re with.”
    “I told you, forget about it.”
    “You’re some kind of assassin, aren’t you?”
    “I’m just here to find Larison,” he said again. The weird thing was, it was the truth. So why did it feel like a lie?
    “Taibbi said you looked like Larison. What did he mean by that?”
    Ben looked at his watch. “Why don’t you tell me what our next move is. You know, don’t you?”
    “Are you talking down to me?”
    “Not that I was aware of. But I can if you’d like.”
    “Our next move is, we canvas restaurants and bars around the sewer where Juan’s body was found. Larison couldn’t have moved him far—the body would be heavy, for one thing. He wouldn’t have time, or concealment, for another. So wherever Juan was found, Larison was nearby that night. If we show his picture in a few places, and if Larison’s been back or if he was a regular, we might just catch a break.”
    Ben nodded. “How’s your Spanish?”
    “I can get by. You?”
    Ben’s Farsi was fluent, his Arabic decent, and his Spanish high school rusty. “I think we’ll need to rely on you in that department,” he said. “And by the way, it’s not just that Larison must have been close by to where he did Juan. It’s also that, when he killed Carlos, it wasn’t in a place that mattered to him.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He’d already spotted the surveillance. He wasn’t going to lead them all the way to his correct address. He’d either get off the bus early, or ride it well past his actual destination. Barrio Dent comes up before Los Yoses on the way from the airport. My guess is, Larison’s real destination that night was Los Yoses, or maybe the next stop, San Pedro, or maybe somewhere farther east. He got off in Barrio Dent to make sure the killing wouldn’t be too close to a place he was connected with. The second time, he wouldn’t have that luxury. He wasn’t being followed, he’d been discovered. It’s a whole different dynamic.”
    “So you think the fact that both killings happened near a restaurant is a coincidence.”
    “I think the first one was a coincidence. The second one, maybe not. Anyway, most of the streets in San Jose don’t have names. People use restaurants and other landmarks to describe locations. That’s all Taibbi was doing.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Read it in a guidebook on the plane.”
    “Well, that was a good idea.”
    Ben nodded. He didn’t mention that reading extensively about a place before going operational was ordinarily only the beginning of area familiarization, and that not having had time to do more than read this time made him feel like he was groping and stumbling in the dark.
    “So you think his girlfriend lives in Los Yoses?” Paula said.
    “Or farther east. But not Barrio Dent. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten off the bus there. Now, tell me this. You think he’d still be dining out a hundred yards away from where he put Juan in a sewer?”
    “From what Taibbi told us, I don’t think we’re dealing with someone who gets indigestion from murder.”
    “What about tactically? He’d practically be returning