by R. J. Jagger
He almost didn’t answer but figured it might be the Egyptian guy.
It wasn’t.
It was a female who spoke flawless English.
“Poon told me to call you,” she said. “I’m on the other team he told you about, the one tying up the loose end.”
“Nathan Rock,” Jonk said.
Right.
Nathan Rock.
“Poon wants me to get together with you and bring you up to speed on a few things. He wants us to work with each other from this point on.”
“Poon fired me.”
“That’s not what he told me, he said you quit.”
“It’s all semantics,” Jonk said “The net effect is that I’m off the case.”
“He said you might say that,” she said. “He said if you did, I was supposed to tell you you’re back on.”
Jonk ran his fingers through his hair.
“What’s your name?”
“Tristen.”
“Tristen what?”
“Just Tristen.”
“Well I’ll tell you what, Just Tristen. I’ll think about it. Call me back in two hours.”
“Two hours,” she said. “Keep in mind that Poon isn’t exactly in what I would call one of his better moods.”
The line went dead.
68
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Morning
IT WAS EASY FOR SONG to talk big when she was with Nuwa, walking down the street, not actually doing anything wrong. But after they separated and she really started to think about it, she had second thoughts about breaking into Rekker’s place. It was an illegal activity. If she got caught, she’d lose her license. Maybe it would be better to just let Nuwa drug him. At least then there’d be no breaking and entering. The more she thought about it, though, the less clean even that option seemed. It was probably illegal to drug someone without their knowledge. Also, even if someone was invited into someone’s house so that the initial entry wasn’t breaking and entering, it was still probably a criminal trespass to go snooping into private places where no authority to go had been given.
Both ways it was a bad deal.
A bad, bad deal.
And both ways, Song and Nuwa were co-conspirators, at least in the eyes of the law. That meant that whatever one of them did, the other was equally liable for.
A bad, bad deal.
The safer course would just be for Nuwa to see what she could get out of Rekker through basic talk, if not full pillow talk then maybe second-base talk. But even then, what was the chance he’d actually say anything incriminating?
Zero.
He wasn’t stupid.
Anything but.
There was only one choice.
Do what it takes.
Go for it.
Besides, if they found what she thought they would, nothing bad would be coming back in her direction. All the heat would be on Rekker.
She rode the bus back to Chinatown.
She thought she’d be at peace.
She wasn’t.
Instead, the city felt cold.
The buildings looked hard.
And her stomach churned.
BY THE TIME she got off the bus, she knew what she needed to do, namely not become Rekker in the name of catching him, even if that meant the end of the case.
Her stomach felt better.
So did her brain.
She called Nuwa and said, “No roofies and no breaking and entering, either. You, me and Shaden need to sit down and have a talk about how to proceed.”
69
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Morning
TEFFINGER KNEW IN HIS GUT how things would end with SJK. He’d follow Condor on the night in question, catch him in the act and kill him. The important thing was to not let Condor lose him. To ensure that didn’t happen, he parked Bertha two blocks down from the man’s house, walked to his garage and pulled on the door to see if it would open.
It did.
He walked inside like he owned the place and closed it behind him. Then he pulled out a small flashlight and studied the undercarriage of Condor’s car, looking for the best place to attach a small magnetic box. Inside that box was a GPS transmitter. He was sticking it well out of sight in the bumper support when his phone rang. He answered immediately to stop the sound.
“Where are you?”
The voice was soft.
It belonged to Neva.
“Out of the office right at the moment,” Teffinger said.
“I know that. We had a meeting this morning at six. I specifically told you about it yesterday. Where were you?”
“I overslept.”
Silence.
“The chief’s looking for you. I’m about 99 percent sure he’s going to fire you.”
“Thanks.”
“Nick, I have to be honest, I don’t know who you are anymore. In fact, the more … ”
A noise came from behind the oak door that separated the garage from the house. Teffinger closed the phone, cutting Neva off in mid-sentence, and turned off the flashlight. A heartbeat later the door opened.
Teffinger scurried to the passenger side of the car and hugged the floor.
The garage door got pushed up.
Someone got in the car, cranked the engine and backed up, almost catching Teffinger under a wheel.
He was totally exposed.
He sprang to his feet, ran to the oak door and got through, slowing just enough to throw a quick glance at the driver.
It was Condor.
He had his head turned, looking through the rear window, concentrating on not running over anyone. Then he got out of the car, hand-closed the garage door and drove off.
TEFFINGER STOOD THERE, coffin quiet, shocked at where he was. He listened for sounds of anyone else in the house and heard nothing.
His phone rang.
It was the chief.
“Where are you?”
“I’m working on the SJK case.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Nothing in particular?”
“Right.”
“We had a meeting this morning, you weren’t there.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that.”
“You’re sorry about that and right now you’re working on the SJK case but doing nothing in particular.”
“Right.”
“I’ll tell you what, when you’re done doing nothing in particular, why don’t you swing by my office.”
Teffinger swallowed.
“Sure, no problem.”
SOMEWHERE IN THE HOUSE was evidence that Condor abducted London Fogg and was holding her somewhere until the date in question.
Teffinger could feel it.
He could smell it.
He could taste it.
The souvenirs of his past victims were here somewhere, too.
Condor had been wearing them.
Taunting the world.
Teffinger listened again for stray sounds, got none, then headed upstairs to the master bedroom. The kind of information he was looking for was personal. A bedroom was personal. They matched.
The telescope was still in place.
Teffinger took a peek through it, just for grins. It was still focused through the upper window of the bondage room but all was quiet now.
He cast his eyes around the room, then headed for the master closet.
On the way something on the dresser caught his eye.
It was a DVD in a clear plastic case.
On the front of the case was a white, stick-on label.
Handwritten on that label with a black, felt marker were the words, NICK TEFFINGER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21.
70
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Morning
WHEN JONK GOT BACK to the hotel, Winter took her coffee and bagel in hand and said, “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll be back in an hour or so.” Jonk didn’t see how anyo
ne could have traced them to the hotel but still didn’t like it. That was too bad because Winter didn’t care. She didn’t even slow down as she headed for the door, turning only to say, “I’ll be fine, lighten up.”
Then she was gone.
Tag locked the door.
“She’s giving us alone time.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked her to.”
Then, just like that, Tag had her arms around his neck and her lips on his, at first close-mouthed, then open. Jonk pulled back and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
She ignored him.
And kissed him even deeper.
Her face was bruised from being interrogated. A cut at the corner of her right eye needed stitches and looked like it would never heal. Her lower lip was swollen on the left side where it got broken open by her tooth after being smacked. As Jonk looked into that face he realized he had never seen a more beautiful woman.
He took her slowly.
On the bed.
He’d had a lot of sex in his life.
Rock star sex.
Bang ’em hard.
Make ’em scream.
In elevators.
Bathrooms.
Back seats.
Airplanes.
He thought he’d seen it all.
He hadn’t.
Until now, he’d never heard a woman breathe, or seen a woman part her lips, or feel the convulsing of her thighs.
Until now, he’d only had sex.
WHEN WINTER GOT BACK, Jonk told the two women about the call this morning from Tristen, who had been tailing Nathan Rock. “Poon’s probably come to his senses,” he said. “I don’t want to beat my own chest, but he’s going to be hard pressed to replace me, especially on short notice. If he wanted to get me back into the game, this is exactly how he’d do it.”
“If that’s true, then you need to renegotiate,” Tag said. “Instead of 20 percent, make it 30.”
Jonk chewed on it.
“That would be dangerous.”
They looked at Winter, who hadn’t said a thing.
SHE TILTED HER HEAD and said, “Who the hell is Nathan Rock and how does he fit into all this?”
Good question.
Very good question.
“That’s what we need to find out,” Jonk said.
71
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Morning
THE LOGISTICS OF ARRANGING a face-to-face meeting with Nuwa and Shaden were difficult, especially on quick notice, but Song wanted to be sure she shaped the course of the case to keep it legal. They met at the end of the Pier T promenade. A dozen fishermen, maybe more, had lines dropped off the pier. Out in the bay, a ferry cut through choppy waters towards Oakland.
A large, black crane flew overhead.
A mild, salty breeze blew.
The day was nice.
Song felt good.
“The more I think about plying Rekker with roofies, or breaking into his house to snoop around, or anything else like that, the more I think we shouldn’t do it,” she said. “So far, we haven’t done anything illegal. It’s important to keep it that way.”
Nuwa and Shaden looked at each other, then back at Song.
They said nothing.
Song laid out her reasons, which were several.
On a personal level, she’d taken an oath to uphold the law.
More than that, though, it might turn out that Shaden actually killed someone. If that was the case, the last thing she needed was to be involved in any additional illegal activity. And if it turns out that she didn’t kill someone, then Rekker was dirty—probably in the very ways that Shaden’s boss out in New York suspected. If that was the case, the three of them might actually need to testify against him in the end. Their testimony would be diminished if they were engaging in illegal activities the whole time.
She nodded, as if to emphasize her point.
“Since Nuwa works for the law firm, I’m legally responsible for what she does,” she added. “If I allow her to bend the law, it’s the same as if I did it myself. We’ll eventually get to where we want to be. It will take a little longer, but in the end we’ll be glad we did it that way.”
Nuwa and Shaden exchanged glances.
Then Shaden said, “Are you done?”
Yes.
She was.
SHADEN EXHALED and shuffled her feet. “Nuwa and I talked before you got here,” she said. “We knew where this was going. The bottom line is that we see it differently, how to proceed.” She let the words hang, then added, “I’m sorry.”
“So what are you doing, firing me?”
Shaden looked at the ground.
Then up.
“You’re a straight shooter,” she said. “I respect that, I really do. Right now though, at this moment in my life, I don’t have the luxury of shooting straight.”
Song didn’t know what to say.
She looked at Nuwa.
The woman hugged her and said, “I love you like a sister but I need to help Shaden. You made a good point that as long as I’m part of the law firm, you’re responsible for what I do. So I think what I need to do is quit, effective immediately. Whatever I do from this point on, you’re off the hook.”
ON THE WAY BACK to the law firm, Song could think of only one thing.
Delicate.
Delicate.
Delicate.
That’s what she was.
She’d been given an opportunity to show what she had and in the end didn’t have anything to show.
She’d never amount to anything.
She was destined to be small and unimportant.
Her eyes watered up.
Tears rolled out of them.
More proof of what she was.
Delicate.
72
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Morning
NICK TEFFINGER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21.
That was the label on the DVD case.
Was it indisputable proof of his illegal entry from a nanny-cam? Right now he didn’t have time for it. He needed to find something that told him whether Condor kidnapped London Fogg and, if so, where she was.
He searched the house, every single room, just in case she was there, drugged, tied and quiet.
She wasn’t.
He found a wall safe behind an oil painting in the master bedroom.
It was locked.
He could feel the souvenirs in there.
It was too perfect a place for them to not be.
The files on the SJK victims were in the same place and in the same condition that Teffinger found them last time, with one exception, namely there was an additional folder labeled September 26.
No name.
Nothing was inside it.
Other than that, he found nothing.
If Condor took London Fogg, he hadn’t dropped any breadcrumbs, at least not here.
He better get out.
He’d already pressed his luck.
The disk in the DVD case had no writing on it, only the case itself was labeled. Teffinger found a stack of blanks, slipped one of them in the case and stuck the other one in his shirt pocket.
Then he left by the back door.
BACK AT BERTHA, Teffinger found a handwritten note under the windshield wiper. Not a good stalking vehicle.
He crumpled it up and almost threw it on the ground, but tossed it into Bertha’s back seat instead. No matter what else happened today, no one could accuse him of littering.
Bertha started.
Good thing, too, because he wasn’t in the mood.
What he needed to do was swing by the chief’s office and get officially fired.
Instead, he went to his apartment on Masonic and popped the DVD into a player.
It turned out to be a compendium of four separate cameras. Most of the time, Teffinger was a mere silhouette. There were a good four or five times however when the flashlight reflected onto his face
with enough clarity to show it was him. All the cameras were from the first floor. None of them were from the master bedroom.
Those same cameras would have picked him up again this morning.
He turned off the DVD player but left the disk inside.
He thought about grabbing an Anchor Steam from the fridge and swallowing the whole thing in one long gulp.
Instead, he called Neva.
73
Day 4—September 24
Thursday Afternoon
THERE WERE TWO NATHAN ROCKS in the phone book. One of them owned and operated a one-plane, skydiving business. The other was a partner in a large law firm by the name of Rapport, Wolfe & Lake, who specialized in international law. One of them was a “loose end.” The lawyer was the one more likely to have some type of connection to Hong Kong, so that’s the one Jonk focused on.
The man lived in a houseboat community in Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito.
They found a place to park near the Bayside Café on Gate 6 Road, which led into the community. Jonk put on his sunglasses, blew Tag and Winter a kiss and headed over on foot.
It wasn’t good.
The boats were close together.
They were all houseboats or liveaboards of one kind or another. Activity on the dock was minimal but was there nonetheless. Everyone knew everyone in a place like that. Entry and exit was limited.
A large sign said, PRIVATE PROPERTY. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The boats weren’t big compared to houses, but that was the tradeoff for the uniqueness. Rock’s particular unit was a contemporary design with round windows, strategically positioned at the end of a long straight dock.
Jonk stepped on board as if he owned it, knocked lightly, got no response and turned the doorknob.
It was locked.
Shit.
He looked around, saw no busybody faces pointed in his direction, walked the dock to the back of the boat and found another door.
This one was unlocked.
He stepped inside and closed it.
The window coverings were open.
He closed them.
Okay.
You’re in.
Go.
Go.
Go.