Ark Storm (21 page)

She drained her glass. “And?”

“Yeah, nice girls. Very helpful.”

“I’ll just bet they were.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Scored the brunette’s phone number, didn’t you?”

Daniel chuckled. “Daisy, that’s her name by the way, gave me Rochelle’s phone number, Rochelle being the best friend of Elise, the lady who Daisy recalls had a problem with a drunk guy at the conference.”

“She remembers! That’s great. The conference was months back.”

“True, but it was a big deal for these girls, all those big swingers in town with their ample wallets and sense of entitlement. She remembers.”

“What about Elise?” asked Gwen, thawing. “Any leads on her?”

“Daisy says she hasn’t seen her in an age.”

“So we start with Rochelle.”

*   *   *

They stood outside, a cool breeze whispering over the ocean. Dan dialed the number.

“Hi, Rochelle, your friend Daisy gave me your name. No, that’s fine, I’m not looking for company. I just want to talk. My friend, female friend, and I just want to ask about the conference here a few months back. A friend of ours was here and, well, long story. We’ll pay for your time … no, there is no problem, at least none involving you.… Five hundred dollars? Rochelle, come on … three hundred it is, ten minutes of your time’ll do it.… We’re staying at the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carlton. Great, see you at noon tomorrow. We’ll be in the Conservatory Lounge.”

He clicked off. “Done.”

“Well done, by the sound of it. So, I guess that means we’re off duty now?” mused Gwen.

“I guess it does. There’s a jazz club inside, and if I’m lucky they’ll play something slow. Like to dance?”

51

THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, HALF MOON BAY, CALIFORNIA

Nina Simone sang “Wild Is the Wind.” Gwen stood eye to eye with Daniel. Their bodies touched, molded to each other. They swayed together, not speaking. Gwen felt as if every nerve ending were supercharged. She had that heightened sense of reality she felt after riding a huge wave. Jumping in, taking the risk, riding it with utter concentration and at the same time complete abandonment to a terrifying physical force. Beauty, danger, and thrill all mixed. There was an air of contained violence about Dan, a dark intensity she had just glimpsed. She could feel the power in his body. She wondered how it would feel to unleash both in her bed.

“Er, Dan,” she said, pulling back from him. “You’ve either got skills to die for or your phone’s vibrating.”

“Damn!” Dan hauled his cell phone from his chino pocket. He read the message, swore.

“My editor. Mack the Fuckin’ Stack,” he added, somewhat bitterly, thought Gwen. “I have to call him. Urgently, it says.”

Gwen held up her hands. “Do what you’ve got to do. I’ll just quietly self immolate here.”

He grinned. “Never heard it called that before.”

They walked out into the hallway.

Dan’s face hardened as he put in the call.

“Yeah, Mack. Hell of a time.”

Gwen watched as Dan grabbed the hotel pen, scribbled on the notepad.

“OK. I’ll do it. I’ll make sure I fly to San Diego too next private weekend I need.”

He finished the call, turned to Gwen. “I have to go. I am theoretically on call. As is my colleague Sam Sanderson. He just had the brains to fly to San Diego. So I’m the idiot in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Ooh, I don’t know,” said Gwen, snuggling closer. “Felt like a pretty right place to me.”

Dan laughed. “To me too.” He kissed her lightly. “To be continued.”

“What’s the story, anyway?” asked Gwen.

“Body’s been found. Seventeen Mile Drive.”

52

THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, HALF MOON BAY, SATURDAY

After a fractured, frustrated night with little sleep, Gwen woke late. She stretched, slipped from her king-size Egyptian-cottoned bed and wandered through to the marble bathroom. Pure luxury, everywhere she looked. She pulled on the heavy cotton-toweling robe and padded across the thick carpet to the minibar. Knocking back a bottle of pineapple and mango juice, she saw a piece of paper protruding under her door.

“Boudy, got back at four. Dirty and p’d off. Didn’t want to contaminate you. I’ll knock on your door at eleven thirty.”

*   *   *

“You’re punctual,” said Gwen as she opened her door two hours later.

“Military habits die hard.”

He looked tired, thought Gwen and weary. “Bad night?” she asked.

“A young woman, buried in a deep grave, dug up by a mountain lion then found by a hiker and his Weimaraner. And I’m tasked with grubbing round, getting the story.”

“And?”

“Nothing yet. There’ll be a press con when the cops figure out who she is. No one’s been reported missing, which means she’s one of life’s forgotten people, few or loose bonds, not missed.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Not much of a life. Worse death.”

Gwen didn’t ask more.

Dan’s cell phone trilled. He frowned at it. “Rochelle. Please don’t cancel,” he said to the ringing phone. He answered it.

“Daniel here.” His frown faded. “No. No problem. Early’s great. We’ll be right down.”

53

THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, HALF MOON BAY

“Rochelle?” asked Daniel, holding out his hand. The girl nodded, shook it tentatively. She wore skinny, faded jeans and white Converse sneakers, with a white tee. Her face was pale, un-made up. She was thin—not trendily thin, but druggie thin, underfed thin, nerve-wracked thin, one or all three, thought Gwen. Her fair hair was lank. She looked uncared for, lost. She looked about sixteen, thought Gwen with a flash of anger. She should have been at home, eating apple pie, fussed over by Mom. She offered her own hand.

“Hi, I’m Gwen.”

Rochelle took her hand, sat back down at her table, tucking her hands under her thighs.

“Would you like coffee?” asked Dan.

“What I’d really like is lunch,” Rochelle replied. “I’m kinda hungry.”

“Me too. Good idea,” said Gwen.

“And my cash. Please,” added Rochelle.

Gwen handed her three rolled hundreds under the table.

Rochelle checked them and pocketed them.

A waiter appeared and all three of them ordered burgers, fries, and Coke. When the waiter disappeared, Dan turned to Rochelle.

“Thanks for meeting us.”

She shrugged. “Three hundred dollars and lunch for a bit of talk is a no brainer.”

“So this big conference,” said Dan, “the venture capital one, back in June. You were there, right?”

“I was. Lots of the girls were. Place was full of guys with a ton of money, away from their wives, looking to party.” She spoke impassively but a film of disgust clouded her eyes.

“We heard talk that your friend Elise was with some guy who got wasted—”

Rochelle cut in. “They were all wasted, seemed like. But, yeah, she was with this drunk guy. Very drunk guy.”

“We’ve heard he said, or did something out of the ordinary, in a business context,” said Dan.

“Something about Paparuda?” prompted Gwen.

“All that shit with the weird name? Yeah. She told me bits of it.”

“Could you please tell us whatever you remember,” nudged Dan.

Rochelle pulled her hands from under her thighs and picked at her nails. She looked up. “I remember it all ’cause it was kinda crazy. Elise says she went to this guy’s room, that he seemed OK, but then he started drinking more and shouting and ordering, do this, do that, getting rough, hitting her and stuff. She wanted to get out. He wouldn’t let her. She got him talking, thought it’d maybe calm him down. She asked him what he did.” She paused as the waiter delivered their cokes. She took a long sip through the striped straw, looking suddenly like the child she was.

She looked up, flicked her glance between them.

“So Elise said he started talking rain, ’bout how he was going to make it rain. And this is the crazy bit. Sounds like one of those God freaks. He said it would soon be time to get into your ark, that he was going to
make
it rain. That he was going to make an Ark Storm, whatever the hell that is.”

Gwen held her breath, let it out silently. “
Make
an ARk Storm?”

“Yeah. And that she’d better believe him and get the hell out of California ’cause it was going to rain like hell. And that
he
was going to make it rain.” She looked up as their food arrived.

“And that’s it. She must’ve believed him ’cause she did just that. After she told me all this crap, she just upped and left. No one’s heard diddly squat from her.”

“Did she tell you his name, assuming he told her that is,” asked Gwen, heart pounding.

“Men often give the wrong name,” snorted Rochelle. “They don’t want a whore finding out who they are, stalking them. But he did give her a name, for what it’s worth; Haas, Hans, some foreign shit like that.”

“
Hans?”
queried Gwen and Dan in unison. Dan glanced at Gwen but she shrugged. “Did she tell you what he looked like, this Haas/Hans?” Gwen asked Rochelle.

The girl shook her head. “Just that he had these intense, kinda crazy eyes.”

“Nothing else?” asked Dan.

Rochelle shook her head. “Na. Just that he was crazy and scared the shit out of her.”

“So how’d she get away?”

“When he went to the can, she ran for the door, got out, ran down the corridor. He chased her, she was shouting, then this guy came out of his room, stopped the crazy one. They musta known one another, Elise reckoned. Anyway, she got her chance. She bolted. The nice guy came after her, bought her a coffee, comforted her. I think she told him what she told me. She said he was sweet, was a good listener. That’s all I know. End of story. She got out. She was lucky, I reckon.”

54

THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, HALF MOON BAY

Gwen and Dan sat huddled at their table after Rochelle had left. They stayed silent as the waiter cleared the detritus of lunch. Background Muzak tinkled.

“Who the hell is
Haas or Hans?”
Gwen asked herself aloud. “I don’t know anybody going by either name.”

“Haas could be a fake name,” hazarded Dan. “Just as Rochelle suggested. Or Hans could be a real, and incidentally, a German name.”

“Intense, crazy eyes. That description could fit Messenger all right,” said Gwen. “Maybe Hans is his middle name.”

“That’s easy to find out. I’ll get onto it in a bit.”

Dan braced his elbows on the table and leaned across to Gwen. “Let’s assume, in the absence of any other ideas, that it
is
Messenger. The thing that’s really freaking me out is the suggestion you can
make
an ARk Storm!”

Gwen lowered her voice, even though no one was near.

“If the ionizers were correctly positioned and programmed, if there were enough of them and they were all sent up on drones, and a big enough atmospheric river storm roars in, then I’d have to say, yes. It is theoretically possible you could make an ARk Storm. The ARk Storm 1000. Clearly someone, and we have to assume it was Messenger, believes that they
can
do it.
Intends
to do it. And here’s the thing,” added Gwen. “Monday, Messenger comes to me, gives me a laptop with the Paparuda model loaded onto it, asks me to play with the model, see if I can get it to yield more rain.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah, shit. It is quite possible that I have helped him.”

“But why? Why the hell would someone want to make an ARk Storm?” Dan peered intently at Gwen, seeking the answer in her eyes.

“Three reasons. Because he’s crazy, because he can, and to make money.”

“How d’you make money out of this? Riley said an Ark Storm could cost the state of California a trillion dollars.”

“Exactly. He’d short the companies that insure property against severe weather events like this. Even better, he’d buy put options. And he’d go long on wheat, orange juice, all that kind of thing.”

“And I thought I’d seen evil,” mused Dan, eyes looking away.

“Comes in many guises,” said Gwen.

Dan looked back to her. “You’re very well informed, on the financial front.”

“We discussed it at the Lab. One of the traders has it all planned out, with Messenger’s backing. How to make money out of my prediction of an ARk Storm.”

“And scores of people would die, hundreds of thousands would lose their homes, harvests’d be washed away.…”

“Yeah, but Messenger would make out like a bandit.”

“There must be easier ways to make money, legally and illegally,” said Dan, frowning. “There’s something we’re not getting here.”

“The mania of the scientist testing his invention?” suggested Gwen.

“Have to be one hell of a mania.”

“Evil, then.”

“Messenger strike you as a psychopath?”

Gwen fell silent. “He’s an extreme person. He seems to live on the edge—fast cars, fast bikes. He likes playing head games. He seems to be holding himself in so tight, like he’s afraid of his shadow.” Gwen shrugged. “Does that make him a psychopath?”

“Not that, but the hidden stuff could. They’re not easy to spot. They wouldn’t have a head count if they were.”

Gwen’s mouth felt dry. She drained her Coke. “No, I guess not.”

“And, if he thought someone, say Al Freidland, had heard about his plans, from Elise, say, and was threatening to blow the whistle on him,” suggested Dan. “That would be ample motive for murder, especially if he’s ready to fill the morgues just to line his bank accounts.”

“Ample motive for murder,” agreed Gwen. “Add to that, with Freidland dead, he gets sole charge of Zeus. Gabriel Messenger gets to play God.”

55

THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, NYC, MONDAY, NOON

Ange Wilkie was prowling down Liberty Street, hunting lunch, when her cell phone rang. She groaned, saw Lucy Chen’s name displayed, and smiled. She took the call.

“Lucy! What’s up?”

“Old Chinese proverb I want to share with you,” purred the voice, sounding ever more like the cat who got the cream.