by Joan Francis
There were several cases in the file drawer that were screaming for my attention. I pulled out the Carpenter file. I had only a few days left to serve this turkey. A lot of PIs won’t fool with process service, but I had developed a reputation for doing hard serves. Of course, no one pays me fifty dollars an hour to serve process unless they have already tried regular servers or marshals who do the job for much less. So when I get an assignment, I know before I ask that the recipient either could not be found or could not be caught.
In the case of Mr. Carpenter, the server had broken my number one rule: Never door-knock anyone. He’d knocked on the door and was told that Carpenter had moved a year ago. The server accepted this and raced on to his next delivery. The subpoena was handed back to the attorney marked, “Moved, no forwarding address.” That’s where I come in.
I turned back to my computer and ran the name of my quarry through all of my database accounts, checking for property, vehicle, employment, and consumer public filings. When finished, I concluded that the guy most likely lived right where the server had tried to serve him. In fact, the server had probably been talking with him. Early tomorrow morning I would do a little field reconnaissance and see if I could verify this assumption.
I stretched and looked at the file cabinet and then at my watch. Yeah, 5:15, sun was over the yardarm. I picked up the phone and dialed Sam. His J.Edgar, Yeabot’s technological father, answered.
“Sam, you there? It’s Diana. How ‘bout dinner at the Ocean Way Grill?”
Sam picked up. “Who’s buying?”
“Me. Got a fat retainer today.”
“I’ll see you there.”
I turned off the computer, slipped my wallet into my jeans pocket, and the CD in my jacket pocket. I needed Sam’s take on this CD.
For twenty-five years Sam had given his heart, soul, and body to the U.S. intelligence service, and high-tech toys and deceptions were his area of expertise. When disillusionment and disgust had replaced duty and patriotism, Sam had looked for a way out. He’d spent his last four years in the service developing advanced robotics technology but had decided he didn’t want this technology put to the uses the military had planned for it. With my own brand of deception, I’d helped Sam leave the service and take his robotics knowledge with him. But that’s another story, one I don’t tell.
Sam now lives quietly in San Pedro. He has no wife, no children, few friends, and no hobbies other than his computer and robotics skills, which he can never use openly. I’m lucky to be his friend and recipient of his genius. However, it is painful to watch such genius and decency wasted and see a dear man grow old in boredom and disappointment.
“I’m going out, Yeabot. You have the security watch.”
“Yes, Mother. Security on.”
This old building I live in was once an office building. When Bluff Beach slipped into decay a couple decades ago, the office suites were haphazardly converted to low-rent apartments. When crazy Merle goes home at five p.m., the elevator is left on the first floor and there is no auto-call button for the old relic, so tonight I walked down eight flights. It’s a toss up as to which is worse, getting in the elevator with Merle or walking the stairs.
Despite its drawbacks, I am enjoying my funky little place, and nowhere else in Los Angeles or Orange County could I find a place so close to the water and so cheap. With the town now redeveloping rapidly, it probably won’t stay cheap for long.
The six blocks between my apartment and the grill used to be an area one did not venture into without an armed guard. Now it is a lively, exuberant mix of shiny urban renewal buildings and upscale supper clubs set among the pawn shops, used bookstores, antique shops, tattoo parlors, and seamy bars. The sidewalks are filled with yuppies in evening dress, city kids on their way to the sixteen-screen theater, and panhandlers. As I walked to the restaurant, Dixieland and progressive jazz emanated from two of the clubs, while three street entertainers tried vainly to compete.
I sat at the bar, nursed a Grant’s scotch, and waited for Sam to drive over from San Pedro. As soon as he arrived and we were seated at our regular table, I began the tale of my new client, our strange meetings, and the seriously protected CD. Through cocktails and salads, Sam listened silently to my whole story and then looked briefly at the CD.
“Well, Diana, if Yeabot says he can’t break this thing, I sure can’t do any better.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t want you to try. I just want you to help me figure out who the heck I’m dealing with here and if I should be. At first I put Borson down as just a curiosity, then as a nut, and then as a crusader with both money and a cause. But this CD puts a new icon on his head. I mean, what writer would go to this length to protect a sci fi manuscript? And, who the heck could do this stuff?”
Sam picked up the CD again and turned it over in his hands as he considered his answer. I noticed how much puffier and softer his hands looked, and noticed the liver spots that had formed on his skin.. He had put on at least twenty pounds. His once handsome face had become round and double chinned, and his bright blue eyes looked tired and dull. I looked back down at my salad plate, hating myself for noticing how much he had aged in the last year. It somehow seemed disloyal.
“Well, you see, just about any able programmer could booby-trap the thing with a virus. To do it so well that Yeabot couldn’t find his way around it, that took someone special. Could be someone from the community, all right.”
“You mean intelligence community? Maybe I should decline the assignment.”
“I don’t see why, unless researching this Red 19 leads you to classified information.”
“Yeah, but in his assignment letter Borson said to check up on all the latest developments in experimental fuels. What if this is some sort of industrial espionage?”
Sam shrugged. “That’s possible, I guess.”
“So you think I should drop it and return the retainer?”
He thought a minute. “Not at this point. You know how to evaluate his requests for information. If they stop sounding like science fiction and start sounding like Leavenworth, get out. I think you can handle this, Diana.”
At that moment the waiter walked up with two plates of steaming lobster. “Besides,” he added, “you’re going to need that retainer to pay for my dinner.”
* * * * *
FOUR
I was up at five a.m. and by six was settled in on a discreet surveillance near Carpenter’s house. My second rule of process service is: Never let them see you coming. No matter how many lead-footed, inept servers have tipped them off, I can still surprise them if I handle it right. A corollary to this rule is my sexist rule of thumb: Never hire a man for the job. Most of the men in this business are too puffed up with macho images of themselves to use stealth. They have to pound on the doors, kick the trash cans, and announce, “I am a PI!” It’s the Sam Spade syndrome.
My subject left his home about eight, driving a Toyota pickup with a plate that matched his vehicle ownership records. His physical description matched the one on his driver’s license and I was ninety-nine percent certain that this was Carpenter. However, as all young PIs and police officers are taught, never assume. Once I found a guy living in the subject’s house and matching his description, but he turned out to be the wife’s live-in boy friend.
I followed Carpenter to work and watched as he parked the Toyota. His work place also matched my research, but I didn’t try to jump out and run him down. Rule number three: Never chase after the subject. Breaking this rule not only caused one of my few failures, but also a broken high-heel, a sprained ankle, and the loss of a client. I watched Carpenter walk into the building, then drove back to Bluff Beach.
It was time to do some research on Red 19. My first job out of college was as a librarian, and I carry a reverence for the wonderful resources of the reference desk. Not in my wildest imagination, however, did I ever envision the amazing, living, breathing, growing leviathan of information that would be born on the Interne
t. With information being loaded from all over the world and growing exponentially, it seems that any subject you search for can be found. Everything, that is, except for Red 19. Try as I might, I found no fuel or fuel byproduct that begins as a viscous red liquid and transforms into a gas when it hits the atmosphere.
However, I did learn a great deal about the R and D of alternative fuels and identified a couple California firms working in this field. I gave them each a call, but I never made it past the PR desk in either firm. The responses I got made it abundantly clear that my inquiries were considered suspect. Next I tried three chemistry professors to see if anything in basic science could behave like Red 19. No luck.
Next I tried Mike Shelley, a friend of mine who works as a tech writer at Space Delivery Systems, Inc. SDS, Inc., is a well-funded, low-profile, private company working on exploration and colonization of the planet Mars. This is not a governmental operation nor a bunch of science fiction dreamers, but a private corporation that is dead serious about showing a profit, someday. I knew that among other subjects, Mike was well read on the development of fuels for space flight. He wasn’t in, so I sent him an email and asked him to check on my mystery fuel.
Finally I called the Wedgeworth Clear Sky Foundation. I am not usually shy about asking questions, but then I normally feel comfortable with my reason for asking them. By the time I dialed Wedgeworth, I was beginning to feel both foolish and frustrated.
Steven W. Wedgeworth had been one of the first chemists to accept and verify the work of Nobel Prize winners Rowland and Molina. Their research had determined chlorinated chemicals were eating a hole in the ozone shield.
Wedgeworth had not waited for the idea to gain acceptance and the prize to be awarded. Though he was at the time a junior chemist for GarlChem, Inc., he had boldly gone where no industrial establishment chemist had gone before. He’d conducted research which damned products manufactured by his employer. When he couldn’t get them to make changes in the polluting products, he had the study published in a respected peer-reviewed journal. He was promptly fired and blacklisted. What else? That’s the American way. Wedgeworth might have found a position in academia but chose instead to devote his life to the cause of saving the planet. He lived like a church mouse and used every bit of his resources to set up a foundation. On the Internet that morning I had learned that this foundation had the world’s largest database for atmospheric studies. If they didn’t know about Red 19, no one did.
I expected to get a secretary or receptionist and at least three lines of defense between me and the Man. When Wedgewood answered the phone himself, I felt guilty for taking his time to ask him about a fictional substance.
He hesitated a long time before answering. Then in slow, carefully measured words he replied, “What you describe to me does not sound like anything currently known to science.”
I thanked him and was about to hang up when he added, “Of course, the entire idea of ozone depletion was unknown to science a very short time ago, so one does not wish to make absolute statements. But at this time, no.” Embarrassed at taking the man’s time for this fiction, I thanked him and quickly hung up the phone.
I was studying my notes to see if there was any other useful place to check when the phone rang. It was Mike Shelley at SDS, Inc. Without even the preamble of a hello, he shouted at me: “Hunter, don’t you ever pull shit like that on me again. I haven’t had a dressing down like that since boot camp. I don’t know what sort of fringe element freaks you’re dealing with these days, but don’t ever use me as the patsy again. Hear?” He slammed down the receiver before I could respond.
I listened to the dial tone a while, depressed the button a moment, and called him back. His phone just rang. He did not want to talk with me.
“Yeabot, send this note to Mike Shelley’s email: ‘Dear Mike, whatever happened, I am sorry it put you in a bad spot. We’ve known each other a lot of years, and I hope you know I wouldn’t do such a thing on purpose. Maybe I don’t know what sort of fringe element freaks I’ve gotten into either. It would really help me if you could enlighten me on that subject. Diana.”
The damned Martian Diary CD lay on my desk, taunting me while I debated what to do next. The answers I had gotten so far indicated that establishment scientists had no knowledge of anything looking or acting like Red 19, at least nothing accepted and proven. But someone, somewhere, must have been talking about it or Mike wouldn’t have gotten the response he did. Some “fringe element freaks” must have tried to tell the tale of the Martian Diary to the team planning the exploration of Mars.
Enough! It was time I found out who the hell I was really working for. I instructed Yeabot to scan my description of Red 19 and search for any information on any persons or organizations associated with such a substance. His search brought up thousands of hits, so I helped him define the search a little better.
Eventually we got the results down to three articles reported in a community weekly in Paso Nuevo, California, a small mountain community about forty miles outside of Bakersfield. These three chronicled a protest attempt by a young woman named Professor Evelyn Lilac. It crossed my mind that with that name she might have escaped from a game of Clue. She had chained herself to the gate of the Blue Morpho Petroleum research laboratory and refused to leave until press and television reported her statement. She wanted the world to know that Blue Morpho was experimenting with a new red-colored fuel that she called Red 19. She claimed it would be disastrous to the environment. It appeared that the only press she got was the local weekly, and even there she was written up as a total nut case.
“Hell, Yeabot. I think we just identified the mysterious author of the Martian Diary. It seems Mr. Borson has us working for a crackpot . . . I think.”
“Crackpot is unknown reference.”
“Means she’s crazy. Yeabot, this article says she got full television and press coverage. Check for other stories on this event.”
He whirred and clicked and reported, “Zero hits.”
“Zero? No one else wrote anything about this event. Scan these stories and check every name, date, fact, and location.”
“Zero hits on this event. Twenty-two stories from Costa Rica on Evelyn Lilac, environmentalist, president of the Lilac Environmental Institute. One article from the Long Beach Press Telegram on the environmental expo.”
“No other paper even covered the story. That is strange. The Paso Nuevo paper even ran a picture of the reporters surrounding her. Maybe she’s not a nut. Maybe it’s Mr. Jordon time.”
“Mr. Jordon reference unknown.”
“Movie reference, Yeabot. Heaven Can Wait. Mr. Jordon said, ‘The probability of a person being right increases in direct ratio to the number of people trying to prove him wrong.’ Think I need to talk with this lady.”
Yeabot translated the Spanish articles and I read through the rest of the clippings. In addition to picking up bits and pieces of information on Evelyn Lilac and the Costa Rican environmental movement, I learned one very interesting fact. Professor Lilac was in the United States for appearances at public conferences on global warming. The first was held two days ago in Chicago, Washington, D.C. would host the last and largest event at the end of the week, but one was scheduled in Long Beach in two days. Bingo! I would meet this lady before I filed any report or spent any more of that retainer.
* * * * *
FIVE
I turned my bike over and popped off the front wheel with its flat tire. Nine years of riding this trail and never a flat. Murphy’s corollary I guess. If it’s going to go wrong it will be at the worst possible time.
Professor Evelyn Lilac had graciously granted me an interview, but her only available time was during her morning bike ride. I was to meet her at the beach entrance to the river bike trail at precisely eight a.m., and if I was late by one minute, she would leave without me. Even getting this concession out of her had taken hours of calls and call-backs from myriad intermediates associated with the upcoming envir
onmental conference.
After chaining my bike to the nature center fence, I picked up the tire and took off at a run down Fall Avenue. As I ran, I tried to figure my chances of making it. At my normal cruising speed of ten to twelve miles an hour, it took me twenty-five minutes to ride down the trail from Fall Avenue to Seal Beach. It was 7:30. That gave me five minutes to fix the tire. It took four of those minutes just to get to the station.
I ran up to the lone attendant and plunked down the tire and a twenty-dollar bill. He was a very young, good-looking kid, with brown eyes and long naturally blond hair tied back in a pony tail. Breathlessly I said, “There’s a ten-buck tip in it if you can do me a rapid pit stop and change this tube in two minutes.”
He eyed my twenty and with a smile replied, “Cool.” With no wasted motion he pulled the old tube, popped in a new one and pumped it up to seventy psi. As he finished, he put his hands in the air like a rodeo cowboy after tying off a calf. With a beautiful, good-natured grin, he called, “Time! Did I make it?”
I actually hadn’t even looked at my watch, but I replied, “With twelve seconds to spare.” I thanked him, handed him the extra ten bucks, and ran toward the river.
By the time I had the wheel back on, I had lost fifteen minutes. That meant I had to make up ten minutes on my usual time. I had recently replaced my beach cruiser with a ten-speed and today I pushed my speed to eighteen miles per hour. I was feeling smug until a voice behind me said, “On your left.” With that, two tall lean bikers in matching “real” biking attire swept past me like I was standing still. I wondered if I could go faster if I changed my blue jeans for a pair of those brightly striped spandex pants.
Just before the Cathedral Street overpass, I heard a noise that was closer and different from the steady traffic sounds on the overpass above. The trail at this spot dips sharply downhill, so that when you go through the underpass, you are within two feet of the river. Then the trail climbs up again on the far side and angles to the left. Because of this configuration you can’t see the bottom of the underpass until you ride into it.