“Spider-sense is acting up again?”
“I have a gut on this one.”
“Did your gut tell you to contact the coroner down there?”
“Gut said to have you do it. I don’t have official status, remember?”
“What about your flame? She’s there.”
“She’s busy,” I said.
Ravi, picking up on something for once, let it drop. “I’ll get back to you,” he said.
37
I WAS DRESSED IN THE sort of official-casual I often used for field interviews: blue sport coat, khakis, blue shirt, no tie. And though I tended to gussy up a little more than my public health colleagues—most of them didn’t go for the jacket—I definitely wasn’t GQ. You want to look stand-up, but not too good. A public health doctor in the field is not the same as a private-practice cardiologist in his clinic. You don’t want the public to get the wrong idea about how much it pays its employees, which, for the record, is peanuts compared to the private-practice guys. Besides, good clothes put distance between the average joe-on-the-street and an investigator. The goal is to minimize distance between you and the interviewee while still looking formal enough to engender some respect. In any case, all this costuming had been wasted on Mr. Yang; I would have gotten the same information from him if I’d been dressed in three-piece Brooks Brothers or one-piece leotard.
As I pulled the Corolla into a Denny’s, I looked around the lot. Nothing out of the ordinary. No SUVs, no Caddies. Just the same, I reached under the passenger seat and pulled out the Smith & Wesson, then slid it back. If someone wanted to dust me at a Denny’s, to scramble my brains with the Grand Slam, they could damn well be my guest. I should have eaten four hours ago. I was starving.
I went into the restaurant sans weaponry. The pancakes, eggs, and bacon went down without incident.
During coffee, my phone vibrated.
“Coroner in Santa Clara called it cancer NOS,” Ravi reported. NOS meant Not Otherwise Specified. It meant the coroner hadn’t biopsied anything. It meant they didn’t know.
“Anything helpful?”
“They pulled the report for me, ‘Extensive involvement of the face.’”
“Only the face?” I asked.
“Only the face.”
“That’s something. So now we can hope the pictures are showing us the whole story and these people aren’t lit up over the rest of their bodies.”
“We can hope, sure. Anyway,” Ravi said, “I’m still not convinced we have anything more than a rare case here. Probably just some weird sarcoma. Just one of those things.”
“Just one of those things…” I let the sentence trail. “All right, Ravi. Keep an eye out for me.”
“You got it, boss.” He laughed. “I love this, McCormick. You owe me more and more each phone call. Hey, did you really have some ceremony with Hillary Schaffer last year?” Schaffer was the Director of CDC.
“Not by choice.”
“Damn it, man. You lucked out with that Chimeragen thing. Lucked out.” He hung up.
Luck, I’m pretty sure, would be the last word I’d use to describe it.
There was something rotten in my gut, and I realized it was more than the grease I’d just ingested: that other thing, the feeling I’d told Ravi about. I focused on the sensation. Anxiety. Anxiety about what might be blossoming on the faces of people out there in the community. Anxiety that whatever and whoever had killed Murph might zero in on me.
I wanted to tell myself that I was losing it, that I was being irrational and paranoid. But I couldn’t totally convince myself of it. We spend our lives worrying about the terrorist attack while we drive to and from our suburban home to our suburban job. We worry about the nuke sailing into San Francisco on a container ship. We worry about hurricanes and earthquakes. Low-level worry. Harder to deal with the threat of shadowy, threatening guys in vehicles with tinted windows.
I finished my coffee, signaled for the waitress to fill me up again. While I waited, I called directory assistance for Dorothy Zhang’s number. Predictably, there was none. I asked for the number to Channel 7, the local ABC affiliate. Predictably, there was a listing.
I scrolled through the numbers on my phone, stopped on Brooke’s, stared at it, and closed the phone.
As I paid my bill, I asked the girl at the register if they had a pay phone. She looked at me as if I had just spoken through my navel.
“You have a cell phone,” she pointed out. “I saw you using it.”
“That’s true. But I’m calling my hit man, and I don’t want them to trace the call.”
She grimaced, bored, pointed to the sign that said “Restrooms.”
Truth was, I really didn’t want the call to be traced. No need to let some nosy news hack from Channel 7 finger me with caller ID. Truth also was that I’d forgotten you actually needed to pay for a pay phone, so I had to return to the helpful young lady at the register and get some change. I handed over four dollars.
“My hit man’s in France,” I informed her.
Back at the restrooms, I dropped an avalanche of coins into the phone, got through reception to the newsroom. Then I began to lie my ass off.
“Hi, uh, this is Bert McBrooke from McBrooke and Filbert,” I said. “Is Dorothy Zhang available?”
“She doesn’t work here anymore,” the woman said. She sounded like she was twelve.
“Do you have her current contact information?”
“Hold on.”
There was a click; I took advantage of the moment to pump a few more coins into the phone. No self-respecting partner from the esteemed law firm of McBrooke and Filbert would ever use a pay phone.
“This is Andy Thomas,” a crisp male voice said.
“Bert McBrooke of McBrooke and Filbert, Mr. Thomas. I’m trying to get in contact with Dorothy Zhang.”
“She’s on leave from the station.”
“I realize that, but I very much need to get in touch with her.”
“We don’t give out that information. What did you say your name was?”
“Bert McBrooke.” The name was sounding more and more stupid each time I said it. “This regards a financial matter. I represent the estate of Jerry Bang”—Jerry Bang?—“who recently passed away. He was her…uncle…and left a substantial amount of money to Ms. Zhang.”
“Why are you calling us?”
“Because her number is unlisted.”
There was some silence as Andy Thomas weighed and reweighed. A voice came on, informing me I had one minute left for my call. I fumbled for more coins. “What was that?” Andy Thomas wanted to know.
“I’m driving to a meeting. I don’t want to drop the call, Mr. Thomas.”
“You said the name was Jerry Bang?”
“I’ve given you too much information already.”
Sounding peeved that I didn’t give him more of a scoop, he spoke brusquely. “We don’t know how to get in touch with Dorothy. She didn’t leave any forwarding information and I haven’t seen or talked to her in months. If you want, I’ll take your number and, if she calls, I’ll let her know.”
I gave him a fake number. He made me spell out McBrooke.
38
SO, DOROTHY ZHANG HAD DONE gone and dropped off the face of the planet. And her name was the strongest thread I had left at that point. All I could hope to do was yank, pull, and tease at it, hoping to unravel something I knew nothing about.
I was in the parking lot again, in my car. I felt more comfortable there. The gun was near me, the sight lines good. It was only eleven and I had a full set of bars on my cell phone. Things were going well.
Since I was going to be mostly honest on this one, I didn’t care about my number showing when I put in a call to Lane, Battle & Sim, a law firm in San Francisco with an intimidating polyglot name, and asked for Daniel Zhang.
Dorothy and Daniel, I thought. Cute.
When he got on the phone, I introduced myself.
“What do you want?”
> Okay, I thought, not cute, and I immediately disliked the guy. Hoping to appeal to his fascination with the morbid, or to his sympathy, I told him about a “worrisome development in public health,” and about Murph’s and his family’s murders in Woodside.
“I heard about that. What’s it got to do with me?” He had the disconnected tone of someone otherwise engrossed—reviewing depositions or editing a motion or another fascinating task—while talking to me.
“You’re Dorothy Zhang’s brother, right?” I asked.
He hung up the phone.
Touchy, touchy. But at least now I knew that Ms. Zhang, or at least Ms. Zhang’s disappearance, was of some importance to her brother.
I sifted through my other contacts, found the number for Dorothy Zhang’s mother, and dialed. After a couple of rings, I heard a female voice utter a staccato “Hello.”
“Wei-Ching Zhang?”
“Yes?”
My introduction this time focused on doctor things, public health things. You know, “This is Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, I’m a public health physician”—I didn’t tell her with whom—“I’m concerned about some public health activities”—I didn’t say what—“that have some of us concerned.” I asked if I could speak with her daughter.
A burst of Cantonese. Or Mandarin. I sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference as the voice squawked out over the phone in a tumble of unfamiliar syllables, conveying either annoyance or confusion. Maybe Mrs. Zhang didn’t speak English. Maybe her son had already called her and told her not to talk to me. Either way, I wasn’t going to make any progress. Through the stream of words, I thanked her and hung up the phone.
So far, Nate McCormick: nil; forces of evil and confusion: more than nil.
Maybe not a total wash, though. Daniel Zhang’s motor had clearly shifted into Drive, and he was beginning to move through his speed-dial, then his address book, warning whomever not to speak to a Dr. McCormick when he called asking questions about Dorothy. The whole situation started to bug me.
Anyway, it was still early in the day, which left more than enough time to head to the City by the Bay, to kick over rocks at the law offices of Lane, Battle & Sim.
39
THE EMBARCADERO IS SAN FRANCISCO’S answer to Wall Street, a clutch of tall buildings crammed with law firms, investment banks, management consultants. And, like downtown Manhattan, it’s a cold space dominated by enormous complexes with inventive and creative names like “Embarcadero Center 1” and “Embarcadero Center 2.” Besides the big, steely numbers stuck to the buildings’ granite façades, the only thing that truly differentiated one from the other was first-floor retail, but even that looked like it was manufactured on the same assembly line that puts together malls and shopping centers around the country. The Embarcadero was the kind of place that died every night and every weekend, only to be resurrected again at eight a.m., Monday through Friday.
Lane, Battle & Sim was shoehorned into two floors in Embarcadero Center 4. I got off on sixteen, and found out from the receptionist there that Danny Z. was one floor up. The very put-together thirty-something asked if Mr. Zhang was expecting me, and I assured her he was. She pointed to an internal staircase, told me to walk up the steps and she’d let Mr. Zhang know I was here.
The reception area in which I now found myself was armored with rosewood paneling, matched to the rosewood coffee table in front of me, the walnut-caned chairs, and the rosewood end table next to the couch on which I parked myself. For someone who spent a good deal of his life in labs and hospitals, the sheer amount of biomass that surrounded me was off-putting. We don’t like wood in medicine. It’s hard to clean, its porosity hides a lot of germs, and it’s expensive. None of this seemed to concern the esquires.
I waited for a few minutes, got so bored I picked up the Wall Street Journal and read about rising interest rates, a falling dollar, a ballooning deficit, and any number of indicators that said the economy was getting the shakes. Thank God I didn’t have any money; I might actually have been worried.
Twenty minutes later, I was deep into the editorial page of the Journal, passively absorbing the opinions of guys who thought the country had gone to shit with the New Deal. I needed to get out of here before I started writing my congressman to gut the commie FDA.
Five more minutes passed. Ten. The Denny’s coffee continued to work its magic, and I’d soon need a bathroom.
I got out of the chair and started walking. At one of the cubicles I saw a woman on a computer, scrolling down through a long list of handbags. For the dedicated, it seemed, there was always a deal to be had on eBay. She clicked on a picture of a Marc Jacobs number, most recent bid at $325. I thought I heard her coo.
“Nice bag,” I said.
Startled, the woman wheeled around.
“I’m here for Daniel Zhang,” I said.
She answered with a glistening smile, the kind of smile that made men like me—men not used to the aggressive mating dance that takes place in the glammed-out corners of society—nervous. Guys I went to college with, guys who went to trade on Wall Street after graduation, would probably take that smile as the opening step in some combative pas de deux, one that ended hot and huffing in a broom closet on floor sixteen. Me? Well, I’m not proud of it, but I felt certain parts of my anatomy shrink.
“Who are you?” She uncurled her talons—bloodred from the young lawyers, copy boys, and whomever else she’d devoured in the past few days—and thrummed them against the desk. “You’re not new here, are you?”
“No.” I stuck out my chest a little to show that I wouldn’t be intimidated, that I could play this game. “My name is Nate McCormick.”
“Mr. Zhang’s expecting you?” Click, click, click as the claws tapped across the desk.
“I’ve been waiting here for nearly an hour.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Oh, really?” she asked with interest. “What kind of doctor?”
Before I could reply, I felt a presence behind me. I turned to see a guy about my height, about my weight, my age, head buried in a document. “Stacey,” he said, “I need you to get in touch with Sam Veatch’s office—” He looked up and saw me and stopped speaking.
“Mr. Zhang, this is Dr. McCormick. He says he’s been waiting to see you.”
His greeting had all the warmth of the lupine growl. Incidentally, I’ve heard that lawyers, like dogs, can smell fear. My deodorant, I hoped, was extra-strength. I said hello.
“Yeah,” he said. He looked at Stacey. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He cast his eyes back to me. “Follow me, please.”
Stacey gave a little flutter of her fingers. “Bye, Dr. McCormick.”
Daniel Zhang wore a jacket and tie, and I was reasonably sure his duds didn’t come off the rack at the Gap like mine did. The cut hugged his wedge-shaped body, leading this disease detective to believe that Zhang spent his free time heaving weights around in some expensive gym. He threw his document down onto his desk, sat in the chair behind it, and indicated a chair across from him. I took it.
With my first good look at his face, I could see the resemblance to his sister. His bone structure was more prominent, giving him a predatory look. Good teeth. Perfect for a lawyer. Perfect for sinking deep into the flesh of a physician unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of a malpractice suit. But the guys at Lane, Battle & Sim weren’t into malpractice. Too small-potatoes. These guys were corporate.
Daniel Zhang leaned back in his nine-hundred-dollar chair and spread his hands. “What?”
I wasn’t going to do well with such an open-ended question, so I parried with my own inquiry. “You’re Dorothy Zhang’s brother, correct?”
“Maybe we should begin by you telling me who you are.”
“I told you. On the phone.”
“Refresh me.”
As I geared up for the refreshing, I keenly understood the liability of not having a job. Who was I? A doctor who wasn’t wor
king, who had no vocational peg? Who was I without a job? Basically, a guy with girl trouble, a citizen concerned about some wacko cancer running roughshod over people’s faces, a man who was furious about his friend’s death and foolhardily trying to “get to the bottom of things.” None of this would impress the man across the desk from me.
So I fudged. “I’m a doctor with the Centers for Disease Control.” Once a CDC doc, always a CDC doc, right? “I told you over the phone about the deaths of Paul Murphy and his family. I’m working with the investigation.”
“Why is the CDC involved in a murder investigation?” Zhang took a long look at me. What he saw did not appear to thrill him. “You have identification?”
I fished in my pocket and pulled out the badge, handed it across the desk. I hoped he didn’t look at the expiration date.
Zhang eyeballed the plastic, then handed it back to me. “I thought it was clear from our conversation this morning what I wanted our relationship to be.”
“I’m not good at interpreting signals,” I confessed.
“Well, that would seem to place you at a competitive disadvantage in a homicide investigation.”
Touché. “I need to talk to your sister.”
“What sister?”
I made a big deal of sighing, reached into my shoulder bag and took out a folder. I leafed through for one of the printouts I had, one mentioning Daniel and Dorothy, and slid it across the desk.
The lawyer looked at the page, looked up. “I don’t know where she is.”
“Your sister’s name was given to me by a man whose whole family was murdered,” I improvised. “Your sister may be in danger.”
Zhang held my gaze and didn’t blink. “Our family can take care of itself.” He looked down at the documents on his desk. “I trust you can find the way out.”
Unable to think of a way around his impassivity, I stood. “I found the way in.”
“And I’d appreciate if you didn’t contact me or my mother again. I don’t want to have to call your superiors.”
“Tattling is for those who can’t take care of themselves. Right, Mr. Zhang?”
Flawless Page 13