18 Explosive Eighteen (25 page)

“Why did he give it to me?”

“That’s a real good question. I think the answer is that he was an idiot.”

“There’s more of an answer.”

Brenda stood. “I can’t talk to you with that hair. It’s disturbing. Look at your friend. She has amazing hair.”

I glanced over at Lula. She looked like she was wearing a giant wad of tutti-fruiti–colored cotton candy.

“I take real good care of my hair, too,” Lula said.

“You don’t take care of your hair,” I told her. “Every four days, you dye your hair a different color. You have indestructible hair. If you set your hair on fire, nothing would happen to it.”

“I can’t believe you two hang out together,” Brenda said.

“It’s embarrassing sometimes,” Lula said. “She don’t know much about dressing, either.”

“Sit down here,” Brenda said to me. “I’l get you fixed up. I don’t have any clients for the rest of the day.”

“Gee, thanks, but I don’t think so,” I said.

“On the house,” Brenda said.

“It’s not the money,” I told her. “I sort of like my hair the way it is.”

“Honey, your hair is
no
way,” Brenda said. She cut her eyes to Lula. “Am I right?”

“Yep,” Lula said. “You’re right.”

Brenda ran her fingers through my hair. “First thing, you need highlights. Big, chunky highlights.”

“About the photograph?”

“Put a cape on and sit down while I mix this up,” Brenda said. “We can talk when I come back.” Heaven help me, I was going to have to let her give me highlights to get her to talk.

“I don’t trust her,” I said to Lula. “She’s crazy. What if she poisons my hair?”

“I’l go watch her,” Lula said. “I know what I’m doing when it comes to hair and pharmaceuticals. You just sit in the chair and don’t worry about nothin’.” They both came back after a couple minutes, and Brenda streaked gunk into my hair and wrapped it in foil.

“It’s no big deal about the photograph,” Brenda said. “I thought I needed it for a business transaction, but turns out it wasn’t necessary.”

“What about your brother? Am I off the hook with him, too?”

“You know about Chester?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, except he’s an asshole. I’m not talking to him. He’s only my half brother anyway. We found out my mother was doing the butcher.”

She picked up a different bowl of glop and streaked and foiled new gunk alongside the previous gunk.

I bit my lip and said a Hail Mary.

“I can see this isn’t gonna be as interesting as I hoped,” Lula said. “Bitch slapping’s unlikely, so I’m gonna go sit and catch up on al your trashy magazines.”

“You stil haven’t told me anything,” I said to Brenda. “Chester hired two guys to fol ow me around. Why? Who’s the man in the photo?”

“The man is no one. It’s a composite. You know, somebody’s nose and someone else’s eyes. It’s done on a computer.”

“Tom Cruise and Ashton Kutcher!”

“I don’t know. I never saw it,” Brenda said.

“Anyway, it’s real clever. It looks like a photograph, but it’s a computer program. You scan it into a computer, and the computer breaks the picture up into little itty-bitty thingies and sees a code. And then you can use the code to do things. Like open a car.”

“I don’t get why that’s so special. You can open a car with a key. You can open a car with a remote.”

“Yes, but this opens cars that have fancy doohickeys like GPS and security systems. You don’t necessarily have to own the car to be able to unlock it, if you get my drift.”

“You could steal a car with this?”

“Exactly, and after you open the car, you can start the engine and do al kinds of things … like work the gas and brake and steering without being in the car.” Lula looked up from her magazine. “So I could use that photo to start any car I picked out of the lot and ram it through your plate-glass window?”

“Maybe not
any
car, but I suppose,” Brenda said.

“Nice,” Lula said. And she went back to reading her magazine.

I was beginning to understand the potential value of the photograph. It sounded like the photo held a program that enabled you to hack into the operating systems of cars remotely. You could use it to steal cars. Or you could use it to drive an unmanned vehicle into another car, or a pedestrian, or a building. And if you fil ed the car with explosives, you’d have a remote-control ed bomb.

“Is this technology wel known?” I asked.

“I guess a lot of people know it’s out there, but not many people have hold of it. It’s, you know, cutting-edge.”

I thought about the megabucks Ferrari sitting in Brenda’s garage.

“You used it to steal a car, right?”

“I used it to get my car
back
. Do you know who Sammy the Pig is?”

“Sure. Everyone in Jersey knows Sammy the Pig.

He’s famous. He runs the north Jersey mob.”

“Wel , my genius husband, who is now dead, decided he wanted to expand his business, so he borrowed money from Sammy. We were doing just fine with thirty-five car washes and a big house and platinum credit cards. I didn’t want him to expand, but would he listen to me? No. He wanted to be the car wash king. He wanted to go national. He wanted car washes on the moon. So he got money from Sammy, and he started building car washes, and al of a sudden the economy is tanking and people are washing their own friggin’ cars. And then Bernie starts having construction problems and labor problems, and he can’t keep up with his loan payments to Sammy. So long story short, Sammy the Pig ended up owning Bernie’s nuts. We lost everything. Al the damn car washes, the house, the time-share in Jamaica that we never used.

Everything. And three months ago, he took my car.

He had no business taking the car. Bernie gave it to me for my birthday. Two of Sammy’s guys came into the salon, took the keys out of my purse, and drove away with it.”

“What kind of car was it?” I asked her. As if I didn’t already know.

“A Ferrari. Red. And it was real expensive.”

“Why didn’t you just go get it back?”

“I was never able to find the papers for it. Bernie’s records were a mess by the time he offed himself.

And the registration was in the car. And what am I gonna say to the police? My husband was in bed with Sammy the Pig, and Sammy took my car to pay off the vig? Anyway, I sneaked over to Sammy’s place and tried to steal my car back, but my key wouldn’t work. It set off the alarm system, and the door wouldn’t open. I guess The Pig had a new lock put in. Probably had a new VIN put on, too. He’s got a bunch of chop shops. The truth is, the car might have been hot even when I got it. Bernie won it in a poker game.”

Brenda unrol ed one of the foils and looked at my hair. “Stil needs more time,” she said.

“But you got the car back, right?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I was complaining to this person I know, and he said he could override al the systems and get me my car. Only thing is, he was living in Hawaii, and he was worried about sending me information.

So when my client Ritchy came in to get a haircut, and he said he was leaving for a conference in Hawaii, I had this bril iant idea that he could bring the information back for me.”

“Why didn’t your friend just mail it to you?”

“He said it wasn’t safe. Turned out this wasn’t safe, either. At least he was smart enough to do the photo thing. I guess you wouldn’t want this code stuff to get into the wrong hands.”

“Like your brother?”

“Yeah, he’d probably sel it to the Russians, or aliens from outer space, or whoever the heck the enemy is. I can’t keep up with it. Or he could keep it and use it to hijack shit.”

I looked at myself in the mirror and tried not to grimace. This was more than I’d expected. My whole head was covered in foil.

“Here’s the big question,” I said to Brenda. “Why did Richard Crick put the photo in my bag?”

“It was an accident. He was airsick, or maybe he was coming down with the flu or something. Anyway, he got off the plane for the layover and was too sick to get back on. He was looking through his bag for his boarding pass, to get it changed out, and he realized he didn’t have my envelope. And he said he remembered you had the exact same bag. A black Tumi messenger bag. And he realized he stuffed the yel ow envelope into your bag by mistake in his rush to deplane. He said your bag was laying on the floor between the seats, just like his. So he cal ed and told me. He said when he thought about it, he knew exactly what happened. He thought maybe I could meet you when you got off the plane, but I didn’t get his message in time. And then he was dead. What are the chances, right?”

Probably

pretty

good,

considering

the

circumstances.

“How’d your brother find out?”

“He was with me when I played the message back. How was I to know he’d be such an asshole?”

“You told him about the photo with the code?”

“I’d had a couple Appletinis,” Brenda said. “I get chatty.”

“I love them Appletinis,” Lula said. “I could drink a gal on of them.”

“Over to the sink,” Brenda said to me. “You’re done processing. This is going to be awesome.”

• • •

I’m always amazed at the way life plays out. How so often a single decision sets people on an irreversible journey. Richard Crick agreed to do a simple favor for a friend, and it led to his death. And the whole ugly chain of events was set in motion when Bernie Schwartz borrowed money from Sammy the Pig. And what was the ultimate result?

Highlights from Brenda.

When your hair is wet, you real y can’t see exactly what the hairdresser from hel has given you. So when I left the shampoo sink and sat in the styling chair, there was hope. By the time my hair was blow-dried, ratted up, and sprayed, I was ready for serious alcohol consumption. The highlights were bril iant red and yel ow, my hair looked like it had exploded out of my head, and I was at least six inches tal er.

Brenda had tears in her eyes. “This is the most fabulous thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “I’m going to cal it Route 1 Sunrise.”

“I never seen anything like it,” Lula said. “This here takes her to a whole other level. She’s not just another ordinary bitch no more. She’s, like, Super Bitch. She’s, like, got
fire
hair.”

“And you see how I gave her hair some lift,” Brenda said. “It gives her style some drama.”

“I could see that,” Lula said.

“What do you think?” Brenda asked me.

“I’m speechless,” I said.

Brenda put her hand over her heart. “My pleasure.

I’m glad I could help you.”

Lula and I left the salon and climbed into the truck.

I got behind the wheel, and my hair stuck to the roof.

“I can’t drive like this,” I said. “My hair’s stuck.”

“You need a bigger vehicle to go with your new look,” Lula said.

I slouched in my seat and drove to the edge of the lot, where Brenda couldn’t see me. I took a brush out of my bag and worked at my hair.

“I can’t get the brush to go through it,” I said to Lula.

“That’s the way hair’s supposed to be when it got some body. She kicked your hair up a notch.

Wham!”

“You might want to dial back on the
wham
thing,” I told her. “I’m not in the mood.”

“How could you be Miss Crankypants when you got hair like that?”

“This is
not
my kind of hair.”

“Yeah, but it could be. It could be a whole new you.”

I didn’t want a new me. I stil hadn’t figured out the old me.

TWENTY-FOUR

I WAS STILL IDLING in the shopping-center lot, trying to squash my hair, when Morel i cal ed on my cel phone.

“I final y caught up with Berger,” he said. “They’ve been reviewing security tapes from LAX, and they have Razzle Dazzle on one of them. There were no cameras in the vicinity of the crime scene, but they have Raz leaving your gate area. They checked the plane manifest, and two passengers didn’t reboard at LAX. Crick and a Somali national, Archie Ahmed.”

“Archie Ahmed? Is that Razzle Dazzle?”

“Yeah, apparently Raz has something like sixty-four identities. The Somali government uses him as an operative. Everything from running guns to recruitment to wet work. They probably drop a stack of passports off to him once a month. Berger got tapes from Honolulu International and identified Raz going through security. It looks like he was on your plane.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“Put a hat on him, and he might look human,” Morel i said.

“Did Berger say anything about his source? I mean, how did he know about the photograph?”

“Information from an overseas operative that a courier had passed a photo to you. Berger is going on the assumption that it’s a photo of a hacker the FBI has been looking for.”

“Wonderful. Anything else?”

“Be careful.”

I took Route 1 back to Trenton. I turned off Broad and parked in front of the bonds office. Lancer and Slasher were across the street, sound asleep in the Lincoln. Connie was inside at her desk, wearing a disposable surgical mask.