Downfall (10 page)

This was an isolated area, but soon enough the neighbors would see the curl of smoke in the sky.

Janice staggered, ran. The horse whinnied, wide-eyed, the ancient fear of fire holding him in a grip. She opened the gate, and the horse cantered out, nervous.

Janice ran. The weakness from the cancer gripped her muscles by the time she reached the car. She leaned against the door, suddenly fighting for breath, fighting for energy. She couldn’t dawdle. Diana’s face swam up through her exhaustion and she got into the car and she tore onto the road. She drove past Barbara Scott’s refuge. Flames exploded from every window, from the broken roof, from the shattered doorway.

She drove, cranking the oldies radio station high and loud, a Doors song, “The End,” blaring in her ears. She got back on the highway to Portland. Her hands shook. She wished she could call her daughter but then she didn’t; she didn’t want to hear Diana’s sweet voice when her head was crammed with murder and arson.

Belias didn’t want Barbara Scott’s book. He didn’t want her notes. It made sense; this book was already written, already read and commented upon and in Nina Rosenberg’s editorial hands, so there was a copy in New York and on her backup servers, and so…the book didn’t matter.

Maybe.

She pulled Barbara Scott’s laptop out of her backpack. She’d disobeyed orders by bringing it; surely it would be missed in the wreckage of the fire; a writer without a laptop was like a painter without a brush.

But she had it now, and maybe it held the answer to why Belias wanted her to kill three people in three different cities.

Why do you need to know?
she asked herself.
You don’t need insurance.

Maybe Diana will. He’s being forced to help Diana once I’m gone; he didn’t pick her the way he normally chooses those he helps and who help him. He’s…inheriting her. It wasn’t the same. Diana might need every advantage.

Janice aimed the car west and drove to a Portland airport hotel, where she had checked in on Wednesday. The long drive calmed her. She parked and she wondered if her clothes smelled of smoke. She kept sniffing herself and started to imagine she reeked of fuel. She worried about the horse, running free.

She went into her room and undressed. In the shower the reaction hit her, and she sank to the porcelain, the hot water spattering on her, the tile hard against her back. She didn’t cry but she felt sick, remembering the surprised glance of Barbara Scott, the blank realization that her life, her dreams, her hopes, her fears were all drawing to an immediate and nonnegotiable close.

If not you to do it, someone else. Barbara Scott was dead the moment Belias decided she was dead. His decision was what fired the bullet, not her finger on the trigger.
Diana will never know a real trouble in life. You did it for her. It had to be done.

She told herself this four or five times, and she felt the strength return to her limbs. She stood and rinsed out the hotel’s gloppy shampoo and dried off. She dressed, hurried downstairs, and put her smoky clothes in the washer. Then she came back upstairs and called him on the pink phone.

“I’m back in Portland.”

“Well done. You need to get on a flight to Las Vegas.”

“But…” She could hardly say,
I just put in my post-kill laundry, I have to finish it
.

“The second target is in Las Vegas, Janice. You just took the first step for Diana’s safety.” He coughed. “Get on the first flight you can. It’s not like either of us has a lot of time. Destroy the pink phone; I’ll call you later on the blue one.”

Janice was silent for a moment. “She seemed very surprised. Like she didn’t see danger coming at her.”

“I’m sure she was,” Belias said.

The laptop lay on her bed. If she confessed to taking it, now was the time. He would tell her what he wanted her to do with it. She wiped her lip with the back of her hand.

“This one was easy,” he said. “The next one won’t be. Bring your A game.”

They’re never easy
, Janice thought.
Never.

T
HE PHONE JARRED ME AWAKE
. Not my cell phone, the bar’s phone, which had a line feeding up to the apartment. I clutched at it. I thought I could smell food cooking. My body ached and a headache pounded. You always feel a fight more the next morning; the bruises blush in the dawn. “Yes?”

“Hello, is this Sam Capra?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“This is Louisa Alcazar with the
Chronicle
. I’d like to interview you about last night’s death…”

“No comment.”

“Did you have a connection to the victim?” she asked and I hung up. I wondered if I should have just said no. The phone rang again seven seconds later. I answered. It was a television station. I repeated the no comment and hung up. I pulled myself with reluctance from the warm sheets and looked out the narrow window. Two news crews were filming on the street. A self-defense death in a nicer bar in Haight-Ashbury was news. A new day after a dreadful night. Sleep had given me a momentary peace. Then I thought of the Rostov brothers, dead on two different floors, a man in black who seemed determined to make an unholy deal with me, a young woman running for her life with me as her impromptu protector.

Life, messed up in one second.

I called Leonie on her cell.

“Sam,” she said, answering after one ring.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Daniel? I didn’t call last night because I didn’t want to wake him or you…”

“I hardly slept.”

“You’ll be safe there, and this will be over soon.”

“What happened?”

I gave her the edited version.

“You said you’d just run the bars for them,” she said after a moment.

“I don’t have a choice. I’ve made an enemy and the guy won’t let it go.”

“Or you don’t want him to let it go, Sam. You’re back in your element.”

“Is that really what you think of me?” I said.

“Yes. Right now. Because I’m hiding in a hotel in Los Angeles with a cranky, tired baby.” I could have handled Leonie’s words better if she yelled them. But she was quiet, stony, and that was more effective.

“Mila will watch over you.”

“You mean Jimmy. He said it was better we stay close to him. He’s here in town. He is down the hall from us.”

Jimmy, Mila’s English boss in the Round Table, a man I’d never met. “All right. It’s only a precaution. This guy may not come after me.”

“You don’t believe that. I can tell it in your voice.”

“If he does, I’ll deal with him and you and Daniel can go home.”

Her unusual silence made me worry. I knew she was upset. I knew she wanted to go home.

“Kiss Daniel for me,” I said to break the silence.

“I will.”

“Will you put the phone up to his ear and let me talk to him?”

“He’s asleep, Sam.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then.”

“Good luck,” Leonie said and hung up.

I would have to talk to my, um, boss. Handler. Better angel. Queen of pain. Call her what you will.

I dialed her number, and when she answered, I was at first unsure it was Mila, her voice a sleepy, languorous growl.

“Yes?”

“It’s Sam. The press wants to talk to me.”

I heard a rustling of sheets as she sat up. She muttered something in Romanian. I’m fairly sure it was a string of curses.

I was not supposed to attract attention. I was not supposed to be noticed by the authorities. “Details. All of them. Leave nothing out.”

I told her the story. She said nothing for thirty long seconds.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

“If this is simply friends of Felix who have gotten in trouble,” Mila said, “then it’s not about the Round Table, and we pull you out.”

“Felix said you would say that.”

“Felix is a smart man although I am questioning his taste in friends.”

“She asked me for help,” I said. “Then she helped me.”

“Then you are even. How sad that you lack basic math skills.” Her voice hardened. “You have other concerns.”

I’d already decided on my angle with Mila. “I can’t sit here or go home and wait for retaliation. The man in black sees me as a threat. I’m going to find out what this is about—for my sake, for your sake.”

Mila’s accent thickened in anger. “No, you are not.”

I lowered my voice. “You wanted me to find out who poisoned Dalton.”

“Too much heat now.”

“Fine. But I didn’t save Diana so they could just kill her today or tomorrow. Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?”

“I am standing with the ovation. Tomorrow is Official Sam Day. How much news are you on?” Rarely, when she got flustered, Mila’s usually impeccable English got tangled.

“Reporters are calling me. News vans are filming outside. I’m not sure I can vanish.”

“One moment, Sam.”

She put her hand over the phone, but before she did, I could hear the barest tinge of a man’s voice. Soft, quiet. I heard the words, “Let him sort it out if he feels he must. He’s a big boy, he can stay out of trouble surely.” A man’s voice, a husky baritone, with a refined British accent.

It must be Jimmy…

Well, it was none of my business. But I felt an odd tug in my chest. And then I ignored it. I waited. Whatever conversation she was having with Jimmy stretched into three long minutes before she came back onto the phone.

“Sam? Very well. Identify who this man in black is so we can evaluate him as a threat. Daniel and that useless nanny woman are staying here in Los Angeles. No one will find them.”

“Thank you.”
That nanny woman.
Mila loathed Leonie. I think Mila thought attachments would distract me from work, but Leonie and I were just friends. We’d briefly been more than that, in a time of great stress, but now we weren’t—it was too soon after Lucy. My ex-wife. “You know I have to help this woman, and I’m going to. With or without your approval.”

“Find out who this man in black is and nothing more. Do you understand me?”

“I understand you,” I lied. “The CIA took care of scrubbing my job history. The press won’t break my background, neither will the police.”

She sighed. “I will get on a plane to come help you.”

“I can handle it, Mila.”

“Sam.”

“Yes?”

“It is never an easy thing to kill a person. Ever. Even a bad person who wants to kill you. Ending a life, it always sticks with you.”

I cleared my throat. “He looked me in the eyes when he died. Like maybe I was going to change my mind and unstab him.”

“Ah, Sam. I am sorry.” And she sounded it. That was Mila. Tough as nails until you didn’t want her to be.

“I’ll call you later.”

“All right, Sam.” She put the phone down, and I could hear before she clicked off, her starting to say, “Darling, he said that…” and then silence.

Darling?
It felt strange to picture Mila romantically involved with Jimmy; I’d always assumed their relationship was strictly professional. Actually, it felt weird to picture Mila with anyone. She didn’t seem the relationship type at all. More a loner, like me, because we’d lost too much in life at too young an age.

I ignored the ringing bar phone.

Felix came up the stairs, having arrived already and fought the press gauntlet. He thoughtfully had a tray of breakfast food—eggs, toast, and coffee.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “You’re here early,”

“I sleep like a gnat,” he said. “Sleep for one day, and then they’re up for a week. Sleeping Gnat would be a good rock band name.” Felix tried a smile, putting on a brave face in the aftermath of the night’s events.

“I have a feeling I’m going to have the sleeping habits of a gnat this week.” I ate and turned on the television to a local station, and five minutes in they went to the reporter standing across the street from The Select. The account so far was that two men had opened fire in an altercation involving a woman, one man had been knifed and killed by “Sam Capra, who is allegedly the owner of the bar.”

Great.
My name was out there now. The dead man was not identified pending notification of family. Harder to do when the family died the same night.

The next story was that a body had been discovered in a home in Outer Richmond by police. Shot to death. A police statement said that the dead man at the home was connected to the dead man at The Select, but didn’t provide more details.

Which made it a lot less likely my involvement in the story would suddenly be forgotten. I felt sick. Yesterday I was so happy that I was living the new life I’d earned, running the bars, my biggest worry being that I would have to spend time away from Daniel.

Now this. If there was evidence of my presence at the Rostov house, I’d be arrested. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d have to vanish again, with Mila’s help, and live elsewhere under a new name. I’d lose my identity. The bars. It wasn’t what I wanted for my son.

I finished breakfast while the news moved onto the wider world. The pundits remained in full pontificating bloom about who the president would select as a new vice president, that no candidate had yet been selected had tongues wagging. I knew I should pay attention, but I had weightier concerns on my mind. An earthquake off the coast of New Zealand, but no injuries, no tsunami. A fire at the house of a famous author near Portland, the author missing and feared dead in the flames. So rarely is there good news. I could use some.

“So. What now?” Felix said.

“I go see the lady who owns the Audi,” I said. “That’s my one thread to pull.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t want you here alone in case the man in black comes to play.”

“I’ve been working for the Round Table longer than you have. There are reporters outside. Right now this is the safest place in the city. I won’t let in anyone I don’t know.”

“Felix…”

Felix crossed his arms. “Look, the Round Table saved my life. And Janice and her kid are clearly in serious trouble. Now you go find the Audi, and I’m going to see if I can track down information on Janice and her daughter and this Rostov guy.”

I went out the back door. The plank Diana had used to strike the suburban dad was gone. The police had taken it, no doubt for evidence. I knew the forensics people could summon fingerprints off untreated wood with a chemical process. I didn’t know if her prints were anywhere on record, but if she was identified by the security tape, it meant I might not have much time to find her.

The press wasn’t lingering around the back alley of the bar, so I walked to my rental car and tapped the rental’s GPS with the Tiburon address of Vivienne Duchamp, who owned the Audi I’d seen racing away, and studied the map. Felix had found nothing useful on any Vivienne Duchamp in San Francisco or Tiburon via online engines last night.

I drove carefully, cutting back and forth in San Francisco’s labyrinth of streets, heading north toward the Golden Gate Bridge, making sure no one was following me. The poor confused voice from the GPS, that of a famous British comedian, kept announcing he was recalculating and telling me a new route until I’d decided no one was following me.

I thought about Diana Keene. Wondering where the young woman was. She was pretty, now that I thought about it in the silence of the car, and she was brave to take on the gunman the way she did.

I tried to enjoy the view as I went across the Golden Gate Bridge, because it’s incredible but the traffic is such that you don’t want to be distracted. I love the bridge. But I could not shake the instinct that I was driving straight into bad trouble.

And yet I wanted to go. Risk it. Go back to my old life. When the Golden Gate Bridge was behind me, as the Redwood Highway began its climb into Marin, I felt like I’d truly passed through a gate that I couldn’t close.