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“Yes. Let’s get inside.”
Baxter and Sovern led the way back to the motel; Cartwright leaned over to Letty and said, “Christ, he’s good-looking. He’s like a movie star.”
“Not exactly your mental image of a computer nerd,” Letty agreed. “On the other hand, neither is Able. That guy has muscles on his muscles.”
As they walkedup the steps to the motel, Letty asked Sovern, “Why wouldn’t a computer guy know about Loren Barron and Brianna? It’s been all over the TV.”
“I don’t have a TV,” Sovern said. “I’m not out on the Net very much because it’s all bullshit now. I’m not a gamer. I prefer to read.”
“It gets better and better,” Cartwright muttered to Letty. Sovern overheard that and turned to smile at her.
In the room with the boxes, Sovern took a look at the chips and said, “If all these boxes are full of those chips, they’d be worth killing for. So, what’s going on?”
They told him about their move to LA, sticking to their cover story, and how they’d tripped over the train hack, the murders of Loren Barron and Brianna Wolfe, and about the chip robbery at the warehouse. When they were done, Sovern said, “Well, that sounds like a load of horseshit. You mean you drove to LA because you couldn’t make a phone call from Florida? Don’t they have phones there? And I don’t know any Russians, or about any Russians. I was writing software.”
“We needed to get out of town,” Letty said; it sounded like a lie in her own ears. She added, “When we looked in the phone book, Ordinary People didn’t have a cell phone number.”
“All of which is totally not the point,” Baxter said. “ThereareRussians. And the Russians may be looking for you. Speaking of a load of horseshit, everybody who knows about the Russian train hack say you’re the brains behind it.”
“Name some names.”
Letty waved him off. “We’re not ratting out anyone. But think about it—if we’re not telling the truth, how’d we get here, to you? We’re trying to figure out who the Russians are.”
“That’s why we went down to the warehouse. We talked to the security guard there, but he wouldn’t give us anything, and what were we going to do, torture him?” Baxter said. “We need to get the cops on the Russians without the cops knowing who we are, because if the cops knew who we are, they might decide they’drather arrest us than some Russians. That fuckin’ hospital ransomware fuck-up is following us around like a...”
He couldn’t think of what it was following them around like, so Sovern suggested, “Fuckin’ albatross?” As he said it, he moved four chip boxes into a perfect cube and spent a few seconds getting the edges exactly straight, then stacked the fifth one precisely over the junction of the four beneath it, forming a short step pyramid.
“Yeah, exactly,” Baxter said. He nudged one of the boxes out of line.
“So... a little while ago, maybe two hours ago, before you came, there was this couple here looking at boats,” Sovern said, as he made a minute readjustment to the boxes. “Americans, friendly, the guy wanted to shake hands, but I told him I didn’t like people touching me. I got this weird feeling about them, like they were too interested in me. Like they came to look at me.”
Cartwright: “Uh-oh. Sure they were Americans?”
“If they weren’t, they lived here for a long time. I spotted them as being from LA, soon as they opened their mouths. But they were too... chatty. Made me nervous. I wanted them to go away,” Sovern said. “The other thing was, they weren’t staying at the motel, so... what were they doing out here? You can’t even see the marina from the street.”
Letty said to Cartwright: “They found him.”
“Sounds like it.” Cartwright turned back to Sovern and asked, “How long does it take to crank up the boat and get out of here?”
“Couple hours, normally. I usually go to Ralphs and stock up on food, but I didn’t fuel up the last time I came in, either. I’m not empty, but I’m close, and the fuel dock doesn’t open until tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe you could take it out and just float around? Or, you got a car?”
“I do Uber,” Sovern said.
“So take off in the boat,” Letty said. “Float away.”
“You think it’s that serious?” He looked doubtful.
“Three dead,” Letty said. “Look it up on the Net. Or call one of your Ordinary People. They know.”
“Okay. I’ll take the boat out,” Sovern said. “Can you guys stay while I get ready to go? That’ll take maybe a half hour...”
“We’ll stay,” Letty said.
Seventeen
As Sovern moved around theGreen Flash, getting ready to go, there was no place for Letty, Cartwright, and Baxter to sit, so they sat on two dock boxes at 2A, one down from Sovern’s slip.
