Dead Midnight (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  Phones rang, fax machines and computers beeped, voices spoke loudly or, in some instances, shouted. About fifty casually dressed people filled the large space, and most of them were in motion—pacing, gesturing, popping up from and plopping down into their chairs. Their battleship-gray metal desks were lined up in rows three abreast; there were no cubicles, no dividers, no privacy. The floor was awash in crumpled paper, candy wrappers, and other litter; the desks were covered with files, notepads, coffee cups, and the remnants of meals. My senses reeled from the noise and the mixed odors of Chinese, Mexican, Italian, and good old American grease. Fluorescent light glared down from fixtures suspended on chains from the high ceiling.

  I would have gone insane within an hour if forced to work in such a place.

  A couple of people nodded to J.D. when we came in, but most didn’t pay us any attention. He touched my arm and pointed to a staircase at the rear of the room that led up to a loft where glass-walled offices overlooked the main floor. A man—medium height, heavy, partially bald—stood in one, motioning to us.

  “Max,” J.D. said.

  I followed him past the desks, up the stairs, and along a short hallway to a narrow corridor behind the offices. Max Engstrom waited for us outside his door. He was older than I’d expected—in his fifties—and massive in spite of his lack of stature. Around his large head grew a fringe of gray hair that merged with a neatly trimmed beard; lines furrowed his cheeks in an oddly corrugated pattern; his eyes, under thick brows, were shrewd.

  “Mr. Smith,” he said, nodding to J.D. “And this is the celebrated private investigator, Sharon McCone.”

  I offered my right hand, but he clasped both in his, scanning my face intently. Attempting to control me by refusing a simple handshake. Sizing me up, too, and whatever first impression he formed would govern whether he continued to take J.D.’s cover story at face value. I returned the pressure of his fingers and smiled girlishly—if such a thing is possible at forty-one—and said, “Celebrated, Mr. Engstrom? I doubt that. But I will be if you use J.D.’s story in your magazine.”

  It wasn’t the response he’d expected. He dropped my hands, controlled a frown. “This, from a woman who’s been written up in People?”

  “If you saw the piece you must realize how much I regret it. Their photographer made me look like a thug, and their interviewer made me sound like an idiot.”

  “Well, I can promise you we won’t do either. J.D.’s the best freelancer we’ve got, and the purpose of InSite is to present attractive people and things in the most favorable light.”

  Engstrom then ushered us into his office, a small space crammed with mission-style furnishings; a leather chair was swiveled toward the glass wall—an excellent vantage point for monitoring what went on below.

  Engstrom saw me looking down and said, “This building used to be a sewing factory. When we remodeled it we kept this loft, which is where the supervisors sat. I’ve amused myself for countless hours by watching my staff’s antics.” His doting smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “They seem a lively bunch,” I said.

  “They’re like a roomful of kindergartners—bright, talented, and skilled kindergartners.” He motioned for us to sit on the uncomfortable-looking sofa and turned his chair around to face us. “All of us at InSite believe that the work-place should be enjoyable—a home away from home. It fosters creativity. And what creativity doesn’t get channeled into the work goes into the games. That’s why J.D.’s idea for your game was so appealing to us.”

  “What kinds of games do they play?”

  “Well, the water pistols are a good example. One of the tech staff came into possession of scores of them at a liquidation sale, which he distributed to all takers. They began working out their aggressions by firing on those who irritated them. Within days, the entire staff was armed and ready. Sneak attacks and retaliations are a common occurrence.”

  “Interesting,” I said, trying not to show my distaste. There had been too many incidents of employees opening real fire on their coworkers. Maybe the water pistols were therapeutic, but to me they seemed only a short step away from the real thing.

  Engstrom went on, “We’re a family here. Long hours and working the occasional weekend are necessary in order to keep the magazine fresh—some of the content changes daily. We use a great deal of freelance material”—he nodded at J.D.—“but it still has to be edited, illustrated, and so forth. And the tech staff is on call twenty-four hours in case of problems. Most of us have newspaper backgrounds like J.D., so we run more like a paper than your traditional magazine.”

  A cheer went up from the floor below. As Engstrom swiveled toward the glass, J.D. and I got up to look. A pair of men were entering, one with a liquor case balanced on his shoulder, another laden with plastic sacks. The staffers crowded around them, herding them into the space under the loft.

  “Cocktail hour,” Engstrom said, swiveling back to the desk. “We work hard, but we also play hard. A daily happy hour is paid for by the company, and the currently fashionable cocktail and snacks are served. This week it’s White Hot Zombies.”

  “What the hell’re those?” J.D. asked.

  “Damned if I know. I’m a martini man myself. But the point I’m trying to make is that we treat our staffers well. We provide a catered breakfast and pay for whatever they order in when they can’t go home for meals. Expense accounts are generous. We provide cell phones, Internet access, and, in some cases, computers for home use. We allow pets and preschool children to be brought to work—although there’s only one baby in the nursery right now, and no pets in the office, due to the travel editor’s Great Dane having taken a violent dislike to the Edibles editor’s Lhasa asshole.”

  “Lhasa what?” J.D. asked.

  “Dog had a lousy personality.”

  In light of what I’d been hearing all day about InSite— which seemed to be common knowledge among Roger Nagasawa’s social circle—Engstrom’s speech sounded as if he were trying to convince us it was a pleasant working atmosphere—and perhaps also convince himself. My suspicion was confirmed when he rose suddenly and lowered the blinds on the glass wall. As he sat down again and fiddled with something under his desk—a control for the listening devices J.D. claimed were planted in the offices?—he said, “What I’m about to tell you is strictly on background, J.D.”

  “I understand.”

  “And you, Sharon—can I count on confidentiality?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have a secondary motive for being intrigued by your game. Someone in our little family is disloyal. Someone in these offices is not working in the magazine’s best interests. I’ve become aware of it in recent months, and whoever it is has to be identified and stopped. I want you, Sharon, to attempt to do so as you go about your game playing.”

  I glanced at J.D., who wore an interested expression. “What makes you think one of your employees is disloyal?” I asked.

  “Important files have disappeared—files on unique stories our people are working on. In one case, a version of an especially good piece appeared in a rival publication. Invoices have vanished and gone unpaid till dunning notices arrived. Equipment that was running perfectly well the day before has malfunctioned. E-mail and voice mail messages have gone astray.”

  “And you’re certain this is the work of an insider?”

  “It has to be someone who has access to the premises and can find out other people’s private passwords. Last week someone disabled the security system by disconnecting wires in an interior junction box.”

  “Any suspicions of who it is?”

  “No. It shocks me to think any of my people could be responsible.”

  “Have you reported this to the police?”

  “I prefer to handle it privately.”

  J.D. said, “So even if Sharon identifies the culprit, nothing about that would appear in my piece?”

  “If it did, I wouldn’t publish it, and I’d block publication anywhere else
. Is that clear?”

  J.D. held up his hands. “Just asking.”

  I said, “Are you proposing to hire me?”

  “I would think the publicity you’ll receive from the feature story would be sufficient compensation.”

  “Of course.” And good that he felt that way, because I’d compromise Glenn’s case if I accepted any payment from the magazine. “Let’s get down to specifics now,” I told him. “I think we’re going to have a very interesting time here.”

  “Jesus Christ,” J.D. grumbled as we settled onto stools at the bar of the Dogpatch Saloon, “couldn’t Engstrom come up with a better game than that? Find out which staff member has a partial manuscript of a novel locked in his or her desk drawer! Doesn’t the fool know that every journalist is secretly writing a novel?”

  “You too?”

  “Me too.” He gave our order to the bartender and stared gloomily at the bottles arrayed across from us, avoiding my eyes.

  “So what’s it about?”

  “About a hundred and eight pages.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “All right—it’s about my childhood in the Deep South. And it’s a silly, self-indulgent piece of crap. I’ll never finish, much less sell, it.”

  “Oh.”

  “But back to the game, it’s so simplistic you’ll have it figured out in a couple of hours.”

  “Not with everything else I’m supposed to do while I’m there. I wonder if these incidents he was talking about have any connection to Roger Nagasawa’s suicide.”

  J.D. shrugged and reached for the drink the bartender set in front of him.

  “Do you know many of the other people who freelance for InSite?” I asked.

  “Sure. Like I said, the way you do business with them is to hang out, schmooze with the VIPs, wait for an assignment to drop into your lap.”

  “What about a graphic designer named Jody Houston?”

  “I’ve talked with her a few times.” He raised his eyebrows. “Wait a minute—weren’t she and Nagasawa an item?”

  “Just friends, or so she says. I talked with her briefly on Tuesday at his flat.” I explained about Houston’s call to Daniel Nagasawa. “Now she’s leased her flat to a friend and vanished.”

  “Strange coincidence.”

  “How so?”

  “You remember I mentioned a VC named Tessa Remington?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I meant to give you the skinny on her last night, but then I got sidetracked. A couple of months ago she disappeared. Left the Remington Group’s offices for a late-afternoon meeting of the board of a nonprofit that she sits on, but never arrived there. Her husband notified the police the following morning, and because she’s a mover and shaker, they got started on it right away, but they haven’t turned up a trace of her.”

  “They think it was a voluntary disappearance, or foul play?”

  “I don’t know, but the investigation’s more or less on hold. Her absence has created a real problem for InSite, according to what Max told me when I called him to propose the game. Remington was about to make a big deposit into their account, but she never got around to it, and no one else has the authority to follow through. Their reserves’re dwindling fast.”

  “But they’re still spending lavishly.”

  “Well, sure. Image is everything with these people. They learned no lessons from the dot-com bust.”

  “Do the police have any theories about what happened to Remington?”

  “None they’re sharing with the press.”

  Two people with connections to InSite had vanished— one voluntarily, the other maybe not. Had Tessa Remington, like Jody Houston, expressed fear for her life?

  Back at the pier, I hurried upstairs, intent on accessing newspaper accounts of Remington’s disappearance, but the sound of keys tapping in one of the offices the operatives shared stopped me, and I went in to see who was working late.

  Julia Rafael hunched over her keyboard, a pencil thrust behind her ear, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. When I came up beside her she made an error and cursed as she hit the Delete key. “I’m a rotten typist,” she said.

  “I’m not too great myself. What’s that?” I motioned at the screen.

  “Report on the Doofus case.”

  “Doofus?”

  “What I call Dreyfus. Guy’s an idiot. Didn’t bother to cover his tracks worth a damn. I’ll have this on your desk in fifteen minutes.” She was trying to act offhand about her success, but her dark eyes shone with pride.

  “Congratulations! I didn’t do that well my first time on my own.”

  “Well, like I told you, the guy’s an idiot.”

  “How’d you like to take on somebody smarter?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be in my office. We’ll talk when you deliver that.” I paused. “Unless you’ve got plans for tonight.”

  “Nope, no plans. I’ll call my sister, tell her I’m gonna be late. She baby-sits my kid.”

  Julia was a single mother with an eight-year-old son. “I don’t want to keep you from—”

  “Hey, no problema. Tonio likes staying with Maria—she lets him get away with stuff.”

  “See you later, then.”

  As I waited for a connection to the Chronicle’s online files, I thought about the first time I’d met Julia Rafael. She’d come for an interview in response to an ad I’d placed in January for an investigative trainee, no previous experience necessary. Meaning not only would I be able to start him or her at the modest salary I could afford, but also instill my methods of investigation and—more important—my professional values in the individual.

  It was raining the day of Julia’s appointment, and she’d forgotten a hat and had her umbrella stolen on the bus. Her hair dripped water and rain had seeped through her cheap coat, staining her tan suit. Immediately I was impressed by the way she handled herself, making only brief explanations, allowing me to hang her coat near the heater, and accepting a towel for her hair.

  The completed application she presented was brutally honest: she’d been incarcerated by the California Youth Authority two times, each for drug-related offenses. During her second term she’d earned her GED. After she got out at twenty, she was dismissed from her first job as a motel maid for striking a customer who physically came on to her. A second job in a relative’s convenience store ended because her boyfriend took to hanging out there and shoplifting. After that she landed a position with a federally funded neighborhood outreach program, working with at-risk teenagers, and things began to change for the better. But two months before she answered my ad, after she’d been on the job over four years, the program had lost its funding.

  I wondered why she’d chosen to reveal her history with the CYA. Juvenile records are officially sealed, in order to give the individual a chance to start over. When I asked, she simply said, “If you hire me, it might come out later, and it would look like I was covering up. Besides, that’s over now.”

  “Okay, tell me why you want this particular job.”

  “I figure in your business you help people. That was what I liked about my last job. And,” she added with a small smile, “you said no experience necessary, and experience is one thing I don’t have much of, unless it’s bad.”

  And it had been very bad, that much I realized as I began to draw her out over a cup of coffee. She’d been born near Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, where her father worked in the artichoke fields, but he’d moved the family—his pregnant wife and four girls—to San Francisco’s Mission district when Julia was five, in order to open a restaurant with a cousin. The restaurant failed, and the family’s life spiraled downward into frequent unemployment, ever more cramped living quarters, alcoholism, and physical abuse. Julia was on the streets dealing drugs and prostituting herself at twelve. Her first arrest was at thirteen. She’d had two abortions by sixteen, and at seventeen gave birth to a son whose father’s identity was anybody’s gues
s, and whom she’d sent to live with relatives in Salinas when she was sent back to the CYA.

  “Why didn’t you also abort that baby?” I asked.

  “Because by then I’d grown up, had feelings. I wasn’t innocent, but I knew the kid was. Didn’t seem right to kill it. And the way it worked out, Tonio turned me around.”

  Pictures of her little boy saw her through the final incarceration by the youth authority. When she returned to the city, she was able to settle down, send for her son, and begin leading the normal life of a single parent.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she told me. “I’m not the model mom. I still like to party. If my older sister—who got out of the apartment before things really went to hell with the family—didn’t live in my building, I don’t think I could manage. But I’m working on it. I got to, for Tonio’s sake. The way I see it, we saved each other’s lives.”

  I’d concluded the interview thinking there was something too pat and calculated about Julia Rafael’s presentation of herself, but next to her the other applicants I saw seemed lackluster. Honesty about one’s past mistakes and determination in the face of the odds have always impressed me, and if she had a bit of the con woman in her, so much the better in this business. I gave her a hard day’s thought, then called to tell her she had the job. So far she’d proven to be a bright student, and now, I felt, my investment in her was starting to pay off.

  I finally located the Tessa Remington story in the Friday, February 16, Chron. It told me little more than what J.D. had already recapped, except for the date of her disappearance—the fourteenth—her husband’s name—Kelby Lincoln, CEO of something called Econium Measures—and that the police were asking the public to be on the lookout for her white BMW convertible, license number 2 KCV 743. A picture of Remington accompanied the article: a woman of about my age with short, sleekly styled blond hair and classically sculpted features. Her expression radiated poise and self-confidence.

  The fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. Roger had killed himself that night. Coincidence, or—?