by Susan Dunlap
No way was I dragging Kristi’s name into this. I used an exercise from an acting class a few years ago—Mimicking the Speaker. Then we’d been able to stare, but now—not. I glanced at his face, and flashed the feel of it on my own. Maybe seeing my unguarded thoughts pop up in meditation had shown me I was as much a phony as anyone else, or maybe I was truly reflecting him. "I’ve done a bit of detective work.”
"Stunts and sleuthing.”
I flashed a false grin. "I could sleuth into whether you own the property or if it’s leased to the department. Or something else. But that hardly seems worth my time, since I have a hard time believing you’re just encouraging small business. So what is it?”
Before he could open his mouth I realized the answer. "A front.”
I was ready for hard-hitting denial, but he shrugged. "Yeah, a front for . . . for us.” He settled in his chair and again motioned me to slide down into mine, as if he hadn’t just asked me to sit a minute ago. "A very good front. With legitimacy we couldn’t buy.”
"Lucky.”
"Lucky.”
"Or not just luck?”
"Yes and no. Luck that I spotted her, luck she found a guy to underwrite her business. Luck, well no, not just luck that she handles that business well. Competence.”
"On both your parts?” I spotted her—odd choice of terms. I could ponder that later. This sparring was a quick in-and-out game. "I need to find her.”
"Why?”
"She tried to jump off the bridge.”
"The Golden Gate?”
"I happened to be there. I pulled her back. I think it’s her.”
"You think?”
"She didn’t leave any identifying . . . anything. There’re probably pictures on the bridge cams.”
"What’s it to you?”
The sparring was over. Now it was for real. I waited a moment, then told him what he’d know that I knew he knew and what it explained. "When someone goes missing you think there’s a point that you’ll adjust and go on with your life. There isn’t. We waited for Mike every day. There was never a time we didn’t wonder what we did wrong, what we missed, what we said or didn’t say. Trust me on this.”
He hesitated and in that moment I knew he’d been planning to stonewall me. He was taking advantage of the pause to decide how to play it now.
I didn’t have time for that. "Tessa said she’d try again! It’s already afternoon. In a few hours she could be back there climbing over the rail. Your employee, the woman you say you spotted.”
A hint of a smile flickered. "You think I’m callous?”
"I don’t think about you at all. Look, I’m just asking for her address! I don’t really even know if it’s her. Maybe I’ll go to her house and she’ll be in her bathrobe drinking coffee, reading the Chron.”
He didn’t reply. I could see him still trying to figure out the damage control.
What’re you more concerned about than her life? Is it your precious front? Or maybe—"Tessa, is she a cop?”
"Hell, no!”
"Cops aren’t suicides? Give me a break.”
"Cops off themselves, Darcy. But they don’t have to jump from bridges to do it, not with a forty-five in the holster, a private in the glove box, and narco down the hall.”
"So you have civilians working in your fronts?”
"That’s what fronts are.”
"You’re telling me you hire people off the street? So you could be hiring me?”
"Not after this.”
I laughed. "Tessa’s address?”
Unwarned, I’d have taken him as a pleasant lightweight. But he was better than just a good cop who’d mastered the poker face. He was maintaining character and running his thoughts behind it, a front operation of his own. "Okay, but you’re going to owe me.”
If I hadn’t known better—
I did know better. Favors in the cop shop are a whole different animal than favors in wine bars. Declan Serrano was one guy I definitely did not want to owe.
And yet . . .
He pulled open a file cabinet and poked around. "I’m doing this as a favor.”
"I could Google her. But thanks.”
"A favor.”
"Thanks. If you ever want a pass onto the set when we’re doing a stunt, let me know. If your kids—”
"A pass, yeah. I’ll let you know. Or I’ll let your brother know.”
I shook my head as if amused. "We’re big people, Declan. You can deal directly with me.”
"Really?”
"Yeah. The address?”
He masked up with that smile again. Did it always hide the same thing? With luck I wouldn’t find out.
I took the paper, gave him my best fake expression, and walked out.
The question was, what was he going to do now? He’d already gotten on the horn. Outside, eyes would be on me and they’d stay on me at least till I cleared out of Tessa Jurovik’s apartment.
Why not make it easy on myself?
I retraced my steps back inside, past Sam at the desk, who looked up then quickly away, and on to Serrano’s office. "You’ve already got a guy on the way there, right? Cut out the middle man and give me a ride.”
He looked up and grinned, this time for real. "There’s a burrito truck outside just south of the main door. Pick me up a carnitos with extra hot and you’re on.”
14
Only an idiot gets into a police car unless he’s driving—another of my brother John’s dicta. Hey, in for a lamb, in for a sheep.
Or was it hanged for a sheep instead of just a lamb?
Whichever, when I got to the front of the line at the Carnitos Burritos truck, I opted for the chicken burrito, and got the special for Serrano, adding a couple of Cokes, Mexican Cokes—from the old recipe with sugar not sucrose, that gives more bang for the buck.
It’d been many hours since my donut on the set. Had the day been decent the sun would have been midheavens. It doubtless was, lounging atop the fog. Like so many San Francisco days this one had started out overcast with the promise of clearing—i.e., it had lied. If I hadn’t had so much food in my hands I would have pulled my jacket tighter around me.
When a black unmarked car, the kind that marked the driver as SFPD, pulled up I was glad to slide in and pass him his share of lunch.
He eyed my half-eaten burrito. "You got time.” But before I could take a bite, he said, "What’s with that guy Dale?”
Uh oh. "I don’t know. Blowing the horn like that—”
"Horn’s the least of it. Asshole called City Hall. Wants to file a complaint!”
"What?” I didn’t know where to begin being outraged. "Sorry. He’s got no business—really, sorry.”
"Tied up half my morning.”
"Sorry,” I said and took a conversation-blocking bite of burrito.
As we drove down Mission Street, there were plenty of distractions. Best time for questions. I started out slow. "Where’d you spot Tessa?”
He corralled a bean with his tongue. "More like I was crushed into her. At last year’s Lit Crawl—one of the readings at Muddy Waters. So mobbed the author was yelling and you still couldn’t hear her.”
"Pulling overtime?”
"Cops can read, or maybe you didn’t know that.”
Touché. Declan Serrano might be an aficionado of the city’s literary scene but nothing I’d ever heard about the cockroach suggested that. Still, I felt like an oaf. I took a swallow of Coke and did a mental reset. "So you ran into Tessa, and what? Asked her out?” Could he be the boyfriend?
"Nothing that formal. Just coffee and business. Enough for me to know she was right for what I needed.”
"How so?”
He took a big bite, but a slower bite. Not a good sign.
He’d been answering so automatically, why was he hesitating now? "What do you know about her?” I prodded.
"She’s just one of my employees.”
Oh, please! "An SFPD officer doesn’t run a background on the woman fronting his oper
ation?”
"I can read people. It’s my business. If I couldn’t I’d be dead thirty times over. Took me one look to know she was right.”
"Really? What’d that look tell you?”
He lifted the burrito and took a bite that would keep him busy chewing for blocks.
It didn’t surprise me that he wasn’t answering—what stunned me was his evasiveness. I’d’ve put money on his first reply being, "Fuck off.” By the time he swallowed and said the meaningless "She looked competent,” I was barely listening.
What had he not said? "Where’d she come from? Surely you ran a social security check, asked for employer references.”
Another big bite.
I didn’t have time to wait out his lunch. The guy could nod or grunt. "Back east?” Could she be from Pennsylvania? Near Dickinson College? Was that the—
"Toledo.”
"Ohio?”
"What’d you think? Spain? Yeah, Ohio.”
"What’d she do back there?”
"Minor offense.”
I almost choked. I’d meant her work, not her rap sheet. I swallowed fast, too fast, and had to grab for my Coke while he looked at me and laughed. "What kind of crime?”
"That’s more than you need.”
"What? Her committing a crime makes her a good employment prospect?”
"For me, yeah. You got a record, you don’t want to mess with the cops.” At that moment, he screeched to a red light, turned, and gave me such an innocent smile it sent chills down my spine.
As he hung a left off Mission onto a side street, I asked, "How’d she seem to you recently? Depressed, desperate, hopeless?”
"Normal.”
"Which means?”
"Means that I only saw her when I went by there.”
"How often? Daily?”
"Whenever.” His phone buzzed. His phone rang. He ignored it. "Leave a message,” his message said.
Almost immediately it buzzed again. He picked up. "What?”
I couldn’t hear the caller, which was fine. Time was running out on this ride and I needed to think. When he hung up, without a word, I said, "Why would you even go over there? If she’s not a cop, if she’s just staffing the front, you have no reason—”
"Don’t be telling me what I can’t do.” Suddenly, he shot the car to the curb, slammed on the brake. "Let me make something clear to you. Don’t think this is a free ride just ’cause you’re sitting there. You don’t like it, get out.”
"And yet, Declan, your employee just about kills herself. You don’t know why. You don’t know where she is now. What does that say about you?”
"Watch what you—”
"She was supposed to be going on vacation. Where?”
"I don’t—”
"You don’t know! She’s answerable to you, there on her own, in your front. Under your protection. What kind of big shot are you?”
He slapped me.
I was so stunned—
He stared as if to say: What’re you going to do about it?
"Or,” I said, "are you the boyfriend she was calling the Friday before she tried to jump?”
He grabbed my arm. "How do you know about that?”
"Are you?”
"Tell me!”
"She told me, on the bridge. What do you think?” I thought that might shake loose the truth. I didn’t think he’d hit me again.
"Told you what? What’d she say?”
I was in too deep. Too deep to lie anymore. "That’s all. You can waterboard me now.”
It was an effort for him to rein himself in. He said, "If you think you’re protected because of John, think again. I know your brother, known him for years. Knew him when he was a high school kid running smack down here.”
"John wouldn’t—”
"Not John.”
I couldn’t help myself, I gasped. Smack.
He’d gotten me. "Yeah, Mike. Said he needed the money.” He laughed. "That’s what they all say, as if that makes everything okay.”
"He didn’t need money. He always had . . . ” Shit!
"He said”—he paused—"he did it for you.”
I worked to steady my breathing. It was a moment before I could force out, "Yeah, right. If you’d had something on my family you’d’ve used it ten times over by now.” I reached for the door and was out before he could react.
But he’d gotten me big time. I knew it. He knew it. The statute had run out long ago on anything Mike had done back then, but still it sent another chill down my spine a lot colder than fear of Declan Serrano.
I didn’t even waste time not believing him. When I’d been desperate for private gymnastic lessons Mike had paid and we’d told Mom they were free. When I’d’ve died if I couldn’t see the Up Down and Over auto race outside L.A. he’d arranged it. And there were birthday dinners for Janice, one at the Palace Hotel for Mom. Not often, but not cheap, and always with an excuse the recipient believed. And that was all twenty-five years ago. What had he been into since?
I wanted to figure—
But no time now. Now I wanted to get to Tessa Jurovik’s apartment before Declan Serrano pulled up.
No way was that going to happen. Not with him in a car and me on foot. And, more pressing, I had to get to Kristi. I’d been so careful not to bring her into it, but a detective’d have to be a total dud not to make the connection.
I pulled out my phone, called information for Skilled Copy, let the phone company steal a buck for putting me right through.
It rang and rang, clicking off just before the machine picked up.
I’d thought to ask her for her cell, though. I called and left a message. And told myself that there were ordinary enough reasons she wasn’t answering.
15
What I couldn’t stop thinking about was Declan Serrano’s slap. If he’d take the chance of hitting me, his colleague’s sister, what would he do to someone like Kristi?
Or Tessa?
I tried Skilled Copy again, not expecting an answer now, and not getting one. Ditto her cell. I could barely keep myself from racing back over to make sure Declan Serrano hadn’t gotten to her.
But I wasn’t near there or close to any transit that’d get me there. On the other hand, Tessa Jurovik’s address was three blocks away.
I started to run, then caught myself. Whatever Tessa was into with Serrano wasn’t going to be changed by my questions to him. I didn’t want to burst into her place on his heels. My aim was to slither in after.
What would I do then? What did I expect? Who the hell was Tessa Jurovik anyway? I had three blocks to come up with answers.
Last Sunday Tessa Jurovik—
No, start earlier. On the Friday before that she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. With Declan Serrano?
No, before that. The weekend before last—Tessa Jurovik had bought a six-thousand-dollar bicycle. When she rode it she was alive. She rode it till the last possible moment, before she tried to jump off the bridge. The bridge is at the far corner of the city from the Mission district, but hardly an impossible ride. San Francisco’s only forty-nine square miles. The hypotenuse of a right angle triangle is the square root of the sum of the squares of the other sides, right? So then, nine? Ten miles? Anyone on an old Schwinn could handle that.
And . . . ? Tessa Jurovik knew bicycles. You don’t wander into a store cold and buy a top-of-the-line racing bike, one that looks no different to the untrained eye. So, this woman who spent her days copying paper knew bikes.
I started across the street. A car shot around the corner, just about blowing me back onto the sidewalk.
Just a car, not Serrano.
So, she bought the bike, but why now? A couple of hundred dollars’ bonus wasn’t the reason. Why buy a luxury bike right before a vacation? I couldn’t get the pieces I had to fit together. What bothered me almost as much as Tessa’s decision to kill herself was trying to figure out the extent of Serrano’s involvement.
The vacation? Had she planning to go
with him? Could—I smiled at the thought—could it be that she pedaled off the bridge, caught a Bayporter to the airport, and was on the beach in Waikiki right now? And the hell to him? Could that be why Serrano had gone off the deep end? Maybe he didn’t know she was gone?
This was her block. I scanned the street, but no sign of the unmarked. Still, he could hardly have come and gone so fast. Or could he? I eased closer to the buildings letting the shadows shield me.
Tessa’s building was squeezed between a motorcycle repair shop and a slit-windowed brick rectangle that could have held just about anything. Its streetside windows had drawn shades. The entryway was on the side and the window next to it was not merely barred but bricked in. Not a place I’d sit on the stoop after dark. Riding a Campagnolo here? That’d be not merely asking to be mugged, but begging.
The buzzers were labeled, Graham–1, Byron/Jurovik–2, and Gonzalez/Washington–3. Was Serrano still around? It was a question I couldn’t answer. I pressed 2. No response. Big surprise.
But then came a real surprise. I pressed the door handle and the door swung open.
The hall was gloomy. I could just make out the edges of that former window around an amateurish bricking in. A wail came from the first-floor apartment. The first floor. She lived on the second.
What kind of place was this?
The wail was louder. Whiny. Piercing.
Omigod. A bagpipe!
A bagpipe in the middle of the city! A bagpipe played by someone who shouldn’t. A fucking bagpipe!
Now things fell into place: the separate building, the bricked window—the self-deception in soundproofing! As if! I wanted to think the ground-floor tenant—he had to be the owner—gave lessons to the tone-deaf who came through the unlocked door and thankfully went, as opposed to the source of those shrieks being himself. Well, no need to creep silently. I raced up the steps and pressed Tessa’s bell. Could it even be heard? How could anyone live here? Did Serrano pay her that little? Poor Tessa. What kind of life did she have? Her days spent copying papers and her nights in a place she couldn’t hear herself scream.
"Yeah?” The guy who answered the door was young, with long dark hair and apparently wearing what he’d slept in. Headphones circled his crown, not earbuds but serious block-out-noise cuffs. He slid them to his neck. He was, of course, shouting. He’d either missed or ignored the downstairs buzzer—if it worked at all—but pulled himself together for the bell here.
