Fangs Out (29 page)

I
SLID
in behind the wheel of the Escalade, lifted the left leg of my jeans, and lashed the knife still in its sheath to my calf, then tugged the jeans back down. My phone rang.

“I got your good news and your bad news,” Buzz said.

“What’s the good news?”

“I talked to a cryptologist I know over at NCC.”

“And the bad news?”

“He told me he couldn’t run your RFI.”

Had my request for information come in through official channels, Buzz’s code-breaking friend at the National Counterterrorism Center would’ve fed “CAPCAFLR” into the NSA’s supercomputer at Fort Meade. The computer would’ve assigned each letter a numerical value correlating to its respective position in the alphabet, then played with more than 180,000 possible combinations. The numbers would’ve been fed through a dozen code-breaking software packages, reconverted back to letters, and the letters to potentially relevant words. But, because my request was for nongovernment purposes, the only assistance Buzz’s buddy was willing to render was wild speculation that the “PCA” in CAPCAFLR possibly stood for “principal component analysis,” a procedure that relies on something called an “orthogonal transformation” to convert correlated variables into linearly uncorrelated variables.

“Orthogonal transformation? Who’s your friend? Mr. Spock?”

“Don’t go getting your bun all in a twist, Logan. I’m just telling you what he told me.”

Buzz said he had to get back to work. I told him I appreciated his efforts regardless, and that I was still working on snagging the opera CDs I’d promised him.

CAPCAFLR.
Two vowels. Six consonants. I stared intently at the scrap of paper on which Al Demaerschalk had scrawled eight letters. Maybe it wasn’t some sophisticated code. Maybe it was an abbreviation. Or an acronym. Like me, Al Demaerschalk was a former military pilot. The military loves acronyms. They use tens of thousands of them. My personal favorite was always MRE, which stands for “Meal Ready to Eat,” unless you’re forced to eat them for weeks on end, wherein they become known synonymously as “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.” But if CAPCAFLR was a military acronym, Buzz would’ve catalogued it inside his encyclopedic mind, and told me.

I hooked a right onto Convoy Street out of the dive shop’s parking lot and braked to a stop almost immediately as the traffic signal on Aero Drive went red. Two twenty-somethings who looked like they belonged in a sorority pulled up beside me in a silver Porsche Targa, sound system thumping out a rap tune, the title of which, I believe, was, “Freaky as She Wanna Be.” The passenger looked over at me.

I head-bobbed to the pounding rhythm like I was gettin’ down with my bad self.

She smiled and blew me a kiss as the light turned green. I noticed the rear license plate as the Porsche zoomed away. It said, “MZBHAVN” and, below that, “ca.dmv.gov.”

Something clicked in my brain. I pulled to the curb and hit the redial button on my phone.

“Sorry to bother you again, Buzz. I just had a thought.”

“Those are fairly rare for you, aren’t they, Logan?”

“What if CAPCAFLR’s a license plate number? A vanity plate. Charlie Alpha stands for California. Papa-Charlie-Alpha-Foxtrot-Lima-Romeo is the plate number itself.”

“You’re asking me to run it for you?”

“Would you?”

“I’m not your goddamn slave, Logan. Just because you saved my bacon once or twice in the field doesn’t give you the right to ring me up whenever you get an itch and expect me to scratch it. I’m a key player in the battle against international terrorism. Do you
know
what that means?”

“It means that anytime you go answering one of my backchannel RFI’s, you run the risk of stepping on your meat and being charged with misuse of government resources.”

“Correct. It also means I’m taking my eye off about fifty Mini-me Osamas who, if they’re not trying to poison the food supply, are all running around out there with a brick of C-4 hidden in their turbans and a hard-on for mom and apple pie. The taxpayer is paying me to help introduce these guys to the seventy-two virgins. But am I doing that? No, Logan, I’m not. And you want to know why I’m not?”

“Because you’re too busy helping me.”

“There it is.”

I told him I valued our friendship and that I was sorry for having distracted him in his hunt for terrorists. It wouldn’t happen again.

Buzz grunted. “You’re just trying to make me feel guilty for saying no.”

“I am not trying to make you feel guilty, Buzz. I still owe you the CDs. I’ll get them to you as soon as I can. I apologize for having wasted your time. The country definitely needs you more than I do.”

He was quiet for a moment. “OK, you win—but this is the last time, Logan. Next time you want an intel dump, do us both a favor. Re-up and make the request through official channels yourself.”

With my airplane out of commission for the foreseeable future and no immediate prospect of income in sight beyond my government pension check, I told him I’d definitely give his suggestion consideration.

Seventeen

F
our Harley-Davidsons were angled on the curb outside the Drop Inn cocktail lounge where I’d agreed to meet defense attorney Charles Dowd. I parked down the block and had just stepped out of the Escalade when Savannah called.

“I’m here at Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house. She’s not home.”

“Did you check inside?”

“The door’s locked. I rang the bell. Repeatedly.”

“You need to check inside the house, Savannah.”

“Logan, I just told you. The door’s locked. What would you like me to do, break in?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like you to do.”

“Logan, I am
not
going to burglarize your landlady’s house.”

“What if she’s laid out in there and can’t get to the phone? You’re a life coach, Savannah. Here’s your chance to save a life.”

Savannah growled with her teeth clenched—that exasperated sound women make when they know men are right but can’t admit it.

“I’ll have to call you back,” she said testily.

“Please do.”

I walked toward the bar’s entrance.

A bearded ZZ Top wannabe straddled backwards one of the motorcycles parked out front. He was wearing a sleeveless denim vest with “Mongols MC” stitched on the back and nuzzling a skanky blonde biker chick whose arms were draped around his beefy shoulders. They were both smoking unfiltered Camels.

“News flash,” I said, striding past them, “cigarettes cause cancer.”

“Fuck off.”

That’s the thanks you get, trying to do your fellow man a solid.

Wedged into a strip mall between a check-cashing joint and a cash-only dental clinic, the Drop Inn seemed right at home on Imperial Beach’s Palm Avenue. Tacked to the front door was a laminated plastic sign, one of those red circles with a slash through it. Behind the slash was the silhouetted image of a pistol: no firearms allowed. I hoped attorney Dowd had paid heed. The last thing I needed was to bring a knife to a gunfight. I stood outside the door for a few seconds with my eyes closed, letting them adjust to the dim light that I knew awaited me on the other side of the door, then walked in.

The Drop Inn offered no surprises. Dark and foreboding, it smelled of chewing tobacco and abject failure. Three rheumy-eyed regulars were parked at the bar, deep in their cups. Charles Dowd hunkered alone in a small corner table near the back, tie askew, suit coat off, sucking down a Corona. He waved me over.

I watched his hands.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No worries.”

He caught the eye of the bartender, a narrow-hipped young woman with a lip ring and a violet-colored tank top who was washing glasses, and pointed to his empty bottle. She nodded.

I pulled up a chair from a nearby table and sat down opposite him, with my back to the door. Putting your back to the door is never a good idea, especially in a biker bar, but it was either that or sit beside Dowd like we were going steady, and who knows how that would’ve been construed among the regulars?

“This arrived in the mail this morning.” Dowd unfolded a sheet of paper and slid it across the table.

It looked like an amateur’s hackneyed idea of a ransom note—multicolored letters in multiple fonts and sizes, clipped from magazines and pasted together. It read, “LEt it go or DIe like janET B.”

“Let what go?”

“I was hoping you might know,” Dowd said.

“Know what?”

“It.”

“What is
it,
Mr. Dowd?”

“You tell me.”

I felt like I was trapped in an old Abbott and Costello bit.

“Let’s try this one more time,” I said. “Who do you think sent you that letter and why?”

“I don’t know who sent it, but it’s obviously a death threat,” Dowd said. “Somebody clearly wants me to back off the Munz case.”

He repeated what his investigator, Bunny Myers, had already told me. That Janet Bollinger had called shortly after I’d been to see Dowd, claiming to have new information that she insisted would clear Munz of Ruth Walker’s murder. Bollinger seemed hounded by guilt, the attorney said.

“Munz was dead and gone,” Dowd said. “Nothing I could do about that, but he was still my client. I felt like I’d let him down in the end. I owed him something. So I sent my investigator to see Ms. Bollinger. He shows up, finds her bleeding to death, and now he’s in the sheriff’s lockup. But I know he didn’t hurt her. He would’ve had no reason.”

Dowd’s prominent forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. His knee bounced nervously, vibrating the table. I asked him why he thought I would know anything about the threat he’d received.

“You’re digging around for some kernel of truth that would erase any taint of guilt on Greg Castle’s part in the death of Ruth Walker. Her father hired you for that purpose. Is that not what you told me?”

“Mr. Walker concluded my services were no longer needed.”

“You’re not working for him anymore?”

I nodded.

Dowd snatched the note away from me and sat back with a puzzled expression. “So, if you didn’t send me this, who did?”

“I’m wondering if maybe you didn’t do a little cut-and-pasting yourself.”

“You think I
threatened
myself?” Dowd gaped at me. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“To deflect suspicion from you. Or your investigator.”

“You’re crazy.”

The bartender arrived with Dowd’s beer. He hastily folded the letter and stuffed it in his suit coat as she set the fresh bottle in front of him and snatched up his empty. A motorcycle was tattooed over her left breast, along with the words, “Live to ride, ride to live.”

“Thanks, Roxie.”

“Four bucks, sugar.”

Dowd pulled a five-spot from his wallet and told her to keep the change.

“What’re you drinking, player?” Roxie asked me, cracking her gum.

“I’ll have an Arnold Palmer, please.”

“Take a look around. Does it
look
like we got fresh-squeezed lemonade around here?”

“Got any juice? Preferably fresh-squeezed.”

“How ’bout a beer? We got plenty of that.”

“Ice water. In a clean glass.”

Roxie shook her head in disgust and walked back to the bar.

Dowd waited until she was out of earshot. “This letter,” he seethed, tapping his chest, “came in the mail. To my office. To me. Personally. I did not ‘cut-and-paste’ it to ‘deflect’ suspicion from either me or my investigator. Some son of a bitch threatened me and I want to know who it is.”

“Could be the same S-O-B who tried to kill me and two sheriff’s detectives a couple of days ago by screwing with the engine on my airplane. You wouldn’t happen to have any insights on that, would you, Mr. Dowd?” I watched his reaction carefully.

“I don’t,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

The attorney gulped half his beer and blotted his forehead with the backside of his tie. The door to the bar creaked open behind me. Dowd glanced over my shoulder, jittery.

Something didn’t feel right.

I leaned forward in my chair and reached down for the dive knife lashed to my calf just as a burly forearm crooked around my throat. I sprung to my feet and pivoted left, in the same manner a bullfighter slips an onrushing steer, sliding behind my assailant and grabbing his left wrist in one fluid motion, while twisting his arm behind his back and using his own momentum to slam him head-first into the table. He flopped from the sticky wooden tabletop like a Slinky onto the floor, out cold. My knife never left its sheath.

“That was totally badass!” Roxie said approvingly as she stepped over the guy and put a glass of water down on the table in front of me.

I glanced around for any other takers—there were none—then stooped to make sure that my assailant—the Camel-puffing biker whose passing acquaintance I’d made outside the bar—was still breathing. He was.

“His name’s Dwayne Streeter,” Dowd said.

“Friend of yours?”

“I used to represent him. Big pot grower. Feds popped him awhile back on an intent to distribute rap. I got it knocked down to straight possession. He was convinced I was Perry Mason after that.”

Dowd said he thought I’d been the one who had sent him the threatening letter and wanted to confront me—but not without first arranging to have Streeter watch his back in the event I tried anything hinky.

“We exchanged pleasantries outside,” I said.

“The idiot was supposed to wait ten minutes,
then
come in and make sure we were cool,” Dowd said, gazing down at his unconscious former client. “You must’ve made him a little nervous. You make a lot of people nervous, Mr. Logan.”

“One of my many gifts.”

The attorney said he had no theories as to who might’ve murdered Janet Bollinger, and professed to know nothing of what had happened to my airplane. The fact that someone had sabotaged the
Duck
, Dowd noted, was affirmation enough that the threatening note he’d received in the mail was legit. He said he’d be skipping town for awhile and staying with relatives somewhere back East until things cooled off.

“Could be Greg Castle killed those two young women, could be he didn’t,” Dowd said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, ain’t none of this conducive to my blood pressure.”