Keeping Watch (27 page)

When Rae came out, she laid the letter on the rustic table under the window and sat in the other chair.

“You'll have to go away for a while.” It was not a question.

“I'm afraid so.”

“We leave Sunday.” For Japan, in six days: Allen already had his ticket.

“I might only need a day or two. If it turns out, as I expect, that the father has a clear alibi for last Monday, then that will be the end of it. There'd certainly be no reason for me to go to Montana—that would only disturb the boy further. All I need to do is reassure him, and Rachel, that they've just got a potential neighborhood problem, not one imported from California.”

“But it could be longer.”

“It could,” he admitted.

“And there isn't anyone else who can do it.”

“I won't know until I get down there. But I promise you, if I can get free of this, I will. And if I can't by Sunday, I'll take a later plane.”

She smiled, finally, and moved over to sit on his lap. The chair, which looked as ramshackle as the small table, creaked slightly under their combined weight, but Rae had built it, and he knew that even a pair of Sumo wrestlers wouldn't end up on the ground.

“You like this boy,” she said.

“I guess I do, yes. He isn't what you'd call likable, but he's intense, and has a lot of inner strength.”

“He needs you.” It was a flat statement and difficult to argue with, although Allen made the effort, simply because he didn't want her to think that this was going to be a common occurrence, his past life perpetually threatening to reach out and drag him back in. He didn't want to think that himself.

But she cut short his protest. “Allen, it's okay. It's disappointing, but I'm not going to break into pieces. Sometimes things come up. Just come when you can. But can you let me know if you're not going to make it back by Sunday?”

“I'll try, sweetheart.”

So much for retirement, Allen mused, watching the summer tourist playground go past from Ed De la Torre's boat. Good thing I haven't cleaned out those storage lockers yet. Good thing I didn't return my working cash to the bank.

Tools were basic, since it was no longer possible to travel with sophisticated electronic equipment on a plane. His most important tool was the money belt he wore around his waist, a strip of shiny brown leather that concealed ten thousand dollars inside its length, enough cash to buy him out of almost any emergency. But just what sort of disguise should he wear with that belt? Surely he could leave behind his smelly biker's jacket—he would be making inquiries about a rich man's whereabouts, not hanging around noisy bars. The other end of the spectrum, more like it, the Armani jacket a grateful client had thrust on him, and the silk shirt that looked like really expensive cotton.

He could only hope they hadn't absorbed the smell of cat piss from the jacket they'd been stored with.

Back at the apartment, he arranged an assortment of plain and costly clothes in a leather garment bag (since a man in an Armani with luggage is less noticeable than one without) and put his laptop and various odds and ends into an equally showy carry-on. He even managed to snag a first-class ticket on the last flight to San Francisco, an hour's drive from San Jose. He went by his club for a workout, then found a place that would cut his hair into the latest Harrison Ford style for older men, and had the gray touched up just enough to be deceptive. In downtown Seattle, he found a place that sold no-contract cell phones, and paid cash, adding a snug leather case to dress it up. He then ate dinner in a restaurant filled with men like himself, executives on expense accounts, studying their mannerisms, getting into the role.

The late flight was uneventful, the car reserved for him had no obvious rental company marks on it, and he stayed the night in a hotel halfway down the peninsula. In the morning, shaving the face under Harrison Ford's hair in the mirror, he drank his tepid room service coffee and listened with one ear to the state of the world as presented by one of the San Francisco television stations. Wars and would-be wars, a juicy political scandal, a drive-by shooting in Oakland, a missing light plane, a fire in the Tenderloin, and to top it all off, the traffic was awful. Welcome to the twenty-first century. He rinsed off his shaving cream, splashed on a small amount of an aftershave that smelled of power, checked that his new haircut still presented the proper amount of tousle and that he hadn't forgotten how to tie a necktie, and zipped up his garment bag.
San Jose, here we come.

Chapter 24

Jamie's father, Mark David O'Connell, worked for a company called Revista. When Allen had first heard the name it sounded to him like software, but it turned out to be investment strategy. Back in May, his inquiries had told him that the company was small, with seventeen employees, and that O'Connell was one of three partners.

Their offices were in one of the big new buildings along Highway 280. Allen had phoned the day before and demanded to speak with “Mark,” gave his name to the secretary as “Tony” (no surname), and grew highly indignant when the woman informed him with polite regret that “Mr. O'Connell” would be out of the office all week. By the time he'd hung up, he was satisfied that he had left her with the impression of yet another self-important dot.com asshole. So that today, when he showed up with that air of inborn good manners that could only come from someone who actually is important, she wouldn't connect him with the rude upstart Tony. He parked in the newly resurfaced parking lot where the air already shimmered with heat, reached under his shirt to activate the wire he wore, and walked briskly up the steps of the glass-and-steel building.

The entrance foyer was air-conditioned down to frigidity, and Allen was glad he'd worn his jacket. He glanced down the directory board, saw that Revista was on the top floor, and joined a pair of women dressed in three inches of heel and the severe skirts made necessary by the belief that it was a man's world, or at least a man's firm. They got out at the sixth floor, a place as grim-looking as their expressions. Four floors up, Revista's secretary was wearing a stark white shirt and an oatmeal-colored jacket, but, he noticed, she wore pants, and comfortable shoes. Mrs. Phillips (as the nameplate on her desk revealed) looked older than her voice on the phone had indicated, and somewhat softer around the eyes than Allen would have predicted. His distracted charm softened her further, to the point that it was actually she who apologized for any misunderstanding, telling him that the missing PDA he so eloquently bemoaned must have recorded his appointment not for tomorrow, but for the following Thursday, because Mr. O'Connell had taken the week off, and was not due in until Monday.

Allen patted his coat pocket for the third time, caught himself, and gave her a rueful smile. “It's terrible, being dependent on these things. I mean, I downloaded all my appointments about a week ago, but the thing went missing between the time I made the appointment and that night when I went to plug in my laptop. I'll have to buy a replacement, but I keep hoping that someone's going to call and say they've found it. I can't even remember the restaurant I met your boss in, that should tell you what kind of shape my head is in.”

“Do you remember what day it was?”

“Not exactly, just the first part of last week. Nice place, I do remember that, Chinese or Japanese, something Asian. I wasn't paying much attention, tell you the truth. Someone else was taking me there, and introduced us.”

“Could it have been a Korean restaurant?”

“It was spicy,” Allen said helpfully.

“Try Kim's,” she said. “He eats there a lot. He used to anyway, before . . . well, I don't suppose there's any reason not to tell you. Mr. O'Connell's son was kidnapped three months ago.” Allen made the requisite noises of distress and disbelief; Mrs. Phillips went on to say that the boy was twelve and no ransom had ever been asked. “Mark—Mr. O'Connell—was absolutely devastated. He's just beginning to get back to normal. So he may have started having lunch at Kim's again.”

“I don't suppose you know if he was there a week ago?”

“I wouldn't have any way of knowing.”

Allen looked at her. “Sorry, I thought you were his secretary.”

“More a receptionist and answering service,” she told him. “Actually, I work for half a dozen small companies and individuals, people who don't need a full-time phone service. They stop in or call for messages, come here when they need to meet clients.”

“You mean, there's not really such a thing as Revista?”

“Sure there is. It's just not the kind of business where Mr. O'Connell needs to spend a lot of time in the office. He's mostly on the road. Or in the air—he has his own plane.”

“But he does have an office here?”

“Oh yes. I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this, you being a potential client and all, but really, there's no point in keeping up a lot of show, is there? I mean, if you think about it, it's better to have a higher return for the client than a set of offices with expensive furniture and an art collection.”

“Makes sense to me.” Allen gave her an amiable grin, wondering what the hell had happened to the other sixteen employees who were on the records—and the other two partners. “Well, thanks for your help. I'll phone Kim's and see if they found a PDA. A week ago Monday?” he said, as if he'd suddenly thought of something. “Could it have been Monday, I think that was the twelfth, that I met him?”

“I don't work Mondays, so I wouldn't know if Mr. O'Connell was here or not. Would you like to leave a message for him, when he comes in?”

“Why don't I just leave you my card, and I'll try to reach him next week? I'm going to be out of communication for a while, myself.”

The slip of heavy card stock he gave her held an imaginary name and the address of an abandoned warehouse in Santa Monica. He thanked her and went back to his car, where he retrieved the miniature tape and labeled it, his mind working furiously.

Back in May, running his searches on O'Connell and his son, he'd never thought to look further than the man's financial statements and the business description that was on the public records. O'Connell had appeared so clean, Allen never suspected that Revista was a front, its most substantial asset the secretary, a sixth of whose services the company hired each month along with meaningless conference rooms. And an office, although Allen would have bet one of Rae's tables that a search of the office would reveal about as much as a search of a furniture-store window display.

So what the hell was Mark O'Connell selling, if not investment strategies?

And if he'd told his semi-secretary that his son had been kidnapped, why hadn't he also told her that the boy was actually a runaway? Surely Jamie's letter had reached him?

Not for the first time, Allen wished he was a cop, to whom many investigative doors would open at the flip of a badge. Alice's group did have one or two pet police officers, but none around here, and they had to be used sparingly. He had no way of knowing if the local police department was already investigating O'Connell for some kind of fraud, or if they remained in blissful ignorance, and he could think of no immediate means of finding out. He did remember that Alice knew someone on one of the newspapers in the Bay Area; that might give him an in.

He passed the afternoon (his Armani-and-silk exchanged for more workaday Levis-and-cotton) in a public library very like that in which he had first watched
deadboy
, alternating between the computer lab and back issues of the local papers. He learned from the latter that Mark O'Connell was a partner in the investment firm Revista, that his son Jameson was a difficult student whose fellow students and teachers spoke of him primarily as keeping to himself, and that this was the third adolescent boy who had vanished on his way home in the past fourteen months. That scanty information was for Saturday, the day after Jamie vanished; Sunday's paper had another article, this one with a snapshot of Jamie in jeans and sneakers, standing in front of a rock, with no discernible expression on his face. There was also a sidebar article concerning the other two boys who had disappeared, with photographs that bore only the most superficial resemblance to each other. Mark O'Connell had read a statement to the press, saying simply that he was too distraught to answer questions, but that he was praying that whoever had taken his son would turn him free unharmed, as the boy was all he had left in life.

Allen scrutinized the picture of the self-described distraught father, seeing a handsome blond man in an expensive suit, who was also the man in a silk shirt who had swallowed four double whiskeys and propped a shotgun against his son's chest just for laughs. True, the man in the grainy photograph looked both exhausted and deeply troubled. But come to think of it, if O'Connell's business was fraudulent, or even just shaky, having the police nosing around after his son's disappearance would create its own world of immediate concerns. Maybe he looked tired because he'd been up half the night shredding papers.

The thought cheered Allen, and he went back to the papers and the Internet with renewed interest. He found little. Ten days after Jamie's disappearance, the paper ran a brief follow-up article, two paragraphs in length, to inform readers that nothing had been heard from the boy or his abductor, and that the police were still treating it as foul play, since the boy was on the young side for being a runaway.

Nothing about having received a letter from Jamie himself, freely admitting to being just that.

Allen sat at the library table, drumming his fingers on the fake wood surface, oblivious to the hum and buzz of the busy patrons as he struggled to come to grips with the possibility that he'd screwed up. He had, without a doubt, allowed himself to be rushed—wham, bam, three weeks from contact to snatch. And although sometimes fast proved best, why hadn't he dug a little more deeply before he and Alice had opened the door and taken Jamie away?

Back to square one.

Sorry, Rae.

The second-floor motel room he rented gave him a refrigerator, microwave, and once-a-week cleaning, and allowed him an open phone line in exchange for a hefty cash deposit. Even more important, the front door was sturdier than it looked, and the back window gave him an emergency exit that wouldn't break his neck. Normally, that kind of security was a minor consideration, more habitual than necessary, but the possibility that he'd missed O'Connell's shady business had made him concerned. The man might be guilty of nothing worse than making himself appear more successful than he actually was, but if he did turn out to be immersed in criminal enterprise—or even in organized crime—he might well have a greater capacity for violent response than the usual abusing parent. Allen had taken children from crooks before, but those offenses had generally been along the lines of turning back odometers or peddling kiddie porn. Only rarely had he come across the darker underworld—but if O'Connell was a part of it, Allen did not wish to be taken unawares.

He hung his clothes in the chipboard closet, then went out again to the grocery and hardware stores. When the motel had gone quiet, he took out his hardware store purchases and screwed locks onto both window tracks, then replaced the door's dead bolt with one that looked nearly identical, but for which he had the only key.

He spent most of that night lying beneath the sheets staring at the ceiling, pondering Jamie O'Connell. In the morning, he made some phone calls and checked his email; nothing there.

He was aware of an odd feeling in the day, as if the dingy air of the city had a mild electrical current tingling through it. His nerves were jumpy, his body felt as if he hadn't worked out in too long, even though he'd both run and lifted less than forty-eight hours before. Lack of sleep and a day bent over the library records, he decided; better look around for a club hereabouts, work off the scholar's stoop.

But this morning, he would remain a scholar, or at least, he'd surround himself with them. He drove through the sprawl of San Jose to the school Jamie had last attended, private and semimilitary, to make inquiries about enrolling his own troublesome son. Back in May, he'd confined his contact with the school to the phone, so he didn't have to worry about being recognized, and that morning he'd been pleased to find that, although the full school term had not begun yet, the school was running its two-week preliminary course for those needing to catch up, and that most of the staff was on board.

The principal, named Kluger, was exactly the sort of person Allen would have asked for, so self-absorbed it was easy to lie to him, so self-important it was a pleasure. Kruger glanced at the Armani, and became less interested in young Eddie's problems (fictional young Ed was a thirteen-year-old with tattoos, a marijuana habit, and a peculiar interest in Nietzsche; Allen thought Ed De la Torre would like his godson) than he was in Allen's bankbook. By dropping a few references to exotic vacation spots and Hollywood first names, Allen had the principal eating out of his hand, and it was a simple thing to establish a few peculiarities of his own. Such as ethnic preferences.

“Do you have any Indian teachers?” Allen inquired, squinting over at the yearly school photographs on the wall as if he couldn't be bothered to get up and study them.

“Indian?” Kruger's caution was no doubt due more to lack of understanding of the reason for the question than any incomprehension of the question itself. Should he admit to the presence of a minority on the staff? Or trumpet one?

“Yes, you know, from the subcontinent. A Hindu, a Sikh would be good, Parsi if you can get one. Not a Jain, they're not disciplinarians.”

“Ah, Indian. Yes, we have two. Mr. Ram— er, Ramaswami I think it is, he's just joined our computer lab, and Ms. Rao in the middle school English program. She has a degree from London University,” he added.

“Good, can't do better than an Indian for teaching boys,” Allen declared, as emphatic as a Raj colonel. “Let me talk to the Rao woman.”

“I, er, I think she's probably in class at the moment.”

“Of course she is, that's where she should be. But surely you give the poor woman a break sometime?”

The hint of outrage in Allen's accusation of overwork put the cap on the principal's state of confusion. “Yes, of course. I mean, her break, let me see.” He leaned forward over his wide, empty desk and pressed the switch on the speaker phone. “Ms. Gillespie, can you tell me when Ms. Rao has her prep time?”