by Jeff Abbott
Diana drove through the western half of San Francisco, pondering her options. She’d slept in the car and it smelled of musty person and cheap food. She headed north toward Sutro Baths. It wouldn’t be so busy; most tourists never knew about it. She needed the comforting whoosh of the ocean pounding against the rocks. The sea breeze would make her feel clean.
She parked at the top of the hill. Steps led down to the ruins of the baths, a long ago San Francisco attraction that sat in a bowl of land next to the bay. Once it held pools that could accommodate hundreds. The Sutro Baths had burned down in the 1960s in a suspicious fire, never rebuilt. Now there were just stone edges, flat land, and a large cave close to the baths where you could walk in the near darkness. The wind was a constant stream, the trees misshapen and bent. She walked down the sand-covered steps, past two older women who were negotiating the incline with caution, past the ruins of the pools. She went inside the cave, thinking of the times her mother brought her here, and they stood in the near dark, watching the ocean rush in below through a slot in the rock. No one else was in the cave—it would be busier in the afternoon—and she could pretend she was the only person left in the world, watching the slice of ocean and sky and rock.
She thought about the deaths she’d seen. Her mother dying. The lipstick case that she needed to get back from The Select bar, but knowing Sam Capra would do nothing to help her now. She closed her eyes and let the nurturing quiet wash over her.
I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.
She remembered a friend telling her there was an old pay phone, one of the few left, up above the baths, along Point Lobos.
She walked to the phone. Then she took a deep breath and dropped in the quarters. Called the San Francisco Police Department; she’d memorized the number the night before, at Lily’s, in case she changed her mind.
“SFPD.”
“I need to speak to whoever is in charge of the investigation of the death of the man at The Select bar in the Haight. I have information.”
“One moment.” Then a new voice. “This is Detective DeSoto.”
Suddenly Diana’s mouth felt as dry as the sand in her shoes. “I have information. On the guy who died at The Select bar.”
“I’m listening.”
“The woman he was…bothering…I’m her.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you that quite yet. Let’s see how the conversation goes.”
Silence for a moment. “All right. Why was he after you?”
“I have something he wants.”
“And.”
“And it could be evidence in a criminal investigation.”
“Evidence against Rostov?”
“Look, I’m not telling you anything more. Because the evidence…it implicates someone I care about. Someone who can give you the biggest case of your life.”
“Let’s just have you come in and give a statement. What’s your name?”
She kept glancing at the steady traffic along Point Lobos, waiting for a police car to materialize. How quickly could the call be traced? Instantly, she would think. “I need the deal first.”
“What deal?”
“I need to be sure someone is immune from prosecution.”
“You?”
“Someone else.” She almost hung up. This was the biggest decision of her life, she realized. If she made the deal for her mother, if her mother revealed the role Belias played in her business’s success—what then? Keene Global could be shut down, sued into nonexistence. People wouldn’t believe that Diana didn’t know—she could be charged as well. Maybe she’d never work at all again. How would she support herself?
It’s a neat little trap of loyalty, Diana thought. It was a tough, economically hard world, and she was about to rip away her comfort zone.
“Hello? Are you there?” DeSoto’s voice rang out.
“Yes. I’m thinking.”
She began to cry. You will be sending your dying mother to prison. What kind of daughter are you? You don’t know they will make a deal.
“I won’t back out on any deal I make with you right now. I will support that.”
“But I don’t know you.”
But she still might have one friend at the bar. Felix. Felix would have a key to the bar, and Sam Capra couldn’t be at the bar all the time. If she could get the flash drive back, she could edit the video and make a deal, now that DeSoto had promised to negotiate in good faith with her.
DeSoto said, “Let’s make a deal now. Tell me what you know. Tell me why they’re after you. I’ll get a DA on the line, we can see what we can work out.”
Don’t go against this, Diana, her mother had said toward the end of the video. You would be going up against some very powerful people, here and abroad. Trust me, sweetie. It’s just better to join the club.
Thanks for making that decision for me, Mom, she thought bitterly. Thanks, but I think I have to make my own decisions now.
“I’ll call you back.”
“No, wait, let’s meet now. Please. Let’s…”
And Diana hung up. She turned around. No police cars in the lot, but soon enough DeSoto could trace the phone call back to this pay phone. She headed for the car.
If Sam wouldn’t take mercy on her, then maybe Felix would.
50
Saturday, November 6, late afternoon
JANICE GOT WHAT SHE NEEDED from the hardware store, and then she drove back to the Mystik.
In her hotel room, she took two small cans from her bag. She went to the bottom of the large, heavy curtain by the window, and she sprayed a foamy epoxy onto the wall, in a thin sphere behind the curtain. Then she took a green foam block and carefully broke bits onto a cotton swab and decorated the smear on the wall lightly. Now the goop was greenish black. She hid the spray and the foam block in the recesses of her purse. She let her handiwork dry. Glancing into the hallway, she saw the maid’s trolley and was glad she didn’t have to call housekeeping.
“Ma’am,” she called out to the maid. “There’s an issue with my room, please.”
The maid came forward. “Yes, ma’am?”
“It’s easier to show you.” She led the maid into the room and hoisted the bottom of the curtain to show the thin arc of green black where it grew from up the wall toward the floor vent. “Mold.”
“Oh, goodness,” the maid said.
“Obviously a health concern…” Janice gave the slightest of coughs.
“Yes, ma’am, one moment.” The maid called a manager in housekeeping. Janice kept a patient smile on her face. She did not want to be remembered as the angry lady.
It took about two minutes. The housekeeping supervisor, a woman about Janice’s age, arrived.
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry about this, we’ll get you moved to another room immediately,” the supervisor said, staring at the “mold.”
“I don’t think it’s real mold,” Janice said.
The supervisor inspected it. Janice knew an experienced eye and a quick chemical test would see her vandalism wasn’t actual mold. Better to look helpful. “I just wondered if it might be a prank. It looks sprayed on.”
“Regardless, we certainly will get you moved to a clean room.”
Janice waited for the supervisor to head for the room’s phone, and she carefully ran right into her, as though heading toward her own closet to gather her belongings.
“Oh, ma’am, excuse me,” the supervisor said.
“My fault, my fault.” Janice laughed. “I’m just in a hurry to wash my hands now that I touched it.” The supervisor gestured for her to walk first. Janice went into the bathroom, cupping the passkey she’d lifted from the supervisor in her palm. The housekeeper would call downstairs to reservations, get a new room assignment for Janice, and then take Janice to the new room or send a bellman upstairs with a new key.
If the housekeeping supervisor realized her own keycard was gone in the next couple of minutes—well, she’d deal with that the
n. A supervisor, her passkey should open every door in the whole building. Including the penthouse level elevator, if not the penthouse itself.
One problem at a time.
She could hear the supervisor hanging up the phone, murmuring instructions to the maid.
Janice stepped back into the room.
“Ms. Atkins, we have a new room for you. One floor up, so not far. I will have a bellman come and move your belongings. Would you like assistance in repacking?”
“No, thank you.” Janice smiled at her.
“I’ll have the bellman bring you up a key for the new room. It’s 4545.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The supervisor smiled and shut the door behind her.
Janice’s smile faded and she packed quickly. The gun and the poison were both in her purse. She had no idea how often the keycard’s combinations were struck and replaced. She had to act quickly.
The bellman was quite prompt and he moved her to her new room. It was nice and fresh and airy. Once he was tipped and gone, Janice pulled the supervisor’s passkey from her bag.
If this couldn’t get her into the penthouse, then she’d have to come up with a whole new plan.
A knock at the door. Probably housekeeping to make sure the new room met with her approval. She opened the door.
One of Lazard’s bodyguards. She started to speak and he punched her hard in the face. She fell back. The bodyguard reached toward her, and she scrambled away, trying to evade his reach.
The poison. She couldn’t be caught. She was dead anyway. She grabbed at the bottle, sitting in her purse, yanking it out, but then the bodyguard was in the room, the door closed behind him. He yanked the vial from her hands and slammed her head down toward the desk.
Agony. Then darkness.
51
Saturday, November 6, late afternoon
HOLLY WORE DARK GLASSES and a 49ers cap pulled low over her face. She walked to an artsy shop and bought a fancy journal and a nice pen. Then she figured out that a small coffee bar gave her a view of both the back lot and the front door of The Select. She perched at a table away from the window, ordered a small espresso, and opened the journal. She was half-tempted to write; she felt like she could pour out all her disappointment in herself, and in Glenn, on the paper. All the pain of the bad choices she’d made. A long confession. But if she stared at the paper too long she might miss Sam coming out of the bar.
She watched the people of the Haight walk by: the omnipresent stoners; the kids, purposeful in their hippiedom; the older rebels, softened by time; the tourists, a near constant stream.
And she thought of shooting Sam cold in the street.
She sipped coffee. She drew pictures of Peter and Emma. She drew pictures of Glenn.
The night began to fall. Holly watched the bar, the weight of murder on her mind.
52
Saturday, November 6, evening
HELLO, MARIAN ATKINS.”
Janice opened her eyes.
Lucky Lazard leaning over her. She lay on a bed.
She screamed.
“No one can hear you,” he said. “The room’s soundproofed. My parties get too loud for the paying guests a floor below.”
She stopped.
“You’ve been shadowing me. I want to know who you are.”
“You’ve made a mistake…I’m a guest here.”
“A guest with two passports in her purse. Marian Atkins and Catherine Bonheur.”
“I talked to you this morning at Enchant. At breakfast…why have you hurt me?” She made tears spring to her eyes.
“You have two passports and a gun with a suppressor on it and a passkey you stole off a staff member,” he said. “Do you think a man important enough to have a private security detail doesn’t pay any attention to his surroundings? I’ve had you watched since you were at the park this afternoon.”
“My name is Marian Atkins. I’m an accountant from San Francisco. I’m just here on a vacation. Please, Mr. Lazard, please. Let me go and I won’t tell anyone. I won’t.”
“Stop the lying.” Then he held up her pills and shook the vial. “You’re a cancer patient. Now, why is a cancer patient trying to kill me?”
“You’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Who sent you?”
She gritted her teeth.
“You tried to grab a vial of eyedrops out of your purse. I’m guessing it was a weapon although I’m not real inclined to test it. Poison, maybe? I could stick it on your tongue and see what happens.”
She shook her head.
“Lady, whoever you are, you’re messing with the wrong guy. The wrong people.”
He leaned close to her, and the kindness and joy she’d seen in his face when he was with his daughter was gone. “You will tell me everything. Who you are. Who sent you. What you want.”
“This is a mistake. The gun is mine, for protection. I’m a woman traveling alone.”
“Explain the two passports.”
“Please let me go. I’ll just leave, all right? I’ll just go.”
“Go? I don’t think I’ll make it easy for you to go anywhere.” And he took her IDs, took out a match, and lit them on fire. He dropped them into a steel wastebasket and she watched them burn. “Hard to go anywhere without an ID,” he said. “So you don’t have to be in a rush to leave.”
She stared at the smoke curling up.
“You came here from Portland. You had a ticket receipt in your purse,” he said. “You said you were from San Francisco.”
She blinked. “Yes, I went to Portland first. Business trip.”
He studied her face. “Because you’re an accountant.”
“Yes.”
He went to a laptop on the desk and typed. Then he glanced at her. “There is no search result for a Marian Atkins, an accountant in San Francisco. Your business must be way down.”
He held up the blue prepaid phone he’d taken from her purse. “This phone. Only has calls to one number. Whose number is this?”
“Call it and see.” What would Belias do if he knew she was in trouble? Write her off? Send someone from the network to help her?
“I think I will.”
He tapped a button and raised the phone to his face. They both waited for the ring to be broken by an answer. And waited and waited.
53
Saturday, November 6, evening
ARE WE READY?” I asked.
“We are,” Mila said.
I dialed Belias’s number.
“I have something of yours,” I said as soon as Belias answered the phone. In the background I could hear opera. A soprano singing. I thought of Svetlana Borodina. Maybe it was her. Maybe only he got to listen to her lovely voice now.
“And I have something I want to play for you,” Belias said. He turned the music down.
“What would that be?”
“Your friend. The attractive woman I met today. Is she with you?”
“Naturally.”
“That woman is selling you out to the Rostovs.”
I let five seconds pass. “Is this really the angle you want to play?”
“I can prove it, Sam. Listen.” He played a recording then, Mila speaking with the Rostov boss in New York, promising to deliver me for a price, the Rostov boss weakly protesting that he didn’t know what she meant. I listened. I stared at Mila, who nodded.
“That…is interesting,” I finally said.
“If you work for her, you shouldn’t. You should work for me.”
“I had something to offer you in trade for leaving me alone. I know Glenn Marchbanks was trying to screw you over. I know who he was working with.”
“See? Our interests align.”
I counted to ten, as though considering the risk. “We should talk. Face-to-face. Palace of Fine Arts. Be there in an hour.”
“It’s rather public.”
“Safer for us both.”
“Is little Miss Moscow coming?”
“I think I just bought the information, Sam. I just bought it by showing you she’s going to get you killed by those Russians.”
“I understand.” I hung up.
“He bit,” Mila said.
“He bit,” I said.
“Then let us go reel him in,” she said. “It is like these hunting shows on TV. The monster is on the hook.”
“Good luck,” Felix said. “I’ll keep seeing what I can find out on Kevin-slash-Belias.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Mila said, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek. Felix didn’t look convinced that our plan would go smoothly.
We headed to the car, Mila talking to me, rehearsing the plan, me silent. My nerves jangled as we reached the car—I felt watched. I glanced around. No one. But something made me say, “Get into the car, quick,” to Mila. She did.
But there was no threat, no danger, at least not here. Just nerves.
I headed north, turning out of the gate, knowing I was about to go into the devil’s den. I drove and put the speaker on my phone and called Leonie.
The whole way over, I listened to my son’s laughter and gurgles, my hands gripping the steering wheel as though I might crush it.
54
Saturday, November 6, evening
JOHN BELIAS LIKED the Palace of Fine Arts. It was designed to look like old Greek ruins—ruins built fresh, which fit his view of the world.
Something that wasn’t exactly what it seemed.
The ducks moved across the vast pond that edged the false ruins; the wind was a gentle caress. Strollers walked along the pathways on the other side of the water, photographing the fake temples to creativity and artistry. He frowned; he could end up on someone’s camera. He saw why Sam Capra had insisted on this as a meeting place. A small wedding party—bride, groom, two attendants, and a friend with a camera—snapped shots at the other dome, and he made sure he wasn’t captured in their camera. The palace would probably get busier after dinner, with couples taking a romantic stroll.