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“Not at this point.”
“We need to know where the G-Class Benz is registered—the owner and the address,” Letty said. “We don’t have a license, so it may be impossible.”
“We’re working on it,” Nowak said, “though we’ll come up with probabilities rather than certainties.”
“That could be good enough. Did you hear anything from Barbara Cartwright?”
“She was visiting her cousins on their ranch outside San Antonio. She’s already in the air, should be landing at LAX within the hour. We’ve filled her in as much as we could with nonencrypted messaging, so you’ll have to brief her when you get together.”
“Got it,” Letty said.
They were still talking about the identification of Ordinary People at the Poggers meeting when Nowak broke away for a moment, then came back and said, “The G-Wagen is likely leased to the Mammuthus Corp... that’s based on its year of manufacture, color, location there in LA, that it has optional armor, and the fact that we don’t find its license plates anywhere on LA freeways or streets. That means it’s not wearing its legal plates, or possibly the plates have a reflective covering or spray that shields them from cameras.”
“Why would the LA cops allow...”
“The LA cops don’t have that information. We do.”
Mammuthus had an address in Long Beach, not far from the port, Nowak said. There was almost no information available on the business, which was registered in Delaware. Satellite and street view available to the NSA suggested that its headquarters were a single-story warehouse-style building that gave no clue as to what might be inside.
“I’m looking up Mammuthus...” Nowak said. Then: “A Mammuthus is a woolly mammoth. That’s all I have on that.”
“Whatever. We’re gonna head down there,” Letty said. “Give Barb my burner number, tell her we’ll pick her up at the airport.”
“Don’t forget you’ve got the FBI SWAT team available. They could be anywhere in the LA area in a couple hours,” Nowak said.
“Not really something I’d forget,” Letty said. To Baxter: “Let’s go. Airport.”
Of all the bellyachingBaxter had done between Washington and Los Angeles, which had amounted to a small mountain of complaints, protests, cavils, groans, whines, and remonstrations, along with his routine bitching and moaning, he reached his peak as he tried to get his truck through the traffic scrum at LAX.
“What’s wrong with these fuckin’ people? You see that guy? You see that guy? How did he get sideways? Here, he wants to go sideways? The Avis van is gonna... Get your gun out, get your gun out... Shoot the guy in the Tesla... C’mon, shoot him...”
Cartwright was standingoutside the American terminal with two bags at her feet; one was soft and obviously clothing. The other one was hard-sided and had locks that would have protected a bank. She wore a battered straw cowboy hat, a raggedy tee-shirt that said “Born Again Christian Dior” under a tan cotton jacket, black jeans with unfashionable worn spots and tears in the legs, and cross-training shoes. Her sunglasses were as dark as obsidian.
“Shoulda been there when I checked the case at San Antonio,” Cartwright said as she climbed into the backseat. “I was toldnoneof my mags were legal in California. Not a problem in Texas, of course.”
“How you been?” Letty asked.
“My cousin Ray told me my time was running out if I want to have a family,” she said. “He told me the baby alarm would go off at any minute and I better have another guy picked out.”
“Ah, jeez.”
“Yeah, no shit,” she said, looking at the back of Baxter’s head. “Who’s the large guy?”
Letty introduced Baxter, who told Cartwright that Letty had refused to kill anyone in the LAX traffic jam, and Letty told him to shut up and quit whining, because they had a lot to talk about before they got to Long Beach.
“Bet you haven’t even shot anybody yet,” Cartwright said with a grin.
Baxter jumped in again: “You’d be wrong about that. She shot a Russian killer, which means Russian killers are going to be annoyed with us. Then the FBI took her gun away, and they gave her another gun, exactly the same as the one they took away. She had to sign for it so they can get theirs back, when they return the exactly-the-same gun they took away, cutting down an entire Canadian forest for the paperwork in the identical trade. You gotta love the FBI.”
Cartwright looked at Letty, as if judging whether Baxter was joking. She decided he wasn’t. “Tell me everything,” Cartwright said.
Letty told her everything, including the compartmented top secrets, as they headed south down nearly featureless freeways to the port of Long Beach.
On the way, Baxter said, “Holy guacamole—see the yellow one? The yellow one?” He meant a car. “That’s a fuckin’ McLaren. I’ve never seen one on the street. Hell, I’ve never seen one, period, except in magazines.”
Farther down the freeway: “Rolls. Good one, I like that black-and-gray look.”
“You’re calming down a little,” Letty said. “You sound bored by the Rolls.”
