His father stood there in silence, blinking at me, unsure what to do, then at his son.
“Please, Dad.”
His father hung his head and nodded, then went back inside. Billy seemed almost relieved to give me the plate number, proud of himself for remembering it. I asked him if he remembered seeing any signs or stickers on the van when he was in Truckee, anything that might provide me a better notion of who drove it.
He said he didn’t.
Could he offer any more specific details about the owner himself?
“He was pretty big,” Billy said after thinking about it for a few seconds.
“You mean heavy?”
“More like, you know, tall.”
“How tall?”
“About your height. Maybe an inch more. Or two. Something like that.”
“Anything else you can remember?”
Billy looked down at his red Chuck Taylors and thought hard.
“Not really,” he said after awhile.
“You did good, Billy.”
He smiled shyly. We shook hands.
The sun was setting. The air was chilled. I zipped up my jacket and watched Billy head inside, then called Buzz. It was pushing 2100 hours on the East Coast. The phone rang four times before his machine picked up, with a personal greeting from the man himself:
“I’m trying to avoid somebody I dislike,” Buzz’s voice said. “Leave a message. If I don’t call you back, you’ll know it’s you.”
Beep.
I left the license plate number Billy had given me and asked Buzz to run it.
My wallet held less than twenty dollars in cash. I was $105.43 short of maxing out the credit limit on my Visa card, according to the pleasant-sounding young Indian woman on the other end of the 1-800 customer service number printed on the back. She said her name was “Kimberly.”
“How may I assist you today, Mr. Logan?”
I kicked off my soggy hiking shoes and lay back on my bed at the Econo Lodge. I had enough credit for one more night’s lodging, and barely enough for gas to get home. Unless Mumbai saw fit to up my limit, I’d have no choice but to leave Lake Tahoe in the morning, surrendering any hope of finding Savannah’s killer on my own anytime soon, if ever.
“You can start off by telling me your real name,” I said. “Not the anglicized version you give out so that geocentric Americans won’t be quite so intimidated talking to a non-American. I like to know who I’m really talking to.”
A long pause.
“I am called Nirupama.”
“Pretty name.”
“Thank you. How can I be of service, Mr. Logan?”
“I need you to raise my credit limit, Nirupama.”
“I understand you would like your credit limit raised on this account. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
Another long pause. She was no doubt on the computer, studying my sketchy payment record — or, perhaps more accurately, nonpayment record.
“I’m sure we can accommodate your request in some fashion. May I kindly place you on brief hold while I consult my supervisor?”
“Sure.”
Elevator music ensued. It soothed my brain. How long I was on hold or when Nirupama hung up on me, I couldn’t say, because I fell asleep. When I awoke, I was on my stomach and my phone was ringing on the carpeted floor. Daylight was sneaking in through the curtains. Morning already.
“This is Logan.”
“This plate number you left on my machine, is this the booger eater who did your lady?” Buzz asked, his voice faint and static-charged from 3,000 miles away.
“Possibly.”
“Well, if it is, save a piece of him for me, will ya?”
“Roger that.”
“You ready to copy?”
“Go.”
Willing my eyes to focus, I grabbed an Econo Lodge pen off the nightstand and a slip of paper from a wafer-thin, motel-provided notepad.
Buzz had tapped into California Department of Motor Vehicle files. Had he violated privacy laws in doing so? Most certainly. But it wasn’t like I was Al-Qaeda. A covert operator had shown his former covert operator friend a little love. Happens all the time.
The plate linked to a green 2003 Chevy Astro Cargo Van and was registered to a Nevada corporation — Patriot Flow Professionals, LLC. The company showed a corporate address in Reno, about an hour and a half away, depending on how snowy the roads were.
“And I already know what your next question is,” Buzz said.
“What is Patriot Flow Professionals?”
“Like I said, I’m one step ahead of you.”
Buzz had pulled up Nevada Secretary of State corporate records. Under “type of business,” Patriot Flow was described simply as a “wholesaler.” The company’s registered agent was identified as D. B. Anderson. He or she also was listed as the company’s president, secretary, and treasurer.
“You’re wondering who D. B. Anderson is,” Buzz said, “and that’s where I can’t help you.”
The name, Buzz said, was too common to research without extraneous effort. I never would have asked him to put in that kind of labor in my behalf, given the pressures of his seventy-hour workweek, saving the free world as a counterterrorism analyst.
“That’s one Pavarotti CD I owe you anyway,” I said.
“We’ll call this one even. Good hunting, Logan. You lemme know if you need any backup, you hear?”
“You’re a man among man, Buzz.”
“That’s what I keep telling my wife.”
I showered quickly, packed, slurped down a bowl of Cheerios in the dining area adjacent to the motel’s lobby, left my plastic room key on the front counter, and headed north to Reno.
The corporate headquarters of Patriot Flow Professionals was situated on the edge of a complex of prefabricated concrete warehouses hunkered north of Interstate 80 on the west side of the “Biggest Little City in the World,” as Reno likes to call itself. There wasn’t a green Chevy van in sight. I got out of my truck and walked to the office door of the warehouse that corresponded to the address Buzz had given me. On the door’s glass insert, I could see the faint outline of stenciled letters, scraped clean: atr ot low Pr f n ls.
I peered through the window. The office was empty. Random pipe fittings, brass and PVC, alongside an unrolled string of plumber’s Teflon tape, littered the floor.
In the glass, I saw the reflection of a uniformed security guard striding toward me.
“Can I help you, sir?”
He was clean cut and buttoned-down, mid-twenties, five foot ten, 160 give or take a few pounds, with a pimpled complexion, mirrored aviator shades, and an all-business attitude. Riding his waist was a black leather duty belt that held handcuffs, a walkie-talkie, and Mace spray, but no pistol.
“I’m looking for Patriot Flow Professionals.”
“May I ask why?”
“It involves a criminal investigation.”
“Are you a detective?”
“Do I look like a detective to you?”
“Yeah, you do, actually.”
“So, what can you tell me about Patriot Flow Professionals?”
“They took off, about two weeks ago.”
The guard told me that the company owed several months’ back rent. They’d stripped the office bare and skipped out in the middle of the night.
“Do you remember any of the employees, what they looked like?”
“Only one I can think of was this one guy. Sort of waved when he’d see me.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall, white. I didn’t see him up close. I just started a month ago.”