Darwin's Blade

4 “D is for Dickweed”

The car chase and Dar’s arrest were on Tuesday afternoon. Freed on bail that evening, he attended a meeting on Wednesday morning in the deputy district attorney’s office in downtown San Diego.

When he was booked on Tuesday, Dar had been shirtless, wearing only his sneakers and the now soiled and bloody jeans that he had pulled on at 4:00 A.M. With the scratches from flying glass, no shirt, wildly mussed hair, two days’ stubble, and what his fellow grunts in Vietnam had long ago called a “postcombat thousand-yard stare,” his mug shot looked classically and fiercely felonious. He could picture it hanging in his study, right next to an old color photo of him receiving his robe and scroll symbolizing his Ph.D. in physics.

At 9:00 A.M. Wednesday morning, sitting at the long table with more than a dozen other people who had yet to be introduced, Dar was shaved, showered, and dressed in a crisp white shirt, striped rep tie, blue linen blazer, tropical-weight gray pants, and polished Bally black shoes that were as soft as dance slippers. He wasn’t quite sure if he was a guest at this meeting or still a prisoner of the state, but he wanted to look decent in either case.

The deputy district attorney’s assistant’s assistant, a nervous little man who seemed to embody every gay stereotype in the culture—from his hand-wringing and nervous giggles to his overwrought wrists—was busy offering donuts and coffee to everyone. Set on the table opposite Dar was a line of Smokey hats and badged caps behind which sat at least eight police captains and sheriffs; on the same side of the table but at the far end, substituting briefcases on the tabletop for hats, were two plainclothes officers, one with the haircut of an FBI special agent. All of them except the FBI man accepted at least one donut from the deputy DA’s assistant’s assistant.

On Dar’s side of the table, besides Lawrence and Trudy and their lawyer, W.D.D. Du Bois, was a motley assortment of bureaucrats and attorneys, most of them wrinkled, rumpled, jowled, and slouched, all in sad contrast to the starched, silent, stern-jawed crispness of the cops on the other side. Most of the attorneys and bureaucrats just accepted coffee.

Dar took his Styrofoam cup with thanks, received an “Oh, you’re welcome, you’re welcome” and a pat on the back from the deputy DA’s assistant’s assistant, and sat back to wait for whatever came next.

A black man dressed in a bailiff’s uniform stepped into the room and announced, “We’re almost ready to start. Dickweed’s on his way and Sid’s just leaving the ladies’ room.”

The previous afternoon, still handcuffed, Dar had been driven to the county jail in downtown Riverside. In the car, the older of the state troopers had literally read him his rights from a frayed three-by-five card. Dar had the right to remain silent, anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law, he had the right to an attorney, if he could not afford an attorney, one would be appointed for him. Did he understand?

“You’re reading it?” Dar asked. “You must repeat it ten thousand times a year.”

“Shut the fuck up,” explained the trooper.

Dar nodded and remained silent. He had been Mirandized. And a perfectly good adjective had been made into a verb.

At the Riverside County jail, a low, ugly structure right next to the tall, ugly Riverside city hall complex, the young CHP officers reclaimed their cuffs and officially handed him over to the Riverside sheriff, who gave him to a young deputy to book. Dar had never been arrested before. Still, all of the procedures—emptying the pockets of personal possessions, fingerprinting, and mug shot—were familiar from TV and the movies, of course, and it all combined to give him a strange sense of disembodied déjà vu that added to the unreal quality of the last hour or so.

He was put in a holding cell, alone but for the company of a few sullen cockroaches. About fifteen minutes later, the deputy returned and said, “You got a call coming. Want to call your lawyer?”

“I don’t have a lawyer,” Dar said truthfully. “Can I call my therapist?”

The deputy was not amused.

Dar called Trudy, who had dealt with so many legal issues that she could have passed the bar exam with half her brain tied behind her back. Instead of handling legal issues herself, however, she and Lawrence kept one of the best lawyers in California on retainer. It was necessary given that Stewart Investigations occasionally got dragged into one of the broad lawsuit nets cast out by hopeful litigants plying the fraudulent-insurance-claim waters as diligently and daily and doggedly as New England fishermen.

“Trudy, I—” began Dar when she picked up the phone.

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “I didn’t catch it live, but Linda taped it for me. The commentators are going on about road rage.”

“Road rage!” shouted Dar. “Those bastards tried to kill me and then I—”

“You’re at Riverside, right?” interrupted Trudy again.

“Right.”

“I’ve got one of W.D.D’s associates on the way. You’ll give a deposition there at Riverside with the associate present and he’ll have you out in an hour.”

Dar stood and blinked at the phone. “Trudy, bail’s going to be about a billion dollars. Two men are dead. Dead live on Channel Five. Riverside County’s not going to let me out of here without—”

“There’s more to this than meets the Insta-Cam,” said Trudy. “I’ve been on the phone. I know who the two guys were and why the CHP and county mounties aren’t releasing your name to the media. And why W.D.D. will be able to—”

“Who were they?” said Dar, realizing that he was shouting again. “Did they say on TV?”

“No, it wasn’t on TV and we’re all going to be further enlightened tomorrow morning at the San Diego deputy district attorney’s office,” said Trudy. “Nine A.M. You’ll be out on bail…the San Diego County DA already has a writ from one of his judges asking the Riverside County judge to be lenient. Don’t worry about media following you home…Your name isn’t going to be leaked until at least tomorrow.”

“But…” Dar said, and realized he did not know what else to say.

“Wait for W.D.D.’s associate,” said Trudy. “Go home and take a hot shower. Lawrence just called in and I let him know what’s going on. We’ll give you a call tonight and then you’ll get a good night’s sleep. It looks like we’ll all need it for tomorrow.”

W.D.D. Du Bois, pronounced “du-boyz,” was short, black, and brilliant, with a Martin Luther King mustache and a Danny De Vito personality. Lawrence had once said that in the courtroom W.D.D. could suggest more with his mustache than most people could with their eyebrows.

Du Bois was not the attorney’s real name. Or, rather, it had not been at birth. Christened Willard Darren Dirks in Greenville, Alabama, W.D.D. had been born in the early 1940s with everything working against him—his race, his family’s rural poverty, the state he was born in, the IQ and attitude of most of the state’s white inhabitants, his parents’ illiteracy, the lousy segregated schools he attended—everything except his IQ, which was higher than most professional bowlers’ average score. When he was nine, young Willie Dirks discovered the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois (pronounced “du-boyz”) and had his own name legally changed by the time he was twenty. By that time he had gotten himself out of Alabama and through the University of Southern California and into UCLA’s law school. He was only the third Negro to graduate from that esteemed institution and he was the first to run a major law firm in Los Angeles consisting only of other black lawyers, associates, and staff.

The fact that this coincided perfectly with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a blizzard of new government-backed civil rights legislation, and Lyndon Johnson’s legislative steps toward a Great Society that required no-holds-barred legal battles on all fronts, helped W.D.D.’s practice but did not define it. His firm handled mostly civil cases, but W.D.D.’s first love was criminal law, and these were the few cases he still argued personally in court—the stranger the case, the more the appeal to Attorney Du Bois. It was well known—at least in legal circles—that Attorney Robert Shapiro had tried to bring Du Bois into the O. J. Simpson case before Johnny Cochran got involved, but that W.D.D.’s only comment to Shapiro had been, “Are you kidding? That brother’s guilty as Abel’s brother Cain. I only represent innocent killers.” Stewart Investigations had offered him some deliciously weird cases over the years, and Du Bois showed his appreciation for that by representing Trudy’s company when things got complicated. This appeared to be just such a moment.

The deputy district attorney entered and took the chair at the head of the table. The politically ambitious Richard Allen Weid was sensitive about his last name, which was pronounced “weed.” His father had been a famous judge, so Richard could not just change his name, but he told people not to call him “Dick” even more frequently than Lawrence objected to “Larry.” Which guaranteed that—at least out of earshot—everyone in the DA’s office, in the downtown San Diego Justice Center, and in Southern California called him “Dick,” and more commonly, “Dickweed.”

“Sid” was a bigger surprise to Dar. The woman was attractive, in her late thirties, a little overweight in a nice way, professionally groomed but with an expression that seemed to suggest high intelligence filtered through restrained amusement at life. She reminded Dar of some character actress he really liked, but he could not for the life of him recall the actress’s name. Dar guessed this woman spelled her name “Sydney” with two y’s, and since she took the only other “power seat” at the table—the empty chair at the opposite end of the table from Dick Weid’s—she was obviously someone with serious clout.

Deputy DA Weid brought the meeting to order. “You all know why we’re here today. For those of you who may have been on duty and missed the news yesterday or this morning, a copy of Mr. Darwin Minor’s statement should be in front of you…and we’ve got this tape.”

Shit, thought Dar as the assistant’s assistant pulled the standard media cart with a half-inch VHS VCR and old monitor out of the corner and moved it to a place of pride next to the deputy DA’s chair. The assistant popped in the tape and Dick Weid wielded the remote.

Dar had not seen the news video the night before. Now he watched the Channel Five live coverage of the chase from the interstate exit, up the winding road above Lake Elsinore, ending in amazing footage as the news chopper—hovering a hundred feet out from The Lookout Restaurant’s patio—was almost hit by the Mercedes E 340 as it came barreling out into midair as if trying to leap to safety onto the skids of the helicopter. Mercifully, Deputy DA Weid kept the reporters’ wild narration muted. Unmercifully, the Steadicam zoomed in on the faces of the two men—both their heads and shoulders protruding now from the driver’s-side window as if they were trying to climb out to safety—and Dar could clearly see the shooter’s lips moving in a shout, although he could not make out the words.

When the Mercedes fell out of the camera’s view, the Channel Five pilot immediately put the chopper into a spiraling dive so that the gyro-stabilized camera could unblinkingly and unmercifully stay on the plummeting vehicle all the way down until the E 340 struck the hillside, upside down, at least five hundred feet below The Lookout’s patio. The wreckage bounced through trees and shrubs for another hundred feet, the body of the Mercedes staying amazingly intact but with wheels, bumpers, mirrors, axles, muffler, hubcaps, windshield, suspension, catalytic converter, and the humans inside flying amazingly apart, until finally the wreck disappeared into its own cloud of dust, rubble, and smashed trees in a steep ravine on the cliffside.

Deputy DA Weid used the reverse control on the remote to run the wreckage backward. The pieces of car leaped together and the car levitated back into the air, and then Weid stopped on a freeze-frame of the two men’s faces, one of them in the act of shouting at the helicopter in what appeared to be a cry of supplication. Dar saw every head in the room swivel toward him—even Lawrence’s and Trudy’s—and he felt the weight of every gaze. He considered asking, Didn’t their air bags save them? but decided to keep his mouth shut. Besides, three of the four front-seat air bags had deployed and deflated by the time the vehicle was airborne, making the front of the passenger compartment all the more pitiful in the video, as if it were draped inside with huge, empty condoms.

Two men were dead and he had caused it. Dar felt the vertigo of the video leave him and a heaviness descend again on his spirit, but it was not regret. He clearly remembered the sound of the Mac-10’s slugs shattering his driver’s-side window and whizzing by his head. He remembered the anger from yesterday as a distant thing, but he remembered it clearly enough to know that if those two bastards had survived the fall, he would have happily climbed down the mountain and beaten them to death with a stick. He kept his mouth shut and his face neutral, and eventually the others at the table turned their gazes away from him.

“Before we go any further,” said Deputy DA Weid into the thick silence, “I should say that we’ve had expert lip-readers from the San Diego School for the Deaf analyze this gentleman’s last cry”—he pointed the remote at the freeze-frame where the mustached shooter was still frozen in time, mouth wide open in the act of shouting his final words—“but as close as our lip-reading experts can determine, the man was saying…ah…‘gave nooky.’”

Everyone stared except for Sydney, who laughed out loud. “Gavnuki,” she said, still chuckling to herself and pronouncing it quite differently than Dick Weid had. “It’s Russian for ‘shitheads.’ I think the guy was stating his opinion of Channel Five.”

“All right,” the deputy DA said, and clicked off the TV image.

“That would confirm the Bureau’s identification of the two men,” said the handsome man in the FBI haircut. “The Mercedes was stolen in Las Vegas two days ago. We have identified the two deceased occupants of the stolen vehicle as Russian nationals. The driver, Vasily Plavinksy, has been in the country for three months on a temporary visa. The other man—”

“The one who tried to kill my client with an automatic weapon,” interjected Attorney Du Bois smoothly.

The FBI man frowned. “The other man, also Russian, entered the country through New York just five days ago. His name is Kliment Ritko.”

“That might be an alias,” said Dar.

“Why do you say that?” asked the FBI special agent, his voice tinged with condescension. “In your deposition, you claimed you had never seen these two men before. Are you now saying that you have some personal knowledge of the identity of these two…ah…victims?”

“Would-be murderers,” said W.D.D. Du Bois instantly. “Hired killers.”

Dar said, “I just suggest it might be an alias because there was an infamous Russian painter named Kliment Ritko. His 1924 painting Uprising foretold Stalin’s reign of terror. He even painted Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and the rest of the Bolshevik leaders against a blood-red background, surrounded by troops shooting defenseless people in the street.”

There was a full thirty seconds of silence—an embarrassed silence—as if Dar’s display of pedantry had been equal to him jumping up and peeing on the table. Dar resolved to keep his mouth shut through the rest of the proceedings unless asked a direct question. He turned his head slightly and saw Sydney, whoever she was, give him a frank stare of appraisal.

“Let me introduce everyone at the table,” said the deputy DA quickly, trying to take control of the meeting again.

“Most of you know Special Agent James Warren, agent in charge of the San Diego branch of the Bureau. Captain Bill Reinhardt is LAPD, their liaison with Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep. Captain Frank Hernandez is from our own San Diego Police Department. Next to Captain Hernandez…and thanks for coming in today, Tom, on such short notice, I know you had a conference to attend in Vegas…is Captain Tom Sutton of the California Highway Patrol. Next to Tom is Sheriff Paul Fields from Riverside County, whose cooperation has been fantastic in this operation. Most of us know Sheriff Buzz McCall from right here in San Diego County. And at the end there…hi, Marlena…is Sheriff Marlena Schultz from Orange County.”

Deputy DA Weid took a breath and turned to his left.

“Some of you have met Robert…Bob, isn’t it?…Bob Gauss from the State Division of Insurance Fraud. Welcome, Bob. Next to Bob is Washington-based attorney Jeanette Poulsen from the National Insurance Crime Bureau. To Ms. Poulsen’s left is Bill Whitney from the California Department of Insurance. And beyond Bill is…ah…” Deputy DA Weid had to glance at his notes. It had been a flawless performance up to that point.

“Lester Greenspan,” said the rumpled, bureaucratic-looking man. “Chief attorney for the citizen’s group Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Also out of Washington, officially liaising with your Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep.”

Dar winced. Liaising.

“Next to Mr. Greenspan is someone whom we all know and love,” said Deputy DA Weid, obviously intending to inject some energy and bonhomie into the sagging proceedings. “Our deservedly renowned and very lucky Los Angeles–based defense counselor W.D.D. Du Bois.”

“Thank you, Dickweed,” said Du Bois with a wide smile.

Weid blinked as if he had not heard correctly, and smiled back. “Ah…next to W.D.D…. most of you law enforcement people know these two…are Trudy and Larry Stewart of Stewart Investigations out of Escondido.”

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence.

“And beyond Larry there,” continued the Deputy DA, “is someone else whom a lot of us have met in the line of business, Mr. Darwin Minor, one of the best accident reconstruction specialists in the country and the driver of the black NSX we saw on the videotape. And at the end of the table—”

“Just a minute please, Dick,” said Riverside County’s Sheriff Fields. He was an older man with gunslinger eyes, and when he turned his gaze on Dar, the effect was obviously meant to be both freezing and wilting. “That was the most reprehensible and cold-blooded example of vehicular homicide that I have ever seen.”

“Thanks,” said Dar, returning the sheriff’s electric stare amp for amp. “Only they tried to kill me in cold blood. My blood was very, very warm when I drove them off the road—”

“Just a minute!” commanded Deputy DA Weid. “Let me finish. And at the end of the table, I’d like to introduce Ms. Sydney Olson, chief investigator for the state’s attorney’s office and currently the leader of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Task Force’s Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep. Syd…you have the floor.”

“Thank you, Richard,” the chief investigator said, and smiled again.

Stockard Channing, thought Dar.

“As most of you know,” said the chief investigator, “for the last three months, the state has been carrying out a major investigation—Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep—in an attempt to crack down on the startling rise in insurance fraud claims in this part of the state. We estimate that insurance fraud this year alone is costing Californians about seven point eight billion dollars—”

Several of the sheriffs whistled respectfully.

“—and is driving up insurance rates at least by twenty-five percent.”

“More like forty percent,” interjected Lester Greenspan from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

Sydney Olson nodded. “I agree. I think the state’s estimates are far too conservative. Especially after the last six months or so.”

Special Agent James Warren cleared his throat. “It should be noted that Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep is modeled after the Bureau’s very successful 1995 Operation Clean Sweep in which we made more than one thousand arrests.”

And probably four convictions, thought Dar.

“Thank you, Jim,” said Chief Investigator Olson. “You’re right, of course. We’re also basing our operation on Florida’s probe, Crash for Cash, where state officials arrested one hundred and seventy-four suspects, many of whom were found working in a single ring linked to fake accidents.”

“Mostly slip-and-falls?” asked Trudy Stewart. “Or heavier stuff?”

“A lot of the suspects were repeat offenders on slip-and-falls,” said Sydney. “But the big catch was a Miami attorney and his son who headed up an organized ring. They staged more than one hundred and fifty auto crashes, paying low-income individuals to collide with each other on the Florida highways and then filing spurious claims against the insurers through collaborating chiropractors or their own law firms.”

“Nothin’ new about that in Southern California,” said Riverside County’s Sheriff Fields in his gunslinger drawl. “Deal with that almost every damned day. ’Bout one out of every eight or ten of the accidents on I-15 through our county is staged. Not a damned thing new.”

Chief Investigator Sydney Olson nodded in agreement. “Except for the fact that in the last few months there’s been some sort of turf battle for control of organized insurance fraud.”

“Groups?” said Sheriff Fields, squinting suspiciously.

Deputy DA Weid spoke. “In Dade County, Florida, they discovered that it was largely the Colombians—the former drug runners—who were organizing the insurance fraud. We’re running into the same thing with some of the organized Mexican or Mexican-American gangs in East L.A. and elsewhere.”

“Figures,” grumbled Sheriff Fields.

Captain Sutton of the CHP shook his head. “The majority of staged crashes isn’t being headed up by our Latino gangs,” he said quietly. “They tried to get into the action and got their butts kicked. Quite a few top hommes in body bags.”

Sheriff Schultz from Orange County cleared her throat. “We’ve seen the same thing with organized Vietnamese crime. They want to dominate, but someone is muscling them out.”

Special Agent Warren said, “And whoever it is that’s been most successful in this turf war is bringing in Russian and Chechnyan mafia enforcers…all along the West Coast, but especially down here.”

All eyes turned back toward Dar and those seated near him.

Lawrence made a coughing noise that usually preceded a longer statement from him. “Our company’s hired Dar…Mr. Minor…Dr. Minor…to reconstruct several accidents that were obviously staged. He’s been an expert witness in half a dozen cases and so have I.”

Trudy was shaking her head. “But we haven’t seen any sign of a highly organized ring in these fraudulent claims,” she said. “It’s just the usual assortment of losers and second-or third-generation insurance-claim parasites. They depend on it the way welfare addicts used to depend on their checks.”

Deputy DA Weid looked at Dar. “There’s no doubt that these two men in the Mercedes were not only Russian mafia imported as part of this turf battle, but that they were tasked to kill you, Mr. Minor.”

Dar winced slightly at the use of the noun task as a verb. Aloud he said, “Why would they want to kill me?”

Sydney Olson turned sideways in her chair and looked Dar in the eye. “That’s what we hoped you’d tell us. What happened yesterday represents the best lead we’ve had in several months of investigation.”

Dar could only shake his head. “I don’t even know how they could have found me. The whole day was crazy…” He quickly and concisely told of his 4:00 A.M. JATO-unit wakeup call, the meeting with Larry, and the interview with Henry at the Shady Rest Senior Mobile Home Park. “I mean…none of that day was planned. No one could have known that I’d be coming south on I-15 at that time of day.”

Captain Sutton of the CHP said, “We found a cell-phone frequency scanner in the wreck of their Mercedes. They must have monitored your calls.”

Dar shook his head again. “I didn’t make or receive any cell phone calls after my meeting with Larry.”

Trudy said, “Lawrence called in after he’d gotten the photographs of the stolen-car ring to say that you were covering the mobile home park interview.”

Dar shook his head again. “Are you suggesting that the stupid JATO thing or the seventy-eight-year-old man falling from his Pard is part of a massive insurance-fraud conspiracy? And that someone would import Russians to kill me over it?”

Again Captain Sutton of the CHP spoke. For such a big man—he was at least six five—his voice was very soft. “The JATO thing, we cleared. The human remains in the wreckage—teeth—were ID’d as nineteen-year-old Purvis Nelson from Borrego Springs, who lives with his uncle Leroy. Leroy buys metal in job lots from the Air Force. Evidently someone at the Air Force base didn’t notice that those two JATO units hadn’t been used. Purvis did, though. He left his uncle a note…”

“A suicide note?” someone asked.

The Highway Patrol captain shook his head. “Just a note dated eleven P.M. that night saying that he was going to break the land speed record and that he’d see his uncle at breakfast.”

“In other words, a suicide note,” muttered San Diego County’s Sheriff McCall. The sheriff looked at Lawrence. “The deposition mentions that when you and Mr. Minor met just before the shooting, you were on your way to document a stolen-vehicle transaction. A car-theft ring targeting Avis vehicles. Could this have been the cause of the attack on Mr. Minor?”

Lawrence laughed softly. “Sorry, Sheriff, but the Avis-theft thing was a strictly hillbilly family operation. You know, one of those good-old-boy Southern families where the family tree doesn’t have any branches?”

None of the sheriffs, police captains, nor the FBI man smiled.

Lawrence cleared his throat. “Anyway, no, this bunch I was following wouldn’t have any dealings with the Russian mafia. They probably don’t even know Russia has a mafia. It was an inside job. Brother Billy Joe worked at Avis and, as part of the usual checkout procedure, got the address where the car renters were staying locally. Then brother Chuckie would take one of the agency’s duplicate keys out and steal the vehicle—they liked sport utilities—that night. They’d meet in the desert with cousin Floyd, cleverly repaint the vehicle at a shop they had out there, and Floyd would drive it up to Oregon as soon as it was dry and resell it at a lot they legally owned up there. They’d change the license tags, but not the registration numbers on the vehicles. They were morons. I turned the photographs and notes over to Avis yesterday and they’ve given the info to local and Oregon police authorities.”

Chief Investigator Olson raised her voice slightly to bring the conversation back on track. “Which means that none of yesterday’s incidents were connected to the attempt on your life, Dr. Minor.”

“Call me Dar,” muttered Dar.

“Dar,” Sydney Olson said, and made eye contact again.

Dar was struck again by how she blended professional seriousness with that hint of amusement. Is it the sparkle in her eyes, or in the way she moves her mouth? he wondered, and then shook his head to clear it. He had not slept well the night before.

“You’ve done something, Dar,” she continued, “that’s convinced the Alliance that you’re on to them.”

“Alliance?” said Dar.

Chief Investigator Olson nodded. “It’s what we’ve been calling this fraud ring. It seems to be very extensive and well connected.”

Sheriff Fields pushed back from the table and flexed his cheek and jaw muscles as if he were looking for a spittoon. “Extensive fraud ring. Operation Clean Sweep. Missy, you’ve got a bunch of the usual losers out there on the highway deliberately fender-bending other people’s cars and then screaming whiplash. Nothing new. All this task force stuff is a waste of the taxpayers’ money.”

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 ninemillimeter 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.