He asked, “Did Susan do this to you?”
“Uh-huh. One minute we’re talking, the next she’s coming at me with Shar’s paperweight.”
“I think I should call for the paramedics. You could have a concussion.”
“Don’t. I can—” She tried to pull herself up, sank back weakly. “Maybe you better.” Then she remembered about the city’s emergency
services’ dangerously slow response times. “
Mierda.
I’ll be laying around here till the middle of next week.”
Craig was dialing, giving the address of the pier.
“Craig? Call my sister and let her know what happened. But ask her not to tell Tonio.”
“Will do.”
“And there’s something I dropped off at Richman Labs. They promised it for tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll pick it up, don’t worry.”
“Thank you.”
Dios
, her head hurt and she felt like she was going to hurl. If she hurt this way, how bad Shar must’ve felt when she got shot!
L
aura Logan didn’t look any more like a porn filmmaker than the guy at Hot Shots had. She was petite, with dark shoulder-length
hair, and beautifully dressed in black trousers and a flame-colored jacket. She lounged carelessly in her chair in the bar
of the exclusive Barbary Hotel on Nob Hill—a place Rae had suggested they meet, thinking it might make the woman uncomfortable
and put her at a disadvantage. Well, that idea hadn’t worked.
Logan sipped at an expensive zinfandel she’d ordered, then said, “You’re probably going to ask me how a woman could go into
my industry. Exploiting other women, issues like that.”
“It interests me, yes. But right now I’m even more interested in specific projects of yours—DVDs you directed for Lee Summers
and the Pro Terra Party.”
Logan recrossed her legs, took a long slow sip of wine. “I don’t reveal information about my projects or employers.”
“Under subpoena you’d have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“One of the women in a lesbian film you shot was Lee Summers’s daughter. A few weeks later she was found slashed to death
in a SoMa alley. My attorney took a deposition from a witness this morning that indicates Summers may have killed his own
daughter. I’ll be talking with the DA, and I’m fairly certain the DA will want to talk with you. Eventually, you’ll be called
before the grand jury.”
“… Which woman was Summers’s daughter?”
“The blonde.”
“The one that was so out of it she didn’t really know what was happening. The other was a pro; I’ve used her before. Jesus,
Summers hired me to film his
daughter
?”
“Right. Apparently it wasn’t the first time she was a featured player.”
“I can’t testify about this to anyone. It would kill me in the industry. I have a nice life, a little girl to support—”
“A little girl who someday may be degraded and exploited and end up with her throat cut in some dark alley just like Alicia
Summers.”
Logan’s hand shook, sloshing wine on the table. “No! I’ve provided well for her, a college fund—”
“Alicia Summers was a bright, happy young woman with everything in the world to look forward to. She’d been accepted at UCLA.
Then her father pimped her for party donations and influence. It only takes one evil person to destroy a life. How would you
feel if your little girl encountered a Lee Summers?”
Logan gulped what was left of her wine and stared at the splatter patterns on the table for a long time. “Okay,” she finally
said, “I’ll give a deposition to your lawyer tomorrow.”
W
hat day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two.”
“Where are we?”
“Pier Twenty-four and a Half.”
“What happened to you?”
“This damn fuckin’
puta
hit me on the head with a paperweight.”
The paramedic’s face disappeared, and Julia looked up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The glare hurt her eyes, so
she squeezed them shut.
“She seems okay,” the medic said, “but she should be hospitalized overnight. Head trauma can be tricky.”
“Right.” Craig.
Julia said, “I want to go home.”
“Follow the doctor’s orders.”
“He’s not a doctor.”
“He knows a hell of a lot more than you do.”
She sighed, gave in. Wasn’t worth fighting when she was so tired. In the ambulance she asked the attendant, “Where’re you
taking me?”
“SF General.”
Well, at least she’d be close to Shar.
H
e wedged the Harley into a spot between two sports cars on Filbert Street in the upscale Cow Hollow neighborhood. The address
Susan Angelo had listed on her application for employment was a two-story sugar cube of a building mid-block. A light shone
in a small entry with two mailboxes and intercoms on its wall. He approached quietly and looked at the names on the boxes.
No Angelo or D’Angelo.
He rang the bell of the first-floor unit, but got no response. A woman’s voice replied on the intercom of the top unit; it
wasn’t Susan’s. He asked for Diane D’Angelo, and the woman said she wasn’t there.
“But this is her place?”
“No. She gets mail sometimes, but she doesn’t live here.”
“May I come up and talk with you?”
“Why?”
“I’m a private investigator with the agency where Diane works. She may be in trouble.”
Silence.
“Look, I’ve got identification. I can slip it under your door—”
“No, I’ll come down.”
He waited. The fog was sailing overhead, bypassing this exclusive enclave on its way to obscure the less privileged neighborhoods.
It was chilly; San Francisco summer wouldn’t arrive till September. He thought of Shar: how she loved the warm, golden autumn
days.…
And again she’d get to enjoy them. His relief on hearing she was going to be okay had made him weak; the tension he’d been
carrying around since the night of her attack had flowed out of him. He hadn’t thought it possible, after what he’d witnessed
that last night at the Brandt Institute, that his aunt would live, let alone be whole again. But by some miracle she would.
The building’s door opened, and a heavyset woman with short gray hair looked out. “Okay, where’s this identification?” she
asked.
He took out both his private investigator’s and driver’s licenses and passed them to her. The door closed, then opened a few
moments later. “All right,” she said, “we can talk here in the lobby. My neighbors are only a few yards away. You try anything,
they’ll be on you pretty quick.”
Mick stepped onto what she called the lobby. It was small with a mirrored wall and no furnishings. The woman took up most
of the space.
“Thank you, Ms.… ?”
“Kelly. Mimi Kelly.”
“I appreciate you talking with me. How do you know Diane?”
“I don’t.”
“But she gets mail here.”
“You ever heard of a drop?”
“So d’you hold the mail or forward it?”
“Forward to a P.O. box.”
“What about phone calls?”
“I screen them, relay them to another machine.”
“Will you give me the phone and P.O. box numbers?”
She shifted her stance, folded her arms across her pendulous breasts. “I don’t give out that information; this is a business
for me.”
“You have other clients, then.”
“Honey, I got clients whose names would make your eyes bug out. People want a fancy address for one reason or another. And
I’m happy to live at that address.”
“You have backing for your business? Somebody who finances your living expenses?”
“Once, a long time ago, I did. My uncle, he’s dead. Left me all his money; now I own the building.”
Mick’s guess was that Susan Angelo had fled the city or had gone to ground at the place where she really lived. He thought
about what she’d admitted to them, then took out his phone and checked San Francisco listings. None, but the one he was looking
for could be easily accessed via search engine. He got it and moments later he was headed downhill to the Marina district.
Quiet in the entry courtyard of this Spanish-style house on Mallorca Way—a building of a type predominant in this bayside
neighborhood. Sweet smell of some night-blooming plant and pungent odor of recently watered earth. In spite of the drifting
fog he thought of summer nights at his grandparents’ house in San Diego, where his father had parked the family while he went
out on the road with other people’s bands before he made it on his own. His uncle John—who was currently hanging around Shar
and Hy’s place and annoying the hell out of Hy—lived with his new wife and two boys in the old homeplace now. Maybe after
Shar was better, they’d pay a visit.…
He went to the front door of the house, hit the bell. Chimes rang inside, but no one came. There were lights on in the room
to the right of the door. He rang again. No response.
Well, maybe his theory had been wrong.
He was about to turn away when he noticed a faint odor that contrasted sharply with that of the plants in the courtyard. He
sniffed. Cordite. A gun had been fired here recently, maybe more than once.
He put his hand on the door latch. It moved. He hesitated.
He wasn’t armed, wasn’t even firearms-qualified. In fact, he had never so much as held a gun in his hands. And he sure as
hell didn’t want to walk into another scene like the one at the lodge in Big Sur. That experience had convinced him he couldn’t
take blood and gore.
Besides, entering struck him as an unnecessary risk. A shooter could be waiting inside and blast him when he walked in. Or
he could jeopardize a possible crime scene—and his license—by inadvertently tampering with evidence.
But maybe somebody in there needed help? If so, he couldn’t do anything for them. Only the paramedics could.
Maybe he was rationalizing, but there was no way he wanted to step through that door.
He took out his phone and dialed 911. Then, since Craig and Adah lived only a couple of blocks away, he called them and asked
for their supportive presence.
C
ome on, Dom—you know me. Give me a break here.”
Craig watched Adah as she faced down Dominick Rayborn, the investigator who had replaced her on the SFPD’s homicide squad.
Around them squad cars’ lights pulsed and an ambulance pulled away. Two body bags had been removed from Jim Yatz’s house.
A press van from the local CBS affiliate had just driven up and double-parked next to others from ABC and NBC.
Rayborn saw it, and his sharp-featured face ticked with annoyance. “Dammit, Adah, I can’t stand here jawing with you. Not
when some asshole with a microphone is about to light on me.”
“You’ve cleared and secured the scene. You’ll need to interview our operative who called this in. We can all go down to the
Hall—”
“No, that’s the last thing I need—” He broke off, said to a uniform, “Get her out of here!” Her being a TV newswoman who had
slipped past the police barricade. “The goddamn media vultures’ll be waiting on the steps of the Hall.”
“So come to my place.”
He hesitated. “Irregular, but it might work. You’ll have this operative there—what’s his name?—Mick Savage.”
“Yes. Craig and I are only a couple of blocks away; when Mick called, we walked over. He can walk back with us, to avoid attracting
attention. Then you shake the press vans and come by.”
He shook his head. “I’ll go with you. They’ll never expect me to leave on foot.”
Craig loved the apartment. It had been Adah’s for years before he met her. Spacious and airy, with white walls and great splashes
of colorful furnishings and artwork, and a large deck that they shared with the neighboring unit. The neighbors were an older
couple in their late sixties; they were gardeners and often shared the vegetables from their small patch with Adah and him.
A few weeks ago, the four of them had gone in together on a gas grill from Costco.
Now home seemed strange, with the rambunctious new cats—still called That One and The Other—locked in the bedroom and the
somber-faced, sharp-featured homicide detective perched on the edge of their red sofa. He’d declined a soft drink or coffee,
taped Mick’s story about how he’d come to be at Yatz’s house, then gone silent, his fingers laced together, staring at the
floor.
“Our turn, Dom,” Adah prompted.
He looked up, distracted from his thoughts. “Okay,” he said. “The vics are Jim Yatz and a woman with two sets of ID on her—Diane
D’Angelo and Susan Angelo. One of your operatives, as Mr. Savage has told me. Our preliminary findings indicate a murder-suicide;
Yatz blew her away, then turned his thirty-eight on himself. Neighbors to the right of the house heard an argument going on
and turned up their TV to cover the noise. This was about nine o’clock; fifteen minutes later, when the husband got up to
get something from the kitchen, everything was quiet.”
Craig said, “Don’t you find it peculiar that two other people involved in city or state government were recently killed in
an apparent murder-suicide?”
“You mean Teller and Janssen. The sheriff’s department down in Monterey County has been in close touch with us; they’ve classified
it a homicide. In this case it’s different: no injections, and obvious powder burns on Yatz’s hands, apparently from his own
gun. There’s also evidence that Angelo had been living there for a fair amount of time.”
Mick said, “So Angelo went home, told Yatz we had evidence on him on DVD, that she’d admitted to everything, and we were taking
it to the DA. He shot her, then killed himself.”
“Everything points to that. We’ll know more when we get reports from ballistics and the ME’s office.”
Adah said, “I’d like to see copies of those reports.”
Rayborn nodded. “We can work together on this. I’ll appreciate any input you can offer, and I’ll reciprocate.” His solemn
face softened. “I know your record, Adah. You were one of the best, and I’m glad to see you haven’t burned out. This job…”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be applying to McCone Investigations myself in a few years.”