by R. J. Jagger
That meant that Del Rey was the target.
Teffinger repeatedly questioned her as to why.
She repeatedly didn’t know.
“You tell me,” she said. “Kelly Nine was the target too. What do me and her have in common, other than you?”
As near as Teffinger could figure, Baxa had somehow got onto him last night, possibly by tracing Rail. The man’s plan was to follow Teffinger to Del Rey. Luckily, Teffinger figured that out on Haight Street before he left the scene. He figured it out good enough to flag down a cab, crisscross all over town, jump into a second cab, cross the bridge and then walk through shadows the last mile to the Hotel Sausalito.
The effort proved worth it.
Nothing happened last night.
No one came for Del Rey.
No one came for the Van Gogh, either.
They were ghosts but it wouldn’t last long.
Luckily, it didn’t need to.
The exchange was set for tonight, man to man with Yoan Foca, the Van Gogh for Dandan and Susan Smith. Things could go wrong a hundred different ways and the number increased every time Teffinger thought about it.
Rail would be busy today securing the dinghies, night goggles, and the rest of it.
His words from last night still resonated.
“It’s not the logistics that makes or breaks an exchange,” he said, “it’s the groundwork that takes place long before the exchange every comes to being. Each party needs to be sure the other party can’t gain anything significant from a double cross. That’s a lot harder in a case where you’re exchanging a painting for money. Both items are valuable to both sides. Neither side would mind walking away with everything. But in this case, on Foca’s side, all he really wants is the Van Gogh. He has no real use for either Dandan or Susan Smith. If things hadn’t turned out well, he would have made it his mission in life to kill Dandan, but after he gets the painting in hand, his passion for her death will quickly pass. He certainly won’t make a move before he has the painting safely tucked away. On your end of things, all you want is the women. You really don’t have a use for the painting. So the exchange should go smoothly. The only thing that could go wrong at this point is if you don’t show up with the painting.”
“We’ll see.”
“Trust me.”
Teffinger studied him.
They were still on Haight Street.
Rail was bloodied from his encounter with Jean-Luc Baxa, bloodied but alive.
“Did I ever say thanks for the help?”
“It wasn’t much help, in hindsight,” Rail said.
Teffinger grew serious and then smiled.
“Yeah, that’s true. Never mind, then.”
“I’m never minding.”
“Good.”
“This is what I look like when I’m never minding. How do I look?”
“Not very good.”
“I could say the same. Right now between the two of us, I don’t think we could get a girl unless there was money involved.”
“A lot of money.”
“And if she was blind, that would help.”
Teffinger narrowed his eyes.
“Foca has some guts coming here.”
Rail nodded.
“He’ll have men with him, you can count on that. They’ll be off-screen but they’ll be there. They’ll have rifles. They’ll have scopes. But they’ll only come into play if you try some kind of slick move, which you’re not, so don’t worry about them.”
Teffinger spotted a coke can and kicked it.
“Is he really going to let you off the hook once he gets the painting?”
Rail grunted.
“I’m not going to stick around to find out. I’ll be going deep as soon as this is over. I’ll send you a postcard.”
“Make it from Iowa.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to be jealous if it’s from Fiji.”
Rail slapped Teffinger on the back.
“We’re not so different, you and me.”
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
The jog went for three miles.
When Teffinger got back to the hotel, something happened that he didn’t expect.
Del Rey was gone.
The Van Gogh was gone too.
107
Day Eleven
July 18
Friday Morning
Friday morning at the firm Jori-Lee kept her face buried in papers hoping that Robertson hadn’t left the security footage of her break-in lying around where the FBI would stumble on it. If they showed up to interview her she didn’t know how to handle it.
She didn’t want to lie.
She didn’t want to tell the truth, either.
Maybe she’d just hire a lawyer and take the fifth.
Bits and pieces of what happened to Robertson trickled in throughout the morning.
Yesterday over the lunch hour he’d withdrawn $5,000 in cash from his checking account.
The murder happened in a gritty part of town given to hookers and pimps and trannys and people of the night.
Robertson had just stepped out of a sleaze-infested place called the Blackmore Hotel and was walking down the street with his head down. He was incognito, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, a baseball cap and sunglasses.
A man approached from the opposite direction.
At the last second he stepped in front of Robertson. At first it looked like they were talking, as if the man was possibly asking for directions or for a cigarette or a handout. Then a scuffle ensued. A gun fired, twice. Robertson fell to the sidewalk. The shooter rifled through Robertson’s pockets, pulled something out and ran.
The only witness was a prostitute, across the street and down half a block. Through the distance and drizzle, she never got a look at the shooter, not even close. The rumor was that she was on serious drugs at the time.
Robertson’s wallet was found on the sidewalk fifty steps down from where he got shot.
It was empty.
His car was located on a side street, three blocks down.
Jori-Lee’s cell phone rang and Sanders’ voice came through. “How are things going?”
“So far so good. Are you hearing all this stuff that’s coming out on Robertson?”
“Yes. I want to meet you for lunch. Can you break away?”
“Sure, if you want.”
“I want.”
108
Day Eleven
July 18
Friday Morning
Del Rey was gone and so was the Van Gogh. Teffinger scooped up his phone as fast as his motor skills would let him and call Del Rey’s cell number. She answered on the third ring.
“Where are you?”
“Across the hall in 216.”
He went over to find her safe, with the Van Gogh.
She was crying.
He took her in his arms and pulled her close.
“There were people out front,” she said. “They were talking in some kind of an Asian language. I thought they were Mun Yin. I thought they’d somehow tracked the painting to here. I grabbed it to run out the back of the hotel. The people across the hall were just leaving. I asked them if they had any clean towels. They said they did and left the door open for me. I came in and shut the door and this is where I’ve been for the last ten minutes.”
Suddenly talking came down the hall.
Teffinger peeked out the keyhole.
A muscular Asian man was standing in front of his room across the hall, putting his ear to the door, listening with intensity. The man examined the keycard device as if memorizing it and then disappeared quietly down the hall.
Teffinger’s eyes tightened.
“We got to get out of here.”
“You go,” she said. “I’m done.”
“What do you mean, you’re done?”
Her eyes got even more watery.
“Nick, I love you,” she said.
“I love you
too.”
“No you don’t,” she said. “You love who you think I am. I’m not that person though.”
Teffinger wasn’t in the mood.
“Pull yourself together,” he said. “I’ll take all the drama you can give me tomorrow but right now isn’t the time.”
“This isn’t drama,” she said. “This is serious.”
She meant it.
It was in her eyes.
He held her shoulders.
“What’s going on?”
She stepped back.
“I’ve been blackmailing a Supreme Court judge by the name of Nelson Robertson,” she said. “I’ve been doing it for two years. I’ve been getting him to swing his vote. He’s done it eight times.”
Teffinger smiled, waiting for the punch line.
It didn’t come.
“This is a joke, right?”
The woman lowered her head.
Teffinger said, “Blackmailing him for what?”
“He was kinky,” she said. “I found out about it and set him up. My friend T’amara Alder helped me; she’s the one you and me had a threesome with, the one I call Trouble. We videotaped him having his sick little sessions, both with me and with T’amara. I didn’t want money. I just wanted his vote. We came to an arrangement. Everything was working just fine but then T’amara saw his picture somewhere and realized who he was. She called me up and said, Remember that creep we were videotaping? He’s on the freaking Supreme Court of the United States. This is going to be worth a fortune.”
“So she wanted to blackmail him for money,” Teffinger said.
“Right,” Del Rey said. “I told her I already had a deal going with the man and for her to just stay out of it. She said, no way. The dollar signs were already in her eyes. I did everything I could to talk her out of it but it did no good. She tried to shake him down even though I disapproved. This happened just a few weeks ago. That put Robertson over the edge. He decided to take both me and her out.”
“That’s why you’re a target.”
She nodded.
“From what I can figure out—and a lot of it’s guesswork, I’ll admit—Robertson somehow got that hitwoman Portia Montrachet on my ass. The Susan Smith she came to murder in Denver was me.”
Teffinger shook his head.
“That can’t be,” he said. “She was killed outside the apartment of the other Susan Smith, the model. She was the target, not you.”
Del Rey exhaled.
“What I’m about to tell you, you have to promise it’s off the record.”
He shrugged.
“We’ll see.”
Del Rey paced.
“I knew Portia was after me because you were feeding me information on her,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I told a friend about it. He decided he was going to step in and help me. He thought that if Portia ended up dead, Robertson would back off. He killed her. It didn’t happen at the alley outside Susan Smith’s apartment. He did it somewhere else and then dumped the body there. That way it would keep the attention off me and, correspondingly, off him.”
Teffinger grunted.
“The boxer,” he said. “Danny Rainer.”
She shook her head.
“No, he’s not the one,” she said. “If you start digging you’ll find that I actually did some legal work for him a couple of years ago. We have some history together and it looks incriminating. It wasn’t him though, I can promise you that.”
“Then who was it?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “You’ll never figure it out otherwise I wouldn’t even mention it. The bottom line is that Robertson didn’t take the hint. All he did was hire someone else to kill me.”
“Jean-Luc Baxa.”
She nodded.
“He killed T’amara first and then came after me. Teffinger, I’m going to tell you something and it’s the honest to God truth,” she said. “I’ve been hanging around you for protection but that’s not the only reason. It’s not even the main reason. The main reason is because I’ve fallen back in love with you. It happened the second you walked into my law office and I looked back into your eyes after so long. That’s why I’m done. Baxa’s after me, and you’ve almost been killed twice because of it. I’m not going to put you at risk any longer, not one second more. I can’t be selfish anymore. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life but if you end up dead that’ll be something I can’t live with.”
He smiled.
“Me either.”
The corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly.
Teffinger squeezed her.
He squeezed her long.
He squeezed her tight.
He squeezed her until the sobbing stopped.
Then he held her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes and said, “We’re going to work this out. We’re going to survive this. Right now though we need to get out of here.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“No,” he said. “Nice try, but no. You’re stuck with me so just get used to it.”
109
Day Eleven
July 18
Friday Noon
Sanders said very little at lunch, which was strange given that it was his idea. Jori-Lee knew something was wrong but couldn’t imagine what. Finally she said, “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No.”
“Something’s wrong.”
He nodded.
“I think Leland Everitt killed Robertson,” he said.
Jori-Lee understood the words but they were so strange she couldn’t process them beyond their four corners.
“That’s crazy.”
“I think Leland Everitt’s dirtier than dirt and that Zahara Knox has been acting as his spy all along,” he said.
“His spy?”
He nodded.
“Think about it,” he said. “Here he is, taking you into the firm at Robertson’s request. Obviously you’re still a potential threat to Robertson, even though supposedly you and him had reached a truce. Leland is going to want to monitor you. He’s going to want to be absolutely sure you’re no longer a threat to Robertson. So what he does is set up Zahara as a spy.”
Jori-Lee shook her head.
“No, that’s nuts,” she said. “She’s been on my side since moment one.”
“That’s my point,” Sanders said. “There she is in your very first meeting with her, warning you—a perfect stranger—to stay away from the firm. That immediately creates a bond. From there she capitalizes on it. It’s called keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Jori-Lee shook her head.
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Am I? It was her idea to break into Robertson’s office, right? And what did you find in there. You found a mysterious Client X file, which I believe was planted there for you to find. It made it seem like Leland was representing Oscar Benderfield, trying to find out for Benderfield who hired him to in turn hire someone to take out T’amara Alder.”
“Right—”
“That exonerated Leland and at the same time gave him a reason to have been talking to Benderfield, as a client, in case anyone ever asked. In reality, I think the whole file was a hoax. I think Leland actually hired Benderfield to take care of the person who was blackmailing Robertson. He did it at Robertson’s request.”
The smile fell off Jori-Lee’s face.
She didn’t expect Sanders to make a case.
He was, though.
“What about the gun in the credenza?” she said. “Why would they let me see it if the whole thing was a hoax?”
“My opinion? I think that was just a slipup. Maybe Zahara wasn’t supposed to break in with you until the following night. Maybe she jumped the clock.” A beat then, “If my guess is right, that’s the gun that was used to kill Robertson.”
Jori-Lee frowned.
“If Leland was going to all these lengths to help Robertson then why would he kill him?”
Sanders too
k a sip of water.
He smacked his lips.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the one thing that doesn’t add up. It’s the one thing we need to figure out. I know this seems sudden but I’ve been building this theory up in my mind over the last few days. It was already in my mind last night. When you and Zahara came back home and I made the argument that we should never tell anyone anything we knew, that was all for Zahara’s benefit, knowing she’d relay it to Leland. It was the only way I could think of to keep you safe short-term. The disc that I burned on the stove, by the way, wasn’t the real one. I still have the real one.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
“Go back to work as if you didn’t hear a word of this. Watch your back though. Leland Everitt killed Robertson. He’ll kill you just as fast if he has even an inkling that you’re on to him. He’s in too deep at this point to do anything other than murder his way out.” He put his hand on hers. “I love you so don’t go and get yourself killed.”
“Likewise.”
“Likewise on the love part or on the don’t-get-killed part?”
She smiled.
“Both.”
110
Day Eleven
July 18
Friday Night
Friday night after dark Teffinger carefully set the Van Gogh in the belly of the dinghy, throttled up the 5hp Johnson and let it warm up.
“This will go smoothly,” Rail said. “Trust me. You’ll be back in half an hour. Everything will be fine.”
“We’ll see.”
The night was full dark, moonless to a fault.
An eerie thin fog played over the salty water, allowing fairly good visibility for a hundred meters and then messing with it. The brighter lights of San Francisco managed to punch through.
The weaker lights had no chance.
