"This is Lieutenant Moore," I said. "I was calling 916 657-8823, but that number doesn’t seem to work anymore." Three things were pulling in my favor here. First, I had reached the deputy on an internal number that he would presume wasn’t available to anybody outside the Sheriff’s Department. Second, taking a small but reasonable gamble, I had given him a wrong phone number with what I was almost certain was the correct area code and prefix, because at the time (as I noted earlier) the DMV was assigned the entire 657 prefix, making it highly likely that the number used by law enforcement would also be a 916 657-XXXX number. The deputy would notice that I had everything right except the last four digits. And third, I had elevated myself to the rank of lieutenant. People in a police department or a sheriff’s outfit think like people in the military: nobody wants to say no to somebody with bars on his shoulders.