The Payback. Mike Lawson

Lucy outside and stand watch. I saw an owner’s manual for a laptop, but I can’t find the laptop. I want to spend a little more time looking for it. If Norton shows up, call me.’

      DeMarco thought Lucy was a really dumb name for a German shepherd, even a female one. German shepherds should have names like Bullet, Fang, or Killer. They should have rabid doggy-slobber dripping from their fangs. Lucy, DeMarco now realized after having spent the day with her, was just a big, friendly puppy with a sensitive nose. She was an embarrassment to the breed, and the name confirmed it.

      DeMarco picked a spot to wait near the entrance to the apartment building and ten minutes later Norton drove into the adjacent garage. DeMarco immediately called Emma on the cell phone.

      ‘Stall him for five minutes,’ Emma said and hung up before DeMarco could complain.

      Goddamnit, DeMarco thought, he needed to come up with some reason for being here. Maybe he could tell Norton he’d taken a job as a dog walker.

      Norton exited the garage. He was holding a knapsack in one hand.

      DeMarco walked up to him and said, ‘Mr Norton, I need to talk to you.’

      Norton looked confused for a moment, before he recognized DeMarco. ‘I’m not talkin’ to you,’ he said.

      ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

      ‘Nope. You got any questions, you talk to Carmody.’

      Norton started to move around DeMarco, but when he did, Lucy barked. It was a scary sound and Norton stopped immediately.

      ‘If that thing bites me, I swear to God, I’ll sue your ass,’ Norton said.

      DeMarco looked down at Lucy. Now she looked like a German shepherd. Her teeth were exposed, she was straining against the leash, and her eyes were focused on Norton’s knapsack. Norton again started to walk around DeMarco but when he did the dog lunged at him and barked again, making Norton take a step back, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Jesus Christ! You call that fuckin’ thing off,’ Norton said. ‘You hear? I’m not kiddin’.’

      ‘What’s in the knapsack, Mr Norton?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘None of your business. Now call that motherfucker off.’

      ‘Norton, I bought this dog from a buddy of mine who works for the DEA. She’s trained to sniff out drugs.’

      ‘Drugs?’ Norton said. ‘I don’t have any drugs.’

      ‘Show me what’s in the knapsack. If you don’t, I’m calling the police and we’re all going to wait here until they arrive.’

      ‘I’m not showing you shit. And I’ll say it again: if that bitch bites me, I’ll sue you.’

      ‘You’ll be suing me with half your butt in a bandage,’ DeMarco said.

      Over Norton’s shoulder, DeMarco saw the door to the apartment building open and Emma exit. She made a let’s-go-gesture at DeMarco and kept walking toward where their car was parked.

      ‘All right, goddamnit,’ Norton said to DeMarco. He unzipped the knapsack and held it out so DeMarco could look inside it. There were two small bags. One contained potting soil and the other fertilizer. DeMarco had seen a couple of red plants – geraniums, he thought – on the small balcony of Norton’s apartment.

      ‘You happy now?’ Norton said.

      ‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said and walked away, practically dragging Lucy with the leash. Stupid dog. It couldn’t tell the difference between chicken shit and a bomb.

      

      ‘Fertilizer can be an explosive,’ Emma said. ‘What do you think they used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma?’

      ‘I know that,’ DeMarco said, ‘but McVeigh had a damn truckload of the stuff, not a one-pound bag.’

      Emma wasn’t listening. She was talking baby talk to Lucy. ‘You’re a good girl. Yes you are. Yes you are,’ she said. As she spoke, Emma thumped her right hand against the mutt’s thick rib cage. It sounded like she was beating on a drum, but the dog seemed to like it. Dogs are weird, DeMarco thought.

      ‘So now what?’ he said. They were back on Highway 3, heading south. Emma was driving and Lucy was once again in the backseat, her head stuck happily out the window. Lucy belonged to the Transportation Security Administration at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Emma’s pals at the DIA had arranged for her to borrow the animal, and she and DeMarco were now returning the dog to its handler.

      ‘I need to get into Carmody’s office,’ she said.

      ‘That’s gonna be tough. It’s in the middle of downtown Bremerton and there are people walking around there all the time.’

      ‘Yeah,’ Emma said, already thinking about how she was going to break in.

      ‘We’re going to get our asses arrested for sure,’ DeMarco said.

      ‘You won’t,’ Emma said. ‘I want you to go back to D.C.’

       18

      DeMarco was getting pretty damn annoyed with the United States Navy. He was now into his second hour of looking for whomever had awarded Carmody the shipyard training contract and he seemed no closer to finding this person than when he started. If he’d owned an aircraft carrier, he would have picked a fight with the navy.

      He had been told by Carmody that Carmody’s contract was administered by someone who worked at NAVSEA – the Naval Sea Systems Command. NAVSEA was located in the Washington Navy Yard in southeast D.C. The Washington Navy Yard had once been a real shipyard but the repair facilities had been closed years ago and its current function was to provide office space for navy headquarters personnel and their minions.

      It took DeMarco half an hour to get past security after which he learned that NAVSEA was a gigantic bureaucracy consisting of hundreds of people working on all aspects of navy business: weapons, ship construction, overhauls, personnel, logistics, and on and on and on. The number of cogs in this bureaucratic juggernaut was endless, and the people in the various departments seemed to know nothing other than their own function.