One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  She didn’t shy away from the question. “My children, in different ways, have struggled to find purpose. Common enough with men and women of a certain standing. I’ve talked with peers enough to know it’s a fairly general occurrence—this generational groping for meaning.”

  “Did you?”

  She gave a thin smile. “I suppose I benefited from an unusually strong will.”

  “And your children didn’t?”

  She considered—whether the question or how much of it to answer, I couldn’t tell. “William did.” Her face shadowed. “Before his accident. He was such a strong and bright boy. My late husband always believed that he would be the one to take our family’s helm. He had so much talent and drive.”

  “And the others?”

  “Ronald, I suppose, always showed a preference for a more hedonistic existence. The type of boy who listens only when it suits him. As for my daughter, Susan, she certainly had willpower, but from a young age she was determined to forge her own way.”

  “And Martin?”

  There was a flash of hesitation. “Perhaps Martin always felt in the shadow of his older brothers. He’s eager to prove himself. In his mind, perhaps he thinks that my relationship with Geoffrey is an… embarrassment. A stain. A signal that he needs to step up and take control.” She fell silent, her eyes clouded with thought.

  “Have you talked to Susan recently?” I wanted to know.

  Her eyes were still elsewhere. “My daughter and I don’t have that kind of relationship. We’ve never been the kind to get manicures and mimosas every Sunday. Susan is independent, as I said. I admire that about her, even if it has created distance between us.” Now she looked up. “Have you met my children? All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I liked Susan, disliked Ron, think Martin is in over his head, and wasn’t able to form an opinion on William.”

  “In over his head? What is that supposed to mean?”

  She had bitten at the hook I’d dangled. I kept my voice casual. “Oh, just that he seemed a bit of a whiffle-waffler—hiring me, then calling me off just when things get interesting. I wondered why the change.”

  I could see her eyes brighten at the word interesting but she didn’t take the opening I had left. Instead, she just said, “Enough about my family. How about you make us another round of those excellent martinis?”

  It was a relief to do something as simple as making a drink. Olives didn’t plan shenanigans and strategize against each other. They bobbed around and allowed themselves to be skewered. There was a gold-framed photograph hung above the bar cart. Four children, lined up in a row. Easy enough to figure out who was who. Martin and Susan looked to be high school age. Even in the picture I thought I could see Martin’s petulant uncertainty, his eyes self-conscious, carriage a little too erect, as if trying to cast a longer shadow. Next to him stood Susan, pretty and smiling, one hand cocked on her hip. Ron slouched next to them, college-aged, handsome and arrogant and bored, a pair of sunglasses clipped to his open-neck shirt. The fourth face I didn’t recognize, even though I knew it must be William, in his early twenties. He looked to be a natural leader, tall and blond and well built, looking directly into the camera with thoughtless confidence. Impossible to connect him to the hunched, muttering figure in the wheelchair I had met.

  I walked the new drink over to Mrs. Johannessen and sat again.

  “What exactly did my son hire you to do?” she wanted to know.

  “He thought you were being taken advantage of—maybe worse. He was worried about blackmail.”

  “Blackmail? Whatever about? I should think I’m far too boring for anyone to want to blackmail.”

  Again, I thought of the poker game—revealing, bluffing, pushing the other to show more. “I have no idea. But he worried something was going on.” I played my single ace carefully. “Which is hard not to agree with—given what happened to the poor guy, I mean.”

  “Poor guy?” she repeated quickly. “Who do you mean?”

  “Coombs, of course.”

  This time she couldn’t resist. “Happened?” Her voice remained casual, but her eyes were intent. “What do you mean, happened? What happened?”

  “Last night. Coombs stepped on the wrong toes. Down in Monterey.”

  “How do you know such a thing?”

  “I was there.”

  “What do you mean, the wrong toes?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “But they belong to a very fat man with very delicate feet who absolutely shouldn’t be stepped on. Coombs is with him now.”

  She leaned forward almost unconsciously. “Have they hurt Geoffrey?”

  “No.” Then I added, “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean, not yet?”

  “He has until tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night? To do what?”

  “There’s money involved. A negotiation. You could call him a hostage, at this point. I was hoping you could help me with that,” I added.

  “I know nothing about any money owed to any very fat men, or very thin men, or anyone else,” she said dismissively. “But Geoffrey is being threatened?”

  “Threatened is a very mild word.”

  “And what are you going to do about that?”

  This was the moment. “Me? Nothing. Nothing I could do, even if I wanted to. Like I said, your son fired me about an hour ago. No longer my problem.”

  “Martin fired you? Why?”

  Because you told him to? I wanted to ask. Instead I just said, “He wanted Coombs gone—and now he’s gone. Although,” I added, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t know if your son fully understands how gone he’ll be.” However much the woman in front of me disdained outside meddling, I didn’t know if she had considered the possibility of physical harm to Coombs himself.

  She set down her drink and closed her hands over each other, as though her fingers had grown suddenly chilly. “What exactly do you do, Nikki?”

  I tossed back more of my drink, feeling, along with the gin, sudden anger at the maddening opacity of this whole family. “You want to know what I do? I run a bookstore. That’s what I do. Books. And when I’m not selling books, I try to do a little of what your crowd might call philanthropy. My own special brand of the stuff. Meaning that when I run into someone who has been treated badly, I don’t turn my head away. Unlike the fellow in your book, I don’t try to convince myself that suffering is okay, or necessary, or not that bad. You want to know what I do? I find the fellow who decided that rough was okay, and I give him the same taste of rough that he dished out. And I make sure to do it in a way that convinces him he should act like a goddamn kitten for the rest of his life.” I leaned toward her. “That’s what I do.”

  Her voice was more subdued when she spoke again. “What will they do to Geoffrey?”

  “They’ll kill him. Drowning is the plan, as of now, although they could always change their minds.” I was being callous, maybe, but I had to be. I needed her to see what I saw. Maybe something else, too. Maybe I was tired of people pretending that little games and lessons didn’t have consequences, didn’t mean real things to real people. Tired of rich people using money to push pieces around a board and then getting up to go do something else.

  She stood, showing no sign of having imbibed two strong cocktails. Once again, I was struck by her height, her presence, her command.

  “Whatever my son was paying you, I’ll triple it.”

  I stood, too. “To do what?”

  Her face was once again hard and determined, her blue eyes icy. I felt her will pressing against me like a physical force. Like wind on a motorcycle. “I won’t let these things you’re talking about happen. I want you to find Geoffrey and free him.”

  “You’re hiring me?”

  In answer she rang a small silver bell. The butler appeared a moment later. “Go to my safe,” she said. “I’ll want ten thousand, cash, immediately.” She turned back
to me as the butler vanished. “For your expenses. Will that do, to start? Yes, I’m hiring you.”

  Five minutes later I was back in the elevator. A little buzzed from the gin, more than a little tired from the long day and the night before. And wiping away a small, victorious smile that had crept over my face.

  I had my client.

  FRIDAY

  24

  I woke up early Friday morning at my apartment in West Berkeley, questions running through my mind before my eyes opened. The last day I had to find Coombs. My last chance. Ethan was asleep next to me. He had come over last night as soon as I got home, cheerfully disregarding my warning that I would be exhausted, distracted, and just generally poor company.

  I got up to shower, trying to be quiet, but I must have woken Ethan in the process. When I came back into the room, wrapped in a towel and brushing my teeth, he blinked groggily up at me. “Why so early?”

  “Work.” I spoke as clearly as I could manage with a mouth full of toothpaste. “There were unforeseen complications.”

  “I had a very specific dream when I was a boy,” Ethan said. “That one day I might grow up and meet a sexy, mysterious girlfriend who was absolutely, infuriatingly, Guinness Record–level vague about everything. Little did I know that one day I’d actually find h—”

  Still brushing my teeth, I bent down and flicked the tip of his ear. “Enough of this crazy talk.”

  “Speaking of crazy talk, how about what we talked about? Any thoughts?”

  “Hang on. Two secs.” I went into the bathroom, traded my toothbrush for a piece of floss, and came back, trying to dress, floss, and talk all at the same time. “Where were we?”

  “Moving in together,” he replied at once. “You’ve been thinking it over for about ten years now.”

  “If we were in a Victorian novel,” I pointed out, “our families would disown us for living in sin.”

  “No,” he corrected, “if we were in a Victorian novel, we’d have been married since we were fourteen and you’d be nursing your fifth child. But I happen to be dating a very contemporary-minded girl who considers marriage a four-letter word.”

  “All in due time! Don’t you want something to look forward to?”

  “Don’t you think it would be kind of fun?” he returned. “Living together?”

  “I’m not saying I don’t want to. But what’s the rush?”

  He looked like he wanted to throw a pillow at me. “I mean, sorry to sound like my grandfather, but we’re not in our early twenties, Nikki. We’ve been together over a year. It’s a natural step.”

  A hard knocking on the door saved me from having to answer.

  “Expecting company?” Ethan asked with a funny look.

  “Stay there,” I told him. “I’ll go see.”

  Still holding my wet towel, I went into my closet and rummaged through my bottom drawer, where I kept my winter sweaters. Under the stacks of sweaters was an unloaded .40 caliber Walther PPQ. A longer barrel than my subcompact Beretta. I kept several full magazines wrapped in a woolen ski hat. I took one and clicked it into the empty pistol grip.

  There was another series of loud knocks. Whoever was at the door didn’t sound patient.

  I chambered a round, draped my towel over the arm holding the gun, and went to check a little TV screen on my kitchen counter. Ordinarily, the screen showed a clear view of outside. Now it was dark. As though a finger was pressed against the camera lens.

  I looked out the keyhole. Equally dark. Like someone was standing tight against it.

  More knocks rattled the door.

  “Who is it?” I called out, the towel draped over my left arm.

  “Nikki Griffin? Open the door. It’s the police.”

  * * *

  Just because people said they were the police, it didn’t make them the police. I stepped back from the door, flattened my back to the wall, pulled away a piece of curtain, and peered out a side window. Two men stood outside. One was in the uniform of the California Highway Patrol and the other was plainclothes. The uniform reassured me, but only up to a point. Uniforms could be acquired easily enough.

  I cracked the door an inch, leaving the security lock chained.

  “Badges,” I said.

  A few seconds passed and then a large, hairy hand wearing a rugged Shinola watch held a pair of badges up to the cracked door. One CHP, one San Francisco PD. They looked legitimate. None of the obvious markers of counterfeiting. Which, like the uniform, was not absolutely foolproof, but what was? I removed the chain and opened the door, finding myself face to face with two burly men in their forties. The badges had told me one of them was Jeffries and the other Clauson. I wondered who was who.

  “I’m not going to offer you coffee,” I said. “And no, you can’t come in.”

  The guy in the plainclothes spoke. “We’ve had plenty of coffee this morning.” He looked so much like a cop that he might as well have been in uniform. Cheap, sturdy dress shoes, slacks, black polo shirt, rumpled sports coat, buzz-cut hair. He gestured at the towel over my arm. “What you got there, the TV remote?”

  “It’s a remote I have a license for,” I retorted. “What are you doing here?”

  The one in the uniform drifted closer to the door. “Sure we can’t come in?”

  I blocked the door. “Extremely sure.”

  “You’re not being very cooperative,” he said.

  “I’m not the one banging on your door. What do you want?” I asked again.

  “We want to talk about Monterey.”

  “Monterey? What’s in Monterey?” My voice was uninterested, but my mind was flashing. Had Mason’s father gone to the police after all?

  The uniform guy said, “You were just in Monterey. Right?”

  I heard Ethan’s voice, calling from the bedroom. “Everything okay, Nik?”

  “Everything’s fine! Be back in a few!” I looked back at the two cops. “Well, I do want coffee. Let’s go up the street.”

  * * *

  There was a taco truck I liked that did a morning route through the neighborhood. West Berkeley had enough construction going on these days that the truck did a brisk business with the work crews. I bought a breakfast burrito and a large coffee and then we walked across the street to a small park. Little kids played on a swing set while a group of young mothers in leggings did yoga in the grass.

  I unpeeled foil from the burrito. “Which one of you is Jeffries and which one is Clauson?”

  “Sergeant Jeffries,” said the guy in uniform. He had a wide, freckled face and sandy hair. I saw his eyes wander to the yoga moms in their tight, high-waisted spandex.

  “Detective Clauson,” said the plainclothes guy. A sturdy brown mustache and crow’s feet around his eyes made him look like a past-his-prime Tom Selleck.

  “Were you in Monterey this week?” asked Jeffries.

  “I stayed at the Cypress Inn. One night.” He probably knew that. If he didn’t, it would be his next question. There were worse things than appearing cooperative.

  “Nice place, the Cypress,” Clauson chipped in. “Pretty pricey, too. Special occasion?”

  I took a bite of my burrito. “Not really.”

  “We heard there was an incident down there. An attempted robbery, one of the guards. I don’t suppose that has anything to do with you showing up?”

  I sipped coffee. “Are you asking me if I did that?”

  “Chatting, that’s all we’re doing,” said Jeffries.

  “Well, I didn’t. In case you’re wondering.”

  Clauson had a notebook out and was writing something down while Jeffries continued the questions. “Can you account for your whereabouts from Wednesday night to Thursday night? Hour by hour, preferably?”

  “If I need to, sure. Why?”

  Jeffries’ face was inscrutable. “Like I said, chatting.”

  Clauson raised his head from his notebook and I braced myself for the Mason questions to begin. He asked, “Are you familiar with the name
Johannessen?”

  Caught off guard, I paused before answering. “I was hired by a member of that family,” I finally said.

  “To do what?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “A legal job?”

  That annoyed me. “They wanted me to rob a bank. Yes, legal.”

  “Are you still working for them?” Jeffries asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re asking.”

  Clauson said, “Take us through Wednesday and Thursday. Where you were, who you were with. All the good stuff. Nice and specific.”

  “We don’t get bored by details,” Jeffries added. “Just in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t.” I spent a few minutes answering the question, leaving out Mr. Z, Mason, and my interactions with Coombs, but keeping my locations as accurate as possible. The fact that I had been stopped by the Seaside police was a silver lining, I realized as Clauson scribbled away in his notebook. If they were suspicious of something, that was an ironclad alibi—and the Seaside cops, thank God, hadn’t seen me with Mason. The cops didn’t seem interested in the Cypress. This was something else.

  By the time I finished, the taco truck had pulled away. The mothers were flowing through their poses. “What was in Monterey?” Jeffries wanted to know. “Why’d you go?”

  I put my coffee down. “I’m done talking until you tell me what this is about.”

  The two of them glanced at each other.

  Clauson asked, “Do you know Susan Johannessen?”

  I stared at him, surprised. “We met once. At her gallery, Tuesday afternoon.”

  They traded another look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Her car was found yesterday.”

  “Her car?”

  Clauson said, “Parked at Monastery Beach, out on Highway 1. Are you familiar?”

  “No.”

  Jeffries said, “The nickname is Mortuary Beach. It’s been called the most dangerous beach in California. Looks like a total paradise—until you get in the water. Vicious undertow, all kinds of rip currents.”