Chapter 19

When Fingers came down from his room after changing out of his ‘traveling clothes,’ Jim was waiting. “So, what do you do when you’re not pretending to be an active-duty SEAL?”

“I’m still on call for guys like D2, here, when something comes up,” Fingers answered.

“D2?”

“He was the second guy named Dave in the unit. So he got called D2. The other guy was ‘Dave’ for a while when D2 showed up.”

There was a longish pause. I peeked in on Jim, and he was connecting with Fingers. He was downloading a whole bunch of memories about the unit’s missions. A lot of data. You’d be amazed at how fast information can be downloaded in a few seconds.

“So, D2 ... right. So, what can you do to help him with this op?”

“I’m a private investigator in California. I do ... stuff.”

“Well, if your stuff needs a little help from the computer stuff of the modern world, let me know. Maybe I can help,” Jim said.

“I’m not THAT old, ya know.”

“Right. I’m not saying ... I’m just saying.”

David came in. “So. We’re looking for a black guy from Rhodesia working for the Fort Worth Lincoln-Mercury dealership. He’s a mechanic or something like that.”

“Don’t forget the likely link to Exxon,” Jim piped up.

“They’re not going to be advertising that,” said D2 – uhm, David.

“But we are going to check that before we wind up finalizing things,” said Fingers. “Right?”

“Oh, sure,” David agreed. But when I peeked into his mind, he was ready to ‘finalize’ the first Rhodesian mechanic he came across. The guy DID plant an incendiary bomb in our car, after all. I’m ready to pinch off a nerve or shut down his heart or something. He wasn’t on my most favorite person list. He’d be right after Abel Fortin, who is – fortunately – permanently off the list.

“What the heck are you trying to accomplish?” That was Jim, interrupting Fingers at the keyboard.

“Trying to find out where their HR files are,” said Fingers.

“Might as well get a dart board. You’re just looking at their public web site. That won’t work.”

“Okay,” he said, pushing back from the keyboard. “Suppose you show me how it’s done in the modern age.”

“Be right back,” Jim said. He went to his room to get his laptop.

’Jim,’ I said to him privately, ’be careful. S2D2 is one of our family secrets.’

He logged on to his laptop and thence to HIS browser. Not a graphics browser, more of a ‘show me what I want to see’ type thing. He put in 15 random characters with S2D2 in the middle of the string. He entered some garbage text, followed by “find HR files for Fort Worth Lincoln-Mercury dealership. Citizen of Rhodesia. Black male. Mechanic.”

’Now if S2D2 is as smart as I think she is, that should cover it,’ Jim sent to me.

’She?’

’I try and vary the pronoun. Sometimes it’s a she, sometimes a he, sometimes an it.’

’Oh, I see. That’s an interesting idea.’

’Why are we searching for the guy’s name,’ asked Alex. ’We already know his name. It’s Ugugu Nununu or something.’

’Alex, we’re pretending we don’t know it so we can keep our secret of how we found it out. Remember, that’s our family’s top secret.’ I sometimes forget that Jim’s sophisticated understanding of the world doesn’t mirror his twin’s eight-year-old simpler outlook.

The screen on Jim’s laptop displayed “searching” followed by a series of periods. I knew that S2D2 / Red could be trusted to seem to take a long time to find all the data.

A minute and a half is a long time to stare at a computer screen. “Mom, can I have one of those cinnamon rolls and a lemonade?” Jim asked. “This is taking forever.”

“Sure, but ... UGG! The sweet of the cinnamon roll and the bitter of the lemonade? Your tongue is gonna be twisted in a knot,” I answered.

Before he got back from the kitchen, S2D2 provided an answer on the display: “Found. Revised query from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Unthib Nu’ngabe, aka Uni Nunga, aka Unig Gabe. Age 41. Employed two years by FW-LM Services, a subsidiary of Fort Worth Lincoln-Mercury. Additional information available.”

Fingers shouted into the kitchen. “Jim, you got an answer. Do we want more information?”

Jim, munching on the cinnamon roll, marched over to the table. “Sure, just type ‘Get additional.’ I’d do it myself, but my hands are all sticky.”

Fingers did so, and was rewarded. The display said: “Traced Unthib Nu’ngabe to Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Last years earnings $92,503. Residence listed at 306 Avenue B, Apartment 3, Fort Worth. Additional person listed at that address: Shantal Bosman. Secondary address: Personal Storage, Unit 202, East Side Boulevard, Fort Worth. End of information.”

D2 was reading along with the others. “Ninety-two grand, huh. Pretty steep for an auto mechanic.”

“Is that a lot of money?” Jim asked. For an eight-going-on-thirty-eight year-old, he didn’t have any sense of money. We had enough to buy what we wanted and that was enough for him.

Fingers said, “For a grease jockey? Yeah. I never made that much in a year. And PI-ing pays pretty good.”

“Can you print all that out, Jim?” said D2. Jim, nodded, around his lemonade. “Great! Let’s retire to the office. We got an op to plan.”

David and Fingers got up to go to the room we called an office. It had a desk, some chairs, a couple of phones, and the electronics hub – that’s about it. Jim followed and retrieved the printout.

David took the paper, and said, “Jim, I think this is a conversation you can’t be in. Sorry.”

Jim took in the serious expressions on Fingers’ and D2’s face, and just nodded and shut the door behind him.

’Mom, can I peek in?’

’Yes, you can peek. I’m going to peek in with you, but we’re not going to tell the Dads or especially Alex. She’s not as ... uhm ... as worldly as you are. We’ll tell the Dads later.’

’I understand,’ said our eight-going-on-thirty-eight son.

There wasn’t much to hear. Fingers said, “I figure it like Bogota, but with me as bait. You got clean guns?”

“Nope. All I got are registered to us,” said David. “Well the AR15s are questionable.” Right. ‘Cause we got most of them from electrified Mexican drug dealers.

“Okay. I want two knives. A big one and a pig sticker.”

“We gotta find the X,” said D2.

“Yeah. Scouting trip? Can we take Jim? I kinda like the kid,” said Fingers.

“I’ll check with the boss.”

He came out of the office to find me talking with Alex.

“She’s just sitting in the oak tree. The dogs don’t mind and ponies don’t mind, but the guys who are supposed to be working the horses are freaking out.” That was Alex, explaining her interactions with the huge white owl that had taken up residence in the only tree that would support her bulk. Then I remembered: she doesn’t have any bulk, so she must be sitting there to build her street cred – sorta. “She’s just sitting there, looking around and blinking. So ... can I go?”

I laughed. “Yes, you can go see her. Explain to the workers that she’s here as a guard for me. She’ll never hurt any of them. She represents the Great Spirit of the Navajo tribe. I look after the tribe, and she looks after me.”

David was leaning on the door jam, listening. “Speaking of going. Fingers and I are going to take a little look around some of the addresses we got out of the computer. Just looking and 100% nothing else. I think Jim would like to go. Is it okay?”

“Sure, it’s okay. Umm ... take some sidearms, yes? In case you have to repel boarders.”

David laughed.

...

Jim was, of course, thrilled. So they packed two .45s and an eight-going-on-thirty-eight year-old into the SUV and headed out. They were going to scout out the grounds for an X – which I believed to be the site for the killing of the only loose end we knew of.

Maybe Jim didn’t know what they were doing. On second thought, of course he knew exactly what they were doing.

They headed off down the dusty drive toward the big, bad metropolis of Fort Worth, better known in Texas-ese as “Foat Wuth.”

Alex sauntered in as the posse was barely out of sight. “Bummer,” she said. “That big ol’ owl flew off just as soon as I was trying to get in touch with her.”

“WHAT?” I practically shouted at her. “Which way did Snow go?”

“Oh. Snow is her name?”

“Yes,” I tried to calm myself. “Snow is her name. Which way did she go?”

“I dunno,” Alex simply answered. “She took off, like, that way.” She pointed at the direction of the driveway out of the ranch. “But mostly she went up. I tried to follow her, but I couldn’t make contact.”

“I could never contact one of the Spirit guardians, so don’t worry about that part of it. They are ... um... ‘special creatures.’ Not real animals.”