by Bill Larkin
“Schmidt, you—”
Lt. Rudy came back to our little group and interrupted Van Ness. “We’ll keep your department advised. I just talked to your chief. For now, he wants to be our point of contact. If he wants to designate somebody else, maybe even you, later, then that’s fine. He’s on his way here.”
Rudy’s smile was gratuitous and, after a few seconds, I could tell that he was saying “Fuck Off” with his expression.
Van Ness sneered at us, then said, “I will call the chief right now.”
He walked off, dialing his cell phone.
Mosher said, “Asshole.”
“Big time,” I added.
Mosher went to do some FBI work.
Lt. Rudy looked at me like a fly in his soup. “How am I going to cover for you freelancing at the Island Hotel and not cooperating with Newport PD?”
“I didn’t know Tremayne was into all this, a Chinese spy ring, FBI following them. I was just helping to find the guy. I would have called Newport PD right away. Never had the chance.”
“You write it up that way. Cooperation all the way.”
“I will, LT.”
“Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment. So I am going to pretend now that you are more experienced and I don’t ever have to worry about you.”
“Right.”
Rudy walked off.
I glanced out at the view over Newport Harbor. My mind had been vaguely circling around the fact that I had killed two men. Maybe repercussions would haunt me later. Maybe not.
In the aftermath, the realness was defined by the fact that I was here and alive, not whether or not hardness resided in my soul. I had just earned the eternal respect of OCSD deputies and other law enforcement. A gunfighter. A defender of my team. Reverence.
Not that I was worried about the necessity of using my pistol, but as the saying went, better to be judged by twelve than carried by six. And all that. But it was really just survival and training.
I thought about Tremayne’s slide through the cactus patch. It must have been a really painful last ten seconds of his life.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
—Descartes
Chapter 13
As I finished waxing my 1969 Dodge Charger in my garage, a Chevy Impala pulled into my driveway. An official looking lady in her 30s, wearing a snug-fitting skirt suit in navy blue, stepped out of the driver’s side.
A simple white blouse peaked out from the suit jacket. The skirt was mid-length, maybe a tad on the high side. As she closed the door and stepped closer, I duly noted that she was very attractive, with dark wavy hair parted in the middle, light brown skin, and shiny white teeth. It was anybody’s guess what nationality. Her hips were a little on the large side, but she was athletic. Almost impossibly nice legs.
“Deputy Schmidt?”
I looked back at her face and smiled. “That would be me.”
“I’m Valentina Smith. Here’s my card.”
It said ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ with a Virginia address. Up close, her face was strong featured, yet feminine. She was probably ex-military. Or maybe current military.
I turned the music down on my small boombox and said, “DARPA, huh? The Feebs give you my name?”
“They did. That’s a great Charger. What year?”
“1969 R/T. 440 motor.”
“How’s the mileage?”
“Atrocious. I need to get reassigned to something else with a take home hoopty.”
“Don’t sell it though,” she said approvingly.
“Never.”
“I have a Camry at home. It was a boring piece of shit when it rolled off the assembly line and it hasn’t improved with age. I’ll buy something more exciting one of these days.”
I was fairly sure she wasn’t here to talk cars.
“Since you’re not here to chat about cars, were you guys after the Chinese too?”
“No. We don’t do surveillance. We’re research only.” She smiled.
I didn’t really believe that, so I said, “Uh huh. Was DARPA paying Barry Tremayne to research?”
“No. We didn’t know a thing about him until yesterday. He wasn’t trying to research lie detection.”
“But DARPA is?”
“DARPA has funded over fifty labs and spent hundreds of millions of dollars related to this technology. We’d like to see if Professor Tremayne actually made it work with perfect accuracy. Especially a small, portable version.”
I put the wax container away and leaned back against the Charger. “And why is DARPA trying to find the holy grail of truth and exactness?”
“It would help discover terrorists and save lives. Protect the U.S.”
“Just in case they run out of water and boards?”
She walked around, studying the car and running a finger along the freshly waxed paint. She said, “So to speak. Then there’s the elimination of costly criminal trials, freeing the truly innocent, simplifying background checks, and making society as a whole more honest. Other than curing terminal diseases, can you think of anything more important?”
“Play the Devil’s Advocate. What is the argument against?”
“Privacy, of course. Civil libertarians would despise it. Lawyers, too.”
“Wouldn’t it change everything? I mean, you’d need to pass the thing to get a driver’s license, insurance, a job, a date. Couldn’t it become the arbitrator of all our behavior? Big brother. Huge brother.”
She was silent for a moment.
I continued, “I didn’t really think about it when I first saw the recording of the test. I just thought of it in terms of replacing the polygraph, but it’s much more than that. Tremayne was after the most ancient and noble of motives: money. You’re after something else entirely.”
“So after your walk-on-role in this whole thing, you’ve had an epiphany?”
“Anybody who really thinks about the implications would too.”
“So, what is your guess? How would he hide and protect that technology?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he never had it. He could have faked everything to scam the Chinese into giving him five million.”
“Maybe, but we talked to his test subjects at UCI. They all thought it was real.”
I didn’t tell her about the video I had of the tests. I knew it was real. I opened my arms and said, “If I get any ideas, I’ll be sure to call.”
She gave me an if you say so nod, then said, “You know about The Ring of Gyges. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“Plato wrote about it. Gyges was a simple shepherd who found a ring on the finger of a dead man and took it. He discovered that the wearer of this ring had the power to become invisible, yet have all the control over the material world as he did before. Gyges now had dreams of unlimited powers. What did Gyges do? He used the power of the ring to murder the king of Lydia and rape the queen. Imagine the power of this ring? Yet, for all the good things he could have done, Gyges chose evil. Is that really human nature? Is the fear of punishment the only thing that keeps us from evil?”
“You’re saying the lie detector will prevent so-called invisibility. . . it would keep everybody in a civilized world in check with perfect moral and ethical justice?”
She nodded, paused, then said, “I’m saying it gets people thinking. But, it’s only my job to find whatever Professor Tremayne developed. That’s it.”
“Remember that you work for bureaucrats and, indirectly, politicians. Both are afraid of what they don’t know or can’t control, and they don’t know shit, so be careful.”
Her expression was ambiguous. “I’ll see you around.”
“Isn’t the CIA motto: And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free?”
“I think so.”
She headed back to the car and got in.
I called
after her, “Is Smith your real last name? You don’t look like a Smith.”
She smiled, put on her sunglasses and drove away.
Chapter 14
My partner Wylie McCarty drove the fireboat from the Harbor Patrol dock while I pulled in the white bumpers. After several days of administrative wrap-up and interviews, I was back on day shift. The mid-morning sun hadn’t broken through the fog and clouds yet. We motored around the harbor, among the sailboats and motorboats, making the most of a Saturday morning.
McCarty asked, “Still don’t know if you’re getting some atta boy or taking days off?”
“Lieutenant Rudy says if it was up to Motkin, I’d be fired. But he’s out of our chain of command so, maybe a couple days on the beach.”
“Maybe they’ll just promote you to homicide.”
“Yeah, callouts in the middle of the night, long brutal hours chasing down leads and interviewing people. Meetings with the DA. Court time. No thanks.”
“One thing I’ve learned from working for this department for twenty-eight years is that you gotta find your corner.”
“As in corner of a fight ring? Picking a side?”
“No, a corner of the department where you survive the bullshit and ride out a career. It’s a marathon, kid. Not a sprint.”
Harbor Patrol had its charms, but I wasn’t going to spend the next twenty years there.
I had a voicemail on my phone from April that I had only listened to in part. I went down to the lower wheelhouse and replayed it.
“Schmitty, um, I don’t really know what to say here. I lot has happened and I am a wreck. How about we skip the part where I apologize? Ok, maybe we shouldn’t skip that part. I would like to meet you for coffee. Ok? Call me.”
I deleted it. My gaze out the window landed on a sea lion lounging on the swim step of somebody’s moored boat. It barked a few times then slid into the water.
Too much sand through the hourglass for me to meet with April again. But I decided to return the call. Not sure why. Maybe she had some sins that needed to be paid for, no matter how delayed.
After hellos and me taking a rain check on a meeting, she said, “Then I’m going to say my piece now and that’s it. I owe you that much because you meant more to me than I let on. When we were together, I was in this flux, changing and moving fast. I wasn’t even sure of the goal; I just had to keep moving. All of a sudden, I was over college and everything about it.”
“And I was part of the everything about it. Fair enough.”
“It wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t personal. It was anxiety that I had to mature out of. My best skill was putting the past behind me. I kept doing it until I married Barry.”
“Did he know?”
“No.”
“You need to dust off that skill right now. I’m sorry, April.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
There was nothing else to say at the moment, “It will all work out for you in the end. You’re that kind of person.”
A muffled sob, “Be well, Schmitty.” She ended the call.
I guess the karma bank would determine whether or not April landed on her feet.
Barry Tremayne’s funeral was set for tomorrow. The joint investigation underway between OCSD, the FBI, and the NBPD had already confirmed that the crew of four who kidnapped us were skilled corporate spies, but lousy kidnappers. They had tried to cut a deal with Tremayne, then became nervous when he disappeared.
The Chinese figured that a 100% accurate lie detector would be worth stealing and killing for. The FBI and DARPA would be searching for the lie detector technology for a long time. They had bits and pieces, and the helmet with sensors, but the software and algorithms that drove the technology were missing. The FBI guy called it the missing ‘secret sauce.’
A perfect truth machine. It would make honesty, well, honest. And uncover a lot of bad people doing a lot of bad things. But, could humans really be compartmentalized into simple right and wrong by a machine? Be defined in black and white? If you believed that, then there’s the matter of who gets to wield all that power of determining who tells the truth, how often, and in what circumstances.
Take away the mysteries and intricacies of us and what do you have left? I wasn’t sure I had the right answer, or that society should be asking that question. The world needs more integrity, but I wasn’t sure about it being ready for absolute truth. At least not in everything.
I reached into my gear bag and removed the hard drive from Tremayne’s office. I’d sealed it in three heavy duty plastic bags to keep it dry. Then wrapped it in a towel.
I used a small screwdriver to open a wire access panel behind the seat. It was a small space, but I wedged the towel in a small area between a support beam and bulkhead wall. I re-fastened the panel. Somebody doing a major overhaul on the fireboat would find the drive in ten years. If I needed it in the meantime, I knew where to find it.
I stepped back out to the open stern area of the fireboat. The sun began burning through the fog and clouds. We passed the historic Pavilion building that was well over 100 years old.
I took out the money clip from my pocket, removed the money, and ran my fingers across the clip a moment. A quick glance at the back, where it said “To Schmitty with Love. The Girlfriend.”
I tossed it as far as I could into the harbor. A quick splash and it was gone.
I turned to McCarty. “Summer’s almost here.”
“Just another summer in paradise.”
THE END
About the Author
A native of Malibu, Bill Larkin is a commercial real estate executive in Orange County, California. In total, he has been involved with over a billion dollars worth of commercial real estate transactions during his career.
He previously served as a Reserve Deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, then the Los Angeles Police Department where he last worked in a detective assignment. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
www.Bill-larkin.com
Copyright © 2013 Bill Larkin
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
Copyright