She knew that she could never stand up to Morgan or survive a confrontation. He wanted her dead. There was no compromise, no deal to be made. What she was, was a prime witness in a murder that could not be proven. Morgan was too clean, too thorough. He had to be, Clarissa reasoned, too well connected with some organized crime to be touched. It would do her no good to walk into a police station and tell them what she had seen. They could offer her no protection. No crime against her had been committed. She had no proof. All she would be doing would be coming out into the open, vulnerable and powerless, making it easier for Morgan to eliminate this current aggravation.
The only way to stay alive was to not let him find her. Bury herself as deep as she could until she could find someone who could help her. Somewhere, Morgan Wolfe had to have enemies and Clarissa had to find one powerful enough to help her. Where or how she would begin to search depended on Virginia Essex or possibly Hugo. Clarissa needed money to stay one step ahead of Wolfe. Right now, few cents for the antiquated pay phone in the lobby was an almost unreachable dream.
Clarissa was half way down the stairwell when a drunk came staggering and swaying his way up, bouncing off the wall and the banister in his effort to make the climb. He was a young man, lean and tall. He wore an old sleeveless denim jacket, torn jeans, care worn motorcycle boots, and black, fingerless gloves. A blue baseball cap was pulled down low over his brow. Wisps of dirty blond hair escaped from the cap and his face, what could be seen of it, was dark with grime and day old beard.
He seemed not to notice Clarissa standing at the top of the flight of stairs, but continued slowly toward her in a plodding, unbalanced struggle for each riser. Clarissa watched him with an unexplained fear intensifying with each of the drunk's faltering steps. She back away to give him room, pressing herself against the wall, clutching the banister. There was something about the man, the way he moved despite the stagger that unnerved her. She could not take her eyes off of him even though he had made no eye contact with her. She could not see his face under the visor of the cap yet she felt a menacing presence about the man.
He jostled into her and she nearly fell. She grasped the banister with both hands and the odor emanating from his filthy clothes and rancid breath made her gag.
"Get away," she said as she managed to push him away from her and duck under his arms as he made a grab for her in an effort to steady himself. "Keep away from me."
The drunk never looked at her or acknowledged that he had even known she was there. He carefully negotiated the rest of the way up the stairs and disappeared into the second floor hallway.
The hotel lobby was deserted. Dusty sat behind the wire enclosed reception desk, one gnarled hand propped up his chin as he read the newspaper. He looked up briefly as Clarissa waltzed past toward the door.
"Gettin' cloudy again," he told her. "Gonna get rain according to the paper. Thunderstorm weather."
Clarissa stood at the glass door and watched the long finger of a gray rain cloud stretch across the blue sky. Suddenly, she crossed to Dusty and entwined her fingers in the wire mesh.
"Dusty," she said and her intensity startled him. "Do you have any change? I need to make a phone call."
"Sorry," he said simply and went back to his paper.
"It's an emergency," she went on, and the wire mesh wavered in her grasp.
"You can call 911 for free," he eyed her over the newspaper, "if it's an emergency."
"I need to call my friend. The one that brought me here. Virginia Essex. You know her. She was supposed to bring my purse. It has my money in it. I'll pay you back. I just need to call her. Please."
"Sorry."
"Look, I need to get out of here. It's just a lousy quarter. Please. I'll give you ten dollars for the damn money when she brings my purse. Please." Dusty shook his head and never looked up from the paper. "You have a phone in your office. I heard it ring the other night. Would you call Virginia for me? It's a local call. It won't cost you anything. Ask her to bring my purse. Please, Dusty."
"Pay phone is on the wall," Dusty drawled. "Takes quarters."
“What about a cell phone? Does anybody in here have a cell phone I can borrow?”
Dusty looked up over his hawk-like nose. “People here can’t afford no cell phone. What do think this is? The Ritz?”
Clarissa slapped the wire mesh in frustration. Already the lobby was darkening with the gathering clouds.
"Did Doc Rowland go out?" she asked.
"Goes every Monday morning," Dusty replied. "Visits his boyhood friend in a nursing home over on Alvarado Street. He's usually back late, around seven or eight o'clock."
"If you see him come in will you tell him I need to talk to him?"
"Will there be anything else, Miss Dugan?" he asked with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.
"Will you make that call for me?" Clarissa was exasperated and near tears. "Just ask Virginia to bring my purse."
"Sorry, Miss Dugan," he told her. "Company policy."
"Please help me."
"It's my lunch break," he said as he folded the paper. Clarissa hung for a long moment on the wire mesh as Dusty went back into his office and closed the door.
"Fine, rot in hell then, you old buzzard."
Her head pounded with a sudden headache and she wanted an aspirin. There was a metal first aid box in her bathroom and all she wanted to do at this moment was to lay down, close her eyes, and make the pain go away. Reluctantly, she turned toward the stairs.
The young man stood on the bottom step staring at her. He was no more than a teenager, fifteen or sixteen. He was bone thin under the black t-shirt with a faded rock group logo splashed across the front, and jeans torn at the knees. Stringy brown hair covered his ruddy, thin face down to his shoulders and his narrow, hollow eyes fixed on Clarissa in an unfriendly glare. He twisted a length of rope absently in his hands.
There was no way Clarissa could get up the stairs without somehow getting past him. He was not moving. The rope continued to snake and curl as he wrapped it around his fists and snapped it taut.
"What do you want?" Clarissa asked nervously, looking back at Dusty's deserted cage.
The boy remained stoic and rigid except for his ever twisting hands. Clarissa looked around at the empty lobby, hoping that someone would come through the front door.
"Who are you?" Clarissa tried again. "What the hell do you want? I'm not afraid of you."
She took a couple of halting steps toward him. The rope stopped twisting and fell limp from one hand.
"Forget robbing me. I haven't got a damned dime. All I got is a major league headache. I need to get up to my room."
He took a step toward her, the stoic expressing never changing, his ice blue eyes intensely staring. She stepped back, frightened. The boy dropped lightly off of the stair, never taking his eyes from Clarissa. He moved to the left of the stairs into the hallway and waited, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling.
Clarissa took the opportunity and bolted. She ran up the two flights of stairs and down the third floor hallway, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She slammed shut the door to her tiny cell and slumped to the floor with her back up against the door. Somehow, she had to get out of this hole.
Light shuffling footsteps in the hallway passed and then paused. Clarissa heard them and listened to see if they would stop at her door or continue down to Rowland's room. There was a tapping on her door and her heart raced.
"Rowland?" she whispered. "Rowland, is that you?"
She prayed that Rowland had come home early as she flung open the door. Her disappointment was reflected in the dismay on the teenage boy's face. He held an old camera around his neck and he looked quizzically at her.
"I don't want my picture taken right now," she snapped at him. "Please, go away."
The boy held out a torn magazine cover. It was an old Harper's cover Clarissa had done almost four years ago. The boy lifted his camera and silently indicated the cover. His eyes were wide and vividl
y blue as he tried to smile.
"I have to go out now," Clarissa told him. "I can't..."
The boy' eyes fell, but when he looked up at her again, his gaze was shy and no longer the frightening stare it had been at the bottom of the stairs. He shrugged his shoulders and shoved the cover at her. When she didn't understand, he made a motion of writing.
"An autograph? I...don't have anything to write with. Why don't you come back later? I'll sign it then. I promise."
The boy nodded that he understood. Clarissa did not intend to keep that promise. When the boy was out of sight, she retied the black scarf around her head, securing it with a knot at the nape of her neck, buttoned up the wool work shirt, and started down the stairs. She'd had quite enough of the Hempstead Hotel. She was through depending on Virginia Essex. Clarissa was restless and needed to move. The walls were beginning to close in on her. She could feel a lurking peril that set her nerves on edge. It was time to put a little more distance between her and Morgan Wolfe and all she needed was another plan.
Eating with Doc Rowland at the church's charity kitchen had given her an idea. The old neighborhood in east Hollywood where she had lived until she had run away at age fifteen was due north of the Hempstead, a little more than a twenty minute walk. St. Hector's Girl's School was just a block or two farther north. The school office or the convent on the hill behind the school would have a phone. She intended to call Hugo's roommate and get the new number for the salon in La Jolla and ask Hugo to come for her. And when she got her purse back from Virginia, she would make a generous donation to the good sisters of St. Hector's.
The sun had broken through the clouds, leaving patches of azure blue among the white fleece. The air smelled crisp and clean. The westerly breeze foretold of another storm front off the coast, but for the time being the sun felt like a golden tonic that lifted Clarissa's spirits higher than at any time since she had been on the run. There was a lightness in her step as she crossed the Hempstead's faded lobby. She smiled at a Mexican woman in a purple shawl sitting on the worn sofa, and even waved to Dusty, who gave her a cursory grunt from behind his racing form.
"Good riddance, you selfish old fart," she thought to herself. "I don't need you either."
Marco lowered the window a couple of inches and let the cool outside air into the black Cadillac. He sipped on the hot coffee in the Starbuck’s cup and sat back in the plush driver's seat.
When things were in discord, Marco could not leave them alone. Life had to run in harmony and only then could Marco feel in absolute control. He needed to be in control. He trusted no one. Not even Morgan Wolfe. He had let his guard down only once when he trusted Alex Rogers to secure the estate on Friday night. That had cost Marco dearly. That one minor slip had endangered the entire operation. It was not the money, the security of the job and the six figure yearly income. If Wolfe's domain began to crumble, the cartels would come down hard, leaving no trace that there ever was a Wolfe connection.
Now, Wolfe had ordered Marco to trust again. This time, an assassin that the Lu cartel had recommended. McKinnon. Unknown, untried, and expensive. Morgan should have just let Marco do his job. No one knew the human animal as well as Marco. He had hunted human prey since the mountains of Afghanistan. None had escaped him. Not until Clarissa Hayden.
Virginia's words had played over and over in his head. "You'll go down with him, Marco. He won't let you live. No one will be alive if the empire crumbles. All because of Clarissa Hayden. Clarissa Hayden. Clarissa Hayden."
But she was trapped inside the Hampstead Hotel. Marco surveyed the outside of the building from where he was parked just down the block from the dilapidated homeless shelter. Morgan was wrong. He could get to Clarissa anywhere, anytime. She'd be dead right now if Morgan hadn't told him to let McKinnon handle the hit. He would wait until dark, get into the building up that fire escape, isolate Clarissa, and rake a blade across that bitch's throat before anyone knew what was happening. Assassin. Trust. Wrong.
Marco raised the car window and snuggled down deeper into the seat. Clarissa would be dead by dark, and so would the assassin if he got in Marco's way.
Marco was just about to close his eyes and take a catnap until sunset when Clarissa stepped out of the Hempstead Hotel and walked away from him toward Western Avenue.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?” Marco smiled. Things were back on a smooth track. It couldn't be a better day for a hunt. “Looks like we can pick back up right where we left off on Friday night.”
He pulled two large black plastic garbage bags and two wire ties out of their box, folded them neatly, and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. He checked to make sure his gun was loaded, shoving that into his shoulder holster. He took a small axe from under the passenger seat and hooked the handle into a loop in his belt. Then, with a grin wide as a Cheshire cat, he started after Clarissa.
St. Hector's was a ruin and so was Clarissa's spirits as she hung onto the chain-link fence surrounding her old high school. Most of the windows on the two-story tan brick school building were broken, some boarded up, others were missing their panes altogether. One wing of the building had been gutted by fire. The bricks above those windows were soot-stained and the roof was open to the sky. Even the convent up on the hill looked shabby and overgrown with trees and shrubs.
Clarissa had attended only two years of the four year school, but it was still painful to see the place in such sad shape. There had been some good times here. Alice May and Ginny Taylor, red-haired twin sisters who were her best friends. Derek Montgomery, her first crush and her first kiss. Barry Nobbs, her first real date and one of her closest friends. He was sixteen and had an old Datsun B210 missing the front fenders and the back seat. Probably why Myra Hayden had let her daughter go out with him in the first place.
Clarissa smiled at the long forgotten memories. She had been a shy girl, more into reading romance novels and mysteries than school social activities. With Alice May and Ginny she spend most weekends in movie theaters or browsing through the unique shops down on Hollywood Boulevard. She turned down more dates than she accepted, preferring to spend days at the beach or in art galleries with the nerdy but likeable Barry.
She had gotten a letter from him years ago when she was living in New York. He had seen her first magazine cover and wrote in care of her agent to say congratulations on her successful modeling career. Barry had married and was expecting his first child and had become a computer IT geek at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the company that tracks mars landings, and the Voyager space crafts on the west coast. Clarissa sent him a short note wishing him well but never heard from him again. She couldn't even begin to remember his address.
"Not a pretty sight, is it?" The voice startled Clarissa out of her reverie. The figure in the black long-sleeved, knee-length dress, black hose and a small black veil fastened to the back of her short cropped salt and pepper hair smiled. "Did you need some help?"
"No...I...went to school here," Clarissa told the young nun.
"Oh, when was that?"
"About thirteen years ago," said Clarissa.
"I've been here only six. I'm Sister Ruth Cecilia. I teach math." The nun extended a thin white hand. Clarissa shook it warmly.
"I hated math," she admitted. But Sister Helen Patricia was my favorite. She got me through it.”
“She’s still here, you know. On retreat at the moment, but you should stop in and say “Hi” sometime. She loves talking to her old students. You know, she was my teacher, too. I hated math but don't tell anybody. I was just good at it, thank the Lord."
"When was the fire?"
"This past summer. Faulty wiring. We've started to rebuild. St. Stephen's Church has set up some temporary classrooms in their parking lot for our sophomores and juniors. St. Francis School is taking our seniors. We make due. What is your name?"
"Clarissa Hayden."
The nun stared at Clarissa as if trying to remember something. Then her eyes brightened. "You know, there's
famous New York model named Clarissa Hayden. She used to do those cosmetic commercials for Cheswick Makeup. Any relation?"
"No."
"Too bad. You live close by?"
"I'm staying with friends. Do you think I could use a phone? I need to call my friend to come and get me and I don't seem to have any change."
"I think that would be alright. There's a phone in the office up at the convent."
The nun unlocked a gate in the fence and Clarissa followed her past the school and up the path to the convent on the hill. Neither noticed Marco as he silently cut a hole in the fence and melted into the shrubbery beside the path.
Clarissa dialed the number again. There was no answer, not even the answering machine. She let it ring sixteen times before she hung up. The clock on the desk in the convent's office said three thirty. Virginia might still be at the Wolfe estate. It just gave her an uneasy feeling that her answering machine had been turned off. She tried the secretary’s cell phone with the same result. Not even voice mail. That too, was strange. It said the number was unavailable. Clarissa’s skin prickled. Something was wrong.
Clarissa picked up the phone and dialed the number for Morgan's office at the house. Her heart raced as she waited, hoping that Virginia would answer.
"Hello?" Clarissa slammed down the phone. It had been Dalton's voice. What was he doing in Morgan's office? Where was Virginia? Or Alex Rogers? What was happening?
"Get through?" Sister Ruth Cecilia poked her head in the office.
"Still busy," said Clarissa. "Can I try my friend's roommate in Pacific Palsies?"
"Sure, go ahead."
Her fingers still shaking, she dialed Hugo's number. She had no idea what Hugo was calling the new salon in La Jolla so calling directory assistance was pointless. Maybe his roommate would have the new number or at least the name of the place.
Domino Page 15