The Last Good Guy

34

Just after three o’clock, a well-worn panel truck pulled up to the deliveries gate. It was white, with a large cooling unit on top and a faded Paradise Date Farm graphic on its broadside panel. I noted the license plate number. An SNR guard with a clipboard stepped to the driver’s side as the window went down. The driver was a young blond man in a black golf shirt and Ray-Bans who said something to the guard and smiled. The guard laughed, tapped his sidearm, and went back into his booth. A moment later the gate rolled open and the produce truck went in.

“I don’t think they’re delivering fresh Medjools,” said Burt.

“I doubt they’re delivering anything,” I said.

The produce truck trundled past the security building and down the road toward the cooling pools, then went out of sight between the steam-containment domes. Came out farther south and stopped in front of a small windowless building.

The driver parked, the tall door at the back of the truck rolled open, and he hopped out. Three SNR guards barged from the squat building, all wearing heavy gloves with high safety cuffs, bearing a small but apparently very heavy wooden box.

“Look familiar?” I asked.

“The heaviest thing on earth is the nucleus of a uranium atom,” said Burt.

“There are eighteen hundred tons of enriched uranium now in storage right here,” I said. “In the form of spent fuel rods. Guarded by SNR.”

“Think portability,” said Burt. “The rods are titanium and they encase the fuel pellets. Small pellets. Like dog kibble. Break open a titanium rod and you’ve got death pellets, ready for deployment.”

“Think concealability,” I said.

“And don’t forget pure power,” said Burt. “Close exposure to one pellet is enough to kill a man within minutes. I’ve seen acute radiation syndrome in rats. Brutally thorough and surprisingly fast. Nausea, convulsions, diarrhea, seizures. Hemorrhage of eyes, nose, and ears. Sudden organ shutdown. Like in old science-fiction movies. Over in minutes.”

They hefted the box into the truck, leaning hard to get it in far enough for the door to close. The four men talked for a while, one of the guards gesturing at the sky, one gloved hand the gull and his other hand the falcon, knocking her meal from the sky.

“You think they’re selling this stuff?” I asked.

“It’s the opposite of valuable,” said Burt.

“Except to well-financed players smart enough to work with it.”

“SNR wouldn’t sell to jihadists,” said Burt. “But they might act themselves. So how about a dirty bomb targeting blacks and Muslims, in keeping with Alfred Battle’s sociopolitical beliefs? Manufactured in their little lab way out in the desert? Led by SNR’s physicists and mechanical engineers.”

“For use where?” I asked.

“Again, who do they hate?”

“Blacks. Muslims. Nosey PIs.”

“A mosque,” said Burt. “A black church. A Black Lives Matter rally. A feast at the end of Ramadan. A nightclub popular with young blacks. A black celebrity. The home of a Muslim family. No end to the possibilities.”

The guards and driver touched fists and the driver boarded his truck. The backup warning sounded as he made a three-point turn and headed out the same way he had gone in.

We gave the lumbering produce truck a comfortable head start down Basilone Road toward the freeway. Stayed far back as it joined the tractor-trailers and the extra-slow drivers all the way down to San Diego and onto Interstate 8 East, bound for the Imperial Valley. Near Buena Vista the truck took the Rattlesnake Road exit, made a left at the stop, then slowly accelerated toward the town and Paradise Date Farm beyond.

I went right on Rattlesnake, swung a bat turn across the median when it looked safe. The Taurus fishtailed severely in the fine white desert sand, and for a moment I thought we’d go under. But the road shoulder rose up to meet us, then asphalt, and I punched the car up Rattlesnake, back to the freeway onramp, and onto the interstate.

“You’d have felt like a real idiot getting stuck back there,” said Burt.

“PIs don’t get stuck.”

I was about to call Mike Lark when Mike Lark called me.

“Ford, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children just got a tip. A girl matching Daley Rideout’s picture and description was seen in the company of three or perhaps four men on the beach in front of Cotton Point Estates in San Clemente five minutes ago. She’s even wearing the Beethoven top you said she took with her. San Clemente sheriffs are rolling.”

“Here’s one for you, Mike.”

I told him that the Paradise Date Farm produce truck about to trigger one of the wasp-cams might have just picked up one very heavy wooden crate from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

“Like the ones in the freezers?” he asked.

“Fresh from the nuclear energy plant.”

“Do you know this for a fact?”

“I watched them load it.”

“This changes everything,” he said. “This is now federal. This is us.”

“You’re welcome.”

“The truck just came on-screen. Tell me what you find at Cotton Point.”

Lark rang off and Burt held his phone up for me to see.

I held the Taurus to eighty most of the way to San Clemente, radar detector plugged in and Burt’s keen eyes on the lookout.

It’s a long haul from deep in the Imperial Valley to south Orange County. Had to gas up in Alpine, wade around a wreck in Del Mar and construction traffic in Oceanside.

I badly needed a posse of deputies in fast radio cars, an aggressive watch captain, and three units on their way, dispatched well ahead of me. And how about a helicopter? All the useful tools I used to have and now do not.

But I did count my blessings. I had me. I had Burt. A six-cylinder Taurus with a radar detector on the dash and a Colt .45 1911 in the console. A concealed-carry permit to make it legal.

I called Lark again, but he hadn’t heard anything from the San Clemente sheriffs. Because they’d gotten there too late to intercept Daley, I thought. Or it was a false tip to begin with. Happens all the time. Sometimes on purpose.

It took a minute to talk my way past the Cyprus Shore guard. I played my ex-Marine card and he accepted it, an ex-jarhead himself.

However, this is a “double-gated community,” so that meant I had to get past the stately Cotton Point Estates guard as well. His name plate read Eccles. I produced my CDL and a “Damian Thomas, Locations” business card, which features a logo criminally similar to that of a famous motion-picture studio. Introduced Burt as my assistant. Told Eccles it was a Leo DiCaprio — Jennifer Lawrence picture, Iñárritu to direct, and I had only ten minutes. Smiled and confessed that Orange County wasn’t as dull as they said it would be. Eccles seemed to suspect that I was a liar, but the distant scent of Hollywood seduced him.

The beach was sparsely attended for a warm day. It’s a public beach but privately accessed. The waves were small and the tide was high, so there were more rocks than sand.

Two uniformed Orange County deputies came down to the beach behind us, a bulky sergeant and a muscular young man with a curt mustache.

When the sergeant asked us for ID, I gave him my PI’s license, which brought a long look from him.

“That Ford,” he said. His nameplate said Ionides. “I thought so.”

The younger deputy handed back Burt’s driver’s license.

“What happened to you?” asked the sergeant.

“I was looking for Daley Rideout and I found six bad guys instead.”

“Six. You were lucky.”

“I was, but the girl’s family is taking this hard,” I said. “They’re good people. So I’m still here. Did you see her?”

Ionides shook his head.

“Had anyone here on the beach seen her?” I asked. “Besides the tipster? I’d appreciate your help, Sergeant. Daley Rideout is mixed up with some very bad people.”

“So I understand.”

Ionides had a heavy, unsurprisable face and flat, wet eyes. He sized me up without a blink and handed me back my license. He had what he needed on me. I was the chickenshit cop who betrayed his partner and cost him his career. I was also the stand-up PI who’d helped the FBI save some lives recently, down in San Diego. But it would come down to a fourteen-year-old girl.

“Couple surfers thought they saw her when they were waxing up,” he said. “Weren’t sure. Mainly focused on the waves. She looked kind of like the picture we showed them. Same top — black, with Beethoven on it. She was with three older guys. She and one of them went swimming, didn’t stay out long. When the surfers came back in, they were all gone. Two other witnesses gave us similar statements. All four witnesses said she looked fine to them. Just a girl and a guy who went swimming. One said they looked like brother and sister. Nobody said she looked afraid. We missed her by ten minutes. Ten damned minutes.”

I texted my employer and told her there had been a reliable sighting of Daley less than three hours ago on the beach at Cotton Point. She appeared to be at ease and unharmed. She swam in the ocean. I was there right now and Daley was gone again.

Penelope called and I let it go to message.