The phone rang again.

It was Lawrence’s cell phone. Dar had forgotten that his friend was sleeping on the couch, but now he sat on one of the high stools at the counter while Lawrence answered his Flip Phone and exchanged some fast but groggy sentences—obviously with Trudy, unless the totally faithful Lawrence had suddenly found someone else to call “Honey Bunch.”

Dar put the coffee on as Lawrence sat up on the couch, moaned, growled, tried to clear his throat, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his cheeks and jowls, growled again, and went through a series of throat-clearing exercises that sounded like a 240-pound cat being strangled.

How the hell does Trudy put up with that every morning? thought Dar, not for the first time. He said, “Coffee’ll be ready in a minute. Do you want any toast or bacon? Or just cereal?”

Lawrence put on his glasses, and grinned across the wide space at Dar. “Shut the coffee off. We’ll grab some coffee and a Toad McMuffin on the way. We’ve got a case already and you’re going to love it.”

Dar glanced at his watch. It was already eight-thirty, but strangely dark in the condo with all of the blinds closed. “I’ve got a lot of work to catch up—” he began.

Lawrence was shaking his head. “Nope. This is just a few miles out…halfway to my place…and you’d hate yourself if you missed it.”

“Mmmm,” said Dar.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” said Lawrence.

“Pardon me?” Dar shut off the coffee maker.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” repeated Lawrence as he flip-flopped into Dar’s bathroom to use the facilities and take a shower before Dar did.

Dar sighed. He found the rod that opened the venetian blinds and then the cord that tugged them up. It was a beautiful, sunny San Diego summer day. Every detail on the aircraft carrier permanently berthed across the bay stood out in the crisp light. The sound of traffic was a reassuring hum. A plane roared in to Lindbergh Field, some of the passengers staring up at the overtowering buildings in pure terror while the old hands kept reading their morning papers. Dar could almost read the headlines through the starboard windows as the DC-9 passed by.

“Nunicide by chicken cannon,” he muttered. “Christ.”

They argued in the condo warehouse parking garage about who would drive. Lawrence hated ever being a passenger. Dar was tired of being one. Lawrence admitted that he had to come back into the city for more testimony. Dar pointed out the logic of leaving his Trooper in the parking area and taking the Cruiser. Lawrence sulked, finally saying that they should both drive. Dar headed for the elevator.

“Where are you going?” shouted Lawrence.

“Back to bed,” said Dar. “I don’t need this nonsense before breakfast.”

Dar drove. The unmarked San Diego police car that had been parked across the street followed them to the city line and then turned back.

It was a short distance, halfway to Escondido. Lawrence gave the address of a Saturn dealership just off the freeway. Dar knew the place.

Lawrence and Dar had shared their contempt for Saturns in the past. Both knew that they were decent value automobiles, but the image that Saturn created in their advertising of a typical Saturn owner made car lovers like Lawrence and Darwin want to throw up. “It’s Jennifer’s first car,” says the sales manager. All of the other salespeople applaud while Jennifer stands and blushes, car keys in her hand.

“Saturns were invented for people who are afraid to buy cars,” Trudy had once said. Lawrence and Trudy bought or traded for a new car about once every five months. They loved the process. “Just like Volvos are for people who hate automobiles and need to tell the world,” Lawrence had added. “College professors, professional tree huggers, liberal Democrats…they have to drive, but they’re letting us know that in their hearts they’d prefer walking or biking.”

“Maybe they buy Volvos for safety,” Dar had said, knowing it would provoke the two adjusters.

“Hah!” Trudy had cried. “A car has to be able to go fast before safety becomes much of an issue. Volvo drivers would own Sherman tanks if the government allowed them on the highway.”

“And remember that touching Saturn commercial a few years ago where all the Tennessee Saturn workers got up at three A.M. to watch the first Saturns being unloaded in Japan?” said Lawrence derisively. “All those happy Anglo, black, and Hispanic faces watching the live TV feed…such pride in America. What they didn’t show is ninety-nine percent of those cars being reloaded on vehicle containers a year later when the Japanese spurned the Saturns.”

“The Japanese like Jeeps,” said Trudy.

Dar nodded. That was true enough. “And huge old Cadillacs,” he said.

“Just the Yakuza,” Lawrence had amended.

Halfway to the Saturn dealership, Lawrence said, “So do you know what a chicken cannon is?”

“Of course,” said Dar, driving with one hand and sipping his McDonald’s coffee with the other. A typeset warning on the coffee cup said essentially that the beverage was hot and could cause injury if dumped on one’s genitals. Dar had always been of the opinion that anyone too stupid to realize that wouldn’t know how to read or drink from a cup anyway. “Of course I know what a chicken cannon is.”

Lawrence looked crestfallen. “You do? Really?”

“Sure,” said Dar. “I used to be with the National Transportation Safety Board, remember? The chicken cannon is the nickname for a gadget the FAA invented to test cockpit windshields against birdstrikes. Actually the cannon is just so much medium-bore oil pipe rigged up to a fancy air compressor. They fire birds into the cockpit composite-glass at speeds of up to six hundred miles per hour—but usually slower than that. They use dead chickens because a chicken represents a large to midsize bird in mass, a little heavier than a seagull but smaller than a flamingo or hawk.”

“Oh,” said Lawrence. “Right. Damn.”

“So how do Saturns and chicken cannon coincide?” said Dar as they took the exit to the dealership.

Lawrence sighed, obviously disappointed that Dar knew the punch line. “Well, Saturn is promoting this new so-called shatterproof windshield glass—actually it just has about thirty percent more plastic composite than the usual safety glass—and the owner of this dealership decided to borrow a chicken cannon from the Los Angeles FAA headquarters to demonstrate.”

“I didn’t know the FAA was in the business of loaning its chicken cannons out,” said Dar.

“It’s not, usually,” said Lawrence. “But the L.A. FAA guy is the Saturn dealer’s brother-in-law.”

“Oh,” said Dar. “Well, I hope they didn’t fire a dead chicken into even that new Saturn window at six hundred miles per hour.”

Lawrence shook his head and sipped his own coffee. “Naw. Just a little over two hundred miles per hour. But it was still supposed to be hot stuff. They were shooting one of Up Front Sam the Saturn Man’s commercials this morning and they used the chicken cannon and Sister Martha.”

“Oh, shit,” said Dar. Sister Martha had been a nun before leaving the convent to peddle Saturns full-time. She starred in most of Up Front Sam’s Saturn commercials. Sister Martha was about five feet tall, sixty-one years old, and looked like an apple doll with rosy cheeks and vaguely blue hair. Her favorite sales practice had been jumping up and down on a removed plastic door of a Saturn sedan, to show how they wouldn’t bend or ding. That was before Saturn went back to steel doors because in accidents, the plastic tended to burn like the smelly petroleum product it was. Now Sister Martha just kicked tires and looked lovable while advertising non-negotiably priced sedans and coupes to the haggle-challenged. Trudy had once commented while watching a Sister Martha from Up Front Sam’s commercial, “Butter wouldn’t melt in that old broad’s mouth.”