Tahoe Payback Page 10

  Street paused. “Maybe you should visit the charity’s office on Market Street?”

  “My thought exactly,” I said.

  SIXTEEN

  W hen we got back to Kiva Beach, I called Sergeant Bains and told him about the necklace and the haiku that we’d found on Fannette Island.

  “I could drop them off at the sheriff’s office,” I said.

  “I’m in town. Let’s meet there. Fifteen minutes?”

  We got the canoe tied onto the Jeep, loaded the dogs, and drove across town.

  Bains was in the parking lot off Al Tahoe Blvd. He said hi to Street. I handed him the baggies with what we’d found.

  “The necklace was about thirty feet below the tea house in a depression in the rocks. It had probably fallen near the tea house and slid down the smooth rocks. The haiku was floating in the water at the base of the cliff below the tea house. It probably blew into the water and was kept against the rocks by the wave action.”

  Bains fingered the bags, turning the items over to look at them.

  “The bags suggest they are not contaminated?”

  “No, they are totally contaminated. We both handled the haiku, and the necklace has dog slobber on it.”

  He looked at me.

  I said, “Sometimes, when one is poking around in woods and wilderness that the sheriff’s deputies have already abandoned, one has to touch stuff to see it. We didn’t wear latex gloves. In fact, I had to scrub at the necklace before I even knew it wasn’t just another bit of dirt.”

  “Okay, I get your point. So your dog found these?” he said. “They’re awfully small to spot in the woods.”

  “Yeah. I got the woman’s pajama top from her boyfriend and had Spot smell it. He followed the scent and found the necklace and haiku.”

  “I’m impressed. It’s hard to imagine much scent on items like these. And the paper was in the water? That’s amazing. The power of a dog’s nose is something, huh?”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said.

  I then told Bains what Street had found out about the Red Roses of Hope charity and that I was going to head into San Francisco to track down its address.

  “Let me know what you find?”

  “Will do.”

  I took Street home to her condo.

  “I’m going to return Diamond’s canoe, then head into The City. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Yes, but no. I have too much work to do.”

  “In that case, can I leave Spot with you?”

  “Of course.” She got out her phone, found the address of the charity, and wrote it down for me.

  “Thanks so much,” I said. I left Spot. He was happy to collapse on her carpet in front of her gas fire. I kissed Street goodbye. Spot didn’t even notice that I left.

  I drove up and over Kingsbury, down to Carson Valley, and left Diamond’s canoe tied up in his garage where I’d found it. I called him and left a message on his voicemail to that effect, adding that I was heading off to investigate the Red Roses of Hope charity.

  While the address for the charity was on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, it was unlikely that I could find a room in The City on short notice, and even more unlikely that I would think it affordable despite the retainer Douglas Fairbanks had paid me.

  So I found a hotel near the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Walnut Creek in the East Bay.

  The next morning I rode the BART train to San Francisco, got off at the Embarcadero station, and walked down Market Street. The address for the Red Roses for Hope charity was down a block and a half.

  I found the number painted in gold script on a double glass door that was tinted so that it was impossible to see through the glass. I pushed inside.

  I’d expected an entry lobby and a desk attendant, or at least a sign box showing tenant names and office locations and elevators that would lead me to Suite 47, as Street had found on the website. Instead I was in a small room looking at a wall of locked boxes like you’d find in a post office. Each box was about 6 by 6 inches and had the word “Suite” and a number. None of the boxes had the name of a business. This facility was nothing but a maildrop, designed for anonymity. There were several hundred boxes.

  Based on the address alone, Street and I had both assumed that the Red Roses charity would have substantial offices. Renting out mailboxes on Market Street in downtown San Francisco was probably a lucrative business. It followed the real estate rule about location being the most important thing in choosing where to set up shop. A business seemed roughly as significant as its address.

  I thought about trying to pick the lock on the box labeled Suite 47 when the outer door opened and a woman walked in. I made a little smile and nodded at her as I feigned digging in my pocket, looking for my key.

  She slipped a key into a box, opened it, pulled out a stack of mail, then shut the box, removed her key, and left.

  I fingered the lock on box 47. It was a simple lock, probably easy to pick if I came back with the appropriate tools. But while its contents could be revealing and possibly useful, any mail addressed to Suite 47 would tell me little if anything about the charity and its employees. I couldn’t get a search warrant to learn about the charity, because I had no probable cause.

  It would be much better if I could wait until someone came to fetch the mail. Then I could follow them and see where their real office was.

  The fact that a woman just retrieved her mail suggested that the day’s mail may have already been delivered by the mail carrier. But I had no way of knowing whether or not the Suite 47 box had already been emptied for the day. It could also be that the box holder was out of town, not to retrieve the mail for two weeks.

  If someone came for box 47, my best approach wasn’t clear. If I waited outside, I wouldn’t be able to see through the tinted glass. I wouldn’t know which box a person was emptying. If I loitered inside, I might get reported and have to answer questions to the police. Having worked for the SFPD for 20 years, I knew they were thorough, and I didn’t want to lose time. Worse, the person who emptied the box would likely see me, making it much more difficult to follow them.

  I studied the location of the box. Walking in the front door, box 47 was at about 10 o’clock, four rows up from the floor and seven columns in from the left.

  If the front door to the room were jammed open, one could see box 47 from outside at about 4 o’clock. But how to jam the door?

  The door had a hydraulic closer attached to the top edge. I pulled out my pocketknife and tried fitting the point of the blade into the Phillips screws on the door closer. They were as stiff as if they’d been spot-welded in place. I’d have to get a strong screwdriver and come back.

  I walked back outside to look and see if there was a hardware store nearby, then remembered this was Market Street near the Embarcadero, home of financial institutions and other large companies. And even if there were a hardware store, the owner of box 47 might come while I was shopping for a screwdriver. As I considered the possibilities, another woman came and opened the door. I followed her in and fished for my keys once again, making pocket noise, pulling my keys out, staring at them as if to find the correct one, all just so I could see whether she was headed for box 47.

  She opened a box on the opposite side of the room from 47. She left. I stepped out shortly after. It was a charade I could repeat all day. But someone would probably notice and get suspicious.

  I walked down the street a bit, thinking, glancing back to see if any of the passersby went through the tinted glass door. I stopped and leaned against a wall, my back to the black granite of an office tower. When I began to think that my loitering would draw attention, I turned around to walk back to the maildrop door. As I rotated, the toe of my shoe caught something heavy and metallic. I looked down to see a four-foot strip of angle iron that had been left on the sidewalk. It looked like scrap hardware that might have fallen off a service truck. Probably someone had kicked it up against the wall so no one would trip on it, the
re to lie for minutes or months until a good samaritan picked it up and disposed of it.

  No reason why I shouldn’t be that good samaritan.

  It was a weighty piece of metal, like the material they use for sign posts. I carried it down the sidewalk as if it were my cane.

  I realized a guy like me could accidentally enter the wrong door, get confused turning around to leave, and accidentally drop the impromptu cane in the process.

  So I went into the maildrop room just after a man came out. The front door was still shutting, I accidentally dropped my angle-iron cane so that it fell into the crack between the door and the door frame. The angle iron clattered down against the lowest hinge and prevented the door from closing.

  Of course, anyone in such an unfortunate situation would try to retrieve the dropped angle iron. So I reached down to pull it out, then accidentally-on-purpose leaned the wrong way and bent the angle iron into a half-pretzel so that it would be very difficult to remove. The door closer was unable to shut the door. It stood open wide.

  I left the maildrop, walked down the sidewalk, crossed Market, and walked back until I came to a bus shelter. By lounging at the bus shelter, I could not only see past the door and into the maildrop room, I could see the box that was four rows up and seven columns over. Box 47, receptacle for mail headed to the Red Roses of Hope charity.

  SEVENTEEN

  I stood behind the bus shelter.

  The maildrop wasn’t a crowded facility, but there was a steady, if slow, trickle of people collecting mail. People who, for whatever reason, wanted to appear as if they had a downtown address.

  I knew there was a good chance that I could wait all day and never see anyone go to box 47. But the business of detecting is often the business of waiting. So I resigned myself to a long stint. I played mental games to pass the time. I made up biographies for every person who went in to collect the mail. On the fourth person, I ran out of ideas for what he did for a living. Next, I tried to perform the memory tricks I remembered from when I was a kid, like naming the presidents in order. I got up to Grant before I crashed and burned.

  A kid came to get mail, the youngest person yet. But he didn’t go near box 47.

  I tried naming all of the states and their capitals. I was pretty good on the East Coast, probably because I was born in Boston, and on the West Coast, because I’d lived out west for some time. But there were many states in the central part of the country for which I hadn’t a clue about where their legislators convened to make law.

  A well-dressed young woman whose clothes were a bit revealing came to get mail. It made me wonder if an anonymous maildrop was de rigueur for call girls and escort services. She went to the wall opposite box 47.

  On the street cruised a black, stretch limo with very dark windows. It stopped, and the woman climbed in the back door.

  I looked back at the maildrop and saw a man shutting the box I’d been watching. Or at least it seemed like the correct box. As he walked away, I squinted at where I thought he’d been, focusing carefully. Then I counted, moving to the left. Seven from the left. Counted down. Four from the bottom.

  My red rose charity man.

  Because I was working solo, my hope was that the charity man would walk or take mass transit to his next destination. If someone picked him up in a private car and there was no taxi nearby, I’d be out of luck.

  The man was wearing what looked like a tailored suit. He stuffed his thick pile of mail into a leather shoulder bag that probably cost more than my used Jeep. He walked a bit like a man on fire. He was doing a kind of jerky jog while he held a phone to his right ear, his left hand holding the straps of his shoulder bag.

  The man’s fast walk seemed the rushed pace of someone who was late for an important appointment. Maybe he was talking to the person he was meeting, as he was almost shouting into his cell phone, his words garbled, but his tension clear.

  I had to walk fast to keep within a reasonable distance.

  The man headed east up Market toward the bay.

  After a block, the man seemed to tire and slowed to a fast walk. He glanced at his watch. At the end of Market, he went across the Embarcadero Park and into the ferry terminal building. It was crowded as always. He must have had a pass, as he headed out to the docks, all while talking on his phone. When I saw which ferry he was getting on, I got in line to buy a ticket, handed over my money, then ran to the gate. The gate shut as I approached. I jumped over. The ferry blew its horn as I ran out onto the dock. The dock hand held his forearms up, crossed like a road-closure symbol. I kept running. At the last moment, he swore and stepped aside so that I wouldn’t collide with him. Without slowing, I put my hands on the rail and vaulted over onto the boat, which had started to move away from the dock.

  People stared at me. Perhaps the man I was following had watched, too.

  I looked for him as the ferry headed out into the San Francisco Bay. We were close to the Bay Bridge, which loomed high above, the cars and trucks looking like toys as they crawled beneath the huge cables that rose up to giant silver towers. Then the ferry turned north and sped up to a fast cruise.

  It took me ten minutes to find the red rose man. He was in one of the upper cabins, sitting on the end of a bench near one of the scratched, plexi windows. He was no longer talking on his phone. Instead, he had his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, like a man grappling with some kind of bad news.

  I stayed back by the rear deck opening. I kept him in sight even though I doubted that he would move until we got to his destination.

  The view of San Francisco’s skyline was spectacular, the buildings and hills wrapped by misty fog that pushed in from the Pacific and swirled about the bases of the skyscrapers. Soon, we headed into the large open strait that stretched from the main bay out to the Golden Gate Bridge. The rolling swell was larger, and the ferry began to porpoise a bit. The few tourists grinned at each other and grabbed the railings for support. The commuters were oblivious, focused on their phones, their tablets, and the rare newspaper.

  The ferry went close to Alcatraz Island, which sits a mile or so north of Fisherman’s Wharf. The remnants of the famous prison were still there, tall masonry walls rising above the imposing surf crashing on the rocks below.

  The red rose man still had his head in his hands as we approached Sausalito, the postcard village that climbs up the hills. The ferry slowed. It reversed its thrust for a moment, sending low, ponderous wake waves toward the boats in the nearby marina and the floating houses to its north.

  The man stood up to disembark. Like before, he was oblivious to those around him. He was easy to tail as he walked the cute little streets of Sausalito. Once out of the business district, he went up roads that climbed in twists and turns like a jungle vine. Despite my high-altitude conditioning, I was soon panting. The red rose man must have been in very good condition.

  He stopped at a tall thick hedge that was on the bay side of the street. The hedge was tall enough and dense enough to hide whatever was on the other side. In the hedge was an opening, and the plants grew up and over the opening in a perfect arch. He reached out and used a key to open an arched wooden door. He stepped through and shut it behind him. I heard the click of a deadbolt.

  In a moment, there was the sound of another door opening and closing.

  I moved close to the hedge gate, wary of hidden cameras, and looked into the hedge. Concealed behind the foliage was a solid wall of stone or concrete. It would be possible to climb by grabbing onto the hedge branches. But it would be messy and noisy.

  I walked up the street, looking for an easier way into his yard. In fifty or sixty feet, the hedge came to an end, but the wall continued. Feeling carefully to make sure the wall wasn’t topped with broken glass, I grabbed onto the top of the wall and pulled myself up.

  Looking over the top, it was easy to see that the spot I was in was completely exposed, visible to dozens of houses on neighboring hills. Anyone who happened to be looking this way would s
ee me climbing the fence.

  I went back down the street, looking into the foliage, probing my hand in here and there. I came to a place where the hedge foliage was sparse, damaged from what looked like decades of neighborhood kids climbing through. It was dark inside the thicket of branches, so I couldn’t see how best to channel my inner ten-year-old boy’s instincts for tunneling through somewhere I wasn’t supposed to go.

  I reached one leg through a small opening, bent some branches, ducked my head down, and poked it into the foliage. I shifted my hips into what seemed like an impenetrable thicket. My shirt hung up on branches, sharp wood gouging into the side of my neck and threatening to poke into my ear canal. A vine wrapped around my throat, seeming to pull at me harder the longer I held still. Maybe it was a carnivorous hedge, reeling me in for the biggest supper of its life.

  I grabbed a different branch, shifted my weight, ripped at the vine that was choking me, and turned so that I was going through the branches back first. Then I popped out into a clearing. I might have been bleeding from multiple wounds, but, assuming there weren’t guard dogs waiting, I would live another day.

  I looked around. A heavy canopy of tree branches stretched overhead, and sunset was soon, so I was still in relative darkness.

  I pushed through the bushes and trees, slipping through tight spots sideways and raising my arms up as plants scraped at my butt and abdomen. Twice, I got down on hands and knees and crawled under low trees whose branches couldn’t be breached without a bulldozer. Marin County jungle might not be as thick as Hawaii jungle, but it was still a jungle.

  I came to a driveway that curved up to a three-car garage. Parked in front was a black Corvette and next to it a silver Audi.

  To my side was an occasional view of the red rose guy’s house, large, low, and modern. Spare windows set in redwood-sided walls with no trim or shutters faced spectacular views across Sausalito to its bay and Tiburon. The sun had lowered behind the coastal ridge to the west. Berkeley and Oakland across the bay were still sunlit, but Sausalito was fast moving toward twilight.