The Heir Hunter (21 page)

“The avenues.”

“Which one?”

“Take Doyle Drive to Park Presidio.”

They moved through the nighttime traffic of the Marina. He wanted to purge himself of the alcohol and think clearly, but he knew it would now have to run its course through him. He rubbed his face and thought of Rose again. His instructions had sent her there. His instructions! His eyes shut tightly, then flew open again. There was someone else he needed to speak with immediately.

He pulled his phone from his jacket and called her cell phone first, then her home phone. He heard her fumble for the receiver, dropping it once. Her sleepy voice made it sound as if she were heavily sedated.

“It’s me, Alex. Where’s your cellular?”

“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Nick—”

“Something’s happened here. Get up and turn on your cellular. I’m calling you back in ten seconds.”

“What’s going on—”

“Alex,
do it.
Something bad’s happened over here.”

“All right, all right . . .”

He waited ten seconds and called her again on the secure line.

“Nick?” Alex said as the connection went through.

“Rose is dead.”

“What?” She went silent momentarily. “What are you talking about?”

“Rose has been killed. Someone planted a bomb in my apartment last night and Rose walked into it. She’s dead.”

“Oh my God, Nick!” said Alex, fully awake now. “Where . . . where are you right now?”

“In a taxi. Just listen for a second. We’re into something bad with this Jacobs thing. You need to pack up and get out of there. You’re my partner and they’ll know that. They’re going to come after you too—”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know, but you have to get up and leave.”

“Leave? Where am I supposed to go?”

Nick ran a hand through his hair. He noticed the driver watching him in the rearview mirror, obviously hanging on every word.

“Keep your eyes on the damn road,” he snapped, glaring at him. He turned back to the phone after a moment and lowered his voice a bit. “Alex, listen to me, okay? Rose is dead. She’s been murdered. It was in my apartment, so there’s no question it was meant for me. If you stay in your house, they’re going to find you. If they find you, they’ll try and kill you. What more do I have to say?”

“But why don’t—”

“No buts, Alex! You were being followed the other day, remember? I really hope it was GI, because if it wasn’t it may have been someone a helluva lot nastier.
Get out of there.”

“Okay, okay, I’m leaving.”

“Bring all of the Jacobs stuff. Everything. The mail, the pictures, the tape—all of it. Grab a few changes of clothes and just get someplace safe. You still got your .22, right?”

“Yes—”

“Load it and bring it with you. Get moving now, okay?”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get there. Wherever
there
is.”

“Be careful, Alex. I mean it.”

“Have you been drinking, Nick?”

“Yes. Call me as soon as you can.”

Nick clicked the phone off and felt a measure of relief. The only people in the world he needed to be concerned with now were Alex and the Spinettis. He doubted Doug would be a target, and his family would be fairly useless to anyone looking for him. All he needed to do, then, was watch his own back. Being alone in the world had its advantages. His emotional baggage could fit in his back pocket. This fact would only make it harder for them to kill him.

The taxi went through Golden Gate Park, emerging on Lincoln Way and making a right. Nick had the cabbie stop in the Outer Sunset, and he walked two blocks east on Lincoln to the Travelers Lodge. The old woman behind the counter looked him over warily as he filled out the papers. She asked him if he was okay. He nodded and asked how much for her cheapest room. “Forty-five dollars,” she croaked through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “You’re lucky—you got the last one.” He checked his pockets and found thirty-six dollars. He paid with plastic and took the outer staircase to his second-floor unit. It was a dim room with two saggy queen-size beds. He threw off his jacket and sat down with the lights off.

The Battery Street office complex was dark and vacant at 1
A.M.
A sixty-one-year-old security guard dozed at his
desk in the east wing. At the furthest reaches of the west wing, two men in dark pants and black pullovers cut the lock on the chain-link fence bordering the complex and entered the parking lot. Each man had lengthy criminal records for burglary, assault, and extortion. They had been approached and paid handsomely by a man who had identified himself as Henry Fields, although his real name was Danny Risso. The assignment he had given them was simple.

Both men lugged two six-gallon buckets through the gate. One of them stooped at the side door of the building and placed a thin metal spike into the door lock. The mechanism was stubborn but they were inside after half a minute. They walked in silence, the contents of their covered pails sloshing. A tiny flashlight skimmed the door of each unit. They stopped at unit number eight and placed the buckets on the floor. This lock took a full two minutes of tinkering before they were inside. They quickly inspected the two rooms comprising the unit before beginning the night’s assignment.

The file cabinets received first attention. Each drawer was emptied in the center of the room. All books were then gathered and added to the pile. The phones were ripped from their connections. The three computer video monitors were smashed, their insides soaked with fluid. In fifteen minutes’ time, all but the furniture lay in a center mound, a grotesque pyramid of Merchant and Associates’ vital innards.

A fire safe presented the most formidable obstacle. The key mechanism was an unfamiliar German design with little free space to maneuver in. They were set to abandon it when it suddenly gave. They opened the two drawers and quickly added the fiche and papers to the pile. They stood back and surveyed their work, an ugly mound of papers and office equipment. Then they ripped the covers from the buckets. In seconds the pile was dripping with fluid. The excess was used on the remaining furniture, carpets,
and walls. The man who knew locks placed his bucket aside and nodded at his companion.

The two of them stepped to the hallway as a book of matches was removed. The lock picker struck a match, ignited the book, and tossed it through the doorway. Lines of fire streaked across the fluid trails, climbed the walls, enveloped the pile. The flames first sought out and devoured the lifeblood of the company—its vital documents, its signed contracts, its licenses, its court affidavits. Then they set upon the tools and hardware. When the fire engines arrived fifteen minutes later, the entire unit was an inferno.

Nick leaned against the headboard of the sagging bed as his mind slowly came back under his control. He had been out on his back for at least an hour, but now the alcohol had started to dissipate as the early stages of a hangover set in. He sat in the dark and stared down at the quilt beneath him. The cold reality of the evening’s events was sinking in with a sick finality.

Rose was dead. Rose had been murdered. It was horrible, horrible to the point of being unreal. She had a huge family, several dozen relatives in the Bay Area alone. He imagined standing there at the funeral, catching the occasional glance, hearing the hushed whispers in between the crying.
There he is
, they would say.
It happened at his apartment.
He felt sick.

He found the bathroom and bent by the sink, turning on the faucet. The cold water provided a needed jolt as he splashed some on his face. He reentered the darkness of the bedroom and lay back down on the bed. All he could do now was think.

Whoever these maniacs were, they clearly were traceable to Jacobs. If it was another heir finder, the motivation to remove him was obvious. He could think of twenty-two million reasons right off the bat. But a murder attempt
with a bomb? He wasn’t sure he could buy that. Still, given the enormity of the Jacobs estate, he couldn’t rule it out. He had crossed ethical boundaries himself on this one.

He considered the FBI. He’d heard of them pulling some pretty dirty maneuvers, but bombings and murders were not their domain. Then again, they probably had all the right connections to people who specialized in just those kinds of activities.

Nick stared into the dark and felt the beginnings of a headache. He would call the FBI at daybreak. He could only imagine the icy reception
they
were going to give him. After dealing with them, he would call a contact at SFPD and find out if the body at the apartment had been identified. The detective said they had found a man’s body
inside
his unit. It seemed clear now. Rose must have walked in on them setting the trap, a trap meant for him.

He hugged his knees and felt alone, more isolated than he could ever remember feeling. He kicked off his shoes and picked his jacket up off the floor, placing it over a chair. The streets outside were silent in the dead of the early morning. He couldn’t even hear a car in the distance. He lay back on the bed with his arms at his sides and tried to will himself back to sobriety.

He woke sometime later, disoriented and still woozy. A noise had cut through the haze in his head—a car door shutting. He jerked his head up as he heard another sound, softer but very distinct. A voice. Two voices?

He crept to the blinds and nudged one aside with his finger. He was just in time to see two figures in long coats disappearing from sight under the walkway. He glanced at his watch. Four in the morning—an odd time to be checking in. He thought of the woman downstairs, speaking through her screen of cigarette smoke.
You’re lucky—you got the last one. . ..

He stood still for a moment, a vague uneasiness sweeping
through him, then hurried into the bathroom. The window was five feet from the floor and maybe a foot and a half by two. He moved a small potted plant from the ledge and slid the window all the way open, revealing a bug screen. He thrust his palms at it hard. It popped free on the second attempt and landed silently in the bushes below. He stuck his head out and looked around. It was maybe fourteen or fifteen feet to the ground. A thick drainage pipe snaked down the wall an arm’s length away.

He stole back to the front window and cursed his stupidity. One way or another, this would be the last time he used a credit card issued in the name of Nick Merchant. He pressed himself against the wall; his finger holding the single blind. He could just barely see the end of the walkway where the stairs rose from street level. The two strangers would either come up the stairs or return to their car and drive off to another motel. In the reflection of a car’s windshield, he could see the neon sign, bright and impossible to miss—No V
ACANCIES
.

It was then that they rose into sight. This was almost surreal now. They were coming up the stairs, their hands deep inside their jackets.

Instantly his mind seemed to clear. He ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He approached the window and extended his arms through first, then leapfrogged into the frame on his stomach. He reached for the drainage pipe and used it to pull his legs out behind him, but his weight proved too much. His hands lost their grasp on the slippery metal and he fell feet first, into a thick patch of shrubbery directly below.

From above, he heard the sound of the bathroom door shattering. Someone swore from the window as he sprinted across Lincoln Way and into the park.

Nick ran blindly, ducking his way around the trees and dense foliage. He assumed they wouldn’t be following him out the window, in which case he would have a good ten seconds before they could run around the building and
chase him. Ten seconds to put as much distance as possible between himself and them. A world-class sprinter he wasn’t, and tearing through bushes was noisy. He could take his chances hiding. The park was covered by a canopy of trees and almost completely black. Thick patches of bushes were everywhere. He looked back and felt chilled to see the glare of flashlights. They were a good distance behind but running hard.

He made a sharp left, ran thirty yards, and dove into a thicket, pushing himself down deep into the brush. Something squeaked in the darkness behind him and scurried away. He stifled his violent breathing and froze. The light beams were bobbing and shaking and getting closer by the second, but they were veering from his path slowly. They stopped fifty yards to his left. He held his breath and watched through the tiny branches and leaves. Two men dressed in dark clothes, both of them thick and formidable. One of them skimmed the other with the flashlight. Nick shuddered as he caught a quick glimpse of him. The man was tall and ponytailed, and he cradled a large automatic weapon in his arm. The man was slowly scanning the park with a pair of goggles. Nick swallowed hard. If those glasses had thermal capability, they would spot him in seconds.

Both strangers were sweeping their flashlights in wide arcs through the park. Nick closed his eyes to avoid any retinal reflections and shrunk back as they slowly took a few steps in his direction. The beams skimmed by him once, then again as his heart was slamming his chest. He could hear them talking, hushed comments he couldn’t make out. They lingered for another minute before suddenly splitting up. One of them began quickly heading south, skimming the bushes with his flashlight. Nick’s eyes widened. The other thug was in a crouch, heading north and coming directly toward him.

Nick felt the hair on his neck stand. He reached back blindly for something, anything, to wield as a weapon. His
hand grabbed frantically but found only dirt and twigs. He held his breath. The man was barely twenty yards away and on course to step right on top of him. Nick found a small rock, held it for a second, and then tossed it into a clump of bushes behind the gunman. The second the thug’s head turned, he launched himself from his hiding place and charged him.

The man heard him move and wheeled at the sudden sound, but Nick had a crucial split second, and he used every ounce of his weight to drive his shoulder into the man’s ribs, separating man from gun and driving him into the dirt. A quick elbow to the face took the remaining fight out of him.