Darwin's Blade (9 page)

Chief Investigator Olson's face reddened slightly. She gave the old would-be gunslinger a stare that might have come from Bat Masterson. “The existence of the Alliance is a reality, Sheriff. Those two dead Russians in the Mercedes—ruthless mafia members who, according to Interpol, killed at least a dozen hapless Russian bankers and businessmen in Moscow and probably one overconfident American entrepreneur over there—those two dead Russians are real. The Mac-10 slugs in Dr. Minor's automobile are real. The ten billion or so extra dollars that fraud tacks on to the cost of California insurance…that's
real,
Sheriff.”

The old man's gaze broke away from Sydney Olson's and his Adam's apple worked as if he were swallowing rather than spitting his chaw. “Yeah, no argument. But we all got pressing things to get back to. Where does this…Project Clean Sweep…go from here?”

Deputy DA Weid smiled. It was a good smile, a reassuring smile. A once and future politician's smile. “The task force is temporarily moving its headquarters to San Diego because of this incident,” he said happily. “The media's screaming for the identity of the driver of the black NSX. So far we've actually kept a lid on the story, but tomorrow…”

“Tomorrow,” said Sydney Olson, looking at Dar again, “we're going to release the official story. Some of it will be accurate, such as the fact that the two dead men were Russian mafia hit men. We'll say that their attempted target is a private detective—Dar's real identity and occupation will be kept secret from the press for obvious reasons—and we'll announce that we believe the killers were after him because he's close to uncovering their conspiracy. And after that announcement, I'll be spending quite a bit of time with Dr. Minor and Stewart Investigations.”

Dar returned her challenging gaze. Suddenly she did not look as cute as Stockard Channing to him anymore. “You're staking me out like that goat in the dinosaur movie…
Jurassic Park.
”

“Exactly,” said Sydney Olson, smiling openly at Dar now.

Lawrence raised his hand like a schoolboy.

“I just don't want to find my friend Dar's bloody leg on my moon roof someday, okay?”

“Okay,” said Sydney Olson. “I'll insure that doesn't happen.” She stood up. “As Sheriff Fields said, everyone has important duties to get back to. Ladies, gentlemen, we shall keep you all informed. Thank you for coming this morning.”

The meeting was over, and Dick Weid looked nonplussed at not having wrapped it up himself. Sydney Olson turned to Dar. “Are you going home to Mission Hills now?”

He was not surprised that she knew where he lived. On the contrary, he was sure that Chief Investigator Olson had read every page of every dossier ever opened on him. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm going to change clothes and then watch my soap operas. Larry and Trudy gave me the day off and I haven't had any other calls.”

“Can I come with you?” asked Chief Investigator Olson. “Will you bring me along to your loft?”

Dar considered ten thousand obvious sexist responses and rejected them all. “This is for my own protection, right?”

“Right,” said Sydney. She moved her blazer aside slightly, just enough to show the nine-millimeter semi-automatic tucked in the quick-release holster at her hip. “And if we hurry,” she said, “we can grab some lunch on the way and still not miss any of
All My Children.
”

Dar sighed.

W
e've only known each other a couple of hours,” said Syd, “and already you've lied to me.”

Dar looked up from where he was grinding coffee beans at his kitchen counter. They had grabbed a bite to eat at the Kansas City BBQ—Syd's suggestion, she said she'd been staring at it from the Hyatt for two days and just the sign made her hungry—and then he'd driven her up to his old warehouse building in Mission Hills. He'd parked his Land Cruiser at his spot on the open ground floor, just a huge, dark room with a maze of pillars, and they had taken the large freight elevator—the only elevator in the building—up to his sixth-floor apartment.

Now he just looked at her as she wandered through the living area between the tall bookcases that delineated areas in the loft.

“So far I've counted…what?…about seven thousand books,” continued Syd, “no fewer than five computers, a serious sound system with eight speakers, and eleven chessboards, but no TV. How do you watch your soaps?”

Dar smiled and spooned ground beans into the filter. “Actually, the soaps usually come to me. It's called ‘taking statements from witnesses or victims.' ”

Chief Investigator Sydney Olson nodded. “But you
do
have a TV somewhere? In the bedroom, maybe? Please say you do, Dar. Otherwise I'll know I'm in the presence of the only real intellectual I've ever met outside of captivity.”

Dar poured water into the coffeemaker and turned it on. “There's a TV. In one of the storage closets over there near the door.”

Syd cocked an eyebrow. “Ah…let me guess…the Super Bowl?”

“No, baseball. The occasional night game when I'm home. All of the play-offs and the Series.” He set mats on the small, round kitchen table. Bright light came in through the eight-foot windows.

“Eames chair,” said Syd, patting the bent wood and black leather chair in the corner of the living-room area where two walls of bookcases came together. She sat in it and put her feet up on the wood and leather ottoman. “It feels comfortable enough to be a real one…an original.”

“It is,” said Dar. He set two white, diner-type mugs on the tablemats and then poured coffee for both of them. “You take cream and sugar?”

Syd shook her head. “I like James Brown coffee. Black. Rich. Strong.”

“Hope this suffices,” said Dar as she reluctantly got out of the Eames chair, stretched, and came over to join him at the kitchen table.

She took a sip and made a face. “Yeah. That's it. Mr. Brown would approve.”

“I can make a new batch. Weaker. Saner.”

“No, this is good.” She turned around to look back across the room and into the other areas of the loft that were visible. “Can I play chief investigator for a minute?”

Dar nodded.

“A real Persian carpet delineating your living area there. A real Eames chair. The Stickley dining room table and chairs look original, as do the mission-style lamps. Real artwork in every room. Is that large painting in the open area there opposite the windows a Russell Chatham?”

“Yeah,” said Dar.

“And an oil rather than a print. Chatham's originals are selling for a pretty penny these days.”

“I bought it in Montana some years ago,” said Dar, setting his coffee down. “Before the big Chatham stampede.”

“Still,” said Syd and finished her mental inventory. “A chief investigator would have to conclude that the man who lives here has money. Wrecks an Acura NSX one day but has a spare Land Cruiser waiting for him at home.”

“Different vehicles for different purposes,” said Dar, beginning to feel irritated.

Syd seemed to sense this and turned back to her coffee. She smiled. “That's all right,” she said. “I'm guessing you're about as interested in
making
money as I am.”

“Anyone who discounts the importance of money is a fool or a saint,” said Dar. “But I find the pursuit of it or the discussion of it boring as hell.”

“Okay,” said Syd. “I'm curious about the eleven chess boards. Games being played on all of them. I'm only a duffer at chess—I know the horsie from the castle thingee—but those games look like they're master level. You have so many chess master friends drop in that you need multiple boards?”

“E-mail,” said Dar.

Syd nodded and looked around. “All right, that wall of fiction. How are those books shelved? Not alphabetically, that's for damned sure. Not by publication date, you've got old volumes mixed in with new trade paperbacks.”

Dar smiled. Readers always gravitated to other readers' bookshelves and tried to figure out the system of shelving. “It could be random,” he said. “Buy a book, read it, stick it on the shelf.”

“It could be,” agreed Syd. “But you're not a random kind of guy.”

Dar sat silently, thinking of the chaos mathematics that had made up the bulk of his Ph.D. dissertation. Syd sat silently studying the wall of novels. Finally she muttered to herself, “Stephen King way up on the upper right. Truman Capote's
In Cold Blood
a couple of shelves below, still on the right.
To Kill a Mockingbird
on the second shelf from the bottom.
East of Eden
way the hell to the left over by the window. All of Hemingway's crap—”

“Hey, watch it,” said Dar. “I love Hemingway.”

“All of Hemingway's crap on the bottom right shelf,” finished Syd. “I've got it!”

“I doubt it,” said Dar, feeling his feathers ruffled again.

“The bookcase is a rough map of the United States,” said Syd. “You shelve regionally. King's up there freezing his ass off near the ceiling in Maine. Hemingway's down there near the floor heating vent, comfortable in Key West…”

“Cuba, actually,” said Dar. “Impressive. How do you shelve your novels?”

“I used to do it according to the relationship between the authors,” she admitted. “You know, Truman Capote right next to Harper Lee…”

“Childhood friends,” added Dar. “Little, weakling Truman was the model for Dill who visits every summer in
Mockingbird.
”

Syd nodded. “With the dead authors it worked all right,” she said. “I mean, I could keep Faulkner and Hemingway the hell apart, but I always had to keep moving the live ones around. I mean, one month Amy Tan's tight with Tabitha King, and the next thing I read, they're not talking. I was spending more time reshelving my books than I did reading, and then my work started to suffer because I was frittering away my days worrying if John Grisham and Michael Crichton were still good buddies or not…”

“You're so full of shit,” Dar said in a friendly tone.

“Yep,” Syd agreed, and lifted her coffee mug.

Dar took a breath. He was enjoying himself and he had to remind himself that this woman was here because she was a cop, not because of his devastating charm. “My turn,” he said.

Syd nodded and sipped.

“You're about thirty-six, thirty-seven,” he said, starting with the riskiest territory and rapidly moving on. “Law degree. Your accent's fairly neutral, but definitely devoid of back east. A little midwestern left in the corners of your vowels. Northwestern University?”

“University of Chicago,” she said, and added, “And I'll have you know that I'm only thirty-six. Birthday just last month.”

Dar went on. “Chief investigators for even local district attorneys are some of the best enforcement people around,” he said softly, as if to himself. “Former U.S. marshals. Former military. Former FBI.” He looked at Syd. “You were in the Bureau for what? Seven years?”

“Closer to nine,” said Syd. She got up, went to the coffeemaker, and came back to pour them both more of the thick, black stuff.

“Okay, reason for leaving…” Dar said, and stopped. He did not want to make this too personal.

“No, go ahead. You're doing fine.”

Dar sipped coffee and said, “That glass-ceiling sexism thing. But I thought the Bureau was getting better.”

Syd nodded. “They're working on it. In ten more years, I could have been as high as a real FBI person could get—right under the political crony or career pencil-pusher that some president appoints as director.”

“Then why did you leave…” Dar began, and then stopped. He thought about the nine-millimeter semi-auto on her hip and the quick-release holster. “Ahhh, you enjoy
enforcement
more than…”

“Investigation,” finished Syd. “Correct. And the Bureau is, after all, about ninety-eight percent investigation.”

Dar rubbed his cheek. “Sure. And as the state's attorney's chief investigator, you get to investigate to your heart's content and then go kick the door in when it comes time.”

Syd gave him a dazzling smile. “And then I get to kick the felons who were hiding behind that door.”

“You do a lot of that?”

Sydney Olson's smile faded but did not disappear. “Enough to keep me in shape.”

“And you also get to run interagency task forces like Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep,” said Dar.

Her smile disappeared instantly. “Yes,” she said. “And I'd be willing to bet that you and I share the same opinion of committees and task forces.”

“Darwin's Fifth Law,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Any organism's intelligence decreases in direct proportion to the number of heads it has,” said Dar.

Syd finished her coffee, set the mug carefully on the mat, nodded, and said, “Is this Charles Darwin's law or Dr. Darwin Minor's law?”

“I don't think that Charles ever had to sit on a committee or report to a task force,” said Dar. “He just sailed around on the
Beagle,
getting a tan while ogling finches and tortoises.”

“What are the rest of your laws?”

“We'll probably stumble across them as we go along,” said Dar.

“Are we going to be going along?”

Dar opened his hands. “I'm just trying to find this movie's plot. So far it's fairly formulaic. You're setting me up as bait, hoping that the Alliance will sic more mafia killers on me. But you have to protect me. That must mean you'll be staying within sight twenty-four hours a day. Good plot.” He looked around his living room and in toward the dining area. “Not sure where you'll sleep, but we'll think of something.”

Syd rubbed her brow. “In your dreams. Darwin. The San Diego PD will be sending extra patrols by at night. I was supposed to take a look at your living arrangements and give a…quote…
security-wise sitrep
…end quote, to Dickweed.”

“And?” said Dar.

Syd smiled again. “I can happily report that you live in an almost abandoned warehouse where only a few units have been converted to condos or lofts. There's no security on the stairways…unless you count sleeping migrant winos as guards. There's little light and zero security on the ground floor where you park your Sherman tank of a sport utility vehicle. Your door's all right—reinforced, with three good locks and a police bar—but these windows are a nightmare. A blind sniper using a rusted Springfield without a scope could take you out. No drapes. No shades. No curtains. Are you a closet exhibitionist, Dar?”

“I like good views.” He stood and looked out the kitchen window. “From up here you can see the bay, the airport, Point Loma, Sea World…” He trailed off, realizing how unconvincing he sounded.

Sydney joined him at the window. He caught a faint whiff of some scent she was wearing. It was nice—more like the woodsy smell of the forest near his cabin after a rain than heavy perfume.

“It is a beautiful view,” she said. “I need to call a cab and get back to the Hyatt so I can make some phone calls.”

“I'll drive you…”

“The hell you will,” said Syd. “If this is going to be a buddies movie, you've got to shelve the chivalry right up front.” She used the kitchen phone to call a cab.

“I thought you weren't going to be protecting me twenty-four hours a day,” said Dar. “How can it be a buddies movie?”

Syd patted him consolingly on the shoulder. “If the snipers don't get you and the Russian mafia doesn't cut your throat in that killing ground you call a parking area and the crackheads don't kill you just for the hell of it, then phone me the next time Stewart Investigations calls you out on an interesting case. Officially we'll be looking for patterns of collision and accident insurance fraud.”

“Unofficially?” said Dar.

“Well, I guess there is no ‘unofficially,' ” said Syd, hitching up her heavy purse and walking to the door. “Dickweed's given me some office space in the courthouse. I'd officially appreciate it if you'd drop in there tomorrow morning so we can decide how we're going to check through your case files.” She jotted her number on a card. “And maybe I'll get a glimpse of something that will explain why our late friends in the former Mercedes thought you were worth taking out.”

“They probably confused me with some other guy who owns an NSX and didn't pay his gambling debts at the MGM Grand,” said Dar.

“Probably,” said Syd, turning back toward him and the apartment as they got to the door. He unlatched it. “How many books
do
you have in here, Dr. Minor?”

Dar shrugged. “I quit counting after six thousand.”

“I probably owned that many once,” said Syd. “But I gave them all away when I became a chief investigator. Travel light, that's my motto.” She stepped into the hallway and pointed a finger at him. “I'm serious about you dropping in at the office tomorrow and then calling me as soon as you get a good case call.” She handed him one of her cards with her Sacramento office number written on it and her pager number. The San Diego courthouse office number was penciled in.

“Sure,” said Dar, studying her card. It was an expensive one but did not give a home phone number. “But remember, you asked for it.” He looked up. She had already walked away and disappeared out of sight around the bend in the corridor, heading for the freight elevator. Her soft-soled shoes had made almost no noise on the concrete floor.