Let Us Prey Page 3

  “No, she was alone. She had her parents, but they died when she was nineteen, left her the house. Why do these things happen?”

  I sighed. “We won’t keep you much longer, Mr. Shaw. Have you got an address for Mr. Sanders?”

  He seemed to come out of a dream or a reminiscence. “Yeah, sure.” He looked at his computer screen. “He was at a hotel—the Hyatt Regency, on Drumm Street.”

  I made a note and stood. Dehan stood too, but as she did, she asked, “What about at the theater company, the Melpomene—did she have any special friends there?”

  He thought a moment. “Yes, there was a girl she was close to. Gloria. She was friends with Gloria. She might be able to tell you something.”

  We asked him if he had some photographs of her we could use. He gave us a couple. We thanked him and left.

  Back in the street, I stopped and stared around me. My stomach was reminding me I had missed lunch. I turned to Dehan.

  She stared me straight in the eye and said, “You look like you need a sandwich and a beer, Sensei. You haven’t eaten since seven o’clock this morning. You can’t do that to your body. It’s not right. You know what?” She started to cross the road, and I followed her. “Your body is the temple of your spirit. You have to care for it. I read that somewhere.”

  I climbed in the car. “Okay, Carmen, you’re hungry. I drive you too hard. I hear you. Let’s play tourist for an hour or two.”

  We took Bush Street down to the Embarcadero and sat outside at Carmen’s Restaurant on Pier 40. We ordered two beers, crispy calamari, and two burgers. When the waitress went away to get them, I rubbed my face and, for a moment, had a hankering for a Camel cigarette.

  “So, let’s revisit your analysis back in the house. An actress, living in a nice house in the Bay Area, she has an agent, she is working because she has money in the bank and is running the house on her own. One day she ups and goes to New York, specifically the Bronx. She’s not planning on staying there, she’s planning to come back soon. It’s just a visit. While she’s there, she visits loser Stephen Springfellow. The Sureños show up, beat seven bales of shit out of him, and then shoot them both. They leave him dead where he is on the chair and take her body away with them. But now let’s add to that. Just before she goes to New York, she is given an exceptionally well-paid job by G. Sanders, whose address is a five-star hotel. The job lasts a week and involves putting on a show at a millionaire’s party. Questions: What was she doing for the nine days that were not party days? What was so special about this gig that he was prepared to pay her that well?”

  The waitress brought our beers, and Dehan pulled off half of hers and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist.

  “We need to find G. Sanders. But my bet is he won’t be very communicative, even if we find him. The person who is going to give us—me—the lowdown is Gloria, at the Melpomene Theater.”

  I nodded. “Reckon you’re right at that, Carmensita.”

  FIVE

  We ate our late luncheon, and as the sun slipped toward what should have been a lazy late afternoon, we slipped back into the Mustang and made our way up through the color and bustle of Market Street to Jones Street, by way of Leavenworth.

  The Melpomene was a club with a theater in it, rather than an actual theater. It was open, but there was nobody there save the barman, who was polishing glasses behind the bar. The place was dimly lit and smelled vaguely of stale beer and furniture polish. There were forty or fifty tables, each with a small red lantern, ranged around a stage that was painted black and had black curtains drawn across it. Every now and then the curtain moved, and there was a sound of feet on floorboards and furniture being dragged around.

  Dehan leaned on the bar, and the barman, who sounded South African or Australian, said, “Whadlit be?”

  “I need to talk to Gloria. She in?”

  “They’re setting up for the show. Through that door. Don’t know how popular you’ll be if you go back there right now though.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve never been popular. It unsettles my stomach.”

  I followed her through the door into a maze of narrow, ill-lit passages carpeted in what used to be gray but was now just dirty. We heard voices, climbed a couple of steps, and found ourselves looking out onto the stage. Two young men who looked as though they needed to eat were arguing in hushed hisses with a girl who looked as though she could take them both with one hand tied behind her back.

  Dehan sighed and said, “Is one of you Gloria?”

  They all turned to look but said nothing for a moment. Dehan was about to repeat the question when the girl pointed and said, “In her dressing room.”

  “Where?”

  “Right at the intersection. Second door on your right.” As we turned to go, she called, “Say.” Dehan turned back. The girl was smiling. “You free later?”

  Dehan nodded. “Yeah. And I plan to stay that way.”

  I followed her to the intersection and then down to the right.

  “You really need to do something about your attitude. The girl was just being nice.”

  We came to the door, and she knocked.

  “Come!”

  When we opened the door, Gloria was naked. She had her back to us because she was sitting at her dressing table putting on makeup. But her reflection was just as naked as she was, and that was facing us. Her reflection smiled brightly.

  “Hello!”

  Dehan blinked and smiled back. “Are you Gloria?”

  “Sure!” She made it sound like, “Why not? We can be anything we want to be!” We stepped in and I closed the door. She was still smiling and looking expectantly at our reflections. I left Dehan to it and watched Gloria’s face in the mirror. She was pretty. She had a nice face.

  “Were you friends with Tammy Gunthersen?”

  She turned on her stool and stared at Dehan, then at me. “Why yes, and I still am. Are you friends of hers? I haven’t seen her for ages.”

  Dehan did a funny little sideways twitch of the head and said, “You haven’t seen her for two years. May we sit down, Gloria?”

  Now Gloria looked worried. “Well, sure, but who are you?”

  Dehan pulled out her badge. “We are police officers. My name is Carmen Dehan, and this is my partner, John Stone. Tammy has gone missing, Gloria. We don’t know for sure, but there is reason to believe that she might have been hurt… or worse. We really need your help.”

  Gloria had put both her hands to her mouth and was staring at Dehan without saying a word. She looked genuinely distressed. Dehan waited a moment, then, with a small, coaxing nod, asked, “Will you help us, Gloria?”

  “Well, of course! Poor Tammy! What happened? How can I help? Just tell me how.”

  Dehan pulled up a chair and sat right in front of her, mere inches away. I removed a bundle of clothes and sat in a chair in the corner, crossed my legs, and watched Dehan with interest. This was the girl nobody could stand at the precinct because she had such a bad attitude. Now she was leaning forward, looking earnestly into Gloria’s eyes.

  “Do you remember the last time you saw Tammy?”

  Gloria’s eyes became abstracted. “Let me see… two years ago, we were doing A Woman for All Seasons…” Her face lit up. “Well, sure! She was real excited. She told me she’d been offered a part that was going to change her life. I asked her what it was, but she said she couldn’t tell me just then, because it was a secret.” She grew confidential, as though she were sharing a secret with Dehan. “She said she had met a wonderful man—he was a millionaire, or a multimillionaire, and he was going to change her life forever.”

  “Did she mention his name?”

  “Well, I asked, as you can imagine. I was dying with curiosity! She said all of that would have to remain a secret, but when I next saw her she would be driving a Rolls Royce!”

  “Was she working here at the time?”

  She shook her head. “No, we went out for drinks. A girls’ night out.”

 
“Where was she working? Did she mention that?”

  She thought for a moment and sighed. “No. She said she had a great gig. She was being paid big bucks to put on some kind of show for a multimillionaire. I asked her if it was the same guy, and she said no, but I kind of figured it was. It was too much of a coincidence, know what I mean?”

  Dehan made a conspiratorial face, narrowed her eyes, and smiled. “Sure! She’s met a multimillionaire, and she’s doing a gig for a multimillionaire. No-brainer, right?”

  Gloria laughed and laid her hand on Dehan’s arm. “Right! That’s what I thought!”

  “So you think she was having an affair with this guy, the millionaire?”

  “Well, at first I did, but then she tells me she’s going back to see her ex!”

  “Her ex?”

  “Some loser she was with for a couple of years. He was an asshole, always sleeping around and treating her bad. So she sent him packing back to New York. But you know how it is—she always missed him. Why do we always fall in love with bad guys?” She turned to me. “No offense.” She turned back to Dehan. “Anyways, she says she’s called him and she’s going to go and see him. He says he misses her and he wants her back. Says he’s changed, there’s no more sleeping around and now he’s going to treat her right—yuh, right! Like we would believe that! Whatever! She said she was going to go see him.”

  “In New York?”

  “Yeah. That’s where he lived.”

  “This guy have a name?”

  She puffed out her cheeks and blew. “Pffff… One of those boring names.”

  Dehan smiled. “A boring name?”

  “You know, normal, like John.” Again she looked at me. “No offense.” I winked at her, and she turned back to Dehan. “Bob, Steve… It might have been Steve.”

  “Did she ever mention the name Sanders to you, Gloria? G. Sanders?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think so, but it was two years ago. All I know is that she was really excited because she’d got this part to play, and it was going to make her really successful and rich. And her ex had asked her to get back with him. We met for a girls’ night out, and I never seen her again. I figured she’d got rich and forgotten all about me. You sure that’s not what happened?”

  Dehan smiled at her. It was a sad smile. “Pretty sure, Gloria.”

  We left her looking sad and naked on her stool, with all her makeup and her reflection behind her.

  We stepped out into the street. Evening was tingeing the air. Headlamps and streetlamps were coming on. I rested my ass against the trunk of the Mustang and looked down the hill. Dehan stood in front of me and leaned against the lamppost.

  I sighed. “We have two, maybe three key people here.” I lifted my hands and looked at them, like I was positioning pieces on a board. “We’ve got Steve. He can’t help us because he’s dead, and in any case, I don’t get the feeling he knew anything until it was too late. Tammy told Gloria Steve had asked her to go back with him, but I don’t believe that. It sounds to me like Tammy was making all the running. She was the one who was suddenly excited and talking crazy, making plans.”

  Dehan nodded. “I agree. So the question is, what happened to make her excited?”

  “What happened was the two other people, Mr. G. Sanders and the mystery millionaire. The mystery millionaire can’t help us because right now we have no idea who he is, and we have no immediate way of finding out. Which leaves us Mr. G. Sanders.” I paused, staring at Dehan’s face. She stared back. It was something we did sometimes to help us think. “And when you think about it,” I said after a moment, “Everything starts with Mr. G. Sanders.”

  “Yup. So we need to go and talk to the Hyatt Regency.”

  I scowled. “They will not be cooperative.” I opened the door and got in. “Let’s go prod them, see what they do.”

  She got in next to me. “Then I want to eat, overlooking the Bay. What was that place we ate at when we were on the Nelson Hernandez case?”

  I smiled and fired up the big V8. “The Epic Steak House.”

  As I pulled out into the traffic, she said, with a kind of casual air, “I think an epic steak might just inspire us. What do you think?”

  “I think we are going to go and poke the security manager at the Hyatt and see what he does, and after that we are going to go and have a couple of epic steaks.”

  “You’re the man, Stone.”

  “I am the man.”

  SIX

  We stepped through the glass doors into a set from Mad Max—the hotel. Everything was brown and brass and seemed to be the wrong shape for what it was. It was as though Salvador Dali had designed it during his steampunk period. We eventually worked out where the reception desk was and approached it through giant spheres and cubes that turned out to be cubicles where people could sit and talk, and probably make dimensional shifts. A bank of elevators like brass bullets vaguely reminded me of a gigantic church organ.

  A guy with a name tag that said “Pierre,” but who was probably called Bobby Brown, smiled at Dehan and said, “Meh ah ’elp you, mademoiselle?”

  She leaned on the desk with her elbows and gave him a wink. “Yeah, we are police officers, and we would like to talk to the head of security.”

  He looked at her the way a man looks at a glass he thought contained fine old whiskey, only to discover it was a urine sample. He gathered his dignity about him and used the internal phone. A couple of minutes later, a man of about fifty with Navy Seal written all over him came striding across the lobby. It is hard to stride sedately, but he managed it. His face smiled at us while his little blue eyes calibrated us.

  “Don’t show me your badges,” he said as he took Dehan’s hand in both of his. “You don’t come to the Hyatt,” he added, laughing and shaking my hand warmly, “to see cops flashing badges. Come to my office.”

  He led us through the vast space, past gigantic orbs and blocks that served no apparent purpose, to a brown door in a brown wall. He opened it and let us in. His office was not designed by anybody who had been abusing chemicals. It was Swedish functional in vinyl and aluminum.

  He sat behind his desk and said, “May I see some IDs?”

  We showed him our badges. He took them and examined them meticulously, then stared at us as though he had uncovered a serious crime. “You’re from New York.”

  “We are here at the invitation of the local PD, Mr…”

  “Major. Major Payne.”

  “Major Payne, we are investigating a homicide in New York, and one of the victims had links with San Francisco. May we…?”

  I gestured at the chairs opposite his desk. Dehan didn’t wait for a reply. She pulled out a chair and sat. I followed suit. He handed back our badges.

  “What has this to do with the Hyatt Regency?”

  “We believe one of your guests may have been one of the last people to see her alive.”

  “And what do you want from me?”

  “We would like to contact that guest.”

  “Out of the question.”

  Dehan scowled at him. “You could be harboring a criminal, Major Payne.”

  “In the first place,” he snapped at her, like he was telling a private to drop and give him twenty, “you are outside your jurisdiction! In the second place, all you have is that you think our guest might have been one of several people who saw your victim! Third, I have no obligation whatsoever to give you private and confidential information unless you have a court order!”

  “All we are asking for, Major, is a little cooperation, and we will undertake to be very discreet. The guest is not at your hotel at present, as far as we are aware. The events we are talking about occurred two years ago.”

  “What you are asking for, Detective, is the address of one of our guests. And I am not going to give you that without a court order. If you have enough evidence to convince a judge, then he will give you that order and I will give you the information. If you haven’t, he won’t and neither s
hall I. Now, you are wasting my time, and your own. I think it is time you left. You are not welcome here.”

  Sometimes you come across a person in life who, if there were any natural justice in the universe, you would be allowed to smack in the mouth, drop into a turbo blender, and feed to your cat. But there is not natural justice in the universe. We have to make our own, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. You just have to smile and take it.

  I smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks for your time, Major. I know you did your best.”

  We stood and I reached for the door. Dehan hesitated and stopped. “Major, I just have one last question.”

  He sighed and looked at her.

  She went on. “How come—when you were promoted to major—how come you didn’t change your name? I mean, Captain Payne I get, but Major? Major Payne? Seriously…?”

  He gave her a look like a one-eyed cat licking piss off a nettle and snarled, “Get the hell out of here.”

  As we crossed the vast lobby back toward the door, she gave me a look that was almost frightening. “I am going to bust this son of a bitch.”

  “How are you going to do that, Dehan?”

  “Just watch me.”

  When we got outside, the sky had turned crimson over the rooftops and night was closing in from the east. As I crossed the sidewalk and opened the driver’s door, she said, “Pop the trunk.” I did as I was told, and she pulled out her laptop. She climbed in next to me and said, “Stay here for a bit, will you?”

  She switched on the computer. I watched her a moment, then asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to hack the son of a bitch.”

  I was surprised and my face said so. “You can do that?”

  “It’s not as hard as you might think.” She typed for a bit, muttering, “When you’re not a dinosaur. First we put the wireless card in monitor mode…” She typed some more, “Then I need to start airodump-ng.”

  “Airodumping?”

  “Yeah… Okay!” She showed me the screen. It had gone black, and there were several columns of numbers and codes.

  She squinted. “See, this one has the lowest value, so I’m going to guess that’s our boy. Now I need to break the WPA2 encryption… and I am in his network.”