Motor Mouth

finishing his pancakes.
    “So we’re sticking to our plan to check out the car and leave the hauler on the side of the road somewhere.”
    “Yeah, except I don’t know what to do about Gobbles. No one knows we’re involved, so we can go home and get on with our lives. Gobbles has a major problem. Gobbles’s life expectancy isn’t good. I have no idea how to fix that.”
    Hooker signaled for the check, and the waitress hustled over with it. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like another cup of coffee?” she asked Hooker.
    “No,” Hooker said. “We’re good.”
    “I hope she gets a melanoma,” I said to Hooker.
    Hooker pulled out a wad of cash and left it on the table with the check. “Let’s roll. I need clothes. We’re going to take ten minutes out to shop.”
    Miami weather is gorgeous in November, as long as there’s not a hurricane blowing through. It was shirt-sleeve, ride-with-the-top-down weather. Bright sun and no clouds.
    The top didn’t go down on the SUV, but we opened the windows and tuned the radio to salsa music. We were relatively mellow, all things considered. Beans was happy with his muffin. Hooker took off in search of a mall, and Beans stuck his head out the driver’s-side back window and his tail out the window on the opposite side of the car. His soft, floppy Saint Bernard ears flapped in the wind, and his big loose Saint Bernard lips ruffled as they caught air. Hooker drove out of Little Havana and headed southwest.
    Forty-five minutes later, Hooker had a bag of clothes. One-stop shopping for jeans, T-shirts, underwear, and socks, plus a canvas duffel bag. Life is simple when you’re a guy. We hit a drugstore and Hooker got a toothbrush, a razor, and deodorant.
    “That’s it?” I asked him. “Don’t you need shampoo, body wash, shaving gel, toothpaste?”
    “I thought I’d use yours. I’d use your razor, but it’s pink.”
    “A Texas tough guy can’t shave with a pink razor?”
    “Hell, no. I’d get kicked out of the club.”
    “What club is that?” I asked him.
    Hooker grinned at me. “I don’t know. I made that up. There isn’t any club. I’d just feel silly if I used a pink razor. I’d feel like I had to shave my legs.”
    We returned to the warehouse, I zipped myself into the borrowed jumpsuit, and I got back to work attacking those areas where I would have hidden a wire and microprocessor. I cut through the roll bar and every other piece of the frame where it could possibly run. I searched through the entire wiring harness. I disassembled the tach. NASCAR had already cut into the ignition box, so I didn’t have to check that. I pulled the engine out with the help of an engine hoist, and started going over it inch by inch with a flashlight and my bare hand, skimming the surface with my fingertips.
    “What are you looking for?” Hooker wanted to know.
    “If Huevo found a way to go wireless, he could stick the microprocessor directly onto the engine block. These things are so small, he could make it look like a casting flaw.”
    I very carefully explored two burrs in the surface. Neither proved to be anything. I found a third and eventually got it to lift off. I was pretty sure it was a chip, but it was too small to see any detail, and I’d partially mangled it trying to get it unstuck from the engine.
    “Is that it?” Hooker asked.
    “I’m not sure. It’s even smaller than I thought it would be, and it’s not in perfect shape. I need magnification to see it.” I dropped it into a plastic sandwich bag and sealed it. “If this isn’t it, then I’m stumped. I’ve looked everywhere I could think to look. I want to roll the second car out so I can check the engine for a similar chip.”
    A half hour later, I was convinced a second chip didn’t exist. I’d carefully examined every inch of the engine but hadn’t found anything.
    Hooker had his hands in his pants pockets, and he was rocked back on his heels. “Okay, Ms. Criminal Mastermind…now what?”
    “The Huevo people will take one look at the sixty-nine primary and know someone associated with racing hijacked the truck,” I told him. “I wouldn’t care about that except it now involves us in a murder. So I don’t think we can return the hauler with the car in it. My suggestion is to unload the second car and make this look like someone took the truck because they wanted to steal the cars. It could be any car thief. Or some insane Spanky fan. And that would go along with Oscar