If he stole her backpack and maybe even that jacket, the cops would think it was a mugging gone bad. Anybody who knew her would say she was the kind of girl who would fight back. He smiled.
But first he would follow her. See if she would take him to what he wanted: the flash drive with the incriminating evidence on it. Above everything, he needed that.
He watched the reporter shut off the phone, hand it through the front door, and then hurry down the street.
CHAPTER 39
She’d just given the phone back to the kid when she caught a glimpse of a guy leaning against a curio shop and checking his phone. He wore a trench coat, a watch cap, and sunglasses. Not unusual in a city of rapidly changing temperatures. But her father had taught her how to recognize like things (birds of a certain species, of a certain family) and then concentrate on what didn’t fit. The man was too casual and studied as he stood amid the crowds of tourists and shoppers hurrying by.
She gave another glance and saw the man look up and turn his head slightly in her direction. She spotted the tiny soul patch under the man’s lip and her heart gave a thud of confirmation. Time to move.
She hurried down Jackson and turned into one of the alleys that cut through the neighborhood. Laundry hung from fire escapes above her. An old man sat on a chair reading a newspaper.
She looked behind her. Two stooped grandmothers in black pants and faded cardigans carried the day’s groceries. A tourist snapped pictures and a young man unloaded a delivery van, but there was no sign of the guy with the soul patch.
Had she been mistaken?
She turned the corner, counted off three seconds, and then peeked back around the edge of the stucco building. Baldy/Archie was jogging up the alley, his unbuttoned coat flapping behind him. She saw the weapon in a kind of makeshift holster under his arm. Calvin’s knife. She hesitated only a second; then she turned and ran.
She sprinted down the sidewalk, darting around pedestrians, her breath coming hard. She looked over her shoulder. Baldy was half a block behind her but gaining ground. Think, she told herself.
In the long months after her disgrace, Aloa had often wandered the city as if needing to relearn its ways. She explored its small lanes, its hidden shops. On one of her walks she had discovered a small Chinatown storefront lined with boxes of soy sauce, fortune cookies, and Tsingtao beer. Inside the protective walls of comestibles, a dozen women played mahjongg. Their high-pitched chattering made them sound like sparrows, and Aloa had stood in the shadows, envying their laughter and camaraderie. She returned the next day to watch again and one of the women had beckoned her inside, motioned for her to pour herself some tea and get warm. What Aloa remembered now was the open door in the back of the room and the reason for the boxes of restaurant supplies.
She turned sharply, her boots slapping the gray cobblestones of another of Chinatown’s narrow passageways. She glanced behind her, saw Baldy had not yet arrived, and pushed her way into the storage-slash-mahjongg-room.
Hands stilled and eight unfamiliar faces turned toward her, their mouths open.
“Sorry. Just coming through,” Aloa said, and skittered between two tables of mahjongg players, ran through the open door in the front of the room, and burst into a narrow restaurant kitchen.
“Hi. Excuse me,” she said as she pushed past a dishwasher who couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
An explosion of what she guessed were Chinese curses erupted as she squeezed quickly past a potbellied man chopping onions and then slipped past a sweating chef who was at a hot stove.
“Excuse me,” she said, not breaking her stride. “Sorry.”
The cook shook a spatula at her and pointed toward the front door. The onion chopper was now yelling at the dishwasher, as if he suspected the boy of inviting intruders into his domain.
The edge of Aloa’s pack snagged a stack of metal trays and sent them clanging to the floor. The guy at the stove was coming after her now, and she pushed through the swinging kitchen door and into the restaurant, where an old man in a black jacket with a pork bun halfway to his mouth startled with a high gasp.
Aloa hoped she hadn’t given him a heart attack.
She ran through the restaurant, squeezing past tables, and then she was out the front door and onto Grant Street. She looked up and down the busy thoroughfare. No sign of her pursuer. She slipped out of her jacket, stuffed it in her pack, and took off at a sprint.
A few pedestrians glanced at her, but that was the beauty of San Francisco. Nobody blamed you for doing your own thing.
By the time she got to Pacific she had slowed to a fast walk, her torso slick with sweat, her limbs shaking with exertion. She hesitated at the star-shaped intersection of Pacific, Kearny, and Columbus, looked in all directions, and hurried to City Lights Books. From there, she thought, she could shield herself among the shelves and still be on the lookout for Baldy from the store’s windows.
She crouched down, willing her heart to settle. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, causing a quick startle of nerves. She pulled it out.
“Great job!” proclaimed the HardE app. “Twenty-five thousand steps.”
“Are you kidding me,” she said, and made to turn off the app, but before she could, another call came in. This one from an unknown number.
She hesitated for a moment, then answered. “Hello?”
“Ink, it’s me, Doc,” said the voice. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can.” Aloa let out a breath and sagged back on her heels.
“Are you sure?”
“How else would I know what to answer?”
“Good point,” said Doc. “I’m testing out my new iPhone. Tick got it for me. You can’t believe the stuff rich white people throw away.”
Aloa didn’t want to know the details of freegan phone acquisition. “Listen, I can’t talk right now.”
“Wait, Tick is putting you on speaker.”
“Where are you?” came a graveled voice.
Aloa thought of her possibly tapped phone. “I’m with Ginsberg. At Larry’s place.”
She knew the Brain Farm would recognize her reference to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who owned City Lights Books, and Allen Ginsberg, the beat poet whose book Howl had nearly landed both men in jail on obscenity charges.
“Got it!” Tick said.
She could hear Doc’s voice next. “What’s going on, Ink? You don’t sound so hot.”
“Somebody’s chasing me. He’s with this group of fixers. Out of New Jersey. He had a knife. I think it was Calvin’s.”
“Don’t move. We’ll pick you up.” It was P-Mac.
“No time. I have to be somewhere at six o’clock,” Aloa said.
“Forget the appointment. Your life is more important, Ink,” Doc said.
“That’s why I need to go. I need proof to stop this thing,” Aloa said.
“Wait right there,” Tick called. “We can make it, can’t we, boys?”
“Where are you?” Aloa asked.
“In the van. Just approaching the Bay Bridge,” Doc said.
Aloa did a quick calculation. “There’s no time. I’ll take the rental car.” For the first time, she was glad she hadn’t been able to find a parking spot near her house, where Baldy/Archie might be waiting for her.
“Don’t be a hero, kid,” P-Mac said.
“Who are you meeting and where?” Tick asked.
“I can’t say who but it’s on the same street as Jerry and the boys.” A reference to the Grateful Dead, who had once lived on Ashbury Street in the Haight. If somebody was listening in, she hoped they weren’t a fan.
“Roger that,” Tick said.
A man in a long coat walked past the window, but he was slender with stringy blond hair that tumbled to his shoulders.
“We can be there in twenty,” Doc said.
The pitch of the van’s engine shifted so it was nearly a scream.
“I don’t want to be late,” Aloa said.
“Many calculation
s lead to victory and few calculations lead to defeat.” A Sun Tzu quote from P-Mac. “We’re going with you.”
Aloa could hear shouts of assent from the other gray-hairs.
“I’ve got my conker,” Tick said.
“And I’ll bring li’l Jackie,” Doc called out.
Somewhere in his life of monkeywrenching and anarchistic misdeeds, Tick had taken to carrying a tube sock filled with marbles as a weapon. And, as an African American male, Doc knew the only armament he could carry was one that could be denied as sporting equipment. He’d named the bat in honor of Jackie Robinson.
“No need for conkers or bats,” Aloa said. “Besides, I think I’ve lost him.” Aloa looked out the window again.
“‘When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away,’” P-Mac said. More Sun Tzu. “Stay right there.”
“We can make it,” Doc hollered.
Aloa thought of the possibility of Baldy/Archie being nearby as P-Mac had said. An unexpected escape in the gray-hairs’ van might be her best choice. “All right. But if you’re not here, I’m going on my own.”
“We got us a mission, boys,” Tick cackled. “Radio silence from here on in.”
The phone went dead.
CHAPTER 40
Where in the hell did the bitch go?
CHAPTER 41
Aloa squeezed the rental car diagonally behind an SUV parked in the driveway of the gaily painted Victorian that housed Jordan’s apartment. That the rental car was blocking someone else’s vehicle and resting halfway across the sidewalk was a dispensation allowed under the informal parking code of San Francisco: thou shalt not abandon a spot simply because it might piss someone off. Aloa got out of the car and hurried up the steps to the front door.
When the Brain Farm hadn’t showed up at the appointed time, she’d cursed, waited five minutes, then slipped from the store and sprinted to the rental car, driving like a madwoman through tourist traffic in order to arrive at Jordan’s apartment ten minutes late. She wondered why she’d believed the Brain Farm could make it to the bookstore in twenty minutes. A golf cart had more chance of arriving on time than that hamster-wheel of a van engine.
She calmed her breath, rang the doorbell, and waited, searching the street for signs of Baldy or anyone who seemed suspicious. The sidewalks were peaceful in contrast to Ashbury Street’s history. One of these Victorians, she knew, was where the Grateful Dead had lived from 1966 to 1968 thanks to the generosity of Owsley Stanley, a man who had reportedly manufactured more than a million doses of LSD in a two-year period. There was also the unnumbered house where the Hells Angels once had its headquarters. Now, the formerly shabby homes that had sheltered the 1960s free spirits were priced in the million-dollar range. Yet vestiges of the old neighborhood culture remained. The clock at the corner of Haight and Ashbury was still frozen at 4:20, the universal code for the consumption of cannabis.
Aloa stepped off the porch, examined the house’s windows for movement, then went back and pushed the doorbell again. Had Jordan changed her mind?
A European starling fluttered onto the porch railing and cocked its head at Aloa. The species had been brought to the United States by a group of Shakespeare enthusiasts who wanted every bird in the bard’s writings to be available for viewing. Now they were everywhere: literature’s pests.
The starling fled at the sound of a buzzer and the front door clicking open.
“Finally,” Aloa muttered. She grabbed the handle, gave one last look down the street for Archie, and went inside.
Time to see what Ethan and Hayley may have died for.
Jordan answered her door in running tights, a jog bra, and an artfully torn T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back tightly into a bun and she was glistening with sweat.
“Are you by yourself?” she asked.
“I’m alone,” Aloa said.
“And nobody followed you?”
Aloa shook her head. She’d kept an eye on her rearview mirror and spotted no sign of a pursuer.
“You freaked me out,” Jordan said. “That stuff about people wanting to hurt me. Come in. Hurry up.” She opened the door wider and Aloa stepped through. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said.”
The competent Jordan who had climbed trees and run hundred-mile races had faded. She appeared anxious, jumpy. “Want some orange juice? I just squeezed it.” She wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt.
“Juice would be good, thanks.”
A small kitchen opened off the high-ceilinged living space, which contained a black leather love seat, a sleek road bike, and a small table cluttered with framed photos and candles. Exercise equipment filled one corner of the room, and a large American flag hung over the fireplace with more photographs. Interesting decor, Aloa thought.
She wandered over to the photos on the table. There were professional-looking shots of Jordan rock climbing, on a road bike, standing on a beach with a paddleboard under her arm. In each, she was dressed in more skin than cloth.
“Do you model?” Aloa asked.
“I’ve done some catalog work,” Jordan said from the kitchen. “Mostly it’s social media stuff. I get bonuses for magazine shots, anything that gets over twenty-five thousand hits.”
Aloa heard the tumble of ice cubes and went over to the fireplace. The photos there were not the stuff of catalogs or social media. There was a shot of four soldiers in desert camouflage standing next to a dead body in loose Pashtun clothing. Another showed a gathering of dusty soldiers with guns. Some of them were shirtless, some in camo gear and headscarves, all of them grinning and making gestures toward the camera.
Aloa straightened. “These are interesting shots,” she said as Jordan came into the room with tumblers of orange juice.
“Friends of mine. They did an important job. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t understand.” Jordan handed her the juice.
“The dead man?” Aloa asked.
“Al Qaeda.”
“How did you know those guys?”
“I don’t have a lot of time. Tell me why you think Hayley was killed,” Jordan said, and perched on the edge of a weight bench.
“I think Hayley had information. I think she may have been blackmailing somebody. Somebody you know.” Aloa settled on the leather love seat, put the glass of juice on the floor, and pulled her notebook and pen from her pack.
“What? Who? How do you know that?”
Aloa studied the athlete. “Why didn’t you tell the cops that Hank Tremblay was at the campout?”
Surprise registered on Jordan’s face, then flitted away. “When Hayley went missing, somebody called from Hank’s office and asked me to tell the cops I didn’t know the name of the other camper, that we should say the only name we had for him was Boots. Hank’s dad used to call him that, I guess.”
“But why?” Aloa asked.
“Hank had blown off some big meeting and the guy who called said if we told the cops Hank’s real name, word would get out and he’d lose some big deal he was making. Why does that matter?”
For a moment, Aloa wondered if Tremblay had also bought her silence. “Because,” she said, “Tremblay’s company was in trouble over this stuff called Pro-Power 500.”
Jordan seemed to study the laces of her running shoes. “So you know about that,” she said, finally. Her eyes lifted and met Aloa’s.
Aloa nodded. “And if Hayley was blackmailing Tremblay over it, which I think she was, well, that’s a good motive for murder. RedHawk would be finished if word ever got out.” Aloa waited to see Jordan’s reaction.
Jordan looked away and then back at Aloa. “But what about the note in her car?”
“The handwriting was never tested, plus the evidence points away from that.”
“What evidence?” Jordan asked. She finished off her juice in a long gulp and set the empty glass on the floor.
Aloa weighed her response. “Hank Tremblay had motive, opportunity, and the means to hu
rt Hayley. That’s why he was at the campout.” She decided to play a little hardball. “Withholding evidence in a criminal investigation is a crime, you know.”
Jordan got up and moved over in front of the American flag above the fireplace. Her unblinking eyes held Aloa’s gaze for just a little too long, a sign, Aloa’s detective ex-boyfriend believed, that showed cognitive overload—either extreme stress or a lie.
“How close are you to writing about that stuff?” she asked.
“Pretty close. The papers will just confirm what I know.”
“Let me ask this: Do you love America?”
Aloa frowned. “I appreciate the freedoms we have,” she said carefully, “but I don’t always agree with our partisan politics, the influence peddling.”
“You don’t think we should have been in Iraq? In Afghanistan?”
“I think the evidence suggests we went there for the wrong reasons.” Aloa wondered where the conversation was headed.
“Well, I love America.”
“I can see by the flag.”
“Hank Tremblay loves America too.”
“I’m not sure where this is going.”
“God, it’s hot in here.” Jordan slipped off her T-shirt and mopped her still-perspiring face. Her jog bra was black, her torso so taut it was almost sculptural. “Just because a corporation tries to make money, you think it can’t do good things?” she said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Hank was doing something noble.”
Aloa wasn’t sure how to answer. Dumping tainted supplements on unsuspecting people was only noble if you were devoted to the bottom line.
“Hank was looking at the big picture.”
“Which is?”
“That America is being threatened and it’s up to patriots to step forward.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
See Her Run Page 21
