A Wild and Lonely Place (11 page)

I studied Adah. She seemed too calm for someone whose career had just crashed and burned. Shock? No, probably relief at having
taken the edge off the stress by ventilating. “Okay,” I told her.

But I’d take charge of the guns.

* * *

Morland didn’t want to leave. I must be tired, he said. Why didn’t I go home and let him watch over Adah? I could talk with
her tomorrow, when she also was rested. When I finally convinced him he wasn’t needed, he wanted to retain custody of the
guns. I had to show him my carry permit before he’d concede that I was a responsible guardian. Finally, mercifully, he went.

I returned to the bedroom. Adah lay on her back now, a Charley-sized lump on her stomach. When I gave her a thumbs-up sign,
she sat up and the cat oozed out from beneath the covers and hit the floor with a thud.

“Jesus, what a relief!” she exclaimed. “I got more mothering from Craig today than I did my entire childhood with Barbara.”
She got out of bed, shaking the wrinkles from her striped caftan, and stalked into the living room, looking around as if she
expected to find some noxious residue of the FBI man. “You want a drink?”

“Yes.”

“Beer, wine, or hard stuff?”

For a moment I seriously considered a double shot of the hardest stuff she had. Then I cautioned myself against doing something
that would only make the situation more bizarre and scaled back my request to white wine. Adah started toward the kitchen,
Charley following hopefully, but she paused to say, “Let’s sit out on the deck, huh? I need some air.”

I nodded and went back through the bedroom to a sliding door that opened onto a deck that Adah shared with the residents of
the adjoining apartment. It overlooked a narrow alley and then the backyard of a peculiar-looking Bavarian-style building
on Fillmore, the street that ran perpendicular to hers. A tangle of vines and old rosebushes forced their way over the high
fence toward the sun and spilled down onto a garbage dumpster beside its gate. I flopped onto a green-and-white ribbed lounge
chair and listened to the conversation that floated through Adah’s kitchen window: a debate on the merits of kitty mixed grill
versus sliced veal with gravy. Naturally the food with the gravy won.

What the hell was going on here? I wondered. Morland’s call had made Adah’s emotional condition sound so serious that I’d
cut short my weekend with Hy and made my first long solo flight. Now I found my supposedly desperate and suicidal friend well
on the road to recovery—and felt both defrauded and guilty for feeling that way. I’d better get some answers out of her, and
damn quick.

She came outside, a glass of wine in either hand. “I took the liberty of ordering from Mama Mia’s. I’m starved, and you must
be, too. Meat combo with olives and mushrooms, anchovies on your side. Okay?”

I took the wineglass, frowning.

“What, you’re off anchovies?”

“Anchovies are fine.”

“Then what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong with
me?
What’s wrong with
you?
You trashed your life, and you’re ordering pizza?”

She sat down in a basket chair, tucking her long legs underneath her. “Ah, McCone, I did my breast-beating last night. All
night, and if it wasn’t for this nifty herbal cream I’ve got, my eyes’d be swollen shut from crying. But then I got over that
and started thinking of the possibilities— and they are absolutely infinite!”

Still out of control, I thought, but on the other end of the spectrum. “Okay—what are they?”

“Well, for one thing, you and I are going to nail the Diplo-bomber. And collect the million-buck reward.”

Humor her. “Sounds good to me.”

“You remember the other day, when I told you the shield had gotten kind of tarnished?”

I nodded.

“Well, the way I see it, disasters like yesterday are a sign that things’ve got to change.”

“So you’re glad that you’ll probably be thrown off the task force and out of the department?”

“I’m ecstatic. All my life, McCone, I’ve been going by the book. Probably a reaction to Barbara and Rupert, who don’t even
know there
is
a book. Now’s my chance to fly.”

“And do what?”

“I’ll figure that out later. Right now we’ve got to get to work on the Diplo-bomber.”

“Adah, we have
been
working on the case. And with very little success.”

“Well, thanks to last night’s meeting, we’ve got one more piece of information. The detail that was leaked to the Techno Web?
It was a second signature that appeared for the first time on the bomb that went off at the Azadi Consulate: the letters C.L.
incised on its metal base.”

“Initials?”

“Looked like.”

“C.L.” I reviewed the names of the people connected with the consulate. None matched. “The bomber’s?”

“Could be.”

I was silent, sipping wine.

“Adah, this leak—do they think it might have come from a member of the task force?”

“No.”

“The bomber, then.”

“Uh-huh. They’re trying to get a court order for a list of the Web’s subscribers. But even if they do—and given the privacy
laws, it’s dicey—it’ll take an enormous amount of time and manpower to track him down.”

“And you think we can? Especially now, when we no longer have access to task force files?”

“Don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Leave that detail to me.”

Morland, I thought. He cares about her, and she’s going to use that for all it’s worth.

“By the way, McCone,” she added, “I’m sorry about how I acted on Friday.”

“Apology accepted. I’ve got to tell you, though—I didn’t appreciate the barrage of phone calls, to say nothing of you camping
out on my doorstep.”

She moved her shoulders in a manner that was usually a prelude to a difficult admission.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s, uh, about Friday night.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for the other shoe.

“I was pissed to begin with, but when you didn’t come home, I got
really
pissed. So I used the spare key you gave me when I stayed at your house while this place was being painted last winter.”

“And did what?”

“Uh, you know that bottle of ninety-three Deer Hill Chardonnay that you were saving?”

I opened my eyes and frowned at her.

“I drank it.”

“You
what?
That wine cost fifty-five dollars! I was saving it for my fortieth birthday!”

“Yeah, I know. And that’s not everything. Afterwards I got into the hard stuff and passed out on your couch. I think I broke
one of those nice crystal glasses your sister gave you.”

“You think?”

“Well, I did.”

“Is that all? You didn’t throw up on something? Wreck the furniture? Terrorize my cats? Uproot my houseplants?”

“What do you think I am?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“I feel bad enough about this, McCone. Don’t make it any worse. I’ll pay you for the wine, I promise.”

“Damned right you will!” Inside the apartment the door-bell chimed. “And you’re also paying for the pizza.”

She stood. “It’s fourteen bucks. Two-buck tip makes it sixteen. Your share’s eight, so that’s fifty-five less eight. Forty-seven
I owe you.”

“What about the glass?”

“You told me you never liked that pattern anyway.”

I sighed and went to the kitchen to refill my wineglass before she decided to start charging me.

When I went back outside with the wine and a handful of paper napkins, Adah was sitting beside a low table on the deck, ripping
open the pizza box. As usual, Charley was sucking around for more food. I sank down across from her, reaching for a slice
with anchovies.

“Look, McCone,” she said, “don’t be mad about the wine. Let’s get serious about the Diplo-bomber.”

I chewed, looking inquiringly at her.

“I’m dead certain that the guy on the Techno Web was him. I had plenty of time to dope that out while I was hiding in bed
from old Craig—who, incidentally, has a hot thing for me, in spite of his tepid appearance.”

I’d been right about how she planned to get access to task force files. “Have you…?”

“God, no! And he’s too worshipful to expect anything. But listen: according to the profiles, a lot of guys who mess with explosives
are also computer geeks. Computers’re an impersonal way to relate to people; bombs’re an impersonal way to kill them. Get
the correlation? So now we know this: the guy subscribes to the Web, or he knows a way to get other subscribers’ passwords.
He’s playful. Confident, too. He’s toying with us.”

I nodded, mouth full again.

“And here’s something else that I haven’t told you: I was on duty at the Azadi Consulate when the mail came on Friday. I intercepted
a note that was meant for Malika Hamid. Guess what it said.”

Be forewarned,
I thought. I kept silent, though; my contract with RKI bound me to say nothing about the earlier notes the Azadis had received.

“Well, the lettering was the same as in the ones he sent after the other bombings. Same stationery stock, too. Mailed at the
Lombard Street post office. But it didn’t say ‘Vengeance is mine.’ It said, ‘Warning Number One. Remember C.L.’”

That
was
a departure. “Did you question the consular staff to see if it meant anything to any of them?”

“Spoke with Mrs. Hamid. We’re only supposed to deal with her, and at the time I was still following orders. She claimed she
hadn’t a clue, but that she’d question the staff and bring it to the attention of the security people.”

“You believe her?”

“No.”

“You bring it to the attention of Renshaw or his people?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, Hamid told me she’d take care of that and somebody would get back to us.”

And, I was sure, she’d conveniently neglected to do anything.

I looked at the fresh piece of pizza I’d just picked up and set it back in the box, my appetite gone. “This is only the first
in a series of bombing attempts—I’d stake my license on that.”

Adah grimaced. “And I’d stake my career—if I had one.”

I said, “I think I’d better get hold of Gage Renshaw.”

Renshaw had flown back to Southern California, but I couldn’t reach him at his home. I called RKI’s headquarters in La Jolla
and used the emergency code number he’d had assigned to me on Friday to get the night operator to track Gage down. By the
time he called back, Adah had been badgering me for close to half an hour to tell her what I knew about the Azadis.

“Where are you?” I asked impatiently.

“Orange County. What’s happening?”

I explained about the note Adah had intercepted. “Hamid didn’t mention it to you, did she?”

“No.” Renshaw hesitated. “Let me call you back. I want to order tighter security there.”

I set down the cordless phone I’d fetched from Adah’s bedroom and looked sternly at her. “If you ask me one more question,
I’ll take the phone and lock myself in the bathroom.”

She shrugged sulkily and carried the remains of the pizza inside. The evening was still warm, warning that we might be headed
into one of those heat waves with which San Francisco is ill equipped to cope. I moved back to the chaise longue; when Adah
returned she pulled the basket chair over by the railing and sat with her feet propped on it.

“I love this deck,” she said in a studiously conversational tone that told me she’d decided it was in her best interests to
keep off the subject of the Azadis. “Times when I’m too wiped out to read and the TV programming is too gruesome, I come out
here and people-watch. Sometimes I feel like the Jimmy Stewart character in
Rear Window.
”

“Oh? See anything interesting?”

“That apartment building across the fence? I’ve named all the tenants, just like Stewart did. There’s Mrs. Cookie Monster—big
fat woman who sits in a BarcaLounger and does nothing but eat Oreos morning, noon, and night. Takes them apart and licks off
the frosting first. Then there’s Mr. Duck. He drives down the alley in one of those funny European cars and parks it by the
dumpster. Waddles in, stays a couple of hours, waddles out again, dropping off his trash as he leaves. Fascinates me: those
apartments aren’t very big, and he’s not there often, but he sure makes a lot of trash. Fascinates Ms. Feather, too.”

“Ms. Feather?” In spite of my anxiety about the situation at the consulate, I was interested in Adah’s ramblings—mainly because
they revealed an imaginative side to her that I hadn’t glimpsed before.

“Ms. Feather lives in the building, but she acts like a homeless lady, always going through people’s trash. She’s got a whole
collection of fancy feathered hats, and she gets dressed up before she checks out the dumpsters. She seems to prefer Mr. Duck’s
trash to anything else; someday I’m going to pick through it, just to see what’s so fascinating. And then there’s Mr.—”

The phone rang. I picked up and Renshaw said, “It’s taken care of. You have anything else to report?”

“No, but I’m wondering if you shouldn’t get the little girl out of there. Her mother, too.”

“I just suggested that to Hamid. She refused.”

“She’d rather jeopardize their lives then give up a little control? That’s insane!”

“You and I know that, but she’s within her rights. The child’s a minor, and the mother’s in no condition to take care of her.
I don’t know if they’re Azadi citizens, but technically they’re living on Azadi soil.”

“Very technically; the principle of extraterritoriality of diplomatic missions hasn’t always been upheld by the courts. Besides,
Hamid’s rights shouldn’t take precedence over their safety. Maybe somebody should lay some hard facts on her—such as how helpless
Mavis is. Such as what nasty things a bomb can do to the body of a nine-year-old!”

“Sharon, calm down. I’ll try to talk sense to her when I get back there. You making any progress at all on this?”

I didn’t reply immediately; anger had made me tongue-tied. The situation at the consulate had become untenable. There had
to be a way to persuade Hamid that Habiba and Mavis should be moved to a safe location; there had to be a way to persuade
her to share the bomber’s earlier communications with the task force.