Malibu Burning by Goldberg Lee

Author:Goldberg, Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Present Day

Friday

Sharpe had Walker stop at Pep Boys, where he bought antifreeze, and at Leslie’s Pool Supply, where he bought “pool shock” granules to clean water, and at Ace Hardware, where he bought a PVC pipe–cutting garrote, and at Dick’s Sporting Goods, where he bought a bag of Ping-Pong balls.

Sharpe did not explain why he was doing all this shopping, so Walker didn’t announce that he was driving through McDonald’s on the way back, either. He ordered a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke, but Sharpe didn’t get anything. Walker ate his lunch while he drove, finishing it by the time they reached LASD headquarters.

They went straight to Sharpe’s office. Sharpe spread a newspaper out on his desktop and started unpacking his purchases. He tore open the bag of Ping-Pong balls first and took one out, offering it to Walker.

“I need you to hold the ball between your thumb and forefinger, like so,” Sharpe said, demonstrating by showing Walker how he held the ball himself.

“Got it.” Walker took the ball and held it as instructed. Sharpe took out the garrote, which had a looped, rubber-wrapped handle on each end, and wrapped the wire around the middle of the ball. “You want to strangle a Ping-Pong ball?”

“I want to cut the ball in half.” Sharpe began sawing the wire through the ball. “Maintain pressure, but be careful not to crush it.”

“Are we doing laundry again?”

“If you mean conducting a test to confirm a hypothesis, then yes.” The hollow ball separated. Sharpe set aside the garrote, took the two halves from Walker, and set them on the newspaper.

“What’s your hypothesis?”

Sharpe opened up the bag of pool shock. “Actually, it’s yours.”

“I don’t remember offering one.”

“You asked if a Ping-Pong ball could start a fire. The answer is yes, it can.” Sharpe took a spoon out of a nearby coffee cup and used it to measure some granules from the bag, which he carefully poured into one half of the Ping-Pong ball. “It used to be that just a vigorous game of table tennis could spark an inferno.”

Walker plucked another ball from the bag of them and examined it between his thumb and forefinger. “They seem pretty harmless to me.”

“They are now. But they used to be made out of nitrocellulose, which is highly flammable.” Sharpe opened his desk drawer and began searching through the junk for something. “Just the friction of the ball hitting the table at high speed could send a fireball at your opponent. Or the ball might burst into flame when you smacked it with your paddle.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Sharpe sorted through paper clips, business cards, nails, plastic cutlery, wire cutters, tiny screwdrivers, broken sunglasses, old mints, receipts, thumb drives, wads of Kleenex, electric wire, tweezers, and curled-up tubes of what appeared to be various ointments, creams, or toothpastes. Walker didn’t see the full labels on the tubes, though one looked like Preparation H.

“It was a serious problem,” Sharpe said, “particularly in competition play. Now the balls are made of ABS plastic, so they don’t ignite anymore.

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