Dead Midnight (7 page)

It was very late in Bangkok—or very early, depending on your point of view—but I badly needed to hear Hy’s voice reassure me that I wasn’t the monstrously uncaring person I felt like. Trouble was, I also needed a phone that didn’t chirp at me every fifteen seconds.

As I merged with the sidewalk crowd on Grant Avenue, I looked around. Chichi shops, restaurants, and not a phone booth in sight. The prevalence of cellular units was forcing the phone company to phase out many booths, and it had been my experience that when you found a working one it was bound to be in an inconvenient and noisy spot. Besides, if I stopped to make a call, I’d be cutting it close for my appointment with Harry Nagasawa. I scuttled the notion for now and headed for the parking garage.

The family’s home was on Vallejo Street in Cow Hollow, a district named for the dairy farms that once were prevalent there. Nowadays the only bovines associated with the place are cash cows—the buildings from which owners frequently milk huge profits. The Nagasawas’ block was quiet and tree-lined, the house a large tan stucco with a blue tiled roof, a small front garden surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, and a pair of yew trees in gigantic blue urns to either side of the door. Impressive, even in this area of very impressive homes.

When I pushed the bell it rang softly. I waited, but no one answered. I rang again, and yet again. Had Harry forgotten our appointment?

Tires squealed a block away. I turned, saw a red Porsche careening around the corner. Rae called Porsches “asshole-creating machines,” and she should know; Ricky owned one, and whenever either of them got behind the wheel they turned into maniacs. Obviously this car had exerted a similar affect on its driver.

The Porsche screeched to a stop at the curb in front of the Nagasawa house and stalled. A man leaped out, his black hair tousled and his chinos and Henley shirt looking as if he’d slept in them. A pair of sunglasses with one missing earpiece perched crooked on his nose.

“Sharon McCone?” he called as he came up the walk, tripping on an untied shoelace. “I’m Harry, Harry Nagasawa. Sorry I’m late, but I got tied up at the hospital—and now I’m untied.” He let loose with a shrill laugh and bent down to fiddle with the lace.

“Housekeeper’s day off,” he said, speaking to the ground. “Otherwise she’d’ve been here. Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? What I mean is that you wouldn’t’ve had to wait outside.” He straightened, launched himself at me, and shook my hand, pumping it up and down. Then he aimed a key at the lock and missed, nicking the door’s varnish with its tip.

This man was a resident in cardiac surgery?

Harry finally got the door unlocked and rushed inside. I followed him into a large tiled hallway. It was filled with plants in more urns—silk, but good imitations—and several of a hand-painted type of chest that I’d heard referred to as
tansu.
Harry heaved his keys and sunglasses at one of them, and both slid to the floor behind it. He didn’t appear to notice.

“Come this way,” he said, and led me to a parlor to the right. The room was so crowded with objects that I stopped on the threshold to study them. Scroll paintings and statues and temple lamps vied for space with massive leather furniture. Tables were covered with embroidered silks and ivory and jade
netsuke.
Harry lurched across to a wet bar on the far wall, narrowly missing a porcelain cat that sat haughtily beside an armchair.

“Drink?” he asked. “You’ll like this Viognier my father stocks for my mother. She doesn’t live here anymore, but he still keeps it on ice, hoping.”

It was too early for wine, but I sensed Harry was intent on drinking and would take offense at being forced to do so alone. As he plied the corkscrew without waiting for my assent, he babbled on about the vintage, and I realized I had yet to utter a word during our brief acquaintance.

He carried the drinks—something dark and strong-looking for himself—over to a coffee table and motioned for me to sit on the sofa. After I asked if I could record our conversation and positioned the machine, he gulped most of the liquor, closing his eyes as if he were taking medicine. And of course he was—the classic signs of a person who had been self-medicating in various ways were all present, and why wasn’t anyone in his family or at the hospital doing something about it?

“You’re here to ask me what I thought about Rog, right?” he said. “Well, I thought he was a total asshole.”

No subtle probing necessary with Harry. “Have you always thought that way, or only since he killed himself ?”

“Always. Rog was born a jerk. Whiney, sulky, self-righteous, self-involved. Sensitive, Mom said. Easily wounded, Dad said. A pain in the ass, I said. Of course, nobody listened to me.”

“You expressed your opinion?”

“We kids were taught to always say what we think.”

“How did Roger react?”

“How d’you suppose? He whined and sulked.”

“Then it would be an understatement to say you weren’t close.”

“Rog was a loner, not close to anybody. During the time he lived here before he bought his flat, he barely spoke. It was a relief to see him go.”

“And I don’t suppose he told you anything about what went on at
InSite.
”

“He didn’t talk about his job to any of us.” Harry rattled the ice in his glass, went to the bar for a refill.

“What about his final e-mail to you? Did he say anything in it?”

“His what?”

“In his journal entry the day he died, he said he’d e-mailed both you and Eddie.”

“Oh, that. I don’t know what he said; I deleted it without opening it.” He paused. “I sense you don’t approve of our relationship.”

“I’m not here to judge you.”

“That’s good, because you don’t understand the situation. Nobody does. Rog gave my parents a lot of grief his whole life.” He returned to his chair, flopped into it heavily. “He ran away from home because he was disappointed in love—at eighteen, for God’s sake. By eighteen I’d been disappointed in any number of things, but I didn’t turn my back on my family. For the next seven years, every time he paid a visit he put a downer on all of us. And then the son of a bitch knocked himself off. My folks’re never going to recover from that.”

“This disappointment in love—did you know the girl?”

“Hard not to, the way she used to hang around here. Dinah Vardon was a miserable little twat. Came from Pinole, or some such place. Was living with an aunt and going to school here because the circumstances at home weren’t any too savory. She met Rog at a party, took one look at this house, and decided she’d love him forever in order to get her hands on our money. Dragged him around by his dick for a year, then ran off with somebody who had even bigger bucks.”

“Are you aware she worked with him at
InSite
?”

“She
what
?”

“She’s their Webmaster. Or WebPotentate, as she calls herself.”

“Goddamn.” His face went still, eyes thoughtful. “Maybe that’s how he got the job. And it might explain—”

“Explain what?”

He shook his head. “Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“I’m interested in anything having to do with Roger.”

“This has no relationship to the lawsuit.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Uh-uh. You go ahead and gather your evidence, but leave me out of it.”

“Why, Harry?”

“Because I don’t care about the suit. Tell you the truth, I don’t care about anything anymore.”

Dinah Vardon and her former relationship with Roger intrigued me, so I drove to my office and called J.D. Smith to ask how his plan to allow me an inside look at
InSite
and its staff members was shaping up. But J.D. wasn’t available at any of his numbers; I ended up leaving messages and, for good measure, e-mailed him. Next I called a couple of Roger’s friends and made appointments and tried Jody Houston again, but got no answer.

It was now nearly five; I added fifteen hours to the local time and came up with approximately eight in the morning. The message slip with Hy’s number in Bangkok was on my desk. I dialed his hotel, asked for his room, and he answered on the first ring.

“About time, McCone,” he said.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I always know.”

And I always knew too. We had an odd emotional connection that seldom failed us. “Why’d you ask if I got the rose?”

“The florist I was using went out of business, and I’m trying a new one.”

“Well, it’s here and it’s beautiful.” I stroked one of its velvety petals.

“Great. So how’re you?”

“Oh … okay.”

“You don’t sound okay. It’s Joey, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We’ll talk about that when it won’t cost us a fortune. But I need to ask you something: do you think I’m insensitive and uncaring?”

“Where’s that coming from? You’re one of the most sensitive and caring people I know.”

“I’m not so sure about that. It’s occurred to me that I give people short shrift when it’s not convenient to take the time or effort.”

“Oh, I see. You couldn’t find Joey, and now that he’s dead you feel guilty.”

“I didn’t look hard enough for him. I gave up when it got difficult. And this afternoon I realized I didn’t even notice that the day he died was his birthday.”

In the silence that followed, I sensed Hy was carefully framing a reply. “Let me ask you this: when was the last time Joey sent you a birthday card?”

“He never did.”

“So he didn’t keep track of your birthday either.”

“That’s no excuse for me—”

“No, but it proves you’re normal. People forget other people’s birthdays all the time. It doesn’t make them monsters, or even mean they don’t care. Your problem is that Joey’s suicide had nothing to do with you, but because he was your brother you think it should’ve, so you’re looking for ways to take the blame.”

I thought about that, again touching the rose. The human mind and emotions worked in such convoluted ways. “Ripinsky,” I said, “how’d you get to be so wise?”

“I’m not, particularly. But I have had some experience with suicides.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know. And I like it that way—keeps you off balance and interested. When I get back, I’ll tell you about those experiences; maybe it’ll help you put this thing into perspective. Meantime, we’d better hang up, or we’ll never be able to afford to build that new deck at Touchstone.”

The evening had turned damp and chill, and a strong wind blew off the bay and whistled through the streets and alleys of SoMa. It rattled newspapers in the gutters and swayed even the hardiest of outdoor plantings. As I walked along Brannan toward Jody Houston’s building a siren wailed nearby and a dog howled in perfect imitation.

The windows of Houston’s flat were lighted, but when I pressed the bell there was no answer. I hesitated, fingering the front-door key that Glenn Solomon had given me. A small white cat crouched shivering against the jamb, and that decided it; I let myself—and the cat—inside and watched as it scampered away to scratch at the door of the first-floor flat.

It was close to ten o’clock. I’d spent some time with Julia Rafael going over the file on her first real assignment—a skip trace so simple that I’d had to bite my tongue to keep from revealing where I suspected she’d find the defaulter— then read through my other operatives’ daily reports, and grabbed a quick dinner at Gordon Biersch with Anne-Marie Altman, who’d been working late in her office in Hills Brothers Plaza. In between I’d lined up several appointments with friends of Roger and made repeated unanswered calls to Houston’s flat. Now I took the creaky elevator to her floor and paused outside her door. Music came from within—rock, turned loud. Maybe Houston hadn’t been able to hear the bell. I pounded on the door and after a few seconds the volume was lowered and footsteps approached.

“Who is it?” a muffled voice asked.

“Sharon McCone. We met yesterday at Roger’s flat.”

“I’m sorry? Oh, you must want Jody.” The chain rattled, the deadbolt turned, and I was looking at a pretty woman in dirty sweats with a smudge on one cheek and light brown hair held atop her head by a scrunchie. She clutched a cleaning rag in one hand. “I’m her friend, Paige Tallman,” she said. “She leased the flat to me.”

“Since when?”

“This morning. She knew I was looking for a place, and she called to ask if I wanted hers. I jumped at the chance, but God, it’s a pit. I don’t think she ever cleaned.”

“Where did Jody go—and for how long?”

“Indefinitely, and she wouldn’t tell me where. Said I’d be better off if I didn’t know. I’m to hold her mail and packages till she sends instructions.”

“What about the rent payments?”

“I gave her cash for first and last, and she has postdated checks for the rest of the year. After that, I don’t know.”

“Awfully sudden, wasn’t it?”

Now the woman’s eyes grew wary. “Who are you, and why’re you looking for her?”

I repeated my name, told her my occupation. “Jody’s connected with a case I’m working on, and she may be in danger. I need to find her.”

Paige Tallman nodded, concerned but unsurprised. “I was afraid of something like that. There were some messages on the answering machine today—including a couple from you—that sounded like she was in trouble. And she acted really freaky this morning, rushing around and tossing stuff in suitcases. She wouldn’t answer the phone or the doorbell, either.”

“When did she leave?”

“Around noon. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. She left a lot of her stuff; I’m supposed to box it up and hold on to it.”

“She drive? Fly?”

“She doesn’t have a car. I heard her call a cab—probably to go to the airport.”

That meant I might be able to trace her. My travel agent had taught me a number of ways to get information from the airlines.

I asked, “Are you sure she didn’t give any indication of where she was going?”

“No. She said that way nobody could force me to tell them.”

But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t try. Paige Tall-man could be in for a very bad time. “Look, Ms. Tallman, this is not a good situation. Maybe you shouldn’t move in just yet.”