The Simeon Chamber (22 page)

“Dr. Jorgensen, are you down there?”

“What is it now?” Nick spoke under his breath. “Yes, Mrs. Bogardus, what is it?” Nick dropped the pen and moved to the basement door.

“There’s a telephone call, for Sam. The woman says she’s willing to talk to you. You want to take it?”

Angie stood framed in the doorway at the head of the stairs, dressed in a fire-engine red evening gown and wearing an auburn wig that looked like it was molting.

Nick started up the stairs. “Do you know who it is?”

“Nope. What am I, a message machine? If Sam wants that, he’ll have to buy one …” Her voice trailed off as the balance of her complaints became lost in a mumbled monologue.

He followed her through the porch and into the old kitchen, where he found the receiver of the wall-mounted telephone dangling on the floor from the end of its cord.

“Hello. Who is this?”

There was no reply, though Nick could hear breathing and background noises from the other end.

Then a female voice came on the line.

“Is this Mr. Bogardus?”

“No, I’m a friend of his. Sam’s not here right now. Maybe I can help.”

There was another pause. Nick could sense anxiety in the woman’s voice. “Yes, perhaps you can.” 5

“Who is this?” asked Nick.

“This is Jeannette Lamonge. Mr. Bogardus was in our shop the other day.”

“The Jade House?” asked Nick.

“Yes.”

“I’m working with Sam—Mr. Bogardus—i know about the parchments. Is something wrong?”

“No. Not at all.” Her tone was insistent, almost defensive. “It’s just that my uncle has remembered something that he forgot to tell Mr. Bogardus the other day.”

“You can tell me and I’ll relay it to Sam.”

“No.” The reply was sharp. Again there was a momentary pause, as if she had to compose herself before continuing. “I’m afraid it’s too complicated for the telephone. My uncle would have to see the parchments to really explain it. It’s very important. If perhaps you could bring the parchments to the shop I’m sure he could show you—and then perhaps you could tell Mr. Bogardus.”

There was something wrong. Nick didn’t need a voice-stress analysis to know it.

“Well, I don’t think I can do that right now.” He stalled.

“I’m sure Mr. Bogardus would want you to.” Jeannette’s voice came back a full octave higher.

Nick looked at his watch. “I don’t think I can get away for at least an hour. And I’d have to pick up the parchments …” He lied, knowing that he had no chance of getting into the safe deposit vault at that hour. “I could probably be there by nine, perhaps nine-thirty.”

“That would be fine, and …”

Suddenly Nick heard the phone go dead on the other end.

“Hello. Hello.”

She’d hung up. Or someone else had done it for her.

The tall, slender man wore a heavy English tweed three-piece suit. His stride and bearing displayed a vitality belying his sixty-eight years as he passed the marble sarcophagus and ambled down the steps and across the open tiled piazza under the tarnished street lamps.

The sky erupted in an explosion of purple-pink hues as the sun sank below 267

the horizon. The bleached ivory skull of the moon peeked from behind a layer of clouds to the east as it rose over the Santa Lucia Mountains.

The man paid little attention to the panoramic view that spread in every direction from the mountaintop. Nor did he look back at the tiled roof or the intricate carved teak figures that adorned the fascia of the Moorish mansion overlooking the Pacific. The environs of his job had long since passed into the commonplace in his mind. Millions came to marvel at the priceless art and its setting in the hilltop residence that at times bordered on the garish. But to Arthur Symington, Hearst’s “Enchanted Hill” held a secret fascination. Longfellow and Disraeli had articulated the formula of his success. Symington had merely put their words to practical use. Everything does come to he who waits.

William Randolph Hearst had begun the construction of what the world would come to know as Hearst Castle in 1919. For nearly thirty years, until illness forced his departure in 1947, Hearst poured a fortune into the construction of the mansion and its three opulent guest houses and spent millions more in the acquisition of fine art with which to adorn the buildings. No one knew for certain how much the Chief had spent, but estimates ranged upward of fifty million, much of it in Depression-era dollars. When Hearst died in 1951, the main house stood incomplete, with ambitious plans and a poured foundation for yet another wing. But neither the Hearst Corporation nor the family possessed the fiscal extravagance of their patriarch, and all future work on the house was abandoned. It was boarded up and Symington nearly lost hope.

Within a decade, mounting taxes on the property and a desire to preserve and display its wealth of priceless art for public benefit caused the corporation to strike an accommodation with the state. Hearst Castle, its three guest residences and all of the personal property in them were deeded to the state to be operated as part of the California Park System in a perpetual memorial to the Chief. A decade and a half had proven the Hearst donation to be an incalculable act of public philanthropy. Hearst Castle and its surrounding environs were producing revenues from tourism that made 269

it the envy of other museums, art galleries and most amusement parks. As it happened, the public dedication of the property was also a fortuitous turn of events for Arthur Symington.

The state searched for almost a year to find a consultant, someone familiar with the Hearst collection, to catalogue and identify the thousands of objects that it now owned. Symington was the natural choice. Anxiously, he took the position, waiting over the weeks and months that followed for the state to discover the scandal that had led to his earlier demise. But nothing happened. In time the old man became more confident, assured that his past was forgotten, that his dealings with the committee were known only to those who could no longer speak of them—

for they were sealed in their graves.

As principal art consultant, his job was to identify and catalogue pieces from hundreds of unopened boxes that lay in storage sheds in the shadow of the great house. In the early months, immediately following his return, he laid plans to enter the chamber and to remove its contents—the items abandoned by the committee, of which he had taken rightful title as sole survivor. But as time passed Symington began to realize the permanence of his position and the advantages of the subterranean vault. Sequestered in its own enclave beneath the foundations, it provided him with a private conservatory, heated and cooled by the engines that operated the great house, its humidity controlled by sensitive equipment installed to protect the public treasures. Yet the room remained unseen by other eyes, its contents his and his alone.

In the years that followed he added to this private collection with regularity, small acquisitions that would not be missed by others on the staff—a few Grecian vases, of which Hearst had one of the largest collections in the world, Renaissance miniatures that he used to grace the walls and small statuary.

Symington feigned a tendency for insomnia and over time won the acceptance of security staff for his unorthodox hours of employment, often working through the night.

Then, as he did this night, after the crowds of tourists had left, after the guides returned to their homes for the evening and darkness enveloped the Enchanted Hill, Arthur Symington would steal down the steps beyond the Neptune Pool 271

to the road and the rusting and forgotten gate to which he possessed the only key.

Most people pick up their mail in the morning. George Johnson was an exception. It was nearly two-fifteen in the afternoon when a nattily dressed man wearing a long coat, felt hat and sporting a walking cane appeared at the box to retrieve his mail. Carns stood at a high, glass-topped table in the center of the lobby twenty feet away, feigning notes in his open checkbook with the ballpoint of his pen still retracted. He watched as the man emptied the contents of the box and sorted it with gloved fingers, tossing the junk mail into a nearby trash receptacle.

It had taken a while to confirm, but Sam’s hunch about George Johnson had been correct. Jake had contacted the Department of Motor Vehicles looking for information on the man, using the Olstead Street address to narrow the search. He hit a bureaucratic stone wall. The D.M.V. refused to provide any information unless the request was in writing. a reply could be expected in the mail two or three weeks following the written request. The clerk babbled something about privacy and disclosure, then hung up.

But the red tape was a mere inconvenience.

Carns short-circuited the process with a telephone call to an old friend at a D.M.V. field office in San Jose. The man punched up the computer and in three minutes located the name and the bogus Olstead Street address. He also found what Jake was looking for, a post office box number at the San Francisco main branch.

Jake weathered the contemptuous glances of an old woman as he reached into the trash can and retrieved one of the discarded envelopes dropped into the barrel seconds before. It provided the final verification. The computerized label was addressed to George Johnson. Carns turned and followed the man from the building.

Jake had suppressed his better judgment in following the blind lead. It was a good way to get hurt, perhaps killed. Bogardus hadn’t told him what Johnson had to do with Pat’s murder, but somehow Carns suspected that the man in the camel hair coat with the elegant cane 273

was closely linked to her death. Since their first meeting five years before, Carns and Pat had formed a close, almost filial relationship. When Sam requested help Jake asked no questions.

If he laid his hands on the man who killed Pat he would break his back.

He was surprised when his quarry entered a waiting cab at the sidewalk. Jake ran at full tilt to the parking lot and his car. He nearly drove through the lowered arm at the kiosk before paying the attendant as he sped to overtake the yellow cab with its well-dressed fare. Carns followed the cab several blocks toward the Civic Center and Market Street before he realized its ultimate destination. By then it was nearly too late. If it hadn’t been for the chance departure of another motorist from a curbside parking space a half block from the B.A.R.T. tunnel Carns would have lost Johnson. As it was he had no time to prime the meter. Instead he ran to the stairs and down into the station. He came to an abrupt halt as he saw the man calling himself Johnson standing at a B.A.R.T. vending machine buying a ticket. Jake followed suit and entered the turnstile twenty feet behind the other man.

Johnson stood waiting with his back to one of the tiled pillars and the tracks as Jake descended the escalator and entered the platform near the train stop. Carns avoided all eye contact with the man and milled to the other side of the escalator ramp, where he was hidden from view. The station was nearly deserted. A dozen other commuters waited in the cathedral-like cavern, their attention periodically directed toward the open tube that disappeared into darkness under San Francisco.

Jake wandered to the other end of the concrete bulwark that formed the bottom of the escalator ramp and walked several feet out onto the platform, idly gazing toward the pillar and George Johnson. His heart skipped a beat. The man was gone. Jake moved back and looked up the rising escalator behind him. It was empty. Carns retraced his steps back onto the platform. There was no sign of the man.

Dropping all pretense of disinterest Carns walked briskly down the platform. Pressure began to build in his ears as the train approached at high speed from the Daly City tube heading east. He was two feet from the pillar and 275

walking at a good clip when Johnson suddenly stepped from behind the tiled concrete post directly into his path. Jake nearly bumped into him.

“Excuse me.” Carns made the best of it, and with the impersonal apology continued his course toward a trash can ten feet away. He reached into his pocket and discarded a brand new handkerchief. Other than his checkbook and wallet it was the only prop he had.

The train pulled up to the platform and stopped. Its automated doors opened in near silence as the audio tape rattled off the train’s East Bay destinations. Jake turned slowly and with peripheral vision saw Johnson still leaning against the pillar, this time facing the train. The last of a handful of commuters exited the cars and headed for the escalator. Five seconds passed, then ten. The doors to the train remained open.

With Johnson’s first motion a sinking feeling came over Carns. Like the lackluster stride of a defensive back when instinct tells him he’s been beaten in the end zone and the ball is in the air, Jake had been maneuvered out of position. Carns was nearly twenty feet from the B.A.R.T. car when Johnson took five quick strides and entered the train a half step ahead of the closing door.

Jake’s eyes blazed, the image of the sinister grin fused in his mind, as George Johnson stood at the other side of the thick glass window and raised the brass handle of his cane to his forehead in a mock salute as the train pulled away in a silent acceleration toward the tube and under the bay.

A large dark limousine was parked at the intersection of Old Chinatown Lane just four doors from the Jade House. It looked out of place against the trash cans and abandoned boxes in front of the drab shops. The tinted rear windows and the privacy screen separating the driver’s compartment from the passenger area shrouded the rear of the limousine in darkness. The finned antenna of a mobile telephone protruding from the trunk punctuated the sleek lines of the vehicle.

Nick walked casually behind the car and toward the alley a half block down.

As he reached the alley he removed the tire iron from under the inside of his coat. He’d taken it from the trunk of his car as a 7

precaution.

The alley was pitch black and the pavement uneven. Nick had to feel his way down the long narrow corridor between the buildings, carefully hugging the brick wall. Skirting a large trash bin, he found his path illuminated by the mute light of a bent and battered lamp hanging over a scarred sign on the wall of the building. The faded letters read: THE JADE HOUSe