by David Freed
“Actually, sir, that pen is $2.49.”
I slapped three bucks down on the counter.
“The restroom’s through there,” she said, pointing down a long hallway, “all the way in the back.”
The hallway was flanked by small, built-in mailboxes, their doors solid brass, each numbered. I tugged on door 1756, the box registered to Lazarus. It was locked. There was a tiny glass window built into the door. Peering into the box, I could see a few envelopes.
Kathy was restocking shelves when I came back from the restroom. I unlimbered my new $2.49 pen and wrote PCAFLR on my palm.
“Recognize this?” I said, holding up my hand in front of her.
She squinted, scrunching her face.
“Sorry, I don’t.”
“There’s a gentleman who rents a mailbox here. He drives a Ford pickup, silver. This is his license plate.” I showed her my palm again. “I’m trying to find him. It’s important.”
Kathy folded her arms defensively. “Are you the cops or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just need to talk to him a little, that’s all.”
“I’m really sorry. We’re not really allowed to give out the names of our postal tenants unless it’s to the police.”
“Do you recognize the license plate?”
Kathy shook her head no.
“What about the name, C.W. Lazarus? Do you recognize that?”
Another shake of the head.
“What time is the mail usually delivered?”
“You know, sir, I’m really, really sorry, but you’re making me really, really nervous, and I really don’t do very well with anxiety.” She walked behind the cash register, dug through her backpack, and pulled out a prescription bottle. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
She was starting to tremble.
“I’m sorry, Kathy. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I walked outside and queried neighboring merchants and shoppers to see if anyone recognized Lazarus’s license plate, or had any insights as to the man himself. My efforts proved fruitless. Most people reacted as fearfully as Kathy had when I approached them. One lady dug through her purse, hurled a ten dollar bill at me, and scuttled toward her E-class Mercedes. I wondered if maybe I still smelled a little on the skunky side.
“I’m not homeless,” I yelled after her, “but I soon may be at this rate.”
I stuck around the parking lot for much of the rest of the afternoon, hoping not to be arrested for loitering, hoping that C.W. Lazarus’s truck would magically appear, but neither the police nor the man I was tracking ever appeared.
By four P.M., my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, while my bladder reminded me of other, equally pressing needs. I went back across the street to McDonald’s.
The men’s room had no toilet stall door and no paper towels in the dispenser, neither of which deterred me from conducting essential business. I washed my hands and wiped them dry on the back of my polo shirt.
The Angus Chipotle Bacon Burger sung to me. But at 800 calories and 39 grams of fat, I couldn’t pull the trigger, especially not after inhaling two McMuffins hours earlier. I went with the Ranch Salad and an unsweetened iced tea.
“Alejandra” was printed on the name tag of the friendly crew member who took my order. I paid with the ten-spot the frightened lady had tossed at me outside Letters and Whatever. Alejandra made change and counted it back to me.
“Picaflor,” she said, smiling.
“Say again?”
She gestured to “PCAFLR” inked on my outstretched palm. “Picaflor. It means the bird who pierces the flower where I come from.”
“Picaflor. Very pretty.”
I took the tray bearing my not-so-happy meal and found a table by the window, where I could watch the strip mall parking lot across the street. I sat down and was squeezing out salad dressing when it hit me:
Picaflor. The bird who pierces the flower.
During my visit to Castle Robotics, Greg Castle and Ray Sheen had shown off a miniaturized drone their company was designing.
It was a hummingbird.
CRUISING CASTLE Robotics’ employee parking lot proved fruitless. No Ford Rangers with PCAFLR vanity plates. There was, however, no shortage of fuel-efficient hybrids, economy-minded subcompacts and one yellow MINI Cooper convertible with a bumper sticker that declared, “Engineers solve problems you didn’t know you had in ways you can’t even understand.”
By positioning the Escalade on a side street directly across from the company’s headquarters, I could maintain eyes-on the employee parking lot and every avenue of approach. Workers began streaming out shortly before five p.m., nerdy-looking software engineers with cheap haircuts and baggy jeans. They shuffled to their cars with their heads down, noodling with their phones, oblivious to my presence.
Did C.W. Lazarus work there? There was one way to find out. I found the list of contacts Hub Walker had given me and called.
“You’ve reached Castle Robotics. Please listen carefully as our menu has recently changed.”
Once upon a time, real-live receptionists answered company telephones. People actually talked to each other. Now it was that same saccharine female voice, with the same computerized voice mail menu that always seems to have “recently changed.” I shook my head. Someday, human interaction will be but a faded memory. People will procreate virtually, online, in the name of corporate cost efficiency. Thank you, bean counters.
“If you know your party’s four-digit extension, you may dial it at any time. For technical support, please press one. For sales, press two. For billing, please press—”
I pressed zero, hoping to connect with an operator.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that extension. For technical support, please press one. For sales—”
Again, I pressed zero.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that extension. For technical support—”
I hung up and rested my forehead against the Escalade’s leather-trimmed steering wheel while trying to suppress the desire to kill something, anything. My phone rang a few seconds later. I assumed it was the automated voice, calling me back to continue our “conversation.”
“Blow it out your mechanical booty.”
“My booty’s been called many things, but never mechanical.”
“That wasn’t intended for you, Savannah.”
“As I understand it, Buddhists don’t typically exhibit unbridled anger, Logan. They modulate their aggressive impulses.”
“I’m more of a Buddhist work in progress. And, for your information, my ‘aggressive impulses’ just now happened to be directed at an inanimate object.”
“It does matter. There’s a fine line between putting your fist through a wall, Logan, and putting your fist through somebody’s face.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“I located your landlady,” Savannah said somberly. “A neighbor told me he saw Mrs. Schmulowitz being taken away in an ambulance. She’s in the intensive care unit at Rancho Bonita Mercy. She had some complications after her surgery.”
My heart sank. I had called the hospital and was told they had no record of Mrs. Schmulowitz having been admitted. Apparently no one had bothered checking the ICU.
“Any idea what kind of complications?”
“They wouldn’t tell me. And they won’t let me in to see her because I’m not a blood relative. I gave the nursing desk your number and asked that somebody call you. That’s all I can do for now. I have to get back to LA. I have an appointment tonight with a new client, a TV executive who’s stressing out about his job. I’m sorry, Logan.”
“Don’t be. I appreciate the help. At least I know she’s in good hands.”
I told Savannah I’d call her that night and we could talk further.
“I’d like that,” she said.
The phone went silent.
Dear, kind-
hearted Mrs. Schmulowitz. I never knew my biological parents. I have no one to compare them to, but I couldn’t imagine a better or kinder parental role model than my wizened landlady. She had one child, Arnie, a history professor who lived back East somewhere. They talked sporadically. Whether he was aware of her condition, I couldn’t say. Somebody, though, needed to be with her, to hold her hand and help her get past whatever medical issues she’d run up against. The world could ill afford to lose someone as special as Mrs. Schmulowitz. I couldn’t afford to lose her. Maybe we weren’t kin in the DNA sense, but we were definitely family.
My airplane wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. Neither, hopefully, was C.W. Lazarus. I decided to head back to Rancho Bonita and help take care of Mrs. Schmulowitz until she was back on her feet, then I’d return to San Diego to wreak revenge on Lazarus. That was my plan, anyway.
I fired up the engine and started to make a U-turn that would take me back in the direction of the northbound 805 freeway, when an ebony Hummer with tinted windows came flying out of nowhere and blocked the Escalade’s path. A middle-aged man with a billiard ball head and a top-heavy, weightlifter’s build climbed down from the driver’s side and strode toward me authoritatively. He was garbed in ballistic, military-style sunglasses and a well-tailored Italian suit, black.
“What’re you doing out here, partner?”
“What’s it to you?”
He flashed me some cop-like badge and wallet ID. “Frank Jervis, corporate security chief for Castle Robotics. We’ve had you under observation for over an hour. Answer the question. What’re you doing out here?”
“Minding my own business on a public street.”
“That’s not what it looks like to me.”
“What does it look like to you?”
“Like you’re conducting corporate espionage.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Actually, Frank, I’m looking for somebody named C.W. Lazarus. I think he works for Castle Robotics.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” Jervis stared at me hard behind his sunglasses. “I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”
“What for?”
“To make sure you’re not packing any surveillance equipment.”
“You’re not the police, Frank. You’re a corporate goon in an expensive suit.”
“You wanna do it the hard way? OK, smart guy, c’mon, let’s go.”
He opened my door and went to grab my shoulder. Nobody likes a bully. I slapped his hand away.
“I said let’s go, asshole.” He pushed his suit coat back and unlimbered a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer.
I pivoted in my seat, shoving the door all the way open. The edge of the door knocked the pistol out of his hand. Stunned but for only a moment, Jervis staggered back as I emerged from the Escalade, then charged. He was a brawler more than a boxer, head down, off-balance. He threw a ragged left, then a right, both of which missed, before I stepped in and wobbled him with a roundhouse to his left cheekbone that scraped skin from two of my knuckles. I was about to drop him when I caught movement at my seven o’clock position—and turned too late. A blow crashed down from behind me with such force that I could’ve sworn I heard my own skull crack.
Constellations appeared before my eyes.
Then I saw nothing.
Nineteen
I awoke on a concrete floor, in blackness, to the mother of all migraines. Weird as it may sound, I was happy for the excruciating pain that threatened to explode my head. Pain meant my nerve endings still worked. It meant I was still alive.
Wherever I was, it was uncomfortably warm. The air was stagnant and stunk like wet cardboard. I was aware that my ankles had been bound together with duct tape, as were the wrists behind my back. My mouth was taped over. Gone was the dive knife I’d stashed under my jeans. I was glad I hadn’t bought a more expensive knife considering what little use I’d gotten from the one I had purchased.
How long had I been lying there? An hour? A day? An entire week could’ve come and gone and I would not have known it. Trying to assess the passage of time, however, wasn’t my priority. Neither was formulating an immediate escape plan. I didn’t yet know enough about the forces arrayed against me to shift effectively into MacGyver mode. What mattered most at that moment was convincing myself that I would survive no matter what my captors had in store for me, so that I could dish it back to them in spades.
There are two types of individuals when it comes to enduring life-threatening hardship: those who rationalize death as an easy escape from their agony, and those who spit in the reaper’s face, too ornery to quit. The latter will themselves to live. “Fighting spirit” is what our instructors at Alpha called it. A refusal to roll over and die.
I closed my eyes and vowed that I would prevail no matter what lay ahead.
Hours passed, or maybe it was minutes. I nodded in and out of consciousness until I was startled awake by the sound of an approaching motor vehicle. The engine died. Two doors opened and slammed shut. I heard a key sliding into a padlock and the lock clicking open, followed by a harsh, metallic clanking. Cool sea air rushed in on a tide of moonlight as a steel door rolled up, revealing my surroundings: cardboard packing boxes, a bank safe, a stack of automobile tires, and what looked to be a vintage Plymouth sedan.
I was being held captive in a self-storage unit.
In walked Castle Robotics’ security chief Frank Jervis, followed by Ray Sheen, the company’s self-assured second-in-command. Sheen was toting a baseball bat.
Jervis muscled the rolling door back down as Sheen yanked on a pull chain. A naked light bulb flickered on overhead, bathing the storage unit in a harsh, white glare. Then Sheen nodded to Jervis who knelt down and ripped the tape off my mouth. The security chief’s eye was as purple as an eggplant where it had met my fist. He was dripping sweat.
Sheen squatted beside me.
“How’re we doing, Mr. Logan?”
“Can’t complain.” I nodded toward the bat in his hand. “That’s not Tony Gwynn’s autograph, by any chance, is it?”
“It is. You know why Gwynn was such a great hitter?”
“Tell me.”
“Because he followed through on every swing. Which is why I stroked you as hard as I did. Didn’t mean to. I was just trying to be like Tony.”
“Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”
Sheen smiled, but there was no warmth behind it.
“We had to make sure you weren’t spying on us,” he said. “You can’t imagine how many of our competitors are constantly probing us, trying to gain proprietary information. Some try to pass themselves off as innocent vendors and private subcontractors. Others as friends of friends.”
“How long have I been in here?”
“A few hours. Hope it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience for you.”
“Being clubbed in the head, hog-tied, then locked in a self-storage unit isn’t inconvenient, Ray. It’s felony battery and kidnapping.”
Sheen offered another soulless smile. “So, I understand you’re looking for a Castle Robotics employee named C.W. Lazarus.”
“Know him?”
“Can’t say I do. I don’t recall anyone by that name ever having worked for the company.”
He was almost certainly lying. Liars commonly try to avoid appearing dishonest by implying—“Can’t say I do”—instead of making direct statements—“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“So who is this guy Lazarus, anyway?” Sheen said.
“He’s the guy who made my airplane crash. He was also involved in the murder of Janet Bollinger, but I’m still working out that part.”
Sheen signed and stood. He looked over at Jervis, who was rubbing his left shoulder and wincing in obvious pain, his head shiny with perspiration.
“You told me you just wanted to scare him a little,” Jervis said.
“It�
��s too late for that.”
“I didn’t sign up for this, Ray. Cut him a check. Just pay him off, for crissake.”
“He already knows too much,” Sheen said. “Don’t you, Mr. Logan?”
“First of all, whatever it is you think I know, I can guarantee you it’s not as much as you’re assuming. Secondly, I recently met a very attractive San Diego County sheriff’s detective. I’m sure she’d be pleased to sit down with the three of us and sort this mess out—unless, of course, you just want to pay me big bucks to keep my mouth shut.”
“You seem incapable of keeping your mouth shut,” Sheen said.
He had a point.
Jervis clutched his chest, his face twisted, and he made a sort of repetitive grunting sound, like a pig rooting.
“I t-think . . . I t-think I’m having a h-heart attack.”
And then, apparently, he did.
Knees shimmying like a newborn colt, he staggered, then fell, crashing into the Plymouth’s rear bumper and shattering the glass of the left taillight with his head while Sheen just stood there and watched.
“Frank, you OK?”
“You need to get him to a hospital.”
“Christ.”
Sheen quickly re-taped my mouth, rolled the door back up and looked outside to make sure the coast was clear. Then, with considerable effort, he dragged Jervis to the yellow MINI Cooper convertible I’d seen parked outside Castle Robotics, muscling him into the passenger seat and hustling back to the storage unit.
“I’ll be back.”
Take your time, Terminator.
He pulled on the chain, turning off the overhead light, then rolled the door back down as he exited, bathing me once more in blackness. I heard the padlock latch outside, followed by the high-compression whine of the MINI’s engine, racing away.
Soldiers and Marines are taught to “adapt and overcome” in combat. More elite warriors learn that prevailing on the battlefield often takes more than mere resourcefulness. It requires complete situational awareness—the ability to instantly assess one’s tactical environment, to inventory any and all available resources that might be used to crush his enemy. To hone this skill at Alpha, we played a game called “Remember or Die.” The course instructor was a fiery little Army private turned Delta Force operator with chronic bad breath named Oren Ernstmueller who’d once escaped a Viet Cong jungle camp after slitting two of his captors’ throats with nothing more than a sharpened lens from his eyeglasses. One at a time, over and over, Ernstmueller would lead us into rooms cluttered with incongruous objects. Cleaning supplies. Ammo boxes. A chess set missing two pieces. A dead crow. Photos of naked women. He’d pull off our blindfolds, give us five seconds to memorize everything in the room and the placement of each item, then slap the blindfold back on. Woe unto any go-to guy who missed the details of a single object, or got its specific location wrong.
