J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01

by And Then She Was Gone

  I ran back downstairs and checked the tables. Nothing. The lobby? Nothing there either.

  Anywhere else?

  The side room. I hadn’t yet checked the side room.

  I waded back through the real-life video game to the quieter play room on the other side of the club. Lights were bright in there, and the wall and window cut the sound from jet engine levels to Harley muffler levels.

  They were gone. The whole sweep took me maybe three minutes. That was three minutes I didn’t have.

  I barreled back across the floor and out the front door, stopped in the cloud of tobacco and pot smoke under the awning. Two blocks north on Fourth, 80 cut across the landscape. Nothing up that way—not much parking either. Looking south, the street was clear for four blocks. No group of two young women with a twentysomething man.

  Flip a coin, Lantham. Head north and take a gamble that they parked on the one available side street that hardly had any spots to fight over, or head south and maybe catch up to them. I knew they had at least one car here—the girls hadn’t come in a cab all the way from Danville, and they got here too quick to come on BART, if the trains even ran this late.

  South it was. I ran the length of the block flat out, zipping past the handful of cars, casting quick glances down Welsh at the half-block mark—nobody to be seen in either direction—then slowing to a walk just before the corner exposed me to view from Brennan. The empty buildings in the still summer night bounced the sounds of my footsteps like an echo chamber.

  I stepped slowly out of the shelter of the buildings, glancing right as much as I could without obviously moving my head. Still nothing. A Muni bus pulled up next to me and blocked my view to the left—I hurried around it, but saw nothing there either.

  I stepped out to cross the street when I heard something else under the rumbling of the Muni’s methane engine. A scraping sound—like casters being dragged fast over concrete echoing dimly from the right. Then a woman’s yelp—surprise, not alarm.

  Gravity was DJ’ing. He’d have his album case with him.

  Turning right, I ran again, quietly as I could. Past my own rented Malibu, a classic Camaro, a black BMW, and the dozens of other vehicles packing the curb. A few cars zipping by helped hide my steps a little bit, but if they were listening for pursuit, they’d know it was coming.

  At the end of the block I slowed again and listened.

  “Phil!” A woman’s voice from the right. Around the corner, maybe half a block up. I hugged the stone wall and leaned around the corner.

  There they were. Two girls in overcoats standing next to a green minivan with dealer plates. The one from the house on Ackerman. Gravity and another man loading the disc case into the back of the vehicle. The men finished the loading. Gravity headed to the passenger side. The other man’s back was to me, but he wore a tweed jacket against the cold San Francisco night.

  Nya’s father.

  I pulled out my phone—I’d hacked it so it didn’t flash or make a sound—and started snapping pictures.

  “Heya, sweetheart,” he turned to one of the girls and embraced her in a very unfatherly fashion. His hand snaked up inside her coat to grope her, and they kissed in a nauseatingly familiar manner.

  That might explain why he’d been at the Ackerman house earlier tonight. But if it did, I didn’t want to think about what it said about his qualities as a father.

  They were whispering something. She tittered, but shook her head at him.

  “Come on,” he said, just barely loud enough for me to hear, “We can come get your car tomorrow.”

  When he let the girl go, she said “I can’t. My parents will kill me.”

  “Okay, I’ll ride with you.” Nya’s father—Phil, evidently—smacked the side of the minivan twice. Gravity stuck his head out of the driver’s window.

  “G, I’m gonna ride with Steph. Meet you back at your place.”

  “No prob.” Gravity ducked back into the minivan. It started up a few seconds later.

  Phil and Stephanie walked past the minivan to an older Nissan. The man got the keys from the girl and circled round to the driver’s side.

  Both vehicles lumbered forth.

  I turned back and ran the half-block back to my car. The adrenaline had pushed the sleep right out of my system.

  I fumbled with my keys. The normal key didn’t fit. Come on, Lantham, this is a rental. I dug into my left hip pocket to get a key that had a prayer of fitting.

  As I brought it to the door, my muscles locked. Pain burned across every synapse and I fell hard to the ground, knocking my head on the car as I went down.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Getting hit with a Taser does that to you.

  Someone in heavy boots clopped up next to me and, near as I can figure, kicked me in the head.

  I couldn’t feel it. You can’t feel anything but pain when your nerves are overloaded.

  Next thing I remember was a blast of alcohol breath in my nostrils and somebody thwacking me in the chest. “Wake up, man. Come on. Wake up.”

  I coughed and shook all over.

  “Come on buddy. Get up.” It was a man’s voice. He shook me and I coughed again. “Shit. Don’t die.” Not a Rhodes scholar, then.

  My nose felt like someone was trying to be sick in it. I flailed and pushed away at the ogre breathing disease on me.

  I managed to roll over and cough a few more times. My body felt sore all over, like from a bad workout. Head swimming like a pair of drunken dolphins. That would be a concussion.

  I tried touching my head to find out if I was bleeding, but even touching the hairs sent stabbing pains through my noggin.

  The dude that woke me up was still pawing at me. “Back off.” I meant to shout, but it came out barely a whisper. I clenched my eyes and pushed as much breath as I can. “Back off, please.”

  “You gonna be okay, boss?”

  “Yeah,” I was choking back bile, but I did owe this guy for bringing me around, “I’ll be fine, thanks.” I dug into my pocket and grabbed a bill—my eyes weren’t working well enough to tell what kind it was.

  I shoved it behind me. “Here, get yourself a drink.”

  “Oh, man, thanks boss. You’re a real stand-up guy. God bless you!” I heard him retreating. A minute later, he shouted from somewhere down the block. “God’s gonna smile on you!”

  With the way my head was feeling, a smile from anywhere was liable to crack the universe wide open and let hell spill through.

  After a few tries I managed to get to my feet and hang on the car. Quick search of my pockets netted me my keys, my wallet, my informant cash…but no phone.

  The pictures were on the phone. Now I had nothing again. No evidence.

  My gun was gone too.

  It took me another ten minutes to remember how the car key worked. When I hit the seat in the Malibu, another throbbing wave of nausea kicked me in the brain stem. I put my head on the steering wheel and breathed slow until the fireworks passed.

  Even the streetlights down the block were enough to blind me. I fumbled for my sunglasses, found them by touch in the console, and shook them onto my head.

  Driving with a concussion isn’t like driving drunk. When you’re drunk, you feel fine, you can’t tell when your judgment is off until it’s way far gone, and you take unnecessary risks.

  On the other hand, when your brain is swollen so bad that it’s bruising itself on the insides of your skull, you don’t know which pretty lights are imaginary and which ones are oncoming trucks, so you tend to drive really, really slowly.

  I limped onto 80, then had to force myself to travel at speed over the bridge. I took it on faith that, on a one-way freeway, none of the bright white lights that speckled my vision were the headlights of oncoming traffic.

  Somehow I managed to get off the freeway at the maze and crawl up San Pablo to my building. No other offices open this late. I held on for dear life up the elevator, stumbled into the office, thought for a minute that there
was a terribly important reason I needed to use the phone if I could just remember it, and fell as gently as I could onto the couch. A couple hours, maybe, and I could get moving again…

  8:00 AM, Monday

  My body had other notions. The sun slapped me in the face at about eight. My head was clearer—still throbbing, but not blinding. I popped a prescription dose of ibuprofen and chased it with some bland toast.

  The office smelled like urine and bile. I cleaned up the mess I made in my sleep—good thing I slept on the narrow couch rather than on the futon in the file room that normally served as my bed. The old hardwood was none the worse for wear.

  I was now a little less than eight hours on a case after I’d been fired. Things being equal I’d have done my job according to the law, and gotten off the case.

  But someone else was involved in this. Tasers aren’t standard mugging equipment, and they’d only taken the phone and the gun. Like hell I was gonna let this go.

  My contract with Mrs. Thales billed by the day. She fired me at twenty past midnight, which meant that I was gonna be paid through midnight tonight. No review board in the world would buy it, but it was all the rationalization my migraine needed.

  There was no shower in this old Vic. Normally I’d get one at the gym down the road, but I wasn’t that steady on my feet right now. A sponge bath in the common bathroom was the best I could manage, but it didn’t kill the stink in the office.

  Rachael had class today until noon, so I had time to get my shit together, but I needed to be gone by the time she got here. She’d try to keep me from running the case down—or try to come with me.

  Where I was going, I didn’t know, yet. But if there was someone else in this equation, and they were willing to risk killing me with a boot to the head, then this trail couldn’t end anywhere good.

  I scrawled a quick note on a yellow pad asking her to do up the bill and collate the case file—I’d email the report later today—then dropped it on her desk.

  Through the fog and throbbing in my brain, I could only think of one angle to work: Rawles. He’d be released sometime this morning—I could get him out on my terms. He might know something about this mysterious fifth wheel with the electric trigger finger.

  I scared up the number for a bail bondsman I knew and dialed her on a prepaid.

  “Kim, this is Clarke.”

  “You sound like you’ve just lost a wrestling match with an elephant.”

  “You should see the other guy. How’s a quick five hundred bucks sound to you?”

  “Like a setup.”

  “There’s a kid in the tank, picked up last night by Danville PD on possession and assault, name of Jason Rawles. Should be up for bail this morning. I need him.”

  “Define ‘kid.’”

  “Nineteen.”

  “How, and how bad?”

  “I need him locked down until I can talk to him.”

  “When?

  “I can be there in half an hour.”

  “They don’t open for another couple hours.

  “That’s fine. Can you get him?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s playing games with some very bad people. I need him to get to them.” I caught myself slurring. Damn.

  “Sounds like you need black coffee.”

  “I need the kid.”

  “Okay. Come on in. I’ll find him.” She hung up.

  Pleasant Hill on a Monday morning. At least it would be contra-commute. And I had a couple hours to get my head to behave.

  A fresh set of clothes from my closet—the closets are one of the bonuses of Oakland’s converted Victorians—bottom desk drawer, a prepaid cell if I needed it. Top it off with my lightest bomber jacket, since my windbreaker had gone missing with Nya.

  I dumped my laptop and the paperwork into a satchel—I’d be wardriving today. I didn’t want to be easy to find until I knew who’d kicked my head in.

  Now, a weapon. They’d taken my primary—the one registered to my PI’s license. I’d need to stop in at the precinct and report it stolen—so I’d need to take the civilian weapons. Keeping a Stockton address has its privileges, like a county sheriff who believes in concealed carry. I kept the gun safe at the foot of the bed in the file room.

  Someone else was keeping a corpse in there.

  Stephanie, the girl who Thales drove off with. Badly used, splayed out and tied to the futon. Strangled.

  Street junkies are one thing. I saw dozens of those while I wore blue. Even saw a few domestics after I graduated to detective. It’s ugly. You learn to shrug it off.

  You never learn to shrug off the kids. If you do, you’re playing for the wrong side.

  A hard death. Dumped in my bed.

  Somebody wanted me out of circulation but bad.

  I didn’t get to be human today. Today, I was a cop again. Even if they sent me to San Quentin for it.

  I picked my feelings up and shoved them into solitary confinement where they could keep my concussion company. I strapped the .38 Special to my right ankle. I plucked the .45 in its molded holster and tucked it into my waistband at the small of my back, then threaded my belt through its loop.

  Two spare mags for the .45. Two speedloaders for the .38. I’d put them on my belt after I was safely away. One box of ammo for each. I backed out of the room without disturbing anything else.

  I didn’t even think about calling in my missing revolver now. Couldn’t have anyone knowing I’d even been in the Bay Area after I left the Thales place last night. As far as the cops were concerned, I’d gone back home to Stockton for the night.

  That meant I’d need extra cash for Kim. And I’d have to do something about Rawles. This one was getting expensive.

  I shook the dust out of one of the throw rugs over the desk to give it a nice thin coating. Every surface I’d touched got the same treatment—if the rest of the surface had dust, where I touched got a wipedown and a fresh sprinkle. By the time I left, a priest would have been hard-pressed to sniff out a ghostly echo of my presence in that office—I even stuck an old coffee mug on the desk that had three-day-old mold growing in it.

  I skedaddled down the back stairs with my barfy laundry in a trash bag, slipped into the Malibu and crawled out the alley. My head was still none too steady, but the sleep had healed me enough that I managed.

  For a little bit, anyway. The sky was nicely cooperative—mostly overcast, and a good thing too. My head kicked itself again every time I was dumb enough to drive through a cloudbreak. I needed to get out of the sun and get some food in me before I could even think straight about what to do next.

  There was a Starbucks just over the border into Piedmont where I picked up some breakfast and an open network. Not that I had anything to look for. Until my head settled down, the mere attempt to focus my eyes finely enough to read a screen sent my stomach lurching again.

  A basic coffee and a croissant was about what I could deal with. A table in the back corner served as a prop for a few minutes while I called Kim up again.

  “Kim, Clarke.”

  “I was just about to go get your boy wonder.”

  “Yeah, about that. Little change of plan. I need him out of circulation for the day.”

  “Not my job.”

  “Five Franklins enough to make it your job?”

  “We’ll talk when you get here.”

  11:00 AM, Monday

  Half an hour later, with my weapons both locked in a drawer under Kim’s front desk, I stood in bounty holding room of Barbersmith’s Bail Bonds, towering over Jason Rawles.

  “You knew.”

  “Yeah, man, I knew. So fucking what?” The kid was already rattled from his night in the joint, morning in court, and his moment of Kim—trust me, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Five foot two and stares down linebackers for fun—and that’s when she’s not working.

  He stared at the table and wouldn’t look up. “Stephanie can do what she wants.”

  “Like fucking her b
est friend’s father.”

  “Yeah. Like I said, so what?”

  “Try this on for size.” I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re gonna have your day in court for possession. Rich kid like you, probably a suspended sentence, some community service, maybe probation. Odds are after today you won’t see the inside of a cell again unless you’re dumb enough to get caught passing product.”

  He smirked.

  “Not bad, eh? What if I pressed that assault charge? How about malicious vandalism for the hood of my car? How about I drop your vacation pictures to the D.A.—Stephanie and Gina are still under 18, aren’t they?” I clucked my tongue at him, “A rap sheet like that, a guy like you would have a hell of a time getting into a college, or getting a job. How long do you think your parents will let you live with them after you get out? Thirty years old, maybe. No career. No job. Covered in prison tats. They’d like that wouldn’t they?”

  He started grinding his teeth, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Your problem is that you’re small time, Jason. Just starting out, you don’t really know what you’re doing yet, do you?”

  He grunted.

  “Did your supplier tell you how to launder your money? What if the DEA got the idea that you were a dealer, not just a user?”

  He stared straight ahead. Wouldn’t look at me. I decided to play a long bluff.

  “Maybe there’s a stash at your house?” He didn’t flinch. But he wasn’t blinking either. “Your car?” Nothing. “Oh, I see! Silly me. Bright guy like you would have a storage unit.” Flinch. “I’m guessing somewhere cheap, no questions asked.” Wince. “Not Danville.” He held his breath. “Somewhere in Dublin. Public Storage in Dublin, am I right?”

  His brow wrinkled, just a bit.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Probably used your own name to rent the unit too, right? Shame. They put people away for a long time for dealing meth. We’re probably talking San Quentin, if you’re lucky. If the Feds sink their teeth into you, it’s a SuperMax prison somewhere in Kansas, some place where they don’t give condoms and lube out. Mmm… those big bastards are gonna love your skinny ass.”