I drove back across the street and backed into a space two rows away from Letters and Whatever, with a white BMW 700-series sedan parked between the store and my Escalade. I would maintain surveillance watching my side and rearview mirrors, the Beemer obscuring my presence should Lazarus pull in.
Then I waited.
Hunting is mostly waiting. Ask any sniper. You wait and watch without moving as minutes turn to hours, with nothing to do but think. The longer I sat, the more I became convinced that C.W. Lazarus, whoever he was, not only was responsible for what had happened to my airplane, but for what had happened to Janet Bollinger as well. What links, if any, did Lazarus have to Hub Walker? Why would Walker have hired me to delve into a criminal investigation that had already been resolved if he feared there was the slightest chance he might be implicated in it? I had no answers to those questions. But I most definitely intended to find them.
Hunkered in the parking lot of a commercial shopping center with plenty of time on your hands would seem the ideal opportunity to meditate, only my thoughts were too scattered. Plus I was tired. I thought about calling Savannah for any updates on Mrs. Schmulowitz or Kiddiot — or maybe just to hear her voice — but I figured she’d call me if she had any news to share.
And so I waited.
At 7:59, a banged-up, mud-splattered red Nissan Sentra turned into the parking lot sporting a bumper sticker that read, “The Dude Abides.” The driver parked in a space directly across from Letters and Whatever, and jumped out, dragging an overstuffed backpack. She was a bespectacled brunette in her mid-twenties, all knees and elbows, with kinky, shoulder-length hair still wet from a shower. Hurriedly, she unlocked the store’s front door and flipped on the lights.
It was getting toasty inside the Escalade. I rolled down the windows. Other cars began filling the lot, luxury vehicles mostly, shoppers coming and going. None of them drove a silver 2006 Ford Ranger pickup truck with the California vanity plate, “PCAFLR.”
I waited another hour. Then I went inside.
The gangly young woman I’d seen earlier was sitting behind the cash register, engrossed in a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. She put down her book and forced a smile. There were no other customers in the store.
“Welcome to Letters and Whatever. My name is Kathy. How may I help you today?”
Well, Kathy, for one, you can dispense with the canned corporate salutation that turns you into a minimum wage automaton and sucks from you the kind of refreshing irreverence illustrated by the bumper sticker on your car.
“Can I borrow your bathroom? I had a little too much coffee this morning.”
“I’m so sorry, sir. Our restroom is reserved for paying customers.”
I plucked a ballpoint pen from a nearby pegboard display, took a dollar from my wallet, and attempted to give her the money.
“Actually, sir, that pen is $2.49.”
I slapped three bucks down on the counter.
“The restroom’s through there,” she said, pointing down a long hallway, “all the way in the back.”
The hallway was flanked by small, built-in mailboxes, their doors solid brass, each numbered. I tugged on door 1756, the box registered to Lazarus. It was locked. There was a tiny glass window built into the door. Peering into the box, I could see a few envelopes.
Kathy was restocking shelves when I came back from the restroom. I unlimbered my new $2.49 pen and wrote PCAFLR on my palm.
“Recognize this?” I said, holding up my hand in front of her.
She squinted, scrunching her face.
“Sorry, I don’t.”
“There’s a gentleman who rents a mailbox here. He drives a Ford pickup, silver. This is his license plate.” I showed her my palm again. “I’m trying to find him. It’s important.”
Kathy folded her arms defensively. “Are you the cops or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just need to talk to him a little, that’s all.”
“I’m really sorry. We’re not really allowed to give out the names of our postal tenants unless it’s to the police.”
“Do you recognize the license plate?”
Kathy shook her head no.
“What about the name, C.W. Lazarus? Do you recognize that?”
Another shake of the head.
“What time is the mail usually delivered?”
“You know, sir, I’m really, really sorry, but you’re making me really, really nervous, and I really don’t do very well with anxiety.” She walked behind the cash register, dug through her backpack, and pulled out a prescription bottle. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
She was starting to tremble.
“I’m sorry, Kathy. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I walked outside and queried neighboring merchants and shoppers to see if anyone recognized Lazarus’s license plate, or had any insights as to the man himself. My efforts proved fruitless. Most people reacted as fearfully as Kathy had when I approached them. One lady dug through her purse, hurled a ten dollar bill at me, and scuttled toward her E-class Mercedes. I wondered if maybe I still smelled a little on the skunky side.
“I’m not homeless,” I yelled after her, “but I soon may be at this rate.”
I stuck around the parking lot for much of the rest of the afternoon, hoping not to be arrested for loitering, hoping that C.W. Lazarus’s truck would magically appear, but neither the police nor the man I was tracking ever appeared.
By four P.M., my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, while my bladder reminded me of other, equally pressing needs. I went back across the street to McDonald’s.
The men’s room had no toilet stall door and no paper towels in the dispenser, neither of which deterred me from conducting essential business. I washed my hands and wiped them dry on the back of my polo shirt.
The Angus Chipotle Bacon Burger sung to me. But at 800 calories and 39 grams of fat, I couldn’t pull the trigger, especially not after inhaling two McMuffins hours earlier. I went with the Ranch Salad and an unsweetened iced tea.
“Alejandra” was printed on the name tag of the friendly crew member who took my order. I paid with the ten-spot the frightened lady had tossed at me outside Letters and Whatever. Alejandra made change and counted it back to me.
“Picaflor,” she said, smiling.
“Say again?”
She gestured to “PCAFLR” inked on my outstretched palm. “Picaflor. It means the bird who pierces the flower where I come from.”
“Picaflor. Very pretty.”
I took the tray bearing my not-so-happy meal and found a table by the window, where I could watch the strip mall parking lot across the street. I sat down and was squeezing out salad dressing when it hit me:
Picaflor. The bird who pierces the flower.
During my visit to Castle Robotics, Greg Castle and Ray Sheen had shown off a miniaturized drone their company was designing.
It was a hummingbird.
Cruising Castle Robotics’ employee parking lot proved fruitless. No Ford Rangers with PCAFLR vanity plates. There was, however, no shortage of fuel-efficient hybrids, economy-minded subcompacts and one yellow MINI Cooper convertible with a bumper sticker that declared, “Engineers solve problems you didn’t know you had in ways you can’t even understand.”
By positioning the Escalade on a side street directly across from the company’s headquarters, I could maintain eyes-on the employee parking lot and every avenue of approach. Workers began streaming out shortly before five p.m., nerdy-looking software engineers with cheap haircuts and baggy jeans. They shuffled to their cars with their heads down, noodling with their phones, oblivious to my presence.