Skulduggery

by Carolyn Hart

  Caught up in the color and excitement, I almost forgot to check behind me and, when I did, it was with the feeling of having missed something because what I saw was wrong, all wrong!

  Jimmy, his face wary and uncertain, was listening intently to a man, who kept jerking his head toward the shadows of an awning. Finally, Jimmy nodded and turned to move the few steps into the darkness where I could scarcely see them. But I knew this couldn’t be the man from the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa. It wasn’t possible. The man wasn’t Chinese!

  He and Jimmy were only dim shapes in the shadow of the awning, but I had seen the man clearly. He stood just over medium height. He wore a heavy winter suit of dull grey. His face was blunt, high colored, heavy jowled, and he wore a bristly blond beard.

  A brass band preceded the dragon and it was swinging past us now, blaring out, oddly. Amazing Grace. Firecrackers sputtered and popped in the street behind us, raining down from fire escapes and rooftops.

  Still I twisted to see behind me. It couldn’t be the right man! Surely Jimmy would be careful. He knew we were here, ready to help him, if need be.

  Jimmy, the straw carry-all still firmly in his left hand, moved back near the lamp post and propped an attaché case on top of a parking meter. He opened it, bent close, reached inside. A loping band of teenagers ran down the sidewalk toward him. He looked up and quickly slammed the attaché case shut. He turned and moved back into the shadowy alcove. There was a flurry of movement then the other man, clutching the straw bag, darted down the sidewalk toward me, pushing into the thick of the crowd massed at the corner.

  I held the Nikon shoulder high, ready, then it was this instant or never as he shoved his way into the crowd and was even with me, only four feet away.

  One picture, two, three, the fourth caught the back of his head.

  The light wasn’t quite as bright as beneath the lamp post but there was an almost daylight-sheen cast by the fire truck spotlight and light spilled from a hot dog stand at the corner. Enough, there should have been enough.

  He was slipping free of the crush at the corner when someone threw a firecracker and it exploded by his right foot. Panicked, he swung around to look back toward Jimmy and he shouted in a language I didn’t know.

  Then, from above me, the friendly boy called out, speaking also in that language that I didn’t know. The man looked up, color spread back into his face, he nodded and, abruptly, he turned and began to run heavily, skirting the fire truck, crossing Bush and heading down Grant. He was almost immediately swallowed up in the shifting moving crowd.

  I looked up, the boy was cheering now because the dragon had reached the top of the hill, was weaving and bobbing, its fantastic face, painted with swirls of red and gold, nodding to the spectators.

  I waited until the dragon was past and a high school band marching by, then I called up, “What did you say to him?”

  The boy looked down, puzzled. “Huh?”

  “To the man who shouted. What did you say?”

  “Oh, I told him not to worry, that it was just firecrackers.”

  Another dragon was turning the corner, far away, down at the base of Grant and the crowd began to murmur, the sound swelling and rising.

  “What language did he speak?”

  “Russian.”

  He misread my expression.

  “You’d be surprised,” he continued from his damp aerial perch, “how many people speak Russian in San Francisco. It’s my major and I’m always getting a chance to practice it. Anyway, you can find people here who speak all kinds of languages, it’s . . .”

  I didn’t really listen to the rest of his likable chatter.

  Russian. Indeed, I was surprised.

  TWENTY

  The big rip-off.

  Of course, nobody should have been surprised. The Babylonians and the Elamites knew about thieves’ honor.

  “It looked like it was all there!” Jimmy said furiously.

  Stacks of twenty-dollar bills were tumbled onto the middle of the conference table in Dan’s office. Lots of stacks. Six hundred and twenty-five stacks in all but only about twenty of them were made up of twenty-dollar bills all the way down. The rest had a twenty on the top and bottom and ones in between.

  Miss Chow and I added them up. It was a respectable total. Seventy-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. But it was forty-six thousand one hundred and fifty dollars short of the going price for the Green Door Hotel.

  And there wasn’t a dammed thing we could do about it.

  If we had been real crooks, we could have put out a call, tried to track the man down. But we were one social worker, one lawyer, one little old lady, one restaurant owner and one anthropologist. Not much muscle there.

  Dan was the only one who showed any interest in my photography. Jimmy just shrugged. Even I couldn’t see much use for it. I only knew that my first instinct, to block the sale, had been right. I was culpable. Damn culpable.

  “What gets me,” Jimmy exploded, “is that I was such a chump! I should have known it was all wrong when he wasn’t Chinese.”

  “He was Russian,” I announced.

  Four faces looked at me seriously.

  “ESP?” Dan asked.

  So I told them of the cheerful college student and the firecrackers.

  “Russian,” Dan repeated thoughtfully. Dan reminded us that China and Russia share the world’s longest border and great mutual mistrust. It didn’t take too much savvy to know that Chinese embassies everywhere were likely objects of curiosity to Russian agents. If a Russian agent in Ottawa was monitoring telephone conversations at the Embassy on Friday and if that agent were both greedy and daring . . .

  We all nodded solemnly. Everybody could see how it might have happened. But that was no comfort at all to Jimmy.

  He pounded the conference table and the stacks of money slithered and jumped on its polished surface. “This isn’t enough! Now there isn’t any way we can save the Green Door!”

  I almost spoke up, then I closed my mouth firmly again. I know how a lawyer’s mind works. They have such a finicky attitude toward what you can do and what you can’t do. An anthropologist is more interested in the art of the possible. So, I kept my mouth shut.

  Instead, I sighed wearily, yawned, said I was sorry that everything hadn’t worked out, but that I believed I would go home now.

  Dan immediately got up and began to reach for my coat and scarf. “I’ll see Ellen and Miss Chow home, Jimmy. They’re about done in. Besides, there isn’t anything more we can do, anyway.”

  Everyone began to mill around. Buddy said he would be glad to take Miss Chow home. I stepped closer to Jimmy, put my hands on his arms, bent close as if to kiss his cheek, but I whispered softly, “Call me later. I have an idea,” then I touched his cheek softly with my lips. “Some money’s better than none,” I said aloud.

  It was close to eleven when Dan walked me up the stairs to my apartment. I handed him my key and he opened the door. I wanted to ask him in and I knew he wanted to come in. But Jimmy would be calling.

  We stood in the doorway. Slowly, he reached out, pulled me close to him. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I lifted my face to his and his mouth came down on mine and I didn’t care if the phone rang forever.

  It was Dan who said indistinctly, “Your phone . . .”

  “Yes.” Then, quickly, “Oh yes, I’d better . . .”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I was smiling when I reached down to answer the telephone. It was Jimmy. I told him my scheme. He was silent for a long moment then he laughed and his laugh reminded me of Dan, an open infectious boisterous laugh.

  “By God, Ellen, you’re all right.” Jimmy laughed again. “Dan won’t like it.”

  “I don’t suggest we mention it to him.”

  That tickled him, too. “At least, not for now, huh?”

  I set my alarm for early. It was going to be a full day. I started off in my darkroom at s
even. I wore rubber gloves as I developed the film. I kept on the rubber gloves while I picked out some contact paper from the middle of the stack where I would not have touched it. I had several plans for the upcoming photographs but putting my fingerprints on them wasn’t included.

  The prints were first-rate, clear, sharp, distinct. My Russian, as I thought of him, couldn’t have come across better if he had posed. The camera had caught him full face, high forehead, thick grey hair receding from a widow’s peak, a blunt nose, pouchy jowls, bristly grey-blond beard and there, just visible above the beard on his left cheek, the jagged tip of a scar that likely ran down the full cheek.

  Oh baby, I thought, anybody who ever knew you will recognize this picture. We’re going to teach you not to be such a greedy bastard.

  Dan called at eight and I wondered whether he just assumed I was an early riser.

  I asked him. He laughed, softly this time. “If you aren’t, you will be,” he declared. “I always get up early.”

  There was a good lot of talk along that line, fun for us, not particularly of interest to anyone else.

  “How about Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch?”

  Damn, I wanted to. Wanted to. But today was duty day.

  “Dan, I missed work Friday, you know, and there is a project I have to work on . . .”

  I could sense his surprise, his sudden uncertainty, and I hurried to add, “. . . not that I wanted to. But you know how it is. So, please, can you come for dinner tomorrow night?”

  That would be Monday night and it would all be done, success or failure, by Monday night.

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see you before then.”

  “I . . .” Damn, I would hurry, get it done. “I want to see you, too. Tonight then. At eight.”

  A busy, busy day.

  Jimmy called at mid-morning, told me he had the contract ready, had talked to Miss Chow and had I read the Sunday newspaper?

  I said no and rustled through the sections to find the story, just a small insignificant story on an inside page about the odd episode in Ottawa when a member of the Chinese Embassy staff was robbed at the airport parking lot of an attaché case by a masked gunman. The Embassy official had declined to confirm the report or reveal what was carried in the case.

  When the pictures were finished, two prints of the best shot, I put them in my briefcase. I filed the negatives under R for Russian with no other notation.

  Next I took a quick run to the drugstore, and, wearing leather gloves now, I bought the cheapest typing paper and a package of manila envelopes. On to Berkeley and the University library where I rented a carrel with a typewriter. It didn’t take long. I put one photo in an envelope addressed to the FBI with the typed information that the subject of the picture had taken possession of the famed Peking Man bones in San Francisco on Saturday, that he would likely attempt to smuggle them out of the United States and that he was believed to be a minor member of the Russian Embassy staff in Ottawa. The second photo went in an envelope addressed to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa with the same information. I dropped both envelopes into a mail box at the Student Union.

  I thought both recipients would find the enclosures interesting.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time I got home from Berkeley. I made coffee, straightened the apartment, but, finally, I could put it off no longer.

  For several months now, as a regular thing, Richard and I went out for dinner on Monday evenings, usually to Mario’s, an inexpensive Italian restaurant not far off Broadway. Richard would drop by my office, wait as I finished up, then we would go out to the parking lot, his car would follow mine home then, in his Fiat, we would drive on to dinner.

  No big deal. But a regular thing, an expected end to Mondays. But not this Monday for Dan would be coming to dinner.

  Oh, it’s hard to do some things.

  I dialed and Richard answered. He was stiff at first. “I came last night. But you weren’t home.”

  I told him I was sorry, that it had been . . . unavoidable. Before he could say more, I forced myself to go on.

  “Richard, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to go out to dinner with you tomorrow night. I’m having dinner . . . with someone else.”

  The sudden silence told me more than I wanted to know, told me he cared and I wondered with an empty feeling if I had made a hideous mistake. I had known Richard for half-a-year and we had laughed together, enjoyed each other, moved toward love. I had known Dan Lee for half-a-week and not quite that.

  Richard cleared his throat, said almost briskly, almost but not quite, “Right, Ellen. I’m . . . sorry you can’t make it.” He paused, then said quickly, “It was good of you to call.”

  Good of me to call. Oh, Lord.

  “Richard,” and it was my voice that broke, “Richard, I’m sorry . . .”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Ellen. Things . . . happen.”

  When the call was done, I knew it was the right thing. But that didn’t make it a happy thing.

  When Dan came at eight, I told him as he stepped in the front door that we weren’t going to talk about Peking Man, not once.

  “That’s okay with me,” he said agreeably.

  But, of course, I had more than one reason for my ban. I might keep some things from Dan but I wasn’t going to tell him any outright lies. And, if we didn’t talk about any of it, then, later, he couldn’t be too unhappy at my lack of revelations. I hoped. But, really, I don’t think we would have talked about Peking Man in any event. Dan’s interests lay elsewhere. And so did mine.

  When I awoke Monday I wondered if I would be scared. But, oddly, I wasn’t. I called the museum, said I had an appointment and would be late to work. I waited until almost ten then walked over to Hyde and took the cable car. I clung to a bar and stood on the outside, welcoming the sharpness of the air, loving San Francisco. I transferred at California and rode down to Old St Mary’s and hopped off. The only reminder of Saturday night’s parade were the shreds of red firecracker paper underfoot.

  Pushing through the heavy door of the Middle Kingdom Gallery, I did feel strange when the quiet young woman, just as she had on Friday, stepped through the beaded curtain and asked if she could help me.

  I told her that I wished to speak privately with Mr. Lee and she led the way to his office. She knocked, opened the door and said, “Mr. Lee, a customer to see you.” She stepped back to let me pass and so she didn’t see the shock on her employer’s face when I walked in. I closed the door behind me before he could speak.

  I remembered his calm, impervious face when Dan and I talked to him on Friday, when he had lied about seeing Jimmy, lied without a tremor. I liked the sudden sheen of sweat on his face, the jerk of his throat as he swallowed.

  I smiled. I suppose women do have an instinct for the jugular. I decided overstepping that fine line between the legal and the illegal was like sipping brandy, easier and a little more intoxicating every time you did it. Shamelessly, I was enjoying myself.

  Mr. Wilkie Lee was not enjoying himself. He started to speak, stopped. If he ordered me out, he was as good as admitting his complicity in my kidnapping. But, he did not want to talk to me.

  “I am sorry, Miss . . . uh . . . Miss, but I am very busy this morning so you must please be so kind . . .”

  “I see no reason to be the least bit kind to you, Mr. Lee.”

  He drew his breath in sharply. His eyes flickered down and I remembered what Jimmy said about the buzzer beneath his desk.

  “It won’t do you any good to push that buzzer either.”

  His hand jumped back as if the desk had snapped at him.

  “I have friends waiting,” I continued smoothly. “To be sure that I come outside in a few minutes. Without being followed by your two young assistants.”

  His face was now an unhealthy greenish color. “What do you want?”

  I smiled. “That’s easy. I want to buy the Green Door Hotel.”

  I couldn
’t see behind the lens of his glasses but I could see his shoulders relaxing, hear the faint sigh of relief.

  So I let him have it in a couple of crisp sentences.

  “Kidnapping is a serious crime, Mr. Lee. Even when you don’t cross state lines. And assault and battery carries a stiff sentence, too. But that doesn’t even touch the civil liabilities, Mr. Lee. For physical harm suffered and mental anguish, oh, and medicines and fright, that sort of thing, I’m sure I could find a lawyer who’d sue you for around five hundred thousand dollars.”

  Sweat glistened on his forehead, trickled down his cheeks. He tried to speak, couldn’t, tried again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  I didn’t say a word.

  He drew his handkerchief from his pocket, patted his face. “Your . . . accusations are fanciful.” He breathed deeply, began to speak more rapidly, “I must insist that you leave my office at once. You are obviously disturbed, overwrought. I have no idea . . .”

  “It’s in the cellar.”

  He sat very still, an animal scenting danger.

  “The cellar?” The words came unwillingly. He didn’t want to ask.

  I nodded. “Yes. I signed my name. In blood. You’ll never find it. But I can tell the police where it is. And they’ll find my fingerprints. And Jimmy’s, of course.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You shouldn’t have been so greedy, Mr. Lee. It doesn’t pay, you know. Jimmy was going to give you the fossils in exchange for the hotel and now, now you are going to sell the hotel to me for seventy-eight thousand dollars . . .”

  His face twisted in dismay.

  “. . . in cash and other considerations. I have the contract here with me.”

  I handed it to him.

  He took it. I moved around to the side of his desk, making sure about that buzzer. When he had read the contract through, he began, “If you will leave it with me . . .”

  I shook my head. “No, Mr. Lee. You are to call your attorney and we will go now and sign the contract. I have witnesses waiting.”

  “Where?” His voice was dull.

  “Why, Mr. Lee. At the Green Door Hotel, of course.”