I was at work Friday morning when I got the call from Ripley. Jean and Carmella had not shown up for work. Jean was not answering her phone and it was not showing up on our locator app. Kidnappings becoming a weekly occurrence might seem humorous if they were not so emotionally straining. It was as if I was caught up in a pulp fiction thriller whose unimaginative author could only come up with one plot device and so it keeps repeating. (At least that author didn't try something meta.) Or maybe I was in a time loop like Groundhog's Day only, I wasn't getting any better at it.

Ripley wanted to know if we should meet at Carmella's apartment.

"I need you to make a call for me first," I told Ripley.

"Do you want me to call Agent Lee?"

"Screw the FBI they are the ones who got Jean into this. We're going to handle this ourselves. I want you to call Roger. See what he can find out about the Vietnamese gang that kidnapped Jean the first time. I'll call Agent Lee just so he knows what we are up to."

"Roger might not want to give up his sources if we bring in the police."

"Then we won't bring in the police. Also, ask Roger if he can get me the number of a Percy Sullivan. I may have some strong arm work I'd like to hire him for. I'll meet you at Carmella's. Let's leave the girls out of it until we know more," I suggested. Ripley agreed.

I then called Agent Lee and told him what we thought had happened to Jean. He agreed to put out a BOLO on Jean and Carmella. At this point, there wasn't much else he could do. We really had no evidence of foul play and legally he couldn't even get a search warrant for Carmella's place. I had no such constraints to worry about. I did not fill him in on my plans.

I found Bill Fullerton and told him I needed the rest of the day off. Seeing as how my supervisor was dead, he had no problem with that. He was glad to delay having to figure out what to do with me.

I met Ripley at Carmella's apartment. He also had gotten the day off. We got the same cooperative superintendent who had helped us before. I returned his baseball bat and Taser and paid him for the gas cartridge we'd used. I asked him where I could purchase a Taser. He told me he had gotten his on line. We again explained the dire nature of our circumstance and he again let us into Carmella's apartment. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Carmella may have taken some of her things and maybe some of Jean's, but it was hard to tell. We left and the superintendent locked it up again.

"What's our next move, Chuck?" Ripley asked.

"I'm not sure. Did you get a hold of Roger?"

"Yeah, he's getting on it right away. He seemed optimistic, about locating our Vietnamese friends. He also thinks Percy will be happy to get the extra work."

"I guess there is not much else we can do until we hear from Roger," I said resigning myself to waiting.

#

I went back to my apartment. Rogue was up and dressed. I filled her in on what was going on.

"We can't just sit around waiting. We have to do something," Rogue complained. "And why didn't you tell me about this as soon as you knew?"

"I didn't want to worry you until we knew for sure." We were both pacing randomly through the apartment as if we were looking for lost car keys. What we were looking for was our next move.

I stood in front of Rogue and took hold of her shoulders to stop our aimless movement and maybe focus her attention on something more productive. "Why don't we keep busy by analyzing the pictures I took at Simon's office, at least for now. Maybe we can find something in his calendar or address book. Anything that might give us a clue who they were working with or where they might have taken Jean."

"I'll Call Ripley and Pixie and see if they want to come over and help," Rogue offered.

They did and they brought McDonald's for lunch. They even remembered to get me the Artisan Chicken sandwich.

The tension caused by our relationship problems took a back seat to our efforts to help Jean. We dove right in examining the material even as we ate. I emailed everyone copies of everything I had captured on my phone from the crime scene. Rogue focused on the photographs. I was hoping her fresh eyes might find something I had missed. I focused on his calendar. Ripley and Pixie each took half of his address book.

Pixie was studying the address book pages on her phone and eating a French fry when she asked, "Did you notice that some of these entries in the address book just seem like random letters, numbers, and symbols?"

"Yeah, I think he must have had some sort of code he used for entries he wanted to keep private. That is probably where the stuff we really want to know is lurking," Ripley surmised.

"You are our resident codebreaker Ripley. Can you do anything with it?" I asked.

"Maybe I can. I'm thinking Ortiz was lazy like most of us so his code won't be very sophisticated. Chuck, when you have to create a safe combination how do you do it?"

"Like everyone else I pick a six-letter word I can remember and then use the numbers from the telephone dial that correspond to each letter and make that my combination."

"So, you use a substitution code that maps each letter to a number. And you use the, phone dial as your readily available look up table. My guess is Ortiz used a substitution code. We just have to find his look up table," Ripley explained. Did you see anything like that in his office? Maybe a calendar with random letters on it, or a chart like a periodic table or something?"

"Not that I remember. Rogue can you see anything on his desk in the pictures?" I asked.

"The only thing on his desk that I'm not sure of is that colorful rock on the desk. Is it a paperweight and why aren't there any papers under it?"

"It's coprolite, it's a symbolic statement of how he viewed his work at NARA."

"What is coprolite?"

"It is a polished fossilized dinosaur turd."

"I get it. He viewed his job as polishing turds." She shook her head in disgust. "The only other thing I can see on his desk is his computer."

"That's it!" Pixie exclaimed.

"You are thinking he used some letter to letter mapping readily apparent on the computer's keyboard?" Ripley surmised.

"Yes. If it were me, I would simply replace each letter with the letter that appears above or below it on the keyboard. Easy to do and nowadays, keyboards are almost as readily available as phone dials," Pixie suggested."

"A modern variation of the Caesar shift cipher," Ripley concluded.

"That explains the odd occurrences of punctuation marks."

"He could have gone left or right as well. Or even two or three keys in any direction. A lot of possibilities," Rogue pointed out.

"Let's assume Simon was lazy and only shifted by one key. On normal keyboards, the keys are staggered so there are six possibilities. The most likely are the shifts up and sideways. We'll start with those. I'll start with left d to s. Ripley, you take up to the left d to e. Pixie, you take up to the right d to r. Rogue, you take right d to f. Everyone, take some coded text from the address book and see if your shift produces anything that makes sense. If you think you have a dead end go ahead and try the lower right and left shifts."

"What do we do for keys on the perimeter?" Rogue asked.

"Try wrapping around to the other side or top to bottom."

Everyone began decoding. After about an hour, I was starting to get discouraged. Someone should have gotten something by now. When Rogue said, "Damn! I think I've got it."

"What do you mean, 'you think'?" I asked.

"I was decoding using a lower left shift. The wrap around was a little tricky and I had to make several guesses on how he did that. At first, I thought I was getting nonsense and an occasional place name, but then, I realized with the correct wrap I could make everything sort of look like words. Then, I realized they were words. But, they were all Spanish. All the coded entries I've tried so far were Spanish and encoded using an upper right shift. Now we need to translate from Spanish to English. My high school Spanish is not quite good enough. Who here is fluent in Spanish?"

"Jean knows several languages including Spanish," Pixie spoke up. "I know, not helpful," she admitted.

"You know I'm pretty sure Roger is fluent in Spanish? Want me to give him a call?" Ripley asked sheepishly.

I nodded and shrugged, "Why not?"

The rest of us worked on decoding the address book entries while Ripley called Roger to see if he would be interested in providing translation services.

What Ripley found out was that Roger already had some information for us. We set our decoding efforts aside and arranged to meet him at the McDonald's in Eastridge Mall in San Jose. Although it was almost an hour south of us, he had chosen the location for a very good reason.

#

We got down to the mall before the traffic got too bad on 101. We parked between Sears and Macys and took the entrance nearest the food court. I spotted Roger at one of the tables working on a milk shake. Percy Sullivan was with him. We joined them. I introduced the rest of our group to Percy and him to them.

"So, Roger, why are we here?" I asked.

"You wanted me to track down the Vietnamese gang that kidnapped you, didn't you? Well one of the gang hangs out here. He comes here to catch Pokémon," Roger explained.

"How did you find them so quickly?" Pixie asked.

"I know some guys who run with some of the Vietnamese gangs. I described your guys and said they might be trying to sell some stolen Ford Explorer tires that I might be interested in buying. They knew the guys and told me where I could find them. Easy peasy."

"So, what now? Are we going to stake out the entire mall?" I questioned.

"There are six of us. I thought the Scooby gang would be all over this?" Roger prodded.

At the time of its construction, Eastridge mall at nearly one point four million square feet was the largest mall west of the Mississippi. It has over one hundred and fifty stores on three levels. It is near several fairly large Asian communities and it looked like everyone there was chasing Pokémon. It's a lot of area to cover and our guy was not necessarily going to stand out. I was not overly optimistic, but at least it was something we could try.

"I am guessing Roger and Percy don't know what any of the members of the gang look like. Pixie and Ripley only got good looks at the two they took out. So, Rogue and I are the only ones who can recognize all of them," I said pointing out one major limitation.

"So, that still gives us two search parties. And safety in numbers with three in each party," Ripley pointed out.

"Okay, Rogue and Ripley should go with Percy. The three of you cover the lower level. Pixie, Roger and I will take the upper levels. Stay close to your group, keep your eyes open, and keep your phones on. If you spot one of them, don't do anything without Percy. Percy, you don't mind applying the physical constraint, do you?"

"That is what I'm here for," Percy answered. "That and my good looks," he added.

Roger took a last sip out of his shake and we all headed out.

Roger, Pixie and I worked our way to the third level which is the smallest area of the mall so we covered it rather quickly. As we were getting ready to go down to the second level, I thought I spotted Curly on the second level across the open central area of the mall. All three levels are visible across this open area but getting between levels or across to the other sides using the various bridges and stairs between walkways is like running a maze. I pointed him out to Pixie and Roger. Curly was staring at his phone so I was pretty sure he didn't see us. I called Rogue and told her to bring Ripley and Percy to the second level and we'd close in on Curly from two different directions.

By the time we got to the second level, I'd lost sight of Curly. I told Roger and Pixie to go one way around the second level and I'd go the other. Everyone was to call as soon as he was sighted.

As I navigated the obstacle course of shoppers, I tried to search both sides of the mall and inside the various stores. As I was walking past one of the unoccupied side corridors that led to the business offices, I felt a hand grab my arm and I was jerked over and pinned against the wall. I was face to face with Curly.

"Not so tough without your fancy stun guns," Curly managed to finish his threat just as Rogue stunned him in the back of neck. Percy caught him as he slumped to the floor.

"Crap!" Percy said. "I think he pissed himself."

"Yeah," Rogue smirked. "That seems to be his reaction to the stunner. I should have let Percy grab him when we first spotted you, but I begged Percy to let me use the stunner. So now that is twice I've saved your sorry keister," she reminded me.

I turned to Percy and jokingly scolded him, "Are you taking orders from her now? Don't you work for me?"

"She says she is the company's bookkeeper so she signs the checks. She who controls the purse strings is who I work for." Percy is quick with the right answer, especially when I've just asked the wrong question.

We took Curly to some benches in an isolated corner of the mall and waited for him to come to. When he did, he realized he was wet and badly out numbered. Percy alone would have probably been sufficient.

"What now? Are you taking me to the police?" he asked. "That Taser thing should be illegal," he said rubbing his neck and looking down at his wet-pants.

"Look Curly, maybe we can work out something where we don't have to bring in the police just yet," I suggested to him.

"I'm listening," Curly responded reluctantly.

"All you have to do, is tell us where Jean and Carmella are."

"What are you talking about?" Curly said genuinely puzzled.

"The girls you kidnapped last Saturday. Didn't your gang take them again this morning?"

"Are you kidding me man? We're done with those guys. They are really messed up. That bitch is crazy and her boss is one mean muther."

"What guys are you talking about?"

"The same ones you are talking about," he said giving me a puzzled look. Then I think he realized I didn't know who he was talking about and said, "The Mexican Mafia."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. I can't speak for the others, but a chill was running through me.

Curly then explained. "The Hispanic bitch told us she was Mexican Mafia. She hired us for both kidnappings. The first time we were supposed to convince you two," he indicated Rogue and I, "that we were Chinese. We were to scare you away from whatever you were investigating. She didn't tell us why.

"The second time she was trying to get information from the other girl. Information she thought the other girl would share if they were hostages together. We were supposed to take them to the same place and make it easy for them to escape just like we did with you two." He gave us a moment to digest this and then explained, "Then this dude Ortiz calls us and says he is the girl's boss. He says there has been a change of plans. He says the girl has gone off the reservation. He pays us big money to double cross the girl or else kiss our nuts goodbye. He tells us to tie them both up so they can't escape. He said he would get them after they had learned a lesson. We did as he asked and gave him the GPS coordinates of where we left them."

"Didn't it occur to you what might happen to them if no one showed up to get them?" I asked.

"He was supposed to go and collect them. Now I hear he turned up dead. Nobody was supposed to be killed. That is messed up. That is the last dealing we had with them. There is no way we are dealing with that crew again!"

"Ortiz knew Carmella was diabetic and without her insulin she would probably die before they were found. He probably knew we were closing in on her as the person who had tampered with the software and decided to get rid of her," Rogue concluded.

"That is why she killed Simon," Pixie finished Rogue's line of reasoning. "I don't really blame her. He had tried to kill her. But why is the Mexican Mafia involved in spreading spyware?"

"Diversifying?" suggested Ripley.

"This explains a lot, but it does not help us find Jean," Rogue said.

"Curly, do you have any idea where the Mexican Mafia might take someone?"

"No. And why do you keep calling me Curly?

"Sorry, what is your name?"

"You can call me Joe."

"Of course, it is!" I said. I thought, "What else could it be? Curly Joe was the name of Curly's replacement in the three stooges." To paraphrase Alanis Morissette, isn't it ironic, don't you think?

#End Chapter Twenty-three