“Chances are any shipment will already be crated before it comes out into the sunlight,” said the air force officer.

“Then get the dimensions on the box from Thailand, and anything that matches it we want tracked,” said Thorpe.

“Will do.” Winget made a note.

“We’ll end up chasing a lot of false leads, but right now we don’t have a choice. I’ll have to tell the director over dinner,” said Thorpe. “See if I can get him off alone for a minute and unload on him. We meet tomorrow. What’s my calendar look like?”

“You’ve got an opening at four o’clock,” said Zink.

“Afternoon or early morning?” said Thorpe.

Zink, who was still taking notes, held up his left hand, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, as if to play the smallest violin in the world.

“Yeah, well, if I can’t get any respect, I certainly want a little pity. Four o’clock it is. Can you make it?”

Sanchez nodded. “I’ll be here,” said Winget.

“Bring any and all information you can find. Anybody who can help, drag them along. We’ll meet daily until we get some kind of a handle on this thing.”

FIFTEEN

Snyder…?”

The name doesn’t click in my brain until he says: “My son was murdered in Washington a few weeks ago.”

“Ah…”

“I’m afraid I followed your partner over here. I’d like to talk to you,” he says.

“Sure, drag up a chair.”

“It might be best if we could talk where we have a little more privacy,” he says.

“Listen, I can go,” says Joselyn. She’s trapped in the curved booth between Harry and me.

I put my hand on her arm as she starts to slide toward me to get out. “We haven’t had lunch yet,” I tell her. “Have you had lunch, Mr. Snyder?”

“No.”

“Then please pull up a chair and join us. You already know my partner. I keep no secrets from him. And this is Joselyn Cole, our resident mystic psychic for whom my head is a glass display case. She knows all my most intimate thoughts.”

He gives Joselyn a cautious once-over. “How do you do?”

“He’s joking,” she says and gives him a simpering smile.

“You want to talk here, it’s fine with me,” says Snyder. He drops a leather portfolio on the corner of the table next to Harry and grabs a chair. He slides it over and finishes up the foursome, sitting at the outside edge of the booth.

I flash the waiter to bring us menus. We take a couple of minutes and we order lunch. As soon as the waitress leaves, I turn and look at Snyder. “So what can I do for you?”

“I may as well cut to the chase. Why waste time?” he says. “I am told that my son discussed certain legal matters with you prior to his death. I want to know what these matters regarded, what the two of you talked about.”

“Who told you this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, because the information you’ve been given isn’t accurate. The fact is, I never met your son, never talked to him, never communicated with him in any way.”

“Listen, if you’re worried about violating privileged communications we can go to your office and talk. It won’t take five minutes. Besides, any privilege died with my son. I too am a lawyer,” he says. “And even if the privilege didn’t die, I’m the executor of my son’s estate. I stand in his shoes. So what you could say to him you can now say to me.”

“It’s nothing to do with lawyer-client privilege. There’s nothing to talk about because I never had any dealings with your son.”

Snyder looks perplexed, casing me with his eyes. “Then why would they give me your name?”

“Who?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Then there’s nothing more I can tell you.”

It’s going to be a long, silent lunch. He thinks about it for a few seconds. “All right. I was interviewed a week ago by the FBI. They asked me if I knew whether my son had recently hired a lawyer. They mentioned you by name,” he says. “So if you never met Jimmie, why would they give me your name?”

“What exactly did they tell you?” I ask.

“Just what I said.”

“They gave you my name. They didn’t say anything more? No other details?”

Snyder shakes his head. “No.”

“What they didn’t tell you is that at the scene the police found my business card in your son’s wallet. That’s how the FBI had my name.”

“But you say you never met Jimmie?”

“That’s right.”

“Then how did my son get your card?”

“I don’t know. The FBI asked me the same question and I told them the same thing. I didn’t have a clue.”

Snyder thinks about this for a moment. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I mean, it’s possible somebody else gave Jimmie your card, one of his friends, on a referral. Maybe he was going to call you and never got around to it. You do criminal work?”

“Right.”

“Do you ever handle drug cases?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. I knew Jimmie never did drugs.” He seems at least relieved by this thought. “Still, he was in Washington. You’re in California. Regardless of what the problem is, I’d get somebody local. Wouldn’t you?”

I nod. What can I say without telling him everything?

Harry has a pained expression. We could just sit here and allow Snyder to wander down this posy path, coming to all the wrong conclusions, wondering if his kid was a closet addict and maybe got a flawed legal referral from some drugged-out junkie.

“The cops are horsing you around,” says Harry. “Sending you here to talk to Paul with only a fraction of the facts.”

“The FBI didn’t send me,” says Snyder.

“Oh, yes, they did.” Harry’s looking at me from under arched eyebrows, shirtsleeves rolled up, his forearms sprawled on the table. “And I think you deserve all the answers.” Harry says it to Snyder, but he’s still looking at me.

“Okay, so you think we should tell him?”

“Hell, yes. If it was anybody else, I’d say no,” says Harry. “But given the circumstances…”

“Tell me what?” says Snyder.

“There’s a tad more to the story,” says Harry.

“Do we have your word that you’ll keep what we’re about to tell you in confidence?” I ask Snyder.

“Sure.” Or at least until he can get outside, whip out his cell phone, and call the FBI to kick the crap out of them, demanding whatever they have on the man Thorpe called the Mexicutioner.

“When the police found my business card in your son’s wallet they also found some other forensic evidence. Based on that, there’s reason to believe that your son may not have been the one who put my business card in his wallet.”

“Explain,” says Snyder.

Plates arrive juggled up the waitress’s arm. Over lunch I tell Snyder about the thumbprint that the cops found on the back of my business card, the fact that the print was somewhat obvious. I tell him that, according to the police, this unidentified print matched a second unidentified print found at the scene of another murder in Southern California committed several months before his son was killed. I’m careful not to give him Afundi’s name or any of the details in the other murder. With Joselyn tuned in, it would probably take her a nanosecond to connect this earlier murder to the shoot-out in Coronado. This would only ignite her candle all over again.

Snyder asks whether any arrests were made in the earlier case or whether the police have any suspects.

“Arrests, no. Not that I know of. But they may have a lead. Call it a rumor.”

I tell him about the tidbit from Thorpe, that the Southern California murder may have been the work of someone called the Mexicutioner, aka Liquida.

“According to the FBI, the narco buzz out of Mexico is that this man is connected to the Tijuana drug cartel.”

With the mention of drugs, Snyder lifts his eyes from his plate, snaps a quick look at me, and grabs a notepad from the leather portfolio at his elbow.

“What did you say his name was? Liquida? How do you spell that?”