Knockout Mouse Read online

  As soon as we got to the top of the stairs in my flat, Jenny turned to me in alarm. “Bill, where’s my handbag? I know I didn’t take it to the cafe with me.”

  “It was on the chair by the door, where you always leave it.”

  We began a hunt for it, starting in the bedroom, under the tossed clothes and unread newspapers. It wasn’t in the living room, either. The camera cases by the bookshelves looked out of order. A panic hit me. I knelt and unzipped them. No, the Aaton, the lenses, the DV, the DAT recorder, all were safely in their bags. But something had changed. The side pockets were open.

  I thought for a minute. The front door had been locked. I went to the kitchen in back. The window was partially open. I was pretty sure I hadn’t left it that way. I stuck my head out. A sliding ladder leaned against the wall. The top rung rested just a couple of feet below the window sill.

  “Jenny,” I called over my shoulder, “someone broke in!”

  I clambered out the window and down the ladder. No one was hiding in the weedy postage stamp of a backyard. No one in the garage either. I did a pull-up on the fences on each side of the yard. No sign of the intruders. I went back up the ladder, two rungs at a time, and called the cops.

  10

  The police didn’t stay long. They were not impressed with the extent of our loss. Yes, I admitted, the expensive camera equipment was intact. My insurance company would be spared. The only things missing were some videotapes and Jenny’s handbag. Luckily, she’d taken her wallet and cell phone with her. The cops wrote it up and told us they would be in touch. They also suggested I put the ladder away.

  That much was true. Mrs. Debler, the owner, had some roof work done two years ago. The ladder had been leaning against the back fence ever since. I collapsed the ladder and stowed it in the garage. I also checked the yard again, more slowly, and this time found a few boot prints. I went back up to get a camera.

  “This makes me so mad,” Jenny said. She was looking around for what else might have been taken. “All this really valuable stuff, and what do they pick? My bag.”

  “You think they should have taken my livelihood—my cameras—instead?”

  “You know I don’t mean it that way. It’s just that I had some personal stuff—some really good skin lotions I just bought.”

  “They weren’t looking for money. This is all about Sheila. They were looking for specific items relating to her. My videocassettes, which probably are blank. They may have thought the diary was in your handbag.”

  Jenny’s eyes widened. “You don’t think it was Fay?”

  “Could be. Or the guy from LifeScience. Or Marion. They all knew about it. I’ll ask the neighbors if they saw anyone.”

  The sound of the phone ringing startled us. I picked it up in my office. Jenny followed, hand covering her mouth.

  “Hi, Wes,” I said. “Glad it’s you.”

  Jenny exhaled with relief, then paced in the hall while I told Wes about the break-in. She came back into the room and said, “I’m going to look around the neighborhood. Maybe whoever took my bag tossed it in the bushes.”

  I told her I’d come find her.

  Wes knew about Sheila, it turned out. Marion had told him. Apparently the two of them had been burning up cell phone minutes. Wes was seeing her tonight and expected cellular communication of another kind to occur.

  I asked if she’d said anything more about Sheila. “Not to me. You had to go down and identify the body, huh? That must have been weird.”

  “It’s only gotten weirder.” I filled him in about LifeScience, Fay, and the diary, and wondered which one of them was connected to the theft.

  “I don’t know, Billy,” he said. “Is it really worth getting involved in this?”

  “I’ve been looking for something to do for nine months. This isn’t what I had in mind, but I can’t stop thinking about what happened to Sheila. My flat getting robbed means I’m already involved.”

  Wes’s call-annoyance feature interrupted the conversation. He said he had to take it, so we signed off. I went downstairs to photograph the footprints in the garden.

  I was back inside when the doorbell rang. I assumed it was Jenny. But when I opened the door, there stood Gregory Alton. “You’re here,” he said. “Good. We can talk now.”

  Slamming the door in his face would have been enjoyable. But if I did, he’d just stand out there until Jenny came back. So I joined him on the porch. “Hey Gregory, how do you get the dotcommer off your doorstep?”

  He looked over his shoulder, as if I was talking to someone else. I answered my own question. “Pay him for the pizza.”

  Gregory managed to crack a smile. Then he made a show of removing his sunglasses and looking me directly in the eye. “Bill, I hope you got my message.”

  “What’s this bullshit about legal risk?”

  He took a deep breath and started to make chopping gestures with his glasses. “Kumar’s jumping our technology. We’ve got a way to model—well, never mind, the point is, Kumar’s filched the key step in the process. We’ve filed suit, but by the time we get a decision we’ll be broke.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What does it have to do with us?”

  “Let me see the footage you got at Kumar’s. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  “Footage isn’t here, Gregory. How long have you been in the neighborhood? Since, maybe, nine this morning?”

  “Bill, the life of my company is at stake. Literally. You’d do whatever you had to do to protect your business, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t break into other people’s houses.”

  Gregory skipped right over this. “You’ve got to help me. What’s he’s doing is totally bogus.”

  “Someone just climbed a ladder and broke in through my back window. They took my girlfriend’s purse and my videotapes. That’s what I call bogus.”

  This stopped him, but only for a moment. “Buddy, that’s a drag. But you don’t think I’d—no way, Bill. Not me. Maybe it was Kumar. Seriously, he is scum.”

  “I’ve dealt with the guy. Nothing came off on my hands. Besides, he has no reason to break in. The footage is his.”

  Gregory answered with a slow head shake. “See, you just don’t know how smooth he is. He’s pulled some fast ones. Slimy, slippery fast ones.”

  I stared at Gregory. Kumar had not pulled any fast ones on us. Nor, for that matter, had Gregory shown any guilt when I mentioned the break-in. But what he was saying about Kumar could as easily be true of himself. I’d seen young CEOs operate. How they could be exhausted, discouraged, sullen—then turn on a dime for an interview, rev up the charm, roll out the company myth, and pronounce with utter sincerity the precise opposite of what they’d just said in private.

  “Gregory, you are going about this in such the wrong way.”

  “All right, so I get a little… enthusiastic sometimes. But BioVerge, it’s my passion, it’s my life. What would you do?”

  He looked a bit ridiculous, standing there with his shoulders cocked, wearing a yellow-print Hawaiian shirt and, incredibly, a yellow scarf round his neck. His hair was a peculiar—and it now occurred to me artificial—shade of yellow. With the little nub of blond turf on his chin and the pleading look in his eyes, he was starting to resemble a golden retriever.

  “What was that bullshit about having us shoot a film for you?” I said.

  “Absolutely real, buddy. We want you to do one up. If Kumar doesn’t ruin us, I’ll pay you like I said.”

  “I’ll dashboard it, Gregory,” I said, mimicking his expression. “But don’t call us. We’ll call you.”

  “I don’t have that kind of time. A contract is coming up. Huge. We’re bidding against Kumar. Whoever gets the LifeScience deal—”

  Gregory caught the change in my face right away. His confidence came galloping back. “So you know LifeScience. Players, dude. About to bust out with a product that will turn the monoclonal world upside down. A big pharma is already courting them. We’re
bidding to partner up on their next project. We’ll be riding their comet trail. You should get in on this action, Bill. Help me stop Kumar.”

  “What exactly is it that you want from me, Gregory?”

  “Let me see the footage. It might have the evidence I need to derail his bid.”

  My phone rang upstairs. “Okay, I will discuss this with Rita, and I will call you as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks, buddy. Look, can I take you to lunch? To a ball game—the company’s got—”

  I shut the door and took the stairs two at a time. It was Jenny, on her cell phone. She’d wandered down to the waterfront and was ready to be picked up. I said I’d be there in a minute. Then I started thinking about what exactly I’d have to give up to get more information out of Gregory about LifeScience Molecules.

  11

  “No!” Jenny shrieked into the phone the next morning. “How can you say that? You bastard!”

  She slammed the phone down. We were in my kitchen, the Sunday paper spread before us. “Who was that?” I asked.

  Her face had turned the color of bleached wood. “My machine. Mr. Harros—Sheila’s father—said I stole Sheila’s diary and he wants it back right now. He didn’t even say hello first—or thank us—or anything.”

  “How did he found out we have the diary?”

  Jenny’s eyes grew hard and determined. She punched some numbers into the phone. “Fay,” she demanded, “what did you tell Mr. Harros?”

  I watched Jenny’s expression change from angry to outraged then back to ashen.

  “The autopsy’s being done Monday—tomorrow,” Jenny told me after she hung up. Her eyes were blank. “Sheila’s family holds me responsible for Sheila’s death, unless the autopsy report—”

  The rest came out between choked sobs. “They’re going to have the police scour my apartment. If they find any matching—whatever—they’ll file charges.”

  I cradled her head. “Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen.”

  “It was Fay who told them about the diary! ‘You’re the one who took it,’ I said. ‘Sure,’ she goes, ‘to give it to her parents. I didn’t want someone else to get it. Why did you take it?’ She’s blaming the whole thing on me!”

  “How did she know the parents were here?”

  “She must have talked to Perkins at the hospital. There was a message on my machine from him saying the family would arrive Saturday night. Then a couple messages later, there’s Mr. Harros, accusing me of things. It’s Fay they should accuse—she was the one having the fit about Simon. And now that I think about it, she wanted to have shrimp for dinner that night! I had to remind her Sheila couldn’t eat it.”

  “Fay has her reasons for not liking Sheila, but I don’t think she’d go that far.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.” Jenny stood with sudden resolution. “I’ve got to go down there. I’ve got to find out where the Harroses are staying and talk to them. I’ll give them the diary.”

  “Not until after I’ve photocopied it. Let them cool down a bit. And let the autopsy happen. Until they get the report, they’ll be filling in the blanks with their own assumptions.”

  “Fay’s poisoned them against me. I can’t believe her!”

  “Let’s go back to Sheila’s apartment. See what else we can find, if the parents haven’t already taken possession. If—”

  “If Fay hasn’t beaten us to it! Oh my God, I’d like to catch her there. Do you think she’d plant some kind of evidence on me?”

  “I don’t think she’d do a very good job of planting evidence even if she tried. But she might try to cover her tracks.”

  The image of Fay in the apartment got us moving quickly. Jenny drove her Miata down the Peninsula and I followed in the Scout. We dropped my jeep at her apartment and sped over to Sheila’s complex. The keys under the flowerpot were gone.

  “Time to talk to the manager,” I said.

  I brought the diary with me. I didn’t intend to let it out of my sight. The manager, Jennifer Poloni, was watching a football game in her apartment. She talked to us in the doorway, wearing a 49ers cap and a red and gold jersey. She wasn’t pleased about the interruption.

  “Nobody else is going into that apartment,” she growled. “You people treat it like a motel room, tromping in and out. Enough. Show the girl some respect.”

  “Who all’s been in there since you last saw us?” I asked.

  She waved her arms in the air. “The whole caboodle! That fellow Dugan from her office. I don’t like him. Claimed her work product was the property of his company. I didn’t let him in; told him he could just wait until the estate was settled. Then I caught another one right inside. Don’t know how she got in, but she was having a good sniff around. Tall, sorta blonde—from the lab, too, she said when I stopped her. At least she was nicer.”

  “Marion,” Jenny murmured. “Did you see anyone else?”

  “That Chinese girl was here. Your friend. I didn’t let her in.”

  “She didn’t have the key?”

  “She said you took it. You better give it back now.”

  Jenny looked at me, then at Poloni’s outstretched hand. “We don’t have it. Honest. We thought Fay did.”

  A roar came from the TV. Poloni ran to catch the replay. “Goddammit!” she yelled.

  We turned and headed back down the walk. “Hey!” she called from the doorway. “I’m watching Sheila’s place, you can bet on that!”

  “Marion found the key,” I said as we walked back to the car. “And Dugan must be the Alpha Male from LifeScience.”

  “What was Marion doing in Sheila’s apartment?”

  “I don’t know. The same thing as Dugan, maybe. Then again—they can’t be working together, or she’d have let him in.”

  “Dugan scares me.”

  “I’ve run into guys like him before. Business is war to them. They fight dirty, but they try to stay just this side of legal. I’d like to know what Sheila had that he wants so badly.”

  Jenny gave a little shiver as she pulled out of the parking space. “Let’s stay away from him, all right?”

  “I’m afraid the feeling won’t be mutual. Not as long as we have the diary. Let’s get to a copy shop. We’ll make two copies. I’ll lock away one as a backup.”

  An unexpected smile crossed Jenny’s lips. “Mister Thorough.”

  I started to say something about my camera operator training, until I realized she meant it appreciatively. I smiled back. She stopped before pulling out of the alley and leaned into me. “Thank you, Bill, for being here for me through all this. I didn’t know if you would.”

  Her golden razor-cut hair swung in front of her face in a way that I found utterly engaging. I could have jumped on top of her right there.

  » » » » »

  We’d just pulled into a mall anchored by a large office store when I noticed the maroon car behind us. It had taken a left with us into the lot. The car was a generic American sedan, but the color stayed in my mind. It had come into the frame near Sheila’s apartment complex. Nothing was special about it—a lackluster maroon wearing a patina of dust—except its recurrence. I watched through my side window as the car tracked us.

  Jenny wheeled into a parking space. I put my hand on her arm. “Let’s just sit here for a minute.”

  She cut me a look and moved over for a kiss. I obliged, keeping an eye out the back window. “Check out this maroon car,” I said as we separated.

  With a gentle swat to my head, Jenny sank back into her seat. “What about it?”

  The sedan took a slot a few spaces down from us. The Miata was low, though, and once the other car pulled in, I couldn’t see it. I gave Jenny the diary, got out, and took a couple of steps to the front of our car. As I stretched my arms, I turned and got a look at the maroon sedan. Two men were inside. I waited. They didn’t get out.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Jenny. “Walk to the store with me. Fast.”

  She wanted to know what w
as going on, of course. I said I was just being safe.

  The copy machines had their own little carpeted area in the front of the office store. The clerk assigned us a machine. I asked Jenny to photocopy the diary. There were about eighty pages, but we could fit two to a legal-sized sheet. The machine collated our pair of copies for us. I kept an eye out for the guys from the parking lot.

  About ninety seconds later a guy as nondescript as the maroon car came in. He had bland light hair, poorly cut, and was wearing shorts and a polo shirt. A couple of inches of belly flopped over his belt. He could have been an engineer out for a Sunday visit to the mall. Nice cover.

  He gave the floor a quick scan. He didn’t linger, but his eye caught us. I knew, because it was the same fleeting glance an actor gives the camera if they’re not sure where it is. First rule of acting: Never stare at the camera.

  “Bill,” Jenny said, “some of the pages have been torn out.”

  I put my finger to my lips and nodded toward the guy. He was perusing the cell phones, which were across the center aisle from us. “Just try to remember where they are.”

  When Jenny was done, I took the copies and the diary to the cashier. I kept them close to my body, hidden from the guy at the cell phones. I was wondering how to make our exit when the clerk slid our copies into a plastic bag.

  “Can I also get fifty sheets of blank paper, legal-size?” I asked.

  The clerk measured out a stack from below the counter. I asked for another bag, continuing to position myself between our watcher and our purchase. I taped shut the bag with the diary and copies, and did the same with the bag containing the blank paper.

  “I’ll carry them,” I murmured to Jenny.

  “Is he—?”

  I gave her a small nod. I could be wrong about the guy. But I had to assume I wasn’t. With my back to the door, I tucked the bag with the diary under my shirt, the bottom half of it cinched under the waist of my jeans. It took me back to my teenage years, when I occasionally borrowed expensive film magazines from stores.