Sand Dollars (16 page)

Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Sand Dollars

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You might think that Saturday would be a good day to find people at home, but it wasn't proving to be the case. After days of rain, with unblemished blue skies and warmer temperatures, people were out of their homes, doing whatever it was that made their lives worth living.

I visited five of the seven addresses and found them occupied, but locked and empty, their residents taken leave in pursuit of happiness. Wherever they had gone, and whatever they pursued, their neighbors had evidently followed. Maybe it was a group thing. Five stops, five blanks. Like Schwarzenegger and MacArthur, I vowed to return.

The sixth stop, vacant, with a FOR LEASE sign on the door, was a split-level duplex in the Hillcrest district, an artsy-craftsy neighborhood of shops and restaurants and restored older buildings bordering the vast, green expanse of Balboa Park. According to Adrian's computer program, the departed tenant had been one Lorena Garcia.

The place interested me because there had been daily telephone calls to this address from Peters's private line beginning the December before he “died,” sometimes three to four calls a day. There had also been a cellular phone number listed to TopProp, Inc., of San Diego, a now-defunct real estate investment company, with a similar frequency of calls. Pacific Bell had no forwarding number for TopProp. According to the young man at the telephone company, there was no forwarding number for Ms. Garcia, either. Adrian told me he had never heard of TopProp or Lorena Garcia.

The apartment above the Garcia place had a sundeck. Music boomed from an open door. I climbed the wooden
stairs to the second level and introduced myself to the two young men sunning themselves on plush, padded chaise longues. They wore matching bikini briefs, their bodies glistening with oil.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Are you here for the Jehovah's Witnesses? Because if you are, you're just wasting your time.” The young man closer to the railing removed his sunglasses and peered up at me. “And ours.”

“Maybe he's a Mormon,” said his companion.

“No. They dress better. They always wear ties.”

“Yes.
Hideous
ones.”

“I'm looking for the woman who lived downstairs,” I said.

“Lorena? She's gone. Split.”

“When was that?”

“Who are you, anyway?” asked the one who had removed his sunglasses. “And what happened to your face?”

“My name's John Caine. I'm a private detective.” I didn't answer the second question, not knowing how these two would take the answer.

“You mean like Marlowe?”

“Or Spenser, with an S?”

“He couldn't be a private detective,” said the first man. “He doesn't have the name of a seventeenth-century English poet.”

“He's biblical, though. Didn't you hear? He's Cain?”

“Is that the mark of Cain?”

I took out my license and showed it to them. “Hawaii? Oh, like Magnum! I love Hawaii. Dig Me Beach at Ka'anapali and all that.”

They were having fun at my expense and there was no harm in it. I stood there, enjoying the sun and the gentle breeze that flowed from the park onto their little sundeck, and waited them out.

“We went to Hawaii last year. It was marvelous!”

“My name's John.”

“I'm Tim. This is Jim. Jim and Tim.”

“Do you by chance know where Ms. Garcia moved to?”

“
Ms
. Garcia is it? You are so politically
correct
, aren't you?”

“Guess so,” I said. “I was trying to be polite. Do you know where she is, or not?”

“You don't have to be snotty.”

“Sorry.”

“Now ask me again.”

“Do you know where Ms. Garcia moved to?”

“No. She didn't tell us. She paid her rent right through to the end of the month, but she moved out early,” said Tim.

“It was only a couple of days. You make it sound as if we got a whole
month
out of her,” said Jim.

“Okay. But she was a good tenant. Never complained.”

“She was never here.”

“Even better,” said Tim.

“Well, she was here,” continued Jim, “but we never saw her. I think she worked out of her apartment. Something to do with real estate.”

“Do you remember the company she worked for?”

“No,” Tim said, “but she gave me a brochure once. I think it's in the kitchen mess drawer.”

“I cleaned that out. If it was in there, I threw it away.”

“Why would you do that? Now this man needs it.”

“Somebody has to clean up around here. You never do.”

“I'll go look.” Tim got out of his chaise longue and padded into the kitchen. “I want another Snapple, anyway. Would you like something, Mr. Caine?”

“No, thank you. But if you could find that brochure, it would help.”

“I'm looking, I'm looking.” He disappeared inside, waving his arms. Jim and I stared at each other.

“You straights find us bizarre, don't you?”

“That's your goal, isn't it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you no harm, you mean me no harm. We're all just getting by. You guys put on this outrageous act for me so I won't get too close.”

He nodded. “That's about right.”

“If I get too close, you're afraid I'll judge you.”

“Won't you?”

I shook my head. “You don't know anything about me and I don't know anything about you, your character, your principles. How could I be judgmental?”

“I don't know. How could you?”

“Can't. And it's a waste of time, anyway.”

“Like the Jehovah's Witnesses.”

“Or the Mormons.”

“No sense of style there.”

“Cheap bicycles.”

He laughed. “
Hideous
ties!”

“What are you guys doing?” Tim returned, some papers in his hand.

“Mr. Caine here and I are discussing philosophy and theology. We agree on almost everything,” said Jim.

“What's the secret?” asked Tim. “Jim and I can't seem to agree on anything.”

“That's because we're too close,” Jim laughed. “Oh, we get so very close.”

“I found the brochure. She was selling shares in resort properties. I don't know why I forgot that. Remember when we went to one of her presentations?”

“I do now. It was lame.”

“It sounded good at first, but when Jim ran the numbers, it came up as a horrible investment. We politely told her thanks, but no thanks. You'd have to be a lunatic to invest in something like that.” He handed me an expensive, glossy foldout for a Palm Desert Resort. It lauded the pleasures of condominium resort living.

“Thank you,” I said.

“We own rental property here in San Diego,” said Tim. “Where we can keep an eye on it. That's our retirement fund.”

“There was something strange about this thing, too,” said Jim. “Do you remember what it was?”

“I'm trying to recall. Other than the food, which was horrible.
I know! All of the investors were men! There were no women. We were the only ones there who kind of stood out.”

“Stood out?”

“The sales staff were all women. Lorena was just one of the salespeople. There were two or three others, and they only brought men.”

“Yeah. We were the only ones there who weren't interested, if you know what I mean.”

“No.”

“They were using sex to sell the properties. We saw some vigorous sales techniques that night. It was a
seduction
, not a sales pitch. The salesgirls, if you'll pardon my lapse into the unpolitic, were more like hookers. It didn't take long for us to realize we'd been invited by mistake.”

I looked on the back of the brochure. TopProp's name and address were printed on the back, along with another telephone number.

“Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.”

“You didn't tell us why you're looking for Lorena. Did she do anything wrong?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It depends on how far she went to make a sale, I guess.”

The address, when I found it near the airport not far from the duplex, proved to be a strip mall private post office, a narrow little shop squeezed between a pizza parlor and a frame store.

The man behind the counter might have been a retired postal worker. He oozed officiousness and hostility.

“I don't talk about my customers,” he told me in response to my first question, hairy, meaty forearms leaning against the counter. “You a cop?”

“Not.”

“Then fuck off.”

I left. Before I did I glanced at TopProp's box number and saw edges of envelopes through the little glass window in its door. The box wasn't stuffed, as if it had been abandoned, but it looked full enough to tell me it was due a visit soon.

Since I didn't have any other leads, there was only one thing to do. After I cleared the final address, I'd stake out the postal store.

From the Range Rover I called the last telephone number and spoke with a Mrs. Sandoval. She remembered speaking with Paul Peters a year ago. She was a dog breeder in Linda Vista, and Mr. Peters had purchased a puppy from her and never picked it up. She later sent him a refund check, minus expenses, and she never heard from him again. Encouraged, I called the others on the list. They all were home, and they all had reasons why they had spoken to Peters.

One was a former employee of Petersoft, a programmer who had been laid off by the cuts after Peters's disappearance, and she wasn't amused by my call. She told me she hoped the company would go belly-up, just like its president.

That left only one lead from the telephone bills. And I was sitting on it.

I went into the pizza parlor, ordered a large pepperoni and a large iced tea to go, went back to the parking lot and watched the customers of the postal store. I'd parked far enough away that the owner couldn't see me from inside, yet close enough to watch the door. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I figured if I watched long enough, something would happen.

It was kind of a tenuous thread, but when you're desperate, a thread tends to look like a hawser.

Jim and Tim had provided me with a description of Lorena Garcia. She was, from their point of view, sensual and hot, a Latin lovely. Slim, with large breasts that were so improbable they shouted “surgical implants,” as Tim had described them. She tended to dress conservatively. Jim said that meant she didn't decorate her dress with bottle caps. Tim said she dressed in a business suit during the day, and comfortable, stylish clothes after work. From Tim I got the idea of a classy, style-conscious lady. Claire's darker counterpart.

No one of that description arrived by six o'clock, when the store closed for the day. I started the Range Rover's engine when the last customer left and the owner locked the door.

Sundays, the postal store didn't open until eleven, so at dawn I ran south from the yacht club along Rosecrans Avenue, down the residential side all the way to the submarine base at the end. A uniformed guard stopped me for identification at the front gate, and when I took the chain from around my neck and handed my retired-officer's identification to him, he compared my clean-shaven photo with my bearded face, scrutinized me, made a decision, saluted, and allowed me to continue.

The road ran another two miles to the end of the peninsula. The submarine base lined the harbor side of Point Loma, stretching along the foot of the tan cliffs below residential property. I ran past the McDonald's and the little submariners' chapel to the officers' club at the end of the point,
where San Diego's harbor meets the Pacific Ocean. I circled the club and then headed out at a leisurely jog.

There are no boomers in San Diego. This submarine base is home port to attack subs. I counted twelve at dockside, the largest number I'd ever seen together at one time. Must be a part of the peace dividend, I thought, or there just wasn't much for them to do anymore. I'd heard that Moscow had abandoned its missile boat program, and the rumors were that China didn't really have nuclear subs. Good. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if they all stayed in port.

I'd been a surface sailor, with an inbred mistrust of submarines. In my time in the SEALS I'd been a passenger in subs several times, but I never got used to it. It wasn't one of my favorite means of transportation. Still, I was glad we'd had ours.

I wasn't convinced we didn't need them, regardless of what the politicians said. Of course, it had been decades since I'd taken what any politician said about anything at face value.

From the headquarters building the road climbs into the hills before it drops back down to the gate. I hadn't run this road in twenty years, and I wasn't in the same shape I had been in twenty years before, but I could still make it to the top and puff down the other side. Old age wasn't creeping up on me too fast. From the summit I could almost see the yacht club where
Olympia
docked.

When I returned to my boat, I found Ed Thomas perched on the fantail, awaiting my return. He had a shotgun across his lap, partially covered by a colorful beach towel. He looked a little wired, but he was holding up.

He'd informed me the night before that the yacht club was too close to the house, and he felt uncomfortable about the placement of the boat. I went below and grabbed my jacket. When I returned topside I handed him the contract Claire had signed.

“That what you wanted?” I asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I might need your help,” I said.

“Name it.”

I told him about the audit, how it didn't sound like a real government investigation. I asked him to run down the agency and see if there really was a Bradley Jacoby or an Office of Audit Management.

When I went below again I found Barbara, Claire, and Juanita making breakfast from the stock of groceries Thomas had brought from the house. Claire gave me a quick smile, then turned back to her chores. Juanita smiled, showing me her gums. Barbara hugged me, then waved me off.

“You are all sweaty,” she said, making a face.

“I get that way,” I said. “Excuse me.” I wove my way between the three women. On the way by, Claire handed me a glass of orange juice. There was a twinkle in her eye I hadn't seen before.

“It's good to see you are back, Juanita,” I said.

“I've been here,” she said. “Oh. Oh, that.”

“Yeah. Oh, that.”

After breakfast and a shower, I returned to my stakeout, cooped up in a car on one of those Southern California postcard days that lavished its beauty on others and wasted it on me. From ten minutes to eleven until after dusk, I sat and watched people come and go. None of them matched the woman's description.

When I returned to the boat, I could tell that my boarders were uncomfortable in their confinement. Barbara and Claire had played three sets of tennis, but had not left the yacht club. Thomas reported he'd had no luck trying to trace the Office of Audit Management. No one had ever heard of them. Likewise, his sources in the federal government had never heard of a Bradley Jacoby.

I took that as an answer and wondered if the laptop had phoned home yet.

I dispatched Ed to the house for a report from Farrell, and asked him to bring him over. Knowing we would be at risk, but feeling the risk was worth it, we all went to dinner at one of the Mexican restaurants in historic Old Town.

San Diego began in Old Town about the time Jefferson
and the others signed the Declaration of Independence. It was in Spanish hands then, an extension of Old Mexico. Some of the original buildings remained, now restored as restaurants. The entire district had the frantic feeling I felt in Waikiki, as if I knew I was supposed to have fun but I didn't know why.

We took advantage of the change of weather and sat outside, but close to the space heaters. The Mexican food was good; the margaritas were even better. I sipped mine and wondered where Paul Peters was, if he was anywhere, and where Lorena Garcia was and how she fit into the picture, and I wondered where the seven million dollars had gone, and if she had anything to do with it.

It seemed to fit. Claire told me she felt there was another woman. And when I had sat in Peters's executive chair at his abandoned desk, it was the only thing that seemed to make any sense. Yet even that wasn't enough of an explanation to warrant his behavior.

Yet, I reminded myself, we weren't talking about mental logic here. We were talking about penile logic. The two seldom have anything to do with one another.

What was that old joke? Why do we men name our penises? Because we hate having a stranger make all our decisions for us. In my life I'd been guilty of that a time or two, so I wasn't qualified to judge Peters.

Call it empathetic understanding.

Farrell reported he had mended the door and had started repairing the bullet holes in the plaster. By the time Claire and Juanita came home, the house would be patched and painted, good as new. He also planned to install permanent lights in the backyard, controlled by motion sensors and switches in both the master bedroom and the kitchen.

Claire took my arm as we strolled to the car behind Barbara and Juanita.

“You don't tell me what you're doing, but you seem to be doing a lot of it,” she said.

“I'm watching a place. That's all. It's not much, but it might be something. And watching it takes all my time.”

“I didn't want you to run away from me. I thought that's what you were doing.”

“No. I'm just working.”

“I spoke to Joe today. I told him that you weren't fired.”

“When did you speak with him?”

“I called him today. From my cellular. It's digital. It can't be traced, and I didn't tell him where I was. I'm not stupid.”

“I never thought you were,” I said, relieved. “What did he say?”

“I told him you were hiding me, and although it didn't reflect on him, you didn't want him to know where because he didn't have a need to know. I told him I was safe and that if it turned out otherwise, I'd call him.”

“And?”

“And he said many things. Most of the things he said were âWhere are you?' and âWhat is Caine doing?' and the like. He pressured me. I had to remind him that he worked for me, not the other way around.”

“And he accepted it?”

“I asked him how his investigation was going, the one with the exâTreasury agent tracing the money. He told me he had some promising leads. I asked him what they were, and he said he couldn't tell me just yet.”

“Have you received any bills from the exâTreasury agent?”

“No.”

“You probably won't.”

“You think he's lying?”

“I don't know, Claire. I don't trust Stevenson.”

“He said the same thing about you. You don't tell me what you're doing, either.”

There was silence between us for a long moment. We reached the Range Rover and I unlocked it and helped her in. Barbara climbed into the backseat. Something in me wanted to reverse their positions, and I wondered where that came from.

“Do you trust Thomas? Do you trust Farrell?”

“Yes. Of course. Hatley saved my life.”

“Then do you trust me?”

“I never said I didn't. I just said Joe doesn't trust you.”

“Oh.”

“You know, John Caine, for a smart man, you can be kind of stupid sometimes.”

“I'm just another human being,” I said, “crushed by my limitations.”