fire escape rose to a thick metal door. The dead bolt was shiny, and traces of sawdust on the landing said it had been recently installed.
I huffed back around and confronted that front door again, in case it had decided to unlock itself. It hadn't.
Now what?
I thought about that FedEx driver, shouldering past me on the stairwell.
I dialed the 1-800 number on the tag, keyed in the tracking code, and waited through a xylophone rendition of 'Arthur's Theme.' When the customer-service rep picked up, I said, 'I'm calling from Ridgeline. I just missed a drop-off, and I think your driver's still in the area. Will you please have him swing back around?'
I walked a ways up the outdoor corridor, not wanting to hang around 1138 in case someone with Danner boots reported back to work. Twenty minutes passed in a crawl. My rising anxiety and discouragement had just reached a tipping point when I saw the big white box of the FedEx truck making its way through traffic. Positioning myself at the office door, I touched the tip of one of my keys to the dead-bolt lock and waited for what seemed an eternity. Finally I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and I pivoted, key in view, as he approached.
'Oh,' I said, 'you just caught me locking up.'
'Missed you the last few times.' He handed me a thin express envelope and the electronic clipboard. 'You guys are tricky.'
I scrawled J. Edgar Hoover illegibly and handed the clipboard back. 'Yeah,' I said, 'we kind of are.'
I had to force myself not to sprint downstairs and across to the valet. Waiting for my car, I glanced nervously along the length of the building toward the Ridgeline office. Only then did I see the silver security camera mounted on top of the overhang right above 1138, out of sight from the corridor itself. It didn't match the others.
And it was pointing at me.
On the FedEx label, under Contents, was written, Insurance.
Sitting at our kitchen table in the quiet of the house, I tore open the envelope. A piece of corrugated cardboard, folded once and taped to protect its contents. A Post-it read, Going dark. Do not contact. I broke the tape with a thumb. Inside lay a computer disc. I took a deep breath. Rubbed my eyes. Frisbeed the cardboard into the heap of trash on the floor.
Insurance? For whom? Against what?
'Going dark' implied it was sent from an inside operative of sorts. A spy?
I took the disc upstairs to my office and, feverish with anticipation, slotted it into Ariana's laptop.
Blank.
I swore, banging the desk with the heel of my hand so hard that the laptop jumped. Couldn't one damn clue pan out? After all I'd risked to get it. The security footage of me left behind for the crew at Ridgeline. The wrath that could bring down on us.
Ariana was at work, looking into our financial options. Worried, I tried her as I had several times earlier, and again got voice mail all around. She was keeping her cell phone turned off, as we'd agreed, so she couldn't be tracked by its signal. I'd taken back and was using--right now--the disposable cell phone I'd gotten for her to carry so we could be in touch throughout the day. Smart.
In Ari's address book downstairs, I found her assistant's cell number and waited as it rang, my knee hammering up and down. A wash of relief when she answered.
'Patrick? You okay? What's going on?'
'Why aren't you guys picking up?'
'We're still getting bullshit calls about . . . you know, so it's easier to just let everything go to voice mail.'
'Where is she?'
'At another meeting--she hasn't stopped scrambling all day. I can't reach her because she's keeping her cell phone off for some reason.'
'Okay, I just wanted to know that she's . . .'
'No shit, huh? But don't worry. She's being super careful. She took, like, our two biggest delivery guys with her.'
That made me feel incrementally better.
'When she checks in, can you have her call me at home?' I asked.
'Sure, but the meeting should be wrapping up, and she said she's heading home after, so you'll probably talk to her before I do.'
I hung up, pressed the phone to my closed mouth. Given that it was the middle of the day, the drawn curtains were oppressive, confining. I'd sneaked in over the back fence again, and it struck me that I hadn't been in my own front yard since getting home from jail. Bracing myself, I stepped out onto the porch. Who could have imagined that something so simple would feel like a bold act? A few shouts, and then a throng appeared at the end of the walk, calling questions, snapping pictures. Closing my eyes, I tilted my face to the sun. But I couldn't relax out there, exposed. In the pressure of darkness behind my eyelids, I relived Elisabeta's bathroom window shoving against me as I'd tried to slither through to safety.
Back in the kitchen, I pounded a glass of water and rooted around for food, adding torn boxes and moldy bread to the trash heap on the floor. Chewing a stale energy bar, I returned to my office and stared some more at the blank disc on the screen. Maybe a hidden document? But the memory showed as zero. It seemed unlikely that data could have been embedded in a way that took up no memory, but with these guys anything was possible. I hid the disc in the middle of my blank DVDs impaled on the spindle and dropped the FedEx packaging into a desk drawer.
The phone rang. I snatched it up. 'Ari?'
'I'm under a rock.' Joe Vente. 'Memorize this number.' He rattled it off. 'I'm bedded down. Safe. No one has this number, so if they come kill me, I'll be really pissed off at you.'
'I won't breathe a word.'
'I called in the body of Elisabeta or whoever the fuck she is. Get ready for the shit to hit.'
'I will.'
'Oh, and now I've earned that exclusive twice over.'
'Does that mean . . . ?'
'You bet your ass. I found her.'
Chapter 44
I caught Trista outside the Santa Monica bungalow, dumping an armload of empty Dasani bottles in the recycle bin. I said, 'Bottled water? Isn't that environmentally irresponsible?'
She turned, shielding her eyes against the setting sun, and gave a sad grin when she recognized me. Which quickly turned coy. 'Your shirt's made of cotton,' she said, 'which requires a hundred and ten pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow. Your car there'--a flick of her lovely head--'if you upgraded to a hybrid, you'd pick up about a dozen miles to the gallon, which would keep ten tons of carbon dioxide out of the air a year.' As I approached, she leaned toward me, blond hair drifting, and eyed my trousers. 'That a cell phone in your pocket, big boy? It's got a capacitor strip made of tantalum, extracted from coltan, eighty percent of which is torn out of streambeds in eastern Congo where gorillas live. Or used to.'
I said, 'Uncle.'
'We're all hypocrites. We all do damage. Just by living. And yes, by drinking bottled water, too.' She paused. 'You're smiling at me. You're not gonna get flirty and patronizing?'
'No. It's just been a long couple days, and you're a breath of fresh air.'
'You like me.'
'But not like that.'
'No? Then why?'
'Because you think differently than I do.'
'It's good to see you, Patrick.'
'I didn't kill him.'
'I know that.'
'How?'
'Your anger's all on the surface. It's really just hurt you don't want to acknowledge. Come inside.'
