The Big Boom

by Domenic Stansberry

  Nick walked away from the young woman at the door.

  “No,” he said to Barbara. “Tell Gucci no. Before we sign a release, we’re going to Columbus Station. We’re making sure the cops do their goddamn job.”

  Barbara put her hand over the receiver.

  “We have an appointment at the mortuary,” she said.

  “To hell,” he said.

  He stomped away. Outside, in the backyard, the cat was back on the diving board, eating some food Barbara had set out. Then the fool beast curled itself out on the edge, over the water, as if it were the most natural place for a cat to be.

  NINE

  Solano Enterprises was in the Jackson Cannery, down in the flats below Telegraph Hill. There had once been a beach here beneath the cliff face, and a shallow inlet, but that inlet had been backfilled long ago. The cannery had been built sometime in the twenties, and it stood against the sheerness of the cliff, a red brick building where the Calabrian women had worked the lines once upon a time, in their black dresses and their hairnets, sorting and stewing and packing. A different kind of work went on in the building now, though the nature of the produce was a bit harder to determine.

  Solano’s company had two floors, in the far wing, but Solano himself was a somewhat vaporous presence.

  Like a number of young men who headed up the small companies that had suddenly taken up residence beneath the Pyramid, he was often referred to as a visionary. But like a lot of these new visionaries, Solano could be hard to locate. He had many responsibilities, many places to be.

  He was in Los Angeles for the day, his secretary said.

  No, no, plans had changed. He was meeting with the technology team in San Jose. He was teleconferencing with Japan. On his cell to New York. In his car. In the conference room with the designers. He would be back this afternoon. Perhaps. Down the hall. In his dusk-gray rayon shirt. Smiling. His presence rippling the air.

  Everywhere at once. Nowhere.

  The rainmaker. The magnet. The one who brought it all together.

  Solano had a number of gurus on his advisory staff. These included a businessman who wrote self-help books. A television producer. A stock market analyst. A political consultant who worked for Senator Feinstein.

  These people were his brain trust. Their pictures were on the company Web site—with sayings, aphorisms, quotations from their columns and their books. For a fee, their collective wisdom would be streamed over the broadband network and delivered via proprietary software to the desktops of employees whose companies were insightful enough to connect to their services.

  But, likewise, their presence was elsewhere.

  Not here exactly. But not there.

  Certainly not in the building.

  There were people in the building, though. More and more these last months. Too many, in fact, for the small quarters in the cannery’s old wing. Information designers and video techs, artists and computer programmers, personnel and marketing people. The employees had meetings, and if at times the meetings were vague—if at times it was not clear the exact nature of their enterprise—if the proprietary software system did not launch and the technology staff backpeddled—if their pay was low and they could not afford to participate in the general hilarity of the streets at the night—if at times they grew skeptical and sardonic and suspicious—they still had their stock options. Not worth anything yet, but they would be, you could count on it. When the company went public, all their work, all their patience, would at last pay off.

  Michael Solano at the moment was in his office. He had not been there long, and there was someplace else he had to be in another minute. Meanwhile, he had a million messages on his cell, a million more on his e-mail. He had too many places to be, and for a second he felt as if everything were getting away from him. In many ways, it wasn’t his company any more. He was working for the venture people now. For Smith. Smith himself was a cipher, a voice over the wire. This was the way of things, Solano knew. The virtual world. Still, there were times Michael Solano felt as if he himself were not real. As if the world itself, and everything in it, himself included, were being atomized, turned into light. But this was the direction of things, as he himself knew. You had to keep the faith. Still, there were times he wished it was like the old days, before the virtual world. When the bosses were big men, fat and corporeal, who sweated as they pleased and jacked off over their money.

  A young woman entered the room.

  She was dressed in black and had startling white hair but also a face full of freckles. She was young. Very young. She was new to the job, but Solano saw in her face the little thrill that people in the company seemed to feel when they ran across him. They wanted to possess him, to capture the moment and put it in a bottle.

  It was what everyone wanted these days.

  “Mr. Solano. There is a man here to see you.”

  “I was about to leave,” he said.

  But he was already too late. The man had entered behind her, and Solano could tell at a glance the visitor wasn’t going to go away easily. He felt a spike of fear. Flesh and blood pinned to the moment, like a fish on hook. The man standing in front of him was an unusual-looking man, a face like some prehistoric bird, with dark, searching eyes—and the biggest nose Solano had ever seen.

  Mr. Solano?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dante Mancuso. I’m sorry, but I left a couple of messages earlier—”

  “If this is a sales call—My secretary—”

  “I’m afraid, no. That’s not it at all.”

  Dante handed him his card.

  “I’m working for Mr. and Mrs. Antonelli,” he said.

  Dante studied Solano for a reaction, but he couldn’t read him. Solano was a good-looking man, the kind of man used to having people study his face. He had curly hair, eyes that took you in quickly. He knew how to smile, how to give you his attention. Still, there was a sense he didn’t really see you, and there was also something clumsy about him, something unsure. That small hesitation, though, that flaw in the surface, was what drew people in, Dante guessed, the thing that made him likable. That, and his offhand charm. The fact you wanted to be seen by those eyes.

  “A few days ago, Barbara Antonelli called you. To talk about her daughter.”

  “Have you found Angie?” Solano asked.

  Dante nodded.

  “Oh, good.” Solano smiled.

  Maybe it was just all those years in homicide, delivering bad news. Or maybe there was something about Solano he didn’t like. Or maybe it was because Dante had just heard the morgue report from Cicero on his way here. Whatever the reason, Dante had the impulse to spit out the words and watch their impact. To deliver them in a way that was as nasty as the news itself.

  “No,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s not so good.”

  “No?”

  “The police pulled her body out of the bay a few days back.”

  If Dante had wanted to shake up Solano, maybe he had succeeded. The good looks disappeared, and an ugly quiver creased the man’s face. Pain, Dante thought. Or something like pain. And maybe Dante took some odd pleasure in it. He watched Solano bury his head in his hands. The man held himself like that a little while, then reached below the desk. The gesture triggered something in Dante. He shifted onto the balls of his feet—but then realized Solano had one of those little office refrigerators beneath his desk. Solano fumbled and came out with a mineral water. He tried to open the bottle, failed, and went to the window, composing himself. There was a sense of theatre about it, maybe, but Dante could not be sure.

  “Excuse me.” Solano’s voice trembled. “I’m sorry. Can I offer you something, a water …”

  Dante shook his head.

  Then Solano picked up the phone and told his secretary to have the design group start without him. His voice was more controlled now. Dante sensed the man’s importance here in this world and he was envious, not for the power, he told himself, but because later Solano would walk down the
hall and immerse himself in other business. He wouldn’t have to go back and sift through Angie’s room.

  “I’m sorry if I was suspicious when you walked in. We have an open-door policy, and lately I’ve been getting a lot of unsolicited visitors. Sales, mostly. And when you showed me the card, the detective thing … I’m sorry. I’ve got juice in here, too … Crackers…”

  “No, thanks.”

  Regarding Solano now, up front, in the flesh, Dante realized the thing he’d been looking for without admitting it to himself. It had nothing to do with the case, maybe, but Dante felt again that animal part of him that still regarded Angie as his own, even these years later. Dante wondered over the attraction.

  Solano had a certain hardness, a certain glassy surface, but there was that other thing there, too. The sense you could give him a push and he would break apart on you.

  Dante wanted to give him that push.

  “Originally, her father hired us to see if we could find her,” said Dante. “Now, I’m just trying to piece together the last few days of her life.”

  “If there’s anything I can do …”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “About three weeks ago. We were planning to go to Cabo together, but…”

  “You didn’t go?”

  “I went.” Solano stopped, drank some water. Thinking about Cabo San Lucas, maybe, and those hot sands in Baja. “I liked Angie, I liked her a lot—but she wanted something more. I mean, I got divorced a couple of years back … And I’m so involved here, with the company. I just wasn’t ready.”

  “So.”

  “I broke it off, to be blunt. And she had a very hard time with it. She quit her job with us. I didn’t mean for her to do that, but she got angry and stomped out.”

  “You didn’t see her again?”

  “She came to a meeting, that afternoon. She was professional… but that was it. And the next day, I went to Cabo alone.”

  Dante remembered how he and Angie had broken up. Or he remembered a street corner somewhere, the expression on her face. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “It’s bit risky, isn’t it, getting involved with an employee?”

  “I shouldn’t have, I suppose,” Solano said. “But it was mutual, and well …” His eyes darted away, and Dante could see his confusion and something like remorse. “Listen, I want to be cooperative. Our company, though … We’re going up for a new round of venture funding.” Solano paused then, as if catching himself, but Dante had seen the cornered look and understood. This world was everything to Solano. If it came unhinged …

  “I wish I could help more. It’s just that after Cabo, I went to New York on business. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “Until the twentieth.”

  Dante went through the dates in his head. By the time Solano returned from his trip, Angie had been in the water a couple of days. Solano had not been in town when she died.

  “Angie worked in publicity?”

  “We are not quite as formal with our titles here. The old business hierarchies, the old boundaries, some of that just doesn’t apply anymore.”

  “The other employees, did they resent her—this woman, hired off the street, working with you so closely?”

  “Maybe some people felt that way, but like I said, we aren’t beholden to those kinds of boundaries. Besides, everybody in the company has stock options. We’re all rooting for success.”

  The last time Dante had run into Angie had been some years ago, down at Carlo’s bar, and she’d had that look newspaper people get: cocky and world-weary at the same time, with her innocence all smudged up. He guessed he could see how she would be attracted to this man. Angie liked being at the center of things. And Solano, with the twist in his smile, the pivot to the hips, slouching against his desk, here in this office …

  Dante had with him the photos he’d taken from her apartment.

  “I was wondering if you’d mind taking a look at these.”

  Dante showed him the photos one at a time. The first was of Solano himself.

  “That was on her refrigerator.” “Oh?”

  “When was the last time you were in her apartment?”

  “I’m not sure. About a month ago.”

  He showed him another photo. Angie skittery in an electric blue dress, on the deck of a boat, with the California coast in the background.

  “Where was this taken?”

  “Catalina, I think. We were on a business trip, courting investors.”

  He handed him another.

  “This man?”

  “That’s Bill Whitaker. He’s our vice president of technology. He was there to provide a reality check. We have to make sure everything we do here, it’s feasible. And the investors, they like to talk to him.”

  “And the empty place, there, who was sitting in that?”

  “It’s empty.”

  “Right—but I see the wineglass is full. And somebody must have taken that picture.”

  “You know, you’re right. I am trying to remember …”

  Dante handed him the last picture.

  A thin-faced young man, with reddish hair, good-looking in a middle-of-the-country kind of way. He stood alone on the deck, with that same piece of California coastline behind him.

  “Oh, yes. Jim Rose. Jim was also with us that evening. At the table. He took the pictures, I remember now.”

  “Jim Rose?”

  The voice on the message machine.

  “Yeah—he’s an engineer. He was along, on the technical side.”

  “He works for you.”

  “He did.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jim left the company.”

  “Why?”

  “We get turnover, like every other business. The competition for talent is intense right now.”

  “Do you know where I could find him?”

  “You could ask our personnel department. They may have a forwarding address.”

  “Angie and Jim Rose—they were friends?”

  “At work he gave her the technical information for the press releases—and her job was to put a glow on it.”

  “How well did Rose know her? Did they socialize?”

  “I don’t know,” said Solano. “I’m not sure.” He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, this meeting, they’re waiting for me.”

  “Something else … Angie introduced you to her father?”

  “Yes, I met him. Just once.”

  “You have a business relationship?”

  “Not me, specifically, no. Listen, I’d be happy to talk about all this later … I don’t know how clearly I’m thinking, I’m a little stunned … and the design group …”

  Dante understood. The man didn’t want to talk. But he knew also that Solano would be on the phone soon enough, consulting his public relations people, or his lawyers, or the venture people themselves, trying to figure out how to control the damage if the news got out about his affair, about the dead employee in the bay. Though Dante knew such maneuvering was inevitable, the kind of contingency planning a man like Solano had to consider, it nonetheless gnawed at him, and no doubt would have gnawed yet more if he had known how quickly Solano would be on his cell, dialing, doing just as Dante imagined. Solano’s call, though, had to be patched. The connection was not immediate. As Solano waited for his call to go through, he could not help but think of Angie’s death, and he felt a certain fear in his chest, a certain irreality, a sense of things veering out of control, of wheels within wheels, and in his fear he touched himself, looking for solidity, and Solano thought of the girl at the front desk, of all the people waiting to talk to him, and then he touched his cock, feeling winsome, thinking it was not half so big as the detective’s nose.

  TEN

  Dante went down to the house on Fresno Street to see if he could determine the problem in the attic. Lisa had sounded blue on the phone, but a few months ago, when he’d le
t her and Tom rent the place, the couple had been happy enough. The pair had come out a year earlier from Philadelphia, but apartment space had been hard to find, and they’d been living for months in a motel in South City, down by the airport. So they had been pleased as hell with the house on Fresno Street, at least at first, loving everything about it, from the lath plaster to the ancient sink to the furniture Dante’s father had left behind and the pictures still hanging on the wall.

  Now Lisa opened the door. She was a dark-eyed young woman, friendly by nature. Usually she was pretty talkative, but today she was quiet, as if there were something on her mind. She followed Dante into the kitchen and stood with her arms crossed, standing sentry as he climbed the ladder.

  Dante didn’t get far. The attic hatch had been padlocked.

  His father had put the lock up there, Dante remembered, because his mother had become obsessed with the attic. She had not been able to let things alone: pictures, old clothes, memorabilia. She’d unpacked, repacked, then unpacked again, all the time in conversation with people whose photographs lay strewn about the attic floor. Over time the conversations had become increasingly strange.

  Now the lock was rusted, and anyway, Dante did not have the key. He could see the lock was not going to come off easily.

  Toward the end, his mother had ripped up some of the photographs and burned others, but a number had survived. Among those was an uncropped copy of the communion photo. That day, it had not just been Dante and Angie standing on the steps in front of the church. In the original, there were other people behind them and to the side, some of whom his mother did not approve.

  La Rocca and his Chicago friends.

  Or so Dante’s mother had said. But Nick Antonelli had been there, too, in the background, and relatives from both families and a number of other children, including a little boy off to the side, his face oddly blurred, out of focus, because the camera had caught him in motion.

  Dante could not quite remember the boy, but something had happened, he knew, and the kid had left the school.