by A. B. Jewell
“What?”
“The usual disclaimer, Victoria, you know that. Also, legal services we provide may backfire and lead to bankruptcy, bad decision making, carpal tunnel syndrome, paper cuts, and gout.”
“Gout?”
“From carrying reams of paper.”
“Fuck off.”
“Can I take that as confirmation that you have heard and acknowledged the disclaimer?”
She drove off. I found myself in the position of having to figure out what the hell to say. I needed a way into this place. I had this feeling, just this aching feeling, that this building and the people inside of it held important secrets. Donogue used this firm, and so did Lester Wollop.
“Hello, Mr. Fitzgerald,” the voice said. “My name is Chuck. I’ll be your barristerista. Welcome to Snozzwanger, Veruca and Gloop. How can I help you?”
Deep breath. “Good evening.”
“Right back at you. Seems like you’re a first timer, so I should tell you that billing starts at this point, unless you plan to do an equity cash-out, but that would need to be negotiated. Are you familiar with our services?”
“I have some important documentation involving the estate of Don Donogue.”
“So, an estate issue? Is this pertaining to loopholes, er, technical issues?”
“Yes and no. Don Donogue was a client here, or is. He died, more or less.”
“I’m sorry, say again.”
Holy shit, I was starting to speak the nonsense talk of this place. It was getting to me, like a virus.
“Yes, an estate issue. Involving a will.”
“Great. Do you have a GropeOn?”
“What?”
“Coupon. We have a Life Closeout Special. I’ll honor it anyway. When you get to the first window, you’ll need to provide death certificate and proof of overseas tax shelter. Our data entry specialist will fill out the paperwork, and at the second window you’ll pay and get your form. Anything else?”
“I’d like to make an appointment.”
There was a pause. Then: “To meet with someone in person?”
“Right.”
“But . . .” He seemed taken aback. “That’s fairly inefficient. We stopped even pricing for that because most people don’t want it.”
“I have documents that involve the estate of Captain Don Donogue. Do you know the name?”
“Of course.”
“I have documents that involve . . .”—I decided to go for it—“millions of dollars.”
“I can recommend a firm down the block.”
“Billions, multiple billions of dollars.”
“Why didn’t you say so? I think Veruca Sap handles the Donogue account. I can see if she’s in. Why don’t you pull up to the next window? We’re getting backed up. We’re hitting peak hours.” In the rearview mirror, I could see three cars behind me. I pulled around the corner to a drive-through window. In a chair, wearing a headset, sat a young man—early twenties, I’d say—eyes wide as full moons. So animated that it looked like his freckles were dancing. “Ms.-Sap’sin-anapping pod!” he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I instantly recognized an unrelated truth: this guy was on a stimulant, much more powerful than coffee. This Adderall was everywhere.
“Can you say what you said but more slowly?”
“Ms. Sap is in a napping pod.”
“Slower, pal.”
He took a deep breath. “Veruca Sap is in a napping pod, please leave a message at the next window.”
“Got it. Listen, can I give you some advice?”
“Skip college? I know. It’s for people who can’t doooooo!” So wired he seemed unable to stop his roller-coaster sentence.
“Get off the speed.”
He laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“It’s got IMMUNOBOOST!”
“So do vitamins. You can take vitamins and get some sleep and you’ll be better off.”
“You-just-blew-my-mind. Next!”
I drove off.
Next window. Another guy in a seat, this one wearing white barrister hair. “Mr. Fitzgerald, Ms. Sap can see you tomorrow morning.”
“Really?”
“Does eight A.M. work?”
This caught me totally off guard—the ease of access. “Sure. Any chance she can see me tonight?”
“I’m sorry, after her nap she’ll be deep in a disclaimer.”
I recognized the voice of the guy who came through the speaker. Same guy. A brown ponytail showed through the back of his white barrister wig.
“Are you bobbing up and down?” I asked.
“Bike desk. Ms. Sap will meet you in the lobby tomorrow at eight. Anything else?”
I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that the next car hadn’t pulled up yet. “Listen . . .” I lowered my voice. “Let’s say that a fella was interested in getting a divorce. Hypothetically. What kind of services can you provide?”
“I can’t give legal advice.”
“I’m not asking for legal advice. I just want to know how the divorce thing works.”
He stopped pedaling. He looked sad.
“What’s going on, Chuck?”
“I was a child of divorce. It’d be great if you could try to work it—”
“Chuck!” He was interrupted by a voice coming from inside the building. Chuck, the barristerista, turned his head toward the person yelling. She continued: “Last warning!”
Chuck swallowed hard and started pedaling again. In a very mechanical voice, he said: “Net worth?”
“What?”
“Snozzwanger, Veruca and Gloop provides the nation’s premier divorce investment services. We provide marriage dissolution investment counseling and representation funding. Our strategy firmly aligns the interest of the firm and client in securing the fairest and largest divorce settlement.”
“Speak fucking English, Chuck.”
“If you want a divorce but you don’t have cash to afford a top-notch lawyer and investigative costs, we carry you up front. Then we take a cut of the divorce. It’s a simple business transaction, if that’s how you want to view a precious relationship that should transcend the ridiculous capitalist forces that have overcome all emotion in this godforsaken place.”
“Chuck!” yelled a voice from the side.
Chuck looked in the direction of the voice and then back to me. “I quit!” he said, and yanked off his headset and started to stand, like he would stomp off, but he appeared to trip. “Frickin’ stirrup! What’s wrong with this place! Why can’t I just sit!”
“Chuck, you’re fired.”
“I quit already!”
“There goes your severance.”
“You don’t offer severance!”
“Well, you wouldn’t have gotten any anyway!”
“This place is ridiculous!”
“If you want to sue us, we can fashion you with an attorney.”
I left the bickering in the background and pulled away. I’d gotten what I came for: a little more information, a few insights into this nuthouse law firm at the center of Silicon Valley, and an appointment to get in deeper still with someone named Veruca Sap. Captain Don’s attorney. I wasn’t sure why, but I had a sense she could shed some light.
That said, my sense of accomplishment was modest and fleeting at best. What was I really going to get out of this place? I was pulling at vapor, looking for anything to help me unravel the mystery of Captain Don’s death and the role of the Spirit Box. Not that I particularly cared. In fact, I’d have long since left this madness behind. The answers held the key to Terry, finding him, saving him. As I drove down El Camino No Real I gritted my teeth so hard I thought they might crack. I had nothing. Nothing. I lowered all the windows of the MINI, let the night air flow through, let the whistle of wind suffocate my thoughts. I kept going north until I decided to go west to a place where I might get a moment of respite. And some very serious artillery.
Twenty-One
> SIX MONTHS INTO the ATF gig, we got a tip about guys sending counterfeit stamps across the Canadian border. This wasn’t usually our kind of gig. But they were armed to the teeth. “Video-game-armed,” Sammy, my mentor, said to me. Meaning: jury-rigged weapons so powerful and multifaceted they would seem to exist only in the world of fantasy. They’d caught one guy with a semiautomatic that sent flames and shot grenades and also hurled insults.
“Just to smuggle in counterfeit stamps?”
“Stamps be cash,” Sammy said.
So before we stormed the bad guys’ castle—really just a shack north of Albany across the border but with a 3-D printer—we did some heavy-weapons training. At the range, we practiced shooting dummies using a MAC-11 with a silencer. Nasty weapon. Generally illegal without a very specialized license. The M11 .380 fired 1,380 rounds a minute. Twenty-three rounds per second. Technology at work. At night, I got nightmares, seeing the land covered with shredded flesh. Got to the point where I hated pulling the damn trigger.
“The man’s conscience shows itself again.” Sammy laughed at the range the next day while I stood there sipping coffee, stalling, unable to shoot.
He handed me a sawed-off, short-barrel pump-action shotgun. I took it, ran my hand along the 8.5-inch barrel, and blew a dummy into the next county. And then another. I looked at Sammy and his smarmy smile.
“You’re cured.”
“Nothing to cure.”
“Sure there is. You got a case of the dinosaurs.”
As I drove north toward Floyd’s parents’ house, I thought about Terry’s ticking clock and about how I might spring him and what firepower that might require. I pulled over to the curb a block from Floyd and texted. He immediately texted back: need more time.
Time’s up.
My phone rang.
“Floyd, get your ass out here.”
“I’m close.”
“You’re close to going down in a murder conspiracy.”
“You’re bluffing, right?”
“Get out here, Floyd.”
“Listen! Please. I think I know what this is. It has to do with encrypting messages.”
“English.”
“It’s a new program, an innovation, obviously—he was Captain Don. Some way to send messages that is secure and that eliminates the problem of hacking and identity theft. This could be big.”
I noodled it. “So not the Spirit Box.”
“I don’t think so, no. I need a bit more time. I haven’t even gotten it to run yet. I’m just seeing the outlines. I think there’s more.”
I looked at the clock.
“Are you bullshitting me, Floyd?”
“I swear.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to wait around the corner from you. I’m in the MINI. I’ll touch base in a bit.”
No silence but it sounded like maybe he gulped.
He hung up.
I couldn’t get a full read on him. He seemed excited about what he was uncovering, but I still didn’t trust him for a second. And what to make of the idea that Captain Don had yet another new innovation—this one involving a new way to send secure messages?
Still, I had no intention of sitting here for the next few hours. I needed two things—rest enough to think, and guns—and I headed northwest to get them. Forty minutes later, I arrived at the porch of Elron and Honey.
“He’s baaaaack!” Elron said. “Honey, fire up the moonshine.”
He turned altogether less playful when I explained I needed a place to stay for a few hours and his best work on some munitions.
“Does Terry know what’s going on?” Honey asked. We stood on the porch in near darkness but I could see his head cocked to the side with suspicion.
“Let’s go inside,” I implored.
I felt their eyes on me.
“Where’s Terry?” Elron pushed.
When I didn’t answer for a second, Elron said: “You want me to get Tucker?”
Tucker Fields ran the Barkers, a biker group that Elron did the maintenance for and sometimes rode with. A tougher SOB than Tucker there never has been. One of the few fellows who actually made my knees knock.
“Not necessary. Just a couple of guns. One intimidating, the other discreet but angry.”
“Just like us,” Honey said without much humor. This was a dark moment, clearly. “Come inside and get a few hours of sleep while Elron does his business.”
I hit the pillow in a wood-framed room no bigger than the king bed stuffed into it. I heard light wind rattle a bird feeder on a nearby tree and fell into a dead sleep. I woke up to a tap-tap on the door and Honey greeted me in a colorful kimono with a cup of coffee, steam swirling over the top. “Crows are up and I got the sense you might be on a deadline,” he said. I squinted at a digital clock perched on the headboard and saw 6:05, and for a second I felt like a million bucks after the dead sleep, and then remembered Terry and the rest of it and dusted myself off and creaked from the bed.
Just off the rustic kitchen a round table needed its sturdy wooden legs to support the huge pile of pancakes that was on it and two very serious guns. They looked for a second like utensils, one on each side of a plate that Honey had set out for me. But you’d not confuse either for a spork.
“Abbott and Costello,” I heard a voice say, and turned and realized Elron was standing in a doorway to the left. His arms were crossed and he looked grave. “It’s what I call this pairing. Costello, the big one, she looks tough and is tough, but I sawed it off before the choke so it’s likely to spray. I got the feeling that might not be such a bad idea.” He seemed to eye me for my reaction. “Abbott . . . well, watch the fuck out.” I looked at the smaller and thinner of the guns—not too long, and lean. “Made to settle all disputes,” Elron continued. “It’s almost all chamber. Houses ten .270—”
“I doubt that.”
“Don’t test me, Fitch. They come out fast. Spare telling me how impressed you are and have some of Honey’s double-gluten frozen berry pancakes and tell me what the hell is going on.”
I sat and I ate and didn’t say much at first, despite their prodding eyes. Then I finally relented and spelled out most of it.
“Where do you think they’ve got him?” Elron asked.
“No idea,” I said, staring at a pancake bite hanging from my fork.
“But you do have an idea,” Honey said.
I didn’t respond.
“How can we help?”
“You’ve helped. I should be on my way.”
Elron sighed, and for the first time that morning I realized how tired he looked. He’d been up all night sawing and retrofitting. At the doorway, Honey met me with a tan leather jacket. “Perfect for the season and concealing weapons.” He fitted it over my shoulders and it hung down below my waist. It felt heavy. “I sewed in a flak jacket,” Honey said. I felt the weight of ammo in the pockets.
Outside, Elron stood beside the MINI and a motorcycle.
“Figured I’d give you an option,” he said. “The car is nice but it’s not the single most powerful engine I’ve ever built—the cycle hums six hundred horses and zero to infinity in four seconds. Your call.”
I took him up on his gleaming silver chopper, but it did little to erase the pained look on his face, or Honey’s. As I warmed the engine with a rev, I could’ve sworn I heard Elron say: “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”
I GOT A block away from Floyd’s place by half past seven and parked in front of a small house. From inside, a woman in a handsome navy business suit appeared, walking purposefully in my direction. Before I could escape, she said: “Are you here for the garage sale?”
I had no clue what she was talking about and couldn’t get the bike started again before she was practically at my back tire. “Nice bike. You must be on at least your third company. You’ll love this. Nearly two hundred square feet of great workspace, a mini-fridge, and a pedigree. The last owners ran eWhale, which got swallowed by GuppE in that reverse consol
idation.”
“I’m—”
“Wait, don’t make an offer yet. Not until you hear about the mini-fridge.”
“You’re selling your garage.”
“Of course.” She looked stung. “The people who lease are taking advantage of you and your terrific ideas. Wait.” She paused. “You’re in your thirties already. Forties? I’m sorry to ask but we won’t take an equity stake if you have kids and may not be willing to work around the clock. You have to understand the reali—”
I didn’t hear the rest as I gunned the engine and thought screw it and drove right up to Floyd’s parents’ place. It was single-story, bungalow style, unkempt front yard, weed-infested. I pulled into the driveway and parked over the unattended-to pavement cracks. I texted Floyd that I was outside and got no answer. I called and he didn’t pick up.
It was irritating, at the least. I considered my options and then I called Lieutenant Gaberson.
“Hey, Fitch.”
“I’m running out of time.”
“I’m coming up empty.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fitch—”
“Sorry, Lieutenant.”
“I understand.”
“We live in a police state. You can track anybody.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“It’s me, remember.”
“I know, sorry. But I’m telling you, I can’t locate him.”
I chewed on it. “What about going at it another way?”
“We’re really pushing it.”
“Lieutenant, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said.
“You know that big box you were carrying around when we had coffee?” I was thinking about that contraption that I’d seen him with and that I’d seen other cops using at the real estate protest.
“What about it?”
“You tell me,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“Fitch, did I detect a threatening tone?”
“I’m just curious.”
He didn’t speak for a second. Then he half chuckled. “A curious Fitch is a dangerous thing. Leave well enough alone on our new hardware. Mind your business. Everything has been lawyered. I’m told that whatever we’re doing with these boxes is close enough to being constitutional. But I’d just as soon not have you poking around. So what’s your other idea for finding your spouse?”