The Night Searchers (A Sharon McCone Mystery) (2 page)

That was the good part. The bad part: I wasn’t used to such an upscale environment. For years my agency had had offices in Pier 24½, which was now in the process of being demolished, and I’d loved it there, drafty and cold and echoing as it was.

Before that I’d had first the closet and then an upstairs room at All Souls’ big Victorian in Bernal Heights, in the southeastern section of the city. The poverty law firm, headed by my best male friend, Hank Zahn, had subsisted in the big broken-down house, with some employees living in and others—mercifully, including me—living out. But most of the friendships forged there had carried on to this day, and when the co-op folded, I’d managed to bring Ted along to my new agency.

Maybe I was just used to downscale, but many times when I came through the door of the high-security RI building—express line, where all the guards knew me—I felt as if I were sneaking in under false pretenses. The offices seemed to demand that I be superior to who I really was: dress better, use more artfully applied makeup, and for Christ’s sake get those nails done!

All this paranoia induced by a
building
! One owned by my husband and, by extension of California’s community property law, by me.

There were message slips on my desk: my mothers (I have two—Ma, my adoptive parent in San Diego, and Saskia, my birth mother in Boise) had both called. My best friend Rae Kelleher had told Ted she was bored; her husband, country music star Ricky Savage, was in L.A. dealing with some problem at his record company. Hank Zahn wanted to have lunch soon. No business calls; I felt lucky to have a few clients in this economy, when most firms and individuals didn’t have the ready cash for outside help.

I logged on to my computer, saw Mick had e-mailed me the results of some searches I’d asked him to run while I was at Glenn’s office. I pulled them up and set my own printer to work. Fortunately
it
liked me. After a while I drifted over to my old armchair, closed my eyes under the spreading branches of Mr. T., and let the facts of the Givens case percolate randomly through my mind.

In particular, the other “episodes.”

After going over them, I had ranked each as genuine, possible, doubtful, or impossible.

Three months ago, almost to the day, Camilla had seen a clown driving on the freeway. Possible: Many clowns, such as Ronald McDonalds, drove to work fully dressed in costume.

Two weeks later she saw a figure jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Possible. Every year a few suicides go unnoticed by both persons crossing and the Bridge Authority.

The next month her tale was of a white horse galloping down the twisty part of Lombard Street just before dusk. Doubtful. None of the residents of that fabled block had seen it or heard anything resembling hoofbeats.

Three weeks later a homeless man urinated in a trash can on Jones Street and then set it on fire. Camilla had put the fire out with her bare hands. Yes, such a thing had happened, but a neighbor had put out the blaze with an extinguisher and made a report to the fire department. In addition, Camilla and Jay had been at their getaway place near Lake Tahoe on the date in question. Impossible.

And so it went, the incidents coming closer together and edging more and more toward the doubtful/impossible end of the scale, until this recent infant-sacrifice tale—which, of course, I had labeled impossible.

In the morning I’d call Jay Givens and tell him he should contact a psychiatrist. But something about such a cold dismissal bothered me. In spite of my better judgment, I kept poring over Glenn’s files.

9:55 p.m.

My God, I’d lost track of the time! Fallen asleep, actually.

Now I felt great. Rested and ready to…what?

Call Hy, and tell him I’d be home shortly.

Something in me balked at that. At home, the conversation would be about what colors to paint the rooms, and the plumber’s estimate, while we both skirted around the how-was-your-day topic, something we weren’t allowed to talk about because of the security regulations of both our firms. Then it would turn to Hy’s hopes to merge our companies so we could become a partnership in every meaning of the word. And I didn’t want to go there. Not yet.

My cell rang, startling me.

“Hey, McCone,” Hy said, “I’m glad I caught you. I’ll be away for a while, don’t know how long yet. There’s been a situation, and a high-level hostage negotiation’s going down. I’ll keep in touch.”

And here RI company policy kicked in. “Okay,” I said. “Love you.”

“You too.”

I wondered where he was off to. A high-level hostage negotiation? That could be anywhere in the world. Hy was known as the best negotiator in his field, but some of those types of tricky confrontations ended in bloodshed.

Well, we were both leading the lives we’d chosen, weren’t we?

To take my mind off grim thoughts, I turned my attention back to Mick’s research. The vacant lot on the corner of Saturn and Leavenworth Streets on Russian Hill had been owned for the past two years by the Kenyon brothers, Dick and Chad. They’d begun to dig the basement immediately, but then construction was halted.

I knew of the Kenyon brothers. They were people who bought things: real estate, both residential and commercial; land, as far away as Montana; commodities futures; small, profitable businesses; hotels, motels, and restaurants; gold, silver, and diamonds; racehorses. None of these had any particular meaning for them or remained in their possession very long; their objective was to turn them quickly for a profit. So far as I’d heard, the only thing the brothers cared about was money—and over the past twenty years they’d amassed hundreds of millions.

So why dig a basement for the apartment building they’d announced they would be constructing and then abandon the project for a year and a half? Obviously they weren’t interested in the property any more, so why not sell it?

Oh, hell. Did I really care at this hour? It was close to midnight, and I was tired.

As I was leaving my office, a fact from the files surfaced, and I had to go back and confirm it.

Right: GW&G Associates, Jay Givens’s CPA firm, was the accountant of record for the Kenyon brothers. Obviously Givens had known his clients owned the lot where his wife claimed she had observed a bizarre spectacle. Why hadn’t he mentioned it?

12:44 a.m.

R
ussian Hill was more or less on my way home, so I decided to take a look at the vacant lot.

No one was on the sidewalks of Leavenworth Street when I drove up to where it intersected with Saturn. The neighborhood was mostly commercial, and the occasional corner stores and small restaurants were closed. Muted light shone behind window coverings in the upper stories of a few of the buildings, and I could hear the mumblings of TV sets, but otherwise all was still. I drove by the chain link fence enclosing the property but couldn’t make out anything in the darkness, so I found a parking place a block away and walked back there.

The lot was small by commercial standards—maybe twenty-five by forty feet. It was on a corner, surrounded on two sides by windowless walls of commercial buildings; catercorner was a residential hotel that appeared to be closed; opposite it sat a boarded-up structure.

This was another example of the changing face of the city: when I’d first moved here, Polk Street had been a haven for gays, a bustling, hustling thoroughfare peopled by zany shoppers and equally zany shopkeepers. Now, at least at this end, near the Civic Center, it was grim and grimy and silent; a few blocks down, music and other assorted sounds rose from the nightclubs that dominated there. Tomorrow the SFPD would have logged dozens of calls from those living on the hill above, complaining about the racket.

The fence surrounding the vacant lot sagged and there were metal signs affixed to it at intervals:

I smiled. Glaskirk had been one of the worst security companies in the Bay Area. In fact, it had been so inept that I’d turned down a job there when I was a desperate, no-skills sociology grad from UC–Berkeley. It had been out of business for nine years now. These were old signs, judging from the amount of rust on them.

I was approaching carefully about thirty yards from the fence, hidden by the shadow of an overhang on the dark adjacent building, when a slight motion stopped me. A figure was slipping through a gap next to one of the fence poles. Something about the way it moved was familiar—

Hy.

I stifled a gasp by clamping my hand to my lips. Anger sparked and spread through me. How I hated to be lied to! Especially by someone I trusted more than—

I hurried back to my car. From the trunk I took a pair of old athletic shoes and a multi-pocketed down vest—a wardrobe I kept there for emergencies. I put them on and armed myself with a powerful flashlight equipped with a special lens cap that made its beam inconspicuous to anyone except the searcher. In the vest pockets I had a small infrared camera, a highly sensitive tape recorder, and a Swiss Army knife. There was yet another pocket meant to hold a gun, but I’d stuffed it with a couple of pairs of gloves instead. Last year I’d investigated a complicated case involving the gun control issue, and after it was over, I’d decided that firepower would no longer play a part in my life—at least for now.

When I got back to the fence I couldn’t spot Hy. I approached the gap where he’d entered. Peered through and down. No light or other motion below. What to do now? Certainly not bellow his name down there to get his attention.

If I followed, I would be trespassing—an offense that, if I was caught, could prompt the state board to hold a hearing and lift my license, possibly destroying my livelihood and credibility. Could a good lawyer prove just cause for such an act? In the back of my mind I heard Glenn Solomon’s voice saying, “Don’t do it.”

I’ve never taken advice—however wise—well.

I slipped through the open space in the fence, then paused to listen and stare downward into the darkness.

No sounds. And nothing to see except shapes that turned out to be slabs of broken concrete. The ground was sandy, with outcroppings of hard rock, and little trails of soil trickled down after me as I descended. Then I tripped on something and skidded the rest of the way.

At the bottom of the excavated area, I pushed up and switched on my flash. It revealed a scene similar to those in post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies. Rubble: earth and concrete and stone. Piles of dirt poised on the brink of toppling. Trash that people had dumped: beer cans and pop bottles; torn newspapers and magazines; an ancient transistor radio; broken glass and flowerpots and crockery; Styrofoam cups and food wrappers. All the garbage that people with no regard for the planet had discarded, rather than disposing of properly.

“Ripinsky?” I whispered.

No response.

There was a cleared space in the center of all the junk, and as I approached it my flashlight showed a pile of charred wood. I went closer, studied the ground around it. Plastic jugs, food wrappers. A standard meal for homeless people—fortunate homeless people. The majority did without.

No indication of satanic infant sacrifices. No discarded hoods. Nothing but a place that beckoned to those who had lost everything—or never had it.

Hy’s voice spoke in a fierce whisper behind me: “What the hell are you doing here, McCone?”

1:05 a.m.

“I thought it was you. I saw you sneaking in,” I said in the same fierce whisper. “So you’re still in the city.”

“Obviously.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t. All I said was I would be away for a while.”

“What about the hostage negotiation?”

“That’ll be clear to you in due time. Now what’re
you
doing here?”

I shook my head. “No, I asked you first.”

“You sound like this is a kids’ game.”

“We’re neither of us kids. Answer me!”

“Sssh. Come on over behind that foundation wall. It’s the best vantage point I could find.”

“Vantage point for what?”

“Not now.”

He guided me over the rough ground and we sat. The night was cold, and I was glad to have on my down vest. As it was, the cold of the ground penetrated my jeans and my nose already felt half frozen. Hy put his arm around me, and we leaned back against the incline.

“If we’re lucky,” he said, “we won’t have to wait long. If anything happens, you stay put and let me handle it.”

“What’re we waiting for? What could happen?”

“Let it go for now, McCone. We shouldn’t talk down here—too dangerous.”

7:37 a.m.

We weren’t lucky, because nothing happened. The time dragged on, and at some point I must’ve dozed off, because I jerked when Hy said, “All right, dammit, we’ve been here long enough. We’d better get out before we freeze to death.”

“Home? And then you’ll tell me what’s going down?”

“Not home. Not yet.”

“Why? Don’t tell me there’s a chance that what happened to our old house is happening to the new one.” I had a mental image of the billowing smoke and all-consuming flames of the fire—a fire set by a disgruntled client of mine—that had destroyed our house on Church Street.

“No, don’t worry about that.”

“Well, then, where?”

“A new safe house.”

RI maintained various safe houses in the cities where it had offices: out-of-the way, innocuous-looking buildings in neighborhoods where people kept to themselves and had little contact with or interest in others. Inside each house, however, was a fully staffed security operation to protect at-risk clients. I’d stayed in one myself a while back, and had found the ever-watchful eyes of the guards and cameras oppressive in the extreme.

The typical client was grateful for his or her safety, but often imperious and demanding, as highly placed persons tend to be: requests for exotic food and drink in the middle of the night; demands that linens and towels be changed more than once a day; sneaky outside phone calls that were strictly taboo; the incessant need for fresh flowers, perfume, hairstyling, and massages—all of these rasped on the nerves of the caregivers, who thought that the self-styled important personages should simply feel goddamned lucky to be alive. As a result, RI had a quick turnover of personnel at all locations.

And now Hy was telling me that they had a new safe house. I couldn’t wait to see it.

8:01 a.m.

It turned out to be a hot sheet motel on the Great Highway near the zoo. The carpet in the unit that Hy steered me to was threadbare, the headboard painted red and carved with hearts and the names of many loving couples. There was even a mirror on the ceiling.

“My God,” I said, “you
bought
this dump?”

“This dump, as you call it, is one of the safest we have in the city, and the security is fully manned from our downtown office.” Hy was checking the locks on the windows.

“What kind of clients do you plan to put here? Sleazy ones? Horny ones?”

“You’d be surprised who’s going to stay here—and be plenty grateful for it.”

He went around a little table with two chairs, removed a device from the phone jack, and tossed it to me. Then he sat down in one of the chairs, motioned me to the other. As I sat I touched the table, quickly withdrew my hand from a sticky spot.

He grimaced. “We had to let the housekeeping staff go—not that they were big on cleanliness anyway, and our operatives aren’t much better. Before we start putting clients up here, I hope to get hold of some good maintenance people.”

“About the clients…?”

“Let’s just say they’ll all be in great fear.”

“Of the cockroaches or the bedbugs?”

“They’ll be fast friends with all kinds of varmints before they leave.”

Hy’s phone rang. He answered, spoke tersely into it. A few seconds after he broke the connection, it rang again. I could tell little from his side of the conversations. After the phone rang a third and fourth time, he punched in a forwarding number and set it down.

“The office’ll buzz me if it’s an important call.” RI’s offices around the world were staffed 24-7, and all reported hourly to the San Francisco headquarters.

“About what? What’s so damned important?”

“What were you doing at that vacant lot?”

“Working a case. What were you doing there?”

“The same.”

“And now we’re going to sit here and discuss confidentiality till we’re both out of our minds.”

“The hell with confidentiality.”

That surprised me. “Never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“I’m sick of all these rules: need-to-know basis and so forth. I didn’t make them up in the first place—Dan and Gage did. But Dan’s dead, Gage is God knows where, and now I’m running the show. Confidentiality has its place, but not between you and me, especially since we seem to be working the same case.”

The people he spoke of—Dan Kessell and Gage Renshaw—had founded Renshaw & Kessell International, the firm that evolved into RI after Kessell was murdered and Renshaw fled the country because of the collapse of one of his complicated scams.

“The cases are—?” Hy prompted me.

“Similar, anyway. I gather you’ve brought me here because we can’t talk at home. Is the house bugged?”

“Probably not. I just sent technicians out to go over the place to make sure. They’ll also clear our offices.”

“And you’re absolutely sure no one can eavesdrop on us here?”

“Yes. That device I disconnected”—he gestured at the small cylinder in my hand—“connects with an RI operative twenty-four seven. It also monitors the entire safe house. Nothing happens here that doesn’t communicate to RI’s office if it’s working.”

I set the listening device down on the sticky spot. “But aren’t there others, in other rooms?”

“No, this one works for the entire premises. I deliberately chose this room because it’s so awful nobody would think there was anything worth finding here.”

“It’s awful, all right.”

“McCone, I’m disappointed. I’d planned to spend our second honeymoon here.”

10:04 a.m.

Hy, he told me, actually was involved in a hostage negotiation. That was why he’d gone to the vacant lot. An RI client, Van Hoffman, had vanished two nights ago on the way from his office on the thirty-fifth floor of the Transamerica Pyramid to his car on the first level of the underground parking garage. Hoffman was director of the influential Global Policy Forum, an advisor to governments and powerful individuals. He was married, had two adult children, lived in the affluent Peninsula suburb of Atherton, and was rumored to be a workaholic with few outside interests. When he failed to return home as expected, his wife, Jane, had contacted RI, with whom Global had an executive protection agreement.

Such agreements, which covered key players in various types of firms, became popular in the late 1980s when a rash of hostage-taking plagued the burgeoning bio- and high-tech industries. For a set yearly fee, a company could take out insurance on executives critical to its operations, and RI—then called Renshaw & Kessell International—would provide surveillance and train personnel in evasion techniques and defensive driving. Should a hostage situation occur, Hy would step in as negotiator.

He said, “At least Jane Hoffman understood what to do if he didn’t return home at the assigned time. So many of our clients try to protect their families from insecurity and don’t tell them about our services. Or the potential risks to them. They’re usually the ones we lose.”

It wasn’t until six o’clock the night before that a message had appeared on Hy’s business e-mail account:

It had, Hy said, been a tense wait. The person made appointments, then broke them; teased and taunted:

“They know about you and me,” I said.

“Yeah, he knows a lot about us,” Hy said.

All the time RI’s technicians had been trying to get a fix on the IP address the e-mails were coming from. No luck—it changed with each message.