Telegraph Hill (13 page)

“A lot of things have happened. And now you, out
of the sky.” Tania put her left hand over her eyes. “I need to think. Need
time.”

Some witnesses could be maddeningly evasive, he
knew, especially Asian witnesses. They wouldn’t argue or fight; they’d just
wait you out, turn the conversation into something slippery and angular. He
admired the tactic. Just as water eventually ruts stone, they won in the end.

“What would you like to do?” Ray asked.

“I need time. I have some decisions to make.
Please don’t tell the lawyer you found me. Not yet.”

She had locked in on his dilemma. His task was
accomplished, it was over, should he define it as he ought. He should call
Lucas now, and inform him of her location. Await further instructions. That was
what he had been hired to do. But he needed to find out more. There was an
undercurrent of fear running through this woman. That was unexpected. He
worried that she might flee. But he could take precautions.

“I can’t agree to not tell my client.”

“Why?” Tania asked.

“He paid me to find you. It’s not ethical to keep
it from him.”

“Well, I won’t be able to be meeting anyone yet.”
She looked away, her mouth knotted, eyes bright.

“It’s your decision about whether you want to
contact him. He knows that.”

“Will you at least agree to hold off until
morning?” Tania asked.

“I’m open to that possibility if you agree to meet
again early tomorrow,” said Ray.

She put her hands together like she was praying.
“OK.”

“We‘ll talk more in the morning.” He stared at
her, tried to get some glimmer into her mindset. But she averted her face.

“Thank you.” Tania got up abruptly and led Ray to
a faded red door leading out of the courtyard. She opened the door, and stepped
into the receiving room where he had been earlier. The jasmine incense wafted
through the doorway. Tania said a faint goodbye, turned, and headed back out
the red door. Ray watched her go, her thin frame graceful but flickery; she
looked like a cornered animal, backed into an alley and ready to lash out in a
desperate and unexpected way.

Euriko stood with feet apart, watching Ray. “So
you were not really interested in yoga after all.” Her face looked gray now.

“Actually I am,” he said. “I really do like your
studio.” Offering only a remnant of goodwill, Euriko showed him to the door. He
felt like he had disappointed a minor deity.

“I’ll be meeting with Tania tomorrow.”

“That’s fine.” Euriko forced a quick smile. The
door shut and Ray walked back to his car.

He slowly drove off beneath the canopy of firs and
pine, and headed toward the main road. After driving down the road for a
quarter mile, he turned off into a dense stand of pines. He pulled close to a
clump of branches so that his car was obscured from the road. Then he sat back
in his seat and watched the road to the Ashtanga Center.

Chapter 23

Ray suspected that Tania might try to sneak away
from the center during the night. She was petrified, clearly under duress.
Surveillance would be necessary. There would be the usual problems. If a car
drove down from the hill at night, identifying the occupants would be
difficult. She could scramble through the woods at midnight—the place teemed
with insects, snakes, even cougars—and try to reach one of the hiking trails
that ran near the property. He had to put someone on the hillside, humping the
bushes.

By 7:40 PM, the sun dropped its scarlet robes and
faded into a gray Pacific slumber. A wind blew in from the ocean. Birdsongs
whistled from the pines and then fell silent. He waited beneath the trees,
vigilant, relaxed. After a few minutes, he called Richard Perry; yes, Perry
could send four guys out there immediately. Ray told him he had a special
assignment: he needed at least one guy with some woodcraft, keeping track of
some walking trails at night. Richard said that his crew could handle the job
with no problem—four men would be at his disposal within two hours.

As night deepened, Ray heard several cars
approaching. The surveillance team arrived: three cars slithered into the pines
and parked near Ray’s vehicle. He put his parking lights on to illuminate the
clearing. In the gloom, Ray watched the men assemble, dressed in jeans and
sneakers. They were fleshy, sardonic, always looking for a joke. A
pie-in-the-face type of crew. Three looked alert and sharp-eyed. One looked
slack and heavyset, and spoke in an overly familiar way. Ray decided
immediately that he didn’t want that clod crawling through the underbrush. He
decided to place two of the three aces—Joe Ronaldino and Art Hulme—on the
hillside trails. They had specialized in stakeouts throughout rural San Diego
County while working for the DEA, and were equipped with night vision goggles.
All had two-way radios, and could be in touch with anyone of the others at a
moment’s notice. Ray reached into his file and passed around the photos of
Tania. The men began to get ready to hike up the hill.

“Don’t let the bears scare you,” said Ray.

“That's what this is for,” Ronaldino said, pulling
out a Desert Eagle semiautomatic pistol.

“Overkill! You could down a rhino with that
fucking thing.”

He directed the two other operatives to fan out at
various points at either side of the road so that both directions would be
covered.

Fog rolled over the ridge, nestling in the valleys
and muffling sound under a thick grayness. Ray sat in the car past midnight and
watched the dark road. They exchanged a few calls every hour—no one had left
the center.

A sunless morning arrived. His legs were cramped
and his muscles urged him outside. He directed a refreshing piss into the pine
needles. Everyone would be hungry. He drove to a small roadside store and
picked up some pastries, muffins and coffee. Back at the pine knoll, he called
and had each investigator walk down alone. They sipped coffee and made small
talk among the pines.

Ray spoke to Hulme, who did some ursine grunting
as he stretched his shoulder muscles. “Let’s keep this going up on the
hillside, at least until noon. I should know by then if we continue.”

“All right. How about the other three?”

“They can go. I’m going up there soon, and between
the two of us, we should be able to track her if she makes a run.”

Ray was jumpy now, amped up with sugar and
distorted hours. After a few minutes, engines rumbled to life and the other
three operatives headed back to San Francisco. Hulme walked across the street
and headed toward the walking trail. He disappeared into the woods.

Ray sat in the car, watching a hawk spiral above
the highlands. A subtle symphony of morning sounds, bird cries, fluttering
wings, rose from the meadows. Remarkable after being in the city where the
buses roared, horns honked, voices chattered—all that modern buzz missing amid
the green of Tomales Bay.

Ray washed up as best he could with bottled water
and some paper towels. Just after 9:00 AM, he heard the sound of a chugging
motor. A car drove up the highway. Within moments a gray Honda roared by and
slowed as it prepared to turn into the Ashtanga driveway. Inside the car, Ray
saw long black hair framing a familiar, well-formed profile. He smiled.

Moon disappeared up the driveway, her car
swallowed by the fog.

Ray paused. He heard another car coming. A black
Mercedes raced along the road. Tinted windows, custom wheels of glittery
platinum. The car slowed and prepared to turn left into the Ashtanga roadway.

Through the front windshield, Ray could dimly see
the interior of the car. It bristled with men, shoulders jammed tight together.
The car shot up the hill. A warning went off in his reptilian brain—these men
weren’t here for the morning yoga class.

Ray started his car and tapped his fingers
absently on his shoulder holster. The reassurance of the Beretta semiautomatic.
He aimed the car across the highway and raced up the road to the center. The
car shuddered as he took a sharp right halfway up the hill.

He grabbed his phone and hit the direct connect to
Hulme: “We got visitors. The girl in the Honda I know, the Mercedes looks like
trouble.”

Hulme came back, heavy static—“Hear you, Ray! I’m
above the center now.”

“Where?”

“Straight ahead, just above the path. Before you
turn right into the lot.”

Up ahead, the Ashtanga Center lay shrouded in the
early morning silence of the mountain. Everything looked damply green, except
the two cars on the unpaved lot, which looked alien and unwelcome. The Mercedes
had stopped at an odd angle. He saw Moon standing on the front landing. She
stood with one hand on the door knob, looking back hesitatingly at some unheard
command issuing from the Mercedes. She paused, fear drawing her face in; she
started to back away. The Mercedes vomited several Asian men in dark clothes.
Two men moved quickly to the porch. One gesticulated harshly and pulled out a
pistol.

The men looked over as Ray’s car advanced up the
street. They reached for jacket pockets. One man wore a slightly mad grin.

Ray felt his nerves spark with an adrenal rush,
elemental colors emerging from grays, sounds shedding their mufflers. He drove
towards the building, quickly preparing for a private little war in the hills.

A commotion behind the men in the center—female
voices rising, a minor panic in the new-age woods. For a moment, the men seem
undecided.

Ray never stopped the car. Racing the engine, he
headed to the right of the center. He drove straight past the Mercedes and
bounced over a raised garden bed, wheels churning through bok choy and cabbage.
The tires sunk into the damp ground, spinning ineffectively before propelling
him toward a flagstone patio behind the complex. He raced over the bumpy ground
and thudded onto the stone. He drove for a hundred yards or so, feeling the wheels
slip over the dewy stone. He screeched to a halt near the rear of the complex.
Maybe one hundred-fifty yards from the men in front, he guessed. He had little
time.

He leaned out the window and shouted for Tania,
glancing at five doors that he guessed opened into the courtyard where she had
been yesterday. He had no idea which door opened to her room.

One of the middle doors opened. Tania’s
sleep-creased face peered out. The growing mayhem, angry voices barking at the
front of the complex. Ray, his car weirdly out of place on the patio. She
looked back into her room and then darted out, racing across the patio. She ran
for the woods.

Ray shouted at her again. She heard gunfire at the
front, voices shouting. Some of the shots sounded like they were coming off the
ridge.

Tania hesitated. Ray was frantically waving her
on, looking back to the front of the property. His eyes were big, intense. Then
Tania angled back to Ray’s car, running hard. He opened the door. He started to
back up even as she closed the door.

Around the corner of the building, she saw two
Asian men materialize, breathing hard, faces gaunt. Hands lifted dark-colored
guns.

Ray drove right at them in reverse, engine
revving.

“Look out!” she shouted.

The car bobbed over the rough ground. Then a meaty
thump—the car smashed its way over one of the men. Dirt sprayed wildly from the
tires. The car cleared the pile of cracked bones. “Oh god, you hit him, you hit
him!” she yelled. The heavy thwack of something heavy hitting metal echoed in her
brain. Things not meant to touch at high speed. She felt a little sick.

Another man ran toward them, pointing a gun. Ray
slowed and turned the car around. He raised his Beretta and blasted three
rounds at the man, who twisted away from the car and fumbled his weapon. Cracks
reverberated off the rocky hillside. The man cried out, sagged and twisted to
his knees and pressed his hands into his thigh. The burning smell of cordite
suffused the cramped interior.

Ray wasn’t sure how many men were out front. But
nowhere else to go. He gunned the engine again. To his right, he saw the yoga
center reeling by like a movie he had watched in another life.

The demolished garden came into view. An Asian man
stepped out quickly from the corner of the building, aiming his gun. As the car
careened at him, his eyes swelled wide. He dove right, firing wildly into the
damp soil. More shots and the right rear window cracked. A sour burning smell.
“Keep your head down!” Ray yelled. Tania crunched herself almost flat on the seat.

The car drove off the raised bed and thunked into
the pavement near the front of the house. Two men raced after him and fired
wildly. Ray spun the car left in the driveway. The centrifugal forces
dispelled, and he was facing downhill. Then the air around him crackled and
smoked. He jammed the car in gear.

More gunfire. One Asian man stumbled, his upper
torso jerking awkwardly like a shattered puppet—Hulme had picked him off from
the hillside. Hulme continued to fire in staccato bursts, confusing the men
below. They looked harried and frayed now, peering into the hills for shooters
they had not expected. So many shots, there had to be more than one sniper.
This fight was not for them. The knife across a throat; a close-range shot
inside a dark nightclub—that was their game. Out here they were lost, firing
blindly into the shadowy evergreens.

Ray winged forward and jammed a hard left. The car
dipped down the gully. He guessed that they were now out of the sight line of
the building. Accelerated down the incline, braking hard as he approached the
main road. He considered turning left and heading towards Bodega Bay, but he
was not familiar with the way—better to be certain of where he was going. He
turned right. The Mercedes was nowhere in sight.

The Asian crew had lost the element of surprise.
He thought about backtracking to make sure Hulme was safe, but he thought the
gangbangers would break off now that Tania was gone. Hulme was just a deadly
presence in the woods, they weren’t about to chase him. Tania was the target.

Ray dripped with nervous energy. Tania twisted
back to peer over her shoulder, watching the road behind them.

“What happened? Who are these guys?” she said.

“I think they followed Moon here.”

“Moon! She’s here!’ Tania’s face was ashen. “We
have to go back!”

“No way! They don’t care about her—if they did why
follow her all the way from San Francisco.”

“She could be killed!”

“If they wanted to kill her, she’d already be
dead. They want you, not her.”

Tania slumped to the seat, saying nothing as she
buried her face in her hands.

Ray drove eighty miles per hour; even though he
saw no pursuit, he wanted to head for civilization, be near witnesses, near
something. He felt exposed on the empty country roads. Ray dialed Hulme on his
cell phone.

“Art, are you OK?

“I’m OK. You?”

“OK. What’s happening there?” He watched the
rearview mirror for signs of pursuit.

“They’re gone,” said Hulme. “She was the target.
Lots of cops here now. I’m talking to a detective now. They want to talk to
you—”

“OK, tell them I’ll call later. Emergency.” Ray
hung up. His phone rang right away but he ignored it. He would deal with law
enforcement later. Right now, this was a private matter.

He got on 101 and drove straight to the city.
After cruising for thirty minutes, he eased up: traffic was thickening and high
speeds were no longer possible. The sun was beginning to slice the fog into
wispy gray ribbons.

He and Tania didn't exchange a word. Lucas would
be pleased: he not only had located Tania, she was sitting in his car.