by Todd Borg
“Taste it, see if we need to make an adjustment.”
Paco sipped it.
“Is it good?”
Paco made a little nod.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Diamond said.
“It’s good,” Paco said.
Diamond looked at me.
“You got a plan?” he said.
“I’ve been working on a concept. Paco and I need to keep moving to stay safe. But if we just keep hiding, if Salt and Pepper are persistent, they will eventually find us. So it may be that the best way to get these guys off Paco’s back is to go after them.”
Diamond nodded, drank Pacifico.
“Any idea how to find them?”
“Paco saw their pickup today. He looked through binoculars and made a positive ID on one of them. They’re staying in a vacation rental in Incline Village. Also, it turns out that their pickup is dark blue with a dark blue topper.”
Diamond looked at Paco. “I thought he said it was dark with a white topper.”
Paco kept sipping his chocolate soda.
“Paco had a mistaken impression from when the shooting happened. It was dark. Same for when I saw the pickup in the woods. I couldn’t really see it because it was so dark out. According to Ramos, these guys got a topper that’s laminated with a fabric that looks light by night and dark by day. Today, Paco remembered that he also saw the pickup when he got out and ran down under Heavenly’s gondola. He remembers that it was blue. That was daytime.”
“And this second memory was triggered by the sighting today.”
“Yeah.”
Diamond looked doubtful.
“This ID is based on Paco’s identification from looking in the binoculars.” Diamond glanced at Paco. Diamond’s words had skepticism in them, but his look didn’t.
“Enough of an ID in your mind to constitute probable cause?” Diamond said. “Can the Washoe County sheriff get a warrant?”
“No. But Paco’s belief that he saw Pepper is enough for me to act on it in some way,” I said.
“Be a big risk for you,” Diamond said, “you get caught in a breaking and entering.”
“If I go in, I’m likely to get killed. I’m thinking of something more like getting them to come out of the house. Maybe I could do something at their house. Something that doesn’t need a warrant.”
“Like...” Diamond said.
“Like maybe we can catch them. Maybe we can set a trap.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“How you gonna set a trap?” Diamond asked. “Or even get them out of their vacation rental?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “What if they get a nice roaring fire going in the fireplace and I accidentally plug up their chimney?”
“You just happen to be up on their roof, carrying a sandbag, and you trip, and it falls into the chimney,” Diamond said.
“Yeah. I was trying to save a lost bird or something. And I had this accident.”
“And the smoke drives them out. They’d study your brilliance at Harvard Law for years to come.”
“No doubt,” I said. “I wonder how many laws I’d break.”
“Take awhile to count,” Diamond said.
Paco was watching Diamond. He was still sipping the soda, trying to make it last. A first.
“So the smoke drives them out of the house,” Diamond said. “Then what are you gonna do?”
“Help someone arrest them. That’s Washoe County. I could tip them off, get them to do the honors.”
“What would the arrest be for?”
“Maybe they will run out carrying contraband. But then the defense attorney would probably be able to get any case against them thrown out because my illegal activities caused them to run out.”
“What if,” Diamond said, “they were to commit a new crime after they ran out of the house?”
“So even if the D.A. can’t prosecute their previous crimes because I corrupted the case with my actions, he could put them away on a new crime.”
“Assuming they commit a new crime.”
“I could entice them to commit a new crime.”
“How?” Diamond asked.
“I don’t know. Get in their face. Call them names. I’m pretty good at getting bad guys to take a swing at me.”
“What if instead of swinging, they just pull out a gun and shoot you full of holes?”
“Good point. I’ll think of something. In the meantime, I still have to get them out of the house.”
“You sound serious,” Diamond said. He looked at Paco as if he could see that I was already influencing him with my bad intentions.
“If I could get Paco and me into a controlled environment, maybe I could entice them to come after us.”
“Where you could get the jump on them,” Diamond said.
“Yeah. Trap them,” I said.
“That’s a better idea. Then we have a reason to arrest them. Even if we stop them before they commit assault, we still get them for busting into your place. The controlled environment.”
“Got to find one.”
Diamond raised his finger. “I just had a good thought. You know Doc Lee’s friend Celeste Redack?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You must. She’s as tight with him as a woman can get. They even go shopping together. Ob/Gyn, I think.”
“Oh, you mean Doctor Redack,” I said. I remembered a tall, skinny redhead that I’d met at a party held by Doc Lee.
Diamond nodded. “She bought a tear-down house on the West Shore, not too far from Chambers Landing.”
“Nice area. I didn’t think there were any tear-downs near there.”
“Not many. But the foundation is sinking or leaning or something. She basically paid for the location, the view and the sewer/water hookup. It’ll cost a peso to build a new spread, but it’ll be worth the result.”
“It’s vacant?”
“Yeah. The county condemned it. Doc Lee was talking about it because the local fire department is interested in using it for a practice burn. Redack was asking Lee his opinion. It could be perfect for you.”
“If I could hide up there with Paco, we could make arrangements to protect Paco’s safety, yet make a few thoughtful mistakes that Salt and Pepper can use to track us. Once they find out where we’re hiding, I bet they’ll come in after us.” I glanced at Paco. He’d finished his soda and was petting Spot and didn’t appear to be listening.
“Yeah,” Diamond said. “And if you’re ready, you could trap them. Pull the fishnet trick on them.”
“The idea is kind of out there. Maybe we should call Doctor Redack and see if it is even a possibility.”
Diamond handed me the phone book for Tahoe while he turned on his laptop. I flipped through the pages.
“No Redack,” I said.
“Give me a minute, here,” Diamond said. I couldn’t see his screen. Maybe he was doing a basic Google search. Maybe there was a new secret website that cops use to find doctors. We waited. Spot walked into the living room and lay down on the rug. Paco joined him, sat on the rug and leaned against Spot’s body. Spot started snoring in less than 30 seconds. Diamond clicked keys, waited, clicked some more. Paco yawned.
Diamond picked up a pen and wrote on the back of an envelope. He shut his computer and handed me the envelope.
“Doctor Redack’s home number.”
“I can’t believe you found it online. Doctors always keep their private numbers private.”
“I texted Doc Lee. He texted me back her number.”
“Ah.” I dialed.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered. A slow, I’m-trying-to-sleep voice.
“Hi, this is Owen McKenna calling for Celeste Redack, please.”
“Speaking,” she said, even though I could tell she was still sleeping. “You’re the detective I read about. Out on the hijacked boat. Doc Lee’s friend.”
“Yeah.” I tried to be brief as I explained what my situation was and how her tear-down might serve t
he cause of justice.
“Sure,” she said.
“Sure, we can use your house?”
“Sure.”
“Great. How would I get the key?”
“I’ll... Lemme think. Can you come by the hospital? I’ll leave the key with Doc Lee in Emergency. The address is on the little paper fob.”
I thanked her profusely, hung up, and looked at Diamond and Paco.
“Now the question is how to trap them once they break into the house,” I said.
“Always looks easy in the movies,” Diamond said.
“Pepper spray,” Paco suddenly said from the living room.
We turned and looked at him. “Now there’s a hypothetical,” I said. I got up, walked in, and sat down on one of Diamond’s big chairs. Diamond followed.
Paco was looking at the living room wall. His brow was furrowed with the normal frown and something else. The look of a kid solving a puzzle. The sunglasses on his head reflected the living room lamp and looked like giant bug eyes.
“Pepper spray comes in small containers,” I said. “Good for shooting into a person’s eyes if they attack you. But a house is a big space. We probably wouldn’t know in advance if they were coming in through a door or a window. Or maybe through the attic. Now if we had tear gas canisters, then we could fill the building and possibly trap them.”
Diamond was shaking his head. “Tear gas is hard to get. You have to be a qualified official from a law enforcement agency.”
“I thought tear gas was like pepper spray,” Paco said.
“Kind of,” I said. “They both make your eyes burn. You can’t see or breathe. The big difference is volume. You need a lot of gas to fill a building.”
“We could make a lot of pepper spray,” Paco said.
“Make it? How?”
“Our Cassie’s Viper peppers are over a million Scoville units. If you touch them, you can’t touch your eyes, or you’re in big trouble.”
“You have enough of them to make a lot of spray?”
“One whole end of the hothouse is Vipers.”
“You got an idea of how to turn peppers into pepper spray?” Diamond asked.
Paco shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked back toward the kitchen and the counter where they’d made the chocolate soda. “Pro’bly put them in the blender or something.”
Diamond raised his eyebrows. He looked at me. “Kid’s maybe got something.”
“Yeah. Maybe you’ll be a chemist when you grow up,” I said to Paco.
“What’s a chemist?” Paco asked.
I had to think about how to answer that. I looked at Diamond.
“A chemist is a person who understands the chemical properties of materials,” he said. “Things called atoms and molecules. A chemist knows how to put them together and take them apart. A chemist can make completely new chemicals using that knowledge.”
“Like making a chocolate soda out of cookies and ice cubes,” Paco said.
“Yeah,” Diamond said, “but what’s cool about chemists is that the atoms and molecules they use are super small. So small, in fact, that you could put many thousands of them on the point of a needle.”
Paco made the smallest of head shakes. “You couldn’t even see them,” he said.
“No, not with your eyes.”
Paco’s disbelief was obvious.
“Okay,” I interrupted, “we use a blender to grind up lots of Cassie’s Viper peppers,” I said. “And we figure out how to make spray. Our plan is to get Salt and Pepper to break into this house to get you, Paco. Not a simple setup, but doable. Once they break in, how do we use pepper spray to trap them in the house?”
“I don’t know. I’m just the chemist,” Paco said. “But if it gets in their eyes, they couldn’t see to get out.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking. Then, in a sudden outburst, he almost shouted, “We could use fire ants, too.”
”Are you thinking of ants instead of pepper spray? Or are you thinking we could use both fire ants and pepper spray?”
“If we did use both,” Paco said, “the superheroes would have to do whatever we wanted.”
“Which would be worse to get hit with?” Diamond asked. “Pepper spray or fire ants?”
Paco thought about it “They’d both be bad,” he said.
“Does pepper spray hurt fire ants?” I asked.
Paco shook his head. “Nothing hurts fire ants. They’re superhero bugs.”
“We can get fire ants at your farm, right?” I said.
“There’s a bunch of nests in the field behind the hothouse. Cassie tried to kill them.”
“Didn’t work?”
Paco shook his head. “You can’t kill fire ants. All you can do is run away when they come after you.”
“How would you collect the ants?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Shovel and bucket. But you’d have to cover your skin. They can chew through anything and then sting you to death.”
“Really,” I said. “Let’s see if we can get some details from the bug expert.” I picked up the phone and called Street.
“Doctor,” I said when she answered.
“You only say that when you want to use my expertise,” she said.
“I’m not calling about sex,” I said. I glanced at Paco when I realized what I’d said. He showed no reaction.
“Funny guy,” Street said.
“I’m calling about your second major expertise. Insects. Specifically fire ants.” I hesitated. “Or are they one of those bugs that aren’t technically insects?”
Street laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said with emphasis. “When entomologists say that insects will inherit the earth, we are often specifically thinking about creatures like the social insects. And of those, fire ants are by some measures at the apex.”
“Of course,” I said. “Apex insects.”
“Toughest bugs there are,” Street said.
“You mean that collectively? Or individually?” I said.
“Both. If you were proportionally as strong as a fire ant, you could crawl up a vertical wall at fifty miles an hour. You could pick up your cabin and toss it into the lake. You could jump from any height without getting hurt. Plus, fire ants can eat almost any organic material, animal or vegetable. Practically everything is food to them. And they communicate with pheromones. Which, with the social organization, is what makes them such pests. Dangerous, even.”
“Because they sting? Paco said that fire ants could kill you.”
“Well, a single fire ant sting is only one-point-two on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. When one or two or three fire ants sting you, it hurts, but you’ll survive. But if you trip and fall into a nest, that disturbance will cause the ants to send up a pheromone-style fire alarm klaxon. If you’re very quick, you can get up and out with only a few dozen or a few hundred stings. But if you’ve bumped your head and are dazed and hesitate, you could be in serious trouble.”
“Some people are allergic to their stings, right?” I said. I saw Paco looking at me.
“Yes,” Street said. “But fire ants are dangerous even if you’re not allergic. When an entire nest mobilizes to attack you, they swarm over you. It’s often worse than having a nest of hornets come after you because there are such great numbers. You could end up with ten thousand stings. Fifty thousand stings. That’s enough to kill a cow.”
I paused. “So obtaining fire ants to use in subduing people might not be very practical.”
“What!” Street sounded appalled.
“Paco had a fantastic idea. Remember the two heavies who took Paco? Salt and Pepper? We’re thinking about making a trap for them. Doc Lee has a colleague who bought a tear-down that we can use. We get Salt and Pepper to think that Paco is hiding out in the house. Our hope would be that they would break in, attempting to get Paco, and we would take them down with pepper spray and fire ants.”
“Owen, that could be really dangerous,” she said. “Both because of the men and because of the ants and spray.”
“But it could work, right?”
“I suppose. You’d have to be very careful.”
“Paco was already telling me the same. So I wondered what I should know about fire ants before I try this.”
“I’ve never thought of ants as weapons. But fire ants would certainly be a good species to use. We refer to them as RIFA, Red Imported Fire Ants. They were accidentally introduced into this country during the nineteen thirties in Mobile, Alabama by ships coming from Brazil. Since then, they’ve spread across the southwest and up into California. They get a lot of attention from people because of their poisonous stings and their aggressiveness.”
“Can they actually kill people?”
“They have. They kill lots of smaller animals. And they make life really difficult for ranchers and farmers.”
“Because they kill farm animals?” It sounded unbelievable.
“Healthy livestock run away,” Street said. “But when a cow gives birth, if the calf lands close to a nest, the ants can kill it. We’ve developed a few techniques for destroying individual nests, but we’ve had no luck with large-scale eradication.”
“How would you recommend that I dig up and transport a nest of fire ants?” I asked.
“I’ve never thought about such a ridiculous thing. The main thing to remember is that fire ants don’t run away from you like other ants. They run toward you in mass attack mode. They will swarm up your shovel the moment you stick it in the ground, so you’re going to need something like a hazmat suit. Booties over your shoes, sealed at your pant cuffs, heavy jeans, gloves sealed at your sleeves, hood, goggles, all taped and sealed.”
“You don’t think I could just shovel fast?”
She paused. “There are probably many people who have under-estimated the risks of fire ants. You could end up thinking that the fire ants are worse than those men who are after Paco.”
“Got it. Any idea how big a fire ant colony is? Would it fit into a five-gallon bucket?”
“There’s a lot of variability. Large nests can go six feet deep in the ground and contain millions of individual ants. But if you could get a concentrated portion in a bucket, you’d probably have tens of thousands of ants. They’re quite small compared to carpenter ants. The problem is getting them into the bucket. As soon as you shovel them in, they’re going to swarm back out, trying to get to you.”
