I actually laughed! Thank goodness the place was empty; I was too light-headed to confront anyone. I’d grabbed some junk food at a gas station, but otherwise I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten. But I had to stay, to watch, to be ready. I’d forgotten about Mike all day and look what had happened.
Oh, shit, I really was losing it.
I considered my options. I needed to sort, to plan, to call one of my siblings. I needed to charge my phone. Needed to eat. Needed coffee, really needed coffee. I climbed into my own little rental car and headed toward the ocean.
Luck was with me. I found a Peet’s Coffee in a mall minutes before it was closing and left with two triple espressos. I stashed one in the car for an emergency, and took the other to a burger place and ordered the cholesterol special minus the roll. Bread’ll put you to sleep faster than you can chew. But the bacon cheeseburger with fried mushrooms, I was counting on that to keep me going. I slipped the counter kids ten bucks to plug in my phone and took my meat and coffee as far as the cord would stretch.
I was calling my sister Janice before I realized I’d chosen her as my least-close sibling. “Janice, it’s me. Listen, I’ve got two minutes. Anything new?”
“No, I mean, not that I’ve heard, but that doesn’t signify anything really. It’s not like they’d tell me any—”
No wonder no one ever called her! “Will you phone Mom—No wait, make that Gracie.”
“I really hate calling Gracie. She doesn’t say anything directly, but just her tone—”
“Okay, Mom then. Surely Mom likes you.” I could hear Gracie in my own voice! “Tell her I’m in L.A., trying to find out about Guthrie’s—”
“I’m so sorry about him. You’ve had a hard time with guys. When I heard about this one I really hoped it’d work for you. He sounded so right. It’s just awful. I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks. But the point is his friend—”
“The one with the Mustang from
Bullitt?
Do you need any more background on the car? I can do an advanced search and—”
“John called
you
for that?”
“Hey, I know the Net. How do you—”
“Sorry. I just figured he’d heavy-handed some rookie.” I also figured Janice would carry on with her gripe.
But she surprised me with: “Do you remember Mike?”
“What? Hey, there’s not a day—”
“I’m not asking about your emotional hangover, Darcy. Or the pictures of what might be. Do you remember him as he was?”
Whew!
“Of course I do. Better than anyone.”
“That’s exactly what everyone in the family says.”
“No way! They’re into self-deception, then. None of them was anywhere near as close as I was.”
“Close isn’t knowing. It can be just the opposite.”
What was with my sister? “Whatever. I gotta go.”
“I’m just saying, remember Mike, the guy who planned that big birthday bash for you in Golden Gate Park. The guy who knew the secret paths in Sutro Baths—which, incidentally, he learned from me. Does that sound like someone who’d stumble into a seedy bar in Matamoros and swallow whatever he was offered?”
“Listen, you want to do something useful? You’re the family geek, right? I’m looking for this guy named Ryan Hammond. Normal spelling. Go online and get me anything you can, okay?”
“Sure, but—”
“Thanks. I gotta go!” I hung up with the same mix of frustration and guilt that ended every conversation with her. The woman was infuriating. Did all her phone calls end with people slamming down the phone? Who the hell was she to think she knew Mike better than I did? Me, who did my homework on the floor of his room. Me, whose room he used to make secret phone calls. Me who took the heat for those calls past my bedtime.
Me, whom he taught to drive and to dance when Gracie and know-it-all Janice couldn’t be bothered. Me!
I wrapped the rest of my food, unplugged my barely charged phone, and made for the car.
When I pulled up outside Blink’s, the only thing that’d changed was the clock. An hour and a quarter had passed. If the woman was behind the curtains in the dark, she could wait me out forever. I’d killed enough time here. She might be tops at theft and hot-wiring, but she’d be no match for me. I climbed the six steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. And when no one answered, I rang again and kept my finger on it. “Come on, dammit! I know you’re there! If you don’t answer the door, I’ll have every cop—”
Hands grabbed me from behind, one over my mouth. I elbowed back hard. A woman gasped but didn’t ease up. She slammed me into the wall. I kicked back into her shin, switched quick and kicked the other leg, thrust my weight full toward the stairs, and sent us both toppling down. She let go midway and I rolled, caught the side of the staircase, and flipped myself so I landed in a squat. She was on her back, winded. I yanked her up, pulled her arm behind her. “Where’s Ryan Hammond?”
“What?”
“Ryan Hammond? Take me to him.”
“How would I know—”
“That’s your problem. My—”
But
my
problem was behind me. Then it was over my mouth and around my arms. And this time I couldn’t get loose.
25
“SO YOU’RE BLINK’S wife, never Guthrie’s wife, and no longer Ryan Hammond’s girlfriend? Which is it?” I wasn’t in the best position to be shooting demands—on the sofa, hands and feet tied. Blink shrugged me off, like one more thing in a day that had forced him to drive one of Zahra’s clunkers back here and was now stretching to eternity.
Not so Melissa, the same not-so-small blonde who’d tossed me like bag of groceries twice in two days. Whatever had made me take her for a fearful young wife yesterday was sure gone now. She was in jeans, a work shirt, now ripped and dirt-streaked, and hard-toed boots. She had the look of one of those pointer dogs focused only on its own goal. “Who did you tell about our house?”
No one.
“My brother’s a police inspector, do you think I would be crazy enough to come over here alone, at night, without a call?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Check my phone, my last couple of outgoing messages. Feel free to call. Name’s John. That’s
Inspector
John Lott.”
Doubt flickered on her face, then disappeared. Her hand shot out and my phone vanished in it. “There’s a Frisco number.”
“Your local cops’ll never get so good a chance to ingratiate themselves with a big shot in a big cop shop.”
That got her attention. She gave a crisp nod toward the hallway and Blink followed her out.
The living room could have been any upper-middle-class setup not inhabited by Blink or intended for a hog-tied victim. It had the look of a parlor entered only for dusting, the kind displayed by people with family rooms filled with dogs, clutter, and giant TVs.
In the kitchen her voice rose: “Your fault . . . rid of her . . . in the whole fucking desert.” How “rid” did she mean? His grumble was too low to make out.
Again, her: “Dumpster.”
Dumpster!
He was disagreeing.
Her: “Okay, okay. You’re right. Too close . . .
your
stupid fault for letting her come here. What’s the matter with you? This was the perfect property—
perfect.
When are we ever going to find another basement like this? Damn you, Blink. Now we’re going to have to clean out, clean it out
good,
and—”
He muttered something.
She: “Okay, yeah, too close. They’d be on us before we got out of the county, before we could boost new plates. But . . . container . . .”
Him: “not breathe.”
“All the better,” she said as she slammed back into the living room.
I heard her footsteps, felt the air on my sweat-coated shoulders. I inhaled and exhaled and inhaled again. “So, are you going to wipe down Guthrie’s house, too? They’ll trace me there, find your fingerprints all over. You can never clean them all up. You’re tied to me. No way you can change that now.”
She swung her arm and slammed her fist into the side of my face. My eyes went blurry. “Stop that!” I yelled. “Look, we’ve got the same
problem here. So stop with this ‘getting rid of her’ business and focus on our mutual problem.”
“Which is?” She had stopped in front of me.
“Ryan Hammond. Lookit, Guthrie was killed in San Francisco. Who was Guthrie’s partner in crime back there? Ryan Hammond. Who knew the other missing member of that gang? Him. Guthrie’s got a house here. Whose contraband was in it? Ryan Hammond’s.” I was going with the story of Ryan Hammond as the Oscar thief, trusting she wouldn’t guess Zahra Raintree had incriminated her. “Where is Ryan Hammond?”
She was about to hit me again, for the pleasure of it. She caught herself. “Ryan? How would I know where he is?”
“Tell me and I’m gone.”
She looked at me a moment, then she laughed.
I hadn’t expected her to buy that, but it was worth a try.
Blink dropped into a padded chair behind her.
I sat up as straight as my bound hands would allow. “Okay, we’re all pros here. You’re burglars and fences. No way are you going to let me walk out of here. I heard you talking ‘container’ back there.”
“But?” she said, still looking amused.
But what? What chip did I have?
“Those cops who came flying up to Guthrie’s house, did you call them?”
She didn’t answer.
“Right. So let me tell you how come they were there. My brother, the San Francisco detective, knew I was there. No, wait, I’m not saying he sent them. You’ve got a bigger problem than that. One of his colleagues, in charge of Guthrie’s murder investigation, told me not to leave town—San Francisco. When I bolted, she called Guthrie’s agent and he gave her the address.”
“You’re saying she’s concerned about you?”
I forced a laugh. “Not hardly. The woman’s got a bug up her butt about me. If she had her way, I’d be arrested every time I ran an amber. If you”—I didn’t want to say “kill,” on the off chance that wasn’t really their plan—“If I don’t come home, my brother will trail you for the rest of your lives. But if she—Inspector Higgins—thinks I’m mocking her and her order, she’ll be a pit bull at your throat. She’ll use every reciprocity, call in every debt SFPD has. She’ll do it now. She won’t eat or sleep till she shows me who’s boss. And if that means tracking you down and sending you to Corcoran, that’ll be an extra gold star on her chest.”
Melissa stared down at me. “We’ll take our chances.”
Which will be better without dragging me with you. Damn, what could I trade? What?
She gave me a snort of disgust—the woman was Higgins’s soulmate!—and headed through the hallway. “Blink, get off your ass. We gotta move!”
He shifted in his chair but didn’t stand. His eyes were half-closed.
“Hey, we don’t have time for this!”
He dragged himself up and came back through the living room, lugging a box that might once have held a television. “Honey-love, I’ve exited more venues than you ever staged.”
“Oh, for chrissakes,” I blurted out. “Can’t you even call your wife by name?”
He started, then kept going. But I’d hit a nerve with Melissa. She shot through the living room, cut him off at the stairs, and kept going. Doors banged, and the couch shook, bouncing me forward and back against my tied wrists.
They didn’t want to hands-on kill me; they just wanted me dead. Nervous crooks with problems, John always said, were the worst adversaries. Melissa would snap and shoot before she realized she had a gun in
her hand. Or, more likely, she’d stuff me in a container, toss in more stuff, and let me smother before the top was sealed.
What could I trade? What did I possess, connect, know? What could they want?
Did they kill Guthrie, or was it Ryan Hammond? Why go all the way to San Francisco and bludgeon him across the street from his sister’s house? Just to throw suspicion on Gabriella? It didn’t make sense. Didn’t even look right. As aggrieved as any sister might be about Guthrie’s long absence, it wasn’t likely she’d take a mallet to his head—to the
back
of his head.
Melissa raced through the hallway. Her hair stuck to her neck. She was panting, but she didn’t break stride. Oddly, since they were so physically different, she reminded me of Gabriella, or Gabriella as she might have been years ago before she turned into a caged animal. Melissa had that same tight-eyed, quivery-mouthed look of a woman about to spin out.
What was it about Guthrie and these women of his? How could this be the same sweet, tormented guy I’d known? The best truck jockey—
Wait!
That day he hadn’t been the best at all. He’d muffed the gag. Because he’d been late. Because he’d been held up by . . . something. What was his lame excuse, a truck overturned on the freeway? An incident that never made the news? That he’d admitted to fabricating. What
had
held him up?
Blink chugged through toward the basement, carting what might have been a boxed painting.
What did Melissa and Blink need?
A guy with a truck is involved with thieves selling collectibles. A normally reliable guy is delayed.
Hmm.
When Melissa rounded the door from the basement, I said, “Guthrie’s truck.”
“What about it?”
“Guthrie got delayed on the way to the movie set doing business for you, right?” I didn’t dare be more specific. “That truck of his, aren’t you worried about it?”
She balanced her load on a chair arm. “Where is it?”
“The cops probably impounded it. But maybe not. I’ll have to check.”
“What, you’re going to call the police chief and ask?”
“I told you my brother’s a detec—”
She looked so shocked at that being true I almost laughed. Her eyes went blank as if she was trying to remember all I’d threatened in connection with that brother, trying to factor it into her plans for me.
“I’ll find out about the truck in return for—”