* * *
By the time we got back to task force headquarters with our sullen, booze-saturated material witness, Ambassador Jalil had arrived. I could see a family resemblance to Malika Hamid in the portly diplomat’s facial features, but little of her intelligence in his small eyes. Jalil proved to be crafty, though: when Dawud refused to cooperate, citing his immunity, the ambassador exerted strong and swift influence to change his mind. He could, Jalil said, waive Dawud’s immunity, as was the prerogative of the senior diplomat, but that would be too lenient. Instead he thought he’d repatriate him to Azad, where a tribunal of Muslim judges would try him for the rape and murder of Chloe Love. Slyly he reminded Dawud that the penalty for those crimes in their native country was death by stoning.
Hamid decided he’d stand a better chance against the Diplo-bomber.
At ten to four, as Morland and I were about to resume our positions in front of the Mac, one of the ATF agents rushed in and handed Parkhurst a message slip. He scanned it, then announced, “Listen up, people. An anonymous tip was phoned in to the SFPD an hour ago. Caller said the bomber was operating out of an apartment on Fillmore between Bay and North Point. He’s not there anymore, but they got their warrant from the judge who’s standing by, and they’re going in to collect evidence.”
The reactions ranged from whistles and foot-stamping to grumbles about the police horning in on the task force’s investigation.
“Fillmore between Bay and North Point,” I said to Morland. “That’s right around the corner from Adah’s building. I’ll bet she came across what Lateef was doing by coincidence, like her message to me said. Went investigating, and he grabbed her. He’s superconfident—thought nothing of telling me he took daily walks to the Marina Green.”
Morland grimaced. “You mean daily walks to his private bomb factory.”
* * *
WHAT A COOPERATIVE WOMAN YOU ARE. OR ARE YOU LYING TO ME AGAIN?
Lateef had logged on at exactly four o’clock.
“No, I’m not lying. We have Hamid in custody.”
WHERE DID YOU FIND HIM?
What does it matter? “At the home of a woman named Blanca Diaz, in the Mission district.”
I AM SATISFIED. NOW HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS. FOLLOW THEM TO THE LETTER. UNDERSTOOD?
“Yes, understood.”
TAKE HAMID IN YOUR LITTLE RED CAR TO THE MARINA GREEN AT TWENTY MINUTES AFTER FIVE. THERE IS A PARKING LOT AT THE EAST END NEAR THE PAR COURSE. IT IS CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL SIX. DO YOU KNOW IT?
“The one by the Gashouse Cove boat slips?”
YES. DRIVE INTO THE LOT, TURN, AND PARK AT THE GATE FACING MARINA BOULEVARD. TELL THE TASK FORCE TO HAVE A HELICOPTER AND AN UNARMED PILOT WAITING ON THE GREEN JUST BEYOND THE PAR COURSE.
I glanced up at Parkhurst. He nodded.
“It will be there.”
LEAVE HAMID IN THE CAR AND GO TO THE FIRST PHONE BOOTH BY THE BOAT SLIPS. I WILL CALL YOU AT EXACTLY FIVE-THIRTY.
“I’ve got it.”
There was a stir behind me, a rustling of paper. I ignored it.
THE POLICE ARE TO CORDON OFF THE AREA. THERE ARE TO BE NO CONCEALED SHARPSHOOTERS AND NO HEROICS ON ANYONE’s PART. I WILL BE WATCHING THE AREA AND WILL KNOW IF A TRAP IS SET. IS THAT CLEAR?
“Yes, it’s clear.” Parkhurst had handed a message slip to Morland. He passed it to me before typing my reply.
The slip gave the address of the apartment on Fillmore and noted, “Bomb-making materials in kitchen. Press-on lettering and stationery stock on desk. No other evidence except a photo of an unknown woman in a chef’s hat and apron with an Arab who bears a strong resemblance to Richard Nixon.”
Chloe Love and Kahlil Lateef.
“Sharon?” Morland nudged me with his elbow. I looked at the screen.
THE MARINA GREEN AT FIVE-THIRTY, THEN. DO NOT FORGET; I WILL BE WATCHING YOU.
Twenty-nine
The Marina Green extends several long blocks east from the St. Francis Yacht Club to the Gashouse Cove boat slips next to Fort Mason. In between stretch a level lawn and bayside esplanade. On the clear, sun-shot days that are fairly standard in a district that has always reminded me of a Mediterranean village, the grass is dotted with picnickers, lovers, kite-flyers, and sun-worshippers. Joggers, walkers, dog-walkers, and bench-sitters crowd the esplanade. Tourists photograph the elegant yawls and cabin cruisers or poke around the small clapboard building that sits midway on the seawall and is used by the navy as a sonar tracking station. The views, from the Golden Gate to Alcatraz, are postcard-perfect. It is a place of joy and peace.
But not so at five-twenty in the morning after a harrowing, foggy night. Not so when a sociopath riding an enormous power rush is dictating the terms of your behavior—and watching you.
The nighttime sky was beginning to gray, backlighting the spires of Russian Hill. The fog had retreated to the Gate and lay like a dirty smear between the reddish towers of the bridge. Scattered lights twinkled on the Marin hills and the beacon on Alcatraz flashed. The wind blew cold and steady off the Bay.
On the lawn some hundred yards from my car an SFPD helicopter idled—red lights winking, an unarmed officer at its controls. Marina Boulevard was cordoned off for two blocks between Webster and Steiner Streets. The ever-present press and curious residents drawn by the activity massed against the barricades. Here, on my side, the Green lay dark and deserted.
I got out of the MG and peered into the shadows. He was somewhere in them, not far away.
The task force had followed Lateef’s instructions to the letter, except for the team of sharpshooters smuggled into an apartment building facing the Green and now stationed on its roof. They would do nothing to jeopardize Joslyn, and there would be no heroics—least of all on my part. I was playing it straight all the way.
I turned from the MG and started toward the phone booth by the boat slips. The hooded sweatshirt I’d borrowed from one of the women on the task force to conceal the body wire I wore was much too big; I rolled up its sleeves some as I walked. I’d objected to the wire at first, afraid Lateef would somehow realize I was relaying his instructions to the task force, but now I was glad I’d given in. It made me feel less alone out here.
I still didn’t understand Lateef’s insistence on dealing only with me. Was it because I was Adah’s friend and would do everything I could to make this operation go smoothly? Or was there some other factor working here—something I’d yet to figure out?
Another thing that puzzled me: how had he known he was actually dealing with me? He hadn’t asked any question that only I could answer, but he’d demonstrated himself too clever to proceed this far on blind faith. Something in our initial exchange had reassured him, but I was damned if I knew what.
Five twenty-four now. I reached the phone booth on the walk next to the slips. “In position,” I said into the wire. Behind me mooring lines creaked as the craft rode on a light swell; a buoy bonged monotonously in the channel. Again I peered into the shadows, searching for a sign of him and knowing I would see none. Finally I gave it up, listened to the drifting murmur of voices from the barricades, watched the trickle of traffic on the distant bridge.
Five twenty-six now. God, I was sick of dancing attendance on him!
In my peripheral vision I caught a motion inside the MG, where Hamid was shackled and handcuffed to the seat-belt support. Unnecessary precautions, since he—while still sullen—was cooperating fully, but Parkhurst wouldn’t let him out of task force custody otherwise. I’d tried to get Hamid to talk on the way here, but all he’d told me was to go fuck myself. Brazening it out, I thought, and he hadn’t even asked me what I’d done with his daughter. Neither, for that matter, had Ambassador Jalil; from the way he’d turned the subject aside when I’d broached it, I gathered he considered Habiba an inconvenient detail that was best ignored.
Poor kid. The Azadis wouldn’t want the motherless offspring of a drunken American and a murderer. And now that she’d ceased to be the prize in
a bitter mother-son tug-of-war, she no longer interested her father.
Five twenty-seven.
My body tingled from an excess of adrenaline. My head ached and my eyes stung from lack of sleep. My hair hung limp to my shoulders. I hadn’t washed or brushed my teeth since late yesterday afternoon at All Souls. I felt and probably looked like hell.
Five twenty-eight. Time now.
Deliberately I began to shut down my thoughts and emotions. I tuned out everything, even physical discomfort, and strove for the kind of focus I achieved in the cockpit. I let myself open to one, and only one, stimulus: fear. Accepted it, allowed it to boost me to a new level of awareness.
Getting high. As high as he must be right now.
Five twenty-nine.
I stared fixedly at the phone. Its burnished surface reflected the graying sky behind me. “Ready,” I said into the wire. And placed my hand on the receiver.
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Is everything in place, Ms. McCone?” The voice was high pitched and unreal, without a trace of an accent. He was using a distorting device.
“Yes, everything’s as you requested.”
“They are tracing this call, of course, but it will be too brief for that. You have on a body wire.”
Damn! I knew he’d have anticipated that.
“Disconnect it, please. I am watching.”
He must be very close by, using a cellular phone. He could even be mingling among the press beyond one of the barricades. I hesitated, hating to lose my link to the task force. Then I recalled Parkhurst’s last words to me: “Give him whatever he wants.”
“All right, I’ll disconnect the wire.” I set down the receiver, unzipped the sweatshirt, ripped the wire free. Held part of it up so he could see—wherever he was.
On your own now, I thought. It’s just you and him.
I picked up the receiver. “You saw?”
“Yes. Now look in the phone book hanging below the shelf.”
I stepped back, raised the book to the shelf, and opened it. Half the pages had been ripped out, and a mini-cassette recorder was attached by duct tape to the inside of the cover.
“You have it?” the voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Play the tape. When you finish, erase it and take it with you.”
“Where?”
He hung up.
I replaced the receiver and switched on the recorder. The same strange voice said, “We will resume our conversation now. After you have listened to this tape and erased it, you will return to your car. At twenty minutes to six there will be a diversion. While the authorities’ attention is elsewhere, you and Hamid will leave.”
A long pause.
“Come on!” I said.
“Look to your right. What do you see?”
A marina.
“Think of what you see. Then think of a drowned bird floating in the water. A drowned bird.”
What does that—oh.
In my dreams Mavis Hamid’s floating form had looked like a bat, but a more appropriate symbol would have been a bird—because that was what her name meant.
Mavis. And Salt Point Marina.
“By now I believe you will have grasped it, Ms. McCone. I regret being so cryptic, but surely you can appreciate my need for extreme precaution.”
Another pause, as if he was gathering his thoughts.
“You have forty minutes to arrive there with Hamid. Make sure no one from the task force or the SFPD follows you. I’ll have fixed the gate so it will remain open; come in and bring Hamid aboard the yawl. I’m sure you remember her name.”
The Freia.
“Now erase the tape and go back to your car.”
The helicopter, the police cordons: all a sham to confuse the authorities. The phone call and recorded message: his method of getting Hamid and me alone.
And Adah? Was she alive, or was that another of his lies?
Give him whatever he wants.
I rewound the tape and pressed the erase button.
* * *
As I slipped behind the wheel of the MG Hamid said, “So what did the lunatic demand this time?” His voice was steady but underscored by fear.
My watch said five thirty-eight.
“I asked—”
“I heard you. There’s been a change of plans. In about two minutes we’re going to take a ride. I’ll need you to watch and make sure nobody—fed or cop—follows us.”
“Oh, no! I will not go anywhere without—”
I motioned at his handcuffs. “You don’t have much choice in the matter, now do you?”
Hamid looked away and slouched lower in the seat.
I kept my eyes on the second hand as it inched around. What sort of diversion—
A muffled thump, like a potato sounds when it blows up in the oven.
Hamid jerked. I looked around him in time to see the lid fly off a dumpster halfway between the helicopter and the St. Francis Yacht Club. Flames shot into the air and debris rained down on the esplanade.
“What the hell?” Hamid said.
Another thump, and a second dumpster exploded.
An SFPD car started up and careened around the barricade at Webster Street. A press van followed. Spectators surged through the tape and over the sawhorses as the uniforms struggled to control them.
On the Green, flames shot high from heaps of burning rubble. The roof of the small clapboard naval tracking station caught fire. An SFFD hook and ladder that had been stationed on Webster pulled out, lights flashing.
I started the MG.
The fire truck turned onto the boulevard, cutting a swath through the people racing along the pavement. I shot out of the parking lot in its wake. In the rearview mirror I saw a task force car attempting to follow. The foot traffic blocked it as I took a hard left and crashed past the barricade onto Fillmore.
“You watch out the rear window,” I told Hamid.
His face was pale. Wordlessly he nodded and looked back.
Not much traffic here on the side street. Intersection clear at Beach, clear at North Point.
Fillmore between North Point and Bay! What’s that address where the bastard was making his bombs? There it is, that peculiar-looking Bavarian-style building with the For Sale sign.
Nobody coming, slide across Bay Street.
“Anybody behind us?”
“No.”
“Keep watching.”
What’s the best way out of town? Lombard to Gough and over the hill to the freeway? Yes.
Peculiar-looking Bavarian-style building with a For Sale sign. The one across the back fence from Adah’s. That must be how…
I turned left on the tail end of the yellow light at Lombard, jumbled words and phrases that I’d heard over the past ten days bubbling up from my subconscious in no logical order.
Mr. Duck…sure makes a lot of trash…he is having trouble selling it…I’m heading out now to confirm it…waddles in and waddles out…probably the most kind and decent person I’ve ever known…it’s too damn close to home for comfort…one of those funny European cars…stumbled onto a lead…by coincidence…left him an apartment building…she went to bat for me…someday I’m going to pick through it, too…you’d give him over, just like that?
“Mr. Duck,” I said softly.
No wonder the bomber hadn’t questioned my identity when we’d talked on the computer; I’d told him something only the two of us knew.
I ran the red and turned right on Gough.
“Hamid,” I said, “where were you before you showed up at Leila’s last night?”
“In a bar. I stopped for a quick beer, and the special report about the bombing came on. I just kept drinking.”
“No, before that.”
“The consulate. I thought Habiba might be there. If she was I planned to play that game you used to get her away from me at Jumbie Cay. Too bad I didn’t remember it until afterwards; I wouldn’t be in this mess now. Anyway, I had
a cab waiting around the block, but Habiba wasn’t there. And my mother wouldn’t loan me any money; she wouldn’t even give me a glass of water.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Went down the Peninsula to a friend of Leila’s. She arranged for me to stay with him, but when I got there he wasn’t home. The place was so damned depressing that I decided to go back to the city. I was sure Leila would make me a loan if I could get to her when Sandy wasn’t around. I left her friend a note and walked down the hill to Brisbane. And that’s when I stopped for a beer and found out how close I’d come to being killed.”
How close he’d come to being killed. No grief for his mother or the others who’d died in the explosion.
We crested the hill onto Gough. Into the homestretch to the freeway now, traffic light, and still no one following.
I asked, “So you never saw Leila’s friend?”
“No.”
And he hadn’t been in that back room at Newton’s bungalow last night.
Adah had.
Thirty
There were a number of cars in the parking lot at Salt Point Marina, but quite a few of the boats were gone. Holiday weekend, I thought, carefree start of summer—for some people.
I pulled into a space at the far side of the pavement, turned off the MG, and checked my watch. Ten of the allotted forty minutes remained.
“We’ll be going into the marina soon,” I said to Hamid. “He wants us on board Eric Sparling’s sailboat.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“We’ll take our cues from him. I think I know him well enough that I may be able to push some of the right buttons.”
“Kahlil doesn’t have buttons.”
“He’s also not the bomber.”
Hamid stared at me. “I thought they were sure he was. What about that picture of him and Chloe that Parkhurst said they found in that apartment?”
“Planted by the bomber, who also tipped the cops. He knew I suspected Lateef; I told him so.”
A Wild & Lonely Place (v5) (epub) Page 30