The Hunt

by Jennifer Sturman

  He laughed, seemingly unaware that we were about to have a very serious discussion.

  “Is there something you forgot to tell me?” I asked sweetly, opting for the passive-aggressive approach.

  “What?” he said, swerving to avoid a group of tourists in matching orange visors. “Oh, right-my call from Alex. He says he wasn’t at the Four Seasons, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have any identical twins from which he was separated at birth. We also talked about a game of doubles tomorrow, around lunchtime.”

  “Doubles?”

  “Caro left a message earlier suggesting the same thing-they both thought it would be fun for us all to get together.”

  “Doubles as in tennis doubles? At lunch?” People were supposed to eat during lunch, not dress up in silly outfits to whack at things with glorified butterfly nets.

  “Caro can lend you a racket and something to wear. I told them I’d get back to them. I wanted to make sure you were up for it and that we had the entire Hilary thing resolved. By the way, did you like how I covered with my parents? I figured you’d rather they thought we were sightseeing tomorrow than doing what we’ll probably be doing.”

  “That was good,” I acknowledged, but mostly I was amazed at the easy way he bandied Caro’s name about, as if their relationship was something we’d discussed thoroughly and laid to rest long ago, and as if there was nothing I’d rather do than borrow her clothes to play a sport I’d been officially declared incapable of learning by more than one professional instructor. A mental image of Caro in tennis whites, blond, tan and radiating athletic prowess, next to me in tennis whites, not blond, not tan and radiating athletic incompetence, flashed before my eyes, and my half of the picture wasn’t pretty.

  Since passive-aggressive hadn’t worked, I discarded the passive part and switched over to just plain aggressive. “When I asked if you’d forgotten to tell me something, I was referring to how you’d forgotten to tell me you and Caro dated.”

  “I didn’t tell you that?” The surprise in his voice sounded genuine, at least.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Oh. I thought I had.”

  “It must have slipped your mind. It also must have slipped your mind to tell me that this dating lasted for a decade and a half.”

  “A decade and a half? It couldn’t have been that long,” said Peter, braking for a red light. Then he thought about it for a moment. “Actually, maybe that is right. We met when I was eighteen, and we broke up when I was thirty-three. So it was a decade and a half, off and on. Wow-it sounds like a really long time when you put it like that, doesn’t it?”

  “Especially when you’re hearing about it for the first time.”

  “The first time? But I told you I’d dated people before. Wouldn’t it have been sort of weird if I hadn’t?”

  “You told me you dated people. Not one person. And not for fifteen years.”

  “You never seemed to have wanted details. In fact, you usually changed the subject when anything came up about people either of us have dated.”

  “Well, now I want details,” I said, steeling myself. “I want the list.”

  “The list?”

  “Of women you’ve dated.” Perhaps there was more off than on in the “off and on” of his relationship with Caro. That would go a long way toward making me feel better. Many meaningless ex-girlfriends were infinitely preferable to a single meaningful one.

  “It’s a pretty short list. There was my high-school girlfriend, Ashley, from the cross-country team. I wonder what ever happened to her?”

  “I don’t think high school counts.”

  “No high school? Okay, then scratch Ashley. After high school, there was Caro. And there were a few women I went out with once or twice when Caro and I were taking breaks. Do a couple of dates count?” His tone was distracted, and he was scanning the streets for a parking space as he spoke. “Mostly it was just Caro.”

  “You told me you hadn’t dated anyone seriously.”

  “I hadn’t,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  “Fifteen years’ worth of not serious?” I asked, incredulous. “How can fifteen years not be serious?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then how was it?”

  “We just fell into it. You know how it is. We got along really well, and we liked to do a lot of the same things. It was almost the path of least resistance. I don’t think either of us ever intended for it to last as long as it did. It just sort of happened. Aha,” he said, pulling the Prius into a space on Fourth Street. “Perfect.”

  “Fifteen years?” I repeated.

  He shifted the car into Park and turned to face me. The sun had only recently set, but his chocolate-colored eyes looked black in the dusk. “Rachel. I promise you. It wasn’t serious. I would have told you if it was. You’re the only person I’ve ever been serious about.”

  “Who broke up with who?” I asked. “Or whom?”

  “Is that really important?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  He looked away, pushing the ignition button to turn off the car and unbuckling his seat belt. “Technically, I guess she broke up with me.”

  This was most definitely not the answer I’d been hoping to hear.

  It was past nine, and there were a few people scattered across the grass of the Esplanade, listening to a lone musician playing a saxophone, but otherwise the park was empty, and Luisa and Ben hadn’t yet arrived. We found the memorial easily, a waterfall of Sierra granite facing onto the Esplanade and lit by floodlights. Water gushed over its fifty-foot wall of rock to splash into a pool below, from which a cloud of mist rose into the cool night air. The waterfall was pretty, but we couldn’t see how it was particularly relevant, so we followed the walkway that led behind it to a series of glass panels displaying photographs of the assassinated civil-rights leader and excerpts from his writings and speeches.

  We moved from panel to panel, studying the quotes and the faces captured in black-and-white. “Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood,” read one panel. “I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self-respect,” read another. “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” read a third.

  “The guy had a way with words,” said Peter in admiration.

  “But I have a feeling he wasn’t much in demand as a speaker at his local Young Republicans club,” I said.

  “Or at his local Old Republicans club,” said Peter.

  “I wonder what Iggie would make of all this?” I asked, still trying to figure out if we were in the right place and if the reason we were here had anything to do with Hilary. It was better than thinking about Peter’s list, assuming anything with less than two items on it could accurately be called a list. “He’s all about inordinate riches and computers and profit motives.”

  “You’re an investment banker,” Peter reminded me. “And I run a start-up. And we both hope to profit inordinately from our work one day. It’s not like we’re so much purer than Iggie.”

  “But we do have better fashion sense.”

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  Studying the panels further didn’t yield any startling insights into the mysterious keychain, or even any insights that weren’t startling. I was getting frustrated when we heard footsteps on the walkway and first Ben and then Luisa appeared around the corner.

  “This had better be worth it,” said Luisa.

  “Find anything?” asked Ben.

  “No, unfort-” I started to say before I realized there was someone else with them.

  “Hey, Abigail,” said Peter.

  “Hey,” said Abigail. A slight breeze ruffled her silky brown hair. “I hope you don’t mind that Lui
sa invited me along-we were having dinner when you called.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  I would have given anything at that moment to be able to raise one eyebrow, and to raise it in Luisa’s direction. As it was, I had to make do with smirking, which was nowhere near as satisfying. She ignored me anyhow. Withdrawal, in addition to making us both blunt and cranky, was doing nothing for our respective levels of maturity.

  “Did you find anything?” asked Ben again.

  “No, we seem to be on a wild goose chase,” I admitted.

  “I keep waiting for another skateboarder to show up,” added Peter.

  “So we didn’t have to rush through our meal to meet you here?” asked Luisa. “We could have ordered dessert like civilized people? They had crème brûlée. I could be eating crème brûlée right now. You know how I feel about crème brûlée.” I didn’t know how she felt about crème brûlée, and I couldn’t remember her ever having a sweet tooth before, but I guessed her withdrawal symptoms were taking the form of an insatiable need for sugar. They were clearly strong enough to offset any desire to show Abigail the sunnier side of her personality.

  “Well, this is still a nice place, and it’s educational, too,” I said.

  “I’m sufficiently educated already,” said Luisa. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s that?” asked Abigail, pointing at a spot near my right foot.

  “What’s what-” I started to say.

  Then I looked down at the spot she’d indicated. “Oh.”

  A small rock rested in the shadows of the walkway, sitting at the base of the panel with the quote about machines and computers. And there was something propped between the rock and the panel.

  I crouched to get a better look. A small padded envelope had been wedged into the space, but one corner protruded from behind the rock, as if whoever had left it there wanted to ensure it would be seen only by someone searching the area with care. I took hold of the protruding corner with my thumb and index finger and delicately slid the envelope from its hiding space.

  Even in the dim light, it wasn’t hard to see that the envelope was a twin of the one Skater Girl had delivered that afternoon or to make out the now-familiar block letters spelling my name.

  13

  Peter took off immediately, disappearing around the other side of the waterfall. He returned a few minutes later, just as disappointed as he’d been earlier that day. “Nobody’s out there,” he said. “The people who were on the Esplanade before have gone.”

  Ben, meanwhile, had been looking for cameras. Checking for surveillance tape must have been a standard part of FBI training, or perhaps it was the part Ben remembered best. But even if there were cameras, I doubted they’d be helpful. Hundreds of people must have come through here today, maybe even thousands-it was tourist season, after all. Assuming we’d be able to talk whatever security personnel there were into letting us view any footage, what were the odds that there was a camera pointed at just the right angle to provide a clear view of whoever had tucked the package into its hiding place? Ben must have been thinking along the same lines, because he gave up his search with a shrug when Peter returned. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  Which left us with the package itself. The five of us stood in a circle on the walkway, looking at the padded envelope resting in my hands.

  “This had better not be another keychain,” I said, testing its weight. The envelope and the handwriting on it were identical to the envelope from Union Square, but this one had a bit more heft to it.

  “Maybe it’s a bomb,” suggested Luisa, but she was mocking me. I was beginning to wonder whether our friendship would be able to withstand another thirty-six hours of withdrawal.

  “Do you want me to open it?” asked Peter.

  “No, I can do it.” I pulled on the little tab that peeled back to slice open the top of the envelope and peered inside. Light glinted off something metallic.

  “What is it?” asked Ben.

  “Strange,” I said. “That’s what it is. Very, very strange.”

  I reached into the envelope and withdrew a shiny new iPod, complete with headphones.

  “Nice,” said Peter appreciatively. “I was thinking of getting you one just like that to take to the gym.”

  I didn’t know when, exactly, he thought I’d be going to the gym, but I could disabuse him of that particular fantasy later. “I guess Christmas came early this year. But why would somebody give me an iPod?”

  “Perhaps to help you expand your cultural horizons beyond national monuments and television shows meant for teenagers,” said Luisa. “You could download operas and symphonies. Or subscribe to podcasts from the BBC and NPR.”

  “I don’t think whoever left this intended for me to bore myself to death.”

  “Maybe there’s something already on the iPod that’s a clue of some sort,” offered Abigail. “A song or photograph. Something like that.”

  This, in contrast to Luisa’s suggestion, was a good idea. I wondered if it was possible to trade in Luisa for Abigail, at least until Tuesday morning at ten. “How do I turn it on?” I asked. It’s possible I was the last American under the age of eighty who had never used an iPod.

  “Here,” said Peter. He took the device from my hand and pressed the track wheel. A second later, the small screen lit up. We huddled around him, watching as the Apple icon gave way to a menu of options.

  “Try Photos first,” I said, thinking about the picture we’d found in the safe, but clicking on Photos led only to an empty screen. He clicked on Music next, but this also produced nothing. Then he clicked on the Videos option in the menu.

  “Jackpot,” he said, tilting the screen up so we could all get a better look. There was only one item listed, but it was clearly meant for me: it was titled “Play Me, Rachel.”

  It was a simple enough request, and it had worked for Lewis Carroll. “Okay,” I said, “Let’s play it.” Peter handed me the headphones, and I inserted the buds into my ears.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, and he pressed Play. The screen went dark for a moment, and I belatedly started worrying that I was about to see something I wouldn’t want to see. But before I could even think of any examples of things I wouldn’t want to see, images began appearing on the screen and a staticky audio track filled my ears.

  The video was a montage of sorts, a series of black-and-white clips of the same man in a variety of settings: behind a speaker’s podium, striding through a crowd, shaking hands with other men, bending to pick up a child. Each clip morphed into the next as someone spoke passionately in a foreign language over the footage. I thought it sounded like Spanish, but, as I mentioned before, I’d taken French, and I remembered precious little of that. The man himself didn’t look unfamiliar, but I couldn’t place him. He had the same shaggy bulk Leo had in the picture in my purse, but these clips were clearly much older, and this guy’s favorite outfit seemed to consist of a beret and fatigues, whereas Leo had been wearing a T-shirt and jeans.

  Luisa had pressed her head in close to my own to see the screen, and she said something beside me, but I couldn’t hear her. I removed one of the earbuds. “What?” I asked. “I’m trying to listen.”

  “Give me that,” she demanded.

  “Why?”

  “Just give it to me.” She grabbed the earbud from my hand and stuck it into her own ear. I’d never seen her quite this testy before, and we watched the rest of the clip together in silence.

  “Do you know who that was?” she said when the montage had drawn to a close a half-minute later. “Could you understand the Spanish?”

  “Well, no.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said with satisfaction. “You may know everything there is to know about TV and American tourist attractions, but I spent my youth studying important subjects, like political history and foreign languages.”

  I didn’t see what political history had to do with understanding Spanish. It also wasn’
t a fair comparison given that Spanish was hardly a foreign language to Luisa, but we could debate that when she wasn’t nicotine-deprived. “Are you going to share with us your knowledge of political history and foreign languages? Or are we supposed to guess?” I asked.

  “It’s Che Guevara.”

  “Who?”

  “Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. El Che. Born in Argentina in 1928 and executed as a revolutionary in Bolivia in 1967.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d heard of him. In fact, I’d seen the movie, feeling virtuous since it had subtitles. “You mean, the guy from The Motorcycle Diaries?”

  “The movie was based on the actual diaries Che Guevara kept during a trip he made by motorcycle to a leper colony in Peru. The experience played a critical role in shaping his radical philosophy.”

  “The guy in the movie was better looking,” I said.

  “Che Guevara was a Marxist, right?” said Ben.

  “Right,” said Luisa. “And the audio’s from a speech he gave in the sixties, talking about the importance of using technology to further socialism.”

  “Well, whoever’s leading us on this scavenger hunt either knows a lot about leftists or he is one. Or maybe both,” said Peter. “But where does he want us to go next? I’m pretty sure there isn’t a Che Guevara monument in San Francisco.”

  My earlier frustration was turning to annoyance. “And we’re not any closer to knowing why he’s leading us on a scavenger hunt in the first place, or if any of this will help us find Hilary.”

  We were all silent for a moment, thinking. The ambient noises of the city-traffic, a dog’s bark, the clang of a cable car’s bell-competed with the rush of the waterfall to fill the quiet. I wondered if I was ever going to be able to get the Rice-a-Roni theme song out of my head. Every cable car I heard only exacerbated the problem.

  Abigail was the first to speak. “You know,” she began, almost hesitantly, “Luisa had started to tell me about everything that’s happened over dinner. About Hilary’s disappearance, and the article she was working on and the picture in the safe. And then the keychain, and now this video. It’s all been reminding me of someone I used to know. Especially when you called it a scavenger hunt, Peter. The person I knew loved scavenger hunts-he loved any sort of puzzle. But it can’t be him.”