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“Yeah. Virtue signaling. Not only virtue signaling, the Tesla drivers can pretend that they’re actually rich enough to drive a Bentley, but they choose not to, because of the whales.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Letty asked.
“Nothing at all,” Baxter conceded. “Just that they’re kinda shitty cars. I’m amazed at all the high-end stuff I’m seeing. I know, movie stars, the industry, and all that, but still... I’ve seen cars here that I’ve never seen in real life, and I’m a car guy. I go to car shows.”
Nothing was happening at Loren Barron’s house. After a while, Letty said, “You know about black people buying Cadillacs back in the fifties and sixties, right?”
“I don’t think I do,” Baxter said.
“I got this in an economic history class,” Letty said. “Back then, there was a substantial number of black people who had good jobs, making good money—doctors, lawyers—but they weren’t allowed to live in white neighborhoods. They were pushed into ghettoes, where the housing was crappy. And cheap. Since they couldn’t spend the money on housing, they bought high-end cars, Cadillacs and big Buicks. I think the same thing might be happening here, to everybody, not just black people. Los Angeles housing is so expensive that you have people making a lot of money, but they still can’t afford a house. So, they drive around in big expensive cars, and go home to their little houses.”
Baxter said, “Huh. Remind me not to move here. Fires, mudslides, earthquakes, high rents, five-dollar gas. Hey, see that black Tesla, right there? That thing’s uglier than my ass.”
Letty: “Mmm, no.”
They’d watched for an hourbefore they got movement at Barron’s place. A silver Subaru pulled onto the concrete pad and a man got out, walked around to the gate and apparently pushed on a doorbell. A moment later, somebody from the inside let him through.
Fifteen minutes later, a second car arrived, another Subaru, agreen one, with a man and a woman. They carried what looked like brown paper grocery sacks, pushed the doorbell, and were let inside.
“We need to get some tag numbers before they leave,” Letty said.
“Yup. Punch up SlapBack again.”
Letty went to SlapBack on the iPad, and it was online. “Nothing yet.”
“Another car,” Baxter said. A man got out of the third car, carrying what looked like two six-packs of something, but they couldn’t see what. “Looks like a party.”
Two hours passed, and nobody else showed up. Baxter had taken the iPad into the backseat, and was playing solitaire, checking every few minutes on SlapBack. And then:
“Whoa. SlapBack is gone,” he said.
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s gone, man. They took it down.”
“Let’s get some license plate numbers before the party breaks up,” Letty said. Baxter walked around to the driver’s seat, Letty got the camera out of the bag, dropped her window, and shot the tags on the three new cars as Baxter rolled them past the house. She chimped the images and the numbers were clear enough, all California plates.
“This was good, we’re piling up names,” Letty said. “See if we can get back in the same parking space.”
Baxter did a U-turn, and then another, pulling into the same spot they’d left. He put the iPad into the dashboard rack and went to SlapBack again, but the site had disappeared.
“Okay, it’s down,” Baxter said. “I don’t think we tell anyone about this.”
“Delores Nowak will know,” Letty said.
“She’ll know, but she won’tknow, and nobody will make the mistake of asking if she knows,” Baxter said. “That happens a lot at the NSA.”
As he spoke, the couple who’d brought grocery sacks came out through the gate, closed it behind themselves, got into their car, and turned south. Another ten minutes, and the first- and third-arriving men came through the gate, closed it behind themselves, stood talking between their cars for a moment, laughed together, slapped hands, then drove away.
A half hour later, as they were talking about leaving their surveillance spot, a dark blue SUV went past, its brake lights winking on as it approached Barron’s house, then continued down the street and turned a corner. Three or four minutes later, it passed them again, and Letty said, “Is that the same SUV? Look at the SUV. It’s cruising them.”
“Don’t know,” Baxter said. “If it’s the feds, because of SlapBack, they broke through in a hurry.”
“Doesn’t feel like the feds,” Letty said, as the truck turned at the corner again and disappeared.
Five minutes later, it was back. This time, though, the SUV went to the curb twenty or thirty feet short of Barron’s driveway. Two men got out of the backseat: they were of average height, wearing ball caps, sunglasses, jeans, and light jackets. They walked like athletes, and had their right hands in their jacket pockets.
“They’ve got guns,” Letty said. The two walked up to the gate, looked both ways, and then one of the men boosted himself up on the gate, dropped over, and apparently opened the gate for the other man, who stepped inside.
