I took the check and started toward the door. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
“Oh, and Nikki?”
I looked back. “Yes?”
“This is very important, this job. I’m counting on you to leave no stone unturned.”
“Right.” I left the suite and stepped back into the elevator.
As the polished door slid shut, I was thinking again about a cage door closing.
2
I rode down Telegraph Avenue and parked in my usual spot just outside the BRIMSTONE MAGPIE bookstore. Telegraph was the usual jumble, dirty curbs and creeping buses, students in blue and yellow Cal gear, street vendors selling handmade jewelry, scruffy panhandlers lounging in clouds of marijuana smoke with dogs and guitars.
The bookstore was busy. We were holding a monthly book drive and a steady stream of people and books had been coming in all day. Books piled everywhere, overflowing the counters, rising in crooked stacks from the floor like stalagmites across a cave. Bartleby, the bookstore’s normally social resident cat, had retreated behind the front counter. I could just make out a gray paw. A potted plant craned toward the daylight coming in from the door. It was a croton, green leaves threaded with sunset veins. I’d bought the plant after being assured it would flourish without demanding a lot of care. Many things in my life required a lot of attention. I didn’t want my houseplants to be one of them.
“Quite a crowd,” I said to Jess. I had hired Jess as a manager soon after opening the store, almost a decade ago. She had become not just a business partner but a close friend.
She glanced up from sorting through a box of books, cobalt glasses and raven bangs framing her fair skin. “Hey, Nikki.”
I joined her in the sorting, smelling dry pages and cardboard. “How are the wedding plans?”
“Have I told you I hate weddings?”
I laughed. “Don’t tell Linda that.”
“We spent over two hours on the phone this week discussing flower arrangements. Two hours. Flowers.”
“Remind me not to get married.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Don’t tell Ethan that. It would break his heart.”
I slid a pile of books out of a box. “I think I have enough stress in my life without flower arrangements.”
“You know we’ve been together five years and our parents haven’t met?”
Still stacking, I gave her a look. “That bad?”
She nodded. “My parents own a holistic medicine shop in Oregon. They go off on spiritual trips to Joshua Tree every Christmas, where I strongly suspect they take psychedelics. Her parents live in Newport Beach in an eight-bedroom house, and every few years they ask her if she’s absolutely, completely sure that her lesbianism isn’t a phase.”
“I say lock ’em all in a room together and see who comes out.”
Jess didn’t look amused. “Forget Lord of the Flies. I’m praying we make it through the rehearsal dinner.”
I unpacked another stack of books. The bookstore had begun with unintentional good timing. A lump sum of inheritance money; a building purchased just before the East Bay became unaffordable; a tenant breaking a lease in the midst of the Great Recession. And me owning too many books. Everything else—sales, shelves, more books, eventually employees and insurance and distribution and all the million details involved in running a bookstore—had happened in sporadic succession. To my continued surprise, the bookstore even turned a profit. Despite Silicon Valley’s best efforts, Berkeley remained a city that loved to read.
A freckled blond girl of ten or eleven came over. “Excuse me, do you work here?”
I smiled, still sorting. “I do. Are you looking for a job?”
“I can’t,” she answered with the special gravitas of small children. “I have to go to school. Do you have A Wrinkle in Time?”
“Sure,” I said, standing. “Let me show you.” Spotting a paperback in the stack I was sorting, I handed it to her. “Have you read this one?”
She took the paperback. “A Wizard of Earthsea?”
“Ursula Le Guin. I loved her when I was your age. It’s yours. If you like it, you can give it to a friend after you finish.” My favorite part about used books was the idea of their unpredictable motion. Maybe ten, twenty years in a basement, forgotten, then suddenly halfway around the world, passed, hand to hand.
A middle-aged man in khakis joined us. “Julie, are you bothering the lady?”
“Not at all,” I said, noticing how his daughter held the paperback in both hands. At her age, I had held books like that. Marvelous objects, full of life, things that could shatter or leap away if not held tight. The age when there was nothing more compelling than a story on a page. When staying up with a flashlight under the bedcovers felt more thrilling than any emotion daylight might bring.
Fifth grade. My life in fifth grade had been normal. I had been normal.
Then two men had knocked at my family’s door.
My life had stopped being normal.
* * *
I worked into the early afternoon and then walked north on Telegraph in the direction of campus. I stopped at Café Strada, a coffee shop always crowded with Cal students, and waited in line to buy two iced coffees. I put cream and sugar in one, crossed Bancroft, and walked over to Wheeler Hall, a stately white building housing the English Department. Afternoon classes were getting out and the campus was full of students.
I waited, the twin coffees dripping chilly condensation, until I saw the person I was looking for walk out of Wheeler in animated conversation with two undergrads. As they finished, I sneaked up behind him, pressing one of the coffee cups against the back of his neck. “Been looking for you.”
He spun around. “Jesus, that’s cold!”
My boyfriend, Ethan, wore a fraying sports coat over a chambray shirt, a leather messenger bag slung across his body. I patted down a stray curl of brown hair and handed him the coffee with cream and sugar. “Looked like an exciting conversation.”
Ice cubes rattled as he sucked coffee through the straw. “Can you believe they hadn’t read A Dance to the Music of Time? These poor kids. I don’t know what they do in high school. Analyze ‘Little Bo Peep’?”
“I think that’s a nursery rhyme.”
“Whatever. The point is—”
I laughed as we started walking. “Twelve books, what, three thousand pages? Such slackers.”
“What’ve you been up to?” Ethan asked.
“Bookstore, plus another thing.”
“I think you hit on the title of your memoir.”
“Know any ghostwriters?”
It was his turn to laugh. “I’ll write up an ad. Candidates should be able to deal with mulish stubbornness, constant obfuscation, and CIA-level secrecy.”
“Perfect,” I agreed. “Just add, Candidate should also be prepared to deal with an incredibly charming, witty, and beautiful—OWW!” I rubbed my cheek where an ice cube had just bounced off it.
“Sorry, I don’t know anyone who fits that description,” Ethan said, readying another ice cube.
I laughed, ducked, and threw one back at him. “You’re welcome for the coffee.”
We passed under the green oxidized copper of Sather Gate to Sproul Plaza. Tables were lined up on either side, student groups advocating for a kaleidoscope of issues. The system the two of us had developed was rough and unwritten, but it seemed to work. Me sharing small pieces of what I did. Up to a point. Certain things I couldn’t share. I didn’t want my boyfriend traumatized. I also didn’t want him subpoenaed on a witness stand.
“How was class?” I asked. After getting his Ph.D. in English from Berkeley the year before, Ethan had been hired by Cal as an assistant professor on tenure track.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this whole teaching thing.” His pride was evident.
“Lucky students,” I said, meaning it. Ethan was one of the very few people I had ever met who loved books as much as I did. “You have to be anywhere?” I asked. �
��There’s a new Thai place on Shattuck I’ve been wanting to try.”
He made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “I’ve always wanted to be the couple that finishes dinner by five-thirty. Maybe afterwards we could do something really crazy. Shuffleboard, or even Boggle?”
“Whatever. I have to be up early to go into the city.”
“What for?”
“There’s someone I have to see.”
TUESDAY
3
I woke up wanting to do two things: to learn more about the man I had been hired to follow, and about the client who had hired me to follow him. Martin Johannessen had told me where Coombs was residing. I didn’t mind work being easy once in a while. He was at the InterContinental on Howard Street, a blue glass rectangle that speared the sky just south of Union Square. I took BART from North Berkeley to Powell Street and walked from there. Finding any guest was easy enough with a name and a face. Coombs wasn’t a celebrity or some visiting head of state; he wouldn’t be rushed into the parking garage in a tinted SUV and ushered up in some back elevator. He was just a guy staying in a room. And everyone left their room sooner or later.
The InterContinental had a stack of newspapers in the lobby. Even better, free coffee. No one seemed to mind when I helped myself to a cup and a copy of the Chronicle. Sufficiently armed, I settled in to wait.
* * *
I made it through three cups of coffee and most of the newspaper. The lead story was ghoulish; police had found a padlocked U-Haul full of dead women in a Walmart parking lot south of Monterey. Heatstroke. No suspects, no leads, no motives. I read the long piece, feeling anger burn its way through my stomach. How could people do things like that? And yet they did, every day. I had learned that in sixth grade. I finished the article and moved on. A record heat wave, San Francisco’s homeless crisis, a new ferry route planned. I drank coffee and flipped pages.
It was easy to tell when Coombs appeared. The lobby lit up.
I kept my face buried in the paper, every sense screaming that the man I was watching wasn’t the sort to ignore details. I glimpsed a confident walk, a crisp checked suit, cuffed pants, dress shoes that clicked against the floor. I saw him throw a cheerful wave to the front desk clerks and get a row of smiles in return. He passed a bellhop, slipped the kid a whispered joke and a folded bill, nodded to a manager with a pleasant word that drew an appreciative chuckle. A popular guest. Affable, witty, courteous, charming. And affluent.
The kind of guest every hotel dreamed of having.
Coombs’s first stop of the morning was the shoeshine stand. He sat on the high seat with his own newspaper in front of him, his feet resting on the little pedals. The shoeshine guy rolled up Coombs’s cuffs and went to work on a beautiful pair of brown leather brogues that gleamed like a pricey bourbon, even before the shine began. When it was over, Coombs stood and handed the guy a bill that made him nod in vigorous thanks. He crossed the lobby to the restaurant, newspaper under his arm, full of purpose and energy and goodwill. Everything had the feel of well-established routine.
I watched a hostess seat him at a choice corner table. A handsome and confident man with the look of someone happy with his place in life. I watched him eat a bowl of fruit, and eggs over easy with toast. He dined slowly, reading his newspaper with apparent interest, twice accepting more coffee from an attentive waitress. A man who had all the time in the world, but none of its cares.
I watched him say something to the waitress, watched her face break into a laugh. Not a polite waiting-to-be-tipped laugh, but a real one. His good humor seemed infectious. He finished his coffee, signed for his bill, rose. I saw the waitress’s admiring eyes on him as he walked toward the front doors.
A bellhop sprang to open them.
Graceful as a magician, Coombs slipped another bill into another hand.
He stepped outside.
He was gone.
* * *
My meeting with William Johannessen was neither long nor fruitful. A muscular nurse with a big body and round face led me into a Potrero Hill apartment that made me think of words like cavernous and cadaverous all at once. The windows were curtained with heavy drapes that allowed in almost no light. Our feet were soundless on sponge-like carpet. Glancing back, I could see our footsteps disappearing from the carpet, like snow melting in reverse.
William sat in a wheelchair in the parlor. A television showed scrolling stock prices, a talking head shouting soundlessly on mute. William didn’t seem to be watching much of anything. If I hadn’t known he was in his fifties, I might have guessed him to be ten years older. I was looking down at a face that might have been classically handsome at one point in the past. Now, in a red cashmere sweater and wide-wale corduroys, his skin was blotchy and he was too thin. His eyes seemed empty of interest, and of most other things as well.
“He hit his head in the accident,” the nurse whispered. “The poor guy used to be a real lion, had the energy of a guy half his age. Now it’s a good day if he can eat his oatmeal.”
I perched on a neighboring ottoman and tried to make eye contact. “Hi, William. My name’s Nikki.”
He gave no indication that he’d heard or understood. His head tilted slightly to the side, but whether that had anything to do with my words was a mere guess.
I tried again. “Can I ask you a couple of questions, William?”
When William finally answered, he did so with his head bent toward his lap like something defective. “Questions,” he repeated. His voice was hoarse and low, a lawnmower engine being primed after spending a winter in a garden shed.
“Do you remember Dr. Coombs? You met him, right?”
William’s head stayed bent at the same odd angle, as though the bones in his neck had softened. “Questions,” he said again. “Questions.”
I looked up at the nurse. “Is this normal?”
“Define normal.” The nurse shrugged. “Normal enough, I suppose.”
“How long has he been like this?”
The nurse thought. “The accident was, let’s see, about three weeks ago.”
“You’ve been caring for him since then?”
The nurse nodded. “Since the day he left the hospital.”
“Just you?”
“We work as a team. Three of us, eight-hour shifts. Twenty-four-seven care.” The nurse grinned for the first time, allowing himself to step out of his somber caretaker’s role for just a moment. “If you got money, you can get most other things, too.”
“Except a working brain,” I said. “What happened, exactly? With the accident?”
The nurse’s smile was gone, as if he’d been chastised. “A hit-and-run, right outside. From what they told me, the poor guy was crossing the street for coffee and a croissant, same as every morning.”
“Did they catch the driver?”
The nurse shook his head. “Never did. They say they’re still looking, but in this city, who knows?”
I was mildly surprised. “No cameras?”
“None pointing the right way.”
I nodded at William, lolling in the wheelchair, a splotchy island rising out of a pristine white sea. “What were the injuries, exactly?”
“Banged up, cuts and bruises, cracked a rib—that’s the less important part. He also suffered a traumatic brain injury. Bleeding and swelling of the brain. The doctors say he could be like this in ten years, or he could be back to his old self next week.”
“Who are his doctors?”
“UCSF Neurology. The best in the city.”
The injury explained the darkened apartment—a heightened sensitivity to light was not uncommon with brain injuries. I tried one more time, kneeling in front of the wheelchair. “William. Can you hear me?”
This time, his neck raised a few inches. He looked at me, or through me, his expression vague as pudding. “Questions, pensions, mentions, tensions,” he mumbled, and then his head lowered again.
I looked up at the nurse. “What do you think that me
ans?”
“I think it means it’s time for his nap.”
The nurse walked me to the door, our footsteps tracking and fading behind us like a wake.
* * *
Outside, I walked up and down the block. A leafy, pleasant, residential street. Mostly tall, fancy doorman buildings that surely had cameras pointing streetward. Up maybe fifty feet I could see a small bakery at the end of the block. The coffee and croissants. Not much else. A dry cleaner and, down at the other end, a little grocer. Basic needs. Opposite the bakery was a construction site, torn-up earth and temporary fencing, creating a camera-free pocket in the street. Abreast of the bakery, I crossed as I imagined William would have crossed. Familiar, routine, maybe a cursory glance in each direction. I pictured a car ripping down the quiet street, too fast, distracted, the driver maybe texting or late for work, looking up too late. And just like that—life different forever.
I knew that feeling.
William wouldn’t be giving me much.
I decided to talk to his sister next.
4
Susan Johannessen’s gallery was in Hayes Valley, on Grove Street, a neighborhood that was the heart of the city for music and performing arts. The gallery took up the bottom half of a two-story building, a condo or apartment above it. It was in between a sleek wine bar and a Ritual coffee shop marked by the distinctive white star against a red background. I went inside. The displayed work seemed mostly contemporary painting with a bit of sculpture thrown in. I tried to make sense of a vivid, three-dimensional orange spiral popping out against a six-by-eight-foot sea of brilliant turquoise. The work was priced at about my annual income. A model-thin guy in black, skintight jeans and wavy bleached hair smiled automatically, sized me up as unlikely to be a serious buyer, and went back to his laptop.
The only other person in the gallery was a woman sitting at a desk in the back. She was clicking away on a laptop, too, and hadn’t looked up. I recognized her at once. Despite their professed distaste for publicity, photographs of the Johannessen family were easy enough to find online.
One Got Away Page 2