Thank you for the update. Things are good.”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed. “Good.”
Once they disconnected, Sarah Guzman pulled up the computer file on Hannah Neil. She read:
She stopped reading. Clicking the down arrow, she scrolled through several pages of photographs. She stopped when she reached a close-up of Peter. She studied that picture and two others that followed. He had a square jaw and a rugged, handsome face. Brown hair. Broad lips. She returned to his bio. He was six foot, one inch, one hundred and ninety-six pounds. No close relatives. Best friend, Drew Franklin—Sarah Guzman highlighted the name. She continued: no athletic scholarship, but ran track and cross-country at UCLA; earned a double major in English and math; outstanding grades. Obviously, she concluded, he had also been a financial underachiever. Until now.
Just before closing the computer file, she nodded approvingly. “Intelligent eyes.”
Opening an unrelated file, she went back to work.
Peter came to with Henry licking his face. Still on the floor, he rubbed the point of impact below his right ear, guessing a metal rod did the damage. The bruise went deep.
The outside door was open, and despite mingling with freeway stench, a stiff breeze brought welcome relief. Pushing himself to his feet, he swooned, clutched at a nearby counter-top, and noticed his small microwave was missing. A robbery? Everything he owned, including the microwave, was antiquated junk. An untouched dirty skillet sat on a burner next to a jelly-jar glass.
Thank God they didn’t use the steak knives to slit my throat, he thought.
Peter managed to stagger to the living room. Sprawled across the floor were the contents of his moving boxes. Spiral notebooks with college class-notes had been strewn throughout the room. Elvis Costello tapes not taken. That qualified as the first piece of good news. A box of photos, dumped. A framed picture of his mother, missing. Why?
“What happened, Henry?” Peter’s voice sounded ragged. “You’re my only witness.”
Peter suddenly noticed his color television was stolen. “What’s the point?” he asked himself. “The thing’s four years old and cost two hundred bucks, new.”
The six-year-old stereo, also gone. His wallet lay open, tossed on the floor. Ten, twelve dollars was all he had. His new credit card, still unauthorized, gone. Through the open bedroom door, he saw evidence of additional ransacking. The mattress was askew. Someone, apparently expecting to find something underneath, stripped the sheets off his bed. Also taken was the clock radio.
“What a bunch of morons,” Peter shouted to the walls. “The damn clock radio ran twenty minutes slow.”
Peter heard a knock on his front door. For the first time, he realized his diver’s watch was missing from his wrist.
Drew, entering the opened door, saw Peter’s face and the neck bruise. “You get in a fight?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Peter answered. “Somebody beat on me to steal eighty-nine bucks’ worth of crap.”
Drew examined Peter and determined the injury wasn’t serious. “They either knew just the right spot to knock you on your ass without serious injury, or you were damn lucky,” he explained.
After Peter’s quick summary of what had happened, Drew found himself equally bewildered. “Doesn’t make a bit of sense,” he agreed. “Probably drug addicts, desperate for a fix. We see them all the time at the hospital.”
Peter shook his head. “This guy, the one who hit me, he didn’t move like someone impaired. Too quick to be a druggie. I’m no slouch when it comes to moving fast, but he caught me flat-footed. And while everything they took was crap, they were thorough and fast. Methodical, I’d say.”
“Let’s call the cops,” Drew said.
“We do that and I’m stuck here at least another day. You and I both know they’ll never find anything or anybody.”
Peter reached into his left trouser pocket: empty. He patted his other pockets. Nothing. He went to the kitchen and checked the floors.
“What are you looking for, White Bread?” Drew asked.
“I can’t believe it,” Peter mumbled.
“Can’t believe someone robbed you? It’s not as if you live in the safest neighborhood—”
“Not that. Never mind.”
Bad enough they stole crappy appliances and took his sheets and pillowcases to cart the stuff off in. But why, Peter wondered, did they take his moonstone?
It took the rest of the day to move out, but by dinnertime, Peter, Drew, and Stuart Grimes sat comfortably on Peter’s ragtag sofa in his new home. They sipped Heineken and enjoyed an ocean view on one side and colorful sightseeing balloons on the other.
Stuart took a deep swig and said, “Well, neighbor—glad I talked you into moving here?”
“Yeah,” Peter began, “especially after getting my head dented as a send-off.”
“I’ll tell you something, dude: as bachelor pads go, you and I live in the best. You’ll have bimbos hanging from chandeliers.”
“If I fall into that trap, Stu, Drew has instructions to castrate me.”
While the three men bullshitted their way into the evening, Peter watched Henry explore his new home. The calico liked the place. Three bedrooms to claim as his new territory, rather than half-of-one. A new, oversized kitchen. Even a new food dish. By the time the others left at ten o’clock, the animal had deposited a layer of fur throughout.
The two roommates—Peter and Henry—went to bed an hour later. They heard real waves through the windows, not the horns, screeching tires, and occasional fatal accident they’d become accustomed to. Before he fell asleep, Peter resolved to call Kate. Ask her to lunch. Maybe invite her over and show her around the new pad.
After all, this bathtub was twice the size.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON MONDAY MORNING, A NEW VOICE ECHOED THROUGH HIS INTERCOM, and Oliver Dawson found it disconcerting. His new secretary, Carol Larson, came from the secretarial pool, assigned to him while he and the other two agents sharing a secretary interviewed and agreed upon a permanent replacement for Angela. Young Carol had a pretty face, but it was her full breasts, straining the buttons of her blouse, that drew everyone’s attention. At ten o’clock, this newest attraction at the SEC Enforcement Division rapped on Dawson’s door.
“Come in,” he called out.
“This just came for you, sir.”
Carol batted her eyes as she handed him an oversized envelope. On the outside it read:
At first baffled, Dawson suddenly remembered his request for the lab results, and for the original documents
