by Louis Barr
Translation bang a Louie: Make a U-turn.
I arched my brows.
Hope pushed her pencil into the electric sharpener she kept on her paperless desk. “I removed the distortion from last night’s call faster than spoiled lutefisk through a short Norwegian, as Stella would put it. I also copied Jud Tucker’s office voice mail recording, as you asked.”
“And the voices matched.”
“A perfect match at that.”
“Making it easy to remove the distortion must be more of Jud Tucker’s game playing,” I said.
“So it seems,” Hope said. “You can listen to the two voices side by each on your PC.”
“I’m expecting another call from Tucker sometime this morning. Is my desk phone still wired?”
She sighed. “Your conversation will be recorded. Christ, do you think I’m about as handy as a hog winding a wristwatch?”
“I’m only checking.” I took a cup of coffee to my desk and listened to the recordings. No doubt about it, both were Jud Tucker’s voice.
I scanned this morning’s Times headlines, then I grabbed another cup of coffee to handle business matters.
I reviewed Hope’s math on the deposit register, then countersigned the business checks paper clipped onto the agency’s invoices.
Since Hope kept the books, I made the bank deposits. She and I applied the first rule of partnership: Trust but verify. We saw our divided duties as nothing more than solid business practices.
At 1150 hours, I’d begun to worry about not getting Tucker’s promised morning call.
Hope buzzed me on the intercom. “It’s that dime-store cowboy asshole. And yes, I’ve got you on the digital recorder.”
I picked up the handset. “Steele.”
“Hello, Clint.”
His familiarity annoyed me. “Yes, Jud.”
“You identified me.” His chuckle rumbled. “I knew you’d make a great player. I gotta say you’re just the cat’s nuts when it comes to playing the game using clever detective work.”
I leaned back in my desk chair. “You made identifying you easy, starting with meeting me in my office, using shoddy equipment to disguise your voice, leaving a loud and clear message on your office voice mail, taking Shane Danning to the supermarket, and finally, returning to the same store alone—all stupid moves on your part. By the way, one of the Stop & Save’s employees has an eye for men, and I got an artist’s sketch of your face right down to your faded acne scars.”
“I’ll admit you made a masterful move bringing a sketch artist.”
“Luck plays a big part in detective work, and you need to know I’m one lucky bastard.”
“Well, when it comes to good fortune, I’ve beaten you hands down,” Tucker said with a smirk in his voice. “I received five million dollars from the Danning tramp this morning. Don’t bother looking for the money. It all vanished across the cybersphere.” He laughed softly. “Let’s see how your luck holds out on your final challenge.”
“Which is?”
“Try to find where I’ve hidden Shane Danning.”
Nothing and no one can remain hidden for long once I put Mars on your ass, I thought. “You’re on.”
“It’s precisely noon. You have twenty-four hours to find Shane. Miss the deadline and I’ll kill your half brother.”
He caught me off guard. How the fuck did he know Shane was my half brother? Who’d known besides my late father, Diana, and me?
I didn’t speak.
“Should you find where I’ve hidden Shane Danning, you’d best come alone. I’m no stranger to murder. I killed Deputy Scott Davidson, then put a hole in his alcoholic father’s head right in front of your house. But I’m guessing you figured that out.”
“I did.” He mentioned murdering two people as nonchalantly as if we were talking baseball.
“Here’s something else you need to know. The firebombing of your buddy’s house didn’t happen out of the fucking blue. My only regret being he wasn’t home that night. It would be a shame if your white colonial went up in smoke too.”
Jud Tucker ended the call.
I called home and told Stella to get herself, Ian, Heathcliff, and Sammy into her car and come straight to the office.
I asked bomb expert Hope to check the office for explosive and incendiary devices.
Then I called Mars.
Chapter Forty-One
The Usual Suspects
Clint, Tuesday, May 22
I heard Hope and Stella talking in the reception area while I watched Ian playing with his Black Hawk outside my office. Heathcliff had made himself at home on my lap, and Sammy lay asleep in my desk’s leg well. White dog hair covered the lower half of my jeans; red cat fur clung to my thighs.
“Isn’t all this loverly,” I said to Heathcliff, meaning it. The big cat opened one eye, blinked, and went back to sleep. For the first time since Tucker’s none-too-subtle threat to destroy my house, I could relax.
I’d come to work today intending to call Captain Flynn about the burglary of Diana Danning’s house before Jud Tucker’s five alarm shit show. I considered how much to tell Flynn about Jud Tucker’s O Dark Hundred and today’s 1150 phone calls. With cops’ loose lips, don’t tell him much until you know where Tucker has hidden Shane, I thought, then decided, the fuck! I’m deputized and need to tell Flynn everything.
I punched in Flynn’s number and caught him at his desk. I spoke without preamble. “On the twenty-seventh of April, someone burglarized Diana Danning’s manse. What can you tell me about it?”
“Oh, to be sure, I fuckin’ live to serve you,” Flynn said.
He kept me on hold. When it came to keyboarding, Flynn was a hunt ’n’ pecker. The one time I tossed that archaic idiom at Flynn, his response had been: “In a pig’s ass I’m huntin’ anybody’s pecker.”
I think he was joking.
Flynn finally came back on the line. “The investigating officers found no signs of forced entry, and the place hadn’t been ransacked.”
“What was stolen?”
“Diamond jewelry, but whoever did it knew the real stones from the fakes.”
I tapped a pencil on my desk. “Sounds like an inside job.”
“Or the burglar wanted us to think it was an inside job,” Flynn countered.
“When did Diana last see her diamonds?”
“Ahh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she’s not absolutely certain. She thinks she last saw her diamonds on or around March tenth. She didn’t discover the safe had been emptied until April twenty-seventh.”
“Could that alleged cat burglar who’s under house arrest account for her whereabouts from March through April?”
“No, but if this wasn’t an inside job, it’s the work of a professional. Our local cat burglar is at the top of our suspects list,” Flynn said.
I couldn’t tell Flynn Hope and I had been retained by the alleged Hancock Park cat burglar’s lawyer to investigate his client’s alibi. Hired by her legal counsel, attorney-client privileges applied on the matter. “What about Diana and Shane’s alibis?”
“Both of them keep day planners. Since we don’t know the exact date of the robbery, we’re up shit creek as to any suspect’s guilt or innocence.”
I told Flynn about the calls I’d received from Jud Tucker, his claim that Diana had paid the five-million-dollar ransom, his confession to committing multiple homicides, and his none-too-subtle threat to destroy my house. “When we learn where Tucker lives, let me go there alone, assess the situation, and find probable cause for you to get a search warrant in advance.”
Flynn spoke firmly: “If you find where this asswipe lives, don’t even consider heading out until I can arrange backup.”
“No, I’ll go alone. Must I remind you that I used to gather intelligence and assassinate terrorists from a thousand yards away?”
I patiently waited for Hal to stop yelling. “Don’t get your balls in a pinch,” I said. “You know if Tucker spots one unmarked car behind me, D
anning’s a dead man.”
Flynn reluctantly agreed.
“I suspect Tucker owns a farm or ranch, and I’ve put together a plan to find it,” I said, ending the call.
I hugged Ian, spoke with Hope and Stella, then headed for Mars’s office.
Chapter Forty-Two
Algorithm
Clint, Hauser Security, Tuesday, May 22
I parked in front of the bland beige building and stepped onto the pavement. Turning, I saw Mars’s brick-shithouse security guard, Alesandro, standing beside the Viper’s passenger’s side door. Worried and edgy over Tucker’s barely veiled threat, I said irritably, “Why don’t I ever see and hear you coming or going?”
Alesandro grinned. “I’m like a whirlwind—here, there, all around you, and poof, gone.”
“Uh-huh. Before you poof your ass out of here, you need to know my family and I have been threatened by a suspected kidnapper and killer named Jud Tucker.” I pulled a copy of Mars’s sketch from my messenger bag and passed it to Alesandro. “I made several quick turns on my way here, but I can’t say with certainty whether I had a tail.”
“I’ve a copy of the boss’s sketch.” He studied the drawing, then slid the page into a pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled his SIG, checked the mag, racked a round, and holstered the semiautomatic. He smiled. “I’ll be watching for him.”
“For the record, I’m also armed,” I said.
He sighed. “Oh, that’s a gun in your pants pocket. I thought you got excited seeing me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I laughed. “And no, Mae West (JFGI), that’s not my gun you’re seeing in my pocket.”
Alesandro walked me to Hauser Security’s main entrance. He held up his proximity card and entered a PIN. I heard the deadbolts unlock. “The boss man’s waiting. You know the way.”
I stepped inside. Keyboards clicked, phones warbled, and soft voices rose from the first floor’s maze of cubicles. I turned back to the doors. Alesandro had vanished.
I caught Mars on the phone. He smiled and waved me in.
Wearing a vintage second-skin Ramones T-shirt and distressed cutoff jeans, Mars completed his extreme office casual dress code with a two-day stubble and unruly mop of blond curls. As I sat down, he plopped his bare feet on top of his desk and crossed them at the ankles. With his tight T-shirt and all that skin on display, I felt as if I was on the set of a soft porn shoot.
When Mars and I first met in our plebes barracks, we instantly clicked and soon recognized our shared bisexuality. Once we’d confirmed our mutual love of both genders, we instantly became best friends. Over the past fifteen years, I’d never seen him acting like an uber manly man. He didn’t need to. With his muscular body and surfer looks, Mars turned heads without macho affectations.
“Consider it done.” He held up his left index finger at me and pressed a switch on his desk phone, taking him off the secure line. He pressed a series of numbers, waited, and said, “Go.”
I knew better than to ask Mars what brave new hell would soon be unloosed on some despotic enemy of the U.S. of A.
He turned his full attention to me. “We’ve a lot of work to do. Get your ass over here and sit beside me.”
I pulled my chair behind his paperless L-shaped desk. Before he dropped his big feet to the floor, I noticed the metro hip nerd sported a recent pedicure. We private dicks miss nothing.
“I take it Ian’s in a safe place,” Mars said.
“He’ll be staying with Hope and Stella in Simi Valley.”
“With all those LAPD cops and LAPD retirees living in Simi, there’s no place safer,” he said. He checked his legal pad. “When you called, you said you wanted to find C. Judson Tucker’s address.”
“Yes.”
“I ran the preliminary searches. I found no property deeds or vehicle titles issued to a C. Judson Tucker or C. J. Tucker, or Judson Tucker, or Jud Tucker; no utility, landline or cell bills; no driver’s or other licenses; no birth certificate, no real property deeds, no federal or state tax returns, and nothing for anyone of that name in a nationwide criminal background check.”
“Holy shit, it doesn’t look promising,” I said.
Mars cracked his knuckles. “We need a search algorithm.”
“Excuse me, you’re speaking nerd.”
“Sorry, Moose. An algorithm uses data stipulations for solving a problem or group of problems. Algorithms are effective methodologies expressed in a finite amount of space and time.”
I hesitated then said, “Okay.”
“Simply put, a search algorithm with a computer is a step-by-step procedure for finding someone. We’ll begin by making notations on everything we know about C. Judson Tucker.”
“Which isn’t much,” I said. “Christ, we don’t even know whether C. Judson Tucker is his real name or an alias.”
“Bear in mind that computers cannot deal with ambiguities. We’ll begin by assuming we have his birth name or a known alias.”
“He might be found under several aliases,” I said.
“That’s my guess,” Mars said. “Chances are the name C. Judson Tucker will point us to an alias or aliases. Another possibility is at some point, Tucker fucked up and left us an incongruity.”
He saw my confusion.
“By that, I mean he used a part or parts of his real name on some official document we haven’t yet considered.”
We began listing what we knew with some degree of certainty about C. Judson Tucker. Mars entered algorithm notations into his computer.
He continued keyboarding. “We’ll be working with a finite number of steps which will likely involve repetitions of the search. As data are processed, the algorithm will perform automatic reasoning tasks that, when executed, proceed through a predetermined number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing output. You’ll want to note that the transition from one successive state to the next won’t necessarily be deterministic.”
“Mars…”
“Yeah, buddy.”
“Your nerd speak is making my brain smolder.” And to think when he was a plebe cadet, the cybertech genius once dressed hurriedly, forgot to pull on his boots, and reported to formation in his socked feet. He’s hated wearing shoes all the years I’ve known him.
“Since we know when he graduated college, we’ll begin our search by limiting the time period to the past twenty years and restrict the quest area to run from Sacramento to the Oregon border.” Mars made a few additional key strokes, then hit enter.
“Now we wait,” Mars said.
Chapter Forty-Three
Algorithm Redux
Clint, Hauser Security, Tuesday, May 22
About twenty minutes later, the first search ended. Neither an address, nor phone number, nor current employer had been located in the northern half of the state for either C. Judson or C.J. Tucker or Jud Tucker over the past twenty years.
“Well, it’s a safe bet he hasn’t lived or worked in the northern half of the state under the name Tucker,” Mars said.
We refined the notations and revised the quest area to search from south of Sacramento to the Mexican border. Mars hit enter again.
We played poker while waiting for the new algorithm to complete its search. About forty minutes later, we had neither Tucker’s current address, nor his phone numbers, nor any other relevant information. After he’d graduated from college, completed his paramedical training, gone to work for the Los Angeles Fire department, and quit his job five years later, it seemed as if he’d beamed himself off to Jupiter.
Mars let out a breath and leaned back in his desk chair. “Ain’t this the screamin’ shits.” He glanced at his watch and dropped his pen on his desk. “We’re spinning our wheels.” He slid his feet into his flip-flops and stood. “Maybe a food break will help us see whatever it is we’re missing in our search notations.”
My stomach growled. We went to Hollywood’s In-N-Out Burger on Sunset.
As we chowed down on burgers and fries fr
om one of L.A.’s best-known fast-food franchises, I had a couple of new notation ideas for our next search.
And the clock kept ticking toward Tucker’s twenty-four hour deadline. But if needed, I had a delay tactic for Tucker’s game.
Back in Mars’s office, I said, “Since Tucker works at Mystic Canyon Casino, and I’m presuming his residence is a farm or ranch, it seems likely we’ll find his address somewhere within forty miles northwest or southwest of the greater Los Angeles metro.”
“Okay,” Mars said, entering in the new notation. “You got anything else we can work with?”
“Maybe we’ll find everything Tucker owns, all his utility bills, his licenses, vehicle registrations, and his farm or ranch under a corporate name.”
“And how the hell do we separate the oats from the horseshit in the greater Los Angeles corporate cluster fuck?”
“Let’s assume his farm or ranch isn’t a nonprofit organization, which narrows the corporate search algorithm to either limited liability companies, or C or S corporations,” I said.
“All right, but why not a nonprofit organization?” Mars asked.
“Although it sounds logical a farm or ranch might be seen as a nonprofit corporation, attempting to file taxes thusly would not be well-received by either the state’s Department of Revenue or the IRS.”
“Got it. I’m entering limited liability companies, or C or S corporations in the notations.” He stopped for a moment. “Supposing we don’t find licenses, tax returns, property deeds and/or auto registrations under something like the Tucker Corporation, or the Tucker Company, or Tuck LLC. What’s the purpose of taking the corporate route in the first place?”
“Because most corporations must conduct at least one meeting of the governing board annually and elect officers. The names of a corporation’s board execs and the CEO must be registered with the secretary of state,” I said.
“Shit, that’s a good idea. I knew there’s at least one reason why I liked you beyond your looks,” Mars said while working the keyboard.