Someone Always Knows (2 page)

“Will do. You want surveillance cams activated there, right?”

“Yes.” I cut the connection, and then buzzed Hy.

“I need you right away,” I told him. “One of our worst nightmares has just come true.”

Hy and Gage Renshaw went way back, to the days when they were both flying highly questionable passengers and cargo in Southeast Asia for an outfit called K-Air owned by a man named Dan Kessell.

As Hy had put it to me, he'd suspected but didn't want to know for sure what K-Air was involved in; the planes were delivered to the pilots fully loaded and they didn't even know their destinations until immediately before departure. There were a few times when he flew passengers concealed in the skin of the plane, meaning between the outer layer and the inside cabin. A good place to freeze to death, as one of his human cargo did. He parachuted contraband into far-flung places. Fellow pilots disappeared into those places and were never seen again. It was a violent world, but he accepted it because he had very little to return to: his father, stepfather, and mother were dead; his stepfather had willed him a small sheep ranch in California's high desert country near Tufa Lake, the region where he'd been born but that was by no means home; he'd wandered for years, but never found a place that
was
home, and he assumed he never would.

The turning point came when his regular flight plan was changed by Dan Kessell, the owner of K-Air, from a city in Thailand called Chiang Mai to an abandoned village near the Laotian border. He was forced down into a clearing by one of his passengers—a drug lord—where he was forced to witness a horrible massacre. That was it—Hy decided to get out (get clean, he'd said) and return to the high desert country of California.

In the years that ensued, Hy became an environmentalist, married a fellow activist, and, when he lost his wife to multiple sclerosis, he sank into a manic-depressive state that alarmed even those friends who'd always considered him a wild man. Then I had appeared and our life together, while sometimes tumultuous, usually had a settled quality that neither of us had experienced before.

Meanwhile, Renshaw and Kessell returned stateside and formed RKI, an international executive protection firm. Basically what such firms do in this era of terrorist threats is contract with US companies to provide security risk analysis, program design, and defensive training. They also have contingency services: crisis management, ransom negotiation and delivery, and hostage recovery. They lured back Hy into the firm as a hostage negotiator with promises of big bucks and short hours; the bucks flew in, but long hours persisted, because Hy is as driven as I am when he's on the trail of a solution to a crime.

Dan Kessell had been murdered a few years ago, his killer never apprehended. I had my suspicions about the murder, all of them involving Renshaw. Later, Renshaw had totally disappeared, probably because one of his nefarious ventures went sour, and after a suitable time Hy had petitioned the court and been granted sole ownership of what was first known as Ripinsky International and is now McCone & Ripinsky International (an unfortunate appellation when it becomes MRI, conjuring up visions of X-ray rooms and white-coated technicians). But now it seemed Gage was back. And no doubt with plans intended to mess up the whole arrangement.

I was on the phone with Hank Zahn, our primary attorney, when Hy burst into my office. I held up one finger and punched the speaker button. Hank's familiar voice filled the room.

“This is a situation I've never encountered before, Shar. When you and Hy transferred the ownership of RKI, did you have Renshaw declared legally dead?”

“I don't think so. That should be in your files.”

“Well, it's not. Do you know who Mr. Renshaw's attorney is?”

“No. I doubt he has one. Gage and legality don't exactly mesh.”

“I'm going to have to speak with some of my colleagues and do some research.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends. A few hours, anyway.”

“And what the hell do I do with Renshaw while you're researching? He's already eating and drinking his way through our hospitality suite.” On the monitor I'd watched Gage order up two huge pastrami sandwiches, potato salad, a sixty-dollar bottle of Merlot, and a big chunk of chocolate cake from Angie's.

“Try to find out what he wants,” Hank said. “If he won't tell you, make nice anyway. Check him into a good hotel—and later stick him with the bill.”

Every now and then I really like lawyers.

Hy was furious—white-lipped, eyes flashing, hands knotted into fists. When I showed him Renshaw on the video monitor, I was afraid he'd rip it off its mountings. I persuaded him to sit down and take several deep breaths before I said, “Okay, you heard Hank advise us to take a low-key approach to this.”

“Why? I'd like to throttle the bastard. What d'you bet he wants in on the firm?”

“Then we pay him off. Everybody's got his price, and from the way he looks, I'd say Gage's is lower than most these days.”

I watched Renshaw light a cigarette with a Bic, draw on it. After a moment he flicked ashes onto the table, missing the ashtray.

Slob.

Hy, considerably calmer, studied Renshaw on the monitor. “You may be right. I spot a broken shoelace.”

I buzzed Mick and asked him to show Renshaw in.

Up close he looked even seedier than he had on the monitor. When he shambled into my office I noted that his hair was unbarbered and the large white shock that hung over his forehead was greasy, and that he hadn't shaved today. His clothing, khakis and a blue shirt, were rumpled and worn. The raspy catch in his voice from smoking too much had worsened. His beat-up leather flight jacket I could understand: both Hy and I had ones like it; the more years you're a pilot, the more evidence of your prowess you want to exhibit, and—for whatever reason—a disreputable flight jacket is part of the mystique.

He spread his hands wide and said, “Here you see me in all my resurrected glory.” Then he plunked himself down in one of the chairs that faced my desk and propped his feet on its edge. Yes, he did have a broken and badly knotted shoelace, and the heels and soles were worn down.

Hy took the other chair, and I retreated to mine.

“So, Gage,” Hy said, “long time.”

“You bet.”

“What've you been doing with yourself?”

“This and that.” With an annoyed gesture he pushed the shock of white hair off his forehead.

“How come you haven't been in touch?”

“No need to be.” Then he looked around and added, “Nice operation you've got here.”

“We like it,” I said.

“Bringing in the big bucks. Nice house in the Marina, nice place on the Mendo coast. And Hy, I hear you've still got the ranch. Still got a plane too. And this firm has one of those CitationJets, if you need to get where you're going in a hurry.”

“Where'd you get all this information?” Hy asked.

“You're a fine one to question me. We learned at the feet of the same father.”

“What does that mean?” Hy asked.

“Father Mammon. He taught us the lure of the buck.”

Hy's expression told me he had no patience for that kind of nonsense. He said, “What do you want, Gage?”

“What do I want?” He paused, rubbing his stubbled chin as if in thought. “What
does
Gage want? Well, at the moment he doesn't rightly know. Why don't you show me around this place?”

“It's off-limits to anybody but qualified personnel.”

“You were always big on security, Ripinsky.”

“It's paid off for me.”

“For you, maybe.” He stroked his chin again. “Not for me.” Pause. “What
do
I want? Not an in with this agency, for sure. No action here. You've turned what was a great outfit into a bunch of wimpy yes-men. You still have the training camp down south? The safe houses?”

RI has always maintained various fully staffed dwellings throughout the country to provide for clients at risk. These range from pricey homes and condos to modest suburban tract houses to sleazy motels. I'd had the dubious privilege of hiding out in one of the worst in San Francisco, a former hot sheet motel near the Great Highway.

Hy said, “We have a number of safe houses, yes. We still own the camp, but we don't use it much any more.”

The training camp is comprised of fifty-some acres, an airstrip, and a few classrooms and housing near El Centro in the Imperial Valley. It was originally used for teaching operatives and clients the tools of their trade: self-defense, evasionary driving tactics, firearms skills, hand-to-hand combat. I'd been there only once, and encountered a horrible situation that had nearly cost Hy and me our lives. If I could help it, I'd never go back.

“Yeah,” Renshaw said, “it looked kind of dead when I drove by there on my way up here. Where you sending the new ops now?”

“We outsource the training.”

“Still, you oughta keep the place up. There're weeds growing through the asphalt on the runway. And the buildings look like shit.”

I asked, “Where were you driving up from, Gage?”

“South.”

“That's no answer.”

“It's all you're getting.”

I noted the word
up
on a legal pad. Renshaw glanced curiously at me, but didn't ask what I'd written.

“You want to buy the camp? We're putting it up for sale soon,” Hy said. “You could start your own driver-training and stunt school.”

“Ha. No way.”

“Why not? You above all that now?”

They were likely to get off on an unnecessary and unproductive tangent, so I said, “Since you're so disparaging of the firm, Gage, and not legally entitled to any sort of compensation”—God, that was what I hoped to hear from Hank later!—“just why did you come here?”

He shook his head slowly. “I can't articulate it.”

“Try; I've never known you to be at a loss for words.”

“But I am.” He spread his upturned hands wide.

“Then why show up at all, unannounced, after so many years?”

“Maybe I'm sentimental, just wanted to catch up on old times.”

“Well, it's been great, but…” I stood up.

Renshaw stood too. “Now that you've mentioned it, though, there just might be something I want from you old pals.” He chuckled and then started for the door. “You folks'll be hearing from me soon, you betcha.”

As soon as he was gone, I got on the intercom to Ted, asking him to put an immediate tail on Renshaw.

Then Hy and I conferred, deciding to set Mick and his department to work on a deep search into Renshaw's background. I knew surface details, but they were skimpy. Even Hy, who'd been acquainted with him for years, had little insight into Renshaw's past, and neither of us had so much as a glimmer into what he might have been doing since his disappearance.

The day had turned warm and cloudless, as so many do in October. Hy and I decided to continue our conversation on the roof garden. It was a lovely space: yew trees planted in big containers; flowers in smaller ones; plenty of comfy, cushioned redwood furniture to curl up on, plus a couple of round tables with umbrellas. Most important, it was protected from the wind and fog by huge Plexiglas panels.

While we awaited news about Renshaw, we went over and over what we knew of him.

I'd successfully bluffed Renshaw years ago, telling him I wanted to locate Hy so I could kill him. When I'd saved Hy, Renshaw had never forgiven me.

Ted came up the stairs and stuck his head out the door: Thelia Chen, he said, the operative who'd been tailing Renshaw, had lost him near Goat Alley. The block—colorfully named after the herds of goats that had once grazed peacefully in a pastoral pre–gold rush city—was in actuality a grimy, unpaved passageway ending at a brick wall off Natoma Street South of Market. I knew the territory, since I'd once conducted a long surveillance on an escaped prisoner who had sheltered there. No doors opened on the alley, and the narrow single exit—which Renshaw had apparently taken—came out at Mission, a busy thoroughfare with heavy foot traffic where a man could easily be lost in the crowds. I wished I'd conducted the tail job myself or asked Mick to assign it to someone more experienced than Chen, a former financial analyst with Wells Fargo who hadn't done much fieldwork.

“Seems as if Renshaw's as crafty as ever,” I said to Hy. “He must've known we'd have him followed.”

“He may be crafty, but he's not putting his skills to good use. Did you notice his clothes?”

“You know, their shabbiness might've been a way of disguising his real status. Why hint at anything that he doesn't want us to know?”

“Could be.” Hy looked at his watch. “I'm out of here, have a meeting with a prospective client. Want to come along?”

“No, I've got plenty of work to catch up on here. See you at home for tacos later?”