The Rule of Nine (19 page)

It was now Thursday. One thing was clear. If Snyder was planning to go public with further information early next week, Thorn didn't have much time.

L
iquida was smiling from ear to ear as he looked at the tracking data on the laptop computer.

After crawling out from under Madriani's house and dusting himself off, Liquida went home and retrieved one of the other GPS trackers. This one was called a Lightning Spark Nano. It was highly sensitive and didn't require an external antenna. You could put it in the glove compartment of a car and track the vehicle anywhere in the world and all you needed was an Internet connection to find it. It ran on a small internal battery that gave it five days of continuous tracking.

Liquida packaged it in a small cardboard box, the kind you might use for a piece of jewelry, and included a short printed note:

He wrapped the small box in brown wrapping paper and taped and tied it with cotton twine, but not before he switched on the tracking device. He addressed it to Sarah Madriani at the home address in Coronado, using Madriani's law office as the return address. Then he hand-carried it to the post office, where he sent it express overnight delivery. Liquida knew it would take longer than that to reach its destination, probably one or two days because of the change of address. But he didn't care. The battery would still be running by the time it arrived.

He watched the tracking data for three days and when it stopped moving, Liquida knew it had arrived.

The GPS image on the computer showed not only a street map, but a low-level satellite image similar to Google Earth. As he scanned out on the computer to get a smaller scale, he could see that the farmhouse in the satellite photo was located on a rural road just outside a place called Groveport, in the state of Ohio. Express overnight mail from the postal service wasn't too bad.

 

The trip to the aviation boneyard in Victorville turned out to be a dead end. Nobody in the office or the shop recognized Thorn from any of the photographs we showed them. It was nearly noon by the time we got back on the highway and headed south toward Arizona.

Joselyn had tried to contact Bart Snyder to see if he had any other information on Thorn and to find out who his source was on the boneyard lead. But she couldn't get hold of him. Her calls kept ringing through to his voice mail. She left a message along with her cell number.

The trek across the desert turns out to be long, hot, and dry. To top it off, our timing wasn't good. After two days of hard driving, we reach the outskirts of Tucson on Friday evening. We take a shot and drive out to a place called Evergreen Maintenance. It is the
larger of the two airplane boneyards in the Tucson area. According to their Web site, they are a major hub for leasing and sales and are used by federal agencies for some maintenance.

The office is closed, and except for overhead lights in the parking area, the place is dark. The storage area, which we can see in the distance, seems to run for miles. It is loaded with planes, too many to count, all parked neatly under overhead arc lights. An ocean of tall tail rudders with airline logos from around the world stretches toward the horizon as far as I can see. According to the online news articles, we are looking at one of the largest grounded fleets of commercial jetliners in the world. The storage area, runway, and hangars are gated off, locked behind chain-link fencing, all topped off by taut strands of barbed wire. We have no choice but to cool our heels and wait.

 

Early Monday morning we head back to Evergreen. By the time we reach the parking lot in front of the office, the asphalt is already starting to warm up. The mirrored gleam of polished aluminum airframes in the bright Arizona sunlight is almost too much for the eyes. In daylight, looking at the planes in storage is like staring into a solar collector.

We make for the office and do the routine with several of the employees at the counter. We show them Thorn's photographs and I give them the spiel. I use my business card and tell them I represent a bank Thorn owed money to and that we are pursuing assets under a court order on the belief that Thorn is purchasing airplanes with bank funds, a loan that was obtained through fraud. We also tell them that he might be using a different name.

The staff in the front office takes a hard look at the photographs, all with the same result. They shake their heads. Nobody recognizes him.

We head back out to the parking lot.

We cross town and head to the second boneyard in Tucson. I'm beginning to think that maybe we're wasting our time. He may be active again, but Thorn hasn't come near any of these places.

Herman is wondering if we should even bother to push on to New Mexico if we bomb out at the two shops in Tucson. He tells Joselyn and me that we should take the car and head back to California. He'll leave his pistol in the trunk of the car and fly on to Kingman in New Mexico, check out the boneyard there, and catch a flight back to California, where we can compare notes.

“Have you heard anything back from your man Snyder?” he asks Joselyn.

“No. Not yet. I left messages on his landline, his cell phone, and sent him a short e-mail from my iPhone. And so far no reply.”

“You called him when, Wednesday morning?” says Herman.

“Whenever we left L.A… . Was that Wednesday?”

“Time flies when you're having fun,” I tell her.

“It's been five days,” says Herman.

“I know. Maybe he's busy,” she says.

“Maybe he doesn't like you anymore,” I tell her. “What did you do, shut him down on a date?”

“Not that it's any of your business, but no.”

Joselyn has the brush out in the backseat, stroking the locks, trying to get the knots out.

“Bad-hair day?” I ask.

“Something like that.”

“Dry air, it splits the ends. Does it to me all the time,” I tell her.

“If I were you, I wouldn't fret about it. In a few years you won't have any hair to worry about.”

“Says who?”

“Says that little budding bald spot in the back.”

“What bald spot?”

“In another year the back of your head is going to look like the moon over Miami,” she says.

“You noticed that too,” says Herman. “I was gonna refer him to my barber.”

“Don't you give her any moral support,” I tell him. “She's enough trouble on her own.”

“You don't believe me, check it out with a mirror,” she says. “Better yet, let me take a picture with my cell phone and I'll post it on the Internet so you can see it.” She leans forward in the backseat and grazes my scalp through the hair with a long feline fingernail. Right there.” She giggles. “You need to start using Rogaine or those few feeble little hairs you use to cover it up are going to die of loneliness pretty soon.”

“When you're done taking pictures with that phone, why don't you call Snyder again?” says Herman. “I'd like to know if we're chasing our tails before I hop a flight to New Mexico.”

“If you like.” She takes out her cell phone and begins pushing buttons. I can see her in the rearview mirror, all cross-legged and sexy. She takes off her earring, shakes out her hair, holds the phone up to her ear, and listens for several seconds. “Mr. Snyder, this is Joselyn Cole again. I left a message for you last Wednesday and I haven't heard back. Mr. Madriani, his investigator, and I are on the road. We could really use some help if you could give me a call. You've got my cell number. I'll be waiting to hear from you.” She drops the phone in her purse. “Sorry, but he's still not answering.”

“Maybe you should use a more sultry tone,” I tell her. “Next time he asks you out, at least tell him you'll think about it. That way he'll take your phone calls.”

“You're the one who keeps talking about him. Maybe you should go out with him,” she says.

“He's not my type. It seems that I tend to argue with male lawyers.”

“From what I've seen, you don't do too well with female lawyers either,” she says.

“No? Now that all depends.”

“On what?”

“On who's on top.”

“Oh, jeez,” says Herman, “let's not go there.”

“From back here it looks like you dropped a flare in your investigator's lap,” says Joselyn. “That is blushing, or do those little veins in your ears always throb like that?”

I look over. With Herman it's hard to tell. But she's right. His head's turned the other way, one hand covering part of his face. He's shaking his head and laughing.

“That'll teach me to get in the car with two horny men,” she says.

“Who's horny?” I say.

“You,” says Herman. “Shut up and drive before you get us in an accident.”

The other Tucson storage facility is about twenty miles out into the desert. It is much smaller, nestled against some low-lying sandstone cliffs. By the time we get there, it's almost ten. I pull up in front of what looks like the office, an old wooden building that was a barn at one time. The Dutch gambrel roof is missing enough wooden shingles that it looks like a toothless hag.

The planes in storage look older and not as well maintained. The entire facility has a kind of seedy appearance, faded paint on the wooden facade of the office, scrapped-out parts lying around, and some old airplane tires piled against the fence. There is a single long runway and about twenty planes, some of them parked on an apron in front of the hangar, and others on a diagonal along the far edge of the runway. Six of these are jetliners. The rest are all prop jobs, and from the faded paint and dust, none of them looks as if it is in great shape.

“Let's get it over with so we can get some lunch,” says Herman.

Joselyn and I open the doors and step out at the same time. “You want to be the lawyer for the bank this time?” I ask.

“No. I'm not good at telling lies.” She looks at me with an innocent smile.

“Right. This way, Pollyanna.” She follows me up the rickety wooden steps to the porch that leads to the office. The window air conditioner is rattling a few feet away, vibrating in the wall, dripping condensation, and expelling hot exhaust.

I open the door and the three of us step inside. It's a small office with two desks, a lot of paper clutter and dust.

“Looks like there's nobody home,” says Herman.

There is one of those antique bells with a button on top of the desk. Herman walks over and slaps it a few times and a voice from the bowels in the back hollers, “Be there in a minute.”

A few seconds later a guy I would guess is in his late forties comes through the door in the back. “What can I do for you?” Dark stringy hair, and oil ground into his fingers.

“We're looking for someone,” I tell him. I pull the photographs from my leather portfolio, the enlargement of Thorn on top, and hand them to him. I can tell the moment he looks at them that he recognizes Thorn. You can smell the rubber burning behind his eyes. He looks at me and then back at the pictures.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I'm a lawyer.” I give him my card, and then lead him through the story of my client the bank and Thorn's fraudulent loan, the fact that we're chasing assets, trying to nail anything that moves to the ground.

He stands there impassively looking at my card and then says, “Is that so? Sorry, but I don't think I can help you.”

“Do you recognize him?” I ask.

“I see a lot of people in here,” he says. “It's hard to remember all of 'em.”

“Yeah, I can see you're doing a booming business,” says Herman. “Gonna have to take a number next time we come in. Why don't you just make it easy on yourself? Tell us when you saw him last. And what it was that you sold him.”

“I didn't say I did,” says the guy.

“No, but your eyes don't lie as good as your lips,” says Herman.

“Is that so?” says the man.

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Why do you want to know?”

“So I can forward it to the FBI along with your place of business. You see, there's a federal warrant out for this man's arrest. And the FBI is going to want to talk to you and take a close look at your records of sale.”

“I see,” he says. “Let me take a look at the pictures again.”

“Take your time,” I tell him.

“Could be this guy was in here early last week,” he says.

“That's better,” says Herman.

“But he wasn't using the name Thorn. He called himself George Michelli. It looks like him. He was representing a buyer out of Latin America. He bought an old 727-100C. And he got a good price. He paid with a certified check drawn on a corporate account down in Colombia. That's all I know.”

“Did he take the plane?” I ask.

“Yeah. Flew it out of here himself that day, along with some onboard equipment.”

“What kind of equipment?” says Herman.

“A generator, a new-model transponder. I can't remember what else,” he says.

“Where was the plane headed?” says Joselyn.

“I assume Colombia,” says the man.

“Did he file a flight plan?” says Herman.

“Not with me,” says the guy. “As soon as I was sure the certified check would clear, he was out of here. Now that you mention it, he seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Do you have the contract of sale and the rest of the paperwork?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I'm not sure I should be showing it to you,” he tells me.

“Your choice,” says Herman. “You can either show it to us or to the FBI.”

The guy thinks about it for a second. “All right, you can look, but I'm not making any copies until I talk to my lawyer.”