Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  The violence kept happening. All around me.

  The fourth time I saw Clara was in the hospital. She wasn’t in good shape. On the other hand, she hadn’t broken her neck. Being pushed down a staircase could do all kinds of things. It was hard to stand in a hospital with a bruised and terrified woman and think about words like “lucky.” But maybe she had been. I decided then and there that I didn’t want there to be a fifth time. The cycle had to be broken.

  Once that decision was made, one step seemed to lead naturally to the next. Like shooting pool. Each shot lining up the next. Finding Clara’s husband was simple. Most people had to live somewhere and work somewhere. Most paid bills and received mail and frequented bars and gyms and grocery stores, had social circles and habits.

  First a name. Then an address. Then watching, studying. Just like I had with Jordan Stone. I learned when Clara’s husband went out and when he went to bed. I learned who his friends were and what he did for fun. I began to understand that a lot of little facts could become important. Whether someone was a vegetarian or loved fried chicken. Whether someone walked a dog every evening or bothered to raise the shades after getting up in the morning. Whether someone’s idea of a good time was getting drunk or going on a hike.

  Everything mattered. The less important a detail seemed, the more it might matter.

  Sink a shot. Line up the cue. Aim again.

  The next step.

  I hadn’t known exactly what I wanted to say to Clara’s husband when I stopped by for a talk. Before I knew it, I had lapsed back into my training. Applying reason, logic, debate. I was a decent talker and I was trying hard. I gave Clara’s husband every good reason why he should allow his wife to move on.

  He made my next choice an easy one. He reacted aggressively.

  And then everything seemed to click.

  Staircases were unpredictable. Someone could go down a dozen different times and end up a dozen different ways. Clara’s husband happened to go down pretty hard. He had been drinking, which hadn’t helped. Later I found out that he ended up with a broken hip, a separated shoulder, and a few less teeth from where his face bounced off the banister.

  Nothing said I needed to break his right wrist after he landed. But it felt fair, so I did.

  He was ex-military. He had guns. He liked to shoot. And he was a drunk. A dangerous combination. After he got better, I visited him again. In the morning, when he was still in bed and most likely to be sober. I reminded him that other people had guns, too. I showed him one of mine. I explained that his wife was going to be single, and that only he could decide whether she should be a divorcée or a widow.

  Breaking the cycle.

  And he understood.

  That week I quit my job at the shelter. I had started to feel that talking was inefficient. Clara’s husband helped me understand that certain people were wired in an unusual way. Like they had a switch that had been mistakenly preprogrammed in the Off position. So that their default mode was not wanting to listen. Talking to them first was pointless. They’d never hear a word. It was important, with those people, to reset the switch to On, so that they were in a position to take in important information.

  Then they could hear just fine.

  Everything became much easier. First reset the switch, then talk. Two steps.

  The danger wasn’t alleviated just because of my talks. Over time I’d gotten good at reminding the men I spoke to that they could meet new people, act differently. Hopeful things. I didn’t want them descending into such pits of depression or rage that even the worst consequences seemed unimportant. Several times, throughout the years, my talks hadn’t worked. Those were terrible moments. But usually I accomplished what I wanted.

  Word of mouth was a powerful thing. Pretty soon I got a call from a different woman at a different shelter. One followed the next. Later, other people started coming to me for other work. Finding information, finding people. Not especially exciting. Mostly following, watching, staying in the same place for hours. I liked the work, though. I was solitary by nature. Irregular hours, time alone, it all suited me well. I was okay at what I did.

  I kept at it and got better.

  43

  Woodside was supposedly one of the most expensive zip codes in the country. A quiet area in between Palo Alto and San Francisco, full of hidden mansions and estates. I bought a coffee and a sandwich in the small town, then rode a few miles out until I reached a winding driveway blocked by a black gate. The gate was about ten feet high, made up of vertical iron rods set two inches apart, topped by a row of little ornamental spikes. Designed to open outward in two halves, each half folding out from the middle. I passed the gate and pulled over on a side street, turning around so I could see the main road. I opened my sandwich and made myself comfortable.

  An hour later the sun had set. I returned to the driveway. The security was straightforward. One camera on either side of the gate, mounted high up so as to take in the surrounding area. Next to each camera was a motion-activated floodlight. The system was clear. Any nocturnal motion would trip the lights, which would then illuminate the area for the cameras. The cameras probably fed into a security system off-site. Simple and effective.

  Except that without lights, at night, the cameras wouldn’t be much use.

  I used a BB gun from across the road. Far enough that I wouldn’t trip the sensors. Aiming not at the bulbs but at the motion sensors underneath, each marked by a tiny red light that I assumed meant they were on and working. Like a pair of eyes in the darkness. A harder shot, a much smaller target, but doable because of the twin red dots. And worth the effort. The sensors would be less obvious when cracked. The floodlights were there to facilitate the cameras, not the other way around. Meaning the lights didn’t have any camera pointed at them. Two shots did it. The two red dots disappeared. The vertical rods on the gate were easy to grab. I climbed up, swung one leg and then the other over the spikes, and let myself down on the other side.

  * * *

  Gregg Gunn’s house was perched high up on a hill. The house glowed like a spaceship. Low-slung, modernist architecture, all long, clean lines and sweeping expanses of glass. A glowing blue pool and emerald hot tub sat upon terraced hills in front of the house. If this was what the gated parts of Woodside looked like, no wonder it was up there in the per capita charts or whatever the economists used to measure that kind of thing.

  Gunn’s Tesla was parked outside. The only car in the circular driveway. I moved quickly. There were surely more cameras. I tried the front door. It was locked. I walked down the side of the house and saw another, smaller door. The kind of informal entrance that a homeowner would use day-to-day when coming in with bags of groceries.

  This door opened.

  I found myself in a vast, icy kitchen, impersonal as a laboratory. Cold recessed LED lights pinpricked down. The eight-burner stainless steel Wolf range looked like it had never been used. The floor was moody gray tile, travertine, maybe. Someone had gone and dug up a granite quarry and spread it liberally for the countertops. The counters seemed untouched, as if a crumb would be a traumatic new experience. I walked through the kitchen into a living room that was furnished with Japanese touches, soft earthy tones and bamboo floors, several silk screens taking up corner space. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a glass sliding door looked onto a wide stone patio. I could see the blue from the pool and, far below, points of light from other homes.

  I found him in his study, although there wasn’t a single book anywhere in the room. A gleaming samurai sword hung against one wall. Another silk screen embossed with Japanese characters. Gunn sat behind a walnut desk, dressed casually in a black T-shirt and yoga pants, one of those cold-pressed juice bottles next to him. His expression was contemplative, as though he was pondering the world’s weightiest problems and making considerable progress.

  The only thing wrong with the image was the hole in his forehead.

  I looked around carefully. I was alone. I walked
over to take a closer look. A single gunshot had killed him. A vertical line of blood had traveled from the wound, down over the right eye, along the cheek and chin, and finally onto his shirt. The back of his head was in worse shape. Stickiness over the brown curls of his hair. There was a stainless-steel Colt revolver on the desk, close enough to his right hand that it was impossible to tell by looking if it had fallen out of his hand or been placed there. It might have been loaded, or not. I wasn’t going to find out. There was no way I’d put my hand on that gun.

  I noticed a spattering of marks on the upper half of his face, like freckles. Gunpowder burns. A close-range shot, suggesting suicide. Equally, someone could have just walked up and stuck a barrel in his face. Impossible to tell whether he had shot himself or someone else had.

  I had shown up with a long list of questions. I had been looking forward to a long talk. We wouldn’t be talking after all.

  The house was quiet.

  It was time to go.

  * * *

  I found a pay phone in town. When Mr. Jade answered he sounded dispirited, but his tone changed when he recognized my voice. “Nikki? Is that you?” His words were eager. “We’ve been wondering when we’d hear from you. Have you found anything?”

  “Doesn’t sound like you have.” Usually I didn’t like rubbing it in. But it was the FBI, and I couldn’t resist. I might never have the chance again.

  “We’re desperate,” he admitted. “We have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less how to stop it. We tried everything. Whatever Karen Li had for us, it’s gone.”

  “That’s because you’ve been looking for the wrong thing this whole time.”

  Mr. Jade sounded almost plaintive. “What do you mean?”

  “I mailed you something. It will reach you soon, in the next couple of days. Just in case we don’t get a chance to finish this conversation.”

  Now he was more confused. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Because there’s still something I have to do tonight. If I can.”

  He started to say something, but I wasn’t done. “In the meantime, I’m going to start by giving you an address belonging to a certain CEO. Probably not a bad idea for you to pay him a visit.”

  Now he was frustrated. “That’s easy for you to say. Whatever corners you might have cut, there are rules. For us, anyway. You know that we can’t just show up and walk in without a warrant.”

  “You can if someone tells you a crime has been committed.”

  “But no one—”

  I had grown impatient. “I’m telling you, okay? As a concerned citizen, or whatever you want to call it in your report. And I’ll tell you the rest soon. I don’t have time now. Make sure I can reach you tonight. And if for some reason you don’t hear from me by morning, don’t forget to check the mail.”

  “Wait—where are you going, Nikki? And what did you mean, something you have to do?”

  I ignored the questions. “Like I said, pay him a visit. I wouldn’t wait.”

  I hung up. Picked up the receiver again. Put in more quarters. Dialed again. This time I didn’t have much to say. “Charles,” I said. “What we talked about—it’s time.”

  I hung up again but kept the phone to my ear. A third call. The last one for now. More quarters clinking into the coin slot. More ringing. The voice that answered this time was suspicious. “Who is this?”

  “Oliver,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “What are you talking about? Why are you calling me?”

  “In person. Tonight.”

  “Meet? Are you crazy? I told you not to even call me anymore. I don’t know who this is,” he said loudly as though the NSA and Pentagon were both tucked into bed with him and the microphones were poking him under the quilt. “Good-bye! I’m hanging up now!”

  “It’s important,” I insisted.

  His voice was reluctant. “Then tomorrow.”

  “I found out what In Retentis is. I think you’ll want to see what I have. Besides, tomorrow might be too late.”

  His voice changed. “You did? What is it? And what are you talking about, too late?”

  “Too late for you, Oliver.”

  “What?” Now he was bewildered.

  “They just visited Gregg Gunn. Which means they probably intend to visit you next.”

  44

  The Port of Oakland was a massive sprawl along the eastern side of the Bay, big enough to handle the thousand-foot container ships that plodded back and forth across the Pacific, decks piled high with rectangular shipping containers. Stacks and stacks of multicolored corrugated boxes carrying the world’s trade across the globe. Above, hundreds of cargo cranes poised like silhouettes of giant herons with metronomic eyes of blinking red, frozen on the verge of dipping into the black water.

  I reached the maze of streets that belonged to the Port itself, my motorcycle bouncing along asphalt that had been chipped and potholed from endless lines of heavy trucks. I turned several times until I reached a one-lane road marked only by the yellow diamond of a dead-end sign. Steel and asphalt were the only markers of human presence. I could have been five hundred years in the future, staring at the deserted ruins of some anachronistic metropolis.

  The night was quiet except for an electric hum and the faint noise of cars dripping off the freeway. In front of me was a reinforced four-foot metal gate. A sign said EAST BAY E-Z-STORE CUSTOMERS ONLY. I pressed a button on a plastic fob that hung off my keychain and the gate slid open. Inside, the ground was packed dirt. Stretching around me were stacks of the ubiquitous shipping containers, each twenty feet long and ten feet high, each stack a half-dozen containers high. There must have been hundreds of them, lining the yard like an industrial hedge maze. The storage facility was a squared pancake of a building, thick walls painted a depressing beige.

  I waited.

  Twenty minutes later I saw headlights. A small white car came into view and I pressed the key fob as the car slowed. The gate opened and the car drove slowly into the yard. Oliver rolled down the window two inches and peered up at me suspiciously, his thick eyebrows furrowed. “This really couldn’t wait?”

  “Come on. We don’t have all night.”

  He turned the engine off and warily got out of the car. He was dressed as though I had told him we’d be jumping out of a helicopter behind enemy lines, a black hooded sweatshirt under a black windbreaker and a black ski hat. The ski hat had a tasseled pompom. Looking at him, I thought that Oliver must be the first special ops soldier in history to have a windbreaker emblazoned with the Sierra Club logo. He rubbed his eyes. “What did you mean about them visiting Greggory?”

  “Gunn’s dead.”

  He stopped rubbing his eyes and blinked. “Greggory? Dead? What are you talking about? He can’t be. I just saw him today.”

  “I saw him tonight.”

  Oliver looked at me as if I had told him a joke in poor taste. “You can’t be serious! What happened?”

  “Either he shot himself or someone gave him a hand.”

  Oliver groped for his orange plastic bottle of antianxiety pills and dry-swallowed several. “Karen Li talked to you and she’s dead. Greggory talked to you and now he is, too.”

  “I didn’t hurt Gunn, or Karen, and I don’t intend to hurt you.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Come on. We’ll talk more inside.”

  * * *

  Plenty of people used storage facilities for normal things. A couple downsizing, or someone stuck in a four-hundred-square-foot studio who needed more space. But storage facilities attracted some definite weirdos, too. Loners, often nocturnally inclined. Plenty of middle-aged men storing survival gear or hoarders filling space with crumbling newspapers. So storage facilities like this one usually offered 24-7 access. If a guy in combat boots and camouflage wanted to go digging around for his hunting rifles, maybe better that he not do so while a family was picking up a couch. The unrestricted access suited me fine. I’d always liked to be a
ble to come and go.

  I used a key on my key ring to open the padlock on the front door and we walked into a bleak grid of hallways, rolling garage-style doors set at intervals. The fluorescent lighting was spotty. Some of the light panels flickered and other patches seemed aggressive, as though they were cannibalistically leaching wattage from the sick ones. The walls were an ugly institutional green that had probably gotten a fresh coat of paint back around the first Gulf War. Oliver looked around suspiciously. “What are you showing me, anyway? You found something new?”

  I stopped at one of the doors, unlocked it, and we stepped into a room that was twenty-five feet by ten feet. The room was filled floor to ceiling with books stacked in triple rows along cheap wood shelves, more books rising in vertical stacks set upon the topmost shelf. The books far exceeded the shelf space and the overburdened bookcases craned forward with excess weight. The walls of the storage unit were cement and so, rather than bolting the shelves to the wall, I had run restraining lengths of yellow nylon rope across the front of the shelves to stop them from tipping over. With the weight of the books pressed against them, the ropes were taut as guitar strings. More books were piled on the floor, rising in places to waist height and creating an overgrown jungle effect.

  “What is this place?” Oliver wondered.

  I sat on a mint-colored file cabinet against one wall, moving an open paperback copy of The Iliad to make room. “I run a bookstore, remember?” It felt strange having someone else in the room with me. I was used to being alone here. I liked it better that way, I was deciding.

  Oliver shook his head impatiently. “The last thing we should be talking about is books. What did you learn? What’s being planned? Is it an attack like we thought? Who’s the target?”