Blood Double

by Neil Mcmahon

“Meekook,” Kwon said. “American. Okay?” The chubby fingers waggled in impatient demand.

  “The name.”

  “Don’t got name. Phone numba at home.”

  “You have his phone number?”

  “Neh, neh, neh,” Kwon said, head nodding yes.

  “What did he look like?”

  “You follow. Get phone numba, draw pitcha.” Kwon jammed the car into gear and pulled away.

  “Motherfucker,” Larrabee said, and took off after him.

  Kwon led them west, driving frenetically, lunging ahead and suddenly braking with no apparent reason for either. Turns did not appear to be premeditated. Larrabee kept cursing but stayed with him.

  In a few more minutes, they were deep in the Mission. The buildings were run-down, the sidewalks cracked and gummy, strewn with broken glass. Accordion grilles covered the windows of the small corner grocery-liquor stores, and painted graffiti was rife—symbols that Monks could not interpret but which he assumed were gang-turf markings. He recalled that some gangs required a killing—say, of a convenient stranger—in order for a member to be made.

  Kwon swerved to the curb, skinning a tire, in front of one of the small stores. Its sign was in Korean. No one was standing in front of this one. He got out of the Cadillac and strode inside without looking at them, but once in, he turned and beckoned, waving them toward him, with his fingers pointed down.

  The store was empty of customers when they stepped warily inside. Kwon was at the rear, talking rapidly to a middle-aged Asian woman. She stared at the two Anglo men, her mouth a small O. Kwon kept beckoning to them with his downward wave.

  Monks and Larrabee made their way through shelves stacked with a melting pot of goods—oriental delicacies, brightly labeled cans of refritos and chiles, a rack of Penthouse and Hustler magazines. A locked, glassed-in case behind the counter offered half-pints of liquor and sweet wine. They stepped cautiously past the woman, following Kwon through a curtain into the back room.

  It was warm and dank, the air pungent with the eye-watering smell of kim chee. An elderly man in loose-fitting pajamas was sitting at a table, spooning sugar onto a plate of sliced tomatoes. He stared at them too, his spoon paused in midair. Kwon snapped quick words at him in Korean. The old man rose with jerky haste and disappeared through a farther door.

  “You wait here,” Kwon said to Monks and Larrabee. “Back two minute.” He left through the same door as the old man.

  The two minutes passed, and then two more. Sounds from the street came through the walls, but inside, it was still.

  Larrabee stepped to the curtain and twitched it aside to peer through.

  “They cut the lights,” he said quietly. “We’re out of here.”

  They strode back through the darkened store toward the street. Monks shoved the door, fearing that it was locked. His stomach unknotted a little when it swung out. They walked fast to the van.

  They had almost reached it, when a voice said, “How’s it going, man?”

  The sound was thin, hard, edged with menace. The accent was faintly Hispanic. Monks could barely make out two human figures, one lean and one much larger, in the building’s shadow.

  “Good,” Monks said. He and Larrabee kept walking. The two men in the shadows stepped out, blocking their path to the van.

  “You fixing some pipes?” the same voice said.

  The speaker was thin, olive-skinned, wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut out and a dark stocking cap pulled over his hair. He had a faintly reptilian cast and the cold, hollow eyes of a real junkie. His companion was taller and built like a bullet: shaved rounded head, neck that sloped outward from below his ears, chest as thick as his shoulders were wide, with no delineation of waist or hips. His left hand hung open beside a thigh the size of a fire hydant. His right was hidden behind his leg.

  The lean man moved toward them with a nervous, fidgety grace, like a cat working its way closer to a bird.

  “You in our place, man,” he said. “You got to pay a toll. Throw down your wallets and shit, we let you go.”

  Monks hitched his thumbs in his belt behind his waist, fingertips brushing the butt of the Beretta in his back pocket. He had never fired a weapon at a human being. He tried to swallow but could not. His heart was beating very hard.

  Larrabee said, “Walk into that store. Go on, do it.”

  The lean man smiled with the contempt of an adult condescending to a child.

  “Hey, sure, man, no petho.” There came a click, a glimmer, and he was holding an open double-bladed butterfly knife. The bigger man’s right hand was visible now, gripping what he had been holding behind his back: a shortened baseball bat.

  Monks eased the pistol butt out, curling his fingers around it.

  Headlights appeared, turning the corner three blocks down. For just a second, the light was in the other men’s faces. Monks was aware of a blur of motion to his left.

  It was Larrabee, lunging forward and side-arming something across the lean man’s face, a sudden vicious lash. There came a crack, like a dry stick being sharply snapped. The lean man doubled over in agony, hands flying to his mouth, the knife skittering across the sidewalk. Blood spilled through his fingers and onto the pavement. The thick pillar of flesh jumped back with a sort of huh, baseball bat rising.

  Larrabee was holding a pistol pointed between the two men at gut height.

  “I’m about to shoot you both in the stomach,” Larrabee said. “Get in the store. Move.”

  They moved, the big man in a clumsy trot, the lean one burbling sounds that might have been weeping or threats or both, into the darkened store.

  “You stick your fucking heads out, I’ll blow them off!” Larrabee yelled in after them.

  He and Monks sprinted to the van. Larrabee wheeled it around the corner and gunned it, checkerboarding through the next dozen blocks, finally turning north on Van Ness and resuming a more sedate pace.

  “I haven’t done anything like that in a long time,” Larrabee said. He seemed to be bristling with energy. “You can bet Kwon’s on his way back to that store, with help. It’ll be a sweet little surprise, having those two inside. Asshole versus asshole, let them cancel each other out. I know it ain’t P.C., but it felt pretty fucking good.”

  Monks was starting to breathe more easily, but he was still hearing that crack.

  “Where did that gun come from?” he asked.

  “Spring-loaded holster, up my sleeve. Nice light piece with a six-inch barrel. It works dandy as a sap.” Larrabee bumped his forearm against the steering wheel and showed Monks the pistol dropping down into his palm: a .22 magnum AMT Automag, lightweight and powerful.

  He turned off Van Ness onto Fourteenth Street and pulled over. The fact was that they were no closer to the information they needed—the name of the American who had given Kwon the tampered-with Demerol, or the women who had been the subjects of Walker Ostrand’s research—no closer to whoever, at Aesir, had engineered murder. Nothing else had offered itself. The search had been a series of defeats, and the list of options had dwindled again.

  Larrabee punched numbers on the speaker phone to check messages from his office. The digital recording informed him that there was only one.

  The voice was a woman’s, young and hesitant. “Have I got the right number?” she said. “This is Trish Roberson.” It took Monks a few seconds to place the name: Clara Ostrand’s daughter, the ink-black-haired young woman in the Haight-Ashbury apartment.

  “I remembered something about Gloria Sharpe,” Trish said. “Just thought you might want to know.” The last words were spoken in a sort of teasing lilt. The connection ended without further information: no phone number, but then, Monks recalled, there was no phone.

  “Ten to one it’s bullshit,” Larrabee said. “She’s angling for another fifty bucks. But—”

  Monks checked his watch: 4:27 P.M.

  “I need to get downtown if I’m going to follow Tygard,” he said.

  Larrabee no
dded. “We’ll split.”

  “What are we going to do for another vehicle?” Monks said.

  “I’ll borrow one.” Larrabee started driving again, cruising slowly into a wasteland of concrete and scrubby vacant lots under the skyway. There were no pedestrians but a lot of parked cars in this area, many of them older models. Monks realized that Larrabee was driving slowly because he was looking them over. It was just dusk.

  “Borrow?” Monks said nervously.

  “I haven’t done any repos in a while either, but it’s like riding a bicycle.” Larrabee pulled the van over behind a late seventies Ford sedan. “This should do. Hand me that red box back there, will you?”

  Monks reached into the back and got a battered metal Milwaukee Hole Hawg carrying case. Inside lay an assortment of lock picks and other tools you would not find in a suburban homeowner’s garage.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Monks said.

  “Take it easy. I’ll call the owner and tell them where to find it. Leave them some money for their trouble.”

  Monks started to say that it was not the owner he was worried about, but Larrabee was out, slipping a slimjim down between window and frame. The door lock popped immediately. He slid into the driver’s seat and fit an instrument that looked like a ratchet over the ignition.

  Monks watched the stream of traffic overhead on the freeway roaring by, the lines of headlights crowding along the main streets only a couple of blocks away, and marveled again at how you could get away with just about anything. He envied people who could pull it off. Whenever he tried something even slightly illicit, he felt like he was wearing a neon T-shirt.

  The car rocked to life with an uncertain rumble. Larrabee got back out and came to lean in the van’s window.

  “This is going to sound ugly, Carroll,” Larrabee said. “Make Dr. Rostanov ride with you. Just in case there’s somebody waiting again. Maybe that will give you some insurance. And if she hedges on coming along—maybe you better not go.”

  He walked back to the Ford, fingers rubbing his temple, where he carried a three-inch scar, still faintly purple, from his own encounter with Robby Vandenard. Monks knew the gesture was not intended as a reproach, but he winced anyway. It was not his fault, but it had happened because of him.

  Monks started the van toward downtown.

  20

  Monks waited, parked illegally on Montgomery Street, scanning the Bank of America Building’s California Street exits with a pair of Larrabee’s binoculars—powerful Leicas that would pick out details at several hundred yards, even in poor light.

  He had talked to Martine again on the phone, arranging to meet her. She was due to come out soon, trying to keep just ahead of Ronald Tygard.

  She had agreed, with apparent eagerness, to come with him.

  It was after five now, and people were leaving the building in a steady flow, hurrying across the plaza and past the adamantine Banker’s Heart, joining the crowds emptying the financial district. As the day shift ended, the night shift was coming on—the homeless, their ranks swelled astonishingly in the past couple of years, as if they had been put on buses in New York’s cleanup of Times Square and shipped west. Some wandered with their garbage bag bundles; others staked out street corners, demanding tribute. Union Square had become a favorite place, with panhandlers mingling with the beautifully dressed elite who cruised the elegant shops.

  Monks focused the binoculars on two men inside the BOA lobby, just coming out a door. Something about them struck him as familiar, not so much visual recognition of facial features as their bearing.

  He realized that one was Kenneth Bouldin, Aesir’s CEO—dignified, upright, impeccably dressed—and the other was Pete Hazeldon, the R&D chief. He looked rumpled, even from this distance, slouching along with one hand thickly bandaged from his run-in with the Viking boat’s anchor machinery, the hand held stiffly away from his side. Monks recalled that Hazeldon had refused pain medication. No doubt it hurt.

  The two men walked together across the plaza, then parted at its edge. Bouldin walked on toward Nob Hill. Hazeldon raised his uninjured hand in farewell, and stood there for several seconds, watching Bouldin’s retreating back. It gave him a forlorn look. Then he turned and walked east, a slight, hunched figure who seemed to be almost scurrying against the wind.

  Martine came out of the building a couple of minutes later, walking with quick, uneven steps. Her dress was of a soft fabric that swirled around her ankles. Monks watched with a bittersweet mix of pleasure and apprehension.

  She climbed into the van, face flushed, breathless.

  “Tygard was putting on his coat when I left,” she said. “He’ll be coming out of the parking garage.”

  Then, with sudden concern, she said, “My god, what happened to you?” She leaned close to him, fingertips touching the scabbed skin over his cheekbone.

  “I took a header,” Monks said. “Cat got between my feet. My own damned yard. My own damned cat.”

  “They’re the ones that will get you.”

  Monks did not have time to sound out just how she meant that, because a green Jaguar convertible was pulling out of the parking garage exit.

  “That’s him,” she said, pointing with one hand and gripping Monks’s arm with the other, whispering as if she could be overheard.

  Monks started after the Jag, glancing in the rearview mirror, just in case another pair of headlights was pulling out behind him.

  Tygard drove several blocks east and then turned south, crossing Market and merging onto Interstate 80. He jumped immediately to the left lane, impatiently tail-gating the vehicle ahead. Monks floored the van to keep up, cutting dangerously in and out of traffic. Less than a mile later, Tygard swerved back to the right and exited at Fifth. He tore through two city blocks and climbed another freeway entrance, this time onto 280 south.

  “You think he knows somebody’s following and he’s trying to shake us?” Martine said.

  “I think he just likes to drive fast. Any guesses where he’s going?”

  She frowned. “Aesir has a warehouse down in Potrero. Computer equipment. But there’s no reason for Ron to be going there.”

  Unless, Monks thought, Tygard had other business that a warehouse might be suitable for.

  The bayside docks were another area of San Francisco where Monks rarely had reason to go—an industrial maze of viaducts, railroad sidings, dilapidated warehouses, sagging cyclone fences lined with windblown litter. Monks followed the Jaguar along Tennessee Street for several blocks, keeping well behind. It turned onto a side street. There was no other traffic here. Monks cut the van’s lights.

  Tygard drove three more blocks, then turned into an alley. It crossed a railroad track, and ended in an eight-foot-high chain-link gate topped with razor wire. Behind it stood a massive old three-story brick structure.

  The windows were dark, the parking lot empty. In the argon lights, Monks could just make out a faded sign on the bricks that read GRANNELLI BROS. Beyond it was a railroad track, and past that, the dead gray concrete walls of a dock terminal.

  Tygard had stopped the Jaguar and was standing at the gate, unlocking it. He drove through and locked it again behind him. Then he drove on around the building, out of their sight.

  Monks glanced in the rearview mirror once more. He was pretty sure no one had followed them. It was still possible that someone was waiting.

  “Can’t you say something?” Martine whispered. “I hate to nag, but, god.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, you know, tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m nervous,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  He drove on past the alley entrance and the warehouse’s front. Then he saw that in its rear corner, to the south, a single top-story window was dimly lit.

  The high razor-wire fence surrounded the building’s concrete yard. There was no way to get closer. He took out the binoculars. The view through the iron-grated window gave onl
y an oblique glimpse of a warehouse room stacked with cardboard boxes—probably computer equipment.

  But then a figure passed by inside, moving quickly. It was only a blur, but that was enough for Monks to recognize Tygard.

  “He’s in there,” Monks said. He was aware of her breathing beside him, a soft, anxious sound.

  Tygard’s upper body had been moving as he passed by; Monks thought he was shrugging off his coat. Monks watched for another minute, but Tygard did not reappear.

  Monks started driving again, looking for a vantage point that would give a better angle. They passed two more alleys, both dead-ending at the fenced-off railroad tracks. But he could see that the next one crossed over them.

  The crossing was posted with PRIVATE signs, but the buildings on the other side looked rundown and were dark. Monks eased the van over the tracks and drove tensely through the deserted trainyard. Cinders and broken glass crunched under the tires.

  At the far northeast corner, he swung the van to face the building. Now the angle to the window was almost straight on. He lifted the binoculars again.

  The interior vista was similar—cardboard computer boxes—but this time there was a human figure clearly visible: stationary, or almost. It was a woman sitting upright on a stack of the boxes, straddling something. A lacy black camisole was draped around her waist. Her breasts, medium-sized and firm, were bare, swaying as her buttocks, also firm and bare, undulated in a leisurely up and down rotation. Her eyes were open and her faint smile suggested the cool pleasure of control.

  Monks had been right about Audrey Cabot. At almost fifty, she looked pretty damned good with her clothes off, too.

  “Can you see Tygard?” Martine whispered.

  “Part of him.”

  Abruptly, Audrey turned her head, staring directly at Monks. It was impossible that she could spot him, but his scalp still prickled.

  “What’s happening, dammit?” Martine said.

  “We’d better go.”

  “Let me look.”

  “I don’t think that’s called for,” Monks said, turning to set the binoculars down. She wrested them away from him and put them to her eyes.