Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

Feo. “Um… every construction site needs a dog. It’s a union thing.”

  Long silence. Olivia clears her throat. “Of course.”

  I don’t think she believes me.

  I’ve been in the parking lot for the Skirball Center—a Jewish cultural center and museum at the top of the Sepulveda Pass off the 405—long enough to report to Len before Toni’s mint-green Fiat 500 rolls up next to me. It looks like an overgrown gumdrop on wheels.

  Toni’s an owl-eyed woman in her early thirties with a stereotypically Italian nose and obsidian hair cut in a not-too-unattractive pageboy. She’s hiding behind a baseball cap and huge tortoise shell-rimmed sunglasses. She ducks through my rental’s passenger door quickly enough to catch me snickering. “What’s so funny?”

  “I love your disguise. How old is my pot?”

  She shoves a Macy’s shopping bag at me like it’s hot. “The TL results were inconclusive?” TL = thermoluminescence, a method of dating pottery.

  “What’s that mean?” The pot’s in the bag, swaddled in bubble wrap. I pinch open the clasp on a manila envelope and pull out half a dozen pages full of text and graphs and tables.

  “It means there wasn’t enough data to assign an age? It’s all in the report?” Toni shoves open the door and bails out.

  Last I checked, I don’t have leprosy. “Toni?”

  She stops, stands with her back to me for a moment, then slowly turns and collapses in on herself. Her shades are full of my car’s reflection.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  After some lip-chewing, she says, “I checked? I don’t owe you any more money? So please don’t call me again, okay? I like my job?”

  I wait until the gumdrop whirs away before I skim the report. Thermoluminescence dating depends on how many loose electrons have built up in ceramics since they were fired. You heat a piece of fired clay to free the trapped electrons and pick up the resulting flash of light on a photomultiplier tube. The more light, the older the ceramic.

  The lab did this, but they ran into two problems. The first problem is that they didn’t have a soil sample from the discovery site to compare readings to the finished ceramic. The lab needs to know roughly how fast the electrons pile up over time so it can figure out how many years the pot’s been in the ground, and also what the local soil is made of so the lab can do radioactivity tests. The other problem is the material itself: the report says the ware’s body is made of “white kaolinate clay” that has “very low TL sensitivity and radioactivity.” In other words, not many loose electrons end up lurking in the minerals. There’s nothing to measure.

  Inconclusive = the pot could’ve been fired yesterday—or a thousand years ago.

  But somebody must’ve dated these things once, right? How else would they know how old they’re supposed to be?

  Let’s see what Savannah has to say about it… and how she reacts to me testing the pot.

  When she picks up, I say, “I have a question for you.”

  “Yes, I’d love to go to St. Barts with you for the weekend.” She giggles.

  Cute. “That wasn’t what I was going to ask, but I’ll keep it in mind. My Nam Ton pot? I just had it tested, and the lab can’t figure out how old it is. Should I be worried?”

  Things stay quiet on the other end of the line for a few beats. “You tested it? Why?” A little bit puzzled, a little bit guarded.

  “I wanted to make sure I got what I paid for.” I let that hang for a moment. “Did I?”

  “Of course you did.” She sounds more confident now. “It’s been a problem with the Nam Ton wares since Pensri found them. She used stratigraphic dating to estimate an age for them. You know what that is?”

  “Carbon-date something organic in the same dirt layer as the pot.”

  “Close enough. What lab did you use?”

  “The Getty.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Surprised. “Really? The Getty?”

  “As in, the richest private museum in the world? Yeah, that one. You keep calling Dr. Udomprecha ‘Pensri,’ like you know her. Do you?”

  “It’s a lot easier than saying ‘Dr. Udomprecha’ over and over, right?”

  “Nice sidestep.”

  She growls. “You know, Nam Ton isn’t the only Thai pottery that doesn’t play well with TL. Sukhothai-period wares from Si Satchanalai have the same problem, maybe for the same reason. Trust me, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  I worry when people tell me trust me or don’t worry. But both…?

  Crawling through traffic to get home gives me more than enough time to take stock.

  I’ve recorded Bandineau and Lorena not-really conspiring to commit tax fraud and more-or-less admitting to trafficking in looted antiquities.

  I’ve recorded Savannah encouraging me to go along with Bandineau’s scheme, and admitting to sending probably trafficked antiquities to China for sale.

  I’ve located Bandineau’s stash of looted and trafficked antiquities.

  I’ve recorded Coulson talking about the connection through him between Bandineau and unnamed Burmese, probably fronting for an apparently nonexistent company that’s probably involved in heroin smuggling between Myanmar and the U.S.

  I’ve narrowed down the source of the ceramics to a few miles along a small river in Myanmar next to the Thai border.

  All this should be in ICE’s hands by now.

  Am I done yet?

  Chapter 38

  24 DAYS LEFT

  The weekend passes pretty quietly other than nursing Chloe through yet another breakup. Either there’s a lot of clueless lesbians in L.A. who can’t see what a gem Chloe is, or she turns into some kind of monster around the women she sleeps with. Whatever it is, it takes a lot of wine, hugs, Kleenex, and bad fantasy films to get her off the metaphorical ledge.

  My email to Olivia on Friday (Does the client need anything more from me?) seems to disappear into the bit bucket. That is, until my work phone blasts me awake at 5:18 on Monday morning. I fumble it off the coffee table, check the number—not one I’ve seen before—and mumble, “Hello?”

  “Who have you been talking to?” It’s Allyson’s voice, and it’s not happy.

  I wake up real fast. “What do you mean?”

  She draws in her version of a deep, cleansing breath so loudly, it sounds like she’s in the room with me. “The client contacted me last night your time. Very early this morning my time. He told me that when he presented your reports to ICE yesterday, they told him they already had the information from another source. He believes he knows who did it. Would you care to guess?”

  If it’s Savannah, Allyson would rub my nose in it right off the top. I think about the situation until another suspect pops up. “Brandon Cort?” He and Ohlmeyer are the only two other clients she’s mentioned.

  Allyson hesitates for a moment. Surprise, or winding up to take my head off? “Yes. The client has reason to believe that Mr. Cort is also under investigation and may also have made the same arrangement with—”

  “It’s a competition? Seriously? Why didn’t anybody say anything before now?”

  “I asked the client the same question. He didn’t provide a satisfactory answer. Who have you been talking to about your inquiry?”

  Sigh. “Savannah. But you already know that—it’s the whole reason I kept her around.”

  “The whole reason?”

  Shit. Shit shit shit. “How is it you didn’t know somebody else is in the race?” The best defense, yadda yadda. “Isn’t that part of what you’re supposed to do? What—”

  “You had no idea she’d try to help another of her clients?” Her voice is slowly turning into concrete. “This is a huge surprise to you?”

  “I had no idea somebody else had done the same deal with ICE. She never mentioned it. Samson didn’t mention it. The ICE dude, Talbot, never said anything. Usually when they run two CIs after the same target, the feds play them off each other, not hide them.
What, I’m supposed to be clairvoyant?”

  “It might have occurred to you had you been thinking with a clear mind.”

  I give myself a ten-count so I don’t say the first thing that comes into my head. I say the second thing. “Okay, fine, I’ve been sleeping with her. What’s your excuse?”

  A low growling sound ekes into her end of the line. “If you want to fight with me, I’ll indulge you, but I’d rather not. We have a problem to solve. Does she know everything?”

  I go over what I’ve put into the reports and try to remember what, if anything, I’ve told Savannah about it. “Maybe eighty percent. She doesn’t know I’ve been reporting on her. I doubt she’s told Cort everything she’s been up to. I didn’t tell her anything about Coulson or Manresa, but she may have known about them before. I also didn’t tell her about WCZ. Whatever’s she told Cort has holes in it.”

  “As you said, unless she already knew.”

  “Yeah.” I’d figured Savannah had an agenda for Hoskins, but this wasn’t it. “I can try to find out if she’s involved with Cort.”

  “I can only imagine how that conversation will play out.” At least Allyson’s voice has loosened a skosh. “You sent an email to Olivia. The answer is, you are not finished yet. I had to persuade the client to not cancel the project.”

  Oh, shit, no no no…

  “I spoke to the ICE agent in charge of—”

  “Talbot?”

  “Yes. You have yet to prove a link between WCZ and Manresa in a way that’s useful to him. He has his own resources trying to establish that link. If they do, he won’t need your information. I expect you understand the consequences of that.”

  No early termination—freedom—for me. “Is that all he needs?”

  “No. You’ve also not yet discovered the link between WCZ and the source of the pottery. He mentioned that he’d told you he needs this.”

  “Yeah.” It feels like I had a forkful of prime rib in front of me, and a dog just licked it. “For the first thing, do you have any crooked customs guys you can strong-arm into opening a shipping container in a bonded warehouse?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “You don’t? I thought that would be your kind of thing.”

  “Civil servants can’t afford us.”

  Of course not. “As for the second—the only way I can do that is to go to Thailand and Myanmar. Will the client pay for that?”

  “I’ll ask.” Her voice stiffens again. “Be warned, though—if Mr. Cort manages to present ICE with information before the client does one more time, the client will end this project. Act quickly, and be very careful what you share with Miss Kendicott other than your bed. Do you understand?”

  Chapter 39

  Olivia says, “That’s rather more difficult than you may think.”

  “Come on. Everything’s online now.”

  “Perhaps so, but not everything online is accessible.”

  I’d called Olivia immediately after Allyson hung up on me to ask what I thought was a simple question: does WCZ have any cargoes on any container ships coming to Oakland? “Okay. Can you at least tell me if any ships coming from Thailand are arriving at Oakland in the next few days?”

  “That, I can do. It so happens we have a subscription to a service that tracks such things. Please bear with me.” A keyboard chatters in my ear. “I’ve yet to solve the last puzzle you gave to me.”

  “Thanks for trying.” While she types, I stare at the wall calendar in what passes for the pool house’s kitchen. Today’s June sixth. Last Thursday, Bandineau said it took a week after the ship pulled into port for Manresa to get the pots, and that his next shipment was due in two weeks. That means the ship must be arriving this week, or could already be here.

  Olivia clears her throat. “Right. Are you ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “The last ship with a port-of-call in PAT Bangkok to arrive in the Port of Oakland did so on third June. The next arrives tomorrow, eighth June. The M/V Panay Voyager, should you be interested. After that is the MSC Lucinda on Sunday next, twelfth June. Do you need more?”

  “No, that’s fine for now.” If Bandineau was right, his pots should be on one of those two ships. We can’t get access to the terminals, but we can check the WCZ address. If it’s anything more than a candidate for redevelopment, there might be something useful there. “Is Ninety-Nine still available?”

  After a few moments and more keyboard action, Olivia says, “Yes. Do you need him?”

  “Yes, please. And I need to fly to SFO. Today.”

  When I tell Savannah I’m passing through on my way to business in Seattle and ask if she’d like to have dinner, her squeal nearly takes out my eardrum.

  Savannah turns on her searchlight smile the moment she spots me in the St. Francis’ lobby. I haven’t seen her since Memorial Day—a week—but I realize I’ve missed her. The way she keeps squeezing my hand as we eat dinner in the hotel’s Oak Room Restaurant makes me think she missed me—Hoskins—too.

  We skip dessert in the restaurant so we can have dessert in bed. She’s very glad to see me. So much so that I don’t have a chance to ask her about Cort even if I remembered to (which I don’t). By the time she’s curled up next to me asleep, I hate the thought of questioning her. If she’s talking to Cort, it’s out of loyalty to a client and not to undermine Hoskins; after all, she doesn’t know Cort and Hoskins are competing. I sleep better than I have for a week.

  We kiss goodbye after a room-service breakfast early the next morning. I hate to see her go. I’m not thinking straight about her… and I’m not sure I care.

  George edges our clapped-out 1998 Ford Econoline panel van—easily the shittiest rental vehicle I’ve ever seen—into a gap between an RV with flat tires and a gutted pickup truck, both on the north side of the street across from WCZ’s public address. He props a reflective sun visor across the windshield while I set up the folding camp chairs in the back. We grab Cokes from the big, high-mileage Igloo ice chest and settle in for a long Tuesday evening of watching through the blacked-out back windows.

  WCZ’s cozy little nest at 1835 Ninth Street in West Oakland looks like the “before” picture in a Rustoleum ad. I’m not sure if it’s still standing because of the rust’s structural integrity, the multiple coats of graffiti, or some combination of the two. It slumps on a half-empty concrete slab and is completely dark in the twilight. Some buildings seem to have life even when they’re empty; this isn’t one of them.

  I ask, “Find out anything more about this place?”

  George shakes his head. “No more than what Olivia knows. A shell company owns it. Used to be a pipe warehouse twenty-some years ago. No history of police calls in the past ten years.” He plugs in earbuds and brings up Spotify on his agency phone.

  Four hours crawl by. Twilight turns into a mercury-vapor-orange night. Traffic noise from the freeway fades from a roar to a buzz. The last decent-looking cars on the street—they probably belong to students at the trapeze school next door to us—skitter off into the dark. Feral things (dogs, cats, children) prowl by.

  By midnight, the ragged people living in the two vans across the street from us throw dirt on their oil-drum fire and turn in. An hour later, there’s no sign of life on the block unless you count the herds of rats grazing in the weeds. I nudge George awake. “It’s time.”

  We go out the front doors, ease them closed so we don’t make noise, then pick our way through ruined cars toward the skate park at the end of the street, next to the freeway sound wall. The gravel’s compacted enough that it doesn’t crackle anymore. I watch for movement or lights both at WCZ’s warehouse and in the five vehicles parked outside it. I also try not to step in dog shit or tear my legs open on rusted metal.

  The skate park gives us a platform to get over the chain-link fence into WCZ’s domain. George hands me a black ski mask, drags on his own. The front door’s completely coated with graffiti, but surprise!
It’s solid, heavy-gauge steel with a serious deadbolt on it. George waves me to follow him around back.

  We find the front door’s twin set into the warehouse’s back wall. There are no windows. George pulls on latex gloves, then starts annoying the deadbolt with lockpicks. I ask, “Shouldn’t you check for alarms or cameras?”

  “If we don’t see them now, we won’t see them until it’s too late.”

  I glance around for night creatures taking an interest in us. The cracked, weedy slab we’re on reaches seventy feet or so to the back fence. Oil stains, spray paint, and at least one sizable burn mark decorate it. A loading dock squats about thirty feet down the wall from us. No wolves, mobs of giant rats, or zombies… yet.

  A click, then the grating of a deadbolt against a strike plate. George stows his pick set and draws a pistol from behind his back. “If an alarm sounds, go back to the skate park. If someone starts shooting, go back to the skate park. If there’s a dog—”

  “Skate park. I get it.”

  No alarms, dogs, or zombies come after us when we slip through the door. George runs the supernova beam of his tiny flashlight around the doorway. “No alarm contacts.” He pads away.

  I lock the door, twist on my red Mini Maglite, and follow. Several ranks of empty industrial shelving reach front-to-back across the warehouse’s floor. A boxy office enclosure about the size of a single-wide trailer is attached to the wall about where the front door should be. There’s a pallet jack in one corner, unrusty enough to still be usable, and a couple appliance dollies. Somebody swept the concrete floor recently; the one trash barrel I find is empty. Somebody—WCZ?— still uses this place.

  I’ve been pretty chill about this so far, mostly because there’s nowhere to hide anything in here. The bad news: there’s nowhere to hide us, either. I eye the office, waiting for the door to fly open. That’s what happened in Milan on my first project. It wasn’t fun.

  George says, “Office?”

  Should we? It’s not like drug smugglers or antique smugglers keep paper records anymore, if they ever did. All we’re likely to find is an old pinup calendar and a coffee mug with “My pusher went to Bangkok and all I got was this crummy cup.” There won’t even be a phone to bug. Still, somebody might’ve gotten sloppy. “Yeah. Let’s—”