“No, thank you. But if you could find that brochure, it would help.”
“I’m looking, I’m looking.” He disappeared inside, waving his arms. Jim and I stared at each other.
“You straights find us bizarre, don’t you?”
“That’s your goal, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you no harm, you mean me no harm. We’re all just getting by. You guys put on this outrageous act for me so I won’t get too close.”
He nodded. “That’s about right.”
“If I get too close, you’re afraid I’ll judge you.”
“Won’t you?”
I shook my head. “You don’t know anything about me and I don’t know anything about you, your character, your principles. How could I be judgmental?”
“I don’t know. How could you?”
“Can’t. And it’s a waste of time, anyway.”
“Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Or the Mormons.”
“No sense of style there.”
“Cheap bicycles.”
He laughed. “Hideous ties!”
“What are you guys doing?” Tim returned, some papers in his hand.
“Mr. Caine here and I are discussing philosophy and theology. We agree on almost everything,” said Jim.
“What’s the secret?” asked Tim. “Jim and I can’t seem to agree on anything.”
“That’s because we’re too close,” Jim laughed. “Oh, we get so very close.”
“I found the brochure. She was selling shares in resort properties. I don’t know why I forgot that. Remember when we went to one of her presentations?”
“I do now. It was lame.”
“It sounded good at first, but when Jim ran the numbers, it came up as a horrible investment. We politely told her thanks, but no thanks. You’d have to be a lunatic to invest in something like that.” He handed me an expensive, glossy foldout for a Palm Desert Resort. It lauded the pleasures of condominium resort living.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We own rental property here in San Diego,” said Tim. “Where we can keep an eye on it. That’s our retirement fund.”
“There was something strange about this thing, too,” said Jim. “Do you remember what it was?”
“I’m trying to recall. Other than the food, which was horrible. I know! All of the investors were men! There were no women. We were the only ones there who kind of stood out.”
“Stood out?”
“The sales staff were all women. Lorena was just one of the salespeople. There were two or three others, and they only brought men.”
“Yeah. We were the only ones there who weren’t interested, if you know what I mean.”
“No.”
“They were using sex to sell the properties. We saw some vigorous sales techniques that night. It was a seduction, not a sales pitch. The salesgirls, if you’ll pardon my lapse into the unpolitic, were more like hookers. It didn’t take long for us to realize we’d been invited by mistake.”
I looked on the back of the brochure. TopProp’s name and address were printed on the back, along with another telephone number.
“Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.”
“You didn’t tell us why you’re looking for Lorena. Did she do anything wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on how far she went to make a sale, I guess.”
26
The address, when I found it near the airport not far from the duplex, proved to be a strip mall private post office, a narrow little shop squeezed between a pizza parlor and a frame store.
The man behind the counter might have been a retired postal worker. He oozed officiousness and hostility.
“I don’t talk about my customers,” he told me in response to my first question, hairy, meaty forearms leaning against the counter. “You a cop?”
“Not.”
“Then fuck off.”
I left. Before I did I glanced at TopProp’s box number and saw edges of envelopes through the little glass window in its door. The box wasn’t stuffed, as if it had been abandoned, but it looked full enough to tell me it was due a visit soon.
Since I didn’t have any other leads, there was only one thing to do. After I cleared the final address, I’d stake out the postal store.
From the Range Rover I called the last telephone number and spoke with a Mrs. Sandoval. She remembered speaking with Paul Peters a year ago. She was a dog breeder in Linda Vista, and Mr. Peters had purchased a puppy from her and never picked it up. She later sent him a refund check, minus expenses, and she never heard from him again. Encouraged, I called the others on the list. They all were home, and they all had reasons why they had spoken to Peters.
One was a former employee of Petersoft, a programmer who had been laid off by the cuts after Peters’s disappearance, and she wasn’t amused by my call. She told me she hoped the company would go belly-up, just like its president.
That left only one lead from the telephone bills. And I was sitting on it.
I went into the pizza parlor, ordered a large pepperoni and a large iced tea to go, went back to the parking lot and watched the customers of the postal store. I’d parked far enough away that the owner couldn’t see me from inside, yet close enough to watch the door. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I figured if I watched long enough, something would happen.
It was kind of a tenuous thread, but when you’re desperate, a thread tends to look like a hawser.
Jim and Tim had provided me with a description of Lorena Garcia. She was, from their point of view, sensual and hot, a Latin lovely. Slim, with large breasts that were so improbable they shouted “surgical implants,” as Tim had described them. She tended to dress conservatively. Jim said that meant she didn’t decorate her dress with bottle caps. Tim said she dressed in a business suit during the day, and comfortable, stylish clothes after work. From Tim I got the idea of a classy, style-conscious lady. Claire’s darker counterpart.
No one of that description arrived by six o’clock, when the store closed for the day. I started the Range Rover’s engine when the last customer left and the owner locked the door.
Sundays, the postal store didn’t open until eleven, so at dawn I ran south from the yacht club along Rosecrans Avenue, down the residential side all the way to the submarine base at the end. A uniformed guard stopped me for identification at the front gate, and when I took the chain from around my neck and handed my retired-officer’s identification to him, he compared my clean-shaven photo with my bearded face, scrutinized me, made a decision, saluted, and allowed me to continue.
The road ran another two miles to the end of the peninsula. The submarine base lined the harbor side of Point Loma, stretching along the foot of the tan cliffs below residential property. I ran past the McDonald’s and the little submariners’ chapel to the officers’ club at the end of the point, where San Diego’s harbor meets the Pacific Ocean. I circled the club and then headed out at a leisurely jog.
There are no boomers in San Diego. This submarine base is home port to attack subs. I counted twelve at dockside, the largest number I’d ever seen together at one time. Must be a part of the peace dividend, I thought, or there just wasn’t much for them to do anymore. I’d heard that Moscow had abandoned its missile boat program, and the rumors were that China didn’t really have nuclear subs. Good. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if they all stayed in port.
I’d been a surface sailor, with an inbred mistrust of submarines. In my time in the SEALS I’d been a passenger in subs several times, but I never got used to it. It wasn’t one of my favorite means of transportation. Still, I was glad we’d had ours.
I wasn’t convinced we didn’t need them, regardless of what the politicians said. Of course, it had been decades since I’d taken what any politician said about anything at face value.
From the headquarters building the road climbs into the hills before it drops back
down to the gate. I hadn’t run this road in twenty years, and I wasn’t in the same shape I had been in twenty years before, but I could still make it to the top and puff down the other side. Old age wasn’t creeping up on me too fast. From the summit I could almost see the yacht club where Olympia docked.
When I returned to my boat, I found Ed Thomas perched on the fantail, awaiting my return. He had a shotgun across his lap, partially covered by a colorful beach towel. He looked a little wired, but he was holding up.
He’d informed me the night before that the yacht club was too close to the house, and he felt uncomfortable about the placement of the boat. I went below and grabbed my jacket. When I returned topside I handed him the contract Claire had signed.
“That what you wanted?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I might need your help,” I said.
“Name it.”
I told him about the audit, how it didn’t sound like a real government investigation. I asked him to run down the agency and see if there really was a Bradley Jacoby or an Office of Audit Management.
When I went below again I found Barbara, Claire, and Juanita making breakfast from the stock of groceries Thomas had brought from the house. Claire gave me a quick smile, then turned back to her chores. Juanita smiled, showing me her gums. Barbara hugged me, then waved me off.
“You are all sweaty,” she said, making a face.
“I get that way,” I said. “Excuse me.” I wove my way between the three women. On the way by, Claire handed me a glass of orange juice. There was a twinkle in her eye I hadn’t seen before.
“It’s good to see you are back, Juanita,” I said.
“I’ve been here,” she said. “Oh. Oh, that.”
“Yeah. Oh, that.”
After breakfast and a shower, I returned to my stakeout, cooped up in a car on one of those Southern California postcard days that lavished its beauty on others and wasted it on me. From ten minutes to eleven until after dusk, I sat and watched people come and go. None of them matched the woman’s description.
When I returned to the boat, I could tell that my boarders were uncomfortable in their confinement. Barbara and Claire had played three sets of tennis, but had not left the yacht club. Thomas reported he’d had no luck trying to trace the Office of Audit Management. No one had ever heard of them. Likewise, his sources in the federal government had never heard of a Bradley Jacoby.
I took that as an answer and wondered if the laptop had phoned home yet.
I dispatched Ed to the house for a report from Farrell, and asked him to bring him over. Knowing we would be at risk, but feeling the risk was worth it, we all went to dinner at one of the Mexican restaurants in historic Old Town.
San Diego began in Old Town about the time Jefferson and the others signed the Declaration of Independence. It was in Spanish hands then, an extension of Old Mexico. Some of the original buildings remained, now restored as restaurants. The entire district had the frantic feeling I felt in Waikiki, as if I knew I was supposed to have fun but I didn’t know why.
We took advantage of the change of weather and sat outside, but close to the space heaters. The Mexican food was good; the margaritas were even better. I sipped mine and wondered where Paul Peters was, if he was anywhere, and where Lorena Garcia was and how she fit into the picture, and I wondered where the seven million dollars had gone, and if she had anything to do with it.
It seemed to fit. Claire told me she felt there was another woman. And when I had sat in Peters’s executive chair at his abandoned desk, it was the only thing that seemed to make any sense. Yet even that wasn’t enough of an explanation to warrant his behavior.
Yet, I reminded myself, we weren’t talking about mental logic here. We were talking about penile logic. The two seldom have anything to do with one another.
What was that old joke? Why do we men name our penises? Because we hate having a stranger make all our decisions for us. In my life I’d been guilty of that a time or two, so I wasn’t qualified to judge Peters.
Call it empathetic understanding.
Farrell reported he had mended the door and had started repairing the bullet holes in the plaster. By the time Claire and Juanita came home, the house would be patched and painted, good as new. He also planned to install permanent lights in the backyard, controlled by motion sensors and switches in both the master bedroom and the kitchen.
Claire took my arm as we strolled to the car behind Barbara and Juanita.
“You don’t tell me what you’re doing, but you seem to be doing a lot of it,” she said.
“I’m watching a place. That’s all. It’s not much, but it might be something. And watching it takes all my time.”
“I didn’t want you to run away from me. I thought that’s what you were doing.”
“No. I’m just working.”
“I spoke to Joe today. I told him that you weren’t fired.”
“When did you speak with him?”
“I called him today. From my cellular. It’s digital. It can’t be traced, and I didn’t tell him where I was. I’m not stupid.”
“I never thought you were,” I said, relieved. “What did he say?”
“I told him you were hiding me, and although it didn’t reflect on him, you didn’t want him to know where because he didn’t have a need to know. I told him I was safe and that if it turned out otherwise, I’d call him.”
“And?”
“And he said many things. Most of the things he said were ‘Where are you?’ and ‘What is Caine doing?’ and the like. He pressured me. I had to remind him that he worked for me, not the other way around.”
“And he accepted it?”
“I asked him how his investigation was going, the one with the ex—Treasury agent tracing the money. He told me he had some promising leads. I asked him what they were, and he said he couldn’t tell me just yet.”
“Have you received any bills from the ex—Treasury agent?”
“No.”
“You probably won’t.”
“You think he’s lying?”
“I don’t know, Claire. I don’t trust Stevenson.”
“He said the same thing about you. You don’t tell me what you’re doing, either.”
There was silence between us for a long moment. We reached the Range Rover and I unlocked it and helped her in. Barbara climbed into the backseat. Something in me wanted to reverse their positions, and I wondered where that came from.
“Do you trust Thomas? Do you trust Farrell?”
“Yes. Of course. Hatley saved my life.”
“Then do you trust me?”
“I never said I didn’t. I just said Joe doesn’t trust you.”
“Oh.”
“You know, John Caine, for a smart man, you can be kind of stupid sometimes.”
“I’m just another human being,” I said, “crushed by my limitations.”
27
The clouds came back the next morning, threatening rain, then fulfilled the threat and drenched San Diego again. After a perfect weekend, the start of the workweek heralded more days of downpour. According to my friend on the radio, it was the same storm that had soaked Seattle, then San Francisco, then Los Angeles. Now it was here.
I was back in the parking lot across from the pizza parlor. The rain provided good cover. I could watch, warm and dry in the Range Rover as people fled from their cars into the strip-mall shops. The only ones who went out were those with a mission. No one else would have wanted to brave the elements.
While waiting for something to happen, I did isometric exercises with the steering wheel and the dashboard. I don’t know if they helped, but my arms and shoulders felt pumped. I’d also purloined a tennis ball from Claire’s sports bag, left on the settee in Olympia’s lounge, and I squeezed it to pass the time. One hundred with the right hand, one hundred with the left, then switch again.
Squeezing tennis balls and pushing and pulling the steering wheel and listening
to talk radio were about the only things I had to pass the time. I didn’t want to eat more pizza. A caller to a local station wanted the National Guard to shoot illegal aliens as they crossed the border. Another guy wanted to plant land mines on our side. The host exhibited about the same amount of humanity, talking of tanks and troops to defend our borders as if the country were being invaded. I thought of the men and women and children I had seen huddled in the rain on the other side of the steel fence, waiting for the dark and a chance to cross to the promised land. In a way, it was an invasion of sorts. I also recalled the indiscriminate, impersonal, and deadly damage that land mines do. I was aware there was a problem here, but the locals seemed rather harsh, and I wondered how the new migrants affected them. I had no answers. I wondered if there were any answers.
I was on my sixty-third set of tennis-ball squeezes when a familiar figure parked a white Chevrolet Blazer two parking spaces away from the Range Rover. I recognized him immediately, although his presence came as a shock, instantly coalescing all my thoughts and suspicions into a single theory. Coincidence was an interesting idea, but I rejected it. The circle, if it was a circle, had nearly closed.
The young gangster who had broken bread with Stevenson so many days before, the one I’d seen from across the street, the one whose dead eyes I’d never forget, got out of the Blazer and casually strolled across the parking lot as if it would be a sin against nature to acknowledge the rain. His stride was languid. The elements were there only for other people. They had no effect on him.
He reminded me of that old dog down in Baja, lolling along the roadside, ignoring the rain.
I remained poised behind the wheel, watching him enter the post-office store. He was there for only a few minutes before he came out again, shielding a stack of manila and white envelopes beneath his plaid overshirt.
When he climbed back into his Blazer and drove out of the parking lot, I followed.
There was a freeway on-ramp two blocks from the mail drop and he gunned the Blazer. The Range Rover had no trouble keeping up. I kept my lights off, the better to blend with the gray background. Traffic was light, but there were plenty of trucks and high-sided vehicles rolling, and I didn’t think he could pick me out of the background even if he looked. We went south on the interstate through San Diego’s downtown, then toward Mexico, which I assumed was his destination, until he turned off the freeway while passing through Chula Vista, a little border bedroom community that was almost, but not quite, rural.
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