A Wild & Lonely Place (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  “No problem. But we do have a problem with the Azadis. First, Hamid’s got to allow Habiba and Mavis to leave the compound. I suggest stashing them in the hospitality suite at your San Francisco building; God knows it’s got everything you’d need to keep a kid amused, and I’m sure at least one of your operatives has enough of a maternal or paternal streak to baby-sit both of them.”

  “I agree.”

  That surprised me. “Can you talk to Hamid, or do you want me to do it?”

  “You’re the likely candidate for the task.”

  “I thought she’d refused to deal with me.”

  “She did, but she will.” The set of his mouth was grim.

  “Will you call her and set up an appointment for me?”

  “I’ll do more than that—I’ll insist she see you.”

  “Good. Now, there’s something else I’ve got to take up with her: the messages they’ve received from the bomber. This secrecy has got to stop; she’s got to show them to the task force.”

  “I agree,” he said again.

  I eyed him speculatively. He seemed unusually subdued this morning, and I couldn’t remember him ever agreeing with me twice in the course of any given conversation. “Has something happened that I don’t know about?”

  He signaled for a coffee refill. When the waitress departed he said, “Within the past hour a bomb arrived by mail at the Azadi Embassy in D.C. and the apartment of their U.N. ambassador in Manhattan. Fortunately, they didn’t get past our people, and the bomb squads were able to disarm them. I got off a conference call with the heads of those squads just before you got here; the signature C.L. appeared on both devices. I suspect there’ll be a follow-up message before long.”

  My breakfast arrived. I looked down at it, wondering how I’d thought I could eat. “Where were the bombs mailed from?”

  “San Francisco, Van Ness branch post office.”

  “He’s staying close to the consulate, then.”

  “Uh-huh. Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “You take it. I’ve lost my appetite.”

  Renshaw looked at the plate as if I’d offered him something with mold growing on it.

  “So what do we do—just wait for the message?” I asked. “Just wait for him to strike again and again?”

  Renshaw’s eyes moved, calculating. He nodded in quiet resolve. “What time’s your return flight?”

  “It’s open. There’s one in ten minutes.”

  “Be on it.” He opened the briefcase that lay flat beside him and took out a cellular phone. “I’ll call Hamid now, pave the way. When you get back to the city, here’s what you do: Go straight to the consulate and tell her how it’s got to be. If she won’t let you take the kid, demand to see her. Play that winking game with her, and get her out of there. Our people’ll assist, and I’ll take full responsibility. If Hamid refuses to release the messages to the task force, get the file copies from Green Street and deliver them yourself. Then call me at this number.” He scribbled on the back of one of his cards and passed it to me.

  I slid out of the booth and headed for the boarding gate.

  * * *

  Malika Hamid was furious. She stalked around her library, railing about Renshaw’s high-handedness and clapping her hands for emphasis. He had no right to ring up and make demands, she said. She had told him in no uncertain terms that she would tolerate no interference on my part, so why was I here? And how dare I demand to see her granddaughter?

  I let her rant.

  I was to leave the premises immediately, she said. She would contact her cousin the ambassador and demand he dismiss RKI from their employ. She would sue Gage Renshaw for harassment. She would…

  I glanced at Kahlil Lateef. The trade attaché perched on the edge of the sofa, his nervous gaze following the consul general. She’d already sent him from the room on two errands; he looked as though he’d welcome a third. Every time she clapped, he winced and jumped. The claps grew more frequent; Lateef’s jumps grew higher. Pretty soon he would spring off the sofa like a demented jack-in-the-box and run amok through the halls of the consulate.

  Finally Hamid’s voice stopped. I realized she must have delivered some dramatic ultimatum, but I’d tuned her out. I said, “Frankly, we’re wasting valuable time here. The situation boils down to this: do you want your granddaughter to die? I don’t think so. You may not care about your daughter-in-law; you’ve demonstrated that by abetting her drinking—”

  “I have never—”

  “You have, and we both know it. Alcohol is your hold over Mavis—and, by extension, Habiba. You must love her very much to go against your religion. You don’t want to lose her.”

  She turned away, hands locked behind the back of her dark suit jacket, and continued pacing, fighting for control. After three passes up and down the Persian carpet she said, “You seem to know a great deal about the inner workings of this household.”

  “Once you grasp certain facts, the rest isn’t too difficult to figure out.”

  Lateef shot me an alarmed look, eyes pleading with me not to reveal where I’d learned those facts. I gave him a reassuring nod and he relaxed some.

  “As I said earlier,” I went on, “one way to minimize risk to Habiba is to remove her to the hospitality suite at RKI’s building. It’s completely secure, has closed-circuit monitors that allow the occupants to watch all entrances to the building, as well as the elevators and hallways. The combinations to the locks are changed daily, and I’m sure Mr. Renshaw will authorize additional guards if you’d be more comfortable with that arrangement. There’s plenty of room, so Habiba’s nanny could go along to look after her and Mavis—”

  “I cannot allow my granddaughter to be exposed to her mother for a prolonged period.”

  “Habiba loves her mother; she’d be upset if Mavis remained behind.”

  Malika Hamid had been standing with her back to me. Slowly she turned. “How do you know what Habiba feels for her mother?”

  “Your granddaughter is very clever at escaping the people who should be watching her.”

  Hamid took a quick breath and strode to a window, pulling the drapery aside and looking out at the garden. What did she expect to see? I wondered. Habiba escaping the compound?

  When she didn’t speak I added, “Another way to reduce the risk to your granddaughter—once she’s safely off the premises—is to take the messages you’ve received from the bomber to the task force. As it is, your secrecy has played straight into the bomber’s hands.”

  “That is enough, Ms. McCone!”

  Now Lateef did leap off the sofa. Mrs. Hamid turned from the window and gave him a scornful look. He smiled weakly and inappropriately, then tried to cover by leaning casually against a bookcase dominated by a bronze sculpture of a horse’s head. It leered over his shoulder, putting me in mind of Mr. Ed.

  Hamid transferred her haughty expression to me. I met her gaze and asked softly, “What are you afraid of?”

  “Afraid! That is the most absurd thing you’ve said yet.”

  “It has to do with Dawud, doesn’t it?”

  Her face paled and she put a hand to her throat. Seconds of silence ticked by. Then she ran her tongue over her lips and moved toward the sofa. Her unsure step and the fragile way she seated herself gave me a preview of how she’d move as an elderly woman. In a brittle voice she said, “My son has been missing for many years.”

  “Except on the days when he visits you and his daughter.”

  Lateef’s eyes narrowed with interest. We both watched the consul general closely. She didn’t speak, just closed her eyes and leaned back heavily.

  “Mrs. Hamid,” I said, “please let me take Mavis and Habiba away from here.”

  Her eyes remained closed; she shook her head.

  “We’ll table any further discussion until Mr. Renshaw returns—providing you allow the two of them to leave.”

  She shook her head again.

  “Of course,” I added, “if you don’t a
llow it, I’ll have no choice but to hand deliver RKI’s file copies of the messages to the task force. They’ll question me thoroughly, and I’ll be obliged to tell them about the situation here. And about Dawud. And Klaus.”

  Suddenly her eyes opened, full of shock that flared into rage. They fixed on me for a moment before she said to Lateef, “Kahlil, please ask Aisha to pack Mavis’s and Habiba’s things. Tell her she’s to go along as well. They must be ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”

  Lateef hurried from the room, a sly, malicious smile on his lips.

  Hamid watched him—marking down that smile on a mental balance sheet. When she turned back to me, her face was composed. “You will wait in the reception hall for them. Do not return here. Any further communication between my country and RKI will be brief and final.”

  I nodded curtly and went out to the reception area, where I sat down on a small velvet-cushioned bench. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. I was growing impatient when a gray-haired woman dressed in a white uniform hurried down the wide staircase, followed by Lateef.

  Habiba was nowhere to be found, they told me. Her mother had vanished, too.

  Ten

  All at once the reception area was full of people, most of whom were yelling. I remained by the bench, watching RKI’s shift supervisor attempt to restore order and waiting for Malika Hamid to make her entrance. The door to the library stayed closed, and after a minute Kahlil Lateef went in to her.

  Curious.

  Nobody was paying any attention to me, so I moved toward the rear of the house, past archways opening onto formal rooms to a swinging door that led to the service area. I slipped past the laundry and pantry and took the back stairs to the second floor.

  The door to Mavis’s room stood open. I stepped inside and surveyed the disorder. A vodka bottle lay on its side on an end table, clear liquid puddled beneath it; a glass and a lamp were in pieces on the floor. Mavis throwing a tantrum, or Mavis being forcibly removed? Impossible to say.

  Quickly I went back to the hall and moved along, opening doors until I came to a yellow-and-white child’s room. Habiba had been subjected to the same overdone decor as her mother: canopied bed, skirted dressing table, organdy curtains, reproductions of Degas ballerinas. A bookcase held dozens of insipid-faced dolls that looked as though they’d never been played with; the bed was mounded with too-cute stuffed animals. I’d have thought the pathologically neat room uninhabited, perhaps a shrine to a long-grown girl, had it not been for the area by the window bay.

  Books were stacked on the floor around the window seat, as though Habiba had forted herself up there. I went over and examined them: some school texts, bearing the stamp of an exclusive private institution nearby; a few Nancy Drews and Judy Blumes. But mostly they were adult nonfiction on a variety of subjects ranging from oceanography to ecology to natural history. Beside them was a stack of National Geographies and a pile of jigsaw puzzles depicting foreign scenes. Imaginary travels to relieve the tedium of Habiba’s restricted life.

  I moved around the stacks to the window. It overlooked a backyard that fell away in terraces to the rear of the house behind it, which appeared to be an annex to the consulate. In between was the old-fashioned gazebo where Habiba used to meet secretly with her mother. A stout wisteria vine scaled the wall not two feet from the window—the perfect escape route for an agile little girl, and why hadn’t anyone recognized that?

  As I turned, something brushed my leg. A telltale piece of paper protruded from under the seat cushion. When I pulled it out I saw it was a math test with an A + penciled in red at the top. The bench was actually a chest with a hinged lid; I lifted it and found Habiba’s treasure trove.

  It contained the usual things kids save: report cards and more school papers; birthday cards and wallet-sized pictures of classmates and souvenirs of field trips. Ticket stubs and theater programs and a Forty-niner pennant. In one five-by-seven photograph a younger Habiba posed shyly with Donald Duck at Disneyland.

  In a gift box decorated with jungle animals I found more interesting items: a picture of Mavis showed her smiling broadly and holding up her book of poetry; she had been almost beautiful before the booze exacted its price. In another photo she held hands on a beach with a darkly handsome man, presumably Dawud Hamid. A posed studio portrait of the young family when Habiba was a toddler confirmed his identity. Hamid had a high brow, thick sensual lips, and a wavy mane of dark hair; the square shape of his face and the stockiness of his body were his mother’s. The way he held his head was highly stylized, as though he’d practiced it many times in front of a mirror; his eyes held a brooding intensity. In both pictures he looked directly into the camera lens, communing with it while Mavis stared at him with frank admiration.

  The way a person poses for a photograph can tell you a great deal about him and how he relates to others. Hamid’s told me that he was proud of his good looks, aware of their impact on both men and women, and would use them to get whatever he wanted. It also said that he placed his interests well ahead of his wife’s and child’s.

  After memorizing Hamid’s features, I returned the pictures to the box and shut the window seat.

  Before I left the room I checked a few more things. Nothing seemed to be missing from the closet, but it was so jammed with clothing—including a large number of frilly pastel dresses that I was willing to bet Habiba hated— that I couldn’t conclude anything. In the adjacent bathroom I found a still-damp toothbrush and a nightgown on a hook behind the door. I looked in all the usual hiding places, hoping to find another cache of treasures, but came up empty-handed.

  Time to see what was going on downstairs.

  The only person in the reception area was the RKI operative on door duty. I identified myself and asked for his supervisor. He pointed me toward the library. I went over there, knocked, and stepped inside without waiting for an invitation.

  Malika Hamid sat on the sofa, her posture rigid. The air in the room was charged with anger. A man in an RKI blazer with a nametag that said “S. Long” stood behind one of the chairs as if he were using it as a shield against the consul general’s wrath, and Kahlil Lateef had resumed his position in front of Mr. Ed. When she saw me, Hamid’s brows pulled together as though I was one more cross she had to bear. If I hadn’t seen her genuinely enraged, I would have bought her act.

  I told Long who I was and asked, “Have you been in touch with Mr. Renshaw?”

  “He’s winding things up in Irvine, and the company jet is standing by at John Wayne. He should be here in”—he consulted his watch—“approximately two and a half hours.”

  “What about the police?”

  “No police—standard operating procedure. We’re waiting for a ransom demand, and when it arrives, we’ll meet it and make a recovery.”

  Unlike other international security firms—who were required by the insurance carriers who underwrote their clients’ antiterrorism policies to immediately report kidnapings to the FBI—RKI had more leeway. Their clients tended to be marginal or very vulnerable or to prefer to rely on their security firm’s protection rather than insurance. RKI operated independent of the authorities, taking advantage of a legal loophole that provides no penalty for either failing to report a kidnaping or making a good-faith attempt to recover the victim. I didn’t wholly approve of their method—it involved too much risk for my taste—but I had to admit that more often than not it worked.

  Long added, “We’ve already got our monitoring equipment in place, and our top man in that line is flying in from Denver. Our operatives are canvassing the neighbors to see if anyone noticed anything. Everything’s under control.”

  Everything was under control, but it didn’t matter. There would be no ransom demand and no one in the neighborhood would report having seen Mavis and Habiba leave the consulate. Their disappearance had the feel of an inside job— probably engineered by Malika Hamid in order to retain custody of them.

  The consul general was looking at Long and me,
eyes watchful. I looked back, taking in her body language and facial expression. For a moment she met my gaze as if daring me to speak; then she lowered her eyelids in feigned weariness. Hamid knew what I suspected.

  I turned to Long. “When Mr. Renshaw gets here, tell him I need to talk with him. I’ll be at Green Street, Charlotte Keim’s extension.”

  * * *

  Keim said, “Your assistant’s as cute as a bug’s butt.”

  The saying had to be straight out of Texas because she spoke it with a trace of the drawl that she’d once told me she’d worked to lose after leaving home. “You’ve met Mick?”

  “Uh-huh. He stopped by this morning on the way to the office and left off your list.” She swiveled away from her desk, tossing her long brunette curls. “How old is he, anyway?”

  “Eighteen.” I parked myself on the straightbacked chair that was sandwiched between the desk and the wall of the cubicle. RKI’s data-search people didn’t labor in spacious surroundings.

  “Well, he plays older. He involved with anybody?”

  “Living with someone, yes. Don’t tell me you’re interested?”

  “Why not?”

  “The age difference.”

  Keim threw back her head and laughed—a deep, uninhibited sound. “Christ, Sharon, I’m only twenty-five. And younger men, they’re so adoring—and so grateful.”

  I was about to warn her off Mick, but then I told myself to mind my own business. Last fall I’d made a promise to cut the already frayed apron strings, and so far I’d kept it. Besides, with her upturned nose and wickedly sparkling eyes, Keim didn’t fit the role of evil temptress.

  “Well, just don’t break his heart,” I said. “You mind if I make a few calls?”

  “I’ll be gentle with him.” She motioned toward the phone. “While you’re doing that, I’ll print out the info I’ve got for you.”

  I thanked her and dialed Greg Marcus. There had been no message from him on either of my machines; I assumed the checks he’d made for me had turned up nothing, but I wanted to confirm that. Greg, however, was out of the office. Next I called Mick. Business was slow, he said, and he was bored. My only call had been from Hy, who was at my house and waiting to hear from me.