Dead in the Water

by Glenda Carroll

  Spencer looked around the yard, by the truck, down the driveway, at the loading dock. His eyes moved to the top of the building. I stepped farther back and bumped into the door. The impact surprised me and I dropped one of my shoes. I gritted my teeth and winced. Did he hear that? I bent down slowly and picked it up. I heard his car start up and saw it head for the gate. I let out a sigh and tried to calm my rapid breathing. The gate opened. Spencer drove out and the gate closed.

  I started down the steps on the side of the building. I could hear Jimmy deep inside the building, talking to the guards in the alcove. A quick look and I saw that his back was facing the truck. I only had a few seconds before the three of them walked out to the loading dock. I sprinted behind the truck, then to the back of the shed and shimmied through the gap in the fence.

  Breathe in, breathe out, deep in; deep out. Surveillance yoga, I thought. It took a few minutes, but my breathing slowed down. Quickly, I put on my shoes and headed for the car, now the only car parked on the street across from the warehouse.

  33

  Spencer was on his way back to the office. If Lena was still there and looking into the underpinnings of their website and he walked in on her…I swallowed. Not good. She needed to get the information to the police and I needed to tell Inspector Burrell where I spent the last few hours and ‘Oh, by the way, I probably killed Justin by whacking him with his trophy.’

  I called Lena. No answer. I called Terrel. This time he picked up.

  “You been to the police yet?” He doesn’t mess around. No ‘Hi, how are you?’—pure business.

  “Not really.”

  “In other words, no.”

  “That’s correct, no. But I’m calling Inspector Burrell as soon as I hang up. Lena could still be at the JL office which is not good. Spencer is on his way there. Their plant in South San Francisco is only a cover for what they really manufacture.”

  “And that would be?”

  “White and dirty white bricks. Drugs, right?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “They had guards with weapons.”

  “Please tell me you’re not still at this place?”

  “No, I’ve left.”

  “And what is Lena’s part in this?”

  “Well, she found the South San Francisco address and gave it to me. Then I asked her to check for a list of their clients, both those that looked legitimate and not so legitimate.”

  “I’ve heard enough. Call Inspector Burrell’s office immediately and tell her everything that you’ve told me. I’ll get a hold of your sister.”

  “Okay.”

  Terrel was right. He had been right all along, but I never listened. I screwed up, because of a few bad experiences in my past. I called Inspector Burrell’s office and left a message with the sergeant who answered the phone. Now the police had the warehouse address in South San Francisco and a description of who was there and what. I didn’t say anything about Justin Rosencastle. I wanted to talk to Inspector Burrell about that in person.

  If I couldn’t get Lena on the phone, I was going to drive to JL & Associates and find her. I headed for Highway 101. Before I had gone more than five miles, my cell phone rang. Lena’s photo came up on the screen.

  “Did Terrel just call you?”

  “Terrel? No.”

  “You okay?”

  “Certainly I am.” Her voice sounded odd, a little strained.

  “Still at JL?”

  “No. Listen to me. I was driving home and my car died. I’m at Fort Mason. Just inside the parking lot.”

  “You sure everything is okay? You sound strange.”

  “I’m upset about my car. If Terrel or his father can’t fix it, this is going to cost me more money than I have. Can you come get me?”

  “It will take about 45 minutes, but I’ll be there. Stay by the car, okay?” Lena hung up. Pain in the ass is what she is, but she’s out of the JL office and she won’t be going back.

  With Lena conveniently stuck in a broken down car, I felt much better. I switched on the radio and found the current Giants game. They were in the middle innings and leading the San Diego Padres, 4-2. From Highway 101, I traveled north on Van Ness Avenue, a major thoroughfare that takes cars from one end of San Francisco to the other. Not that much traffic. Relief was washing over me like a cool waterfall on a hot day.

  It was that half hour after dusk, when it wasn’t day anymore, but not quite night. San Francisco Bay was covered in a moody thin fog. A strong cold wind blew off the ocean dropping the temperature to the fifties. Welcome to summer in San Francisco. I could see sections of the two orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge stretching into the darkness. There were still a few joggers making their way around the Marina Green and a few sailboats heading out of the marina for what would be a bumpy nighttime sail.

  I pulled into Fort Mason but didn’t see my sister’s Camry. I drove slowly through the large parking lot. It was partially full. Customers at Greens, the vegetarian restaurant, were going in for dinner. Parking spaces in front of the Magic Theater was filling up. Where were Lena and her car? I drove by my old office building slowly and rolled down the window. At the other end of the parking lot, I could see the NPS security car. I wondered if Jon was driving.

  Was it only yesterday that I had been fired and Jon had escorted me out of the office? It seemed like weeks ago.

  Then I headed outside the parking lot toward Gas House Cove, the marina gas dock that backed up against Greens. I could see Lena’s car parked near the gate closest to the dock. I pulled over slowly and parked next to it. She wasn’t inside.

  I rolled down the window and called out, “Lena.” No response. The only sounds were the halyards clinking against the masts of the sailboats in the marina and the low rumble of traffic going by on Marina Boulevard.

  I got out of my car, leaving the door open, walked over and looked in the window of the passenger side of my sister’s car. She wasn’t inside. The car door was unlocked. I shook my head in disbelief. If she was going out for a walk, she should lock her car. I walked around the car looking at the tires. No flats.

  The parking lot was almost empty. I scanned the marina docks.

  “Lena?”

  Still no response. Maybe she went across the street to the Safeway to get something to eat. The long low grocery store was lit up as bright as a cruise ship coming into port at night. I took a few steps back to my car and pulled out my cell phone. “I’m here. Where R U?” I texted her. Grabbing my backpack, I hunted around in the bottom until I found her spare set of car keys.

  I went around to the driver’s side, climbed in, put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car started. What could be wrong? I backed it up slowly—no problem—then drove around the empty parking lot. No engine lights turned bright red on the dashboard. The car didn’t make any stranger sounds than usual. Even the wipers and the radio still worked. What was the problem? I pulled next to my car, turned everything off, got out and locked it.

  Where could she be? I sat on the hood of her car and waited. I’d been there almost 30 minutes in the dark and I was cold. That’s when I heard her calling me.

  “Hey, Trisha, I’m over here. Come on down,” she said.

  There she was, standing at the end of the first dock.

  “What are you doing down there?” I yelled.

  “Ran into some friends. Come over for a drink.”

  “No, I’m going home. Your car is fine. Whatever was wrong has fixed itself.”

  “You gotta come.”

  Her voice sounded a little slurred. Strange. My sister rarely drank.

  “Let’s go home, Lena. Come on, I’ll drive you. We can pick up your car later.”

  She turned back and said a few words to someone in the sailboat tied to the dock next to her. I heard a faint ‘okay’ as she began to walk down the dock toward the gate. Her balance was off. A few times, she had to stop or she would have taken a step off the dock and into the water.

 
I was annoyed. “What is wrong with you?”

  The tide was out and the gangway leading up to the parking lot was steep. I walked over to the gate as she climbed up the walkway. I tried to open the gate, but my side was locked.

  “Lena, you are so irritating. You call for help with your car and then you go and have a few—maybe more than a few—drinks on someone’s sailboat. Open up the gate and let’s go.”

  “Come on down,” she said loudly. Then she whispered, “Run away.”

  “What?”

  “Run away. Men with guns.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just get out of here.”

  Pins and needles spread through my fingers and climbed the back of my hands. My throat tightened up.

  Behind her, I could see two sailors walking down the dock. One was pulling a white cooler. The other was carrying two large sail bags. The stiff cloth crinkled in his arms. Their laughter grew louder as they approached the steep gangplank.

  “Going out?” one said to my sister.

  “Yes, she is,” I said.

  From down the dock, a heavyset man climbed off the sailboat that Lena had been standing by. He walked quickly toward the gate. He was bald and had a rust-colored goatee. He was the man from the hospital parking lot; the man who had been following me. There was someone else on the boat. I couldn’t quite see who it was; but the shape was thinner, smaller. The face was lost in shadows.

  Lena pulled open the heavy gate. I grabbed my sister’s arm and yanked her toward me, making sure that the gate shut right in the faces of the two stunned sailors.

  “Run!” I said.

  The man moved faster down the wooden dock. The sharp movement of his steps caused it to sway from side-to-side and the water to splash over the edge. He started up the gangplank as the two sailors juggled the cooler and sail bags so they could pull open the gate again.

  “Get out of the fucking way.”

  “Buddy, calm down.”

  The gangplank was narrow and the three bodies bumped against each other. One sailor, a small man still wearing yellow foul-weather gear dropped the sail bags. They narrowly missed falling into the water.

  “You idiot. Watch what you’re doing.”

  The man elbowed his way past the first sailor, opened the gate and was about to run out, when the other sailor grabbed his arm and pulled him back. The gate slammed shut.

  “What’s the hurry, pal?” he said with a firm grip on his arm. The sailor backed him up against the gate.

  “Move,” said the man, as he tried to push back.

  The sailor was almost a foot taller, but he stepped back slowly when he felt a gun press into his stomach.

  “Whoa, wait a minute. Don’t do anything stupid,” said the sailor as he walked backwards slowly down the gangplank. The man glanced over at Lena and me as we climbed into my car.

  “Shit,” he said and he pulled open the gate.

  My hands were shaking when I started the engine. I could see the man bolting across the parking lot toward our car. I floored it and heard a shot fired. Pop! The back window shattered.

  “My God,” I said.

  I kept on driving, not sure where I should go. Pop! Another shot. It must have hit a tire, since I started to swerve. I couldn’t control the car. We spun sideways and I slammed into a car that was pulling into the lot.

  “Lady, what are you doing?” someone yelled.

  “Trishy, we havetaget outta here,” said Lena, slurring her words. She turned around to look out what was once the back window. “He’s right there.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Dunno. Doesn’t like me. Doesn’t like you.”

  I slammed the car into reverse and yelled out “Sorry, really sorry” to the passengers in the car that I hit.

  “Where are you going? Get out of the car,” I heard one of them call after me. A short, dark haired woman threw open the passenger side door and lurched out of the car with a piece of paper and a pen. She squinted as she tried to write down the license plate of our retreating car.

  “Maybe she’ll call the police,” said Lena is a voice that seemed to be getting smaller and weaker. She rested her head on the seat at an angle, but she kept her eyes on the man with the gun. He had stopped running after us. His eyes darted from the passengers in the car we just hit to the sailors opening the gate. Everyone had pulled out their cell phones and were punching in numbers.

  He sprinted back to his car. It sprang into motion, but he didn’t follow us. Instead, he drove across Marina Boulevard. His car moved past the stores on Buchanan Street and he disappeared into the darkness.

  While watching him fade into the side street, I slowed down but kept driving our limping car. Tha-thump, tha-thump, thathump. I glanced back at the end of the pier where the sailboat had been docked. From the shadows, a tall thin figure climbed out and ran down the dock.

  I stopped the car and watched, transfixed.

  “It’s your fault,” he yelled at us, almost in tears. “It’s your fault that he’s dead.”

  The two sailors now standing in the parking lot and the passengers from the car I hit looked at the teenager on the dock and then at our car.

  “I don’t believe it. It’s Nick, Daisy Menton’s boyfriend.”

  “I know,” said Lena, her eyes almost closed. “Told me he was working for Justin. Sold drugs at his high school. Made big bucks.”

  He was almost at the gangway when he threw his arms up in the air and let out an anguished yell.

  “He was my friend.”

  The words echoed through the marina. Then he slowly walked back to the end of the dock and climbed into the shadows of the sailboat.

  I began to drive away.

  “Where are you going?” asked Lena.

  “Back into Fort Mason. I saw a NPS security car earlier.”

  The car jerked and thudded as I aimed it into the neighboring parking lot. Daisy told me how easy it was to get drugs at her high school, but I blew it off. Just like I blew off her insistence that Nick was involved.

  I pulled into a space not far from Greens, turned off the ignition and looked at my sister whose head was dropping to her chest.

  “Lena, what’s wrong?”

  “Shot.”

  “You were shot?”

  “Notwithagun,” she said running her words together. Her right hand went to her upper left arm. She pantomimed sticking a needle into it. “Wouldn’t kill me,” he said. “He wanted me”—she pointed to her chest—“to get you. Get you on the boat.” She stuck her finger in my chest.

  “I have to call an ambulance. You’re sick.” I glanced out the window at the parking lot. There were a number of cars moving around, but I couldn’t see the security car. Lena let out a groan and her body fell toward me. My cell phone dropped to the floor of the car, as I tried to hold her up.

  “Oh, Lena. Don’t go to sleep.”

  Her eyes opened slowly. They tried to focus on me and couldn’t.

  “Sing,” I pleaded with her. “Sing, row, row, row your boat.”

  As if on cue, I could hear her mumble the song she always sang as a child when she was trying not to cry, or trying to keep her mind off what was hurting her, both mentally and physically.

  “Rowwwww, roooo–boat,” she mumbled.

  “Like this,” I said. “Row, row, row your boat.”

  She joined in, “Gently down the stream.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Merrily….…merrily……merrily. Life is but a dream.”

  “Again,” I said. “Lena, I’m going to get out of the car and make a call. You keep singing. I need to reach the police.”

  I could hear her start the round again, missing a few words here and there, but picking up steam as she went.

  I opened the car door, got out and then bent back over to hunt around on the floor for my cell phone.

  “Got it.”

  I was keeping my eyes on my sister as I punched in 911. There was a click a
nd I knew I was about to hear a voice when the cell phone was knocked from my hands. It disappeared into the darkness of the floor of the car again.

  “Think you and your sister would like to take a ride?” said Spencer who stuck a gun in my back and grabbed my neck with the other hand.

  I could still hear Lena singing as he walked me around to the passenger side of the car, still with the gun at my back. He opened the door and dragged Lena out. His car was parked off to one side.

  “Get her out,” he said, “and shut her up.”

  I put my arms around my sister and helped her walk to his car. A cold damp wind blew off San Francisco Bay.

  “Gentlydownthe stream.”

  A couple walking by smiled at us as they passed.

  “Too much to drink, huh?” the man in khakis and a windbreaker asked.

  “She gets like this every once in a while,” Spencer said. “Come on, hon, let’s get your sister home.”

  I stared at the couple, trying to send them a mental message. “Help us…please, help us.”

  But they kept walking.

  I opened the back door.

  “No, up front next to me.” I eased her into the passenger seat. Reached over to fasten her seat belt.

  “Get in,” he ordered, motioning toward the backseat with the gun.

  “Your boat…your boat…gently down,” Lena mumbled off-key, her head sagging toward her chest.

  I climbed in and sat down. Spencer slammed the door behind me, then crawled into the driver’s seat.

  “You do anything strange and your sister is dead,” he said looking at me through the rear view mirror. His eyes burned black and vicious.

  I nodded and looked out the window. Where was security?

  Spencer drove slowly, almost too slowly, toward the parking lot entrance. He stopped. Then flipped on his left blinker. The car moved down Marina Boulevard and turned up Beach Street next to the Safeway.

  “What do you want with us?” I asked.

  “What were you doing at the warehouse today? Sightseeing?”

  He cast a quick glance into the rear view mirror.

  “You couldn’t keep away, could you? You’ve been nosing around since that ridiculous brother-in-law of mine died. Couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”