AFTER RECEIVING A FRANTIC TELEPHONE CALL from Captain Queeg von Hindenburg, Corky Laputa had to undertake an unexpected journey to the farther reaches of Malibu.
The man in Malibu currently called himself Jack Trotter. Trotter owned property, carried a valid driver’s license, and paid as few taxes as possible under the name Felix Greene. Greene, alias Trotter, had once used the names Lewis Motherwell, Jason Barnes, Bobby Domino, and others.
When Jack-Felix-Lewis-Jason-Bobby had been born forty-four years ago, his proud parents had named him Norbert James Creezel. They had no doubt loved him and, being simple Iowa farm folk, could never have imagined that Norbert would grow up to be a wigged-out piece of work like Captain Queeg von Hindenburg.
Corky called him Captain Queeg because the guy exhibited the paranoia and megalomania to be found in the character of the same name in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. Von Hindenburg suited him in part because—like the German zeppelin that had taken thirty-six to their deaths in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937—he was a gasbag and, if left to his own devices, he would one day crash and burn spectacularly.
[411] On his way to Malibu, Corky stopped at a garage that he rented in Santa Monica. This was one of forty double-stall units accessed by an alleyway in an industrial area.
He held the lease on the garage under the name Moriarity and paid the monthly bill in cash.
A black Land Rover occupied the first stall. Corky owned this vehicle under the name Kurtz Ivory International, a nonexistent but well-documented corporation.
He parked the BMW beside the Land Rover, got out, put down the garage door, and switched on the lights.
Redolent of the crisp limy scent of cold concrete, the sweet-and-sour fragrance of old motor-oil stains, and the faint but still lingering astringency of insecticide from a termite fumigation that had been conducted a month ago, this drab space was, to Corky, the essence of magic and adventure. Here, like troubled Bruce Wayne in the Batcave, Corky became a dark knight, though with an agenda that might appeal more to the Joker than to Bruce in cape and tights.
In the war between Heaven and Earth, armies of rain marched across the corrugated-steel roof, raising such a battle roar that he could not have clearly heard himself singing if he’d chosen to break into “Shake Your Groove Thing.”
After switching on an electric space heater, he took off his rain hat and yellow slicker. He hung them on a wall peg.
On the left side of the garage, toward the back, four tall metal lockers were bolted to the wall. Corky opened the first of these.
Two zippered vinyl wardrobe bags hung from a rod. On a shelf above the bags, a large Tupperware container held socks, neckties, a few items of men’s inexpensive jewelry, a wristwatch, and other personal effects of a false identity. On the floor was a selection of shoes.
After pulling off his rain boots and a double layer of socks, after stripping to his underwear, Corky dressed in gray cords, a black turtleneck, black socks, and black Rockports.
The elaborate combination workbench and tool-storage cabinet at [412] the back of the ............