The next morning Sims strolled into the offices of the Chronicle, a broad smile on his face and Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor playing on his iPod.
“The boss wants to see you,” one of his colleagues told him before he could even sit down at his bullpen desk. “PDQ.”
“Good,” Sims replied confidently, “because I want to see her.” He walked quickly to the glassed-in corner office of Margaret Hill, the paper’s city editor. “Boss,” he began speaking as soon as he crossed the threshold into her office, “you won’t believe—”
“I trust,” she quickly interrupted, “that you’re about to tell me that you’ve completed all three of the assignments I gave you last week.”
“Not quite,” Sims replied. “But something far more important has come up, something that you won’t—”
“Wait a minute,” Margaret interrupted again, a look of serious annoyance on her face. “I decide what’s important around here, not you. I don’t know where you got the notion that you’re some sort of investigative reporter-at-large, but if you wish to continue being an employee of this newspaper you’ll lose it immediately. Is that clear?”
“Yes, but,” he quickly took out the photos he had shown Laszlo and Clarissa the day before and laid them on Margaret’s desk, “you don’t understand. These people . . .”
Margaret didn’t even bother to look down at them. “I know all about Mrs. Ralph Johnson, and Roscoe Wilson, and the little shop out on Union Street.”
“You do?” The perplexed look on Sims’s face was so comical that Margaret would have laughed had she not been so annoyed.
“An hour ago I received an unexpected visit from Tower Percy.” Everyone who worked for the Chronicle knew Tower Percy, the paper’s executive editor, and more, justly feared him as a man with zero tolerance for perceived shortcomings, personal and professional. “He wanted to know if I was aware that my most junior employee was running around taking clandestine pictures of some of the city’s most prominent citizens. It seems that he had gotten an angry telephone call earlier this morning from his boss, the publisher of this newspaper. Are you beginning to get the picture?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But nothing. What these people,” she pointed at the photos on her desk, “are doing is none of your, none of our, business. They are private citizens engaged in private matters.”
“They’re being cheated,” Sims interjected. “That couple out on Union Street are running a scam. Look at this.” He took a sheet of computer printout from his pocket and handed it to Margaret. “This shows that Mrs. Johnson withdrew one hundred thousand dollars, in cash, from one of her bank accounts two days ago.”
“Where did you get this?”
“I have a friend who works for the bank,” Sims replied, a proud smile on his face. “A good friend. She got into the database and printed it out for me.”
“You’re a fool,” Margaret said, shaking her head in disgust. “Such a fool, in fact, that I should fire you right now. This,” she held up the printout, “or, more accurately, the manner in which you obtained it, is a felony. Worse even than that, however, it proves absolutely nothing. The ultrawealthy, people like Mrs. Johnson and Roscoe Wilson,” she glanced down at Sims’s photos, “are almost impossible to scam. They are surrounded and protected by attorneys, accountants, financial advisers, and security consultants. It is therefore almost impossible for confidence artists to get close enough to them to ply their trade.”
“So one of them got on the phone with our publisher and had the story killed, is that it?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me?” Margaret snapped. “There is no story. If, once in the proverbial blue moon, a billionaire is flimflammed out of a hundred thousand dollars or so, it’s like the tree falling in the forest that no one hears. The Mrs. Ralph Johnsons and the Roscoe Wilsons of the world do not go running to the district attorney and admit publicly to having been made a fool of. And we in the newspaper business,” she took the computer printout that Sims had given her and pointedly fed it into the paper shredder next to her desk, “however we might hear about it, do not publicize it.” She then picked up the photographs he had taken. “You should know that my boss, the executive editor, suggested in no uncertain terms that I give serious consideration to terminating your employment. I told him, however, that no, you were merely young and foolish, and that I thought you might one day make a good reporter. Henceforth,” she paused a second, the better to emphasize her next words, “you will confine your activities on behalf of this newspaper to assignments given to you by me.” She slowly fed the photographs into her shredder. “And nothing else. Do you understand?”
Sims nodded but did not speak.
“Good,” Margaret said. “Oh, and one other thing,” she added, looking at his clothes with obvious distaste. “Do yourself a favor and start paying more attention to your wardrobe. You look like some sort of refugee from the Salvation Army.”
Back at his desk, Sims ground his teeth in silent fury and cursed Laszlo and Clarissa and the rich old fools they were so obviously scamming. He knew full well that he could do nothing more on the story himself without risking his job, but . . . A sudden smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he thought about his cousin Andrew O’Reilly, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department.
Laszlo was seated at the Bösendorfer, playing a Chopin étude, when the SFPD cruiser pulled up to the curb in front of the shop. He looked at Clarissa and raised a single eyebrow.
“I’ll call him right now,” she said, as if reading his mind. She got up from the love seat and walked back to the small office at the rear of the room, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
Laszlo rose from the piano and went to the front door, opening it just as the patrolman stepped up to the threshold. “May I be of some assistance, officer?” he asked pleasantly, standing aside to allow the policeman inside.
“My name is O’Reilly, Officer O’Reilly, and I’m here in response to numerous complaints about your business.” O’Reilly was young, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and possessed of fiery red hair and a beardless, freckled face more suitable, many thought, for the priesthood than law enforcement. “Numerous complaints,” he reiterated, thrusting his jaw forward pugnaciously.
Laszlo carefully closed the front door. “Won’t you have a seat?”
“What’s that cat doing in here?” O’Reilly asked, pointing rudely at Grace.
“Why shouldn’t she be here?” Laszlo asked in return. “She owns this business.”
O’Reilly’s face flushed red with sudden anger. His cousin had warned him that Laszlo could be difficult to deal with. “Keep up with the wise-guy attitude and we can continue this conversation down at the Hall of Justice.” He paused a second and glared at Laszlo as if daring him to say something. “As far as that cat goes, it’s illegal in San Francisco to keep an animal in a place of business.”
“I had no idea,” Laszlo replied.
“And ignorance of the law is no excuse,” O’Reilly added for good measure. He looked to his right as Clarissa entered the room.
“Dear,” Laszlo said, turning to look at her, “this kind gentleman has just informed me that numerous complaints have been lodged regarding Grace’s presence here in the shop.”
“No, I never,” O’Reilly quickly interjected. “I said that there’s been numerous complaints about your business, not about the cat.”
“But I distinctly remember you saying that Grace is breaking the law by being in here,” Laszlo replied.
“The cat’s not breaking the law, you are, and anyway that’s not why I’m here.” O’Reilly ran a hand over his face, feeling that somehow he had lost control of the interview before it had even begun. For one thing, he didn’t think he’d ever before been in a room with a better-dressed couple. In fact, they reminded him of the wealthy opera patrons he had seen when he had been assigned to traffic control in front of the opera house on opening
night. “Listen,” he began again, looking from Laszlo to Clarissa and back again, “first off, I want to see your business license.”
“Business license?” Clarissa asked, her face a study in wide-eyed innocence. “What is that?”
“You know,” O’Reilly said, unconsciously rolling his shoulders in what he thought was a manly fashion, “your license from the City and County of San Francisco to conduct business. Your business license.”
“Do we have such a license?” Clarissa asked Laszlo.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Laszlo responded calmly. He looked from Clarissa to O’Reilly. “How, exactly, does one go about obtaining a business license?”
“See, I thought there was something fishy about this setup right from the get-go,” O’Reilly said, throwing his shoulders back to emphasize his pectoral muscles. “I don’t know what it is that you two are trying to pull here, but I’m thinking that unless I get some straight answers, the three of us are going to be taking a little ride downtown.”
“To the Hall of Justice?” Laszlo asked.
“You got it, wise guy,” O’Reilly replied, already basking in the anticipated glow of the commendation he was now certain he would receive for busting these two con artists.
“What is this Hall of Justice?” Clarissa asked.
“I’m not precisely sure,” Laszlo replied, “but I rather doubt, its felicitous name notwithstanding, that it’s a pleasant place to be if one is suspected of having engaged in criminal activity.” He glanced over O’Reilly’s shoulder, toward the front window, and smiled. A black limousine had pulled up and a distinguished-looking older gentleman emerged, followed by a young woman carrying a large, litigation-style leather briefcase. Laszlo looked back at O’Reilly. “Isn’t that correct?”
Before O’Reilly could answer, the man and woman opened the front door and came into the shop. Tall, white-haired, and exceedingly well dressed, the gentleman turned immediately to O’Reilly and fixed him with a glare. “What’s going here?” he demanded.
“Well, um,” O’Reilly licked his lips nervously and cut his eyes from the gentleman to his assistant and back again, “it’s kind of hard to explain.” He pointed at Laszlo and Clarissa. “These two—”
“Do you know who I am?” the older gentleman brusquely interrupted.
Again O’Reilly looked from the man to his assistant and back, slowly shaking his head.
“This is Judge Martindale,” Laszlo gently informed the stricken policeman, using Martindale’s honorific title. Martindale, in a career spanning almost sixty years, had been, among other things, a district attorney, a superior-court judge, a justice on the California Supreme Court, a state senator, and a mayor of San Francisco. He was currently the senior partner of San Francisco’s largest and most influential law firm and personally represented, among others, Roscoe Wilson, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
“I can assure you that I have neither the time nor the inclination to indulge in nonsense,” Martindale informed the now-terrified young policeman. To his side, his assistant had taken out a cell phone and was dialing a number. “So I won’t ask again,” he warned. “What, exactly, is going on here?”
“Well, these two,” O’Reilly once again pointed at Laszlo and Clarissa, “I mean, they don’t have a business license and—”
“Wait a minute,” Martindale snapped as his assistant discreetly tapped him on the elbow and then handed him the cell phone. He turned his back and carried on an intense, sotto voce conversation. After what seemed like several minutes, he turned back to O’Reilly and handed him the cell phone. “Your boss wants to talk to you.”
“Sergeant McClorg?” O’Reilly squeaked, the sudden tension causing his voice to rise an octave.
“No,” Martindale replied with a grim smile, shaking his head. “Alan Beal. Chief Alan Beal.”
The color drained from O’Reilly’s face as he took the cell phone with a trembling hand. He had never before spoken to the chief of police, indeed had never met him. In any event, the conversation was short, if not sweet, O’Reilly’s part limited to a handful of yes, sirs, accompanied by vigorous noddings of the head as if the chief could see through the telephone connection. He did not even have to say goodbye, inasmuch as the chief abruptly hung up when he was finished giving orders. O’Reilly handed the cell phone back to the young woman and, without a word, turned and left the shop.
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”
Roger Sims was standing nervously in the office of his boss, city editor Margaret Hill. Seated in one corner of the office was the newspaper’s executive editor, Tower Percy, and behind them, next to the door, stood a uniformed security guard.
“I’m not sure what you—” Sims started to say.
“It was a rhetorical question,” Margaret interrupted, disappointment evident in her tone of voice. “You were ordered to forgo any further inquiry into the shop on Union Street.”
“I did,” Sims replied hastily. “You told me to drop it and I did.”
“That’s not exactly true, is it?” Tower Percy said from his seat in the corner, his expression one of intense displeasure. “In fact, you contacted your cousin on the police force and asked him to drop by the shop and harass the owners in the hope of sweating incriminating information out of them.” He stood up and stepped to the side of Margaret’s desk. “We know this because in an effort to save his own job your cousin dropped, you might say, a dime on you.”
“I might have spoken to him,” Sims allowed, “but—”
“Might have, or did?” Margaret interjected.
“Well, technically, I did, but—”
“Technically?” Margaret’s anger at Sims’s equivocation was immediate, as was her response. “You’re fired.” She nodded at the uniformed security guard standing at her door. “He’ll accompany you to your desk while you get your personal belongings and then escort you from the building.”
“Hey, Sims,” one of his fellow reporters, unaware that he had just been fired, called out as he walked out of Margaret’s office and into the city room, “I’ve got another screwball story for you.” Several other reporters, also unaware that Sims had just been fired, laughed. “A friend of mine, a nurse at the Laguna Honda hospice, told me that one of her patients reported seeing a cat sucking the breath out of one of the other patients.”
The color drained from Sims’s face. “What’s your friend’s name?” he demanded.
“Judith Taylor,” his colleague replied. “But I . . .” His voice trailed off as he watched Sims turn and run quickly from the office.
“Yes,” the nurse, Judith Taylor, smiled and nodded her head affirmatively, “poor Mr. Sullivan was quite certain he had seen a cat on Mr. Martin’s bed. He said he woke up in the middle of the night and looked over and saw it on Mr. Martin’s bed.”
“Was it an orange cat?” Sims asked. He and Judith were sitting on a bench in the hospice’s garden at the Laguna Honda Hospital. He showed her the picture he had taken of Grace. “Did it look like this?”
“You misunderstand. You see, Mr. Sullivan, as are many of our patients in their final days and hours, was not entirely lucid, or at least not all the time. There was no cat; it was merely a figment of his imagination.”
“But why would he make up such a thing?”
“I didn’t say he made it up—I’m sure it was quite real to him.”
“But why a cat? And why would he imagine it sucking the breath out of the old man who died?”
Judith shrugged. “Volunteers bring animals, dogs and cats, to the hospice from time to time to visit the patients. Perhaps Mr. Sullivan saw such a cat and it stuck in his mind. As to it sucking the breath from Mr. Martin, haven’t you ever heard the old wives’ tale about cats sucking the breath from babies? As I said, in their final days and hours, many, if not most, of our patients are confused, their minds constructing reality from bits and pieces of long-forgotten memories.”
“Would it be possible for me
to see Mr. Sullivan? I’d like to ask him about what he saw, or thinks he saw.”
“Unfortunately he died early this morning.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to work.”
“One last question,” Sims said. “Have you seen this couple here at the hospice?” He showed her the picture of Laszlo and Clarissa.
Judith studied the photo for a second. “What a beautiful dress,” she murmured, more to herself than to Sims.
“Have you seen it before?” Sims pressed, suddenly excited.
Judith hesitated for a second and then handed the photo back. “It’s possible. A lot of people, relatives of our patients, pass through here every day. I may have seen it, the dress, and her,” she nodded at the photo, “but,” she shrugged and turned to leave, “I couldn’t say for sure.”
Sims left the hospice and drove straight down to the little shop on Union Street, hoping to provoke a confrontation of sorts with Laszlo and Clarissa, although to what end he was not exactly sure.
“What’s going on here?”
When Sims got to the shop he was stunned to find it empty of everything save the Bösendorfer, which was being manhandled onto a moving board by two exceptionally large and surly piano movers.
“What does it look like?” one of the movers responded sarcastically.
“I can see that you’re taking the piano, but where are the tenants?” Sims asked. “There were two tenants here, a man by the name of Laszlo and and a woman named Clarissa. I don’t know their last names.”
“Hey, buddy, all we do is move pianos.” The mover reached into the bib pocket of his overalls and took out a work order. “See this?” he asked, waving it at Sims. “This says that we’re supposed to pick up this piano and bring it back to the store, okay? Other than that, I don’t know nothing. Now, why don’t you step out of the way,” he shooed Sims aside none too gently with one massive arm, “and let us get about our business.”
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