Arsenic and Old Paint

by Hailey Lind

  “Where’d they go?”

  There was a small hole in the wall, where brick didn’t quite meet concrete, right at the base of a stairway leading up, with a solid iron door at the top.

  I reached into my satchel, brought out the reserve flashlight, and handed it to Mary. “Don’t drop this one.” And started up the stairs.

  “Do you think we’re at the Fleming-Union?” Mary whispered, close on my heels.

  “I’m not sure.”

  The soft soles of my sneakers sounded like boots on metal, the sounds were so magnified in the echoey tunnel.

  I reached the doors. Over them was written a Latin phrase, the same as was on Wesley’s business card. REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD. An appalling motto. These Fleming-Union boys were getting on my last nerve.

  The old metal doorknob turned, but the door was stuck. I put my shoulder into it and pushed. It started to give way slowly, creaking.

  “Annie,” Mary said in an urgent whisper behind me. She handed me a crucifix she wore as part of her Goth outfit. “Take this. Just in case.”

  I tried to snort and roll my eyes, but the truth was, I half expected Count Dracula and his minions to be lurking behind the iron door, ready to pounce on me and make me an unwilling blood donor. Or maybe, I thought wildly, Balthazar Odibajian was actually a vampire. That would explain a lot.

  I accepted the crucifix and held it in front of me as I pushed the heavy door open a few more inches.

  Pitch black. The doorway had been covered with a velvet curtain. Pushing this aside, we stepped into another arched brick space. It looked just like Anton’s sketch, “Tunnel Vision.” Around the top of the walls, right under rough wooden corbels, was an intricate border that looked recently painted. The stone floor was swept clean. And there were racks and racks of bottles.

  “This is awesome,” Mary whispered behind me. “A wine cellar?”

  There was a thick coating of dust and cobwebs on many of the bottles. I glanced at a few, and saw dates going back to the early 1900s. I doubted wine remained drinkable that long, but it was undeniably impressive. This was quite the historic collection.

  I checked my watch. It was a quarter to three in the morning. No one would be up and around at this hour, would they? It was as good a time as any to sneak around, right? There must be some stairs that led—

  A door opened. We heard far-off noises, sounds of a party. Voices, glass clinking, laughter.

  And two men’s voices in discussion, descending toward us.

  “Get back!” I said in an urgent whisper to Mary. “Back to the tunnel!”

  Mary and I careened back through the door to the tunnels. The lights in the wine cellar flipped on just as we slipped behind the curtain. We tried to close the door, but the heavy, stubborn iron was hard to budge, and creaked.

  We left it ajar and ran down the steps, and around the corner, flattening ourselves against the wall. We could keep running, but our steps echoed in the tunnels. Presuming they had powerful flashlights, there would be nowhere to hide if they actually came down to investigate.

  “Why’s the door ajar?” A man’s voice said.

  He pulled back the curtain. Light spilled down the steps and pooled in the water of the sewer.

  “I want this door locked at all times, understand me? What the hell’s wrong with you people?”

  It banged shut, and we heard the loud scraping metal-on-metal sounds of an iron bar being secured.

  Mary and I stayed where we were for a few minutes, in the damp dark, catching our breath. Then we turned our flashlights on and snuck back down the tunnel.

  We came to another iron gate, this one locked. Mary used her lock picks and opened it easily enough, but the area beyond it looked caved in.

  “Is this the only way out, do you think?” asked Mary.

  “It’s hard to say,” I equivocated. I was having a tough time thinking straight. Suddenly the walls felt like they were closing in on us. “Maybe we could retrace our steps.”

  “We’d probably end up explaining ourselves to the Cameron House security,” said Mary. “Besides, we’ve been walking—and crawling—for more than an hour, and took a bunch of turns. We might get lost, make things worse.”

  “True.”

  “I sure would like to get out of here,” Mary said. “It’s cold. And I might talk a good game, but I really don’t like vampires.”

  I flashed my light through the caved-in section. There was still enough room to pass. It didn’t even look as narrow as the first stretch we went through from Cameron House, and it only went about ten feet before opening back up. The ceiling looked intact; the cave-in had come from the sides. I tapped the roof and a wall with the flashlight. It seemed secure.

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” I said. “If I die, you get the business.”

  “Does that mean I have to do all the paperwork?” she whined.

  “I’m facing death and you’re worried about paperwork?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  I took a deep breath and entered the space, crawling carefully on hands and knees. I held the flashlight awkwardly under my arm, wishing I had one of those miner’s hats with the lamps on them. Ten feet stretched out, seemed like twenty. Thirty. I was feeling a whole lot of sympathy for Michael’s claustrophobia about now.

  At long last I emerged at the other end.

  Mary’s turn.

  As she pulled herself through slowly, I looked around. My flashlight beam landed on a ladder that disappeared into a hole in the ceiling. As soon as Mary emerged from the collapsed section, we hurried over to it.

  Metal rungs led up a vertical tube, to a round manhole cover.

  Mary illuminated the shaft with her light while I climbed up. With a great deal of grunting and pushing, I finally managed to shove the heavy manhole cover up slightly and to the side. I waited for a moment, listening for cars: nothing. Finally I poked my head up, praying some Mack truck would not choose that precise moment to come whizzing down the street.

  “I know you,” said a voice. “What you doin’ in the sewer?”

  I looked around. Harvard and his jump-suited buddy stood staring at me, bewildered expressions on their faces.

  Harvard offered me his hand and helped pull me up and out. His younger companion, meanwhile, took a broad-legged stance out in the street with his hands held out stiffly in front of him, keeping traffic at bay. Despite the fact that there were no cars on the street at this hour, I gave him points for good intentions.

  Mary popped her head up, startling them both.

  “Hey,” Mary said.

  “Hey,” answered Harvard with a nod.

  “Hey,” repeated the blond man in the jumpsuit. “What up?”

  The four of us just stood, somewhat awkwardly, for a moment. Hard to know what to say, really. Though it was dark, after the pitch black of the sewer Mary and I were blinking in the streetlights. We were right in front of the Fairmont Hotel, across Mason Street from the Fleming-Union.

  “What you two doin’?” Harvard asked.

  “Exploring, sort of.”

  “You sayin’ Hermes is down there?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “Find him yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “So you explorin’ down in the sewers? Just the two of you? Woman shouldn’t go down there by herself. Where’s the man was with you?”

  “He wouldn’t go,” Mary said, brushing herself off. “Scared of vampires.”

  “Duude,” said Jumpsuit with a sympathetic nod. “Me, too. They totally weird me out. Supposedly they live right under Nob Hill.”

  Harvard snorted and rolled his eyes at me.

  “Speaking of vampires,” Mary said, “did you know that Chinese vampires hop?”

  * * *

  I dropped Mary at her apartment off Valencia in the Mission, then drove over the Bay Bridge, home to Oakland. I needed to shower and change, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. It was well past three in the mo
rning. Surely that didn’t still count as night, did it? Besides, at this point I was thinking maybe I should just let Odibajian’s goons put me out of my misery.

  As I trudged up the stairs past the second floor landing, I noticed a tiny video camera near the ceiling of the stairwell. I had never seen that before. Was the building’s normally hands-off management going high-tech?

  I turned the corner at the landing and peeked up at my door. It stood wide open. This time it wasn’t Anton with paella, that much was sure.

  It was Frank. Looking rumpled and sleepy, shoving something into his jacket pocket. I glimpsed the butt of a gun.

  “Is there something in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

  He gave me a grudging smile. “You okay?”

  “Sure.” I walked the rest of the way up the stairs, and he stood back to let me pass. I noted a pillow and blanket on the couch, and perched on the coffee table was a small video player with a black and white picture of the stairwell showing on the screen. “Looks like you set up shop.”

  “You haven’t been answering your cell phone.”

  “It sort of got broken.”

  “And you haven’t been home for days.”

  “You told me to stay away, remember?”

  “Since when do you do what I tell you?”

  I shrugged.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded, not wanting to review the day, or the night, or remember pretty blond Kyle Jones lying too still in a filthy alley.

  I pulled a bottle of vodka from my freezer and poured two shots, offering one to Frank.

  “Listen, Annie, I need to talk to you about something.” He reached for me, but I pulled back. In part because I feared I smelled like a sewer; in part because I thought if he touched me right now I would just melt right into him.

  “I’m in desperate need of a shower,” I said. “Could we talk after?”

  By the time I came out, wrapped in my comfy robe, Frank had taken off his jacket and fallen back asleep while sitting up on the couch. I stood over him for a moment, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like as a little boy: pouty lower lip, long dark lashes. I had never seen him look vulnerable before.

  As I watched him, his eyes opened.

  He reached for me. This time I didn’t back away.

  As in the car, his mouth was ardent, demanding. I crawled into his lap, fully aware that the robe I wore was all that stood between him and me. All he had to do was push it open and—

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “What’s what?”

  “Here, on your shoulder.” He traced the bruise gently with his fingertips. His eyes met mine, accusatory. “It looks like a love bite.”

  “It’s, um...”

  “Are you seeing someone? Please tell me it’s not Michael, or whatever the hell his real name is.”

  “No. I’m not seeing anyone, least of all Michael.”

  Frank looked angry, hurt even. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, but I was too tired, my mind too muddled to come up with any sort of plausible explanation. A doorknob? A crescent-shaped branch that somehow whacked me while on a hike?

  “I...had a little run-in with a goon.”

  Frank froze. “A goon.”

  “I don’t know what to call those guys. Guys who beat people up.”

  “Some goon bit you?”

  “Kind of.”

  Frank shot up to his feet, dumping me unceremoniously onto the couch. He paced the living room, hands on hips. He finally turned back toward me, still breathing hard. When he spoke his voice was strained.

  “When was this?”

  “Earlier today...I mean yesterday afternoon. It’s been a long day.”

  “Where?”

  “In a stairwell. It really doesn’t matter—”

  “It doesn’t matter? What else did he do?”

  “They just—”

  “They? There was more than one?”

  “Two. One held me and the other sort of slapped me. No big deal, really, except for the bruise. It was worse for the fellow I was with, they pushed him down a flight of stairs. They just wanted to scare me, told me to back off and...What are you doing?”

  Frank was pulling on his jacket and adjusting the pistol in his pocket.

  “He’s gone too damned far.”

  “Who?”

  “Balthazar Odibajian.”

  “What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going? It’s four in the morning.” He was pulling on his jacket and striding for the door. I ran to intercept him, putting my hands on his chest. “Frank. Stop it. You’re acting as crazy as me. Stay. Here. With me.”

  Frank was livid, black eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, breathing heavily.

  Suddenly I couldn’t keep from smiling. My straight-laced landlord was like one big, blustery, ex–Special Forces sex machine. And I had him in my clutches. My hormones shifted into overdrive. Time to use my feminine wiles.

  My smile gave him pause. But then his eyes dropped to where my robe gaped open, displaying one naked breast. If that’s not a supreme example of feminine wiles, I don’t know what is.

  After a very brief moment, his mouth followed his gaze.

  There was no more talk of goons, or Balthazar Odibajian, or retribution. There was very little talk at all, beyond moans and gasps and whispered nothings.

  * * *

  Far too soon I was awakened. Frank had already showered and dressed.

  “Breakfast meeting?” I croaked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I’m sorry about this.” He sat on the side of the bed and pushed a lock of hair out of my face. “How do you feel?”

  My eyelids felt like sandpaper. I glanced at the clock: just after nine A.M. As I sat up, any number of unfamiliar muscles cried out in protest. Were they from my active day yesterday...or the even more active night? Frank looked a little the worse for wear, himself. We couldn’t have gotten more than a couple hours of sleep between the two of us.

  Frank’s lovemaking had been as passionately demanding, as gloriously insistent, as deliciously wicked, as his kisses had always promised. And I matched him at every step. Neither of us seemed able to get enough.

  “Why don’t you go back to sleep for a while?” Frank suggested. “I already called a guy to come watch your door.”

  “A babysitter?”

  “A bodyguard.”

  “Frank—”

  “Just let me do this. I’m older than you. My heart can’t take the stress.”

  I smiled and kissed him on the cheek, hyper-aware of my morning breath.

  He hugged me. Our eyes met. If my teeth had been brushed I would have kissed him, maybe tried to convince him to come back to bed.

  “Frank, promise me you won’t do anything crazy against Odibajian.”

  He smiled. “Thanks for reining me in last night. It’s not like me to go off half-cocked.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Cute.” He gave me a crooked grin. “I’ve decided upon a much better revenge. Odibajian will pay, believe me.”

  “Just as long as you don’t get killed or hurt in the process.”

  “Now you sound like me. Let’s both try to stick to that.”

  Frank kissed me on the top of the head, then cupped my cheek in his hand. When he spoke his voice was low, husky. “Last night was...incredible. Worth waiting for.”

  I just nodded, feeling suddenly awkward. After he left I tried to go back to sleep. Usually that’s a real skill of mine. But now random thoughts kept flitting through my mind.

  Among these was the fact that I might be falling in love with my landlord. He wasn’t even trying to tell me what to do, or bend me to his will. What the heck was that about? Was this some sort of sneaky plan to lure me into his web, like a spider? Or could he really be just about the most decent man I had ever known?

  My mind started replaying last night. The kisses, the caresses, the moans...

 
But then I started thinking. How was this going to work, exactly? Were we a couple now? He hated my business partner, and Michael would find it problematic to work with Frank. Plus, I still had no idea what was going on with Anton et al; and I think we all knew that I wasn’t going to let that drop.

  The vision of Kyle Jones’s body came back to me, chilling me to the core, washing over me like a bucket of cold water. I had practically caused a man’s death last night, then spent hours frolicking in bed. I was scum. Confused scum. Confused, horny scum.

  All right, time for a quick shower, a stop at Peet’s Coffee, and if I was very lucky I might even find a straggler at the Casual Carpool line.

  There was one lone man waiting at Casual Carpool, but since I was the only car—other than the one containing Frank’s man tailing me—I lucked out. I didn’t even look over as a man in a cowboy hat and jeans with a huge belt buckle climbed in.

  “What I don’t get is, why you don’t just call me if you want a ride,” I said, maneuvering us onto the freeway entrance.

  Michael-the-cowboy grinned. “This is so much more fun. And look how fast you caught on. I’m proud of you.”

  He leaned over and ruffled my hair. I pulled away. After the night with Frank I was fortified against Michael’s charms.

  “Hands to yourself, jerk.”

  “Whoa. What’s up?”

  “Crawford needs to talk to you. ASAP. You’re casting doubts upon me and the business.”

  “I had Kevin, our FBI guy, call her.”

  “I realize that. She still needs to talk to you. In person.”

  He stared at my profile for a moment.

  “That’s not what’s bothering you. Is it that you saw me with another woman?”

  “What?” Truth was, it was the furthest thing from my mind. Funny how violence and passing the night in a police interrogation room and sewer tunnels could put things into perspective. Not to mention that I had spent the last several hours indulging in the lewdest sort of behavior with Frank, so it seemed a bit much now to act jealous with Michael. I shook my head and took a drink of my coffee. “A man died last night. Because of me.”

  “Who? What happened?”

  “Kyle Jones. He was the parking attendant at the F-U, and used to work for the couple who originally lost the Gauguin. I think he must have stolen the painting from Victor Yeltsin in the first place,” I mused aloud. “I just can’t figure out why he was working at the F-U, especially if he had the painting. Unless, of course, it was a worthless fake. But even so, why would he hang around a club where Victor is a member? It makes no sense.”