Catch Her If You Can by Merline Lovelace Read Free Book Online

project and gushed into the mike.
    “Talk about winning the lottery! Someone’s gonna collect big bucks on this one.”
    “Way to go, DeWayne.” Disgusted, I shook my head. “Splash it all over TV land, why don’t you?”
    I still wasn’t sure whether Noel or I could claim any portion of the reward. With all the calls and controversy, I hadn’t had the time—or the nerve—to check with headquarters about that. This stuff about war crimes and desecration of the dead weighed a lot more heavily on my mind than a closet full of new shoes.
     
    I stuck to my guns over the next few days and refused all requests for information or interviews, referring inquisitors instead to DARPA’s Public Affairs office.
    Unfortunately, I wasn’t as successful at fending off my family. One of my cousins had read about the triple decapitation/shooting/reward on an ex-con’s blog and spread the word to the rest of the clan. My brother, Don, wasted no time in calling.
    “I know this really good lawyer,” he advised.
    Don is four years older than I am and, along with my mom, has been in AA for more than a decade. After a number of abrupt career transitions, he’s now a financial advisor in Ventura, California. And we wonder how the economy ended up in the toilet!
    “I don’t need a lawyer, Don.”
    “Yeah, ya do, Sammy. This lawyer is good. Remember the twenty grand in back taxes the IRS tried to stick me with a couple years back? He got ’em to accept less than five thousand.”
    I chose not to remind him that taxes paid for roads and parks and the schools his five kids were yawning their way through.
    “Give Nowatny a call,” he urged. “He’ll get you every penny of that reward.”
    “Minus his fee, of course.”
    “Of course. Bastard hit me up for forty percent of the amount IRS knocked off.”
    “And what do you get out of this deal, Don?”
    “You’re not going to begrudge me a small referral fee, are you? That’s how things work in the real world. Got a pencil? I’ll give you Nowatny’s number.”
    The only pencil in sight was the one protruding from Pen’s lopsided bun. I didn’t reach for it, as I had no intention of contacting Lawyer Nowatny. I pretended otherwise, though, to get my bother off my back. He rattled off the number and issued a final warning.
    “Better call him or you’ll have every leech and charity case in the family coming at you with their hands out.”
    Riiiight.
     
    DESPITE the hassles and outside interruptions, my team and I managed to complete the rest of our evaluations by Friday noon as scheduled. None of the remaining items on our list demonstrated potential for military application in a desert environment. I did see real utility, though, in a neat little iPhone-type application that zeroed in on the location of the nearest public rest-room.
    Of all the items we evaluated, Snoopy had the greatest possibilities. I could envision a hundred uses for him. Assuming we could get him to function within guidelines of the Geneva Convention and not creep everyone out.
    With that goal in mind, I got over my snit at Farmer Farnsworth and finally sent him a much-edited email. In it I requested additional time to complete our evaluations. This time, I promised, we would carefully screen Snoopy’s menu and take extreme measures to avoid negative publicity. I didn’t detail those measures, mostly because I hadn’t formulated them yet, but I did win an extension from the disgruntled potato planter.
    Then I had to convince a very skeptical Dr. J to let us give Snoop another shot. That took considerably more effort. Like me, he’d spent a fair number of hours perusing the Geneva Convention. We’d both received a thorough and very nerve-wracking education. But when my team packed up Friday afternoon, Snoopy went with us instead of getting shipped home.
    Normally we convoy back to El Paso. Sergeant Cassidy drives his pickup loaded with our personal gear, Dennis the van crammed with our portable