The Baker Street Letters (29 page)

The high gray haze had swept away to the ocean, where it was condensing on the horizon in a distinct amber layer, like the top of a custard pudding. Above that layer was a sky so clear and blue that it was startling.

Palm fronds were blowing hard toward the west, advertising flyers and sheets of newspaper kited along the street and plastered themselves against utility poles, and the air was more hot and dry than at any time since he had touched down.

As they entered the Valley, Reggie knew before the driver said it that this was a Santa Ana.

It was Saturday, and the car park at the Paradigm business tower was nearly empty.

Reggie saw his reflection in the obsidian-toned glass doors of the main entrance as he approached. The doors were locked and there was no lobby attendant in sight. He pressed a buzzer, and after a moment the doors opened.

He rode the lift to the last floor before the top, then walked down the corridor to the corner office of J. T. Krendall, Vice President for Corporate Affairs.

The door was open; he was expected. Reggie walked through the reception area to the interior office, where the nameplate on the door had apparently just been put up; the screws weren't even in yet, it was affixed for the moment with masking tape.

A man under forty, dressed in expensively casual clothes, was looking out the window as Reggie entered.

“I'm Krendall,” the man said cheerfully as he turned to face Reggie. “Are you carrying any sort of recording device?”

“No,” said Reggie.

“It's illegal in California unless both parties consent. I do not consent.”

“Understood.”

“Fine, come right in.”

Reggie did so.

“My predecessor died just recently,” said Krendall. “I get his office, my own nameplate, and the view. And now I set the rules. It's a nice gig. The king is dead, long live the king.”

“To what king are you referring?”

“You hadn't heard? Died in a fire. Something underground, just down the street. Funny, I thought you knew. I mean, there he is, on the wall right up there.”

Reggie looked. There was a photo of the tall, bald man, just like the one he'd seen in Joe's Deli, but a number of years older. The same man had been in the tunnel, and on the reservoir bridge, and on the flight from London.

“Thing is,” said Krendall, “in addition to all the perks, I also inherit his mess. You're part of that. Part of that mess, I mean; no offense, of course. But no one likes that, right? It's a very uncomfortable position to be in. So how about we see if you can be part of the solution instead?”

Krendall seated himself with a show of ease behind the desk, but he was full of tense energy. He leaned back in his chair, but he kept his feet on the floor and jittered one leg like an anticipatory teenager.

As if it just occurred to him, he said, “You can sit down if you want.”

Reggie declined; Krendall shrugged.

“So,” said Krendall, like a talk show host, “tell me, who is Reggie Heath?”

“You've got to be kidding,” said Reggie.

The smile vanished, the back of the chair came forward, and the hands got planted solidly on the edge of the desk.

“Fine,” said Krendall. “Word is you have a document you plan to convey to the police, and the transit board, and hell, maybe the chamber of commerce for all I know. Thought we should talk first.”

“Word from whom?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who tells you I have such information?”

Krendall ignored that question.

“We want to avoid some unfair publicity,” he said. “That's all you need to know. So here's the deal: If you provide to us the document in your possession, we—and I mean that only in the corporate sense—we will in return pull some subtle strings with the DA to make sure you are allowed to go on your merry way back home, and—to just sort of help you on your way—we will make a contribution to your favorite charity, or offshore account, whichever you prefer, to the tune of . . . shall we say two million?”

“Pounds?” said Reggie. He just couldn't help asking.

Krendall frowned for a moment, then said, “Don't get greedy on me.”

“Perhaps I'm wasting your time,” said Reggie, and he made a pretense of turning to leave.

Krendall stood and called after him.

“Quite frankly, it's all just not as important as you think it is, Mr. Heath. You won't get a better offer anywhere else. We're the only ones interested, and our interest is only slight.”

Reggie turned back and said, “Somewhat more than slight. I looked it up. A rather straightforward bit of research, when it came to it. Would you like to know what I found?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. You bought this land in 1974, in a speculative, inflation-driven market, with the intent, I'm sure, of leasing out the extra space to cover the cost and make a profit to boot. But when the price of commercial property in the Valley dropped, this venture began to look like a huge and foolish loss, and it was obvious to everyone that the decision-maker had paid too much. This put you on your back foot, and looking over your shoulder to see who they would get to replace you.”

“Wasn't me,” said Krendall, “I was still chasing tail at Encino High School.”

But Reggie continued.

“Then a miracle happens. A new underground gets funded, and of two possible routes, the favored one would have cut right through your land. And everybody knew that if they built in your direction, not only would the transportation agency buy all that extra land, but the right kind of businesses located next to the terminal would make a ton.”

“All common knowledge. If that's all you've got, I don't know why I even asked you here.”

“I'm wondering that, too. But there's more. Just when your board of directors starts counting its bonuses again, the geological surveying firm hired by the transportation authority—Rogers's firm, with Ramirez doing the fieldwork—discovers that tunneling into your little piece of the Valley would be like trying to mine the La Brea tar pits. Methane everywhere. The subway would have to be rerouted, and no one would want your land. You couldn't allow that. So you bought Rogers off. And Ramirez, too.”

“That's just speculation.”

“No, the original unaltered map, and bank records that the DA's office can subpoena, will pretty much prove it.”

“Maybe. But stop saying ‘you.' It wasn't me; I wasn't even here then. And twenty years ago, it was all just plans on paper—no one really thought they'd ever actually build the stupid thing. Then they do it, the tunnel runs into a methane pocket, and someone gets killed. Go figure.”

“Indeed. Bad luck, that.”

Krendall looked suspiciously across at Reggie for some clear sign of sarcasm, but Reggie didn't acknowledge it.

“That's when you heard from Parsons,” said Reggie.

Krendall studied Reggie. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said after a moment.

“Parsons liked to follow the international cable news,” said Reggie. “He saw a headline about the subway fire at the same time that he happened to be doing an inventory of these annoying letters that now get delivered to my chambers. In one of them, some twenty years ago, an eight-year-old girl sent a copy of a geological survey map. When Parsons stumbled on it in his inventory, he had just enough science background to understand what the map meant. He put two and two together and decided it should equal enough for him to buy a small island somewhere. He made copies of the letter and the map and hopped across the pond to show them to Rogers and demand a fortune for their return. Then he came back to London while Rogers was supposed to be gathering the money.

“But Rogers decides he needs a more permanent solution. He agrees to meet Parsons in London and make the exchange—but then he lies in wait and does the blackmailer-in-front-of-a-bus thing. Whether he managed to take the documents off Parsons before or after the push, I don't know—but I'm sure he
was disappointed when he discovered that they were only copies.”

Krendall studied Reggie for a moment. “You've got no proof for any of that.”

“If you were involved in none of it, Mr. Krendall, you wouldn't know one way or the other what proof I have,” said Reggie, “unless of course someone filled you in after your predecessor died. Someone who rang you this morning, and that's the reason you and I are having this conversation. Either that is true, or you in fact do have prior involvement. Which is it?”

Reggie looked at Krendall, and Krendall glowered back.

“Like I said before, it was all my predecessor.”

“Good to know. As to what is in fact provable—the police had no reason to expect foul play in their first investigation. But now they will. Airline records will show Parsons coming here and then Rogers going to London after. The curb in London where Rogers did his push is directly in front of a café that is populated by regulars, and now that they know to look, the police should have no difficulty finding someone who saw Rogers in the immediate vicinity at the time. That will be enough to start a circumstantial case. The rest will be standard fieldwork.”

“Rogers was a guy who really needed to learn to think outside the box,” Krendall said finally. “But I've never met the man myself. And anyway, you're talking about prosecuting a dead man—so what's the point?”

“It didn't end there. It might have, if Rogers had just managed to get the map. But of course he didn't. That's why you sent the follow-up letters to 221b Baker Street.”

“No,” Krendall said quickly. “I didn't send them. It was . . .”

“Yes?”

“Fine,” said Krendall. “Like I said, it wasn't me. It was like this: Rogers comes back from London, waving copies of this
damn letter and the survey map, and tells my predecessor that there's another version of the map in some dusty office on Baker Street that can send everyone involved—again, I was not—to jail. And on top of that, he's worried that the nice grown-up daughter of the guy who did the unaltered survey might start to think about just what it was that she sent twenty years ago—or worse, that the guy himself might hear about the fire, get all guilt-ridden, and come back. And then where would we—in the corporate sense—be?”

“Rather screwed, in the corporate sense.”

“Exactly. So my predecessor takes a couple precautions. He writes to get the stuff back. Easy enough. He forges the signature from Rogers's copy of the letter. He knows Dorset National is a financial institution, and financial institutions verify address changes, so he doesn't use his return address—he uses the real one, where the girl actually is, and he just stations this lousy actor there to keep an eye out—for the map when it comes back in the mail, and for Ramirez if he decides to show up. It was all just a precaution, nothing dramatic, and it might have been—should have been—just fine.

“But a couple weeks go by, and there's no response to his letter. So he goes out to London himself to do a little careful reconaissance and see what's going on.

“He learns that you have just taken over the premises. That it's your brother who is answering the letters now, and maybe he just hasn't opened that letter yet, and my predecessor's best chance is to finesse it—send another request, and hope that you guys will just routinely dig it out and send it back.

“But in case that doesn't happen, he wants a backup plan. He needs someone on the inside to make certain the map gets returned. And he needs some leverage on the person in control of those premises in case things go wrong.”

“The person in control of my chambers is me,” said Reggie.

“Of course.” Krendall nodded.

“No one has leverage on me.”

Krendall shrugged very slightly, then continued. “My predecessor does his due diligence and learns that there's no point in approaching your brother—apparently he's not the type to be induced by money to do something that is technically legal anyway. Kind of weird for a lawyer, if you ask me. But no matter. Where one person isn't willing to make fast money, there's always someone who is. My predecessor took money where it needed to go.”

“To someone inside my chambers.”

Krendall ignored that, and continued. “If you brother had just sent the thing back, everything would have been fine. But noooo, that wouldn't do. He tried to contact the girl. So now there was a problem: a meddling Brit with a document that could send us—some of us, in the corporate sense—to jail.

“Yes,” said Reggie. “Too bad about the meddling.”

“But why talk about the past?” said Krendall. “Let's talk about now. Right now, although I think they're being paranoid, someone over in Legal has some slight concerns about civil liability. So while no one here was involved in any way—especially me—we do have an interest. And we can make this worth your while. Pounds, even, if you insist.”

Reggie stood. “I think not,” he said. “I just came here to confirm the London contact. And I think I have that now.”

He turned to go. He was at the door when Krendall called calmly to him.

“Let me phrase this another way, Mr. Heath.”

Reggie paused.

“I understand you are a Registered Name in Lloyd's.”

“I am,” said Reggie.

“It's a very special thing, isn't? Wonderful the way it works; we would never do it that way here. When you are a Registered Name, you are personally liable—and I stress personally—for any shortfalls that might occur in the industry you cover. You invest a large amount of money into the fund just to join, of course, but if that gets tapped out—the insured can come after your personal assets. Correct?”

“Roughly.”

Krendall shakes his head. “It just astonishes me. I mean, I know you get a great return—just as long as the world operates the way it's supposed to—but if something truly spectacular and out of the ordinary comes along, your personal fortune can be on the hook. Right?”