Both Ends of the Night Page 16

  “Shar, I know you’ve lost a friend and are hurting, but that’s no excuse to take it out on the rest of us. Don’t spoil Ted and Neal’s pleasure by putting down their invitation. It’s their first Thanksgiving together, and it means a lot to them to have their friends gathered around their table. Just like it means a lot to Ricky and me to have you guys there on our first Christmas Eve.”

  Ouch. She’d cut to the core of my behavior and scooped out the rotten part.

  “I hate it when you’re right,” I said.

  “Indulge me—I so seldom am.” She grinned, her nose crinkling.

  “So how was your trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium?”

  “You mean how was Zach? So-so. The sea otters made him laugh, but sea otters could cheer anybody up. Thanks for dropping that stuff off for him; a touch of home was what he needed.”

  I pictured the wreckage of that home. Even if I found John Seabrook and reunited him with his son, would they ever be able to live happily there?

  “Well,” I said after a moment, “thank you for being so kind to him.”

  Her gaze turned inward. “I remember what it’s like to all of a sudden have nobody. Right now Zach feels as unsafe and unloved as can be.”

  Rae’s parents had died in a drunken car crash when she was a little girl, and the grandmother who raised her took pains to let her know she was a burden. I suspected that in spite of an early marriage and a great number of superficial and short-term relationships, she’d never felt either safe or loved until Ricky came into her life.

  She looked at her watch and stood, stretching. “Guess I’d better do some work. Are you and Hy going to be at Ted and Neal’s tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll tell Ted we’ll try.”

  She hesitated as though she wanted to say something more, then nodded and left my office.

  There were times when I wished I were more like Rae—less driven, more committed to the personal side of my life. But where did the professional stop and the personal begin? The line between the two had blurred when Matty died.

  “Maybe I can help you,” I told Mick.

  The belligerent expression that settled on my nephew’s face reminded me of a day when he was five and I was baby-sitting him, Chris, and Jamie. Giving me that very same look, he’d refused to pick up his toys, and I’d said calmly, “If those aren’t in the toy box in two minutes, I will kill you.” Never before or since had I seen him move so fast. And in spite of Charlene’s fear that my brand of behavioral control had scarred her eldest for life, he exhibited no signs of deviancy; if anything, he was tidier than the average male.

  “What’re you grinning at?” he asked grumpily.

  “Nothing in particular. Look, why don’t we talk about the problems you’re having with this search? Exactly what is it that’s hanging you up?”

  “I’ll show you what’s hanging me up—that!” He motioned at one of two computer-generated color-coded maps of the United States that were taped to the wall above his desk. “This country’s too damn big!”

  “Explain, please.” I sat down on a packing crate that contained my old files. Even though we’d been in residence at the pier since last summer, Ted hadn’t yet gotten around to ordering cabinets to house them.

  “Okay, you told me that in the Witness Protection Program they try to relocate people at a significant distance from the… what d’you call it?”

  “Danger zone.”

  “Right. So on the map, Florida’s red. Originally I coded blocks of other states from hot to cool colors, depending on how far they are from Florida. Then I logged on to DIALOG—”

  “To what?”

  “Shar, it’s a major commercial vendor I use—Oh, Christ, why am I even explaining? You probably think the information highway is somewhere in Ohio!”

  “All right, I remember what DIALOG is. Go on.”

  “I’ve gotta back up a step. The assumption I was working on is that whatever Ron Fuller was involved in had to be heavy-duty and high-profile. He must’ve testified about something major, in order for somebody to have his wife killed. That indicated a periodicals search was in order. There’re a hundred and thirty-two U.S. newspapers available full-text online, and DIALOG carries fifty-six of them. I started with the Detroit Free Press, thinking that Fuller might’ve had some connection to Michigan, since the Seabrook birth certificates were issued there. My initial search was two years to either side of the date Marie Fuller was shot, in categories such as drugs and arms trafficking and organized crime.”

  “Sounds like solid methodology to me.”

  “Except that I came up with zip. Next I moved to Illinois. Same result. I was heading for Indiana when it finally hit me: those’re all cold-climate states.”

  “So?”

  “Where do people living in places like that go for their winter vacations?”

  “The Caribbean? Oh, right—Florida. The Justice Department would never relocate somebody there who came from one of those states. Too much chance he’d run into vacationers he’d known in his past life.”

  “That’s what I figured, so I scrapped that block, as well as the East Coast, and went west. People out here tend to take their winter vacations in Hawaii or Mexico. It would make more sense—”

  “There’s a flaw in that logic.”

  “Tell me about it! As John Seabrook, Fuller ended up here. They wouldn’t have relocated him in California if the danger zone was anyplace nearby. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch on to that until I’d run up a mondo bill with DIALOG. By then it was ten o’clock, and I had a headache, so I packed it in.”

  “And this morning?”

  “This morning at about four o’clock I sat straight up in bed and said ‘Shit!’ The assumption I’d based doing a periodicals search on was also faulty. What if the case wasn’t high-profile? What if for some reason it didn’t melt the media’s chocolate bar? I should’ve been going at it from the federal-courts angle.” He motioned at the second map. “Those other color-coded blocks represent the eleven federal districts.”

  “How far have you gotten with them?”

  “Far enough to know I can provide you with a wealth of info on appellate cases, bankruptcy court, and civil actions. But so far I can’t locate a resource for information about federal criminal actions. And I’m certain it was a criminal action, because of the contract hit on Fuller’s wife.”

  “Well, there’s got to be a resource someplace. Those cases are matters of public record.”

  “Oh, there is, and eventually I’ll find it. But right now my brain’s going into meltdown. And you know what? About five minutes before you came in here I had another horrific thought: What if the case never went to trial? What if I’m wrong in assuming only people involved in criminal actions order contract hits?” Mick’s shoulders slumped. “I could be a white-haired old man drooling and mumbling over an obsolete PowerBook before I come up with something.”

  “I think you’re on the right track,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. Just keep at it and… tell you what: when you come up with the answer, I’ll treat you and Keim to dinner at the restaurant of your choice.”

  He sat up straighter. “Here, or anyplace?”

  “Let’s confine it to the city limits.”

  “Too bad. I was thinking of this restaurant in Paris that Dad told me about. But that new place they reviewed in the pink section last Sunday might do; it had four stars after the dollar sign.” He swiveled back to his desk and commenced tapping the keyboard.

  As a motivator, I’d come a long way from the day I threatened to kill him.

  When I dropped by Ted’s office to tell him that we’d try to make Thanksgiving dinner, he held out the phone receiver to me. “Adah Joslyn.”

  “Hey, there,” I said to her. “Thanks for setting things up with Craig.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “Different. I think he’s experiencing major di
sillusionment with the Bureau. He exhibits all the signs of a midlife crisis.”

  “Huh. I thought those went out in the eighties. How bad is it, do you think?”

  “Bad. He offered to access classified information for me—pushing the envelope, I’d say.”

  “Jesus, McCone! You didn’t take him up on it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I won’t if I can help it. But you know what? I think he was disappointed that I didn’t. He wants out—badly.”

  “Why can’t he just quit, like a normal person?”

  “God knows. Maybe he has a flair for the dramatic. I think you should talk to him—persuade him to take a vacation.”

  “I might. Thanks for the suggestion.”

  Mick’s questioning of his basic assumptions had made me question mine. I went back to my office, intent on dictating some letters on tape, but instead began brooding. By the time Keim appeared in the doorway, I was on the verge of making myself crazy.

  “I know you told me you couldn’t use me on this Seabrook thing,” she said, “but I had some extra time and I couldn’t resist. That money he had transferred into Matty Wildress’s account came from a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Without another word she turned and walked away.

  No, I didn’t want to know, but a head-in-the-sand attitude on my part could spell disaster for my agency. Sometime soon I’d have to sit down with my employees for a little talk about professional ethics, as defined by the state department of consumer affairs. The pressures of learning how to run a growing business were no excuse for straying far across the somewhat meandering line I’d set for myself in that area; I was the one ultimately responsible for the actions of those who worked for me, and they’d have to be curbed—

  Enough beating up on yourself, McCone. It’s lunchtime.

  I walked along the Embarcadero as far as Miranda’s, my favorite waterfront diner, and ordered a burger to go. Carried it back to the pier and ate at my desk while catching up on paperwork. Two prospective clients came in during the afternoon; one I assigned to Keim, whose computer expertise makes her a natural for going under cover in offices; the other, what my detective friend Wolf calls a worried-mother job, went to Rae. All the time my mind was half on the Ron Fuller problem; my ears strained to hear Mick coming along the catwalk to announce he had the solution. And underlying it all was the nagging notion that I’d somehow dropped the ball on this, ignored an important piece of information.

  It was four-thirty before I realized I’d definitely fumbled. I was sitting in the armchair under my schefflera plant, staring aimlessly out the window; a Cessna turned out toward Treasure Island, as low as it could legally fly, monitoring traffic. I peered at it, trying to make out the identification number; a friend flew a similar plane for Metro Traffic Control, the big outfit that supplies reportage to Bay Area radio and TV stations, and I wondered—

  “Dammit, McCone!” I exclaimed, snapping my fingers. “How could you not follow up on something like that?”

  Somewhere in my purse were the notes I’d made while talking with Gray Selby at Mario’s yesterday afternoon. I rummaged around and found them tucked into my wallet with the change I’d gotten at the tollbooth on the Golden Gate. Some fine degree of organization there! I scanned the scribbled page until I found the number 3317J, then sat down at the desk and drummed my fingers on its edge. How to go about this…?

  Hy could tell me, of course, but he was in La Jolla and unavailable today, attending to RKI business at their world headquarters. The FAA could tell me, but they were a bureaucracy and unlikely to respond this late on the day before Thanksgiving. Still, there had to be a way.…

  Then I remembered the bad-gas incident that had happened when I was a student pilot. Contaminated fuel had been delivered by Chevron to numerous Bay Area airports, including Los Alegres; when the problem became apparent, it fell to the managers of the facilities to notify those who had received it. I remembered Matty helping Art Field, the airport manager, with the time-consuming task of going through his microfiches of U.S. aircraft identification numbers so that Chevron could repair or replace their customers’ damaged engines.

  I called Information, got the airport number, and dialed. Art was there, and sounding as low as I’d ever heard him. Small wonder: he and Matty had been flying buddies for years. When I explained what I needed, he readily agreed to look up the name and address of the registered owner of the Stirling Silver Ranger that had briefly stopped there two weeks before.

  I stepped through the door of Mick’s office and said, “Try Arkansas.”

  He swiveled around, frowning.

  I added, “Specifically, anything to do with Stirling Aviation, in Alda.”

  Ironically, the Silver Ranger was not only made by but registered to the aircraft company that had manufactured Matty’s plane.

  Mick’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Here I’ve been slaving away all day, and you come up with a lead like that without even using a computer. I’m not going to ask you how you did it.”

  Just as well. I didn’t want to tell him that the information that would have put an end to his slaving had been in my possession since the previous afternoon. “You having any luck with the federal criminal-proceedings records?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was about to buzz you. Cornell University has a database of millions of federal district court cases going back over the past sixteen years. It’s limited to cases that were fully tried, but it may be useful.”

  “What about newspapers? Are any in Arkansas online full-text?”

  “I’ll check.” He turned to the desk and thumbed through a sheaf of printouts. I perched on the packing crate. After a moment he said, “Only one—the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. It’s probably got a statewide circulation.”

  “Give both it and the Cornell index a try.”

  “It’ll take some time, Shar.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He surveyed me, looking uncomfortable.

  “What, have you got something going for tonight?”

  “No.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t concentrate with you hovering over me.”

  “Hovering? I’m just sitting here.”

  “I know, but your… presence is filling up the room.”

  “What d’you mean, presence?”

  He sighed. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that when you’re on the scent of something your personality is bigger than usual?”

  “No. How big is it usually?”

  “Pretty substantial.”

  I frowned, unsure whether I liked that assessment.

  “Go home, Shar. When I find out something I’ll page you.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day you’d order me around—and get away with it.”

  He grinned and turned back to the PowerBook. “It’s been a long time coming, and in a way it’s better than sex.”

  Mick paged me several times that evening. At around nine I called Craig Morland, waking him up, and asked him to check Justice Department files so he could confirm or deny a set of assumptions I’d made; he promised to get back to me first thing in the morning. At midnight Mick appeared, carrying a thick file; by two a.m. I’d read it twice and exhaustively compared the grainy newspaper photographs of a young blond-haired, mustached man to the one of John Seabrook. Craig called at six-thirty on Thanksgiving morning with the confirmation I’d expected, and at eleven I caught a flight to Dallas–Fort Worth. There I’d make a connection for Fayetteville, Arkansas, only miles from where it had all begun.

  Three Years Ago

  “Stop trying to crawl on my lap, McCone. Sit straight in your seat and ride it out.”

  “Sorry. Oh, God…”

  “You’re not gonna throw up, are you?”

  “No, I don’t throw up—much. But… oof!”

  “Just a little updraf
t. Nothing you haven’t felt before. What’s the matter with you today?”

  “I’m edgy, that’s all, and this turbulence isn’t helping any.”

  “Is that crash last night what’s causing the problem?”

  “… I guess. One of my so-called friends phoned this morning to tell me about it. She said, ‘Maybe now you’ll give up on this insanity.’”

  “And you said.?”

  “‘Thanks for your concern, but I’ve got a lesson at noon, and I’m going.’”

  “Good girl. What did you learn from that crash?”

  “That the pilot must not have bothered to get a weather briefing or else he’d’ve known those squall lines were coming in and never taken off.”

  “Or?”

  “Or that he did get a briefing but ignored it, thinking he could outrun the thunderstorms.”

  “Which means?”

  “He was stupid or arrogant—or both.”

  “Are you stupid or arrogant?”

  “I hope not!”

  “Well, then. You know, McCone, some people have a lot of baggage about flying, and when something like that crash happens, they’re going to try to hand it to you. You can’t stop them, but you sure as hell can stop yourself from bringing their baggage on board the plane. Think of the cockpit as a special place where absolutely nobody can get to you.”

  “Hey, you’re not trying to crawl on my lap anymore.”

  “Nope.”

  “This is a pretty strong crosswind. Would you be more comfortable if I was on the controls while you land?”

  “No. I’ve handled crosswinds before; I can handle one now.”

  “Yeah, you can. And after we land and you go home, what’re you going to do?”

  “Call up my so-called friend and tell her to get a life.”

  PART THREE

  November 28–December 1

  Fifteen

  Friday morning: Fayetteville, Arkansas

  I got back into my rental car in front of the federal office building on East Mountain Street and glared up at the austere granite-and-glass structure. Last night, while eating a lonely room-service version of Thanksgiving dinner at the Hilton, I’d planned a simple and direct course of action designed to obtain the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time. Now, at only nine-thirty in the morning, circumstances were conspiring to defeat it.