“Here are your clothes, and here is a jacket belonged to Meester Peters. It might fit joo, jess?” It was a brown-suede jacket with Thinsulate lining. I tried it on. Although extra large, it fit a little tight in the shoulders, but well enough, and it would keep off the rain and the chill.
“Gracias, Juanita.”
“De nada,” she said, automatically answering in Spanish. Then she giggled. “Oh, joo speak e-Spanish very good!”
“I speak the accent Without a trace of the language,” I said.
She screwed up her little face and burst out laughing. “Joo are a funny man, Meester Caine. Joo make me laugh.”
“And you are a good woman, Juanita. Keep Mrs. Peters safe, and call me if anything happens.”
“And I’ll let Mees Claire know they will call from the office.”
“Thank you very much.”
I changed back into my own slacks before I went out to the car, the husband’s high-water pants uncomfortable in both their appearance and their symbolism.
The Range Rover was where I parked it the night before but there was something different about it. Sometime during the night someone had run a sharp edge down both sides of the body and had written something on the hood. I stared at the highly stylized markings, recognizing them as similar to gang graffiti, trying to decipher them until they made sense. The writing was in Spanish. “Mate lo,” I said aloud, reading the tortured characters. “Kill it.” It also meant “Kill him.”
I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the body, then opened the hood and searched the engine compartment. I checked the wiring for the ignition, following it from the key switch through the fire wall into the electrical system. The battery wires betrayed nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing was out of place. Unless someone was world class, there was no bomb on the Range Rover.
But I still felt the adrenaline flow and my butt pucker involuntarily when I turned the key and the engine kicked over.
So our visitor hadn’t gone. He was still around after I arrived. And he was bragging about it. There was ego involved.
I smiled. That was something I could use.
On the way out to Petersoft, Ltd., I tried Sergeant Esparza. He was in.
“Good morning, Sergeant. Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Unless something strange comes up today.” I could hear men laughing in the background, an explosive male baritone of testosterone and camaraderie. Someone slapped a desk with the palm of a hand. It didn’t sound angry. “’Course, strange things come up every day around here.” There was another round of laughter in the background, Esparza playing the room.
“Do you know any ex-cops who are available to work bodyguard? I need a couple of men. Experienced guys.”
“You want someone who’s worked bodyguard. Not just some retired stiff off patrol.”
“That’s what I need.”
“Sure. You got a pen?”
I fished around, found a Mont Blanc in the inside pocket of Peters’s jacket, Jack Kinsman’s business card in my wallet. “Okay,” I said. “Name and number?”
“Ed Thomas. He’s a retired detective sergeant. Used to work SWAT, too. Has his own license and I know he takes bodyguard jobs. He can get a couple of guys, too. They all carry. They’re all ex-cops. Thomas is picky about who hires on with him, so you’ll get a good team. Tell him Greg Esparza gave you his name.” He gave me the phone numbers for Thomas, both cellular and office.
“I’ll tell him,” I said. “And I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Meet us at eight-thirty. They have very strict laws in Mexico, so don’t bring your roscoe.”
“My what?”
“Your gun.”
“I don’t carry a gun.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Just don’t bring it.”
I thanked him again and phoned Thomas. He was in his office and agreed to meet me at the marina for lunch. I told him how to recognize me. He told me he’d find me by asking the hostess.
Smart man.
13
Petersoft, Ltd., occupied a three-story concrete building along Torrey Pines Road between the UCSD campus and the Salk Institute. The building didn’t look as if it had been constructed from the ground up. It appeared to have landed after a voyage through deep space. The windows looked strange, long thin vertical lines with no apparent conscious spacing, their meaning obscure until I recognized the pattern: bar code, spelling out some formula or name or something in light and space and concrete. The asphalt parking lot, as big as a football stadium and hidden from Torrey Pines Road by landscaped berms, was nearly empty.
I parked the Range Rover in a spot near the entry. The front door was locked. I peered through the glass. The first floor was as deserted as the parking lot. A hand-lettered sign instructed visitors to go around the back.
Rain was still falling hard, but I walked along the pathway next to the building. Thick landscaping covered the grounds and the trees offered some meager protection, but by the time I made the rear of the building, the rain had soaked my head and shoulders, and I began to wonder if Peters had left a hat around, too.
An open door and metal stairs were my reward. I followed the stairs to the second level, opened the fire door, and found people.
A pretty blonde in her early twenties wearing 501’s and a bulky white pullover sat hunched over a workstation near the door. She ignored me and continued peering at the screen in a nearsighted way that made me wonder why she didn’t wear glasses.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Can you tell me where I can find Adrian?”
“He’s in the lab,” she said, not looking away from her task. She pointed toward the other end of the building. It was a crooked point, but I followed her finger and found a glass enclosure in one of the corners.
“Thanks,” I said.
There was no reply.
I made my way through a half-abandoned landscape of workstations and empty cubicles. Wastebaskets overflowed and trash littered the floor as if people had moved out in a hurry, and the ones who remained didn’t give a damn about the mess. It reminded me of the old proverb: something like “Why worry about your haircut when you’re about to lose your head.”
Two people occupied the lab, looking at some papers laid out on a desk. Both were young. Both male.
“Excuse me,” I said again. “Is there an Adrian here?”
“That’s me.” One of the men focused his attention on me. He was tall, nearly my height, with high cheekbones and clear gray eyes. He wore his blond hair longish, swept over the back of his head like a lion’s mane. When he looked at me, there was little interest.
“I’m John Caine.”
“Claire called. She said to give you whatever you needed. What do you need?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d like to see Mr. Peters’s desk.”
“His office is upstairs. I’ll take you.” He spoke quietly to the other young man, who nodded and folded the papers they had been scanning and went out the door.
“Come on,” Adrian said to me. “We’ll take the stairs. The elevator’s out.”
I followed him up the fire stairs to the third floor. In the corner of the building, with windows facing both the Pacific and the groves of eucalyptus trees lining Torrey Pines Road, was an all-glass enclosure. Even the door was glass. Adrian unlocked the door and stepped aside.
“I’ll be downstairs. You need anything, come get me.” His hostility covered him like a blanket.
Not knowing what I’m looking for is standard for me, but I know what I want after I’ve found it. There was nothing here but more questions.
I sat in Paul Peters’s leather chair, my feet on his desk, and gazed through the glass wall at the empty executive floor. He had been king of all he surveyed. His domain, now crashed and burned, was another victim of the accident. Or whatever it was.
Were I Paul Peters, with a beautiful and loving wife and a successful company, a life I had carved from nothing at all with my own two
hands and intelligence, why would I want to leave all this? Why would I subject my friends and employees and family to the stress of dealing with the mess I left behind? Ego had to be involved. What would make a man abandon all this, including this monument to his ego?
What had Claire said about another woman? A year ago, last December, Paul Peters had attended a seminar in real estate investment. In Palm Desert. There would be records. There would be expenses. He would have been given a notebook, a syllabus, handouts. There would be hotel bills, airplane tickets, expense-account vouchers, possibly a list of attendees. Of course the company would have paid for it. Why have your own company if you don’t use it?
In the third drawer of his credenza I found a collection of leather desk-model Day-Timer notebooks. In the book for the previous year, in the month of December, I found a notation about the seminar. December twelfth through the sixteenth. Desert Hot Springs Resort. Room 1651. There were four telephone numbers scratched on the page under the notation. I took out my notebook, which today was Jack Kinsman’s business card, and copied the numbers.
That was the solitary clue. There were no Polaroid photographs of a young vixen wearing only a lewd smile, no hidden notebooks, no agendas of trysts. I spent an hour making certain there were no more leads before I gave up. It was almost time to meet Ed Thomas.
I went downstairs and found Adrian drinking coffee, leaning against the top of a partition, talking quietly with the same young man who had been in the lab.
“I’m through,” I said.
“Okay. You lock it up?”
“I didn’t have the key.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.” He made it sound as if I’d put him out.
“Did Paul Peters carry a personal Day-Timer?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Not.”
“Would he have kept it here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out who gave the real estate investment seminar in Palm Desert that Mr. Peters went to in December of last year? And can you get me a copy of his expense account? All receipts?”
“Sure. When do you want it?”
“Friday okay?”
“I can do that.”
“Can you get me a list of people who attended?”
“I can try.”
“How many people went through his office since he, uh, died?”
“You. Me. Mrs. Peters. Mr. Stevenson. And those guys from the government yesterday.”
“The audit?”
He nodded. “They tore the place apart. They asked me the same questions, except for that investment seminar stuff. They wanted everything.”
“IRS?”
“I don’t know. Just the government.”
“No one else?”
“No.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll call you if I think of anything else.”
“Okay.”
Feeling like a blabbermouth, I fled down the stairs and braved the elements back to the Range Rover. I had the glimmering of an idea, but I wasn’t sure where it would go.
Just like all my other ones.
14
Ed Thomas was a big man in his late sixties with white hair thinning on top and a white mustache and goatee that made him look like a fit Kentucky colonel. He wore a double-breasted blue blazer and an open-necked blue shirt over tan trousers with knife-edge creases. His boots were polished to a high sheen. His gun was barely noticeable, riding high on his right hip.
“You’re Caine?”
I stood up and shook his hand. He had a firm grip. It gave me hope.
“You’re Thomas?”
“Esparza gave you my number?”
“Yeah. He said you were good.”
“Probably wants a cut. I trained him when he first came on, my last year. He’s a good officer. Lots of potential there. Maybe someday he’ll be chief.”
“He said you’re a private detective and that you knew protection.”
He nodded. “You need bodyguard work?”
I explained the problem and explained the client, which in most cases amounted to the same thing. In this instance it was beginning to look like the family lawyer might be a part of the problem. I explained that, too. Thomas nodded understanding when I laid out the deal. Something about him reminded me of Obi Wan Kenobe, but taller and with less hair.
“Heard about Peters. It was all over the papers when it happened. Thought it was just an accident.”
“Maybe. The wife doesn’t think so.”
“I guess not.”
“Can you do it?”
“Two men can cover sixteen hours. You’ll cover the other eight?”
“I don’t want to do it that way. I’m following something and I don’t want to be tied to a schedule.” I also didn’t want to be available when the widow Peters had a few drinks and became amorous. There was no telling how long my willpower would last. It was getting more difficult as time went on. “But she should be okay during the day,” I continued. “She seems to be afraid of the dark.”
Thomas snorted. “Aren’t we all?”
We agreed on a daily rate for the two shifts. Ed said he’d man the graveyard shift himself, and he had a good man, retired San Diego PD, ex-SWAT, who could work early evening to midnight. He assured me that between the two of them there wouldn’t be any trouble they couldn’t handle.
“Prowlers, you say? You want us armed?”
“Yes.”
“Side arms and shotguns?”
“Whatever you think appropriate. I’m not going to tell you how to do your job.”
He squinted at me. “Well, you’re a rare son of a bitch. I thought everybody was an expert on everything these days.”
“When can you start?”
“We’ll both be there tonight. You got the address?”
I wrote it on a napkin and handed it to him.
He looked at the address, brought it closer to his face so he could read it, and snorted again. “Fancy neighborhood. You know who lives across the street?”
“The governor?”
“Close. Her royal highness, the mayor.” He stood up, pocketing the napkin. “A bigger pain in the ass you’ll never meet. I know we were supposed to have lunch, but I’d better start setting this up. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all, Ed. I’ll see you tonight. About five?”
“Tell the lady not to worry. Ed and Hatley will be there.”
15
She surveyed beautiful. Got ’em to expedite, since you’re in such a hurry. Got a little dry rot in the bilge, but nothing to worry about. You’d expect that in a wooden boat. New engines. The latest electronics. New generator. New hull paint. She’s in better shape than when she was first launched.” Jack Kinsman, the boat salesman, was happy with the report. It meant no delay in the completion of the sale, which meant no delay in receipt of his commission.”Wanna come sign the papers now?”
“No,” I said. I was standing naked at the window, dripping water on Intercontinental’s carpet fifteen floors above his floating sales office. It was still raining hard along the waterfront.
On the television across the room, the weatherman admitted he really didn’t know when the rain was going to end. It was an El Niño year and San Diego, it seemed, was in the path of something called a storm track. Another gully washer was on its way, currently pouring on the good folks in Seattle, but it would be here in a day or two. In the meantime, the present deluge had backed up an emergency storm drain, filling the basement apartment of a woman confined to a wheelchair, drowning her while her husband was at work. The public-works spokesman said he couldn’t understand it; everything worked fine all summer.
“I’m sorry, Jack. Can’t make it this afternoon. Let’s leave it for Friday as we’d planned.” I lusted for the Olympia, couldn’t wait to own her. But I had a standard daily rate to earn, and things were getting interesting.
>
Kinsman called when I was fresh out of the shower. I had run again despite the rain and worked out hard at the hotel gym when I returned. I compromised and took the elevator to my room, ordered room-service coffee and pastries, and then hit the shower.
I’d just hung up and was toweling dry when the knock came at the door.
“Just a minute,” I called, wrapping the towel around my waist. I opened the door a crack. “I’m just out of the shower. Can you leave it at the door?”
“Of course, sir. Can you sign for it?” A pale white hand thickly covered with blond hairs pushed the invoice and a pen through the crack. I added a fifteen-percent tip, scribbled my signature, and pushed it back. “Thank you, sir,” said the voice in the corridor.
Still wearing only a towel, I counted to ten and opened the door, looked both ways to make certain the hall was deserted, picked up the tray, and shut the door. I carried the tray to the little table and sat in the easy chair near the window, poured some coffee into a china cup. Rain spattered against the glass. Ah, the joys of casual dining.
There was another knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I called from my chair. I wasn’t expecting anyone and wasn’t inclined to move. My body was a little stiff from all the recent exercise.
“Room service.”
It was a different voice. Another pot of coffee? More pastries?
“Already got it,” I said, still not moving, except to take a bite from one of the bear claws.
“There was a screwup on your order,” said the voice outside. “I’m here to make it right.”
Curiosity got the better of me. This wasn’t the same kid who delivered the tray. This voice was crude, untutored. A street voice, not what I was used to in this hotel.
“Just a second,” I said, getting up and securing the towel around my waist. It was my intention to open the door a crack and send him on his way.
It didn’t happen that way.
I turned the lock and the door imploded at me, the leading edge hitting me between the eyes like the blade of an ax. I bounced off the mirrored closet door behind me. As I rebounded, a fist hit me square on the point of my chin.
Sand Dollars Page 8
