The Nano-Thief: A Lenny D. Novel (Lenny. D. Novels Book 1)

by Michael Lieberman

  The fire had started in the second floor apartment below her. Two guys from the College of Engineering had rented the place, which only vaguely resembled your average graduate student apartment. It included no flat panel TV. There was no beer in the refrigerator. Nor was there any food. They had gone to the trouble of putting plates and glasses in the cupboards above the sink and cutlery in the drawers, but they had not stocked dishwasher detergent. There was a couch and two armchairs in the living room, and they had bought some cheap reproductions, which hung above the couch—one of Degas's dancers and another of Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Each of the two bedrooms had a double bed made up with sheets and blankets.

  There the similarity ended. One of the bedrooms contained a newly purchased chemical safety cabinet. They had repainted the conspicuous yellow to a dark brown and installed a rod with hangers, perhaps imagining that when they had no solvents on hand, the casual observer might think it was a Chem. E.'s attempt at campy humor, an armoire for nerds. One of the bathrooms had been converted to a chemical analytics lab, equipped with a GC-MS—a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer. It was kept locked on the off chance that they might have an unavoidable visitor.

  That night the kitchen counter was overlain with plastic-backed matting, on which the curly-haired one had laid out gear for chemical synthesis. The setup was designed so that they could quickly clear the counters and deposit the apparatus in larger back bedroom. They planned to use the closet there for the electronic gear they would need to construct detonators for their devices. Now most of what the two students did was preparation, hence the place was only minimally stocked and equipped. Biggie had yet to give them the final go-ahead.

  In the meantime, what they had done was create a small extracurricular business of their own. The curly-haired one did most of the synthetic chemistry—though he sold a little of his product to a select few at the Starbucks where he worked. The other one had a large marketing operation in Houston's northern suburbs. The venture had gone smoothly. For the most part the waft of solvents and stinky chemicals had been kept to a minimum, and they were sure the other tenants and the university landlord had no idea that they were making drugs. The quality was good or good enough—no complaints from their customers, and no overdoses that they knew about. They split the profits fifty-fifty. At first the curly-haired man had not known what to do with so much cash, but then he settled on a large safety deposit box in a bank in out-of-the-way Navasota.

  They had also done their homework. There was a risk that initially they had not anticipated—the other tenants. Normally it wouldn't have been worth a second thought. The downstairs folks were going to be okay, good Christians. The guy was on his way to a Ph.D. in religion, Sammy surmised from the university website. If things went south, they might get testy, but testy was not a problem. It was upstairs that was the problem, not with her, she was on the up and up, but Barry Weeks was a partner at Unlimited Ventures, Limited. That worried Sammy. He knew the firm and their capabilities. Best to keep Weeks on the radar, and so he put together an electronic dossier on him. There was not much to discover, but enough, just in case.

  The curly-haired one was alone at work on a new batch when his workspace flared and then exploded. A whoosh of flames had enveloped his right hand and burned it badly and singed the other. He managed to grab a fire extinguisher from the wall and hold it. He turned it toward the blaze. At first the fire seemed contained. The CO2 was doing its job. Suddenly there was a second much larger flare, which seared the right side of his face. He screamed in pain and panicked. He raced out, not even remembering to pull the fire alarm or shut the door.

  The fire followed him out the door and then turned up the drafty stairwell. Edie fought the smell of smoke in her sleep. A dream told her she and Barry were camping and watching the burning embers of a fire. Finally the roar of the blaze brought her to wakefulness. By then there was no way out. Clad only in an overlong T-shirt, she went out front to investigate and opened the apartment door. She stared into a wall of fire. Oh my God, Leon, and she ran back to find him The draft from the open bedroom window sucked the flames in behind her as if a fire breathing monster was about to devour her. She held the infant trying to cradle him from the heat. She had the idea to go to the bathroom and wet a towel to protect them. Flames already blocked the passage. The drapes caught fire and fell. The duvet was burning. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. A last word with Barry: she reached for her cell phone on the nightstand. The superheated metal was like a griddle. She tried to drop it, but it clung to her outstretched hand. Her T-shirt caught fire. Jesus protect me.

  All that was left were two charred, huddled skeletons.

  6.

  Curly was gone long before Edie Villanueva and little Leon were burned beyond recognition. Later the ME and the police would use her dental records and the apartment lease to establish her identity. His hands too painful to drive the Vespa, he summoned an Uber. At the hospital ER he registered as Sean Abernathy and told the admitting nurse that he had been lighting a gas grill when suddenly it exploded and he was burned. Two hours later he was released. He looked a sight with his bandages and his torn shirt and charred clothing. Not a good night to crash in his girlfriend's dorm room. He chose the hotel attached to the hospital. It made sense. The desk clerk had seen much worse. "No problem, Mr. Abernathy, room 347, and yes, I'll hold your calls." He got up the next morning and was startled to see his disheveled clothing spread across the room's second bed. He leafed through a list of hotel services and called down to a clothing store in the first floor arcade. In twenty minutes a bellman delivered slacks, an Izod, underwear and socks. His shoes were filthy, but he was betting no one would notice.

  It was the thought of Mrs. Babcock that put a crazy idea in his head: he would go to work late that morning. He'd finish the remainder of his shift and return in the evening to the house where he lived as Stephen Alcott, another one of his aliases—Sammy had more aliases than Scheherazade had stories. He had a lot of sorting out to do, but that could wait. First things first: he'd get a look at the lovely clean, features of Mrs. Babcock's enticing face.

  The online edition of the Houston Ledger American carried a short piece on the fire in the State and Local section. It had broken out on the second floor of structure at 1783 Ferguson St. The wood frame dwelling was owned by the university and used for graduate student housing. Police were trying to establish the identity of an adult and an infant killed in the blaze. The structure was a total loss and fire officials were looking into the cause. Sammy noted with satisfaction the it was many clicks away from the masthead and almost devoid of detail.

  A local TV station did a spot in the morning, but then the item was gone. The holidays, the bowl games, a murder/suicide in Sharpstown, and a much larger apartment complex fire on Telephone Road that killed six and injured 13 had stripped the Ferguson St. fire of newsworthiness.

  Eventually, someone would put it together, but for the moment the two of them—Sammy and his partner—were home free. He had to hope that the arson squad didn't do a chemical screen for drugs, but at those high temperatures there was not going to be much left. Whether they would check the local ERs for burn victims depended on interest and available manpower, which during the holiday season would be minimal. He was guessing—correctly it turned out—that most of the attention would go to the Telephone Road fire. The one problem was their lease. The university would want to know about Curly and his roommate. Sammy called him and suggested that he contact university officials and explain that he himself was okay and his roommate, Samuel Anderson (another of Sammy's aliases), was out of town and okay as well.

  The next day, Lenny didn't get to Starbucks until mid-afternoon. Jesus, Sammy was a sight. His right hand was a hopeless mound of gauze, from which only the tips of his fingers and a bit of thumb protruded. His left was a sea of blotches. The barista's face was plastered with a large dressing that covered most of its right side, running from his ear down the jaw and almo
st to the corner of his mouth.

  "What'll it be, Mr. D.?" Sammy said, trying to appear nonchalant.

  "A coffee, a Grande, no need to leave extra room for milk." Which Sammy correctly took to mean no magic powder today.

  "Just put your card in the chip reader, please."

  "Sammy, what the deuce happened to you? You look like you got blindsided by a paper shredder."

  "Not exactly, a small problem with a gas grill last night. It looks worse than it is."

  "Oh, so sorry. Hope it's not too painful and you're going to be okay."

  "It's nothing really, just superficial burns. I'm good. I'll be fine, but I won't be able to help my friends for a week or two."

  "I'm very sorry about that too. But we'll all survive. In the meantime, life goes on." He wondered if this would bring Sammy's extracurricular activities to an end, or if he was making the stuff, he might go out of the manufacturing business and find someone else to do the lab work. He could stick to sales.

  At that moment, Naavah came up behind Lenny and let out a gasp. "Oh, my God, Sammy, are you okay?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Babcock, I'm fine."

  Lenny looked behind him and saw the Israeli. In the confusion, he forgot "Naavah Ben David" and blurted out, "Mrs. Babcock, I..." but before he could finish, she had turned, and without a word she was out the door.

  "Okay, Portia, time to invite her to coffee," and he told her the story. When Portia emailed Naavah for coffee, she replied that this wasn't a good time. She was tied up with some personal issues. She would get back to her. From then on, N.K. walked the Dobermans. And when Lenny wandered by the yellow house with the wrought iron fence, he was struck that the blinds were always drawn on the first floor and in the dormer windows. He couldn't believe what he was thinking: Why was there not more security. Security for what? His brain told him there should be a man or two keeping watch and a black SUV parked discretely a few houses away. Then his brain told him he was crazy. Security for a second level official in the Israeli Consulate in Houston? If something was really going on, they wouldn't leave a vacant house next door for sale. They would somehow secure it. Surprising how little the brain knows, he concluded.

  He got a call from Snorri. He had information, and if he wanted to know what was up, he should come out to Ferndale's. Lenny wasn't sure whether he had information about Sammy from FDU or the Europeans had gotten back to him. He walked into the restaurant and found him alone behind the bar. "Hey, Travis," Snorri shouted, "can you come out and cover for me? I need to take a small break."

  "Outside," Snorri mouthed.

  As they walked across the parking lot, Lenny said, "Why all the conspiracy?"

  "Not conspiracy, just caution. Let's sit in my car," and once inside, Snorri turned on the radio. "You never know who might be listening."

  "To us? You're kidding."

  "So, I've got what you want from my European friends." They did immunoassays in let's just say a country, he explained, and preliminary tests showed PCP and PCP-like substances. Then they ran a full gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy analysis and found caffeine, theophylline and theobromine, which Snorri explained were from the coffee, and other minor alkaloids.

  "Snorri, get to the point."

  "Just want you to know that these guys did a complete workup. The GC/mass spec confirmed the immunoassays. There was some PCP, some degraded PCP or impurities due to poor processing, and some PCP-like compounds that could not be identified with certainly. Bottom line, this guy is making home brew and his report card gives him a C+. Either the synthesis is poor or the purification is incomplete, or both."

  "Why's he doing this?"

  "Of course, the Europeans couldn't tell me that, but I think he's making a little extra spending money on the side. No way, according to my sources, is this a large-scale operation. A professional would have much better quality control."

  "Well, you're not going to believe what I found out," and Lenny told him about Naavah/Mrs. Babcock and N.K. Ben David.

  "Weird shit, all of it. So interesting. When I tend bar, I hear stories. But this is one we are living. So here's the problem: we are at an end unless we want to provoke some international incident with either the Israelis or the Egyptians or both, and probably land in jail or on some government watch list forever."

  "Where's your Norse sense of adventure? So you're right. It isn't obvious what to do, but I'm going to keep an eye out and see what happens. The inscrutable Sammy A. will reveal himself sooner or later."

  In fact, the inscrutable Sammy A. was about to become the invisible Sammy A.

  7.

  Her car was behind his in line at the Starbucks when up front on the street a red Prius rammed a Buick, snarled traffic, and brought the line to a halt. Both drivers walked away, but that wasn't the point. Mothers had kids to drop off, lawyers had meetings, the financial markets were about to open, and people were stuck. At the tail of the line, a forty something dressed to the nines tried to back out into the street. That way people could back out and leave, even if deprived of their daily caffeine boost. But impatient drivers, themselves late for work, were in no mood to cooperate.

  Lenny waited for the police to come and direct traffic and the wreckers to clear the cars up front. Out of boredom he turned to look at the cars behind him. In the next car back, a gray Lexus SUV, he found a bright face, barely visible over the steering wheel, assessing him. He smiled. She motioned him back and let down her window.

  "What do you think the probability is that on any given Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. any given car, not necessarily a red Prius, would run into any other car at any Starbucks or this one in particular?"

  "If it is this Tuesday at this Starbucks, it's 100%, but really I don't have the foggiest," Lenny said, and mostly to keep the conversation alive, he added, "That's an odd question to ask." She nodded approvingly. Yes, definitely worth keeping her in play, he thought.

  "I don't either. I'm practicing."

  "For what? If I may ask."

  "My life coach says I'm too nerdy, that I need to be more, ah, assertive in meeting people. I guess it wasn't a great line."

  "Well, it worked. I'm in. I'm Lenny, and, by the way, I was a math major."

  "What do you think the probability is that a nerdy software engineer in a Lexus SUV would try out a weird pickup line in a Starbucks tangle and find a math major on the other end." She let out a quiet laugh that was almost a giggle.

  "Same: 100% if she's a spunk quant."

  "You're flirting."

  "I am. Isn't that what you and your life coach want?" and he handed her his card.

  "I'm Emma Meripol. Great to meet you."

  "Are you a regular?"

  "Yeah, I fuel up here before I hit the decks. I, ah, well, let's just say I troubleshoot for a software company." Later he would learn that it was her extracurricular activities that made her almost famous. In the hacking community everyone called her Miracle Meripol.

  The wreckers arrived and separated the Prius and the Buick, and the line edged forward. He asked the squawk box for his usual Grande, cream and two sugars.

  But when he looked in his rearview mirror, she was gone. She must have become impatient and backed out. And she was, ah, Emma Meripol, and she worked where? and her cell number was? and you could email her at? "Shit."

  When he picked up his coffee, he got his second surprise. No Sammy. Well, people took time off. Or maybe he was having complications from his burns.

  Then his thoughts turned back to the Meripol woman. Maybe the gods would watch over him and deliver more information about the sprite of a woman in the gray Lexus. That was his hope. Lenny was, like so many successful middle-aged men, generally lacking in self-awareness, but one thing he did get was that he was at the mercy of bright, pretty women—and fortune or destiny or the gods or whatever you wanted to call it.

  In the past they had obliged. There had been his first wife Samantha Weeks and her knockout sister Wendy, who ended their marriage when s
he became pregnant with his son, Barry. He remembered with regret his second wife Connie and Rebecca, his third wife. Now Portia—and those were only his major involvements.

  Emma Meripol was a bright, pretty woman. He knew he was susceptible. He wanted to be susceptible. It was always the same—attraction that lead to obsession, followed by an intense relationship, a pledge of undying love and commitment, and then something, in fact a variety of different somethings, happened. He didn't want to review the dreary details. Really, he didn't,

  Again he remembered, he couldn't call Emma even if he wanted to. He figured there was no easy way to find her. She and Sammy A. were plaguing him. His mind played tricks: their actions seemed like a collusion of evasion. She had his card. He hoped it had not slipped from the passenger seat and fallen to the ground or filtered down to the bottom of her great leather purse, never to be seen again. He was driven by a strange force within. Something—part limbic, part calculating—nudged him forward. He screwed up his face into a mixed gargoyle of pleasure and pain. He knew he should not respond, but if called, he would serve.

  There was no way in. He was the spy left out in the cold. Again, the next morning Sammy A. was not at Starbucks when he went by. Nor the next day, nor the next. Maybe his burns were more serious than he portrayed them. Perhaps he was being treated, maybe there were skin grafts or plastic surgery. If they were deep enough, he might lose use of his fingers or need tendon repair. He gave up the idea Sammy was on vacation since classes had started or soon would. Two more days and nothing. Finally, he chatted with the manager. Sammy had called in to resign, she said. "He had too many other commitments at school and with his family." When he asked for information to contact him, she explained that it was company policy not to give out that information.