“One has to wonder,” she said. I had to agree, “one” did—every year or so there’d be another set of headlines about a SalaMan who pushed a Salaphobe’s buttons and got himself beat up, or worse.
“Yeah, activism can be a dangerous hobby. What was he into when he disappeared?”
“He had a friend, a woman, who—”
“A friend, or a good friend?” I interrupted.
“I think they were serious, but I’m not certain. I only met Eileen a couple of times, but he liked her a lot. And then about six weeks ago she just up and vanished. She texted him—not even a phone call—to say she couldn’t take it and she was going home. When he went to her apartment, most of her stuff was there but she wasn’t. He was convinced something happened to her. He’s been trying to find her—that’s her name on the list, right above his. And now he’s missing, too.”
Harry’s was the handwritten name at the bottom of the printed list.
“Who are the others?”
“I’m not altogether certain, but I think they’re all people like us.” I wished she’d stop putting it that way. “I found that piece of paper in Harry’s desk drawer two days ago. It was on the top, so I thought it might be something he was working on, a meeting or an article or something. And I recognized two of the names—other than Eileen’s, of course. Imogen and Barbara were girls I’d been to college with. So I tried to find them, to see if Harry had been in touch. But they were missing, too. Both of them.”
I had to agree, the odds of coincidence here were pretty thin.
So I took her check, and I got to work.
BROTHER HARRY HAD A THIRD-FLOOR APARTMENT IN A TIRED PART OF town near the water, which address alone would’ve made me wonder about him. And when I walked in, using the key his sister had given me, I’d have known for sure: The air was so moist the paint was coming off the walls, and you could smell the mildew despite the scrubbers. Which told me Harry had the kind of skin that needed to be damp. Humidity was one reason so many of his kind—okay,
I stood in the neat little two-bedroom, listening to the low hum of the two opposing machines—one to make the air wet, the other to battle the effects of damp—and waited for the place to tell me about Harry. He was a tidy guy, I could see that. He liked bare floors and simple furniture, and color on the walls. Not too many books, but then, books didn’t like humidity, so that was hardly unusual.
More interesting, the place had been searched. So carefully that, unless you’d done a lot of cautious searches yourself, you wouldn’t have noticed it. And even I might not’ve caught on if the sun hadn’t been out, or if Harry liked sunlight a little less.
It gave me pause, for a minute. But in the end, I was here with the permission of the owner’s sister, and anyway, my presence was sure to be on a camera somewhere in the neighborhood. So I went ahead with my search, keeping an eye out for bugs, but either the guy who’d searched the place was sharper when it came to planting surveillance than he was at putting back the vases on dusty surfaces, or there weren’t any.
My client’s brother liked damp, but he also liked light, which was unusual, considering the sensitivity of most SalaMan eyes. His walls were painted a bright white, the bulbs in his lamps were full strength, and the thin curtains over the windows were designed to keep out eyes rather than glare. Moving to the kitchen, I could see he was a cook, with a bunch of Asian-style pans and spices, more knives than I’d seen outside a French bistro, and an espresso machine the size of a small car. His refrigerator’s sell-by dates didn’t narrow down his departure a whole lot, although I didn’t spot anything that was actually expired.
And his willingness to embrace the amphibious side of his heritage stopped well short of his palate—you wouldn’t believe the things some of his—of
Or maybe you would.
His closet had a suitcase in it. His bathroom had a toothbrush, electric razor, and zip-up traveling bag in a drawer. The little closet near the front door had an overcoat, a raincoat, and a leather jacket, and its only bare hangers were half-hidden by occupied ones. All of which suggested that when Harry went out, he didn’t expect to be gone long.
I pressed a couple of buttons on the espresso machine, took the cup of black sludge that resulted over to Harry’s desk, and settled down to the drawers.
The first thing I saw was a box of bullets. It was sitting next to a tin of oil and a cleaning rag. The box was half empty. I got up and went to look for all the likely places to hide a handgun: bedside table, behind the toilet, in the flour canister. No gun.
I had to wonder if he had a carry permit for it. Permits aren’t easy to get, here in California.
My tablespoon of espresso had gone cold, so I pressed the buttons again and let the powerful syrup dribble into the cup, then returned to the desk.
Four cups later, my nerves were singing and I knew a few more things about Harry Savoy. His sister had told me he was a kind of graphic artist specializing in architectural drawings, who worked from home. The room he used as an office was drier than the rest, probably because of the equipment—I’d gone there when I’d squeezed what I could from his desk, and found a desktop computer with a state-of-the-art drawing pad, a giant wall-mounted screen, and a printer fitted with paper three feet wide. Most of the stuff I didn’t touch, although I did turn on the desktop long enough to see that pretty much all the files were password protected. Which put it beyond my personal skill set, although I had a friend who could help me, if need be.
His paper files told me he made good money, and invested some. His machinery suggested that most of his friends existed online, through WeWeb, although he also had a Facebook page. I shut the computer down without logging on to either, and sat for a minute looking at the half-dozen framed pictures on the wall over the desk.
Harry was good-looking. My client hadn’t mentioned that, not a thing a sister would notice maybe, but the group photos had one person in common, a guy with a dark and intense look about him I figured would win him a lot of attention, even without the litheness he was sure to have when he moved. Gun, looks, money: maybe I didn’t have to look any further than old Harry’s personal life for a motivation.
But I would. If nothing else, I had to earn the check in my pocket. I made notes of his phone numbers from the bills on file, and made copies of the last few months’ statements on the credit cards he used. He had an address book, a tattered old thing that functioned as a backup to whatever phone he carried, but I wrote down a few of the addresses that looked more recent.
I didn’t find a laptop, or a pad, or the phone.
I did make one very interesting discovery, hidden in a place so clever I nearly missed it myself—inside the heater vent, under a false side that looked exactly like the other three. I pulled it out, and sat on the floor to look at it: a nine-by-twelve envelope of printouts and clippings, nineteen of them, that made my brain whir around for a while until a little voice told me it might be a good time to leave. Taking the envelope with me.
Maybe I needed to take a look at the other names on that list, after all.
WHEN I FINALLY SLIPPED BACK THROUGH MY OWN FRONT DOOR, LATE THAT night, I stood in the dark for the longest time, straining to hear over the pounding in my heart. Stupid, to leave my gun in the safe. Stupid, stupid, to let the habits of paranoia go rusty.
After the longest time, my eyes showed no motion. No intruder shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned me, and I heard nothing outside my own skin. When I forced my hand to flip on the light, the only thing that looked back at me was my wild-eyed reflection in the mirror—good thing I didn’t have a gun in my hand, I told myself, or I’d have blown a hole in the wall.
But just because there was no one waiting for me (and no one in the bathroom or in the closet) didn’t mean I was safe. In ninety seconds I had my gun, my hat, my go-bag of cash, and a clean shirt, and I was out the door.
I left my car where I’d parked it, and went away on foot.
Which took care of my own safety; now for that of my client. It always looks bad when a PI loses a client. And anyway, she was probably going to owe me plenty by the time I’d finished.
She was asleep, of course, since it was just shy of two in the morning. Anyway, I hoped she was only asleep. Her small house up in Sausalito (another place with damp air and tolerant attitudes) was dark, like all of its
