Runaway Heart

TWENTY

When Chick O'Brian-the policeman's policeman and one-time LAPD heavyweight boxing champ-entered Jack Wirta's office it was a little past 6 p.m. He was surprised to find his old bud with his shoes off, sitting behind the desk, feet up, drinking scotch with two nutsack chorus boys. Chick was massive and kept things simple: guys were guys, girls were pussy. Everything else was perverted. He had shoulders like an American buffalo. His face was pink and oily and he always looked like he'd just finished running two miles-a condition he blamed on acute dermatitis. Miro looked up at the huge, glowering apparition in Jack's doorway and set his jelly glass down quickly. He knew homophobic intolerance when he saw it.

"Well, it's been ever so…" he said, getting up from the chair where Jackson Mississippi was perched on the arm like a parlor ornament. Then the two of them hit the road, grinding their way out the door.

"Jesus," Chick said, watching them go. "Whatta you doing hangin' with those two sternwheelers?"

"In this neighborhood you have to adapt. Come on over here, big guy, and give your little Jackie a sloppy, wet kiss."

Chick actually took a step backwards. "That ain't funny. Don't even joke about that shit."

"You find out what I wanted?" Jack asked. "You coulda just called."

Chick moved over to the chair that Miro and Jackson had been using and looked at it cautiously, inspecting it for the AIDS virus. Then he sat down carefully, like an Episcopalian taking a dump in a public toilet.

"I ran what you wanted through my secure contact in D.C. He called back two hours ago and said Octopus is a black op computer lab."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he found only one mention of it, but it was in a secure Pentagon computer. This lab is located out at Pepperdine University, in room 212 of the Computer Science building, if you can believe that. It's being supervised by something called Echelon which my friend tells me is like a satellite spy network-real hush-hush."

"No kidding. That's what my client thought."

"Yeah. But that's all he could find on it. He said it was buried under a layer of UP codes. That's Ultimate Priority. It's supersecure. But here's where it gets interesting…"

"Good, 'cause so far that doesn't quite figure."

"An hour after my guy gives me this he calls back, and Jack, I never heard him in such a panic."

Chick squirmed slightly in the brown leather chair, screwing his ass in for better traction, then he leaned forward and said, "He tells me to forget everything he just told me. Says, whatever I do, don't tell a soul. He said his career is cooked if it gets back to anybody on his agency flow chart that he gave me this. Apparently he wasn't supposed to be able to access it, but because of his White House security number he leaked in. Big mistake! The systems administrator traced the breach to him. It's called a back-finger. Anyway, a team of federal hitters shows up in my friend's office twenty minutes later and they put him through a half hour of bullshit. He tells these two suits that he'd heard about Octopus, got curious, and was checking because he thought it might be part of one of his drug cases-that it was all just a dumb mistake. He doesn't think they bought it. They rattled him good, but he held up, didn't tell them he gave it to me, and I didn't tell him I was doing this for you. Whatever it is, Octopus is not supposed to see daylight."

After Chick finished, Jack poured the big cop a scotch to calm him down. He slid it over, but Chick O'Brian just looked at the glass… stared at it as if Jack had just rolled a live grenade across the desk.

"What?" Jack asked, slightly perplexed. Then it hit him. It was Miro's glass and Chick was afraid it was crawling with herpes simplex 12, or dick fungus, or some other form of sexual leprosy. So Jack switched glasses, handing his to Chick and taking Miro's for himself. He began sipping, while Chick watched him with something between awe and disgust.

"You got guts, I'll say that."

"No, I'm just not a moron. You can't get a sexual disease from a glass."

"Your dick falls off, don't come crying to me."

"Right," Jack said. "You'd be my first stop if that happened."

They sat there for a long minute savoring their drinks.

"Computer lab, huh? Okay, look, is there any way to track this thing from another direction? Find out more about it?"

"Don't you listen? This guy freaked out on me, and he's no wuss. We did some doors together. He's solid, and he was scared pissless. I'm telling you, Jack, don't mess with it. It's why I came over here in person to warn you. Whatever it is, leave this Octopus thing alone." Chick stood, put his empty glass back on the desk, then stopped and examined the shattered lock. "What happened here?"

"These guys around here all find me irresistible," Jack said, deadpan. "I'm thinking about not wearin' my Brut cologne anymore. Fucks 'em up."

"I'm worried about you, Wirta," the cop's cop said over his shoulder as he left.

"Me too," Jack said softly, wondering what the hell kind of nightmare Strockmire had stumbled into.