Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  Under the words were three numbers. 11/1.

  A date less than one week away.

  A milestone they’ve spent years trying to reach … and they’re almost there.

  “Latin,” Jess said. “Which I dropped sophomore year of high school. What’s it mean?”

  “In retentis. A legal term. Documents held back from a court’s regular records.”

  Jess’s voice was uneasy. “Nikki. If they’re planning some kind of strike, you have to take these to the police. If a bomb goes off we’d both be complicit.”

  “I know.”

  Her voice grew still more uneasy. “If Karen Li knew about this, and if the people in these pictures found out that she knew…”

  Again, I was silent. Again, I had been thinking the same thing.

  “How do you find out for sure? Can you get to anyone else at the company?”

  I thought. “There might be someone I can reach.”

  32

  I hadn’t seen Oliver since the day he’d pulled up to me at the gym to show me Gunn’s flight itineraries. The strange little man’s precautions while setting up our meeting were so elaborate that they might have been funny. Except Karen Li was dead. That made them not funny. I couldn’t blame him for being careful. I had thought about telling Mr. Jade and Mr. Ruby about both Oliver and the photographs, but something held me back. Part of it was that I trusted them about as much as I would any pair of strange men who had thrown me into the backseat of a car by way of a handshake. The fact that they were FBI agents didn’t do much to tip the scales, either. Law enforcement types were notorious for pursuing their own ends, which sometimes happened to parallel those of the people they dealt with, and sometimes did not. Our goals regarding Care4 might seem to align, but I wanted to learn more for myself before I shared. More importantly, they had let their star witness be murdered almost under their noses. Whether that was bad luck, indifference, or incompetence didn’t matter all that much. If Oliver learned I was working with them, that would be the end of that relationship, and the whole company might be spooked into lockdown.

  There was another part, under the logic. I’d gotten used to relying on myself in life.

  I’d fill in the FBI when I was good and ready, and not before.

  Following Oliver’s instructions, I took a train to the San Francisco Ferry Building, getting there at one in the afternoon. The Ferry Building was a grand, rectangular building done in the Beaux Arts style, the exterior composed of a double series of arches, three large central arches supporting a clock tower rising hundreds of feet above the water. In front was a palm-filled plaza; behind, the water, the titular ferries cutting around the Bay.

  I found a seat at the Hog Island Oyster Bar and, according to instructions, waited. It was a good place to wait. I ordered a dozen oysters and drank a draft pint and watched the oyster shuckers. There were two of them. One seemed to shuck at a steady three-oysters-per-minute rate. The other was faster. His technique seemed better. More fluid. He didn’t waste a motion. He seemed to get about four oysters a minute. He worked the oyster knife with small, easy gestures, flipping each full shell onto the bed of display ice and the empty shells into a trash can under the bar.

  An hour went by. More than four hundred oysters shucked, sold, and served.

  A waitress came over and handed me a paper. “Your friend said you forgot this.”

  I took the paper. It was a ferry schedule. Dense rows of locations and departure and arrival times. A single line was circled in blue ballpoint pen. A 2:05 departure to Sausalito, across the Bay. I checked my watch. 1:59. I had to hurry.

  I was the last one to board, hurrying onto the walkway as the engines powered up. Onboard, the ferry had three levels. The bottom, where I had boarded, was indoors, with a small bar at one end. The bar was crowded. Sea voyages seemed to inspire people to drink. A ferry across the Bay wasn’t a steamship crossing the Pacific, but the water was salty enough and we were floating. The essentials were there. I bought a coffee and walked upstairs to the middle level, feeling the engines thrum through the deck as we eased out. People sat on benches and milled around. Easy to pick out the tourists from the locals. Only a question of who was taking the pictures. It was a bright, windy day and the water surged with whitecaps. Behind us the wake frothed. I walked up to the top level. It was much windier up there. Fewer people. Most of the benches empty.

  I found him leaning against the railing, watching San Francisco recede. I remembered the thin face, that mix of intelligence and caution. He wore a scarlet windbreaker emblazoned with the Stanford tree logo and the usual socks and sandals combination, a blue Clipper card visible in his pocket. One of the Bay Area all-purpose transportation passes, good for busses, trains, and ferries. “Hey, Oliver,” I greeted him. “You picked a nice day for a boat ride.”

  “Did anyone follow you?” he wanted to know.

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Reasonably.”

  His mouth tightened and he glanced around. “That’s hardly reassuring.”

  “How’d you choose Oliver?” I asked. “Out of all the names. You a Dickens fan, too?”

  “What?”

  “You know, Oliver Twist.”

  He gave me an uncomfortable look. “I don’t understand.”

  I put my elbows on the railing and watched the water. “I always used to think it was just a brilliant name. Oliver Twist. Then I realized it’s actually a Cockney accent, asking, ‘Olive ’er twist? Olive or twist?’ One of the most famous names in literature, just a bartender asking about a drink. It always made me wonder. Were martinis around back then and, if so, how did Dickens take them?”

  He shook his head and peeled an orange that he had taken from his pocket. “I don’t read Dickens and I don’t drink. So I don’t see how that applies to me.”

  “Careful,” I warned. “You’re starting to sound like you have too much fun.”

  He angrily threw a piece of orange peel over the side. I watched the peel until it became invisible against the water. “Spare me your jokes, okay? A woman I work with—worked with—is dead. Dead. For doing pretty much what I’m doing. Talking to people I shouldn’t be talking to, about things I shouldn’t be talking about. Go find someone else if you want to crack jokes. I shouldn’t even be here. I should be as far away from you as I can get.”

  He had a point. “Sorry. You’re right. No more jokes.” I drank some coffee. The hot liquid felt good against the breeze. “So tell me, what shouldn’t we be talking about?”

  “Everything.”

  “That might limit the conversation.”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said again. “They killed her.”

  “Who killed her?”

  His face was pinched and fearful. “How am I supposed to know? There were rumors that the company was investigating employees, and then she turns up dead. They sent an e-mail—that’s all she was worth in the end. We are deeply sorry to inform you that a beloved colleague passed away…” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

  “So why are you?”

  “If there’s a right side and a wrong side, I want to be on the right side.”

  “Then tell me about In Retentis.”

  I had thrown the words at him like a fastball. His eyes widened and his gaze shifted to my left for a split second. Then his features were back to normal. “In what?”

  “You know,” I said. “Or you don’t know. I’m tired of guessing. If you know, tell me. If not, I don’t know why we’re talking, because that means I know more than you do, and don’t need you to tell me anything.”

  His eyes were wary. “You first. What do you know about it?”

  I pulled a photograph from my jacket and put it on the railing between us. I had to keep my finger pressed tightly down to prevent the picture from blowing away like the orange peel. A Middle Eastern woman with a set, determined jaw and large sunglasses. I slapped down another lik
e I was dealing blackjack. A young, dark-skinned man, photographed walking out of a café, coffee in one hand, wearing jeans and a soccer jersey. I put down a third. A fourth, a fifth. “That’s what I know.”

  His eyes were focused intently on the photographs. I took another look at his Clipper card, the upper edge jutting out of the small side pocket of his jeans. Easy to reach when rushing through a turnstile with people crowding from behind. No one wanted to be the person fumbling in a wallet and holding up the line. He was still staring at the pictures. I let one of my hands fall from the railing toward his pocket. There was a huge cargo ship stacked high with rust-colored containers, working its way toward us on the other side of the bridge, Chinese lettering on the side. I wondered what the cargo was.

  Oliver pushed the photographs back to me. “I’ve only heard vague rumors.”

  “I’ll never consider myself too good for cheap whiskey or vague rumors.”

  As usual, he didn’t laugh. “The company became unintentionally involved with something big. Our networks were linked to so many cameras, we were collecting so much data, so much raw footage, all over the world. In hindsight, they should have realized that at some point certain parties would approach us, wanting to use what we had collected in ways we hadn’t anticipated.”

  “Parties?”

  He shook his head in distaste. “You’re making me spell it out? I thought you were some kind of detective. Foreign governments, or affiliated agencies.”

  “Affiliated agencies … you mean security services? Counterterrorism?”

  He nodded.

  “And Karen Li was involved in this? She had been working on In Retentis, right?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “She found out accidentally.”

  I relaxed a little. He was telling the truth, at least here.

  “How did you find out about any of this?” he wanted to know.

  “That doesn’t matter. There was a date,” I pressed. “Something major happening on November first. What is it?”

  Now his head shake was definite. “I don’t know anything about a date.”

  “Who are the people in the photographs?”

  He shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Are you even listening to me?” he said impatiently. “Which countries we’re talking about—which parts of the world? They breed radical extremism like stagnant ponds breed mosquitos.”

  “So these are terrorists? Planning some kind of attack? Is that what Karen was talking about when she said people will die? Something happening on November first that the people in these pictures are planning, and Care4 won’t release information it got hold of?”

  That frightened him. He chewed his lip nervously. “An attack? Is there going to be one?”

  I looked straight into his eyes. “We should go to the police. This is too much for us.”

  “Really?” He looked even more nervous. “The police? Are you sure?”

  “I think we need to. I know some people I’ll get in touch with this week.”

  He licked his lips. “When, exactly? Will the company find out I was involved?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

  Oliver took this in. We were nearing the shoreline. I could see the main street of Sausalito, just above sea level, a border of toothy black rocks set against the water. A charming street full of antique stores and ice-cream shops. Above the town jutted steep green hills flecked with homes. “Look,” Oliver finally said. “It’s not safe for me to be seen with you. I’m serious. I’m going to disembark. You stay on the ferry, take it back to San Francisco. If anyone asks, we never spoke.”

  The ferry was slowing as it approached the gangway. Below I could see a line of people waiting to board. Oliver headed for the staircase without another word. My coffee had gotten cold but I sipped it anyway, feeling an emotion that I wasn’t used to encountering in my professional life. Self-doubt. Whatever I had gotten caught up in was starting to feel unmanageable, and each step forward seemed to lead to impossible new questions. There were too many missing parts, too many unconnected pieces, and only a handful of days between now and the first of November.

  Time was running out.

  Even worse, I still didn’t know what would happen when it did.

  33

  The next morning I went for a long run in the Berkeley Hills. I often did my best thinking while running, and I was starting to feel desperate. I had exhausted every lead, every piece of information. There had to be a way to take the next step—but what?

  The trail I was on ascended gradually for a few miles before looping around. I was high up and could glimpse fragments of the Bay in between the hills and trees. Like glimpses of Care4. Pieces, fragments. But I couldn’t see everything. I passed a pair of plodding hikers with a leashed golden retriever. The dog jealously watched me pass. The trail steepened and I forced myself to keep my pace. I leapt over a branch, ran faster. Gregg Gunn hired me to follow Karen Li. Next. Karen Li was killed. Next. I found the photographs she hid. Pictures that she had wanted me to have.

  And then?

  I got another glimpse of the Bay. From this distance, the water looked still and artificial. Those faces. Where did they lead? What did they mean? If there was a pending attack, where would it be, and what was Care4’s role? Pieces. All I had were unconnected pieces. How could I see the whole picture? My foot snagged a root and the next thing I knew I had sprawled onto the ground. I caught myself on the palms of my hands and rolled over to a seated position, laughing for no good reason at my clumsiness.

  I had started with Care4 by following Karen Li. And ended up back there after finding her. Circular. A loop, like this trail. Offering glimpses but not the whole view. My visit to Care4, Gunn’s soft tone, warning me to leave it alone. But leave what alone?

  Leaving Care4, hating myself for having failed Karen, pulling away, almost being sideswiped by the Mercedes.

  The man in the Mercedes.

  Still sitting on the trail, rubbing dirt off my leg, I said two words. “Brenda Johnson.”

  * * *

  Brenda’s contact information was at the bookstore, where I kept all my client files. When I arrived that afternoon I was met by loud voices raised in argument. The amateur sleuths, the ZEBRAS, were in their usual corner. “You can’t tell me Kay Scarpetta is more memorable than Carlotta Carlyle!”

  “We’re not talking about individual quirks of character, we’re talking about where they stand in the pantheon! The woman’s powered almost twenty-five novels over the better part of two decades!”

  “Don’t start with the quantity-over-quality argument, Abe, it’s beneath you.”

  “I’m surprised you ever got past the Hardy Boys. You have the mind of an adolescent and always will.” Abe, the passionate founder of the ZEBRAS, accentuated his point by crumpling up the page of The Times he was reading and hurling it toward Zach, his antagonist of the moment. The crumpled paper bounced off Zach’s glasses and rolled to the ground.

  Zach shook his head. “When words fail, resort to physical assault. Classic.”

  I picked up the ball of paper, smoothing it. “In Abe’s defense, sometimes words do fail.” I handed the paper back to him. “You dropped your newspaper.”

  Abe drank his coffee and shook his head sadly. “My apologies, Lisbeth. We didn’t mean to expose your delicate sensibilities to such turmoil.”

  I pinched his ear. “If I was fifty years older I’d show you turmoil.” About to walk away, I stopped. “Hey, let me see that.” I took the newspaper I’d just given him and looked closer at the small photograph of a man, recognizing immediately the curly black hair and missing tooth. I read the few lines of print under the photograph.

  ANTI-CORRUPTION BLOGGER’S DEATH NO SUICIDE, FAMILY CLAIMS

  Sherif Essam, a Cairo blogger who had devoted his career to exposing government corruption following the Arab Spring, was found dead after leaping from a rooftop this past
September—only his family insists his death was anything but willing. Reports from friends, relatives, and human rights organizations are insistent that Essam never would have jumped. “My husband had the courage to point at powerful people and accuse them of crimes. We received threats, he knew he was in danger … but to call it a suicide?” said his wife, Dina, 31. “He spoke too loudly, and so they murdered him.”

  The last time I had seen his face had been in a different newspaper. While taking the affair photographs for Brenda Johnson. Then the death had been described only as a suicide. I wondered what had changed. The face was familiar for another reason, but my thoughts were interrupted by Jess. “Any progress?” she wanted to know.

  I rubbed the back of my hand into my eyes. “Ask me anything but that.”

  “Okay.” She considered. “So how are things with Ethan?”

  I thought about the attempted robbery, the conversation in the donut shop, the note he had left. “A few bumps. But better now, I think. I hope.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Long-term like?”

  With slight surprise I found myself nodding. “Yes. Long-term like.” Saying it made me realize how much I meant it. I found a couple of clean coffee mugs and poured us each a generous measure of scotch. We sat on the floor and Jess threw a little toy mouse across the store so Bartleby could charge crazily after it. “I swear he thinks he’s a dog,” she said as the cat trotted back to us, mouse in mouth, depositing it neatly on Jess’s lap to be thrown again.

  It felt good talking about something other than Care4 for a few minutes. “How’s Linda?” Jess’s fiancée was a pediatrician. We usually had dinner together at least a few times a month. I liked her a lot. There was a wedding planned for the following summer.

  “She’s good. Except we’re going down to her family’s place for Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s a problem?”

  “Orange County. I get to enjoy four days of beautiful weather and expensive restaurants, swim in a seriously big infinity pool, and listen to a lot of pointed questions about how much longer we’ll continue our untraditional lifestyle.”