The Simeon Chamber (9 page)

“Marguerite, I’ve been meaning to ask if you could do me a favor.” He looked intently at the old woman.

“If I can.”

“There are some things belonging to Mrs. Davies upstairs in that old dresser in the closet. i just don’t seem to be able to bring myself to go through it and clean it out. It really should be done.”

Davies looked down at the table somberly. “I don’t want to end up like one of those old farts who turns everything into a miniature museum and lives as if the pages on the calendar are stuck together. I know she’s gone, and I can accept that, but I’m having trouble going through her personal belongings. It brings back too many memories. Maybe you could take a look and see what needs to be tossed out and take care of it if you get some time.”

“Certainly.” Her tone was stiff and formal. “I’ll do it tomorrow, first thing.”

Though Davies didn’t know it, it was a task the old woman relished. That dresser stuffed away in the closet was a part of Dorothy’s past, a part that Marguerite had often wondered about, back before Dorothy had become Mrs.

Louis Davies. The maid remembered that years before, just after she’d come from Spain under a visa to work for the family, one afternoon she had attempted 87

to return a shawl to the dresser only to be unceremoniously ushered out of the closet by Dorothy and instructed never to go near the old bureau again. In the years after that she had opened its drawers only once and then on express instructions from Dorothy, who lay on her deathbed.

Bogardus had no difficulty getting to sleep. Two bottles of wine and relentless lobbying by Pat had given him more than a slight buzz. But after an hour between the sheets his head began to throb with an increasing intensity and he lay in an indecisive slumber, unable to muster the energy to make his way to the bathroom for aspirin.

It was nearly two in the morning when his fitful sleep was disturbed by a slight squeaking, a plank of the old hardwood floor in his apartment moaning under the weight of a foot. Sam knew the sound instinctively. Someone was in the apartment with him, and his eyes opened wide in the darkness of his bedroom.

He lay motionless, listening. Again there was a soft squeak, barely discernible. Sam moved slowly under the sheets toward the edge of the bed, away from the bedroom door. His hand reached the top of the nightstand next to the bed. In the dark he felt with his hand down to the drawer and quietly slid it open. Like a blind man he pawed through the contents until his fingers brushed the checkered-wood handle of the .22-31liber Beretta. It took him several seconds to untangle the gun from the cluttered assortment of objects surrounding it.

With the pistol firmly in his hand under the sheets, Bogardus rolled to his right and faced the door.

A dim shaft of light shone down the hallway from a streetlight through the living room window.

Sam’s eyes fixed on the light and watched. Several seconds passed with nothing. No sound. No movement. Suddenly the shaft of light was broken. Something or someone had moved in the other room. Sam gently threw back the sheet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

He stood slowly and tried to get his bearings in the dark room. He was dizzy from too much wine.

A cold sweat peppered his forehead. He had never aimed the gun at any living thing before. He couldn’t remember if he’d even loaded the pistol after the last cleaning. He felt for the clip in the handle. It was in place, but did it 89

have any bullets in it?

Half naked, in bare feet on the hardwood floor, Bogardus considered his options. He could turn on the light and hold his visitor at pistol point, but with an empty pistol he could get himself killed. He could pull the trigger in the dark room. If it fired would the burglar run, or was he armed and would he return the fire? And what if the pistol reported only the deafening click of an empty chamber? Embarrassing as hell, thought Sam.

He felt for the small button on the side near the handle, the release for the clip. Without thinking to place his hand under the handle, he hit the button and the spring-loaded clip ejected from the handle and bounced on the hardwood floor. Sam was startled by the loud clatter of the metal clip hitting the wood. He moved his foot as if by reflex, kicking the clip out into the hallway.

The noise sent whoever was in the outer room scurrying for cover. Bogardus heard several heavy footsteps and then silence. His mind was racing. The element of surprise was lost. And he had resolved all doubt. The gun in his hand was now worthless. He got down onto his hands and knees and, reaching out, swept the floor as he crawled searching for the clip. He moved through the bedroom door and into the hallway. He covered six or seven feet out into the hall, across the shaft of light, and into the dark shadows beyond when his hand came in contact with a solid object. His heart raced—the clip. But the object didn’t move when his hand hit it. It was fixed to the floor. Sam started to move his hand in an upward motion and instantly felt the fabric of a man’s pant leg. Before he could move there was a flash of light behind his eyelids, a burning sensation across the top of his head, and a stabbing pain that sent a sharp jolt down his spinal column. He started to rise from his knees and everything went black. 3

Nick Jorgensen had been calling Bogardus at his apartment every fifteen minutes since before six o’clock in the morning, but to no avail. Finally at eight he called the law office. Carol answered. She hadn’t seen Sam and didn’t expect him until later in the morning. Nick left a message and tried the apartment

again. There was no answer.

Nick itched to tell Sam what he’d discovered the night before, to read to him from his notebook the scrawled transcription from the Davies parchments. He wondered, in the centuries since Drake’s voyage, how many hands had felt the vellum of those pages, how many eyes had passed over the delicate letters formed there—yet failed to fathom the message inscribed.

Two hours later Nick finally abandoned his efforts to reach Sam and headed for his ten-thirty lecture.

Across the bay in the apartment on Bush Street, Sam Bogardus rolled on the floor in agony. There was an incessant ringing in his ears.

His head pulsed with stabbing explosions of pain. The warmth of the early morning sun reached him on the cold hardwood floor where he lay, slowly clearing the fog of unconsciousness.

The ringing in his ears came to an abrupt stop. Only then did Sam realize it was the telephone in his living room that produced the ringing, and not the throbbing pain in his head.

He rolled listlessly onto his back and lay for a period propped at an angle against the wall, trying desperately to stop the spinning motion of the room, which appeared to him to be in total disarray, with chairs, tables and sofa floating by in upturned positions and cushions drifting separately in space.

Gradually his vision began to take hold, and the rotation of the room slowed and came to a stop. He lay still on the floor and noticed for the first time that the displacement of the furnishings in the room was no illusion. Chairs were turned over and broken. The sofa lay in the middle of the living room floor on its back, its fabric torn and its stuffed innards strewn in clumps around the room. Nothing remained upright. The stack of law books lay in a tangled pile of pages under the overturned bookcase.

As Sam struggled to his feet he saw the small kitchen through the open pass-through over the sink. Dishes lay broken on the floor, and the drawer of silverware had been pulled from its runner and thrown to the opposite side of the room. Even the carpet that covered the living room floor had not escaped damage. It was ripped and 93

pulled from its tacking strips with a large butcher knife. The knife still lay embedded in the carpet padding.

Sam stumbled to his bedroom and found his bed turned upside down in the middle of the room. The mattress was torn and ripped in several places, its springs and padding protruding from the holes. The nightstand and dresser remained standing upright against the wall, but all of the drawers were pulled and the contents dumped in a pile on top of the upturned mattress.

Making his way to the bathroom Sam fell to his knees in front of the commode, lifted the seat and vomited into the toilet as waves of nausea racked his body. Blood dripped from his head and chin into the toilet. He steadied himself for several minutes over the bowl and then carefully rose to his feet, grasping at the wall for support. Half crawling to the living room Sam negotiated around broken furniture and finally found the wall-mounted telephone near the kitchen. He dialed the office number and Carol answered. Through a fog of slurred speech he tried to relate the events of the previous evening, but his thoughts were confused and his words tangled on his tongue. Finally he gave up and simply told her he was hurt in his apartment and needed help. With that he hung up the phone and slowly slid back onto several sofa cushions that lay behind him on the floor.

He lost all sense of time as he passed into a semiconscious state. He was engulfed by a black void broken only by occasional sounds of voices and glimpses of people—some familiar, some not. Now Pat was leaning over him, the feel of her soft hair on his face, and Carol was hovering, and strangers he could not identify floated over and around him. Sam’s body levitated from the floor and was immersed in brilliant flashing lights—

white, red and blue—and then nothing.

The office was decorated with an obviously feminine flair. The tapestry print upholstery on the two chairs across from the pedestal desk and the landscape lithographs all reflected the refined taste of Jennifer Davies. The small office jammed between two boutiques in the renovated Victorian building on the main street of St. Helena commanded a view in two directions from the large bay window on the 95

second story.

Jennifer worked with a pen on a yellow pad scratching notes and updating her calendar, which in the last two weeks had become filled with appointments. She’d given up answering her own phone as business prospered and had turned instead to an answering service. What started as a part-time venture had mushroomed in seven months to the point where she seriously considered taking in an associate. She wasn’t sure she enjoyed the work, but it did serve to keep her mind off of other things, at least for the moment.

Her concentration was broken by the abrupt ringing of the replica antique French phone on the credenza behind her. It was a private line she’d installed when she opened the office and then quickly bypassed in favor of a two-line business system as things had picked up. It hadn’t rung in months.

“Hello.”

“It’s me.” She listened in silence for several seconds.

“Read the letter to me.” Jennifer doodled on the pad as she listened. The letters “USN” appeared on the page followed by the name “Jack Caulford” surrounded by curls of ink and ornate arrows.

“What? Read that last item from the list again.” Rapidly she scrawled the words: Four page document stamped The Jade House, Old Chinatown Lane, S.F.

“You’re sure the letter was addressed to Dorothy?” There was a pause as she pressed her ear to the receiver and listened.

“No, don’t discuss it with him. Put everything in an envelope. I’ll call a messenger service and have them stop by and pick it up. i want to look at it today.”

She dropped the phone into its cradle and stared out of the window for several minutes. There was a dazed look in her eyes as she picked up her briefcase and walked to the door. As she closed it behind her the taffeta shade on the antique door slapped against the glass panel from the inside, just above the gold-leaf letters reading: LAW OFFICEs

Slowly Bogardus emerged from a deep and restless sleep. His vision, while

blurred, focused on the familiar faces that loomed over him. The room was bathed in stark white. A young nurse adjusted a bottle that hung from the side of his bed, and the faces of Pat, Angie, Carol and Nick all smiled down at him.

“Thank God! You’re back in the land of the living.” Carol’s voice was soft and friendly.

“How do you feel?” asked Nick.

“Agh.” Sam moved slightly in the bed. “Like a sack of wet shit.”

“In most cases looks are deceptive, but in this instance I’d say you’re right on.” Pat winked at her partner as she spoke from the end of the bed.

Angie shot Paterson a cold stare that on a direct hit would have killed.

“The doc says it took eleven stitches to close that gash on your forehead,” said Nick.

Sam reached up with his hand and felt the heavy padding of bandages over his left eye. Even with the thickness of gauze the slight pressure of his finger renewed the searing pain that penetrated to the core of his brain.

Angie Bogardus pushed between Carol and Nick to the side of the bed and took her son’s hand. “I told you living alone was no good. Now maybe you’ll listen to your mother and move back home with me.” The ache in Sam’s head became more intense.

“What happened?” asked Pat.

“What do you think happened? He was robbed! Mugged! That’s obvious,” said Angie. The old lady’s open hostility toward Sam’s partner was evident in the tone of her voice. “This city is becoming a jungle. People don’t know where to turn anymore.” Her piercing voice was penetrating Sam’s head like an ice pick.

“Please, Mom, a little quieter.”

Sam looked over at Pat. “I wish I knew what happened. The last thing I remember I was crawling around on my hands and knees on the floor of my apartment looking for the clip to my gun and then nothing.”

“Your gun? Oh my God!” Angie’s voice trailed off on an ascending note and her hands went to her mouth.

Sam looked over at Nick and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Nick moved to Angie’s side. “Here, Mrs.

Bogardus, let me help you.” Half pulling the old lady, he led her to a chair several feet from the bed.

“Did you see who hit you?” asked Pat.

Sam tried to focus his mind on the events of the previous night—the dark apartment, his clumsy efforts with the pistol—but it was lost in a fog.

“No. It was dark as pitch. But I heard him. Woke me out of a sound sleep. I got home last night, I guess it was close to midnight …”