Hunter could already tell where his partner was going. ‘Why go through all that effort, right?’
Garcia agreed with a shrug. ‘To disguise the murder of someone who, so far, seems to be no one special. He was just a plumber, Robert. That doesn’t make sense. I accept, we still haven’t checked his financial records. Who knows? Maybe all his money is tucked away in the Bahamas.’ The sentence was delivered with an over-sarcastic look. ‘But we’ve seen his car, we’ve been to his apartment… if Shaun Daniels was laundering money – or involved in any sort of illicit financial transaction where he was supposed to be taking a cut – he was being conned. That man did not live a life of luxury. It doesn’t even look like he had a stable financial life.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Hunter agreed.
‘So this cannot have been about money, Robert. We both have seen it many times before. If this was about Shaun Daniels ripping someone off in any sort of way, he would’ve just been shot in the face, or chopped to pieces and that would be that. There’d be none of this hit-and-run staging crap. Loan sharks, gangsters, gang bangers, drug pushers, whoever… they won’t torture a person for dimes, you know that. They’d have to have been ripped off big time, and even when they do torture somebody…’ Garcia gaveHunter a despondent headshake. ‘They do it to set an example… to send out a message. They’d want others to know that they did it, so no one else would be getting any more funny ideas. They wouldn’t have tried to cover anything up with a fake accident.’
Hunter said nothing back because he got the exact same feeling – whatever Shaun Daniels had meant when he told the bartender at O’Hearn’s that he had fucked up, it couldn’t have been about money.
Thirteen
Ten days after Terry Wilford’s abduction
Monday 1 July
The waters of the world-famous Los Angeles River, historically known as the Porciúncula River, began their nearly 51-mile journey in Canoga Park. From there, they traveled south through the San Fernando Valley and into the City of Angels before finding their way to Long Beach – where they finally flowed into San Pedro Bay. Unlike most natural rivers, as it passed through Downtown LA, the LA River flowed through a man-made concrete channel on a fixed course, which was only built after a series of devastating floods hit Los Angeles in the early twentieth century. But its worldwide fame went much deeper than its waters and the destructive floods of the last century. In fact, it went all the way down to its man-made concrete channel.
During winter and spring, the river was fed primarily by rainwater and snowmelt, but during summer and fall, when temperatures in southern California could get up to 80°F and the entire state could experience months without a drop of rainfall, long stretches of the river’s concrete channel would practically dry up – and that was why the LA River became so famous.
When dried of water, the man-made concrete channel became,in essence, a freeway. During the Second World War, for example, trucks sped loads of munitions and war materials down the paved river to the harbor – but war didn’t bring fame to the Los Angeles River… Hollywood did, thanks to some of the most iconic scenes shot down at the concrete freeway for blockbusters such asGrease, The Dark Knight Rises, Terminator 2, Drive, Point Blank, All Quiet on the Western FrontandTo Live and Die in LA.
Despite its fame, the LA River freeway did have one major drawback. In the summer, when it didn’t rain, the freeway didn’t just run dry. At certain specific spots, it was fed wastewater discharged from three distinct treatment plants – Burbank, Glendale and the City of Los Angeles. Whenever that happened, the concrete channel needed to be cleaned, a job that fell to the LA Sanitation & Environment Division (LASAN), and there was no job that LASAN employees Luis Toledo and Randy Douglas hated more than cleaning and sanitizing the LA River freeway. Unfortunately for them, they’d been assigned to LA River sanitation duty for that entire week’s nightshift, starting that Monday evening.
‘Look at all this shit,’ Luis said, gesturing at the amount of wastewater that he and Randy were looking at. His Mexican accent was mild, but still clearly noticeable.
‘Literally,’ Randy replied, crinkling his nose before hooking the wings of his P3 disposable mask behind his ears and handing one to Luis.
They were both sitting inside the cabin of their LASAN vacuum sweeper truck. Even with the windows shut the smell from the wastewater was still strong enough to itch the inside of their nostrils.
‘This will take us all night… every night,’ Luis said, putting on his mask before slumping back against the driver’s seat.
‘Well, it’s not like we haven’t done it before,’ Randycommented, his mouth twisting left behind his mask.
‘My point exactly.’ Luis did nothing to cover the annoyance in his tone. ‘I mean – we got assigned to nightshitduty every goddamn year for the past seven years. They could’ve given us a break this year. Let some othercholosclean it for once.’
‘I’ve only done four out of the past seven,’ Randy reminded Luis. ‘But you’re right, they could’ve assigned this crap to a different team this year.’
Luis had parked the vacuum sweeper truck directly under the East 7th Street Bridge, one of the 136 bridges that provided some sort of crossing over the LA River. He checked his watch before letting go of a deep breath. It was just past eight in the evening, and their shift ran from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
‘I guess we better get started,’ Luis said, nodding at Randy, before pausing and quickly studying the stretch of concrete in front of their truck. ‘The right side looks heavier with wastewater, but not as bad as last year.’
‘Yeah, I noticed that too.’ Randy nodded. ‘So let’s start with the right side. I’d rather get through the heavier stuff first.’
‘Yeah, me too, but since the whole stretch doesn’t look as heavy as last year, I’m thinking that maybe we can cover one hundred yards at a time, instead of only fifty. What do you think?’
Randy’s bottom lip pursed forward as he nodded. ‘Yeah, I think that’s doable. We’re cleaning all the way up to the next bridge and then back, right?’
‘That’s right.’ Luis nodded.
‘OK, let’s get this party going.’
Luis shook his head at Randy. ‘You and I have very different ideas of what a party is,cholo.’
There was no specific procedure that a team had to follow when cleaning the LA River concrete channel. It was all a question of preference, which was left to the team itself. The way Luis and Randy went about it was a simple and efficient one, but certainlylaborious.
First, they would divide the channel into two halves – right and left side. Then they’d use the truck to sweep the bulk of the wastewater toward the edges, where drainage gutters ran for almost fifty miles. After that, came the hardest part – they needed to manually sweep the leftover water and waste from the main concrete body to the side gutters, picking up any large debris they might find, so as not to clog up the gutters. Due to how wide the channel was – equivalent to about four freeway lanes – they had to repeat that entire process four times – twice on the left… twice on the right.
Luis started the truck and activated the sweeping blades together with the wind turbines before driving south, in the direction of the 6th Street Viaduct, which was the next bridge along. They drove for about one hundred yards before stopping the truck and switching off the blades and the turbines.
