Turbo and Pablo - Detectives in East L.A. During the 1990s - The Mall Murders

The floorboards in our office always vibrated at 4:30 AM.That was when the industrial mixers in Rosie’s Panaderia downstairskicked into high gear. To anyone else, it was just the sound of breakfast beingborn. To Pablo and me, it was the start of the shift. We’d sit there in thedark, the room smelling of yeast and old cigarette smoke, watching the earlycommuters on Whittier Boulevard through the slats of the Venetian blinds.We weren’t the guys who made the bread. We were the guys who watched the peoplewho bought it.Being a detective in East L.A. in 1994 wasn’t about high-speed chases orcinematic shootouts. It was about knowing which delivery trucks were runningheavy, which shipping containers at the harbor weren’t onthe manifest, and why a 'construction site accident' at the new Montebello Plazalooked a lot more like a professional execution.The city was changing. You could feel it in the air, the ozone of the comingdigital age clashing with the salt of the old harbor. People were talking aboutthe 'information superhighway,' but they didn’t realize that every highway needsa toll booth.I looked down at my desk, at the photograph of my uncle standing in front ofthis very building in 1978. He’d been a driver for the wrong people, a man whogot lost in a paper trail that ended at the bottom of the Port of Los Angeles.Pablo tossed a cigarette into the tin tray and pointed at the street. A blackSuburban was idling at the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the neon 'OPEN'sign from the bakery.'The delivery is early,' Pablo said, his voice grating like gravel.'It’s not a delivery,' I said, reaching for the magnifying glass. 'It’s anaudit.'I didn’t know it yet, but the bill in my pocket, a banknote that technicallywouldn’t exist for another two years, was about to turn our second-story officeinto the front line of a war for the soul of the dollar. The mixers downstairskept humming, heavy and rhythmic, unaware that the foundation of the buildingwas sitting on a secret that was about to blow the neighborhood wide open.