Trail of the Spellmans (13 page)

I should clarify: Mr. Slayter went to meetings, he met men in suits for lunch, he met more men in suits for dinner, he went for long strolls in the park, he had tennis dates and even a few doctor’s appointments. Mrs. Slayter merely wanted to know where he was and yet she didn’t seem particularly interested in what he was doing when he was there.

At one point I suggested she stick a tracking device in his coat pocket when he left the house, which might have been more accurate and cost-effective than hiring a PI. She seemed to mull the idea over for a few seconds and then replied, “But sometimes he leaves his coat at the office.”

I voiced my concern to Mom at one point. She asked me if Mrs. Slayter
was current with her payments. I replied that she was. Our conversation ended there.

I voiced my concerns to Dad. He asked me the same question Mom did. I gave him the same answer. “Then what’s the problem?” he replied.

The problem was that I didn’t trust Mrs. Slayter. It’s one thing if a client asks me to follow a suspicious spouse, but following an unsuspicious one is a truly uncommon request. I’ve been at this job long enough to know when I’m being played and I couldn’t shake that feeling when it came to Mrs. Slayter.

When I was younger, I always had an excess of broke friends to hire on a moment’s notice for backup on a surveillance job. In the intervening years those friends moved away, got married, had kids, became gainfully employed, or discovered that surveillance was about as interesting as bird-watching. No offense to bird-watchers.

My point: I had to call Fred again, since what I was doing was in the shady section of the PI department store.

“Now, let’s go over this one more time, Fred,” I said when I dropped off Finkel in front of Mr. Slayter’s office building on Market Street. “All you have to do is follow him and text me his current location. You don’t provide subject with directions, transportation, or medical advice, or offer to buy him lunch. Got it?”

“What if he’s hit by a car?”

“Call 911.”

“What if he’s bleeding profusely?”

“The ambulance guys will take care of it,” I said.

“They’re called EMTs,” Fred replied.

“Finkel, do you want to make fifty bucks in cash or not?”

“I do.”

“Then shut up and do as I tell you.”

Silence.

“Got it?” I asked.

Silence.

“Acknowledge you understand me.”

Fred nodded his head. I drove off before he could convince me to take him off the job.

Mrs. Slayter sent me a text message while I was parked three doors down from her house, requesting her husband’s coordinates. I informed her that he was at the office, which, as I far as I knew, was the truth.

Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Slayter left her home carrying a gym bag and wearing what I presume were workout clothes. There was some writing on her ass, which I couldn’t make out, so I kept staring at it. I couldn’t figure why you would have something written on your butt unless you really wanted people to stare at it. For the record, the primary reason I stopped wearing my extra
JUSTICE
4
MERRI-WEATHER
T-shirts was because I got tired of people reading my chest. Another thing I noticed about Mrs. Slayter was that she was in full makeup, which I think is kind of gross if you’re going to the gym. Turns out Mrs. Slayter wasn’t going to the gym.

Mrs. Slayter pulled her Mercedes out of the driveway and turned north, making a right on Gough Street. I started my engine and was about to sneak in behind her when a black Audi cut me off. The driver didn’t notice my cheap Buick on his tail. He was too focused on following the Mercedes. I hung back just a bit to keep a low profile and followed the Audi, following Mrs. Slayter to the Four Seasons hotel. Mrs. Slayter valet-parked. The driver of the Audi followed suit. Since I knew I’d miss the party if I tried to find a metered spot on the street, I valet-parked my crappy Buick. To the valet’s credit he treated me like I was driving a Benz.

“Are you a guest, ma’am?”

“No, and please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’”
¹

I rushed into the lavish lobby of the swanky hotel to catch a brief glimpse of Mrs. Slayter entering the elevator with an unknown male. The unknown male, I should mention, was approximately twenty years younger than her husband and not unattractive. While they did not show any affectionate exchange during my brief sighting of them, they were riding an elevator together to the guest-room towers of the Four Seasons.

I then scanned the expansive lobby and found a known male comfortably seated on a plush beige couch, reading a newspaper.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

INTERSECTION

T
he question is, what are
you
doing here?” my father replied, folding his newspaper in quarters.

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Would a straight answer every once in a while kill you?”

“I don’t know; I’ve never tried it.”

“You know this place is kind of above your pay grade.”

“We need to do something about that. So, Dad, what case are you working on?”

“I’m on a surveillance job for the Sweater Vest.”

“Who is the Sweater Vest?”

“You took the meeting.”

“You mean the guy from the library?”

“We call him the Sweater Vest, because he wears sweater vests.”

“Do you see now why this nickname business is idiotic?” I asked.

“Right now it’s not working for you and me, but Rae and I have no problem with it.”

“The client’s name is Adam Cooper, right?”

“Yes. Now, would you like to tell me why you’re here?” Dad asked.

“Who are you surveilling?” I replied.

“Meg Cooper, and you still haven’t answered my question.”

“The blonde who got into the elevator with the younger man?”

“Yes, Isabel. What’s going on?”

“Meg Cooper is Margaret Slayter.”

“And that is?”

“Margaret Slayter is a client. She hired me to follow her husband.”

“Is her husband at this hotel?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I followed Mrs. Slayter here.”

“Why?”

“Because something was fishy about the job.”

“Isabel, you were not hired to follow the client; you were hired to follow her husband. You need to leave immediately.”

“Wait, how long has Margaret/Meg been seeing this man?”

“End of discussion.”

“But I need to know why she’s hired us. I think it’s to keep track of her husband while she—”

“Isabel, if you aren’t out the door in five seconds, you’re fired,” my father said.

I can usually tell when my father is bluffing, and this was no bluff. In fact, his face was turning a shade of crimson that only occurs when he’s either drunk or about to go into a rage.
¹

I was out the door on the count of two.

I checked my phone when I got in the car and saw a text from Finkel from just ten minutes before.

Sub on move.

Where?

1799 Clay Street.

ha ha.

No. Seriously.

UR a dead man.

ha ha.

No. Seriously.

1799 Clay Street, in case I haven’t mentioned it, is the address of the Spellman compound. As I approached the front door, Fred surfaced from the small alley that divides our house from the next.

“What’s he doing in there?”

“I don’t know,” Fred replied, appearing genuinely baffled. “You think he made me?”

“He made you the other day when you had coffee and chatted like a pair of biddies on a park bench. But that doesn’t explain what he’s suddenly doing at our office.” I pulled sixty from my wallet and passed it to Fred. “Keep-your-mouth-shut money.”

I could tell he was about to question the overpayment on a botched surveillance, but I needed him in my corner. One day I’d need a favor from Fred and I was merely laying the groundwork.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Get out of here.”

Just then a black limousine double-parked in front of the Spellman house and idled there for about five minutes. I paused along the side of the house until I saw my mother walk Mr. Slayter to the front door. They shook hands and my mom said she would be in touch. Mr. Slayter got into his limo.

Once the car was out of sight, I entered the house. “What did that man want?”

“The one who just left?” Mom asked.

“Yes. Did he tell you his name?”

“Mr. Slayter. Don’t we have another Slayter case?”

“What did he want?”

“He had the oddest request.”

“Let me guess. He wants you to follow his wife.”

“No,” my mother replied. “He wants us to follow him.”

Part II

THE WALL

(October)

BRICK BY BRICK

C
onflicts of interest are not unusual in my line of work. San Francisco is a small city, and the PI business has taken a beating. With Harkey (our main competition for twenty years) out of the picture,
¹
there are only a handful of other firms in the city, and most people would prefer a momand-pop shop to the corporate ice cube
²
that is our main competition. It’s not unheard-of to have domestic cases intersect, but a three-way intersection was new territory.

Dad called Mom from the field after our collision. He told her to keep me in the office until he returned home. While I still had a window to gather information, I used the time to get to the bottom of Mr. Slayter’s visit. Unfortunately there was no bottom to get to.

“So a guy walks into the office looking to hire someone to follow him and you don’t ask why?”

My mother sighed impatiently. “Of course I asked, dear, but he wouldn’t say. He merely said that he wanted an investigator to document his daily activities.”

“Didn’t you find that suspicious?”

“I found it unusual.”

“Did you ask him how he came to our agency?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He said that he found us on the Internet.”

“Interesting.”

“Rae did an excellent job redesigning our website.”

“Did he say anything about his wife?”

“That’s all I can tell you, dear.”

I stacked files and errant paperwork in an untidy pile on my desk—my typical end-of-day ritual. Then my mother explained that we were to have an emergency company meeting and I would have to wait in the office until Dad returned home. I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and turned to a chess study website to practice my endgame, which Henry had informed me was sorely lacking. Although at other points he’d mentioned the same thing about my opening game and middle game.

“I’m still on the clock,” I informed my mother.

“Then you should do some filing.”

“Three out of five,” I said, holding out my fist. Mom and I played rock-paper-scissors to decide who would file, and I won. Which I had been doing ever since Demetrius pointed out that I favored rock (then launched into a long-winded explanation about how my preference for rock indicates my personal preference for inertia, since when you’re a rock you don’t have to do anything at all). After I stopped favoring rock I had a whole lot less filing to do. And I like to think that in the not-too-distant future filing might become as obsolete as fountain pens.

My mother tried to amuse herself with idle gossip while she stuck pieces of paper inside folders inside larger folders with letters on them. See how dumb that sounds?

“So Demetrius is going on a lot of dates,” my mom said. “I hope he finds someone special.”

“Mom, has it occurred to you that D isn’t actually going on the dates?
Because what kind of grown man lets his fifty-seven-year-old employer control his Match.com account?”

“Yes, dear, that occurred to me.”

“Do you know for a fact that he is actually braving the singles world?”

“Truth be told, I had some suspicions and I followed him one night. He was having a perfectly nice dinner with a very attractive woman who I believe works at a veterinary clinic. She had no profile picture, so I can’t be sure it was the same one, but I have vetted all of them. No pun intended.”

“Did they go on a second date?” I asked.

“No. D said there was no rapport. He said she carried a Hello Kitty purse.”

“That would be a deal-breaker for me too.”

“Anyway, he’s been on a few other dates, but so far, no one special.”

“You understand, Mom, that if he does meet someone special, he will eventually move out.”

“I do,” my mother said. The tone of her voice had shifted. I had clearly touched on a dental-level nerve. I switched topics to ease the tension. “Don’t you have a class tonight that you’re missing?” I asked. I took a photocopy of Mom’s schedule from my drawer and reviewed it. “Ah, yes, Monday you have Beginning Pottery. Curious that you have nothing to show for it.”

“My pieces are still in the kiln,” Mom replied.

“Likely story. Are you even going to these classes?”

“Krasivaya bluzka,
”
³
Mom said, in Russian, I guess.

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘Of course I am.’”

Inside my desk, I turned on my digital recorder.

“How do you say, ‘Where is the restroom?’” I asked.

“Where is the restroom,” Mom replied.

“Hilarious. In Russian, please.”

“Vy ne mogli by govorit’ pomedlennee.”
⁴

“How do say, ‘What time is it?’”

“Etot mužčina platit za vsë.
”
⁵

“How about ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’?”