Just returned from a few days in San Diego. On the flight over I read Mario Vargas Llosa's erotic novel In Praise of the Stepmother, nicely illustrated by Jacob Jordaens, Francois Boucher, Titian, Francis Bacon and Fernando de Szyszlo (one of the lesser recognized but certainly a key and influential Latin American abstract artist - Peruvian like the author).

On the flight back today I read Mea Cuba by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a spectacular book that documents (from the perspective of perhaps the greatest living Cuban writer) what Castro has done to Cuban artists, writers and poets, and Cuba.

I had an interesting experience on this flight back.

I had originally planned to fly back on Friday, but I finished my business early and thus changed my flights so that I departed from San Diego early this morning. So I called Moe, who is a taxi driver that I've been using for years to pick me up to and from the airport. I called him and told him that I had taken care of everything a day early, so he needed to pick me up tonight at BWI.

From San Diego I flew to Phoenix, and I was sitting there, waiting for my connecting flight to BWI, reading Mea Cuba , when this very large, cop approached me and asked me:

"Excuse me sir, are you Lenny?"

"Yes," I answered, wondering how this very large cop knew my name and why was he asking me for it.

"Can I speak to you for a minute?" he said.

"Sure," I answered getting up and walking with him, while a few dozen Baltimore-bound passengers looked at us in alarm and my mind was running several algorithms trying to figure out what was going on.

We walked a few feet away, and I looked at his name (Officer Contreras - a very large, shaved-head, imposing cop).

He was very nice and professional, and it turns out that someone in San Diego, a fellow passenger at the terminal, had overheard me talking to Moe, and somehow deduced from my conversation with my taxi driver that I was a Mafia hitman, so this alarmed citizen, as soon as the plane landed in Phoenix, went to the airport police and demanded that they investigate.

"How did you know my name and what I looked like?" I asked Officer Contreras, intrigued and impressed at the efficiency of the whole event (and after showing him some ID, which he dutifully recorded in his notebook). He explained that this concerned citizen had listened to my conversation (where I mentioned my name to Moe) and then taken a snapshot of me with his cell phone, which he had then shown the Phoenix Airport cops and demanded that they arrest me before I completed my next Mafia job in Baltimore.

Now, I sort of feel like Dan Rather with the whole "What's the frequency Kenneth?" episode.

I'm expecting black helicopers to fly over my house tonight.