Darwin's Blade (24 page)

W
ednesday was a lost day. Dar slept only a few hours—sleeping during the daylight made him feel creepy. When he got up, he found someone in the yellow pages who could install window blinds in a hurry and waited for them to come, puttering around the apartment. He was not afraid to go outside—he did not think he was afraid—but he also wasn't ready to unless he had a reason.

Lawrence came over about noon with a hot lunch for them to share and made sure that Dar was hiding no horrific bullet holes. Lawrence said that he was working “in town,” which meant San Diego proper and usually meant testifying at the Justice Center. He said he'd be in town until late, and asked if he could crash on Dar's sofa. Dar was suspicious—he suspected that his insurance adjuster friend was looking out for him—but Dar could hardly say no.

When Lawrence left and the venetian blind installers were finished, Dar finished his old case files, e-mailed his chess moves to all of his opponents except Dmitry in Moscow, and found himself in the bedroom, going to one knee and pulling the Remington 870 and the box of shells out from under the bed. He fed five of the clunky shotgun shells into the bottom of the receiver and then balanced the weapon on his knees. The embossed lettering on the left side of the chamber above and in front of the trigger guard read
Remington 870 EXPRESS MAGNUM,
designating a shotgun made after 1955, when Remington modified the 870 to accept modern 3-inch magnum shotshells as well as the older, 2¾-inch twelve-gauge shells. Dar touched the release catch for the sliding pump—a tiny latch on the left forward portion of the trigger guard—pumped the action once, chambering a shell, and then pressed the cross-bolt safety button at the rear of the trigger guard. The blue-steel touch of the weapon and the smell of gun oil coming from it reminded Dar of his childhood—of hunting ducks and pheasants with his father and his uncles in southern Illinois—of crisp autumn mornings, brittle cornstalks, and well-behaved bird dogs trotting behind them.

Dar put the weapon back under the bed and closed his eyes. Flashes of images were haunting him—not recent images, not of the mirror shattering, but images of shoes scattered across grass, shoes of every sort, men's polished wing tips, children's Keds, a woman's sandals. After every air crash, the first thing the investigators noticed—even before the stink of aviation fuel, the torn and burned metal, or the bits of bodies—was the hundreds of shoes seemingly tossed at random around the site. It always said something to Dar about the terrible kinetic energies being unleashed in a crash that shoes—even those laced tightly—almost never stayed with the body. It seemed a final indignity somehow. Dar remembered the shoes in the Richard Kodiak a.k.a Richard Trace investigation. The young man had been completely knocked out of his right loafer, but the shoe was in the wrong place—Gennie Smiley had backed the van up too far the second time she ran over him.
The boy's a little light in his loafers.
Dar could hear Dallas Trace saying that to some of his country-club friends.

As night fell, Dar wandered to the bookcases and pulled down a well-thumbed copy of the Stoics. He started with Epictetus but skipped ahead to Marcus Aurelius—Book XII of the
Meditations.
Dar had read and reread the passages so often in the last decade that some of the lines had taken on the singsong familiarity of a mantra:

Dar closed the book. Those lines—so many lines like those—had comforted him after Barbara and little David had died in the Colorado crash, after his own brief descent into madness and suicide attempt. He remembered the sound of the firing pin striking hollowly on that .410 shell that did not fire, did not fire. It had been the only time his father's .410 had ever misfired; the hollow sound of that misfire woke him often but was counterbalanced by the sensible reply of the Stoics.

Not this night.

Dar made sure the blinds were closed and the police bar was in place, but tired as he was, he could not sleep. He did not believe in sleeping pills—he had seen too many accidents not that dissimilar from poor Mr. Hatton who answered his own .38 when the phone rang—but he knew the soporific potential of reading Immanuel Kant, and this he did until he was on the verge of sleep.

There was a knock at the door. Dar considered pulling the shotgun out from under the bed, but the knock had been the familiar shave-and-a-haircut. It was Lawrence, wrinkled, rumpled, and sweaty after a long day testifying. Dar went back to his Kant while Larry showered and came out in the extra, oversized bathrobe Dar kept for just these visits.

While Lawrence was straightening his stuff and fluffing his pillow on the couch, Dar was eyeing the shoulder holster and .32 Colt revolver that his friend had nonchalantly draped over a chair.

“You and Trudy going into L.A. for dinner tomorrow?” asked Dar.

“What do you mean?” said Lawrence from the couch. He was comfortable in his bathrobe, a Hudson's Bay blanket over him, reading a
Car & Driver
magazine.

“You usually only pack heat when you guys are going into the city.” Dar knew that his friend had a permit to carry a concealed weapon because of all the threats the adjuster had received from car thieves and fraud artists, who were behind bars thanks to Lawrence's testimony.

Lawrence grunted. “Coming to see you is enough reason to carry,” he said. “It's like hanging around Charles de Gaulle in
The Day of the Jackal.
”

“Only in the original,” said Dar. “In the remake it's the head of the FBI who's being stalked. And not by Edward Fox but by Bruce Willis.”

“They always screw up remakes,” said Lawrence, putting down his magazine and snapping off the light at the head of the couch.

“Don't they,” agreed Dar. He went to check that the door was locked and the police bar in place. He glanced at the ugly but closed blinds on all of his tall windows.

“Good night, Larry.”

Dar waited for the correction in the name, but Lawrence was already snoring softly. Dar went into his bedroom and was asleep within minutes.

Dar awoke on Thursday morning to the sound of the phone ringing. He grabbed the phone. Nothing. His bedside phone only gave him a dial tone. He jumped up and grabbed his cell phone from the dresser. It wasn't even powered up. Dragging on a robe, he walked to his fax machine. Nothing there.

The phone rang again.

It was Lawrence's cell phone. Dar had forgotten that his friend was sleeping on the couch, but now he sat on one of the high stools at the counter while Lawrence answered his Flip Phone and exchanged some fast but groggy sentences—obviously with Trudy, unless the totally faithful Lawrence had suddenly found someone else to call “Honey Bunch.”

Dar put the coffee on as Lawrence sat up on the couch, moaned, growled, tried to clear his throat, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his cheeks and jowls, growled again, and went through a series of throat-clearing exercises that sounded like a 240-pound cat being strangled.

How the hell does Trudy put up with that every morning?
thought Dar, not for the first time. He said, “Coffee'll be ready in a minute. Do you want any toast or bacon? Or just cereal?”

Lawrence put on his glasses, and grinned across the wide space at Dar. “Shut the coffee off. We'll grab some coffee and a Toad McMuffin on the way. We've got a case already and you're going to love it.”

Dar glanced at his watch. It was already eight-thirty, but strangely dark in the condo with all of the blinds closed. “I've got a lot of work to catch up—” he began.

Lawrence was shaking his head. “Nope. This is just a few miles out…halfway to my place…and you'd hate yourself if you missed it.”

“Mmmm,” said Dar.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” said Lawrence.

“Pardon me?” Dar shut off the coffee maker.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” repeated Lawrence as he flip-flopped into Dar's bathroom to use the facilities and take a shower before Dar did.

Dar sighed. He found the rod that opened the venetian blinds and then the cord that tugged them up. It was a beautiful, sunny San Diego summer day. Every detail on the aircraft carrier permanently berthed across the bay stood out in the crisp light. The sound of traffic was a reassuring hum. A plane roared in to Lindbergh Field, some of the passengers staring up at the overtowering buildings in pure terror while the old hands kept reading their morning papers. Dar could almost read the headlines through the starboard windows as the DC-9 passed by.

“Nunicide by chicken cannon,” he muttered. “Christ.”

They argued in the condo warehouse parking garage about who would drive. Lawrence hated ever being a passenger. Dar was tired of being one. Lawrence admitted that he had to come back into the city for more testimony. Dar pointed out the logic of leaving his Trooper in the parking area and taking the Cruiser. Lawrence sulked, finally saying that they should both drive. Dar headed for the elevator.

“Where are you going?” shouted Lawrence.

“Back to bed,” said Dar. “I don't need this nonsense before breakfast.”

Dar drove. The unmarked San Diego police car that had been parked across the street followed them to the city line and then turned back.

It was a short distance, halfway to Escondido. Lawrence gave the address of a Saturn dealership just off the freeway. Dar knew the place.

Lawrence and Dar had shared their contempt for Saturns in the past. Both knew that they were decent value automobiles, but the image that Saturn created in their advertising of a typical Saturn owner made car lovers like Lawrence and Darwin want to throw up. “It's Jennifer's first car,” says the sales manager. All of the other salespeople applaud while Jennifer stands and blushes, car keys in her hand.

“Saturns were invented for people who are afraid to buy cars,” Trudy had once said. Lawrence and Trudy bought or traded for a new car about once every five months. They loved the process. “Just like Volvos are for people who hate automobiles and need to tell the world,” Lawrence had added. “College professors, professional tree huggers, liberal Democrats…they have to drive, but they're letting us know that in their hearts they'd prefer walking or biking.”

“Maybe they buy Volvos for safety,” Dar had said, knowing it would provoke the two adjusters.

“Hah!” Trudy had cried. “A car has to be able to go
fast
before safety becomes much of an issue. Volvo drivers would own Sherman tanks if the government allowed them on the highway.”

“And remember that touching Saturn commercial a few years ago where all the Tennessee Saturn workers got up at three
A.M.
to watch the first Saturns being unloaded in Japan?” said Lawrence derisively. “All those happy Anglo, black, and Hispanic faces watching the live TV feed…such pride in America. What they didn't show is ninety-nine percent of those cars being reloaded on vehicle containers a year later when the Japanese spurned the Saturns.”

“The Japanese like Jeeps,” said Trudy.

Dar nodded. That was true enough. “And huge old Cadillacs,” he said.

“Just the
Yakuza,
” Lawrence had amended.

Halfway to the Saturn dealership, Lawrence said, “So do you know what a chicken cannon is?”

“Of course,” said Dar, driving with one hand and sipping his McDonald's coffee with the other. A typeset warning on the coffee cup said essentially that the beverage was hot and could cause injury if dumped on one's genitals. Dar had always been of the opinion that anyone too stupid to realize that wouldn't know how to read or drink from a cup anyway. “Of course I know what a chicken cannon is.”

Lawrence looked crestfallen. “You do? Really?”

“Sure,” said Dar. “I used to be with the National Transportation Safety Board, remember? The chicken cannon is the nickname for a gadget the FAA invented to test cockpit windshields against birdstrikes. Actually the cannon is just so much medium-bore oil pipe rigged up to a fancy air compressor. They fire birds into the cockpit composite-glass at speeds of up to six hundred miles per hour—but usually slower than that. They use dead chickens because a chicken represents a large to midsize bird in mass, a little heavier than a seagull but smaller than a flamingo or hawk.”

“Oh,” said Lawrence. “Right. Damn.”

“So how do Saturns and chicken cannon coincide?” said Dar as they took the exit to the dealership.