Telegraph Hill (10 page)

“Poon, what a great word.”

Silence. Moon looked more relaxed, but she still
dodged the question of where Tania was living.

“Where did you last see Tania?”

“Here. She and I shared an apartment together
during…”she stopped. “Before she disappeared.”

Her face quivered, and her left hand whispered
against her cheek.

“During what?” Ray asked.

Moon said nothing.

“You were lovers.” He said it quietly, not asking
a question.

Her eyelids flickered slightly wider for a split
second, then pulled down quickly, like shade in a private room. “For a time.”

“Did you work with Tania at all during your
therapy sessions?”

“Occasionally.”

“Is that how you both first met?”

Moon nodded. “A client called, and asked for two
Asian girls. Big deal, right? That's the most common request. The guy was a
dotcom businessman. He owned some computer company in San Jose. Nice man. Lots
of money and no one to share it. He rented a suite on the top floor of the Mark
Hopkins. That was the first time I met Tania. I was nervous. She knew I was new
to the business. She helped me, took care of me.”

Ray resisted the urge to develop this scenario
further.

“How often did you work together?”

“Every week after that first meeting. The guy
talked about us with his friends, and we got a lot of calls. They wanted us
together.”

“And you were comfortable with her by this time?”
said Ray.

“Very much. She looked after me.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

“A while," said Moon. Her eyes were lanterns
shining through half-closed shields.

“Any clients take a special interest in her?”

“They all did,” said Moon. “Unlike most girls, she
put her heart in it. She does that with everything.”

“Anyone that you remember having some hesitation
about?”

“No.”

“She ever threatened by anyone? Anyone she worried
about?”

Moon thought for a moment. “One guy. Not a
client.”

She went on to explain that, for a time, Tania
resisted working long hours, and was content to be a highly paid escort who saw
clients only when she desired. Her mood abruptly changed one winter afternoon.

“She was having trouble with a boyfriend. Very
jealous guy.” Moon picked up a towel and began scrubbing the massage table.

“Remember his name?”

“Steven.”

“Last name?”

“He was Irish,” said Moon, scrunching her brow.
“Moore? Moran? I don’t remember.”

Ray took it in, showing nothing.

“You said he was jealous. How so?”

“He did not like her in the life. The strange men,
the money. She was mixing with some rich people. I think he thought that she
was out of his league. But that stuff never got to her. Deep down, she’s a
nerd; she carried around this book of poetry and read it between appointments.
She was always reading.”

“Did he know about you two?”

“Yes. He didn’t like me,” said Moon. She shifted
in the chair. “He resented our friendship.”

“Did Steven ever get violent with her?”

“There was some weird stuff one night. I remember
that he came over one night after Tania and me got off work and had dinner
together.”

In his mind, Ray pictured the two of them,
commuting home and washing the day’s juices and dust off of each other. The
world was not always deep, but it was wide.

After dinner at a Thai restaurant, Moon and Tania
had returned home to find Steven waiting by the front door. He was highly
flammable, vapors of rock-gut wine wafting from his pores. He shouted angrily
at Tania, who drew him into the confines of her bedroom. His loud shouting had
continued for several minutes. He emerged fifteen minutes later, his bile
neutralized by Tania’s twilight softness. He left wordlessly.

“Steven faded out of the picture. I never saw him
again after that night,” said Moon

“What else did she say about breaking up with him?
Was she involved with anyone else?” asked Ray.

“No.”

“What about her interests?” Ray asked. “Dancing,
clubs, yoga?”

“She was into yoga, sure. Everyone in the Bay Area
does yoga.” She shrugged.

“What clubs did she go to?”

“Nightclubs? She doesn’t go out much. She is not a
drinker.”

Present tense again. He continued to admire Moon’s
cool beauty, so different than the Mediterranean firebrands he usually dated.

“When did you last speak with her?”

“Like I said, it’s been over a year.”

He looked at her face. Her brow angled low and
heavy, a squall was building. The eyes just a bit tense. He was pleased—she was
sensitive about this topic of her contacts. He’d gouge her a bit more.

“Moon, I appreciate you talking with me. I hope
she is OK. Do you think you might in the fullness of time tell me where she
is?”

“I don’t know where she is.” She fired a sharp
smile at him.

“If you find she’s in trouble, would you call me?
Or tell her I can help.”

Moon shook her head yes, slightly.

“Well, thanks for talking,” he said. Moon looked
unperturbed, yielding in defense; she was not even in the room anymore. She
bent over to pick up a towel.

Looking up, Ray noticed on the mantel a photograph
tucked into a frosted glass frame. The photo showed two Asian women, Moon’s raw
beauty dominating, Tania’s lush sensuality revealing itself more gradually.
Both women huddled together, windblown against a backdrop of lilac-blue sky and
a smudge of golden sand. A long stretch of beach curled to the right. Orange
yellow light streamed over the water.

Ray peered at the photo. “Ocean Beach or Baker?”

Moon glanced at the picture and moved to the door.
“Baker,” she said finally.

“If I need to talk again, how can I reach you?”

“You can find me here.”

She jotted down a cell number on the back of a
magazine, tore off the scrap and handed it to him. “OK, big handsome man,” she
said, “You come back to see me.”

Ray walked down the hall to a rear exit and left
the house. He felt relaxed. He strode through a path lined with reed grass and
cone flowers and headed over to his car. He drove back to the hotel. The
Victorians of the Haight slid by in hues of mauve, gold, aquamarine, vermilion.

Ray was pleased, especially by Moon’s final
comment. She had lied, but the picture was worth the thousand words she left
unsaid. It often worked that way, sifting through a heap of crap until a cut
diamond hit you in the forehead.

A steep cliff rose in the background of the photo
on Moon’s mantel. The sheer sandy wall reminded Ray instantly of Drakes Beach
in Marin, a beach he knew well. Beach lore was a particular favorite of his. So
Moon and Tania had once visited Drakes Beach in Marin County. But Moon had
tried to hide that fact by agreeing to his suggestion that the photo had been
taken at Baker Beach. The cliff at Baker was not as sheer, and the topography
looked different: drifts of ice plant lined the cliffs below twisted eucalyptus
trees. But why was Moon hiding the fact that she had been to Drakes Beach once
with Tania? He thought about it, pictured her slight anger over his presumption
that she was still in touch with Tania. Perhaps Tania was presently to be found
near Drakes. Right now. And Moon knew exactly where she was.

He pulled into the garage. After he arrived back
at the hotel, he sat down to his computer and researched businesses near Drakes
Beach.

Drakes Beach ran along an estuary inside Point
Reyes National Seashore. The seashore hosted California’s richest assortment of
wildlife: coyote, bobcat, and elk were plentiful while sea lions and whales
churned the ocean.

Drawn to the tremendous natural beauty, communes
had sprung up in the hills near the town of Inverness. Some were headed by
devout leaders steeped in ancient Eastern traditions; others were wacky
California medicine shows that worshipped a Volvo-driving guru with dirty feet
and a past crime spree in Florida. There were also numerous resorts catering to
high-end tourists from the city. On Friday nights, fresh from their downtown
offices, middle-aged corporate men arrived, comfortable in their chinoed
chunkiness, recuperating for next Monday’s pillage. The women, sleek and
knife-haired, commanded the days behind their sunglasses, wildly overpaying for
everything.

There were many resorts to check, but Ray didn’t
think Tania was the resort type. No, the communes seemed more promising. Like
the resorts, they peppered the hills, and some were not open to the public at
all. She could also be hanging out in one of the innumerable little cottages in
the hills. He decided to let technology narrow the odds.

Chapter 18

In America, billions of electronic information
bits were packaged for sale. Email addresses. Unpublished telephone numbers.
Credit histories. A man’s social security number, his wife’s maiden name.
Buyers abounded, both innocuous and sinister. A small industry had arisen to
meet the demand, merchants of the information age, ensconced in anonymous
office parks in leafy suburbs, or sequestered in decrepit buildings not quite
downtown. The properties were occupied by doctors with licensing issues,
lawyers with degrees from offshore diploma mills. Offices doubled as
apartments, and sported doors with heavy bolts, phones answered by secretaries
with cold sores that never healed. Privacy laws supposedly governed the sale of
such data, but raw greed often prevailed over the niceties of federal law. In
just a few years, millions of fictitious electronic golems were created, built
with parts from real people—a birth date here, an address in Flagstaff,
Arizona. The electronic people borrowed and spent, used credit cards. But they
never actually paid a cent. In just a few years, they gummed up the world’s
commerce to such a degree that the financial powers gazed in worried awe at the
digital morass they created, trying to keep the lid on an invisible crime spree
of unprecedented proportions.

Shavonne Rabb ran her information brokerage
business from a little office located inside a florist shop on Broad Street in
Newark, New Jersey. She was not looking for walk-in traffic, and the locale
suited her. Ray had used her successfully in the past on a few cases. She was
one of the few brokers who restricted sales of personal data to the legal
profession. She was sharp, discrete, quick to respond. Her voice was so
soothing Ray sometimes felt like calling her just to listen to her purr.
Shavonne told Ray that, with some luck, she could discover Moon Lee’s cell
phone and try a ruse to get her to reveal Tania’s address. He asked her to get
back to him within twenty-four hours.

Ray called Dominique at her office. He felt like
more than business might be resolved over the next few days. After not seeing
her for a few years, they were back in the routine now, seeing every other each
night for dinner. It was as if they never stopped seeing each other.

“I have something for you,” she said. “I got it
from someone at the Bureau. For review only. No copies, if you don’t mind—just
read it and give it back to me. It provides some interesting background on the
prostitution scene here in San Francisco.” She paused. “There’s a heavy Chinese
criminal element involved. These are some seriously deadly people.”

“I like serious people. You can reason with them.”

“My concern was the deadly part. I talked to the
agent about the dominant group here, the Black Fist. They have set up a drug
and counterfeiting bazaar outside Naples. Working closely with the Syndicate,
the Camorra. They operate factories that import huge amounts of fabric and
material from China. Everything gets labeled—or relabeled— “Made in Italy” in
these huge anonymous buildings north of Naples. Just acres of trash-strewn
concrete. The drugs run on the same trucks as the gray market clothing.

“The Black Fist Triad has become extremely
wealthy. They dominate human trafficking—prostitutes, low cost laborers,
household staff for wealthy Chinese. Very dangerous people,” she said.

“Come by later and we’ll talk,” Ray said. “I’d
like to see the report.”

“What about me?”

“Of course you. Especially you.”

They said goodbye.

Chapter 19

The cell rang. Ray stopped his pushups and hopped
to the desk to pick it up.

“Ray, its Rick Perry. We’ve been on the subject
all day. At Pier 39 now. He’s leafletting. He’s like a wart out there, people
just move around him. With a few exceptions.”

“Try to get a copy of whatever literature he’s
handing out.”

“Will do.”

“Anyone with him?” asked Ray.

“Couple of guys. Two white guys, pale, sort of
goofy-looking. Classic skinhead look. Cherry has longer hair.”

“The master race. Looks like this race is run.”

Richard laughed.

“Let’s run plate numbers on all of them,” said
Ray. “Are they all together?”

“More or less. They’re talking occasionally.
Cherry’s in the middle of the boardwalk trying to chat up the foot traffic. The
other two guys are hanging out nearby along a fence. One of them is throwing
rocks at the sea lions. Asshole. You wonder how such a sorry-ass bunch of scabs
could ever call themselves masters of anything.”

Perry paused. “We had him on a different routine
yesterday. He walked up Powell Street to North Beach. Near Filbert, I think it
was, I’ll have to check later. He stopped for a minute looking at an apartment
building across the street.”

Ray felt a chill. “What number?”

“1856 Powell, it’s—”

“You sure?” Ray interjected.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the building like?”

“Three story. Mediterranean. Tile roof, lots of
detail. Cherry stood across the street. Looked around for a few minutes. Could
have been the building next to it but I don’t think so. He was squared up. I’ll
find out who lives there, check the names on the mailbox.”

“I know the building,” Ray said. “That’s my old
apartment.”

“No shit. I didn’t know.”

“What did he do after?”

“He walked over to Columbus and picked up the
number 15 bus. He got off as usual at Market and headed to BART.”

“Good. Good. Let’s keep an eye on him on Oakland.
I want an undercover in the group.”

“We can manage that. It’ll take some time; we have
to figure out when they meet.”

“Approach him at the pier—that’s why the asswipe
is out there, right? New recruits. Let’s provide them with a recruit.”

“OK, I’ll get on it.”

Ray hung up, walked to the bed, and lay down. He
pictured the corner apartment on Powell Street, gleaming white in the western
sun. The frantic activity there, the groaning bus snaking right and then left on
Columbus, kids playing hoops, the thump of a soccer ball on the asphalt. Cherry
leering at the carnage.

Everything blown into a million small pieces, dust
filling the air on a sunlit afternoon. He would make Cherry tell him about the
splinters, the cause of the dust, who was dancing because of the dust. Even if
it meant pile-driving Cherry’s face into concrete.