Or She Dies Read online

  The parking lot was jammed, so I valeted in front of the café at the far end of the complex. None of the patrons took note of me, though I assessed their faces with skittish defiance, searching for signs of recognition. Amazing how self-centered a good dose of fear can make you.

  The valet handed me a slip featuring a glossy ad with Keith Conner’s scowl:

  This June, Be Afraid.

  This June, There’s Nowhere Left to Hide.

  This June . . . THEY’RE WATCHING.

  Another driver tapped the horn politely; I’d zoned out there a few feet off the curb. I stepped through the mist of the outdoor air conditioner onto the sidewalk and took in the shops and offices, feeling some of the frustration Joe must have felt: how do you search a massive strip mall for something suspicious?

  Two workers carried a picture window out of a glass shop, like extras in a Laurel and Hardy sketch. Figuring that the other downstairs businesses, which ranged from a dry cleaner to a Hallmark, were equally innocuous, I walked to the stairwell. A FedEx delivery guy tapping at an electronic clipboard whistled down, not even bothering to glance up as I skipped aside at the landing.

  The upstairs hallway, shaped in a wide V, hosted an endless row of doors and windows. Quite a few were open as I strolled by, uncertain of what I was looking for. Cubicles and wall charts, young guys on phones working baoding balls, selling penny stocks and exercise equipment in three no-hassle payments. I passed a fly-by-night insurance shop, then a straight-to-video operation with proudly displayed movie posters featuring giant insects wreaking havoc on metropolises. A few of the offices had been hastily cleared out, clipped cables poking from the ceilings and walls, jumbles of telemarketing phones mounded in corners. Others, with closed blinds and unmarked doors, were as silent as a surgeon’s waiting room. Clearly the rentals had a considerable turnover rate.

  Ducking the occasional shitty security camera, I kept walking, noting business names and glancing at faces, wondering what the hell I was doing here. Finally I ran out of room, reaching the far stairwell. I was just starting down when the brass placard drilled into the last office door caught my attention: DO NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITHOUT SIGNATURE. DO NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITH NEIGHBORING BUSINESSES. A FedEx tag had been left compliantly around the knob. Except for its number, 1138, the door itself was blank, like many others.

  I plucked the tag free, stared down at the sloppily penned business name: Ridgeline, Inc.

  My face tingled with excitement. And fear. Careful what you look for — you just might find it. In this instance the likely operating base for the men who’d sent me those emails, who’d framed me for murder, who’d killed three people and counting.

  The orange-and-blue tag indicated a second delivery attempt for a package sent from a FedEx center in Alexandria, Virginia. Just inside the Beltway, the city was rife with influence peddlers and power brokers. The package’s origin struck me as ominous.

  The blinds of the office window were imperfectly closed. I went up on tiptoe to get an angle through the slats. The front room was as plain as could be. Computer, copier, paper shredder. There were no plants, no paintings, no Sears family portrait taped to the monitor. Not even a second chair for a visitor to sit in. A windowless door led back, I assumed, to a hall and more rooms.

  I jogged downstairs and through the dingy alley behind the complex to check out the rear of 1138. A rickety fire escape rose to a thick metal door. The dead bolt was shiny, and peels 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 o
f 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 felt 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 Debbie Vance 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, blonde 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.’

  Moving boxes littered the tile floor — evidently the production company had wasted little time in dismissing her from the movie once it was no longer necessary for her to look after Keith. I glanced around the bungalow. A choice location, four blocks from the ocean, eight hundred square feet that probably rented for a couple grand. A slab of floating counter barely accommodated a kitchen sink, a microwave, and a coffeepot. Aside from a tiny bathroom next to the closet, the place was one room.

  Whale posters adorned the walls. She caught me looking and said, ‘I know, it’s the decor of a sixth-grade girl. I can’t help it, though. They’re so magnificent. It kills me.’ She swiped a bottle of Bombay Sapphire off the floor and refilled her glass, adding a splash of tonic. ‘Apologies. You probably think I’m . . .’

  I said, ‘No, please. You can trust a woman who drinks gin.’

  ‘I’d offer you some, but I’m running low and I’m gonna need it to get through this.’ She placed her nightstand lamp into a metal trash bin along with a handful of socks and then looked around, overwhelmed.

  ‘I’m moving back to Boulder,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll get going on another project and . . . and . . .’ Her back was to me, and her hand rose to her face and then her shoulders bunched, and I realized she crying, or trying not to. She made a high-pitched gasp, and when she turned, her face was red, but she looked otherwise normal, if a touch pissed off.

  She took a slug from the glass, sat on the bed, patted the spot next to her. I went. Glossy photos of beached and autopsied whales had spilled across the comforter. They were crime-scene graphic, impossible to ignore. I felt a sense of despair at seeing those magnificent animals reduced to driftwood. A helplessness that turned to revulsion at the back of my throat.

  She picked one picture up and gazed at it almost fondly, as if it were a remembrance from some other life. ‘It’s all fucked up, Patrick. You know that. The dream is never the dream. It’s a bunch of compromises and, if you’re lucky, a few decent people now and then.’ She rested her head on my shoulder, and I could smell the gin.

  She wiped her nose with her sleeve, sat back upright. ‘It was my job to baby-sit him. Keep him from dying in a drunken car crash, from fucking a seventeen-year-old, whatever. Keep him alive and out of jail and we get our movie. How hard can that be?’

  ‘Pretty hard.’

  ‘I know you hated him.’ Her words were slurred, ever so slightly.

  I said, ‘Maybe he wasn’t so bad.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he wasn’t. He was kind of a dumb Labrador, but he tuned in enough that we could get him on board. Stars, movies, opportunism — Christ, it sounds so cynical.’ She looked down at one of the eight-by-tens — blubber and pink meat. ‘But I actually believe in this shit.’

  ‘And Keith?’

  ‘He was a movie star. So who the fuck knows? He got used for all kinds of agendas.’ The irony sat with us. She said, ‘They get bored, you know. Look for hobbies, for causes. But he didn’t have to pick this one. He didn’t have to pick anything. But he did. Remember when the gray whales were washing up in the San Francisco Bay?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Right at the foot of the Golden Gate. I took him up there. You know, in the field with marine biologists. Get your shoes dirty. They love that shit. He was all excited, bought a new Patagonia windbreaker. When everyone finally left, I couldn’t find him. He was back by the water, his hand on the whale. He had one tear going down his cheek. You know, the Keep America Beautiful crying-Indian tear? Like that. But no one was looking. He wiped it — he was all fine, sure, no problem. But I forgave him a lot for that tear.’ She stood abruptly. ‘I gotta finish packing. I’ll walk you out.’

  But she just stood there, glaring at those sagging posters. ‘What the hell am I doing?’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about movies. Or financing. I’m just a bleeding-heart idiot with half a master’s degree who loves whales.’ She looked around the cramped bungalow as if these four walls held all her shortcomings and disappointments. When she snapped out of it, she caught me watching her and flushed at the glimpse she’d given up. ‘I said I have to finish packing.’

  ‘Listen, just give me a minute. Please. You were with Keith a lot at the end -’

  ‘You have to remind me?’

  ‘Can I ask you a couple questions?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Did he ever mention a company called Ridgeline?’

  ‘Ridgeline? No, never heard of it.’

  ‘Did he ever go to the Starbright Plaza? A strip mall with office buildings off Riverside in Studio City?’

  ‘He never went to the Valley.’ She sank back onto the bed. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I’ve got limited time, Trista. I’m the lead suspect. I have to figure out who framed me, and I have to do it before the cops come and put me in jail. Because once that happens, no one will be left to figure it out.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do about it? Haven’
t I helped you enough already?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I got him and Summit to drop the lawsuit against you. At least they were going to.’

  I gaped in disbelief. ‘That was you?’

  ‘Yes, that was me. After you vandalized Keith’s house—’

  ‘That wasn’t me.’

  ‘Whatever — I convinced him that all this legal mess was a distraction and a pain in the ass for him, and I practically wrote the cue cards so he could convince the studio they didn’t need a stink hanging around They’re Watching when the movie was riding such good buzz. I know you didn’t hit him anyway — like I said, you’re too harmless — and if the truth were to come out, he’d lose all credibility to be a caring environmental spokesperson for us.’ She flicked at a chipped nail, then stared at me from beneath her curled eyelashes, an incredible package of style and substance. ‘Now, is there anything else or can I get back to my solitude and misery?’

  I struggled to regain my mental footing. ‘Can you tell me anything Keith did or anyone he met with that seemed out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Out of the ordinary? For all the excitement at his fingertips, he was one of the dullest, most predictable people I’ve ever been around. It was all stupid childish shit — clubs and bars and midnight limo rides with underwear models. There were a lot of pranks and drunkenness, sure, but nothing serious. I doubt he ever met anyone interesting enough to want to kill him. And that includes you.’

  Assuming that her last words were a dismissal, I got up quietly. She was right; it was difficult to imagine Keith doing anything serious enough to elicit the attention of people with top-shelf intelligence gear at their disposal. He breezed around from one thing to the next. Parties, movies, projects. He’d fallen into Trista’s cause like anything else, then worked himself up into a state of conviction over it.

  I paused in the doorway and turned back to face her. ‘I lost my job, too,’ I said. ‘Teaching. I never realized how much it meant to me until it was gone. And you know what’s funny? It was always just a backup job to me, a consolation prize, but it feels worse losing it than it did getting booted off my own movie.’ I realized I was rambling, and I cut myself off. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m really sorry you got fired from something that meant that much to you.’