“An associate! So, you’re like a league of private detectives?”
“Exactly. Each with his or her own superpower.”
She smiled briefly. “I haven’t helped you at all. Knowing that you were going to come here today, I thought about Natalie and my brother, and everything that’s happened. Kirby, of course. I wish I could help you. But all I can do is offer you things you don’t want.”
I stubbed out my own half-smoked cigarette in the barnyard. Watched the embers fade on the green grass and the smoke snake down the holes.
“Like that half-used thing,” she said. “See?”
“You’ve been helpful, Tola.”
“But there’s something else you want from me, isn’t there?”
She held my gaze.
“I know a guy,” I said. “Some years ago he loved someone and was happy, but it . . . ended. And when something reminds him of that woman and that time in his life, he’s drawn to her. Like to a campfire on a cold night. That’s where you came in.”
A flat green stare. Impossible to separate from what used to be.
“By reminding you of Justine.”
“Correct.”
“I know what happened to her,” she said. “We may look something alike, but we’re so different. The noble legal mind and the drug pusher.”
“I don’t see either of you that way, but yes.”
“Yes what, then?”
“You two are different,” I said.
“But we both set off hardwired desire that draws you to us. Is that what you’re saying, Roland?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“So it’s physical.”
“It starts with that,” I said. “I have a hunch that’s nature’s way.”
“Which is part of your job. Following hunches.”
“Less than people like to believe,” I said.
I pictured Tola Strait marching down the hall of the Capitol building, toward her brother’s office. And later, standing under the streetlamp on Sacramento’s tree-lined Fourteenth Street not far from the Capitol, Zorro hat over her back and her arm draped casually over the craggy-faced man I’d seen in the San Diego FBI field office.
Tola’s flat green stare became a smile, somehow private. She moved the Nectar Barn lighter one inch to her right.
“Well, that didn’t quite come out of nowhere,” she said.
“I tried to hide it.”
“You’re not much of a hider.”
A sharp rap on the office door.
“Later!” yelled Tola.
“The eleven o’clock is here!”
“Later!”
“Yes, Ms. Strait!”
Her expression went from amused to serious.
“My turn, Roland. Ready? You remind me of absolutely nobody. You are not my type, as I understand my type to be. You don’t connect with anything I’ve known or dreamed. But you’ve been on my mind since I saw you at Grandpa’s. Not quite a lightning bolt, but a good, healthy shock. And I haven’t been able to wash you out of my hair.”
A flummoxed look.
“Which is not part of my program,” she continued. “What I do is I compartmentalize. Put everything into boxes. Big as shipping containers or as small as thimbles. A place for everything and everything in its place. But I can’t fit you into any of them. On less of a stoner’s note, I spent more time getting ready for you today than I have for any appointment in recent memory. I didn’t take a puff or a nibble because I was afraid I might miss something here. I felt as if I was preparing for something important. An audition. I’ve never felt that before, so strongly. And I feel good right now, sitting in this room with you. All sober and present. It’s very unusual. For me.”
Another long gaze from her. She fiddled with the lighter again, both hands this time, squaring it up before her, just so.
Time went by in the quiet of her office. She cleared her throat in an exaggerated way.
“The eleven o’clock is here,” she said. “Stay and watch. It’s fun.”
EIGHTEEN
She entered something on her cell phone, waited a moment and entered something again. Waited a beat, eyes on the screen. Then pushed back her chair and walked toward the wet bar. Made a hard-right turn to one of the Outlaw safes, pushed a combination into the pad, turned the wheel and swung open the door. With her back still to me she held up a pistol in each hand, fingers competently outside the trigger guards, waved them back and forth, then set them atop the big black box. Stepped away and turned to me with a game-show gesture to the safe.
The gun racks had been replaced by simple shelves as deep as the safe itself, about eight inches apart. All shelves except the top one solely occupied by bundled bills of varying heights. The top shelf flush-full except for the weapon bays.
“Kind of saw that one coming,” I said.
“Another hunch of yours?”
“You don’t need a hunch for cash the banks won’t touch.”
“Can’t touch.”
“How much?”
“Guess. Fifties on the top shelf only, twenties on the next three down, then one each of tens, fives, and ones.”
I knew the values from my deputy days. Because counting bills costs traffickers too much time, they just weigh them. All U.S. bills weigh one gram. So, a pound of twenties is worth $9,080, a pounds of tens $4,540, and so on. The bundles looked fifty strong.
“I need a calculator.”
Tola smiled, her face filling with pride.
“Five hundred forty thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars,” she said. “The shelves aren’t completely full, but almost. This is my central bank for all five Nectar Barns. Banks can’t take it, the freebooters are too expensive, so I keep it here. Easier to defend one branch than five. Three armed guards here, round-the-clock. Good ones. I pay them small fortunes. I contract with two security firms. God knows what happens if they both show up at once.”
Another knock. Tola pressed a code into the lock pad and the door slid open.
Under the solemn gaze of the door guard, two more uniformed men wheeled a cart with a strongbox on it into the office. One guard was very large and one very small. Both Natives—all muscles, guns, and radios. The door slid shut.
“Good morning, Ms. Strait,” they said in near unison.
“My Strait Shooters! Feeling lucky today?”
“We’re always lucky to be here, Ms. Strait,” said the small one. “Sorry we’re late. Hit a checkpoint on Highway 78, bomb dogs and National Guard, courtesy of the president himself. Everyone edgy about the bombers. Seeing those masks on TV.”
I thought of Mike Lark’s confidential tip on the Ramona FedEx being the point of origin for The Chaos Committee’s second attack—on the county building in downtown San Diego. As of last night, had lightning struck twice from Ramona? Ramona was just down Highway 78 a few miles from here. Thus the federal roadblock. If last night’s Encinitas bomb had arrived by mail, then The Chaos Committee was sophisticated enough to make a bomb either timed to match their Local Live! studio takeover or designed to be set off remotely. Both possibilities sent a cold tickle to the boxing scar on my forehead.
I also couldn’t help but note the odd geographical proximity of the first two Chaos Committee mailings—both likely made by the woman wearing the big sunglasses—to key locations in the lives of the Strait family. Such as Fallbrook, where Dalton had first told me about his missing wife. Such as Ramona, where Natalie grew up and that Dalton now represented as part of the 82nd Assembly District. Such as Valley Center, also only a few miles from the Julian Nectar Barn, where Ash Galland last saw Natalie at breakfast. Such as the mountains around Palomar—also close to here—where Tola Strait grew some of her marijuana under armed guards . . . and her once fratricidal and felon brother, Kirby, was now encamped with a young woman. Such as sprawling E
scondido, just twenty-seven miles from here, where Natalie sold BMWs. Such as Tourmaline Resort Casino, wedged between Fallbrook and Valley Center, and where Brock Weld, unappreciated observer of Natalie Strait, worked security. And how about the Julian Nectar Barn where I now sat with Tola Strait and over a half million of her dollars?
She had taken up her phone again. A moment later the bolts within the strongbox hummed and the door opened one inch. She pulled it open, hinges wheezing open with stiff pneumatics.
She gave me an odd this is what I do look, then unloaded two handfuls of bundled bills onto the digital scale on the wet-bar counter. Pushed a button and turned to the guards.
“Thanks, men,” she said. “Good work and see you later.”
The big guy pressed the lock keypad and the door slid open. It closed on them a moment later, followed by the hum of steel sliding into steel.
She turned to me. “We’ll have a one o’clock, a two o’clock, and a three o’clock today,” she said. “Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.”
“Business is good,” I said.
“And it’s about to get a lot better.”
“How so?”
“Direct mail, baby,” said Tola. “These stores will soon be quaint tourist attractions. Shipping will do for cannabis what Amazon did for everything else.”
“Interstate, the feds won’t allow it,” I said. “Even with the Indians backing you.”
She entered information on her phone, then set the bundles in the safe.
“One state at a time, Roland. How about California? Biggest pot market in the nation, not even close. Hand me some of those bundles, would you?”
I did. While I thought of Tola’s late-night consorting with Heath Overdale, of Kimmel, Overdale & Schmitz, public relations consultants and lobbyists for the freight and direct-delivery industries. Direct mail, baby. And the craggy-faced older man whom I’d seen in the FBI’s San Diego field office? Who did Tola Strait think he was?
“What are you going to do with even more cash?” I asked.
“Put it in the bank.”
“Over the FBI’s dead body.”
“Got that covered, too. Almost. No dead bodies necessary.”
Again I thought of the older FBI agent she had been late-nighting with in Sacramento. Was Tola working the agent or the other way around?
After the scale was turned off and the cash stacked, the guns put back, the safe locked, and the cell-phone notifications made, Tola Strait led me into the cavernous, high-ceilinged Nectar Barn.
The interior was rustic-hip, all distressed and antiqued lumbers, exposed crossbeams and metal joints and metal industrial lampshades. Sections for clothing—heavy on Nectar Barn–logo flannel shirts. An aisle of cannabis-helpful kitchenware—blenders, grinders, utensils, recipe books. Closer to the registers were the impulse buys: shelves of pipes, bongs, vaporizers, papers, clips, lighters. Drink holders and key chains, mouse pads. Skylights allowed a warm and glowing sunshine down upon it all.
We walked side by side around the customers crowded at the eight open registers. Long bakery-style shelves were filled with products, many marked with handwritten Staff Picks recommendations. Much earnest chatter about taste, strength, and psychoactive properties. Farther into the store were sections for packaged edibles, extracts, CBD-only pain remedies and vitality boosters, an Our Daily Bread shelf featuring all-organic, whole grain, low carb, no sugar, gluten-free bread loaves with varying THC ratings. Vaporizer dosers and endcap stacks of canned High Country Brewers cannabis drinks.
Tola stopped and nodded. “Drinkables would put us on a level playing field with alcohol, but it tastes terrible and it’s expensive. The THC takes forever to get through the digestive tract into the bloodstream. I know, I know—you’ll stick with beer.”
I noted the grim-faced armed guards in the corners, and the customers still coming through the door. All around was our America—polyglot and poly-racial, from baggy aging stoners to the slim-cut young, techies to athletes, artists to engineers, students to moms, rich to poor, Democrat to Republican to independent to disengaged, from the simple sober to the complexly loaded, the eagerly present to the permanently gone.
Tola walked me to my truck. She was a tall woman but I slowed to match her pace. I felt a moment of authentic peace: a sunny day in May and a woman you’re happy to walk with.
“May I be a little blunt?” she asked. Then giggled.
“Please do.”
“Then you could smoke me anytime!”
I smiled as we continued.
“Sorry. It was on one of our Nectar Barn Valentine’s Day cards.”
“That’s quite an offer,” I said.
“It won’t last forever.”
We’d come to the truck. Tola Strait kissed my cheek and strode back through the lot, boots on the asphalt and sun on her hair.
* * *
Kissed and rolling down Highway 78, I got stuck in the same checkpoint the guards had been in. After examining my CDL, the burly, armored HSI agent pulled me into a makeshift secondary inspection turnout, where of course were discovered my sidearms, protection-modified 12 gauge, cameras, binoculars, flashlights, hiker’s headlights, ropes, pry bars, sleeping bag, brilliant disguises—from costume mustaches and hairpieces to a Rolling Thunder Security windbreaker—and two days’ worth of water and food, all neatly arranged in the oversized and locking toolbox in the truck bed.
Which went over poorly. In spite of my current enhanced PI photo ID card required by the state, my pocket license and valid CCW permits issued by the county, and my best manners, they made me sit and watch the near deconstruction of my beloved truck and its hasty reassembly.
I sat in the sun wanting to knock somebody out, but I couldn’t decide who.
Dalton Strait on the phone:
“Roland, I need your help. The feds just indicted me and Natalie for misuse of campaign funds, fraud, and conspiracy. They say we swiped hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and spent them to live the high life. Completely fake news and I’ll prove it. It’s all political. They’re talking twenty-two counts and five years in the slammer for each of us. I’m having a press conference an hour and a half from now. I want you here at my house to take questions.”
“Answer your own questions,” I said. “I’m not talking to the press for you.”
“You’re on the payroll, Roland.”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Your money’s coming, man. Just be here. I need you. Semper Fi, dammit.”
And rang off.
Then, as if in answer to Dalton’s call, a YouTube video arrived, courtesy of Harris Broadman, innkeeper.
His message said, “Thought you might enjoy this trip down memory lane. This is just a few hours before we hit the IED.”
I hit the Play arrow.
A dusty Fallujah street of low, rectangular homes.
My beat for thirty days.
That soft glow to the dirty air. Bridges and sagging power lines in the background.
And resentful Iraqis watching the camera, which was moving along the road past them, apparently shot from a vehicle with some elevation to it. Broadman’s Humvee?
Then Broadman’s soft, calm voice:
“East Manhattan sucks, man. Here they are, thousands of people who hate us and want us dead. They cling to their customs and their sects and their ruined government because they’re confused animals. They don’t get that we’ll be gone soon. So they fight because they’re hardwired to fight. Like any animal. That’s not an insult. We’re all animals. I really can’t wait to get out of this shit hole. Home to some warm women and cold beer.”
I recognized Dalton’s voice:
“Boy, ain’t that the truth. I thought I was signing on to hunt terrorists. I didn’t think they’d be hunting me.”
“You’re an innocent,
Dalton. An innocent blockhead.”
“Married to the prettiest woman in California.”
“Don’t lose your balls to a roadside.”
“Not me, Harris. That’s not in old Dalton’s cards.”
The clip ended and I played it again. And again, riding the video back sixteen years that seemed to have gone by in a moment. Back to my eager young man’s desire to serve his country, and the innocence quickly lost. Back to the idea that you’ve been fooled and extremely lucky to have survived it.
The past being not even past and all that.
I looked out at the pretty plains along the highway, temporarily greened by rain.
Okay. Maybe it wasn’t past, but it was behind me.
NINETEEN
The Strait home stood at the end of a rural road south of Escondido. It looked to be 1960s construction, a modest stucco two-story with a wholesome face and brown trim. The yard looked uncherished and the hedges needed trimming. A flagpole mid-yard, no flag. A FOR SALE sign. Around the home were several unbuilt lots and a few similar structures, as if these homesteaders had led the charge only to be abandoned.
Dalton stood in the doorway, a beer bottle in one hand and an apparently just delivered handful of mail in the other. He had his air of disheveled nonchalance. A small Bichon mix wagged its tail at me eagerly. The press conference was almost an hour away. I wasn’t sure how hot a ticket it might be, given last night’s bomb. Every media outlet I turned to—from local to national to the BBC—was covering the bombing deaths of Representative Nisson and his aide. Would they have time for a humble assemblyman accused of financial misdeeds?
“I’m going to stand right in this doorway when the media asks questions,” he said. “That way, they’ll see I’m a just a humble blown-up war hero and family man, defending my home and wife against lies and slanted accusations.”
Then She Vanished Page 11
