A Wild and Lonely Place (18 page)

She shook her head. “The island is sovereign. I do not know why that is, something about the old man he bought it from having
declared its independence from Great Britain and the British not wanting it anyway. It is a small island, and very poor.”

“But you don’t know its name?”

“No.”

“Or its location?”

She closed her eyes. “I think it is in the Leewards.”

“Near St. Maarten, perhaps?”

“I am not familiar with that area, I really do not know.”

I studied her face for a moment to see if she was lying, but anxiety was all I saw. “Okay, Speed is operating the sports book
again. Why does he risk making trips to San Francisco?”

“Me, of course.”

I doubted that. Speed Schechtmann didn’t sound like the type who would risk his freedom for any woman—particularly one in
whom fidelity was so demonstrably absent. “He must do something else besides see you.”

“Well, there is the check cashing.”

“What about it?”

“Eric Sparling, do you know him? The man who owns the
Freia,
he has a chain of check-cashing places, mostly poor people on welfare use them.”

“And?”

“Speed brings the checks he collects for gambling debts, and Eric cashes them.”

“Eric launders money, you mean.”

“I guess that is what it is called.”

“Where can I find Sparling?”

Alarm flared in her eyes. “You can’t tell him—”

“It won’t be necessary for me to tell him you’re involved. Where?”

“His office is in his main branch on Sixth Street near Howard.”

Sixth near Howard was in the middle of Skid Row. Appropriate. “What’s his home address?”

“I don’t know, Speed never mentioned where he lives.”

It shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain. I turned and started down the staircase.

“Ms. McCone?” Leila hurried after me, frightened now. “You will keep my secrets?”

“I will, but secrets have a way of coming out on their own.”

Again she covered her lips with her fingers, as if by doing so she could prevent that from happening. Like Langley Newton,
Leila now had to deal with her recriminations.

Eric Sparling was unlisted. I called Charlotte Keim’s extension at RKI, hoping she’d still be there and could pull a quick
check for me, but only reached her voice mail. When I glanced at my watch I saw it was well after eight. Time was passing
too fast, and every minute took a little girl who by now must be very frightened farther away from me.

I didn’t leave a message for Keim, instead transferred my call to the building operator. Was anyone in, I asked, who could
run an address check for me?

No, he replied, there had been a problem in La Jolla and the central computer was down. Mr. Ripinsky was in the office, though;
did I want to speak with him?

You bet I did.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked when he came on the line.

“Better; this bug comes and goes.”

His repeated bouts with it had me seriously worried, but I knew I’d get nowhere by insisting he see a doctor. Hytended not
to give in to illness, but he wasn’t irresponsible; he’d see to it in his own good time.

He added, “I spoke with Gage, and he told me what went down today, so I gave up on you and came in to access some documents.
Just my luck—no computer.”

“You’ll be there for a while?”

“Yeah. Some of the night people in the data-search section are putting together a poker game. I thought I’d sit in on it and
see if the computer comes back up.”

“Then I’ll stop by later. Wish me luck.”

“With what?”

“I’ll explain when I get there. Just wish me.”

So because of a balky computer, I was walking along one of the city’s roughest streets toward Eric Sparling’s check-cashing
establishment, caressing the .38 and feeling bad all over again about having come to depend on it. The mayor’s controversial
Matrix program—designed to roust the homeless from the inner city—may have worked at the Civic Center and Union Square, but
not at Sixth and Howard. A man with a little dog begged for spare change in front of a closed sandwich shop; a woman with
a shopping cart full of shabby possessions slept in a doorway. Poverty-stricken souls were everywhere; add to them the drunks,
addicts, teenaged runaways, pimps, and hookers, and you had the full flavor of life on the city’s sad, seamy underside. I
walked quickly, avoiding all eye contact.

The exterior of Ace Check Cashing flashed neon like a Las Vegas gambling casino, but the interior was a cross between a small
bank and the visiting room at a county jail: a high counter, two cashier’s stations equipped with automatically operated tills
and microphones. Glass—probably shatter and bullet-proof—rose from counter to ceiling. Only one of the booths was staffed,
by a white-haired woman whose slate-blue eyes told me I hadn’t seen the half of it. When she said, “Help you, honey?” the
microphone amplified her smoker’s voice.

I held up my I.D. and asked if Sparling was in.

The woman looked my license over carefully, then picked up a phone receiver, punched a button, and—turning her head so I couldn’t
hear—spoke softly.

“Mr. Sparling wants to know what this is about,” she said.

“Tell him it’s about the
Freia.
”

Apparently my voice was as loud on the other side of the glass as hers on this side because she didn’t relay the message,
merely listened to Sparling’s reply. “He says the boat’s in its slip at Salt Point Marina.”

“It may be now, but it wasn’t at five-thirty when I fished Mavis Hamid’s body out of the water.”

The woman didn’t react. She listened to Sparling, then motioned at a door near the end of the counter. “I’ll buzz you in.”

Before I was through the door, one in the facing wall opened. A silver-haired man with a sailor’s tan stepped out and said,
“Ms. McCone? This way, please.”

I followed him into a narrow robin’s-egg blue corridor. He motioned for me to go around him, latched the door, and leaned
against it, arms folded across his chest. “Now,” he said, “what’s this about a body?”

I took a few steps along the corridor, distancing myself from him. “You
are
Eric Sparling?”

He nodded.

“Well, I’m surprised the sheriff down in San Mateo County hasn’t been in contact with you. They’ll want to question everyone
who keeps a boat at the marina—and the body was floating in the
Freia
’s slip.”

“Get to the point, please.”

“The point is that the body was the woman your associate, Speed Schechtmann, kidnaped from the Azadi Consulate this morning.”

“Schechtmann left the country years ago.”

“And has returned a number of times, with your help.”

“Nonsense. And what’s this about him kidnaping someone?”

“Mr. Sparling, you don’t have to cover up with me. I know all about you having the
Freia
pick Schechtmann up offshore. The marina manager has seen the two of you together. And I know about the check-cashing service
you perform for Speed.”

“Check cashing is my business.”

“Social Security checks. Welfare checks. Payroll checks. But not checks that are in repayment of gambling debts.”

His lips twitched and his eyes moved to my right hand, where it rested on the gun. He glanced along the corridor, then back
at me. “Is this a shakedown?”

“Blackmail? No, Mr. Sparling. I need information.”

Again he glanced along the corridor. Someone back there should have been paying attention but wasn’t.

I pressed my advantage. “Look, I don’t care about your connection with Schechtmann and his betting operation. I don’t care
what kind of checks you cash, or for whom. I do care about finding out where Speed is taking Habiba Hamid, the daughter of
the dead woman.”

Silence.

“You really don’t want to jeopardize a pretty nice setup here by aiding and abetting a kidnaping, do you?”

“Speed didn’t kidnap either the mother or the kid. He was supposed to be taking them to Dave Hamid, with his mother’s blessing.”

“Why?”

“These bombings—she felt they’d be safer down there.”

“Down where?”

Another silence.

“It’s still kidnaping; neither Mavis nor Habiba wanted to go.”

“…Was Hamid’s wife murdered?”

“We won’t know until after the autopsy but yes, I’d say so.”

“By Speed?”

“Besides your crew and the little girl, he was the only one there. By the way, why haven’t any of the crew contacted you?”

“The
Freia
’s not due back yet. And if what you say is true, my captain certainly wouldn’t put out the word on the marine radio.” He
spoke distractedly, as though he was considering his options. There was a sound at the far end of the corridor; Sparling shook
his head and by the time I glanced back there, whoever it was had gone away.

He said, “There’s no proof they were on the
Freia;
my crew will back me up.”

“I don’t really care about proving anything. All I want is the little girl.”

“Why?”

“She’s in danger.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? You know Speed—and Dave Hamid.”

“Hamid’s her father, for God’s sake! She calls Speed her uncle.” But I’d struck a nerve, which produced a tic under his right
eye.

I said, “I can find them by other means. I know Speed’s running the sports book from a private island somewhere in the Leewards.
It used to belong to Great Britain until the former owner declared independence; there can’t be too many of those around.
But going about it that way will take longer and put the little girl at greater risk. Won’t you help me, so I can go there
and bring her back as soon as possible?”

“You’ll never get near it.”

“I’ve got to try.” I hadn’t been fully committed to the idea until I saw the tic under Sparling’s eye, which had grown more
pronounced. He knew something about Hamid and Schechtmann that would give support to my uneasy feelings.

Sparling looked away, covered the tic with his fingertips.

“She’s nine years old, Mr. Sparling. A young nine. Her mother’s already been killed, and she probably witnessed it. Think
about it.”

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, then became still, his gaze turning inward. He didn’t like what he saw; the tic
came faster. After a moment he said, “I have two daughters. Five grandchildren. In spite of what you might consider me and
my business, I’m not an insensitive man.”

“Then help me.”

“You’ll be taking your life in your hands if you go near that island.”

“I’ve risked it before.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not unknown in this city, Ms. McCone.”

“No, I guess not. So how about it, Mr. Sparling? Will you tell me how to get to Speed’s island?”

He thought for a moment more, then pushed away from the door. “Come to my office. I’ll write down the details and draw you
a rough map.” He paused, eyes shaded by uncertainty. “I just hope I’m not sending you to the same fate as the Hamid woman.”

The nearest major airport to Jumbie Cay, Schechtmann’s island, was Princess Juliana on St. Maarten. As I drove to Green Street
I called Mick at home and asked him to look into flight schedules. Next I accessed both my office and home answering machines.
The messages at the office were about routine matters that Mick could handle in my absence; at home was only a cryptic one
from Adah Joslyn: “I stumbled onto a lead on the bomber by coincidence, and it’s too damn close to home for comfort. I’m heading
out now to confirm it. Sure wish you hadn’t appropriated my guns. Call you later.”

Now what could that mean?

I dialed Joslyn’s apartment and let the phone ring fifteen times. She must’ve forgotten to turn on her machine when she went
out. Not a good sign. Adah was the most detail-oriented person I knew.

Mick called back as I slid into a parking spot across from RKI’s building. There was an American Airlines flight leaving SFO
for Dallas-Fort Worth at half past midnight; at seven-thirty I could connect with another destined for St. Maarten via San
Juan and arrive at three tomorrow afternoon. I told him to make the reservation.

* * *

As I passed through the security gate in RKI’s lobby, Renshaw stepped off the elevator. He looked exhausted, more rumpled
than usual, and furious. Obviously he’d been waiting for me; the guard must’ve buzzed him when I came in.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” he demanded. “Why haven’t you reported?”

“Our agreement was that I’d report only when I had something to tell you.”

“As far as I’m concerned our agreement is voided.”

The guard was staring at us; he’d probably never seen Renshaw this angry. I said, “Gage, let’s go someplace where we can talk
privately.”

He turned on his heel and stalked toward the hallway that led to the projection room. When we got there, he slammed the door
and glared down at me.

I said, “We’re both on edge, but shouting isn’t going to accomplish a damn thing.” Then I told him what I’d found out in the
hours since we’d last spoken, ending with, “My flight for the Caribbean leaves at twelve-thirty.”

“Why the hell’re you going down there?”

“To bring Habiba back and, if possible, find out more about Dave Hamid’s connection to these bombings.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Mrs. Hamid wants—”

“Fuck what Mrs. Hamid wants!” The rage I’d been reining in since I saw Mavis’s body floating in the icy black water threatened
to run wild. I gave the reins another tug and said more calmly, “This is one time that woman is not going to have her way.”

“Hamid is the client—”

“And the client is
not
always right. Look, Gage, so far I’ve played it your way, but right now I’m sitting on a kidnaping and a probable murder.”

“The sheriff’s department told Mrs. Hamid a probable accident, and there was no kidnaping. According to you, she arranged
for Schechtmann to take them.”

“I have a witness who says Mavis wanted to go home and was restrained by force. And after seeing her mother die, you can bet
Habiba isn’t a willing traveler anymore. But to get back to what I was saying, it isn’t going to be very long before the San
Mateo Sheriff’s Department figures out a few things, and then I’ll be in too much trouble to be of any use to you.”