My Mustang was a different story. After I lugged all my equipment down to where I’d left my car, I found one bug inside the trunk, a second under the exhaust manifold.
I studied them thoughtfully. They were tiny, only about an inch square, but they were attached by powerful magnets, very difficult to pry loose. They didn’t have any manufacturing or patent information on them, so whoever used them was working hard to stay anonymous. And whoever used them had access to top-shelf electronics.
That could mean my pals in Homeland Security, but I wondered as well about Metargon, “where the future lies behind.” Metargon could and likely did make this kind of tracking gadget. Cordell Breen had a tight connection to the FBI, that was clear from how easily he got an agent to question the staff at Alison’s computer lab in Mexico City. If Homeland Security had seen Alison arrive at my place last night, Cordell could have persuaded them to bug my car so he could keep track of his daughter.
I put the bugs back where I’d found them and drove home. I used the sweeper on my place, on Jake’s and on Mr. Contreras’s. There weren’t any devices in our rooms that I could detect, but phone lines are tapped remotely these days, and there wasn’t any way I could tell if there were outside ears trained on the building. Life as a paranoid person is not fun.
Despite realizing that I genuinely was under surveillance, I fired up my laptop and went into a database that gets me DMV records. Besides being hideously expensive, it is illegal, so if Homeland Security wanted to rat me out to the state’s attorney, I was in trouble. I was betting on their incurable penchant for secrecy to protect me.
Of the seven license plates I’d taken from Freddie’s, two had belonged to Lincoln Navigators. One was a two-year-old model reported stolen nine months ago. The second belonged to Phoebus Fleet, a leasing company whose headquarters were in Dallas.
It was long after the end of business hours, but a leasing company must have round-the-clock staff to respond to customer emergencies. I spent half an hour in fruitless conversation with a representative who could neither confirm nor deny that one of their vehicles had been stolen and who certainly was not going to give me the name of the lessee. Neither would her supervisor, nor the supervisor’s manager. Unless I had a subpoena, the information was totally confidential.
I hung up in a snarly mood. Why couldn’t the Nav have belonged to Sheriff Kossel, or someone else in Palfry?
I took a bottle of Torgiano out to my back porch to call Jake. He was rehearsing the double-bass solo in Rautavaara’s Angel of Dusk for a performance with the San Francisco Symphony. He stopped work to talk to me, but when he said he had to get back to the rehearsal, I asked him to leave his phone on. Hearing him play was all I needed from him right now. He attached his phone to his bowing arm and I sat watching the clouds gather in the eastern sky, listening to the music.
Even after he hung up, the calm of the night and of his music remained. I sat on the porch, drinking a second glass of wine with a plate of cheese and salad, thinking of nothing in particular. I didn’t hear my front doorbell ring. The first I knew I had company was Mr. Contreras, slowly climbing the back stairs.
33
LAP OF ELECTRONICS
SORRY, DOLL, but he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” Mr. Contreras was holding the top railing, puffing for air, after his climb.
Peppy and Mitch, who’d run up ahead of him, were now standing on the top step, facing down. They were growling softly, that deep-throated sound that says a dog is serious. In the dim light from the alley streetlamp, I could just make out a tall, wide shape below them.
“Who is ‘he’?” I put my wineglass under my chair, out of reach in case things became physical. The Smith & Wesson was in my tuck holster but I wasn’t going to draw it on a crowded porch.
“You Ms. Warshawski?” the shape called.
“Yes.” I leaned forward in my chair, thigh muscles tensed so I could leap or duck in an instant. “And you are?”
“My name’s Durdon; I’m Mr. Breen’s driver. He wants to see you.”
“I thought he was married,” I said. “Anyway, I’m in a committed relationship.” The language of Facebook sounds stupid when you say it out loud.
“Huh?” Durdon took another step up and Mitch gave a warning bark. “Can you hold your dogs? It’s hard to talk with them sitting there.”
“You came around without an invitation,” Mr. Contreras said. “The dogs live here and you don’t, so say what you want to say from where you’re standing.”
I love Mr. Contreras. I went over to the dogs and put hands around both their collars.
“Tell Mr. Breen I’m very flattered, but I’m not interested.”
“What do you mean, you’re not interested?”