by Alton Gansky
“I know. I appreciate your help. You are a true friend.”
“We’ll see if you’re still saying that when you get my bill for cab fare.” The old Jack was back. “How can I help?”
“You can help me think this through. Do any of the words my father said mean anything to you? They seem random.”
“I doubt they are. From what you told me, your dad’s mind seemed engaged. He even made you repeat everything. Lloyd. Lake. Nevada and some names.”
“Monte Grant, Cynthia Wagner, Victor Zeisler. Do those names mean anything to you?”
“Not a one,” Jack admitted. “And what does 1974 have to do with it? You were just a troublemaking kid in 1974.”
“I was the perfect child. Just ask my mother.”
“I did, and I stand by my statement.” Perry forced a smile, but it felt insincere. “Maybe they all live in Nevada.”
“Maybe. Whatever the names mean, they’re important to Dad. So important he wouldn’t let me go find Mom so she could talk to him. That’s not like him.”
“Well, if it’s important to him, then it’s important to us.” Jack steered down one more street and turned into the drive of a large colonial home. It was the home Perry had grown up in. A few moments later, Perry and Jack were inside, walking through the living room. Perry paid no attention to the furnishings, the art, or anything else. He had one goal in mind—the kitchen.
Thick pile carpeting gave way to the tile floor of the kitchen. Perry crossed the room, rounding the island cooktop, and marched to the pantry.
“You can’t be hungry,” Jack said.
“I’m not, but Mom told me that Dad hid the safe in the pantry floor.”
“Whatever happened to hiding such things behind framed paintings?”
“It’s the first place a crook would look.” Perry opened the oak-paneled door, removed a wastebasket, and set it to the side. He knelt on the tile and ran his hands along the floor of the food closet. The floor was composed of three panels of medium-density fiberboard. He found a plastic plug in the middle of the second panel. With a fingernail, he popped the plug free. A hole large enough to admit two fingers had been bored into the panel.
“I have a pantry at home,” Jack quipped, “but I don’t think you’d want to stick your fingers in any holes you found.”
“I’ve been to your house, and you’re right.” Perry pulled, and the board came free. He handed it to Jack.
“Maybe there are Twinkies in there.”
“If there are, they’re all yours.” Perry knew that Jack was trying to keep things light. He appreciated that. There was too much darkness swirling in his mind as it was.
With the board removed, Perry could see a metal safe with an old-fashioned dial combination disk on its face. “Dad always had an affinity for old things.” Perry leaned over the opening and dialed in the combination. He got it the first time. With a crank of the stainless steel handle, the safe opened. Perry began removing items and handing them to Jack, who set them on the counter. There was a strongbox, a photo album, and a notebook in a large plastic bag.
“I was expecting the Sachs crown jewels.”
“A jewel thief would be disappointed if he robbed this place. The only jewels my parents wear are wedding rings.” Perry lifted the metal box. It had a roller-combination lock on the front. He was looking at six zeros in a row. He tried to open it, but the top didn’t move.
“Try your birthday.”
“My birthday? Why?” Perry dialed in the numbers. It opened. “How did you figure that out?”
“You’re the apple of your daddy’s eye. It’s obvious to everyone. Being the only son, he could use your birthday without feeling like he was playing favorites.”
“I’ll have to talk to him about that. Using birthdays for security codes is not wise.” Perry thought of his father lying unconscious in the hospital. He prayed he would have the opportunity to talk to his father about anything.
Inside the metal box were papers and envelopes: the deed to the house, pink slips on the cars, life insurance policies, and the like. Nothing appeared unusual. He closed the box and set it aside.
“May I?” Jack pointed at the photo album.
“Go ahead. I’m going to take a look at this.” Perry picked up the notebook in the plastic bag. The bag opened, and he removed a three-ring binder, the kind kids took to school. Inside was narrow-rule-lined paper. It had aged yellow but was still in good shape. Perry assumed he could thank the plastic bag for that.
“I’ve got nothing here but pictures of you on a pony, Little League pictures, and birthday parties. There are a few of people I don’t know. Aunts and uncles maybe. What about you?”
“There’s not much here—just a few pages of names, numbers, and some pencil drawings. I’m not sure what to make of it. None of the names have last names, just first and an initial.”
“Sounds like your dad wanted the secret kept a secret,” Jack said.
“Why would he send me looking for this? He was coherent. I wondered if the medication was affecting his mind, but I had the impression he knew exactly what he was saying but was too weak to say it all.”
“What about the names? Do any of the names he gave you match what’s on the list?”
“This list is cryptic, but it does have first names.” Perry scanned down the column of names. Soon he found Monte G—CE; Cynthia W—BE; and Victor Z—EE.
“What are the initials?”
“Don’t know. Dad abbreviates everything.”
“CE could be civil engineering,” Jack suggested.
“Possible. If that is true, then EE could be electrical engineering.”
“Is your dad’s name there?”
“Good question.” Perry searched the list again. “Sure enough, Henry S—SE. In his case, SE could stand for structural engineer. But what is BE? Let’s go into Dad’s office. I have some computer work to do.” Perry carried the notebook as he and Jack crossed the spacious house. Henry Sachs’s home office was wide and paneled in dark wood. A table served as a desk. On it was a computer and several rolls of plans. At the right edge of the table was a phone and answering machine. A red light blinked with demanding regularity. Perry decided to retrieve the message. It was one more thing he could do for his mother. He pressed the Play button. An elderly-sounding voice wafted up from the speaker.
“Henry? Henry, it’s Cynthia Wagner. We need to talk. It’s—it’s about Monte. He’s dead. It’s horrible. Call me. Please call.” She gave a number.
Perry picked up the phone and began to dial.
Chapter5
Her hips hurt, but they had been hurting since she was in her early fifties. Now, at seventy, she had learned to ignore the pain. Arthritis plundered her movement and comfort, but she had grown accustomed to morning aches and the extra time necessary to rise from a chair. Seventy was a good number, she thought. Seventy years was long life—longer than she could have expected if fate had placed her in a third-world country but not as long as she knew the human body was designed to live. Aging always baffled her, and often she wished she had focused her training in that area instead of bioengineering. What was, however, was, and it was far too late to change things now.
She had much to be thankful for. She had planned her retirement well and had no money problems. She wasn’t rich, but she didn’t need to be. Money was a means to food, housing, and books and magazines. Very little else was needed.
The garden stretched before her. Zinnias, calendulas, celosia, and other flowers splashed color along the stretch of dirt that ran in front of her home. Other flowering plants made their homes in terra-cotta pots and wood planters.
There were other things growing in front of her San Diego home: weeds, and weeds left unattended were weeds that thrived. Not in my garden, she thought. From her garage, she pulled a tool with a sharp, flat tip and a wide pad of foam rubber. She returned to the strip of flowers, dropped the foam rubber, and lowered herself to her knees. Her back complained,
her hips grumbled, and her wrists groused. She ignored them all.
As she dug the weeding tool into the soft dirt, she thought of poor Monte Grant, dead and lying in the morgue in Kingman, Arizona. Soon, if it hadn’t already happened, some medical examiner would take a scalpel and cut Monte’s chest open. It was undignified and useless. Luisa, Monte’s sister, had called in tears. She had heard a crash and ran outside to see her brother slumped over the steering wheel of his lawn tractor. Luisa had called her because Monte had left instructions to do so. Over the years, she and Monte had remained friends. Perhaps, had they not each been married when they met, they might have been more. They never spoke of it. After her husband died of heart disease five years ago and Monte’s wife of a stroke last year, Cynthia held out a slight hope of exploring what might have been, but it didn’t happen. Monte was entrenched in Arizona and she in San Diego.
She would go to the funeral, of course. Perhaps the others would be there. The others. How many were left now? How many could say they really knew? It had been over thirty years ago. Three decades could eradicate a lot of memory. Her memory, however, was still undimmed by distance. Age had touched her hearing, corroded her joints, dimmed her sight, and bollixed up her biological plumbing, but it had left her mind alone. She was thankful for that and thankful that she could still live on her own.
Granted, she lived in a “retirement village,” where neighbors were more than neighbors. They were also guardians of one another’s well-being. Several times a day she received calls from others to see how she was doing. Translated, that meant, “Are you still alive?” She laughed to herself. She had starting making the same kinds of calls.
Cynthia stopped weeding and closed her eyes. Her vision wasn’t what it used to be, and now she was having trouble seeing. Perhaps she needed a nap. She rubbed her eyes, then leaned forward, resting her hands on the dirt. She was on all fours. Her lungs joined the chorus of complaints. She opened her eyes and wondered when the world had turned milky.
A loud ringing startled her and pulled her attention to the cordless phone she had brought outside with her. She had called Henry Sachs to let him know of Monte’s death. Maybe he was calling back. She reached for the phone but stopped. A dagger of pain ran up her spine. She was familiar with all her pains, and this one was a stranger.
The phone rang again. This time it sounded muted. She shifted her position and grabbed the phone. There was a new pain in her stomach. Cynthia sucked in air, and it burned her lungs. She couldn’t get a full breath. As she exhaled, she heard a gurgling and realized there was fluid in her lungs, fluid that had not been there fifteen minutes earlier.
The phone rang a third time, and Cynthia raised it to her ear. She tried to speak. Nothing came out.
“Hello? Hello? This is Perry Sachs. I’m calling for Cynthia Wagner. Hello?”
The normal, autonomic breathing had become labor. Cynthia had to think about every inhalation. Her skin began to burn, as if it were ready to combust.
“Ms. Wagner.”
Perry Sachs, Henry’s boy. She remembered him talking about his son over thirty years ago. Perry . . . She doubled over and retched. Blood poured from her mouth.
So this was it, she thought between spasms of pain. This was the place of her death, on her knees amidst the gold, blue, and yellow of her flowers. It was a good place, a pretty place to die.
She forced her hand to rise and place the phone by her ear. Her lungs were no longer drawing breath. She was suffocating, but she had to say something. Help? She was beyond help, and she accepted that. Perhaps she could get one word out, one word that could make a difference.
“To-no-pah,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” the voice on the phone said.
“Tonopah.”
Cynthia Wagner fell to her side, and the phone dropped beside her.
“Ms. Wagner? Ms. Wagner, are you all right?”
Cynthia’s vision faded into white, then into black. Her last sight had been of a marigold. She thought it very pretty.
Perry hung up the phone for the second time in less than five minutes. The last four minutes had been spent on the phone with a 9-1-1 operator explaining how he knew that someone named Cynthia Wagner in San Diego was in trouble when he was in Seattle. The operator assured Perry that the proper authorities would be called. It was all that Perry could do.
“She said Tonopah?” Jack sat in a burgundy leather chair. “That’s in Nevada, right?”
“I believe so. I’ve never been there.”
“Really?” Jack cocked his head.“I thought maybe you had.”
Perry switched on his father’s computer. “Why would you think that?”
“The photo album. Lots of pictures of you when you were cute. I saw a few of the desert. I had assumed you had vacationed there.”
“If we did, I was a baby. I don’t recall any such family vacation.”
“You couldn’t have been too young. One of the cars in the picture is from the mid-seventies. You had to be nine or ten.”
Something struck Perry. “Show me.”
Jack flipped through the pages, then pushed the photo album toward Perry. “Here it is.”
Perry pulled the book closer. “I don’t remember this, and I doubt it’s a vacation.” He was looking at a group of smiling people, one of whom was a much younger version of his father. He was surprised how much he resembled his dad. The group of six stood in front of a dark red stone building. There were five men, counting his father, and one woman. Two of the men frowned at the camera while the rest smiled. Perry studied the photo. His father’s hair was moderately long, and he sported a thick mustache. Another man had long sideburns and wore pants that flared a little at the bottom. Not quite bell-bottoms but related. The woman’s hair was straight and blond. The two men on the side with the serious expressions wore civilian clothing, but their clean shaved faces and short hair made Perry think military. Just to the right of the group was the front end of a car.
“I recognize my dad,” Perry said. “And you’re right about the car. What is that?”
“A 1974 Chevy Suburban. My dad was a car nut, always buying some car or another, fixing it up, then selling it. Several of those went through the garage when I was a kid.”
“So this picture has to be from 1974 or later.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, it’s no vacation picture. I’ve never met these people. They seem an odd match.” Perry removed the picture and turned it over. There was writing on the back. He read aloud,
“Mizpah Hotel. VZ, CW, MG, me, and two associates.”
“Those initials match up with the names your father gave you.” Jack thought for a second. “Where’s the Mizpah Hotel?”
“I don’t know, but I have a guess.” Perry set the photo down and started the computer’s Internet browser. A few moments later, he said, “I’ve got it.”
“Tonopah?”
“Tonopah, Nevada. I’ve found several pictures on the Web. It’s the same place, all right.” Jack rounded the desk and looked over Perry’s shoulder. “In Dad’s photo, I can see the entrance to the hotel and some of the architectural style. It’s a match.”
“It looks a bit run-down in this photo.” Jack pointed to the screen.
“It was built just after the turn of the century, so it has a right to look a little run-down. Look, here’s one after it’s been refurbished.”
“Looks better.”
Perry shook his head. “There’s something in all of this that Dad wants me to find. There’s some connection. But what?”
“We know that one person in the photo is dead. We know your father is very ill, and from what you told me about the conversation you just had with Cynthia Wagner, another one is in bad shape.”
“All within a day or so of the other. All were together in 1974 in Tonopah, Nevada. Now, over thirty years later, three of them are afflicted.”
“Coincidence? None of them is young.”
“I doubt it.
I think Dad wants me to find them.” Perry shut down the computer, then stood. He closed the album and bundled up the notebook.
“We’re going somewhere?”
“We’re going several places. At least I am.”
“You will have better luck shaking your shadow than shaking me loose, pal. Where to?”
“First the office. I’m going to put Gleason to work. Then to the hospital. I’m going to check on Mom and Dad. I also want to talk to Dr. Nishizaki. I have some questions. Then we pack our bags.”
“Road trip?” Jack smiled.
“Road trip.” There was no smile.
It was a chartered flight, and the Boeing business jet pushed through the hazy skies of Washington, D.C. At 110 feet in length and powered by a pair of CFM56-7 engines delivering over twenty-seven hundred pounds of thrust, it seemed overkill to be carrying only one passenger. Finn MacCumhail was no ordinary passenger. His name never appeared in the newspapers or on the list of directors for government agencies, but he was known around Washington, D.C., and his name was often spoken of in hushed whispers. That was the way he liked it.
At forty-two years of age, he still cut a dashing enough figure to turn the heads of most women and to garner the scowls of most men. His hair was short, red-brown, and hinted at a curl. His eyes were blue and showed an intimidating intelligence. Beneath his gray business suit was a well-exercised, muscled body.
Finn found a comfortable seat over the wings and settled in. Soon the aircraft would be flying at thirty-five thousand feet and cutting the thin air at over five hundred miles an hour. Even at that, he was in for a six-hour flight. Over three thousand miles separated Washington, D.C., and Nellis Air Force Base. Accommodations would be waiting. In the morning, he’d take a drive.
He shifted in his seat. Reaching under his coat, he repositioned the 9 mm pistol that was sticking him in the ribs. Once comfortable, he opened a briefcase. A leather skin covered the protective metal structure of the case. Inside rested several plastic file folders. He removed the top one and set it on his lap. Opening the folder, he studied the pictures it contained. He whispered to himself: “Henry Sachs, Cynthia Wagner, Victor Zeisler, Monte Grant.”