Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  At a law firm, plenty of people worked late. The junior partners tended to leave reasonably early and the senior partners earlier still, but the hungry young associates saddled with billable hour quotas were eager to have their late-night e-mails and punch-out times prove their worth as they chased promotion. Working until nine, ten, maybe eleven at night was no problem for associates in their twenties. Seventy, eighty hours or more a week was normal.

  The custodial outfit that cleaned the offices of Gilbert, Frazier & Mann probably cleaned a dozen different sets of corporate offices each night. They were an efficient group. Six of them traveling in two minivans. They carried equipment with them and seemed to reach Gilbert, Frazier & Mann between eleven and eleven thirty nightly. The firm took up three floors of a skyscraper in San Francisco’s Financial District. The kind of place that during business hours had security in the front lobby and a strict sign-in system for visitors. After hours the building relied on electronic readers and swipe cards. Law firms were busy places. They wanted their lawyers to be able to work late.

  As the last of the six cleaners walked into the building, I stepped around the corner and waited until the glass door had swung closed. Then I kicked the door loudly with my foot. It hurt. I was used to kicking with motorcycle boots, not open-toe heels. The last of the six turned at the noise. I kicked the door a second time. Impatiently. As though annoyed at even a second of delay. He came back and opened the door, a small Hispanic guy in a Giants sweatshirt and baggy jeans. I walked in, barely nodding as I passed him. “Thanks.”

  He started to say something and then changed his mind. I was wearing a black skirt with a blouse and blazer. My hair was pinned up into a bun and my arms barely wrapped around a large cardboard shipping box, so full the top flaps couldn’t close properly. I walked purposefully across the lobby until I was in the midst of the group waiting for the elevator. They watched me. One of them whispered something in Spanish to another. They seemed torn between wanting and not wanting to ask me something.

  “Excuse me, do you work here, ma’am?” the second one finally asked.

  I gave a curt nod without looking at him. The kind of short, impatient gesture that said my mind was on far more important things. There was a floor directory by the elevator. Gilbert, Frazier & Mann were floors ten, eleven, and twelve. I stood by the elevator and got one hand from under the box, juggling it on my knee as I tried to bring a lanyard and plastic card around to the card reader. It couldn’t have looked easy. “Shit!” I exclaimed as the box I was holding started to fall. I tried to catch it, clumsily, and wasn’t able to get my arms back around it in time. The box hit the floor and several manila folders fell out. Papers scattered over the floor. “Damnit,” I said with more irritation, and knelt to grab up the papers. “Hold that, will you?” I called as the elevator opened.

  It wasn’t really a request. They held the door while I stuffed papers back into the box. It was a tight fit in the elevator. Pressing the box against the wall, I freed a hand and managed to hit the button for the twelfth floor. Silas Johnson’s Pacific Heights Victorian had been too expensive for him to be anything but a senior partner. He’d be on the top floor. The janitorial crew got out on ten, where the reception area and kitchenette would be. The most time-consuming floor to clean.

  On the twelfth floor, the overhead lights were off and the hallway was almost pitch black. No one working late up here. I set my box down in a stairwell next to the elevator and pulled a bright LED flashlight from my purse. The offices all had little brass name plaques screwed into the hardwood doors. The doors were set apart at lengthy intervals. Spacious offices, up here on the partners’ floor. I moved quickly. I didn’t want to be in the building all night. I found Silas Johnson’s office and used the key his wife had given me. Inside I kept the overhead light off and used my flashlight, turning it this way and that so that the room came into view. It was a large, comfortable office furnished principally with a black leather couch and a hulking mahogany desk. A bookshelf held the same sort of legal texts I’d seen at the Johnson house, all leather and gilt titles that gleamed like treasure as I shined the light along the spines. There was a steel file cabinet against the far wall. Five drawers, all locked. I didn’t bother trying my key. I could tell by sight it was too big.

  Busy lawyers needed quick access to documents. And in a locked office in a security-conscious building, people didn’t think much about theft. I shined my light over toward the large desk. There was a vertical column of closed drawers on the left side and a narrow horizontal front drawer. I wasn’t surprised to find the front drawer unlocked. The thin beam of the light illuminated standard office paraphernalia: paper clips, rubber bands, staples, pens. In a corner of the drawer there were two small silver keys. One fit the file cabinet.

  I spent an hour going through the file cabinet drawers one by one. Judging by the dates, the cases seemed to be current. The firm would have archives of some kind where they stored the work of past years or decades. I worked as fast as I could, looking for any mention of Care4 or Gregg Gunn or In Retentis.

  Nothing.

  The desk was messy, covered in papers. Unlikely that any sensitive material would be left out in the open, but I went through everything anyway.

  Nothing.

  I checked the trash can, digging through a browned apple core and several empty Diet Coke cans, a copy of The Wall Street Journal.

  The three vertical drawers of the desk were also locked. I tried the second key from the desk. It worked. I started at the bottommost drawer. It held a nearly empty bottle of Macallan eighteen-year single malt. Not a cheap bottle. Two unopened bottles of the same stuff lay behind it. Like a one-man supply chain. Two lowball crystal glasses were tucked neatly into the drawer next to several Penthouse and Playboy issues. The tanned, airbrushed girls on the cover looked about the same age as the scotch, and the same color.

  The middle and top drawers held more files. I worked my way through them as fast as I could. Understanding anything about the nature of the cases would have been a far longer job, but it was easy enough to tell which people and companies were involved where.

  I found the Care4 file in the top drawer. Three folders, rubber-banded together.

  I had just opened the first folder when the office door opened.

  I threw myself under the desk and clicked my light off as the overhead light turned on. I narrowed my eyes in the brightness and huddled under the desk. The front panel meant that I was invisible as long as no one came around to the back.

  It also meant I didn’t know who was in the office with me.

  An unsettling feeling.

  Footsteps moved closer and I caught a glimpse of an old white sneaker under a slice of loose jeans. I relaxed a little. Lawyers who drove Mercedes S-Class sedans didn’t wear beat-up Nikes. If they wore sneakers, they’d be brand-new. I tried to figure out where these sneakers were likely to step next. The trash can. The cleaners would go office to office, emptying the trash cans. No one wanted to sit down in the morning and smell decomposing apple cores. I stayed very still. The cleaner’s feet came closer. I heard a grunt as he bent down. The trash can lay less than a foot away from my head, separated only by the side of the desk. I held my breath and stayed absolutely still. I heard the trash can empty into a bag. Heard the rustle of papers and the more solid thump of an object. The apple core. I could hear plastic crinkling. A new bag, being shaken open.

  Then silence. I couldn’t see the sneakers anymore.

  Five or six seconds stretched on forever. Finally, I heard footsteps again. Moving away from me. The custodian hit the light switch and the room was dark again. The office door closed. I let out my breath. Slowly getting to my feet, I switched the flashlight on again and sat at the leather desk chair, file in front of me.

  It was time for some reading.

  * * *

  Gilbert, Frazier & Mann had been involved with Care4 for several years and appeared to have done a variety of legitimate work. As
the partner who oversaw the Care4 account, Silas Johnson had been involved in much of this work. It was clear that the folders I was looking through were far from complete. There were probably thousands or tens of thousands of additional documents, filed somewhere on the firm’s three floors. These folders offered only an overview. I learned that he had helped guide the company through equity financing in its early stages. I reached the second folder, which involved litigation and HR. One case, involving trade secrets with a rival company, had gone to court. Several contract disputes had been settled in arbitration. When it came to its employees, Care4 didn’t hesitate to use its lawyers aggressively. The next folder was thinner and pertained mostly to financial and tax matters. Other lawyers were referenced. Silas Johnson didn’t directly handle tax law. A different department.

  After an hour I didn’t feel like I knew anything more about what I was searching for. Silas Johnson’s work seemed exactly what his wife had described it as: boring corporate law. The files could have been dealing with any corporation. Nothing stood out. No mention of In Retentis or strange photographs or murdered employees or criminal investigations. Nothing secretive or villainous. In fact, the most scandalous thing I’d found all night were the Penthouse magazines. I’d have to figure out a different angle. Silas Johnson was a terrible husband, but as a lawyer he seemed boring, capable, and nothing more.

  Putting the rubber bands back around the three folders I stopped, interested. There was a fourth folder in the stack. I hadn’t noticed it at first because it was completely empty. A plain olive-green filing folder containing absolutely nothing. The kind of folder that sold at Staples for about seventy cents. Just a basic organizational vessel to put papers in.

  Or take papers out of.

  Maybe this was nothing. Or maybe there had been other papers inside it. Papers that Silas Johnson didn’t trust to a locked desk in a locked office in a locked building. Papers that weren’t boring corporate law filed routinely for any company in the country. Papers that the lawyer would want to keep extremely close. I relocked the drawers and made sure everything was exactly how I had found it. When I was done, the only difference from when I walked in was the now-empty trash can, loaded with a new trash bag and ready for the next day.

  The cleaners had long left. On to the next building, the next stop of their long night. I found the cardboard prop box where I had left it in the stairwell and headed down the stairs in the red glow of the emergency lights.

  Thinking about the next step.

  40

  The Kingston Hotel was a block off Union Square, on Geary Street. It had a grandiose Art Deco feel. Not the sleek, minimalist luxury of newer hotels, but a more ornate style out of a Dreiser or Fitzgerald story. The lobby floor was white and black marble like a chessboard. Oil paintings in gold frames hung on the walls below crystal chandeliers. It was exactly the type of hotel that I would have imagined a wealthy, middle-aged lawyer would go to if kicked out of his apartment.

  I didn’t know much about Silas Johnson, but I knew that he liked women and he liked a drink. Those facts counted for something. So I wasn’t surprised to find that he seemed to be a regular at the hotel bar. The hotel lobby offered a clear view of the bar. Basic architectural strategy: the more people that could see a place, the more likely they’d be to go in. The lobby was full of couches and armchairs. Easy enough to sit unobtrusively and watch.

  The first night the lawyer unsuccessfully hit on a pretty Indian woman about my age who sat at the bar with a laptop and a glass of white wine. There was an unwritten rule that people on laptops weren’t generally around to be picked up. They were there to work. To concentrate. Silas Johnson either didn’t know about this rule, or didn’t care. Maybe he took it as a challenge. I watched as he sent a glass of champagne her way, via the barman.

  The woman drank the champagne but didn’t seem much interested in the person behind it. The lawyer’s face showed irritation. Silas Johnson clearly liked women who thanked him after he sent them unsolicited bubbles. A few minutes went by. I watched him lean over and say something to her. Her face froze up in the kind of polite smile that women all over the world are used to giving in those situations. I noticed the sparkle of a diamond on her left hand. Maybe the lawyer had noticed it, too. Maybe he hadn’t. Even the best-intentioned men seemed to notice those details imperfectly. And Silas Johnson didn’t seem like the world’s best-intentioned man.

  He also didn’t seem like the kind of man to take a hint. He finished the Manhattan he was drinking, ordered another, said something else, and patted the empty bar chair next to him. Like he was calling a dog to sit. This time there was annoyance behind her smile as she shook her head. A moment later the Indian woman got up and carried her laptop and drink to the far end of the bar.

  That night Silas Johnson went to his room alone.

  The next night he was back in the same spot. The bar was a bit more crowded on the second night. The lawyer’s gaze flicked around the room to different women but he didn’t talk to anyone. He checked his watch several times. By the time he’d worked his way through his first Manhattan, a tall blond woman in a tight black dress walked in. She must have been thirty years younger than the lawyer. She had red nails and copious eye shadow and a pair of stiletto heels that looked high enough to let her wade right across the Pacific without getting her hair wet. The lawyer stood, smiling. The woman walked over and he kissed her on the cheek. She sat next to him.

  He drank a second Manhattan while she put down three vodka sodas, one after the other. I couldn’t blame her. In her position, I would have had six. He whispered something in the woman’s ear and they got up with their drinks.

  I watched him sign for the tab.

  I watched the two of them leave the bar and head for the elevators.

  That was the second night.

  The third night he talked to me.

  Nothing about the situation was ideal. I liked to spend at least a week following someone before any contact. A night or two wasn’t nearly enough to learn someone’s habits. I preferred to watch someone interacting with the people in his life, learn his routine. I didn’t have the luxury of time, though. It was the twenty-ninth of October and I still had no real idea of what was going to happen on November 1. People will die. The words had been looping around in my mind until I felt like I was starting to go crazy. I knew increasingly how Karen Li must have felt in her last weeks. Too much uncertainty, too much stress. Care4 had taken over my mind. Whatever Silas Johnson had or knew, I couldn’t wait any longer to find out. Even watching him for two nights had been pushing it. I had to act.

  The first hint of his interest was a flute of champagne that descended in front of me, the small circle of glass clinking delicately against the zinc bar. I looked up inquiringly. Past the golden effervescence of the glass to the bartender who had set it down. “Did I order that?”

  The bartender shook his head disinterestedly. His face was neither golden nor effervescent. He was a thin man with a wide forehead, a large reddened nose, and a mustache the color of calking putty. In keeping with the rest of the hotel, he was dressed formally in a white shirt, black tuxedo vest, and maroon bow tie. The bow tie was a clip-on and the vest was slightly too big. He looked like he’d done this routine a million times and expected to do it a million more. “From the gentleman down the bar,” he explained.

  He nodded in the direction of Silas Johnson.

  I followed the bartender’s look and met eyes with the lawyer for the first time. He was at his usual seat with his usual drink. He was a handsome enough man in a rumpled, affluent way. His brown eyes were set deep in his face and gave the impression of pugnacious shrewdness. He had a salt-and-pepper goatee and a square, heavy head. The knot on his tie was loosened and his checked blue sports coat was open, revealing a belly that the personal trainer had apparently been unable to do much about. He gave me a broad smile and raised his drink. I wasn’t worried that he might recognize me from the Care4 parking lot, where I�
��d been wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet. I’d spent the last two evenings in the lobby, but the lawyer’s attention had been focused elsewhere. He hadn’t seen me.

  I nodded without lifting my own glass and went back to my book. I turned a page and took a sip of my red wine. The champagne sat untouched on the bar. I turned a few more pages, not minding the passing minutes. Portrait of a Lady was a favorite. I drank more of my wine. My hair was down and I wore a simple black dress that showed my figure.

  Finally, I heard his voice. “That champagne is thirty dollars a glass. You’re not going to drink it?”

  I looked up again. He was leaning toward me, voice raised slightly, smiling to show that he didn’t really care about wasting thirty dollars on a drink. I looked from the lawyer to the champagne. “I’m not sure. But if I do, I know where to find it.”

  He gave me a look to see if I was being flirtatious or insulting. My tone had been neither. Just matter-of-fact. I was already back to my book. He called down the bar again. “Maybe champagne isn’t your thing. Would you prefer something else?”

  I gave him a polite smile and nodded at my wine. “I have something else.”

  I kept reading. Another slow night, the nightcap-after-dinner crowd long gone. The bar was almost empty. No other single women. No one else for the lawyer to order expensive champagne for.

  Only me.

  He tried again, changing tactics. “What are you reading?”

  “This?” I looked up, as if trying hard to associate my book with the stranger in front of me. “Portrait of a Lady. Do you know it?”

  He didn’t look interested as he shook his head. “Afraid not. That’s a big book. Looks worse than what they threw at me in constitutional law.”

  “Is that your way of telling me that you’re a lawyer, or that I should be reading something easier?”