Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  Savannah finally forces out some words. “Trey was with you?”

  “He saw them take me.”

  More stewing. She inspects her manicure, which is flawless. She watches a dog walker trot by behind enough dogs for a sled team. She gets out, then slams the door behind her.

  I don’t want to go this way. I can’t tell her that without turning off Hoskins.

  Savannah stands on the curb with her back to me, her shoulders stiff. Then she turns to stare at the window she used to be on the inside of. After a few moments, she raps on the glass.

  I wait a beat, then open the window.

  She glowers at me, though her chin isn’t as strong as it was. “Aren’t you going to ask me to get back in?”

  “You led me into a trap. Ever wear handcuffs? It’s fucking humiliating. You want back in? Climb in. But I’m not begging you for anything.”

  She swallows. Hesitates. Gets in, slams the door. Leans forward to tell the driver, “Keep going.” Then sits bolt upright, her chin turned up. “Bastard.”

  “Say that after you’ve spent the night in a holding cell.”

  We pull to the curb on Valencia, one of the Mission District’s main commercial streets. It’s a lot of two- and three-story Victorian townhouses with commercial on the ground floor. The streetlights glow and the sidewalks bustle in the twilight. I remember how scruffy this area was when we came to see Mission Dolores when I was a kid. Not anymore.

  Lolo is crowded and noisy, with a lot of action near the front door around a bar with a photomural of palm trees and sunsets behind it. The seater walks us to a table underneath a collection of car doors hung on the back wall.

  I ask, “What is this place?”

  “California Jaliscan.” She bites off the ends of the words.

  We order drinks and dinner. Savannah folds her hands on the edge of the table and watches me for a moment. “There’s something you should know about me.”

  “What’s that?”

  She works her mouth for a few moments. “My ex-husband used to disappear overnight, wouldn’t call or answer his phone. He’d come back the next day and give me a story about how he’d worked late, then went out drinking with his work friends and he didn’t want to come home drunk, or whatever. He’d bring me a ‘sorry’ present. I bought it the first few times. I was young and…”

  “Naïve?”

  She sniffs. “Stupid. Being in love lowers your IQ by about forty points. I figured it out, though. I didn’t want to believe it—denial’s a big part of being in love, too, I think—until he caught the clap from one of his playmates and gave it to me.”

  “Ouch.” Wait. “You’re better now, right?”

  She snaps, “Nine years ago. Yes, I’m better.”

  The waitress brings our drinks. Savannah takes a hit from a tumbler with an orange slice floating in a sea of brown. “I cried a lot, got insanely mad and confronted him at his office in front of all his work friends, then filed for divorce.”

  “Good for you.” I mean it, too. Giving your steady an STD is just plain rude.

  “Thanks. Now you know why I reacted the way I did.” Savannah sets down her glass, then folds her hands again. “You know, you’re right. We’re not married. You haven’t proposed. I’m just some girl who sleeps with you sometimes.” Her jaw stiffens. “You said you expected courtesy from me? Well, I expect it from you, too. If you ever talk to me again the way you did on the way here? I’ll walk away and disappear. Is that clear?”

  I admire her sticking up for herself and telling off Hoskins. He’s not so wild about it. “If you ever talk to me again the way you did in the car? You won’t have that decision to make. Is that clear?” I wait for her lips to finish disappearing. “Now what the hell have you gotten me into?”

  I give her a highly sanitized version of last evening’s festivities, mixed with some nuggets I learned this morning. We chip away at the house-made tortilla chips and chunky fresh salsa more for form than out of hunger. She asks a lot of questions. Sometimes Hoskins even answers them.

  Savannah looks and sounds lost by the end. “I have no clue about any of this. Jim and Lorena moving drugs around? It’s crazy. If I saw anything like that, I’d go to the police.” She shakes her head. “Where did all this come from?”

  “My good buddy Bruce. Your competition. He’s been watching them… and you.”

  Her eyes go circular. “Me? He’s watching me? Why?”

  “Maybe because you’re friends with these people you hooked me up with. The ones with the DEA on their backs? Thanks for that.”

  “I didn’t know!”

  “You’re supposed to know. That’s why I pay you.”

  Ever since Tuesday night, I’ve been trying to figure whether it’s worth dumping the photos of Bandineau’s storage cube on Savannah. It is. I slap them on her placemat.

  She gets through the first two before she asks, “What is this?”

  The waitress interrupts with the first part of our food: small, Instagram-ready dishes, a kind of Mexican tapas. I scoop up a spicy beef albondiga (meatball with tomato sauce) before I answer. “Jim’s storage locker. It’s in Potrero Hill, if you know where that is.”

  “How did you get these?” Her volume’s about doubled.

  “Keep it down. I have ways.”

  Savannah sorts through the pictures, glancing at me now and then. She stops at a shot of the two shelf units. “Wow.” She doesn’t sound shocked, only mildly surprised.

  Wow? That’s it? When she starts to count the Nam Ton wares, I say, “Eighty-one.”

  She works her way through a meatball and a tlacoyo (basically, a Mexican vegetarian pita pocket) while she reviews the photos again. Then she flags down the waitress to order something called a Mezcal Mule.

  “Well?”

  She stacks the photos, slides them into their envelope, then gives it to me with a slightly trembling hand. “I never thought he’d stockpile them like this. Not at this scale.”

  “Any idea who his supplier is?”

  “They’re not coming from the markets, not this many.” She bolts the remaining half of the last albondiga. “They’re not that common. I know, I’ve looked.”

  “Where, then?”

  “I’d be guessing.”

  “So guess.”

  Savannah’s Mezcal Mule appears, an amber drink with a lime peel on top of the ice. The way she disappears the top inch says she’s more rattled than she lets on. “Maybe he has some kind of pipeline to northern Thailand? Someone with resources?”

  “Like a drug trafficker?”

  Savannah sags as the fight goes out of her. She drops her face into her hands and pleads, “What do you want me to say?”

  “You can start with ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Sniff. “I’m sorry.” She pushes out of her chair and swipes her purse strap off the back. “I have to go to the bathroom.” There’s no swing to her step when she leaves.

  It’s amazing what Hoskins can get away with. Having that kind of power would be awesome. I’d never be able to look in a mirror again, though.

  Our empty plates are replaced by two more full ones while Savannah’s gone. My appetite’s gone, too, but Hoskins needs to eat. I pick at the new food, watch the ice melt in Savannah’s drink, and hope that she’ll come back.

  She does after fifteen minutes or so, drops her purse on her chair, then stands next to me. When I look up, she bends, takes my face in her hands, then gives me a long, lingering kiss. She whispers, “I’m so sorry. Last night must’ve been horrible for you. I should’ve believed you.”

  “You talked to Trey?”

  After a while, she nods a fraction of an inch. “Forgive me?”

  Hoskins takes a shot before I can stop him. “You believe him, but you don’t believe me?”

  She works her mouth a few times without making any sound. “I…I thought you told me so I could call him and he can back you up.” She tosses he
r hands. “Sorry. Forgive me?”

  Hoskins wants me to say not yet, maybe never. I tell him to shut the fuck up—I’m tired of abusing Savannah and I won’t kick her anymore. I stand and wrap my arms around her. “Forgiven.”

  We stay locked together for a few moments with the waitstaff brushing past us until she kisses me again, then sits and starts attacking the food. “I guess we both said some things—”

  “Shhh.” I watch Savannah eat for a while, then consider the wall behind her—painted mango, half-covered with origami boats. “How’re you and Jim living in the same house?”

  Her glass skids to a stop halfway to her mouth. After a deer-in-the-headlights moment, she slowly sets down her drink. “How do you know where Jim lives?”

  “He and Lorena aren’t the only people who can pry into other people’s lives.”

  She sighs. “Promise you won’t repeat what I’m about to tell you. Especially not to Jim.”

  “I promise.” Until I need to.

  She takes a bit more liquid courage. “It’s mine.”

  “You own it? That must be some trust fund you’ve got.”

  “It was. When I finally got control of it, about six years ago? I had a lot of losses to make up for. The Leech did a—”

  “‘The Leech’?”

  “My stepfather. You read Mother’s Wiki page, right? Stanley Wilkes?”

  “The hedge-fund guy.”

  “Get it right—the hedge-fund ‘genius.’” She says genius like it’s a disease. “He’s been bleeding her dry since they met. My trust fund, too. I needed to invest in something that never loses value, and the only thing I know of like that is San Francisco real estate. The house’s worth about three times what I paid for it. I’m a millionaire again—not like you, but I’ll take it.”

  “And Jim doesn’t know you’re the landlord.”

  “No. I dropped a hint that my building had a vacancy and he moved in.”

  An idea explodes in my brain. I hate myself for thinking of it. But it’s a pure Hoskins play to separate Savannah from her friends and have her totally commit to his goal.

  I finish my beer while I roll the idea around and knock off the rough edges. “Ever hear of forfeiture?”

  Her eyebrows try to meet in the middle. “What’s that?”

  “Once you’re indicted, the DA will move to seize any assets that may have been bought with the proceeds of a crime. It’s how they clean out drug dealers’ accounts so they can’t pay for fancy lawyers with dirty money. If you’re convicted, you forfeit the seized assets to the government. It’s a profit center for a lot of big-city PDs and the DOJ.”

  “Okay.” She looks puzzled. She hasn’t connected the dots yet.

  “Your friend Jim—your tenant—is part of a criminal conspiracy. Whether it’s about customs laws or drug smuggling, who knows. Doesn’t matter. Knowing Jim, he’ll flip on you the moment they cuff him.”

  The light dawns. Savannah’s mouth sags open. “They wouldn’t.”

  “Sure they would. A nice house in central San Francisco would pay for a lot of new toys for the DEA. Even if you’re not convicted, you’ll probably have to sell it to pay the lawyers.”

  Her face starts to dissolve. “No. Not my house.”

  Hoskins, you’re such a bastard. “We’re both in this, now. The DEA knows about you. They know about me.”

  She cups her hands around her nose and mouth and starts to breathe noisily. She whimpers, “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t matter.” I hold out my hand to her, sweep my fingers as a prompt. She grabs it like she’ll fall into the bay if she doesn’t. “I don’t want that to happen to you. I like you. The way we stop it is to make sure that if Jim goes down, he doesn’t take you with him.”

  “H-how do we…?”

  “We find out where he’s getting the pots and who’s giving them to him. Then we hand it to the feds.” I squeeze her hand. “He sinks like a rock and we don’t get splashed. You keep your house, I keep mine.”

  The pain in her eyes almost breaks my heart. She whispers, “He’s my friend.”

  “Somebody looking at a stretch in the federal pen? He’s got no friends.” Ask me, I know. “I’m doing this with or without you. I’d rather do it with you.”

  I expect tears. They’re there, shimmering in the candlelight. But she holds it together, wipes her nose with her napkin, blots her eyes, sniffs. “What do you want me to do?”

  Chapter 34

  35 DAYS LEFT

  Southwest drops me at LAX at 11:35. I wait seemingly forever for my checked bag to pop out the chute. The Nam Ton vase is in my carry-on; I left the three sacrificial pots with Savannah to dump on the Chinese. We’d kissed (and other things) and made up last night.

  I flog my rental car straight up the 405 to Getty Center Drive. I hand over the pot to Toni in the parking lot of the Leo Baeck Temple, the synagogue across the street from the entrance to the Getty Center. She’s jumpier than a cat in a room full of vacuum cleaners. She promises she’ll have it for me in a week, then slams the door and flees.

  I sigh. It’s hard to believe I still have this effect on people here. What happened to forgiveness?

  After I finish my report and send it to Olivia, I go for a run to shake the stiffness out of my body, bake the Bay Area chill out of my bones, and think about what’s next.

  Two things need to happen to finish the project. One depends on Bandineau: he needs to get me a meeting with his supplier. That’ll tell me if the supplier gets the pots direct from Thailand or from somebody on this side of the ocean. I hope it’s the former—if the supplier has a domestic connection, then I have to do all this again, which will eat up more time I don’t have.

  The other depends on… well, somebody: I need to know where Nam Ton comes from. Hopeful Me hopes that Bandineau’s connection pulls the stuff directly out of the ground in Thailand and ships it here. It would save a whole lot of time, but not even Hopeful Me believes it’ll work out that easily. Realistic Me has already decided Bandineau’s supplier won’t solve my problems and may add some more.

  Maybe I should look for the source myself.

  This is not only the kind of resourceful, success-oriented behavior Allyson expects from her associates, but also gives me an excuse to keep billing the project. That hasn’t been a problem up to now, but I no longer have a house to build and I doubt Allyson will keep paying me €1500 a day to read books.

  Savannah hasn’t had any luck at this. But she’s not as motivated as I am. I can do this.

  I can do this. I keep telling myself this as Friday afternoon turns into Friday evening. I manage to find the places Savannah said she’d rejected, and the places I’d found last time I did this. The problem I keep running into is that I don’t know how Thailand is set up, I can’t read Thai, and I can’t recognize when the same place has multiple names. None of that’s going to change this weekend even if it is three days long (it’s Memorial Day).

  I grab a Stone Ruination IPA from the fridge—I’ve used my agency money to step up our beer game—and plunk into a plastic lawn chair on the patch of mostly-dead grass that used to be a pool. It’s warm with a gentle onshore breeze that helps clear my head. This leads to thinking, then plotting, then some internet research on my work phone, then a call to Olivia.

  She says, “At last, you ring. I’ve been pining.”

  “It’s been five days.”

  “Time does tend to stretch when one is pining. How may I help?”

  “Our mutual friend Rick—” Hoskins “—needs a weekend getaway to San Francisco.”

  Savannah says, “Oh, this is pretty. I love it already.”

  “This” is a city-view executive suite on the sixteenth floor of the Four Seasons San Francisco. Lots of cool grays and taupes, contemporary furniture, an all-marble bathroom big enough for a party. Why not the Saint Francis? The Four Seasons has a spa; the Saint Francis doesn’t. I f
igured Savannah would appreciate that.

  I made a simple deal with her: she’d get the run of the place, including the spa, but when she wasn’t being pampered, she’d help me look for the place where Dr. Udomprecha found Nam Ton. It’s the name of a river, after all; it’s got to be on a map someplace.

  But after hours of searching spread over Saturday and Sunday, we come up with nothing. All I learn is that Dr. Udomprecha is female. “Pensri’s a woman’s name,” Savannah tells me. “It means ‘beauty of the moon.’” I’ve now got more digital maps of northern Thailand than I ever knew existed, but no better idea of where Nam Ton wares come from.

  We don’t work nonstop. It’s fun letting Savannah haul me around, showing me her favorite places in the city. She also wants to play a lot. The things I do for the agency…

  Using Savannah’s phone to take a picture of her gets me a look at her call log. There’s a lot of numbers with an “86” country code going back for weeks. Country code “86” is China. Her friend there? She was calling way before I got the wares for them to sell. Hmm.

  On the flight home on Monday, I can’t shake the feeling that the entire weekend was lost.

  Then while I wait outside Terminal 1 at LAX for an Uber to take me home, I notice my work phone has a voicemail.

  It’s Bandineau. We’re going to meet his supplier on Thursday.

  Chapter 35

  29 DAYS LEFT

  Bandineau and I sit in the silver Chrysler 200 I rented at Oakland International Airport a few hours ago. We’re parked in a long, narrow lot at the very northern tip of Alameda Island, across the street from what used to be Alameda Naval Air Station. It’s now a collection of empty buildings and whatever businesses decided to hide out here. Mythbusters used to film their experiments on the runway a couple hundred yards west of us. Across the channel, Godzilla-sized cranes threaten two city-sized container ships in the floodlights’ artificial sunshine.

  The clock on the dash says it’s 9:36 p.m. and it’s 58 degrees outside. Bandineau’s contact is late.

  Bandineau hasn’t had much to say since I picked him up at BART’s 12th Street Station in downtown Oakland an hour ago. I can’t tell if he’s pissed at me, if he’s talked out from his day, or if he’s scared. Maybe all three.