“I’ll start,” she said. “What did I do tonight? I sat in this chair and I finished Letessier. I made breakfast at seven and had lunch just after midnight. Now I’m going to have dinner with you. This is my first glass of wine.”
She brought it to her lips and sipped. Then she looked at him and waited. He was sure he could knock on every door in the city and not turn up a single other person like her.
“I went down to the station and met Jenner,” he said. “The last six weeks, we’d been trying to find this guy. Patrick Wong—a small-time crook who’s connected to a big-time crook. We wanted to ask him about a girl who got murdered. When I called Jenner on Sunday, he told me he’d talked to Patrick on Friday.”
“While you were with me.”
He nodded.
“But when I saw him at the station, Jenner couldn’t remember what they’d talked about. He couldn’t find his notes. And his gun smelled like everything else does. Like hot metal.”
“You think he was with you. That whatever happened to you happened to him.”
“Yeah.”
“Did he remember the Fairmont?”
“Maybe a little—I didn’t ask him. But I saw him staring at the lanterns over Grant, in Chinatown. Just standing there staring, like he was hypnotized. Or remembering something.”
“You were in Chinatown tonight?”
He told her the rest then. At one point, Mia let him keep talking while she got up and put the clay dish in the oven. Then she came back and he finished the story of his night.
Talking to her was easy. He’d felt sick since waking up on Sunday, but his head had been clear. He could focus, could scan a scene and see all the details. With Mia, it was even better. It wasn’t just her. It was the space she’d created around herself. Her apartment was a shelter from the rain and the wind. A place where you paused and found your breath, and thought that perhaps it wasn’t so cold after all. Perhaps you could carry on, once you’d had a moment to gather yourself.
They ate dinner at the granite bar in the kitchen. He thought she might excuse herself and change out of her robe, but she didn’t. Before she sat down, she turned her back to him and drew the robe closer before cinching the sash tight. That was all, and then they ate.
He’d never had anything like her cassoulet, and he wasn’t ashamed to tell her. She thanked him, but didn’t say how she’d found a woodland duck, or olive oil that wasn’t adulterated with synthetics, or herbs he hadn’t seen since he was a teenager. When they were finished, he took the plates and washed them at the sink, and then he followed her back to the chairs. She’d put the bottle of wine on the table between them and carried over their glasses.
He sat and looked at the fire, and then at the curtains. There might have been a little light out by now, but he couldn’t see it, and that was fine with him. He let the silence stretch out as long as it was comfortable, and then, the wine loosening him up a little, he spoke aloud the first thing that had been on his mind.
“I’ve never been in an apartment like this.”
She leaned forward in her chair.
“Never?”
“At least not since I was a kid—a young kid, at that.”
“What about it?”
Words failed him as he looked around. Part of it was shame at how he had been living; more of it was awe that it was possible to live some other way. He looked at her and shook his head. He couldn’t answer.
“Do you ever wonder why that is? Why every change has been for the worse?” Mia asked.
She was sitting cross-legged in her chair with her wineglass cupped in her hands.
“Come again?”
“It’s just, it wasn’t always like this,” she said. “Do you remember how people used to be? Not just other people, but us, too. Do you remember when you could take a walk in the park and not buy anything? When you could make love to someone and not get up to check your phone? The streets weren’t always covered in glass.”
“Things change,” Carver said. “Years go by, some people get harder. Others break. And the ones who break make things worse for everyone. That’s your smash-and-grabs, those clubs on Powell.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Mia said. “It’s not just time going by. It’s not just the world growing up.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
She drank the last of her wine and reached for the bottle. She refilled her glass and then leaned over and poured the rest of the wine into his. There wasn’t much.
“This reminds me of when I was a little girl,” she said.
“In New York?”
“That’s right. A little girl, in New York. Just off Central Park West. Six, seven years old, and my friends would come over to my parents’ apartment for a sleepover. We’d stay up all night, talking. There were chairs, like this, in my dad’s study, and we could close the doors, so no one would hear us. We’d talk the sun all the way around and back up again. Then when the light was gray and sleepy, we’d get pillows from the couch, and blankets, and bed down on the carpet in front of the fire—but who does that anymore?”
“Not little girls?” he asked. He drank the rest of his wine.
“They don’t, and they haven’t for a long time. They’re lost in their screens, or out on the streets, in the shopping districts. Like moths to a flame,” she said. She looked at his glass. “There’s another bottle of the burgundy, if you’d like it.”
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I should get some sleep, I think.”
“When you wake up, you’re going to try to find out more, aren’t you? You’re going to try to track it down.”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t told her any more about that than he’d told Jenner. But he’d come close.
“Knock on my door if you want someone to come with you.”
He nodded, and stood up. She didn’t rise from her chair, but she held her hand out to him. He took it and squeezed her fingers lightly. Then he showed himself out.
10
CARVER CHECKED EACH room of his apartment. He didn’t think anyone had been in it since he’d left. It was nearly eight in the morning, and there was a hint of light from behind the wooden blinds in his bedroom, but he made no move to open them. Instead he sat at his father’s desk and opened the duffel bag. The thermal scope was on top, wrapped in his gym towel. He turned on his computer, found the number he needed, and dialed it.
“Equipment, Hollis speaking.”
“Hey, Hollis. This is Inspector Carver, from Homicide. Can you help me out?”
“I can try.”
“I was at a scene on Thursday night. Typical government clusterfuck. Paramedics, cops, firemen. Witnesses milling around. We got it squared away, but someone left a thermal scope in my scene bag. A patrol model, an Ønske. If I give you the serial number, can you tell me whose it is?”
“Read it out.”
Carver gave the number to Hollis, and then waited. He could hear tapping on a keyboard.
“Just a sec,” Hollis said. “I need to pull up a different table.”
“Fine.”
Carver closed his eyes and held his temples between his thumb and middle finger. He thought of Mia. She’d been gorgeous in the firelight, her legs tucked beneath her and her wine glowing like a garnet. She’d asked him if he thought something was wrong with the world. It hadn’t felt like a casual question. He was certain she knew something, and he sensed she was trying to lead him to it.
“Here we go,” Hollis said, more to himself than to Carver. “Officers Kimberly Houston and Winton Roper. They’re Metro Division, out of Central Station. You want their badge numbers?”
“That’s okay,” Carver said. “And listen, don’t mention this. I don’t want to bust their asses or anything. I just want to get it back to them.”
“You ought to bust their asses. Shouldn’t just leave stuff like that lying around.”
“It was a complicated scene.”
“So they sh
ould’ve kept their gear in order,” Hollis said. “Of course, I’m talking to the guy who smashed his scope last week. At least you reported it.”
“They haven’t reported theirs?”
“Not that I can see. Maybe they don’t even know they lost it. Christ, what would that say about them?”
It was possible they didn’t know. But Carver was putting his money on a different story: they knew it was missing, but they had no idea what to write on the report. They were taking their time, trying to trace their own steps back to last Thursday. If that was the case, then it would say a lot about them. It would mean they were his kind of cops.
“Thanks, Hollis,” he said.
“Anytime.”
He hung up, and thought about how he should come at Central Station. He didn’t like calling the desk officer because he didn’t know who would be on duty. Calling to ask for the work schedules of two patrol cops might raise more than an eyebrow. It wasn’t beneath reporters to call the front desk and pretend to be someone on the force. The desk officer might ask for Carver’s badge number, and then run it on the system to see if it checked out. If Hernandez had put a suspension hold on his file, he wouldn’t last thirty seconds.
He dialed the main line and a kid’s voice answered on the first ring.
“SFPD Central Station, this is Officer Yardley.”
“Good morning, Officer,” he said. “This is Inspector Ray Bodecker, SFPD Homicide. My badge number is 2524. I need a favor.”
He could hear the desk officer typing, looking him up. He hoped Ray wasn’t standing at Central Station’s front desk. The kid cleared his throat and shouted something to someone in the lobby. Carver couldn’t tell what it was, because the kid had covered the receiver with his hand. Then he was back on the line.
“What can I do for you, Inspector Bodecker?”
He must have passed the test.
“You got a pair of patrol officers on your roster, and I need them. Houston and Roper. When’s their next shift?”
“Can you hold, please?”
“Sure.”
“I got a situa —”
The officer transferred the call to hold, and Carver sat listening to a recording. The SFPD wanted him to remember the new tip line. It wanted him to remember: If they’re ripping copper, call in a chopper. Probably plenty of people called. Nobody liked it when the lights went out. The recording cut off and Yardley came back on the line.
“Inspector?”
“Still here.”
“Roper’s been out since Friday. Flu, sounds like. Houston’s on a shift that started ten minutes ago. She comes off at eight.”
“Thanks.”
“You want me to have dispatch call her with a nine-oh-four?”
Carver thought about that. Yardley was offering to have the dispatcher broadcast an instruction to meet another officer. It would be the fastest way to meet her, but he couldn’t have Bodecker’s badge number going out on the radio.
“How about a note on her locker?” he asked. “I’d rather keep it off the air.”
“She in trouble?”
“Not at all, son. I’m just working something and need to keep it close. I think she can help me. That’s it.”
“Yessir. What should I put on the note?”
“Tell her to meet me at Hideo’s. Tell her it’s about Thursday night, what she saw. If she can’t make it, have her call my cell.”
He gave Yardley his cell number, thanked the kid again, and hung up.
In the shower, he noticed he was feeling stronger than he had been. Mia’s meal was keeping him warm. He thought of what she’d said about the gray light at dawn, pictured her as a little girl, rolling out her bedding in the library of a townhouse on the edge of Central Park. Gray light and snowflakes on one side of the window; fire and books—and Mia—on the other. He liked that image, and liked even more that she had shared it with him. He knew there must be more that she was keeping back, but perhaps she meant to give him small things first, to see how carefully he could hold them. When she trusted him enough, she would give him something larger, more delicate.
He toweled off and put on a pair of boxer shorts. The blue pants he’d woken up wearing on Sunday were in the hamper next to his dresser. He looked at them and wondered where they’d come from. Then he pulled back the covers and got into his bed.
He’d told himself to wake at six in the evening, and he opened his eyes within a minute of that time. He’d never owned an alarm. He rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen to make coffee. While it was brewing, he shaved and dressed, and then he took the first mug and went to his study to see what else he could learn about Kimberly Houston. It didn’t take much effort to find a photograph. She was in her SFPD uniform, a pair of flags behind her. She might have been half Chinese, but he was no good at that kind of guessing. Her dark hair was wrapped in a bun. If she let it down, it might reach her shoulders. He tried to picture it that way, to see if it stirred any memory. The wooden blinds in the study were open, and he looked out at the Neptune Hotel’s neon sign, the red and blue lights blinking in the rain.
“Houston,” he said. “Officer Houston. Officer Roper.”
Saying the names didn’t bring any familiarity to them. Looking at the picture stirred something, but it was more a feeling than a memory. The feeling was fear, but he couldn’t connect it to anything. Until right then, he’d never been afraid without having something to be afraid of. It hadn’t even occurred to him that fear could be a free-roving agent, a dark thing that walked wherever it chose. He closed his eyes and tried to see the first thing that flashed behind his eyelids—Mia’s trick. But there was nothing.
There was still an hour and a half before Houston’s shift ended. When she got back to Central, she might have paperwork, and she’d likely want to shower and change before she went to her car or walked to a MUNI station. All that could add an hour. More, if her shift had been a bad one.
He took his coat from the hook by the door and stepped out of his apartment. He’d handed his department-issued weapon to Hernandez, but he had a personal nine-millimeter automatic in his holster. Without a badge, he had no right to carry it. Until today, he’d never considered he might need a concealed carry permit. But that wouldn’t matter if nobody knew. He crossed the hall to Mia’s door and knocked. When he heard her boot heels come down the entry hall, he knew she was dressed already. She opened the door and leaned against the jamb. She was wearing blue jeans and a knit sweater underneath a leather coat; not only had she been waiting for him, she’d been waiting with an expectation that he’d ask her to come.
“I’m going to meet someone,” he said. “I don’t think it’s dangerous, but I don’t know that for sure.”
“Where?”
“A Japanese place,” he answered. He’d chosen it because it was walking distance from Central Station, but it wasn’t a cop hangout. “Less than a mile from here.”
“Will I need to do anything?”
“Sit with me,” he said. “Follow my lead. Be disarming.”
“I can do that.”
“You ready?”
She stepped out and turned the lock, then pocketed her keys and took his arm.
In the parking garage, he gave Mia his flashlight, and she held it for him while he knelt next to his car’s open door. The car belonged to the city, and if Hernandez hadn’t taken his keys when she was collecting his badge and gun, then she must have wanted him to have it. He didn’t like that at all. He reached under the dash console, searching for the fuse panel under the steering wheel. He found it, had Mia point the light, and then pulled out one of the fuses. He tossed it into the back seat, then came around the car and opened the passenger door for her.
“How did you know which one?”
“I looked it up.”
“With a computer?”
“With my phone.”
He came back around the car and got in. He tried the GPS and nothing happened. He’d found the right fuse. H
ernandez couldn’t follow him that way, but he knew it was impossible to disappear from her altogether. She could track his phone, if she got a subpoena. Or she could just put a two-man tail on him and he’d never know it if they were any good. Maybe that had been her thought all along. She knew he was going to move around the city no matter what she did, so she meant to keep him in a vehicle she recognized. He’d have to think about that, weigh whether it merited some kind of response.
He drove out of the garage and down into the wet street. After looping to Kearny, he followed it north. Mia never looked out the window. She was either watching him or looking at her lap.
“Except for the two times you’ve gone out with me,” he said, “have you left the building since you moved here?”
“I try not to.”
“Why is that?”
“When I’m at home, I feel like I’m myself,” she said. “I’d rather be alone, and be myself, than be with other people and lose everything.”
None of that made sense to him, but he went with it.
“What about when you’re with me?”
“If we’re in my apartment, it’s fine. More than fine. If we’re in your apartment, it’s okay. Not as good, but okay. When we’re out here . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“How much I can handle,” she said. “I thought I’d be okay, when we went to the Fairmont. But it was hard. It took time, after, to get back to myself.”
They passed an Italian boutique. Purses and leather goods glowed beneath spotlights behind its tall display windows. A mob of women jammed its entrance, pushing to get in. Off-duty cops moonlighting as security guards were trying to force the crowd into a line along the sidewalk. Carver changed lanes to avoid the women who’d fallen into the street, and he saw Mia glance up when she heard the shouting. She looked away quickly when some of the uniformed men raised their nightsticks and started to swing at the women nearest the door. A cry went up, then faded as they went on. After they passed Columbus Tower, they entered the new red-light district that had metastasized from North Beach. There were Thai massage parlors and flashy sex clubs. Yellow cabs unloaded men at every corner, adding to the existing crowd. Flyers littered the sidewalks, their flexible LED screens running looped videos of girls in the unlicensed brothels.
The Night Market Page 10
