The Night Searchers (A Sharon McCone Mystery) (17 page)

Their expressions said they’d believe that when giraffes could fly—another of Ma’s malapropisms. Finally one of the SFPD inspectors spoke in a conciliatory tone. “None of us really believed you’d tried to drown Hoffman in the Bay. The APB was our way of getting hold of you so we could find out what really happened.”

“A simple appointment at my office would’ve worked better.”

They all ignored my remark. Then one of the feds asked if my husband was Hy Ripinsky, who was currently being interrogated in another room. One and the same, I replied. Added that if this was going the way I thought it was, I wanted my attorney, Glenn Solomon, present.

The SFPD detectives exchanged glances. They’d tangled with Glenn many times before.

“You’re free to call Solomon,” one finally said.

I really didn’t want Glenn there any more than they did. Apparently they had no knowledge of Jay Givens, so I didn’t want to bring Glenn into this until I could talk with him privately.

“You know,” I said, “if you’d questioned me politely and respectfully, as I would a member of an allied profession, I wouldn’t be insisting on bringing in a high-powered and frequently obstructive attorney.”

Startled expressions.

“Why don’t we start over?” I added. “You’ve got a lot of information from my own staff, as well as what you’ve found out on your own. I’d like to hear your version.”

They laid their case out for me, linking Van Hoffman and the Night Searchers. They’d arrested Hoffman, but he wasn’t talking. “We’ll break him down, though. It’s only a matter of time and pressure,” one of the feds said.

What kind of pressure? I wondered. Waterboarding?

When they finished, telling me little that I didn’t already know, they left me alone for a few minutes, during which I laid my head on my arms on the metal table like a kindergartener. Then an inspector—Wesley Moore, I thought his name was—returned and said, “Come with me, Ms. McCone. All the Night Searchers have lawyered up, but the attorney for the one who calls himself Malanzky has advised his client to cooperate with us.”

He took me to another room with one-way glass and indicated I should watch through it. Malanzky sat at the table next to a poorly dressed man who evidently was a public defender, and two uniformed cops flanked them. Plainclothes inspectors, Brenda Barcy and Frank Collins, sat across the table.

Brenda Barcy said to the lawyer, “You realize this doesn’t imply a plea bargain will be offered? That’s up to the district attorney.”

“Yes, we understand. My client’s actions have weighed heavily on his mind recently. He’s chosen to unburden himself.”

“Just so you’re aware.” She nodded to Malanzky. “Your turn, sir.”

After a moment, he began in a quavering voice. “We were just this bunch of people, you couldn’t even call us friends. I mean, we didn’t even know each other’s real names. All we did was play pranks. For fun.”

“Why?” Frank Collins asked.

“Why? ’Cause that was what we did.”

“People paid you to perform these ‘pranks,’ right?”

“…Sometimes.”

“Who?”

“I dunno.”

Barcy stood up, leaned across the table toward him. “
Who?
”

“…Well, there was this one guy, wanted to play a joke on his old lady on their wedding anniversary. She didn’t much like it.”

“His name?”

“Uh…uh…dunno, but he lives on Russian Hill.”

“Go on,” she said.

“There was a woman in Pacific Heights. Wanted us to scare the hell out of her husband for some reason, pretend we were going to beat him up.”

“Just pretend?”

“That’s all. He came at us with a rifle and we took off.”

“His name?”

“I don’t remember. I’m no good with names.”

“What about Van Hoffman?” Barcy asked.

“I dunno anything about him.”

“How much did your so-called clients pay you?”

“Don’t know that either. The Griz handled all our finances.”

“Was the Griz in control of everything?”

“Well, there was Supercom.”

“Who’s that?”

“I dunno. The Griz was pretty closemouthed with information about him. I kinda suspected he didn’t exist. You know, like he was somebody to lay the blame on if anything went wrong.”

“So you think Grizeldy was the mastermind of the whole scheme?”

He frowned. “I dunno. Griz didn’t strike me as too smart.”

“Maybe she had help.”

“From who?”

Indeed from whom? As Malanzky hesitated, my mind ranged through the list of Grizeldy’s associates. None of them seemed particularly bright.

Collins asked, “What about a man named Jay Givens? His wife—”

A flush spread slowly up Malanzky’s throat to his face, and he turned to his lawyer. “…I think I’m not gonna talk any more. That’s my right, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

The detectives looked at each other and shrugged. End of interview with a perp. The world according to Miranda.

9:02 p.m.

I banged on the door of Glenn Solomon’s Italianate house in St. Francis Wood—an exclusive neighborhood west of Twin Peaks where he and Bette had moved last year. There was no response, so I banged again. A light was on in Glenn’s library on the lower story. I watched as more lights flashed in progression to the entry.

Glenn, clad in a maroon terry cloth bathrobe, peered out at me. “My friend, what are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

I pushed past him. “There’s nothing ungodly about this hour.”

“There is if you’re dressed for bed and listening to Mendelssohn.”

“Tough. I’m sick and tired of you ducking my calls. Why have you been hiding from me?”

He sighed heavily. “Because I can’t lie to you. I never could. And client confiden—”

“If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to run amok.”

Glenn took my elbow and propelled me down the hall to his library. It was a very masculine room, probably designed by Bette. Music filtered softly through speakers mounted on one wall.

“Drink?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Information.”

“About?”

“The Givenses.”

“…All right.” He sat down in an easy chair, but I remained standing.

“You haven’t been up-front with me,” I said. “Not at all. Why?”

“I was afraid I might’ve prejudiced your investigation.”

“How?”

“With my suspicions about them.”

“What suspicions?”

“Nothing specific. Just that hinky feeling I mentioned.”

“Did it ever occur to you to examine that ‘hinky feeling’?”

“It didn’t seem important. I knew you’d get to the bottom of it.”

“And it never occurred to you that you might be putting me in danger because I didn’t know all the nuances of the case?”

“If I had, I would have—”

“I am so sick of these excuses! Lawyers lying and covering up for their clients—”

“Wait till you’re in trouble and need one. You’ll thank me then.”

“You pompous son of a bitch!”

Glenn drew back as if I’d slapped him. I’d never before called him names or spoken to him in such a tone.

I pressed on. “For starters, in the files you let me see you noted that an HH had contacted you, and you referred him to Jay, who said he’d take care of it. What’s an HH?”

“Oh, that.” He rubbed his eyes. “The initials stand for
heir hunter
. Kind of a disreputable lot, but if their fees aren’t too high, they occasionally help people out. They search for inheritances that haven’t been claimed, contact the heir, and provide them with information on the bequests—for a fee.”

“Steep fee?”

“Depends on the hunter and the amount of the bequest. In Camilla’s case it was an aunt in New York whom she barely remembers.”

“And the bequest was…?”

“Privileged information. I shouldn’t have told you what I already have.”

“Stop stonewalling—we’re not talking about some client’s little secrets now. This is a damned serious matter. Did you report this information to her?”

“No, Jay said—”

“So she didn’t know.”

“He may have told her—”

“He didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, he’s always controlled their joint finances. But why would he hide it from her?”

“For greedy reasons. Ever since then he’s been siphoning a mixture of chemicals into her cigarette lighter that produces hallucinations. When she decided to quit smoking, he began having a group of weirdos he’s associated with stage little horror shows in order to convince medical personnel that she’s crazy.”

“
What?
My God, Sharon, why?”

“So he can institutionalize her and control her inheritance.”

Glenn was silent for several seconds. “Can you prove it? Because if you can’t, the rules of confidentiality—”

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed. “I think the right to confidentiality has been trumped by gaslighting and attempted murder, don’t you? If you insist, I can get a court order—”

Glenn grimaced, then rested his forehead on his hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

“How much is the bequest?” I asked.

He sat very still for several seconds, then raised his head. Even before he spoke his expression said he wasn’t going to argue with me any longer.

“The estate hasn’t been evaluated yet, but I would guess between fifteen and twenty million dollars.”

“That much!”

“It’s prime real estate in Brooklyn. An area where development’s going over the top. He said he would tell her about it and they would decide—”

Now he’d confirmed what I’d suspected Jay Givens had been up to. Camilla had no money of her own, but squandered his. She was eccentric, while his tastes ran to the conservative. Divorce was out of the question: under the state’s community property laws, any and all assets would be equally split, and half of fifteen to twenty million wouldn’t be enough for him. He wanted it all.

So what had he decided to do? Arrange some sort of fatal “accident”? No, the man didn’t have it in him to do it himself, and hiring it out would be too dangerous. That left the mental institution and a conservatorship over her affairs.

And who better to spook her when she was in one of her drug-induced states than the Night Searchers, a group Jay occasionally associated with? As leverage, he’d gotten one of the Searchers to hide the plaque Grizeldy had contributed to their pool and had communicated that she could have it back once the group performed his bizarre charade. He’d also instructed the Searcher to hide it in her own freezer—an ironic touch that had Jay written all over it.

8:11 a.m.

I
checked in with all my available operatives; most were out hunting for Jay Givens, who had vanished from all his usual haunts. None of them complained about sleeplessness or having to work on a Sunday; they knew I’d give them plenty of paid free time when the caseload lightened.

It took all the restraint I possessed to wait to call Camilla Givens at a civilized hour. But
is
there a civilized hour to tell someone that her spouse is planning to have her committed to a mental institution? When I finally did make the call, the operative at the RI suite turned out to be Arthur Ames, a longtime employee whom I knew well.

He said, “Ms. Givens didn’t have a good night.”

“I expected that.”

“I’ll take the phone to her.”

“Thank you, Arthur.” Arthur, not Art; he was a formal man, a published poet in his spare time.

Camilla came on the line, sounding shaky.

“I need to talk to you today,” I said.

“I’ll be here. I’ve seen enough of the outside world for a while.”

“Know what you mean. How about if I come by around noon?”

“That’d be fine.”

“One question for now: do you know anybody named Opal Carson?”

“Opal Carson.” A pause. “I don’t know her, but someone of that name left a message on our machine recently. I think she’s Jay’s physical therapist—he has a bad back, you know.”

Right—a physical therapist who made her living as a chemist.

Chemist…

10:09 a.m.

I’d taken Derek off the Opal Carson stakeout the day before, but now I called and asked him to meet me across from her apartment building on Balboa Street, where I found him browsing through the bins of fruit and vegetables outside a corner grocery.

He must’ve sensed my presence beside him, because he said, “Do you know that if you eat these every day you’ll live ten years longer?”

He indicated something that looked like a cross between a rutabaga and a turnip. Uglier than both too. The sign below it said “mulzini.”

“I’d rather die young. Well, middle-aged, anyway.”

“Me too.”

“So what’s happening over there?” I motioned at Opal Carson’s apartment house.

“Lots of people coming and going. Not our Mr. Givens, though.”

“These people—”

“They don’t look like druggies, but they are—the genteel variety.”

“Meaning?”

“Well dressed, expensive cars. Buying stuff like uppers or downers. Maybe performance enhancers, steroids. I just saw the agent of a prominent local athlete come and go. The woman’s running a regular pharmacy over there.”

“Any chance of going in undercover?”

“I can try.” He took out his wallet and showed me a business card that identified him as a physical trainer. “After all, my clients need to build up their abs and pecs.”

I smiled as I watched him cross the street; I myself had amassed a large collection of cards of people in various professions, and had found that there’s nothing like a crisp rectangular piece of cardboard to gain entry to all sorts of places. Derek was admitted to the apartment after a bit of initial questioning. Then I walked a block to a café where we’d agreed to meet, ordered coffee, and waited.

11:17 a.m.

Derek sat down in the chair next to mine. “Easy,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

He handed me a bottle with a Safeway pharmacy label attached. The label claimed the blue pills inside were sleep aids. “She says they’re ‘safe steroids.’”

“I’ll send them to Richman Labs for analysis. What’s she like?”

“The term ‘witchy’ applies. Maybe it’s an act she puts on for her customers—she’s only open on Sundays, you know. But black hair streaked with silver, purple lipstick and nail polish, multiple piercings and tattoos, and clothes that show everything but her twat—that’s witchy.”

“I’d’ve thought you’d enjoy clothes like that.”

“Mostly what they did was show more tattoos. You know I’m sorry I ever had this done.” He touched the snake tat around his neck.

“Why do you suppose somebody like Jay Givens would be attracted to her?”

“For the drugs, of course. And she’s so different from the norm. There’s something about her that’s so earthy, so elemental, so evil…was I just repetitive?”

“It’s called ‘alliterative’ when applied to poetry.”

“Poetry? First time in my life. You see what a woman like that can do to a man?”

12:01 p.m.

Camilla greeted me warmly and seated me on the couch while the RI man went to the kitchen for coffee.

“I suppose you’re wondering where I went last night?” she asked.

“I know where you went. Home to see your husband.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To tell him I want a divorce. I can’t stand to be with him any more.”

“What did he say?”

“He wasn’t there. So I walked around for a while—didn’t feel like going inside even though I have a key—and when he still wasn’t home, I came back here.”

“Jay’s claiming you went inside and trashed the condo in a rage.”

Her dark-blue-ringed eyes grew wide. “I
what
?”

“Since it was only your possessions that were damaged, I think we can assume he did it.”

“Why would he?”

“He seems bent on proving that you’re mentally unstable. He’s responsible for what’s been happening to you, all the things you believe you witnessed. They weren’t real, Camilla.”

“They…they weren’t?”

“No: all the hallucinations, the bizarre experiences. Jay was infusing your cigarette lighter—the gold Dunhill—with a mixture of butane and other chemicals that cause such problems. I had the residue analyzed.”

“Where did you get the lighter?”

“I found it where you must’ve dropped it in the vacant lot where you believed you saw babies being sacrificed. Those gatherings were staged especially for you by a group called the Night Searchers that Jay’s been a part of.”

“This is a lot to take in.” She put her hand to her forehead. “Why would Jay want to make me think I’m crazy? If it’s another woman—and there have been plenty—why didn’t he just divorce me?”

“Think back to when these incidents started. Did anything significant change in your lives around then?”

A long pause. “No, not that I remember.”

“All right, then. What matters most to Jay?”

“Money and status. But mainly money.”

“Were there any changes in your financial state around that time?”

“…No. I think he may have lost money in the stock market, but not enough to worry about. Jay believes the market always corrects itself.”

Well, it usually does, but often it’s a long, slow process. And Jay was clearly not a patient man.

I said, “I think there was a definite change for the better in your financial situation, but only Jay knows about it.” Then I proceeded to tell her what I’d found out from Glenn.

12:36 p.m.

“Fifteen to twenty
million
dollars? I don’t believe it!”

“Believe it—it’s all yours.” I watched Camilla as the news began to sink in.

“This great-aunt who left me this…this fortune,” she finally said. “I didn’t even know about her.”

“Apparently the last time she saw you was when you were a baby.”

“Who was she?”

I took out the fact sheet Glenn had given me. “Emily Rosenthal. Your maternal grandmother’s sister. She never married or had children, but she sure knew how to pick her real estate.”

“But how did she know where to find me?”

“She didn’t, so she asked her attorney that upon her death, he should take the usual steps.”

“What steps?”

“Generally, announcements in prominent newspapers across the country, requesting information about an individual’s whereabouts. That’s probably where this heir hunter learned of the bequest. Sometimes the attorneys hire them, but not in your case.”

“So this guy located Jay and me, but talked to Jay first. Why would he do that?”

“Plain old sexism, I’d guess. Or maybe he tried to reach you but couldn’t.”

“And Jay decided he wanted my inheritance all for himself.” She took a cigarette from a silver box on the end table, looked around for matches, then replaced it in the box.

“I’d like my lighter back,” she said after a moment. “I’ve mostly quit smoking, but that lighter belonged to my father, and I’m sentimental.”

“You’ll get it back after the trial.”

She pushed her fingers through her hair. “There
will
be a trial, then?”

“Probably several. There’s Jay, the Night Searchers, and there may be others who were involved.”

“And all because some money I didn’t know existed was willed to me by a great-aunt I don’t remember.”

“You’re a wealthy woman now, Camilla. First thing you should do is divorce Jay.”

“And it will be. You know…I first thought of ending the marriage last fall. But I changed my mind because we had such a nice Christmas—it made me believe in us again.” Tears were welling in her eyes.

“Well,” I said, “if I were you, I’d contact a lawyer immediately. Glenn can recommend someone good.”

She nodded. “But for now—Jay doesn’t know where I am, does he?”

“No.”

“Have you told the police yet what he’s done to me?”

“I thought you might want to do that, make the formal complaint. We’ll all be available to back you up.”

For a moment she sagged, then sat up straighter. “I’ll do it. I
can
do it.”

“But not just yet,” I told her. “Let me have my turn at him first.”

“Fine with me. The first time we met you, Jay said he didn’t like or trust you.”

“Well, maybe he was right.”

4:35 p.m.

After a stop at the office, I joined Derek in his stakeout at the produce stand across the street from Opal Carson’s apartment on Balboa.

“Business has been brisk over there,” he told me. “I’ve never seen so many upscale people who want to exist in an altered state.”

I moved to allow a woman to get at the bok choy. “We need to find a better observation point. You’ve been here too long.”

“There’s a phone booth around the corner. Nobody uses those any more.”

But when you needed one—such as when your cell’s battery died—you couldn’t find one. I remembered the time I was at O’Hare Airport, en route to New York: the cell was dead, I needed to return a call, and I had to range for what seemed like miles to locate a pathetic little kiosk blocked from view by candy and soda machines. We forget the fallibility of our technical devices until one of them quits on us. Not that landlines are any better: at Touchstone the wires are down in the strong coastal winds about as often as they’re up.

“Okay,” I said. “You head for the booth. I want to call Hy.”

Hy answered his phone on the first ring. “How’s it going?”

“Derek and I are waiting outside the Carson apartment house to see if Jay Givens shows up.”

“Need company?”

“No. We’re about to take shelter in a phone booth, and three won’t fit.”

“Don’t touch his dick.”

We both laughed: it was our favorite line from an outrageous old movie,
A Fish Called Wanda
.

“Ripinsky, when this case is over—”

“We’re taking a long vacation.”

“Hah.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you believe what you say.”

“But…?”

“I also believe in past experience.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

We ended the call, and I went to the phone booth. Derek took up so much room that I sat down on the pavement outside and acted like a homeless person.

7:50 p.m.

It was full dark, the lights having winked on all around us. I stood up, mostly because I was afraid of a passing patrol car rousting me, but also because my ass was cold and my muscles tight.

Derek moaned, “I could’ve had a date with one hot woman tonight.”

“Call her.”

“What?”

“I sense Givens has gone to ground. I’ll stay here for a while, just in case he shows.”

He took out his phone, and I resumed my sidewalk sitter’s pose.

8:14 p.m.

The fog was in and the night felt chilly; the Avenues, especially in the area where Opal Carson lived, were wrapped in mist, only a few muted lights showing. Traffic was at a minimum. Every half an hour or so I’d get up from my slumped position by the phone booth and walk around to warm myself, keeping my eyes on the building across from the now-closed produce stand. I was about to give it up as a lost cause. One more stroll up and down the block, I promised myself, then home.

I was on Sixteenth, almost to the intersection with Balboa, when a dark figure appeared from between a couple of Dumpsters that were pulled in close to the curb. I backed up, prepared for flight, but strong hands grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back into the alley behind the building that housed the produce stand. My feet banged into wooden crates and I smelled rotted fruit and vegetables. I slipped on a slick place, an arm encircled my neck and pulled me upright.

Then I heard a snicking sound—the safety being taken off an automatic. The gun’s muzzle jammed into the bone behind my right ear.

“Don’t try to struggle, Sharon. I’ll shoot you right here if you do.” The voice, tense and nervous, belonged to Jay Givens.

I stood still, cursing myself for walking into an ambush like a damned amateur. I should’ve anticipated the possibility that Givens had already arrived, by a different route, and set himself up where he could watch and wait for an opportunity like this.

“You don’t want to shoot me, Jay.”

“The hell I don’t. You’ve spoiled everything, you and Camilla.”

“Yes, and we’re not the only ones who know the truth. You can’t get away with killing me.”

“I can try.”

“Use your head, Jay. You’re not stupid—why risk adding a murder charge to the other ones against you?”

“Shut up. Just shut up!” He jabbed my ear with the gun muzzle. “My car’s up the street. We’re going for a ride.”

“Where?”

“Never mind where. Let’s go. No, wait. You armed?”

Even though I wasn’t, I said, “Yes.”

“Where’s your weapon?”

“Coat pocket.”

“Take it out with your thumb and forefinger and drop it.”