While Other People Sleep Page 15

  “Thanks.” I ended the call. To Glenna I said, “They're on their way.”

  She nodded, busy with her video equipment.

  A minute more and the phone buzzed again. Keim said, “Neal just passed me. And Larsen's coming out of the alley.”

  “Wait for Mick, then follow.” I closed the phone, tucked it into my purse, and took out my small flashlight. “Now,” I whispered to Glenna as I flashed the beam at the porch of the house across the steps, where Rae had gotten the residents’ permission to wait.

  Glenna began filming.

  Rubber soles slapped on the concrete and a stocky figure clad in jeans and a down jacket appeared. Neal. He skidded to a stop and peered into the shadows, as if to reassure himself that we were really there. I coughed softly. His posture relaxed some and he moved to the railing and stood as if taking in the misted lights below.

  More footsteps, stealthy but unhurried. I tensed as Glenna swiveled the camera toward the stairway.

  Bud Larsen turned the corner. For a moment he paused on the landing. Then he started down the next flight in a predator's walk: slow, calculating, fluid. He stopped no more than a yard away from Neal.

  Neal turned his head, said in an uneven voice, “Bud. You startled me.”

  “More like I scared you.” Larsen moved closer.

  “Not really. I don't scare easily.”

  “Come on, all you faggots do.”

  “What did you call me?”

  Larsen was silent. Beside me, Glenna fine-tuned her focus. Neal turned to face Larsen, his back against the railing.

  “ ‘Faggot’—right?”

  Larsen shrugged.

  “You're the one who's been doing those things.”

  “What things?”

  “The notes, the phone calls. The Valentine's Day heart, the salad. You made a death threat on the phone.”

  Larsen licked his lips, looked around. For a moment I was afraid he'd stonewall Neal, but his type never can resist boasting of their own cleverness.

  “Okay, all right—I did those things. And you shoulda listened to what I told you on the phone. That bitch your boyfriend works for is asking questions. Says she's your friend. You know what a real man'd do if he had a friend like that nice piece of—”

  “Shut up!” Neal's voice was controlled, quietly angry.

  At any point now I could go down there and break up the confrontation; we had what we wanted—Larsen admitting on video what he'd done. But I was curious to see how this scene would play out.

  Larsen laughed. “Oh, the faggot's gettin’ tough with me!” Sarcasm, but also a touch of surprise there.

  “What I want to know, Bud, is what started this business? And where's it going to end?”

  “I told you on the phone—somebody's gonna die. Guess who?”

  “You don't mean that. Now, what started it?”

  “You oughta know.”

  “But I don't.”

  “Remember a month ago, in the elevator? When you made that pass at me?”

  “I what?”

  “The day I fixed that leaky kitchen faucet for you. You were leaving, and we rode down in the elevator together.”

  “Yes, I remember that, but—”

  “You gotta remember what you did.”

  “Honestly, I don't.”

  “Oh, man, you must come on to a lotta guys! Too bad for you you picked the wrong one.”

  “Bud, I'm asking—”

  “Yeah, questions—like that McCone bitch. All right, you want me to say it, I'll say it. You punched me on the arm and called me Buddy.”

  “… Is that all?”

  “Isn't it enough?”

  “Bud, I do that with everybody—male or female, straight or gay. It's just a mannerism I use with people I like. I was thanking you for fixing the faucet.”

  “Bullshit, man! You perverts're all alike.”

  “All alike. In what way?”

  Larsen hesitated. Looked away from Neal, alert, like an animal sniffing the air. “What is this?”

  “What's what?”

  “This whole month you never went for a walk alone before. Tonight you're standing here like you're waiting for me.”

  “I was just looking at the lights.”

  “No, I don't think so.” Larsen shook his head, peering into the darkness. “Uh-uh.”

  “So what're you saying, Bud?” Neal braced his hands on the railing behind him, ready to push off.

  “I'm saying this is a trap. That McCone bitch has you wired.”

  Before Neal could reply, Larsen lunged at him, got him by the throat. I started sliding down the mat of cypress needles on the slope, and Rae came off the porch. We were equidistant from the struggling men when Neal brought his forearms up against Larsen's wrists and broke his hold.

  Larsen grunted and staggered back, grabbing his left wrist. Neal saw his advantage, charged him, and butted his head into Bud's soft belly. As Larsen frantically sucked air, Neal grabbed his forearm, shot one leg out, and flipped him onto his back. Larsen lay still, gasping and moaning.

  Rae and I approached slowly, while Mick and Charlotte clattered down the steps. I said to Neal, “I thought you were taking karate, not judo.”

  “I'm not taking either—anymore. But I'll tell you, rage is a great teacher.” Breathing heavily, he stared with narrowed eyes at Larsen.

  I went over and took a closer look at Larsen. He'd had the wind knocked out of him, but didn't seem to be badly hurt. When he saw me, he waved his arms and uttered something that sounded like “Scraw!”

  “I don't suppose that's a compliment,” I said to the others. “Let's go now. Mr. Larsen would probably prefer to be left alone.”

  “The wire,” Larsen muttered. “Wha’ the hell you gonna do with the tape?”

  “Neal wasn't wired.”

  “Then why—”

  Glenna came out of the shrubbery, video cam perched jauntily on her shoulder. “Smile, Mr. Larsen,” she said. “You're going to be a very big star!”

  Glenna's film came out beautifully. I stayed around the pier while she edited it, so I could see the finished product. In the morning she'd screen it for Anne-Marie and Hank, and then they'd start the legal maneuverings that would guarantee Bud Larsen would leave Ted and Neal alone forever.

  Funny—I'd thought the film was going to be about rage and hate and evil. And it was, in a way. But once you've looked unreasoning hatred in the face, you know not only how evil it is but how sad. That's mostly what Glenna's film showed: sadness.

  At after four in the morning I was still in my office, curled up in the ancient armchair under my schefflera plant, the handwoven throw that usually hid the worn upholstery and bleeding stuffing pulled around my shoulders against the damp and cold. The chair was old and ill treated when I found it in the cubbyhole under the stairs that was my first office at All Souls Legal Cooperative. God knows why I had a fit of sentimentality on moving day and brought it along to the pier. But maybe the fit was more pragmatic than sentimental; I'd always done my best thinking in that chair.

  So there I was, sitting in the dark and feeling free. A strange way to feel, given that my impostor was still out there and Hy's situation was still unresolved. But I was free to go after the impostor like I'd never gone after anybody before. Tomorrow—

  But why wait? It was already tomorrow. My mind was clear, and I wasn't the least bit tired. Why not go over my notes one more time?

  Initial awareness of her: conversation with Glenna on 2/12. Not a conversation I'm ever likely to forget.

  2/13: Clive Benjamin, the art dealer who slept with the bogus McCone. I've always felt I missed something there. What?

  We were here in the office. He was sitting across the desk from me. I asked him to describe her.

  “She was about ten years younger than you, but very similar in appearance.”

  “Native American ancestry, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “What were her facial features like?”<
br />
  “Well, sort of cute.”

  “Is there anybody you can liken her to? A public figure or film star?”

  “Maybe Susan Dey, the actress who was on L.A. Law, you know?”

  That's it!

  “Shar, you've got to be insane! Neal just got to sleep and now you want him to—”

  “You're awake, aren't you?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Take his keys and meet me at Anachronism. Please.”

  “… Okay, give me twenty minutes. It's the least I can do after what you did for us.”

  The bookstore was pitch dark, but I didn't wait for Ted to put the lights on, just rushed down the main aisle toward the cubbyhole where Neal stocked film memorabilia. The overhead fluorescent flickered on as I began flipping through the files of studio glossies.

  Please be here.

  Darnell … Darren … de Havilland … De Niro … Dey— “Oh, my God …”

  Back at my office I spread the prospective employee's file open on the desk and read it slowly, refreshing my memory.

  On January 30 she'd sat across from me, smiling, anxious to please, giving all the right answers. Her references—from Carver Security, a high-tech outfit here in the city—had checked out beautifully. Lee D’Silva was a fine technician, highly versed in all the latest systems, as well as a whiz with computers and an all-around good employee.

  The interview had gone well—so well, in fact, that after I ran out of questions we chatted for at least fifteen minutes, mostly about flying, because she was a student pilot. When she left my office Lee D’Silva must have had every expectation of landing the job. And by all rights, she should have. She was just the sort of person McCone Investigations needed to handle the increasing number of breach-of-security cases that came our way. But then Craig Morland called to accept my still-open offer, and I decided I needed his contacts with federal law-enforcement agencies more than D’Silva's expertise. I'd sent her a turndown letter saying I'd keep her in mind for a future opening. And that was when all my trouble started.

  Strange that there had been no hint of emotional or mental disturbance in the background check Mick had run on her.

  I went over the file again. D’Silva was thirty-one and single. She was born in the small town of Paradise in the foothills of the Sierras northeast of Oroville, attended school there, and earned her degree in police science at nearby Butte College. She explained a two-year lapse in employment after graduation as time taken off to nurse her dying mother. Afterward she moved to San Francisco and worked for three security outfits, the last being Carver where, presumably, she was still employed.

  I should have put this together sooner. After all, it would have taken a knowledgeable technician to plant the bugs in my home, clone my cell phone, and breach security at Vintage Lofts. Why hadn't I remembered her?

  I stood, shut off the lights, went to sit in my armchair again. It was dawning gray outside, raining again. The traffic sounds on the bridge had grown louder, and the Golden Gate would be similarly busy; the early commuter ferries would be churning from Marin County toward the city. I watched boats slip by, dark and mysterious with only their running lights showing. And I began to reconstruct what had happened.

  February 3: Craig called. Immediately I dictated the letters on tape, and Ted had them on my desk for signature by that afternoon.

  At the latest, Lee D’Silva would have gotten her letter on Wednesday, February 5. On Friday the seventh she'd passed herself off as me to Clive Benjamin. The next night she'd assumed my identity at the fund-raiser.

  Deliberate attempts to damage me? Or delusional attempts to live my life, now that she'd been denied the opportunity to become part of it?

  Didn't matter. I'd identified her.

  The hunter was becoming the hunted. I was back in control.

  Thursday

  On Thursday morning I spent a couple of hours wrestling with a moral dilemma, and in the end personal satisfaction won out over the letter of the law.

  Legally I was required to notify the SFPD of Lee D’Silva's identity; otherwise I'd be obstructing their ongoing investigation—an offense that could cost me my license. But I doubted the investigation was really so ongoing, and besides, there was little hard evidence against D’Silva, only my word and that of Glenna Stanleigh and Clive Benjamin. Glenna hadn't witnessed her committing a crime, and Benjamin couldn't prove she was the person who had taken his spare key. Nor was there anything stronger than circumstantial evidence of her theft of Carlton Maxwell's rare coins. Circumstantial cases are only as good as the D.A. who builds them, and a defendant of D’Silva's demonstrated histrionic talents could easily enlist the sympathy of a jury.

  So went my reasoning, but deep down I knew I was manipulating it in order to justify what I planned to do. I, not the police or the courts, would be the one to bring Lee D’Silva down.

  “What, you stole one of my top technicians, and now you're not happy with her?” Mitch Carver said. “Sorry, we don't accept returns.”

  I'd known Mitch, Lee D’Silva's former employer, since the days when we'd guarded office buildings in the dead of night for low hourly wages and no benefits. In the intervening years we'd both prospered, but neither of us had changed all that much. This morning he half reclined in his swivel chair, booted feet propped on the desk; his sandy hair was rumpled, his tie askew, and his sport jacket looked as though it could stand a trip to the dry cleaner.

  “I didn't steal her.”

  “Then what d'you call—”

  “I interviewed her, but I didn't offer her the job.”

  “Say what?” He lowered his feet to the floor and sat straighter, hitching the chair up to the desk. “She bragged to everybody that she was going to work for you, and one day she just didn't show up. I thought it was tacky of her not to give two weeks’ notice, but that's about par for the business.”

  “When was this?”

  “That she didn't show? I'll check.” He dialed an extension, spoke briefly. “Three weeks ago tomorrow.”

  About the time she would have received my turndown letter.

  Mitch asked, “So what's the story here? You change your mind about hiring her?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, good luck finding her. Her supervisor called her place a few times, never got an answer. And she didn't bother to pick up her final paycheck.”

  “Did she leave any personal possessions behind—in her desk, for instance?”

  “Let's go see. And if you do locate her, tell her to pick up her goddamn check so we can close the books on her.”

  The items D’Silva left behind in her desk had been packed in a cardboard carton and placed in a storage room. After her supervisor located them, she showed me to an empty office where I could go through them in private.

  Chap Stick, nail file and clippers, personalized coffee mug, box of tampons, pair of running shoes, panty hose in their Original packaging. Two paperback novels featuring fictional female private detectives, well thumbed; tucked inside one was a copy of an interview I'd given to a local magazine last spring. I unfolded it and saw that certain phrases were underlined.

  Q: I understand you're a licensed pilot. Do you use your flying in your work?

  A: Mainly I fly for pleasure, or sometimes to get away from what's happening on the ground. Nothing and no one can get to you at several thousand feet.

  Q: When and where did you learn to fly?

  A: Close to four years ago, at Los Alegres Municipal Airport, where I had a terrific woman instructor. Now I fly out of Oakland.

  Q: What kind of plane?

  A:A Citabria. It's a type known as a tail-dragger. On the ground, the tail rests low, the nose high, because the third wheel is at the rear. It's— Don't get me started; I'll bore your readers to death.

  Q: Sounds more scary than boring. Isn't flying an expensive hobby?

  A: It's perceived that way, but most airports have flying clubs that offer discounts on lessons. And ai
rcraft rentals are fairly reasonable: you only pay for the time you spend onboard, and the planes rent wet— meaning the fuel is included. You can rent a plane, fly someplace two hours away, stay a weekend, fly back, and only be charged for the four hours you actually used the aircraft. It's when you own a plane that you get into the heavy-duty expenses.

  Q: So you don't own the … Citabria?

  A: No, it belongs to a friend. I've got a great deal there, because he's also a CFI—certified flight instructor—and once I had the private license, he taught me what I needed for my instrument and multiengine ratings.

  Q: I'm impressed.

  A: Don't be; it's like any other skill—you learn one thing, and it's a building block to another. When I started out, I thought it would be enough if I could just get the plane into the air and back down again, but now…

  There wasn't a lot of personal information in the piece, but D’Silva had used what she'd underlined as the kind of building blocks I'd mentioned. Easy for her to come up with Hy's name: Citabrias aren't all that common, and CFIs make up a small proportion of licensed pilots. A computerized cross-referencing of Citabria owners and CFIs must have put her on the way to a wealth of information. And that information, cross-referenced with what she knew about me, must have amounted to a treasure trove.

  In spite of the cold rain spattering against the window, the small office seemed overly warm and stuffy. I got up and opened the door to let some air in before I went through the remaining contents of the box.