“Thank you for cooperating,” Ari said to Evers. “You may receive a follow-up call from Inspector Sanchez.”
Evers stayed slumped in his chair, and we left for real.
Out in the corridor, we paused by the elevator. Ari opened my shoulder bag and took out two devices. One teardrop-shaped bit of metal looked something like an ordinary earphone, but much smaller. I realized that Ari could have combed some of his hair over it, and no one would have noticed. The other device, a small square gray box, looked like nothing I’d ever seen. He clipped the one onto his left ear and held the other out in the direction of Evers’ office.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“An illegal wiretap, of course. Shush.”
As much as I disliked being told to shush, I did and kept a watch on the corridor. In a few minutes Ari made a small mutter of satisfaction and removed the earpiece. He put the devices back into my bag.
“As I thought,” Ari said. “He called both women and told them we’d been to see him. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything incriminating, and neither did they. He did, though, call one of them Sweetie.”
“Which may be why he didn’t want to tell us their names.”
While we waited for the elevator down, I had the distinct feeling that someone was staring at me. I turned around, looked in all directions, but saw no one. Once the elevator car arrived, the feeling disappeared.
As soon as we returned to the apartment, Ari phoned Inspector Sanchez to report in. I sat down at my computer desk and contemplated the blank screen of the monitor. In the past, I’d occasionally seen clues and pictures appear when the system was down—just image objectification, of course—but it stayed stubbornly dark. Still, Evers’ remark about spirits and the secrets of the universe nagged at me.
“That’s done.” Ari strode back into the living room. “Sanchez will follow up on the other two coven members.”
“Damn! I was hoping to interview them myself.”
“So was I, but I think we’re being put in our place. I doubt if they have anything valuable to contribute, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
“Let’s hope. I—” I paused, staring at him. “Grimoires.”
“What?”
“Sorry. The Collective Data Stream just reminded me that I’ve got some grimoires. You know, books of spells and magical lore.”
Ari rolled his eyes but said no more. I got up and went to my bookshelf, where I kept two scholarly editions of late medieval grimoires hidden behind a row of books on nutrition.
“You used a couple of words that triggered this,” I said to Ari. “Put in place, valuable—they made me think of hidden treasure. If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of the things spirits are supposed to do for you, finding lost treasures.”
Sure enough, when I leafed through the first grimoire, I found a passage describing a guaranteed way of discovering buried gold. Since the spell began with biting out the heart of a living dove, I ignored the rest of the details.
“This Caleb guy,” I said, “the one I told you about when we were coming home from Aunt Eileen’s.”
“The treasure hunter?”
“That’s him, yes. I’m wondering if he’s our Brother Belial, and he was looking to invoke some spirits that could help him find it.”
“You could call your sister and ask if this fellow’s tall and thin.”
“Brilliant idea. I’ll do that.”
Kathleen, however, sank my hopes of a quick ID on the hooded man. Caleb Sumner was short and pudgy, she told me, and had a tenor voice.
“He pronounces some words kind of funny,” Kathleen said. “I mean, he keeps dropping his R’s like some New England people do, but beyond that. When he says light and night, it’s sort of like loit and noit.”
“When he’s answering a question, does he say ‘yeah yeah’ instead of just ‘yeah’?”
“Yeah, he does.”
“I bet he’s from Martha’s Vineyard.”
“The island? No wonder he’s so good with boats, then. Jack says he really knows his stuff. Other than that, he’s a total dork, if you ask me, not that anyone does.” Hurt crept into her voice. “Jack won’t hear a word against him.”
That bit of information struck me as odd, because Jack was normally suspicious of everyone who tried to befriend him. Like many rich people, he worried that these potential friends were trying to get into his bank account.
“Does Caleb come to the house a lot?” I said.
“Not a lot, not since Woofie Five bit him.” Kathleen paused for a laugh. “Really hard on the ankle, which was all the poor little love could reach. He’s the Yorkie mix.”
And as nasty a canine critter as you could find, or at least, so I remembered him. In this case, however, I was prepared to cut Woofie Five some slack.
“Did Caleb do something to set him off?”
“No. It was just the bad vibe.” Kathleen hesitated, thinking in her usual slow way. “Aunt Eileen told me that you’re still going with that British guy. The one from InterCop or whatever it’s called.”
“Interpol, and his name’s Ari Nathan. He’s Israeli. He just sounds British. Actually, we’re looking for an apartment together.”
Kathleen squealed in honest delight. “Oh, that’s great news!” she said once she’d finished squealing. “Congrats!”
“Well, it’s not like we’re engaged or anything.”
“I could guess that, knowing you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just your fear of commitment. That’s what Sean calls it, anyway.”
“Well, he could be right about that.”
“It’s probably because we lost Dad.”
“Oh, don’t you get all psychological on me!”
Although she didn’t laugh, I swear I could hear her smiling, it was that loud.
“Anyway.” Kathleen paused again. “But, Ari, if he’s a cop, he must know what criminals are like, right?”
“It comes with the job, yeah.”
“I wonder if he could take a look at Caleb for me. You’re coming to the party Sunday, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, for sure. Will Caleb be there?”
“You bet. Jack insisted. Ari could tell me what he thinks of him.”
“Better yet, Ari could look him up on a database if we can get his fingerprints on a glass or something, which should be easy if you’re serving finger food.”
“I gotta say, Nola, you always have awfully useful boyfriends. I hope Ari’s not the jealous type, though. Caleb’s mentioned a couple of times that he wants to meet my sister, though maybe he was just joking around. Trying to flatter me, y’know.”
An alarm went off like a foghorn in my mind. All I said was, “You get a lot of that, yeah. Are your sisters as beautiful as you?”
“Yeah, just like that.” And to give her credit, she sounded honestly disgusted. “I get real sick of it.”
“I bet. What time Sunday?”
“Around four or five. See ya then.”
With that she clicked off. I told Ari the news.
“Odd all around,” Ari said. “But then, anything to do with your family tends to be. I’ll have a legitimate reason to ask for a match on this fellow’s prints if we can get them. This Drake’s treasure business—it sounds to me like some sort of confidence game.”
“Getting Jack to put up cash, you mean, and then disappearing?”
“Precisely that. From everything you’ve told me,” Ari went on, “your brother-in-law sounds frightened of him.”
“Yeah, he does, and that’s not like Jack at all.”
“Which reminds me. I meant to ask you about this boat of his. I’m assuming it’s not a commercial fishing craft.”
“No, though it’s big enough to go pretty far out to sea. It doesn’t have sails, just an engine, but it’s got a cabin and a galley. I don’t know anything about boats, or I’d tell you what kind it is.”
“Have you ever gone out on it?”
> “Only when it’s been docked down at Tiburon. Sometimes Kathleen throws parties on it. I get seasick too easily to want to go very far on the thing. Why?”
“No real reason. Just curious.”
More warnings sounded in my brain. Thanks to his guns and his muscles, I tended to forget that Ari could be just as sly and sneaky as I could. He was probing for something, and Jack and his father had more than a few old secrets that I didn’t want found. Something must have shown on my face, because Ari smiled in a vague sort of way.
“Well,” he said, “what’s on the agenda for today? Apartment hunting?”
“For sure. The sooner we’re out of this place, the better.”
Besides the usual problems with finding an apartment in San Francisco, I had one particularly difficult requirement. Having Chaos masters out to kill me was one thing; putting innocent bystanders in their way, quite another. I wanted a unit over a business that would be closed and uninhabited at night, the most likely time for any attack.
That afternoon we had a real stroke of luck. Under a heavy gray sky that threatened rain, we were driving back and forth on various streets down in the Sunset district when I suddenly knew we should turn down 48th Avenue. Whether it was the forces of the Balance or the Collective Data Stream, I don’t know, but the tip paid off.
Just a couple of blocks from Ocean Beach, we found a building that held two flats, both empty. Most of the houses on that block stood cheek by jowl in the standard Sunset district style, but this particular house stood between two wide driveways, both leading back to a graveled yard and a row of ramshackle garages. A “To Rent or Lease” sign displayed a handy realtor’s phone number. When I called, the realtor was more than glad to meet us at the property.
While I looked over the inside of the building with the realtor, Ari prowled around the outside and sized up the neighboring apartment houses as well as the building itself. As I walked through the two flats, the realtor, a skinny dour sort in a gray suit and a pale green turban, kept peering out of various windows to keep track of him.
“May I ask what your partner is looking for?” Mr. Singh said eventually.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a cop. They’re suspicious by nature, cops.”
“I suppose this is so.” Mr. Singh hesitated, then shrugged. The upstairs flat turned out to be a very typical San Francisco railroad flat, though a nice one with hardwood floors. It had a modern kitchen opening off the back door steps, which seemed solid when we climbed them. From the kitchen, a narrow hall led to a sizable bedroom and bathroom and eventually to a big living room with a squared-off bay window that let in afternoon sunlight. When I sampled the vibrations, I felt nothing but the usual lingering traces of domestic bickering and laughter, probably from a large family.
Downstairs, however, struck me as peculiar. From the upstairs flat, we went down the front stairs and out of the front door to a glassed-in porch and the door into the downstairs flat. It opened into an oddly shaped room with a closet that implied it had once been a bedroom, except that on the far side it opened directly into a tiny living room with the obligatory bay window. Beyond that, a hallway led down to a minuscule bathroom, a randomly assembled kitchen, and a huge proper bedroom with windows looking out to the graveled yard and the garages.
“This place is put together kind of weirdly,” I said.
“Yes, I am afraid that is true.” Mr. Singh paused to look out of a bedroom window at Ari, who had opened one of the garage doors and was peering inside. “What is he doing now?”
“I can only guess.” I finally thought up a plausible reason for all the prowling. “But he’s getting a new car this week.”
“Ah.” Mr. Singh smiled in relief. “Of course. He wishes to ensure it will be safe. With the lower flat, you would also gain access to the garage directly under the building, but the rain does run under that door. The outside garages are quite sound. The property management firm had our maintenance man look all the garages over.”
“His name isn’t George, is it?”
“No.” His puzzled frown reappeared. “Why—”
“Just a thought. Sorry.”
Mr. Singh led the way into the narrow beige kitchen—beige walls, stove, refrigerator, the works, all the same ugly yellowish tan. The paint and the counters looked brand-new, as did the stove. While Mr. Singh scowled out the window at Ari, who was taking pictures of the back of the house with his cell phone, I opened myself up to the vibrations. Immediately, I smelled gas and felt despair. I shut down fast.
“Someone killed themselves here, didn’t they?” I said.
Singh winced, then forced out a weak smile. “You are very astute,” he said. “I am afraid that this is true. A very sad case, a woman who had taken many drugs, or so the police told us.”
“I see. That’s why it’s been standing empty so long.”
“Yes, many people who rent here in the Sunset are arrived from China. They will not take a house where someone has recently died.”
“I see. Well, that won’t bother me, particularly. I’d only use this flat for business, if the zoning’s okay with that, anyway. I’m moving into Internet marketing, and I’d like a separate office and storage space.”
His dour mood lifted. “The zoning will be no problem. May I ask what you will be selling?”
“Souvenir objects from the Holy Land—Israel, that is.” Although I was lying at the moment, it occurred to me that I’d found a good cover story. “Thanks to Ari, I have connections.”
“Ah, of course. And then you would live in the upper flat?”
“Yes, and I assume nothing horrible happened there.”
“Nothing, no, that I know of, and I have handled this property for many years. Perhaps if you rent the entire building, the owners can be persuaded to give good terms on the lease.”
Although we made a formal commitment that afternoon, the owners, of course, wanted a credit check. On a handshake, Mr. Singh promised to call us as soon as he talked with them. We left him to lock up the building and returned to our car.
“Let’s go straight to the old apartment,” I said to Ari. “I want to do an LDRS on Evers. Something keeps nagging at my back brain.”
But at the apartment we found Mr. Hansen the glazier there, busily glazing, while Mrs. Zukovski, swathed in her pink tracksuit, sat on my computer chair and watched him. He’d taken both side panes of glass out of the bay window as well as the remnants of the shattered main pane. A chilly wind blew through the living room.
“You might have told me that he was coming today,” I said.
“I didn’t know until he got here,” Mrs. Z said. “He had a cancellation.”
Hansen turned from the window and smiled. “Sorry. I got all the way down to the other job before they bothered to tell me I couldn’t come in.”
“Very rude of them,” Mrs. Z said. “So I thought I’d just keep an eye on things.”
Meaning, no doubt, that she’d been going through our stuff while Hansen worked. It was a good thing I’d put all the papers pertaining to the case into a locked drawer in my desk.
“Uh, I hope you’re going to get that done before the rain hits,” I said.
Hansen stuck his head out of the glass-free window and considered the cloudy sky. “Sure looks like it, don’t it?” he said. “Sure been a wet year.”
“It has, yeah,” I said. “Everyone was worrying about drought, and it turns out that we’ve got water to burn.”
Hansen laughed and nodded. “Yeah, we sure do. I’m glad of it, yeah, but it’s sure caused a lot of trouble down the coast.”
“Like Pacifica, you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s it, all right. All them fancy buildings, red-tagged now.” He paused to scratch his scalp with one dirty fingernail. “Well, I’ll be getting the windows done in a couple of hours here.”
Rather than sit around and freeze while Hansen finished, we left. Once we got outside, I paused on the sidewalk and considered my back brain.
The nagging sensation had disappeared. “We could go sit in the car,” Ari said. “You could do your LDRS there.”
“Not necessary. I’ve missed my chance at whatever it was.”
“That’s too bad.” Ari glanced at his watch. “It’s four-thirty. Let’s go have an early dinner.”
We walked across the street to the Persian restaurant. Since they featured a salad bar, I’d gone in there a couple of times. Nice people ran it, the son and daughter of refugees from the fall of the Shah. That afternoon, in the slack time between lunch and dinner, a young skinny guy with a long blue apron covering his gray slacks and white shirt drifted over to take our order. I remembered him as a cousin of the owners.
His English, when he asked if we’d like something to drink, was not the best. Not a problem—Ari spoke to him in a language that sounded a little bit like Italian to my ignorant ears. The waiter grinned in relief and answered in the same. Needless to say, I let Ari order for both of us.
“Is that Farsi?” I said once the waiter had gone off to the kitchen.
“Yes,” Ari said. “A dialect of it, anyway.”
“How many languages do you know?”
“It depends on how you define a language.” He looked away and frowned while he thought about it. “Five European ones, then Hebrew, of course, and Farsi. I can get by on the street with Dari, but I can’t claim I know it. Then there’s Arabic. It has a lot of dialects. Most speakers of one can’t understand the others, but everyone who’s been to school can understand the standard version. I know the standard and the Palestinian dialect well, and then I can get by with the Egyptian version.”
I was impressed. I only know three languages, if you don’t count Latin, which I don’t, since there aren’t a lot of people around who want to speak Latin back.
The waiter returned with rose-flavored sodas and a tray of appetizers, a more generous selection than I’d ever seen before. With the place so empty, he hovered at the table for a while, talking with Ari. Both of them laughed now and then—at jokes, I supposed. After he brought the main dishes, he lingered some more, and this time Ari began asking him questions in between bites, which the waiter answered at some length.
Water to Burn Page 6
