“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
Four 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 pistoclass="underline" 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.