The Woman Who Stopped Traffic

by Daniel Pembrey

  “Mind sharing a bit of what went on here, detective?”

  “Well, I guess your old man knows anyway.” Pulver looked at Natalie. “I’ll share what I can.” He wadded up some gum. “The deceased hung from a hook drilled into the two-by-fours of his ceiling. The construction of those units was so flimsy that after a few hours, the ceiling fell in, awakening the upstairs neighbors.” Pulver’s jaw sank down into the gum. “The arriving officer checked the body, and even a cursory glance told him all was not well. Burn marks on the neck.”

  “Taser? Stun gun?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first.’

  Silverman said to Natalie: “It’s a popular way to disguise homicide as suicide. Believe it or not, a crime writer came up with a story like this involving a stun gun, causing copycat cases. Life imitates art, you could say.”

  Natalie asked them which book.

  “I never read ‘em,” the detective said.

  Silverman said: “Anything from the ident technician yet?”

  Pulver looked at him like he’d well over-stepped the mark.

  “OK,” Silverman tried to backtrack. “Well, tell us how we can be of assistance. We both had contact with the vic in the days leading up.”

  “Who said we’ve classified him a victim?” Pulver looked over to the street. A couple more cars had arrived, likely journalists. The blogosphere would be lit up over this one. “Who said we’ve pronounced it a homicide?”

  She got it: how detectives needed to manage the information flow. You’d only got one chance to watch an interviewee react as he or she heard about it for the first time. They would want “homicide” kept out of the press for as long as possible.

  Pulver drew matters to a close. “Where can I reach you both?”

  “I’m probably flying back to my home in the Bahamas by mid-week,” Natalie said, “but can always be reached at either this number or email address,” and she handed him her card.

  Silverman looked at her, but it was Pulver who said: “Miss Chevalier. It would be real helpful if you stuck around for the time being. We may need to talk to anyone who knew the deceased.”

  The insistence in his eyes suggested he may become real unhelpful if she didn’t.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me once more, I need to do something about these vulture scribblers descending on our asses.”

  “What the –!” she said to Silverman as soon as Pulver was out of earshot.

  His hands flew up, palms open. “Take it easy, Natalie.”

  “Mind coming clean about just why you’ve got me roped into this?” she asked with arms crossed.

  “I’d love to,” he replied. “I’ve got an appointment in forty five minutes with chief puppeteer Jon Vogel at his home on the peninsular. Why don’t you ride down with me, and we can talk it all through?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There are things you and I should discuss. It’ld be worth your while.”

  They walked back to their cars. Finally: “What things?”

  “Like how we get through this situation and return to our normal lives,” he replied.

  She thought about returning to the Clamor office, and trying to re-engage Nguyen – no. What else?

  The interior of his car was angular and masculine. It smelled new and clean. The scooped out seat offered welcome lumbar support.

  “So,” she said. “Talk.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Where’s that accent from?” Ben asked. “I keep trying to place it.”

  “The South.”

  “But whereabouts?”

  She eyed him sideways, then stared back at the highway his sports car was devouring. “South Carolina.”

  “I see. Columbia? Myrtle Beach –?”

  “Charleston.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Heard great things about it. The food… what was it that Rhett Butler said again, about Charleston? You know: something about going back there to see whether there wasn’t something left in life of grace and charm?”

  She said nothing.

  “Yup,” Ben continued. “I even remember my mom talking about it, quoting some etiquette expert as saying Charleston was ‘the most mannerly city in all of America’.”

  She was conscious of having her arms crossed, of looking straight ahead, her hair shielding her face.

  Ben: “OK, my concern is in protecting the IPO, which right now is looking like a pretty tall order.”

  The road started to descend from the Valley into a section of two-lane highway, carrying them towards Salinas. The Porsche sucked down into the highway’s sweeping curves. Natalie pushed her boots deeper into the foot well, clasping a charm bracelet round her right wrist. “Hold on Ben. Just indulge me a little, would you? By telling me some more about yourself. This is all rather sudden. And try not to get us both killed while you’re about it.”

  He eased up and started talking about his time at the University of California, Davis, due east of San Francisco. About beginning on the trading floor at Carmichael Associates, then managing to get into Stanford business school – before quitting a year later for the first dotcom boom. It sounded like he’d never left Northern California, physically at least.

  Football, she was thinking. Football and perhaps head of bar ops, Delta House ’95 or whatever: “You play much sport at Davis?”

  “Not a lot. I was too into my course.” He caught her look. “English major. But I kept up with the spelunking,” and he clocked her surprise again. “Sea caving, down the peninsular here.

  “By the way, this here on the left,” and he pointed up towards the yellow-brown grass ascending skyward: “these are the Pastures of Heaven Steinbeck wrote about back in the day.”

  Natalie took in the view, the new information.

  He said: “Boy, The Grapes of Wrath. I tell ya, that book taught me all I needed to know about the Depression – and about my dad’s side of the family.”

  Silvery remnants of barn and broken down corral sped past. She decided to lighten the tone a little: “So you weren’t tempted to become a writer yourself? Pen that Great American novel?”

  “All I could think to write about was myself, and even I’m not that interested in me.”

  She laughed involuntarily. “So why did you engineer for Buffalo Bill back there to forbid me from leaving town anytime soon?”

  “Detective Pulver makes his own calls. From my perspective, it’s great to know that someone’s looking into the human trafficking problem at Clamor. Someone smart, someone technical. And, you’re not an investor in the company, which almost places you above suspicion.”

  “Above suspicion? Of what?”

  He didn’t answer, asking instead: “How much d’you know about IPOs?”

  She hesitated, perplexed. “Back in the day, dotcoms seemed to treat them as these big marketing junkets. Whose is the latest hot web site everyone should visit –”

  “But you’re aware an IPO is really about raising capital.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “And that the sudden marketability of the stock gives existing investors an opportunity to cash out. A liquidity event, we call it in the trade.”

  “Right.”

  “So, people get twitchy about their stockholdings as IPO day draws near. They want to lock in, to the big win. It’s within reach: they can feel it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. I’ve witnessed it many times.

  “Take Malovich for example, who held options over 5% of the company. You know about stock options – how they give the right but not the obligation to buy shares at a set price, and typically a pretty low one at that?”

  “Ben. I was a head of security for a rather big software company.”

  “Well I calculated just how much Malovich stood to make. Given how early he joined the company, it would have cost him around five hundred thousand dollars to exercise those options. And after the IPO, he could have sold the stock for some six hundred and twenty five million d
ollars, based on what we expect the IPO to price at, which would have netted him a profit of – rounding up –”

  “Six hundred and twenty five millions dollars.”

  “Erm, right. So it doesn’t make sense for him to have committed suicide,” Ben continued. “But it may very well make sense that he died at the hands of someone else.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what happens to options after employment terminates, whatever the cause.”

  “How so?”

  “When your employment ended at your last job, what happened – to any options you hadn’t exercised?”

  She winced. “Sure, I had to exercise and sell them within weeks or the company would cancel them –”

  “Just like at Clamor. You have a brief window after employment ends to exercise your options, or they’re gone. Which effectively augments everyone else’s stock holding by five percent.”

  “But that’s not motivation enough. Let’s say you’re going to make fifty mil’ anyway. And you have the opportunity of making another two-and-a-half – only, for the extra gain you’ve got to get rid of someone. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Silverman was silent.

  “So,” she said, changing the subject. “You weren’t tempted to become a detective yourself, like your dad?”

  “You don’t just become a detective, Natalie. You’ve got to become a cop first. Which is hard work, and dangerous work. Neither of my parents encouraged me down that path. But I’ll say one thing: my dad was an unbelievable detective. He said he got his clues from the victims themselves, like he was communicating with them beyond the grave or something.”

  They swept down the long Carmel Valley. Ben checked his wing mirror then overtook a slow moving RV with out-of-state license plates.

  “Why do we need to go see Vogel?” she asked.

  “I’ve set in motion events to kick out these Multiworld guys. No one could tell me anything about them. So we’ll buy back and cancel their shares for the price they paid. Mail a check to a P.O. box in Aruba if need be.”

  “And you can just do that? Force the repurchase of stock now worth hundreds of millions of dollars?”

  “Technically, it’s worth whatever it was valued at in the last funding round, which – granted, is a fraction of the IPO valuation. But, if we can show that this Multiworld crowd invested fraudulently, we should be OK. We can get a court order.

  “We’ve searched for Multiworld in every database at Carmichael’s disposal, and that’s a few. We even put calls in to the Aruba Chamber of Commerce. I’ve been through the paperwork at Clamor’s offices. They never submitted Foreign Investment Disclosure forms when they invested. The Clamor guys faxed those requests over several times, according to the physical transmission reports. Of course, the fax number’s now dead.” He shook his head. “Hell, we deserve a court order! Whoever’s heard of an investor who no one’s ever heard of!”

  “OK, OK! – but how does any of this involve Vogel?”

  “Oh. We’ll still need an extraordinary stockholder resolution to affect the buy back, and therefore Vogel’s vote. He owns almost forty percent of the company.”

  At the valley’s mouth lay an oasis of smoky-green pine trees. They turned onto coastal Highway One, bypassing Carmel-by-the-sea.

  “Ben, I know you suspect that another investor may have had something to do with Malovich’s death, but there could be other reasons why people wanted him dead.”

  “No kidding. What was that PhD he wrote? Hunting and fishing among the Russian mafia?” and he grinned morbidly.

  “Hey, there’s big money to be made from that stuff. You do it right, and people don’t even contest the rogue charges on their credit card statements. Why bother, for a buck? But if these guys can work that scam with a few million cardholders worldwide, well. Malovich’s thesis did a lot to curtail that stuff, directly or indirectly.”

  “That could have been his problem right there,” Silverman said. “Particularly among the Armenians. I remember dad telling me about those guys, man. Some of the stories.” He whistled. “One crew presented a Russian Kamov Ka-32 military transport helicopter as a gift: to the San Francisco Police Department. Can you believe that?”

  Finally they turned onto Pine Glade Way, home to movie stars, sports celebrities, technology billionaires, and not too many others.

  She nodded. “I don’t know which prospect is worse. An insider taking the life of another shareholder, or the Russian mafia.”

  Silverman said: “neither is good, but both –”

  “Multiworld?”

  “I just don’t have a good feeling about this one, Natalie.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The glade was peculiarly dense around Vogel’s un-gated entranceway. Pine, maple and scrub oak fought for sky. The canopy of the driveway almost totally shut out light. Only after a hundred yards or so did it open out, into bright meadowland. The sun was beginning to burn through the marine layer above, gently illuminating the yellow-white asters and mauve lupins dotted about. At the far end, trees pincered in around a group of wooden buildings. Beyond winked ocean.

  “Well, this is where it happens. The annual tech barons’ Woodstock-by-the-sea,” Silverman said. “He must have a hundred acres. Unbelievable.”

  “What’s that?” Natalie said, looking to the left.

  Set back from the driveway was a complicated metal structure glinting unevenly. It looked like a Jean Tinguely sculpture – only, the size of a small house. Metal wheels whirred on different axes. Hammer levers rose and fell uncertainly. It creaked and groaned and moaned at its task. They pulled over and got out. A plaque read:

  The Clock of the Eternal

  NOW!

  July 29th, 1967.

  “Interesting,” Ben said.

  Turning back to the meadow, Natalie saw something move in the trees opposite. “And what’s that?” she said.

  “What?” he said, shielding his eyes from the brightening sun with a hand.

  “Shh,” Natalie said. For a moment, there was only insect drone. Then she whispered: “Look. Over in that oak, the large one: the lowest branch, extending horizontally,” and she guided his vision down her outstretched arm to a pale golden shape straddling the limb in question.

  “Must be another sculpture,” he murmured.

  But she knew. She could sense its watchful, feline presence. Suddenly its eyes blinked frostily.

  “Holy shit! That’s a lion over there!” Ben raised his forearm protectively.

  She eased his wrist aside. “It’s OK. There’s a fence.”

  There was a set of horizontal silvery strands just visible in the strengthening light.

  “And that fence is supposed to stop a three hundred pound lion?” he said.

  “It’s likely electrified. And it’s a lioness, look: no mane. The lion is over there.”

  “Fuck!” Ben sucked in air. Not fifty yards from them a five-hundred-pound male had broken cover and was standing equally still, its eyes quietly and intently upon them, its enormous mane flattened here and there by the ocean breeze.

  Natalie: “I read an article in last Sunday’s Times about the growing trend for these exotic pets. You know, rap musicians and basketball stars looking to bring a bit of the Serengeti to their back yards.”

  “Yeah well,” Ben swallowed hard. “The only guy I heard of who kept zoo animals on his property was Michael Jackson. And we all know what happened to him.”

  A purring rumble came their way – the kind the reptilian brain is designed to focus its fullest attention on. Ben hurried her round to the passenger side of the Porsche: “get in,” he urged.

  “I’m sure glad this ain’t an open top now,” she laughed uneasily.

  “No kidding.”

  Still wary of triggering a predatory response in the lion – even encased in the Porsche, they moved slowly over to the huddle of low buildings. They leaned in to the raked windshield to take in the roof structure of the crescent-shaped central build
ing. Beams thrust out of the ground like some giant, hand-held fan. Or perhaps the display of a male peacock, Natalie decided: the copper flashings had turned an appropriate shade of green. The view of the ocean from inside had to be stunning. Around it were other, smaller structures fashioned from natural materials and separated by mature trees.

  Warily, they got out of the car once more. They could hear the boom-and-hiss of surf. The air was balsam fresh. There was another smell that Natalie couldn’t put her finger on.

  A young woman with frizzy blond hair appeared out of nowhere in khaki shorts and a tight halter-top. She had a tiny frame and enormous, surgically enhanced breasts. Her eyes were like saucers.

  “Hi!” she squeaked. “I’m Mysty – with two ‘y’s!”

  “I’m Ben Silverman, two ‘n’s. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

  “I’m Mister Vogel’s personal assistant,” Mysty said for Natalie’s benefit. On cue, a bear-like figure rounded the corner of the house. Jon Vogel was wearing only a lime-green Speedo. Natalie didn’t know whether it was a good thing or not that his belly hung down to almost cover the front, giving him the appearance of going naked.

  “Jon, this is Natalie Chevalier –”

  “Oh yeay! Oh yeay!” he rang out like a town crier. “All hail the visiting princess!” and he gave a wildly exaggerated bow, fingers twirling.

  “I think they’re stoned,” Ben said in a low voice.

  “You don’t say.”

  “Well welcome to New Earth, Natalie,” Vogel said with disarming sincerity.

  “Thank you.”

  “We were admiring your big game,” Ben said. “The lions –”

  “Life is a big game!” Vogel exploded with kinetic energy, “the divine game!” He seemed to inhabit some other place where color, contrast and volume were turned to MAX.

  “ ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’!” he cried out.

  Ben: “Shakespeare.”

  “As You Like It,” Vogel laughed heartily. He led them up a path away from the house, into a canyon-like area previously hidden from view. The subject of Malovich’s demise soon came up, briefly tranquilizing him: “I can’t believe Yuri’s a goner,” he said. “He was a good kid: someone who’d always do the right thing. Shit, it feels like only yesterday Wiz and I recruited him from Stanford,” and he gripped the sides of a ladder that rose vertically into a tree-house twenty feet above. “Come up to my office.”