Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [34]
“I wanted to learn more, so I started building a network of informants. When I caught a guy I thought could be useful, I’d let him go.”
“Which meant he owed you.”
“That’s right,” said Davidson. “I started visiting the pool parking lot where they all wait and got to know as many drivers as I could. I became friendly with a lot of them and learned what restaurants they hung out at and started eating in those places and so on and so forth. What really surprised me was that nobody was doing this. Not the CPD, not the FBI, nobody. I mean before 9/11 I could understand them overlooking these guys, but not doing it afterward was nuts. Nevertheless, that’s the way it was and still is. I’m it.”
“How does this play into Alison Taylor’s case?”
“I put the word out to all of my informants. I wanted to know if they’d heard of anything that fit with our case. Was anyone suddenly out sick? Was anyone suddenly remorseful or guilty? That kind of stuff.
“I pumped my contacts at the cab restaurants, the roach coaches, the hummus stands, the hookah bars; everywhere. I even spent the last two nights cruising the neighborhoods most of these guys live in, looking for cabs with damage.”
“How’d you do?”
“I struck out,” replied Davidson. “I didn’t get anything.”
“So?”
“So I reached out to another driver I know. He’s not a regular informant, but I let him slide on something a ways back and he owed me.
“I wanted to put myself in the shoes of the guy we’re looking for, so I called him up and laid out the scenario for him. I asked if he had been involved in a hit-and-run, what would be going through his mind.”
“I would assume, getting caught by the cops,” said Vaughan.
Davidson shook his head. “Not quite. According to this driver, he’d be more afraid of his owner learning that the cab had been in an accident.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. And to prevent the owner from finding out, the guy we’re looking for would need to get the cab repaired as quickly as possible. Enter the Triple P.”
“What’s the Triple P?”
“Piss, paint, and pray,” replied Davidson, as the waitress set his breakfast down on the table. “It’s an under-the-radar taxicab mechanic and body shop. They’re all over the city and fix damaged cabs while drivers wait. And they’re fast too. The Muslim ones have little prayer rooms in them and the joke is that as soon as you’ve taken a piss and said your prayers, the paint on your cab would be just about dry.”
Vaughan was fascinated.
“If you’re a Middle Eastern driver, you go to one of the Triple P’s owned and run by a Middle Easterner. If you’re Pakistani, you go to a Pakistani operation. If you’re East African, you go to an East African one, yada, yada, yada.”
“How come I haven’t heard about these places before?”
“Like I said, they’re under the radar. They operate around the clock, only deal in cash, and don’t advertise. They do business only within their own ethnic group.”
“And you think the driver who hit Alison Taylor used one of these body shops to repair the damage to his cab?”
“According to my source, there was a Pakistani driver who brought his vehicle into a particular shop on the night in question. He was shaken up and was dumb enough to blab about clipping some woman. He wanted to get his cab repaired as soon as possible and was willing to pay extra for it.”
“This is fantastic,” said Vaughan. “When can we pay a visit to the shop?”
“Right after we’re done with breakfast.”
CHAPTER 16
They left Vaughan’s Crown Vic at the restaurant and drove Davidson’s Bronco to the Crescent Garage and Body Shop. Outside, several cabs were double-parked along the street. Men dressed in the traditional salwar kameez—long, cotton tunics over loose-fitting trousers that stop just above the ankles—stood in front talking. Many had long beards without mustaches and almost all of them were wearing sandals. Vaughan couldn’t tell if he was in Chicago or Karachi.
As the two police officers walked up, the men ceased their conversations and stared at them.