16

‘You love this, don’t you?’ Frannie asked.

Hardy hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d told the cops in the elevator to rebook Rane Brown. He had just told his wife the story. ‘It has its moments, I must admit.’

‘So who are you nailing this afternoon?’

Hardy looked at the folders on his desk, still a formidable pile. ‘The afternoon looms large before me,’ he said. He noticed Andy Fowler’s jade paperweight and picked it up, cool and heavy in his hand. ‘Maybe I’ll shoot some darts, eat lunch…’ His feet were up on his desk, his tie loosened. Abe Glitsky appeared in his doorway, knocked once and sat down across the desk from him. ‘On the other hand, I’m sure Abe says hi. He just walked in.

‘I’ll let you go then.’

‘Okay, but guess what?’

‘I know. Me, too.’

‘Okay.’ Saying they loved each other in code.

Glitsky had come directly to Hardy’s office from the evidence-locker room. The telephone receiver wasn’t out of Hardy’s hand yet when Glitsky said, ‘As you astutely predicted, Diz, the Eloise was clean.’

Hardy was tossing the jade from hand to hand. ‘Well, I didn’t think -’

‘Except for a gun, a slug, a bunch of blood, some other stuff.’

Hardy put the jade down, swinging his feet to the floor. ‘I’m listening.’

Glitsky filled him in. He had bagged the Beretta for evidence. You could still smell the cordite. He would bet a lot it was the murder weapon, although Ballistics would tell them for sure by Monday. On deck, they had found what looked like blood on the railing where Nash might have gone overboard. ‘Whoever shot him, whoever brought the boat back in, must have washed down the deck, but they missed the rail.’

‘The gun registered?’

‘I’m running it now. We’ll know by tonight.’

‘Any word on May Shinn?’

‘I was thinking you might have something there. Maybe Farris?’

Hardy shook his head, told him a little about how he’d spent his morning, about Rane Brown. Glitsky nodded. ‘You ever notice how just plain dumb these guys are?’

It had crossed Hardy’s mind. ‘So what’s my excuse to talk to Farris again? Maybe you want to talk to him. Till you give me a suspect, I’m not really in it.’

Glitsky was firm. ‘You’re in it, Diz. You already know the guy. Tell him we need Mr Silicon and we haven’t located Shinn. See what he’ll tell you. He’s probably handling disposition of the body, too. Although maybe the daughter… no, probably him.’

‘I’m on it,’ Hardy said.

Hardy passed on his lunch. It was too nice a day to stay cooped up, so Hardy called, got directions and made an appointment, then drove with the top off his Samurai around the Army Street curve down 101. He got his first view of the Bay as he passed Candlestick Park – remarkably blue, clear all the way down to San Jose, dotted with a few sailboats, some tankers. The Bay Bridge glittered silver a little behind him and the pencil line of the San Mateo Bridge ran over to Hay ward. You could see it every day, Hardy thought, and the beauty still got to you.

He exited the freeway at South San Francisco and drove north and west through the industrial section. Owen Industries spread itself over nearly two acres of land at the foot of the San Bruno mountains, a bunch of white and green structures that looked like army barracks. Hardy was issued a guest pass at the guard station after he’d had his appointment confirmed. These folks were into security.

He drove a hundred yards between two rows of the low buildings, then turned left as instructed and came upon the corporate offices, which showed signs of an architect’s hand. A well-kept lawn, a cobbled walkway bounded by a low hedge, a few mature pines, relieved the drab institutional feel of the rest of the place. A flag flew at half-mast. The corporate office building itself was fronted in brick and glass. It, like the surrounding compound, squatted at one story.

Inside, red-tiled floors, potted trees, wide halls with modern art tastefully framed, gave the place an air of muted elegance. An attractive young receptionist took Hardy back to Farris’s office and explained that he would be back in a moment and in the meantime Hardy could wait here.

The door closed behind him and for a moment after turning around, Hardy was struck by an intimate familiarity.

The walls were painted lighter and the view outside the window was certainly different, but otherwise Farris’s office was strikingly like Hardy’s own at his house. There was a fireplace with its mantel, the seagoing knickknacks, even a blowfish on the green blotter that covered the desk. There was no green-shaded banker’s lamp, but the file cabinets were wooden, the bookshelves contained business stuff but also some popular books. Finally, there was a dart board studded with two sets of what Hardy recognized as high-quality custom darts.

There were differences, of course. This room was twice the size and altogether brighter than Hardy’s. The floor was of the same red tile that had been in the lobby, partially covered by three Navajo throw rugs and a couch.

Hardy walked to the desk, felt the grain of the wood, moved to the bookshelves, then to the dartboard. He removed three of the darts and stepped back to the corner of the desk.

After throwing all six darts, Hardy sat on one of the stiff-back wooden chairs, crossed one knee over the other and waited. In under a minute the door opened.

‘Hardy. Dismas, how are you? Sorry to keep you waiting. Something came up.’ A somewhat forced smile in the handsome face. Again, impeccable clothes – a charcoal business suit – with the personal touch of cowboy boots. Hardy thought he looked exhausted. He went around his desk, arranged some papers and sat down. His eyes went around the room. ‘You’ve thrown my darts.’

‘That’s an impressive bit of observation.’

Farris brushed it off. ‘Party trick,’ he said, ‘like Owen breaking boards.’ He explained. ‘You’re around Owen, you better have something you can do better than he can. I got good at details.’ He seemed to slump, remembering something.

‘You all right?’ Hardy asked.

‘Yeah, I’ll live. This is a bitch of a blow, though. I’m not much good at pretending it isn’t.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘With you, okay. But out there’ – he motioned toward the door he’d just come through – ‘I set the tone. People out there see me panic, then it starts to spread, right? I just put the word out we’re closing up for today. Maybe things’ll look better on Monday.’

Hardy gave it a minute, then thought he might as well get down to it. He briefed him on Glitsky’s discoveries on the Eloise, which Farris took in without comment. Then he got the name, address and phone number of Mr Silicon – Austin Brucker in Los Altos Hills. Finally he got around to May Shinn.

‘I wanted to be clear on May, though. Wednesday when you called her, you left a message?’

Farris nodded. ‘That’s right. You were right there.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m a little confused, though, because Sergeant Glitsky tried to call her this morning and no one answered.’

‘How’d he get her number?’

Details, Hardy thought, this guy is into details. He lifted his shoulders an inch. ‘Cops have access to unlisted numbers.’ He hoped.

Farris accepted that. ‘But the machine didn’t answer?’

‘Ten rings.’

‘No, it picked up after two, three for me.’ He thought a minute. ‘Maybe it got to the end of the tape.’

‘You’d still get her answering message, wouldn’t you?’

‘I think you would.’

The two men sat, putting it together. ‘She’s alive then,’ Farris said. ‘She unplugged it.’

‘Would she have had a reason to kill Owen?’

‘May?’

‘Somebody did.’

Farris shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know her. I wouldn’t know her if she walked in here.’

‘But did Mr Nash -?’

‘Owen liked her.’ He paused. ‘A lot. More than a lot.’

‘So how about if he stopped liking her?’

‘So what?’

‘So might she have gone off, something like that?’

Farris shook his head. ‘I just don’t have any idea. The last I knew, Owen liked her. But, I mean, the woman’s a prostitute, right? She kills a John over his dumping her? Even if it’s Owen, I don’t see it. And I don’t think he was dumping her.’

‘So where is she? Why hasn’t she returned your call?’

‘I don’t know. That’s a good question.’

Hardy finally had to let it go. ‘What are you doing about the body?’ he asked.

Celine was going by the coroner’s this afternoon to sign some papers. The autopsy was supposed to have been done this morning. So they planned to have the cremation Sunday morning, scattering his ashes over the Pacific that afternoon.

Farris looked hard out the window. He had a minimum view of the sun behind the low green buildings, some grass, a couple of pine trees. He put his hand to his eyes and pushed against them, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

Hardy stood and thanked him for his time. Farris got up from his chair, shook hands over the desk and apologized again. He wasn’t himself. Sorry. Thanks for coming by.

Hardy turned back at the door. Farris had sat back down in his chair behind the wide expanse of the oak desk. He was staring out again into the evening shadow cast over the lawns and pine trees, the shade now reaching to his no-view window – a statue of grief.

The flight was on Japan Airlines at eight-fifteen.

It was four-fifteen, far too early to leave, yet she had phoned for the cab. What was she thinking of? May knew she would go mad sitting out at the airport for three hours, worrying that someone would stop her, knowing that she had to leave here, that this place, maybe America itself, was over for her.

Her bags were by the front door. She had decided to pack the Lennons, and the foyer looked bare without them. The sun shone in through the turret windows, which she’d opened due to the heat. The heat made her feel as though in some ways she was leaving a place she’d never been.

She wore a dark blue linen suit with dark hose, not the perfect outfit for this weather, but she thought it made her look more businesslike. Her hair was in a tight bun, her most severe look. She didn’t want people coming up and talking to her.

When the doorbell rang, she was surprised. Normally, the drivers would honk out on the street. Nevertheless, she determined that she would tell the man she’d made a mistake; he could come back later if he wanted the fare.

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Through the peephole, his looks scared her – a light-skinned black man with a nasty-looking scar through his lips, top to bottom. On the other hand, she wanted someone who wouldn’t talk to her and this man looked like that type. She opened the door.

She was looking at a badge of some kind, the man identifying himself as Inspector Abe Glitsky of the San Francisco Police, Homicide. She stepped back as he asked if she was May Shintaka. ‘May I come in?’ He sounded polite enough.

‘Certainly.’

He stood in the foyer. There was nothing she could do to keep him from noting the newly empty walls, obviously where the Lennons had been taken down. ‘I’m here about Owen Nash.’

A nod. She turned and walked back into the living room. Now she was really hot and she took off her coat, draping it across the arm of the couch. She went to the turret window and heard the honk of the cab down below.

The sergeant took a few steps into the room, but stopped near the foyer. ‘Your shoes,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’ She motioned to a long, polished and ridged board that began next to the door. Her own pair of dark-blue pumps were already resting over the ridge.

Abe stepped out of his wing tips and placed them on the board. ‘Were you planning on going somewhere?’ He motioned to the bags in the hallway.

She was coming back across the room. He seemed to fill up where he stood even more than Owen had, and Owen was a big man, had been a big man. ‘That’s my cab down there now,’ she said. ‘But it’s too early anyway. I should tell him.’

Abe was nervous about letting her go down, but she’d left her bags as well as the jacket of her suit. She didn’t take a purse. If she got in the cab, he’d be able to call the dispatcher and possibly stop her before she’d gone a mile.

The advantage was his now. She had invited him into her apartment. He hadn’t needed to show a warrant, which in any event he didn’t have.

As soon as he’d left Hardy, he decided he had to do some police work. He had the phone company run a reverse list on May’s phone number and got her address, which was on his way home. He’d called back Elizabeth Pullios, but she was out with a witness and wasn’t due to return to her office until Monday. He finished up his paperwork on the Nash incident report, grabbed an afternoon cup of tea and some peanut M &Ms downstairs, then went upstairs to the jail and interviewed a snitch who supposedly knew the name of the shooter in last weekend’s drive-by. The information was worth checking, so he scheduled a videotape session for Monday.

Back at his desk, now getting on four o’clock, he called records and got a registration on the Beretta. The gun belonged to May Shintaka.

Nash’s autopsy showed that the bullets that killed him were.25 caliber, and Glitsky figured he didn’t have to wait for the formal Ballistics report. He had her address, and for the moment at least, May Shinn was ‘it.’

She didn’t hop in the cab and make a run for it. He was standing in the turret, watching her say something into the passenger window. After she stepped back, the cab took off with a squeal of rubber.

Glitsky watched her close the door to the apartment, gently, holding the knob with one hand and fitting the door into the sill with the other, the way mothers sometimes did when their children were sleeping in the room they were closing off. Seeing her dark blue, low-heeled pumps and the tailored suit, he had to remind himself that according to all the information he had, this woman was a prostitute.

She was out of the shoes, then, turning away from the door. She came back into the living room. He found he couldn’t make a guess as to her age and hit it within a decade. She could be anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. She had, he thought, a very unusual face, the bones clearly defined, the skin smooth and stretched tight with the hair pulled back.

She walked over to the low couch, next to where she’d laid her jacket, and floated down onto it. She made some motion that he took to be an invitation to sit, which he did, feeling like a clod in his brown socks and his American sports coat.

‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked. ‘Please, take off your coat. It’s too warm.’

So far as Abe knew, he was the only male tea drinker on the force. He thought about declining, then realized he would enjoy watching May Shinn move around. ‘That would be nice,’ he said. He folded his coat over his end of the couch, thinking if she kept this up, he’d be stripped before long.

She walked into the kitchen, open from the living room, and he watched her back, the straight shoulders, tiny waist, womanly curve of her hips. Even barefoot, her ankles tapered, thin as a doe’s.

She poured from a bottle of Evian into a kettle. ‘Owen’s dead,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am. Somebody killed him.’

He kept watching her closely. She was taking down some cups, placing them on a tray. If her hands were shaking, the cups would betray her, but they didn’t. She stood by the stove, turning full to face him. ‘I read that.’

Glitsky sat forward on the couch, elbows on his knees. ‘The suitcases,’ he said. ‘You were going somewhere.’

‘Japan. On business,’ she added, spooning tea into the cups.

‘You have business over there?’

She nodded. ‘I buy art. I am a – a broker for different friends of mine.’

‘Do you go over there a lot?’

‘Sometimes, yes. It depends.’

Glitsky would have time to pursue that if he had to. He decided to move things along. ‘We found your gun on Mr Nash’s boat. On the Eloise.’

‘Yes, I kept it there.’

‘We’re reasonably certain it’s the gun that was used to kill him.’ She seemed to be waiting, immobilized. ‘When was the last time you saw him, Ms Shinn?’

She turned back to the stove, touched the side of the kettle with a finger and decided it wasn’t ready yet. ‘Friday night, no, Saturday morning, very early. He stayed here.’

‘In this apartment?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then where did he go from here?’

‘He said he was going sailing. He sailed many weekends.’

‘And did you go with him?’

‘Most times, yes. But not Saturday.’

‘Why was that?’

She tried the kettle again, nodded, then poured the two cups. She brought the tray over and set it on the low table in front of them. ‘He had another appointment.’

‘Did he tell you who it was with?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Or what it was about?’

‘He didn’t say. He only said it was clearing the way for us.’

‘What does that mean, clearing the way for you?’

‘I don’t know. I think he needed to be alone. To think it out.’ She seemed to be searching for words, although not the way a foreigner would. She appeared to be a native speaker of English, but there was a hesitation, a pause. It threw Abe off – he couldn’t decide when, if, she was editing, when she was telling the truth. ‘We were going to be married.’

‘You and Owen Nash were going to be married?’

‘Yes.’ Keeping it simple and unadorned. The best kind of lie, Abe thought. And this, he was sure, was a lie. Owen Nash, internationally acclaimed tycoon and business leader, intimate of presidents and kings, did not marry his professional and well-paid love slave. Period.

‘Had you set a date?’

‘No,’ she said. She picked up one of the teacups and held it a second, then put it back down. ‘It is still too hot,’ she said. ‘We only decided, finally, last Friday. It was my ring.’

‘The snake ring? The one on his hand?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Then you’ve known since Monday that he was dead?’ Or since Saturday when you shot him, he was thinking. ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

She picked up the teacup again, perhaps stalling. ‘When it doesn’t burn the fingers, it can’t burn the mouth,’ she said. She handed him the cup.

It was strong, excellent green tea. Abe sipped it, not really understanding why you could drink hot tea on a hot day and feel cooler. ‘May, why didn’t you call us, the police?’

‘What could they do? He was already dead. I knew it was Owen. The rest didn’t matter. It was his fate.’

‘It wasn’t his natural fate, May. Somebody shot him.’

‘Monday I didn’t know that. I only knew it was Owen’s hand.’

‘What about today? Did you read the paper today? Or yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

Glitsky waited. ‘Just yes?’

May Shinn sipped at her own tea. Carefully she put the cup down. ‘What do you want me to say? My instinct, after all, was not to call the police. Whoever killed Owen will have to live with himself and that is punishment enough.’

Abe put his cup down and walked back to the turret window. Across the street was another apartment house, the mirror image of this one. A cable car clanged by below. The sun was still fairly high, slanting toward him. There wasn’t a cloud clear to the horizon.

From behind him. ‘Am I a suspect, Sergeant?’

Glitsky turned around. ‘Do you remember what you did last Saturday, during the day?’

‘An alibi, is that right? I am a suspect, then.’

‘It’s an open field at this point, but unless you have an alibi for Saturday, I’m afraid you’re in it. Did you kill him?’

Just say no, he thought, I didn’t do it. But she said, ‘I was here Saturday, all day.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes, alone. I was waiting for Owen to come back.’ A little short there, exasperated. Deny you did it, he thought again, just say the words. But she said, ‘I loved the man, Sergeant.’

‘Did you make any phone calls, order out for pizza? Did anybody see you?’

Finally it was getting to her. She sat on the front three inches of the couch, ramrod straight. ‘I got up late, around nine. Owen had left sometime around six. I took a long bath. I was nervous. Owen was doing something to make it so we could get married -deciding, I think, that he was going to go through with it. He thought best out on the water. I waited. I paced a lot. When he wasn’t back by dark, I went to bed. I couldn’t face anybody. I was crying. I thought he’d decided not to.’

Glitsky put his jacket over his knees. ‘I think you might want to put your trip on hold,’ he said. ‘And maybe see about retaining a lawyer.’

He thought about taking her downtown now, but knew that he’d be asking for repercussions if he did. It was premature. He really had no evidence. It had been a week since the gun had been fired, and even the most sophisticated laser analysis wouldn’t show powder on the hands after that long. What May had told him was plausible, though pretty unlikely, and there was still plenty of legwork to try and verify her alibi or not, maybe neighbors hearing her walking around and so forth. If she agreed to put off going to Japan, there wasn’t any risk of imminent flight, and he didn’t really have any probable cause.

Plus, she being Oriental and he being half black, he didn’t want to give anybody any ammunition to be able to accuse him of hassling her on racial grounds. She had invited him, without a warrant, into her apartment. It was bad luck to arrest somebody under those conditions. Now if she took flight, it would be a different story.

But she was standing, too. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

Glitsky was picking up his shoes. ‘Can you get a refund on that ticket? If you can’t, we may be able to help you.’

She shook her head. ‘They should refund it. God knows I paid full price, they should.’

So she’d bought the ticket recently, Abe thought. Probably since last Saturday. He hesitated. Strike two and a half. Tough call, but he was still an invited guest in her house, and she’d promised to stay around. He’d really prefer to have an indictment before he decided to arrest somebody on a murder charge.

He thought he’d bring his suspicions to Hardy and Hardy could decide whether they wanted to try to persuade the grand jury. But he doubted there was enough yet. Two and a half strikes didn’t make an out.

He said goodbye and she closed the door, gently, behind him.

Abe didn’t love himself for it, but it was too close and he thought with a little patience he would at least not have to worry over the weekend. He pulled his Plymouth away from the curb and made a point of turning west at the corner under the turret window. He drove three blocks, turning north again on Van Ness, left on Geary and back up to Union. He parked at the far end of May’s block on her side of the street.

Even with the windows down, in the shade, it was hot. Fortunately, he didn’t have long to wait.

A cab pulled up in front of the corner apartment building and honked its horn twice. Glitsky waited as May came out of the building. He let the driver load her suitcases into the trunk, let May get settled into the back seat before he pulled out into the street.

As the cab rounded the first corner, Abe turned on his red light and hit his siren. The cab, directly in front of him, pulled over immediately.

Abe came up to the window and flashed his badge. The driver asked what he’d done; Abe had him get out of the car, then asked him where this fare had asked to be taken.

‘Down the airport,’ he said. ‘Goin’ to Japan at eight o’clock.‘

Glitsky thanked the man, then opened the back door and looked in at May. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re under arrest.’