The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (23 page)

CHAPTER 29

Natalie and Ben met up again on his return from Tahoe, at an outdoor café near the Keaton. It was silly, really: all those phone calls, with her hotel and his office having been just a few blocks apart, but perhaps they’d already become too close already.

The weather had cleared up entirely. The sky was California-blue, the eclipsed sun hazy between the tall buildings.

He appeared different to her. The tightness of his face had dissipated, his eyes were clear. He seemed happy, relaxed – at least more so than at any time she’d known him.

“Nguyen accelerated my data study and report,” she updated. “He’s made it pretty clear that my stay at the Keaton is coming to an end.”

Things had in fact never been quite right since she’d logged into his office voicemail late that night at the Clamor office, she knew.

“But after the
Bugle
ran that story on IPO day,” Ben said, “surely the sex trafficking problem is more pressing than ever?”

“In one sense, yes. In another, not so much. From Tom’s point of view, the worst has now happened. Whatever media embarrassment they feared, it’s played out. I guess it’s the difference between the fear of being hit, and actually
being
hit. The first is maybe far worse. I mean, sure, something should be done, and no doubt
will
be done once Cindy and the federals are through with it. But the business press is already acting like Clamor.us never had any responsibility for what users do on its site.”

“Bob Swaine was right,” Ben said.

“Huh?”

“Oh, just some assertion he made, when I met with him and Wisnold – that Clamor wasn’t culpable for its members’ actions. You got paid for your consultancy work, though?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t mention the eighty percent she’d paid on to the Captive Daughters charity. “But just back on Dwayne Wisnold for a moment: didn’t it strike you as odd that he sold out to Towse?”

“You mean by agreeing to Towse’s tender offer? Honestly Natalie, nothing about this situation surprises me any more.”

She was wearing black yoga pants and a top sporting the logo ‘Be Present’. She’d found a nearby yoga studio and hadn’t yet changed after class. It had been a powerful, revivifying flow class. Her eyes felt blazing alive.

A jazz band struck up across the plaza – double bassist, drummer and singer with two-tone wingtip shoes and upturned hat: pure San Francisco.  

Sure looked back to him.

“What’ll you do next?” he asked.

“Return to the Bahamas, I guess,” and she hunched her shoulders. “And you?”

“Looks like Occidental may be interested in me. Occidental now being in charge of Carmichael’s operations. Somebody apparently put in a good word, about how I at least
tried
to steer Clamor away from total calamity. It’ld be a promotion, even. You now, I –”

He waited a beat, then another. He looked at the band. ‘
Everybody
–
Loves My Baby / But My Baby – Don’t Love Nobody But Me
–’

“You were saying?” she said.

“I did a lot of thinking up in Tahoe, Natalie. It’s a very special place for me. Looks straight down into the lake itself. Anyway, I thought a lot, about growing up, and about who I’ve become. And some interesting stuff came up.”

“Like?”

“Like when I was growing up: I never knew why this was, but my mom used to talk my dad down a lot. Or to put it another way, she never seemed to show him any real love. My dad wasn’t the most demonstrative guy either, but in his own way managed to make it clear he loved my mom. Not the other way around though.

“And I think, at some level, I drew this lesson: that a man isn’t worthy of a woman’s love.”

“
Ben
! C’mon, we all have our family issues…”

“No, but hear me out: that for so much of my life, I’ve lived by other peoples’ expectations. But I realize it doesn’t have to be that way. That
I
get to choose.”

She said: “Maybe it’s no bad thing, to want other peoples’ approval?”

“Maybe it isn’t. But maybe
my own
approval should count for more. Therefore, in answer to your question, I don’t know what I’ll do next. But I intend to figure it out. Perhaps I’ll go to write that book after all. Who knows?”

“Towse?” she said, with a sidelong glance. But neither of them was quite ready to treat casually Paul Towse’s fait accompli at Clamor.

“At least I got to the bottom of the Multiworld mystery,” he said.

She couldn’t talk to him about the Malovich sketch, the FBI having sworn her to secrecy.

“Towse,” he answered himself. “It’s his company. It owns Further Online Gaming. Winston Ma found out about it from his contact there. Told me so on IPO day.” 

“Huh,” she said deliberatively.

It was an intriguing elucidation of the pattern. For, if Multiworld was Towse, then according to that Malovich sketch, all those illicit organizations – Surefar Enjoy, the Leading Ladies Agency – pointed to him. And what did that imply about his relations with other key stakeholders in Clamor? – Or entities beyond? What about this Xiao Lin guy, who she’d just uncovered using her Mapper?

Wait:
could it be that Towse and Wisnold had a deal going from the start
?

“How much of Clamor does Dwayne Wisnold own?” she asked.

“About a third, following the IPO,” Ben said. “Look! There’s something I need to tell you Natalie.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve worked pretty well together, haven’t we? I mean,
you and I
. And …”

Uh oh,
where was this going
?

“How much before the IPO?” she interrupted him.

“Huh?” he said. “Oh, around 40%. Natalie...”

“But that means –”

“Jesus Christ, Natalie!” Ben almost stood up: “
Can you just leave that stuff alone for five minutes
?” He started to take both her hands, then hesitated: “What I
wonder
is – whether
…
we should start a security company, perhaps Silverman-Chevalier Associates.”

She raised both eyebrows.

He caught the need to lighten it: “Maybe get Winston in on the act, ya know. Silverman, Chevalier and Ma.”

“SCAM,” she said, laughing.

“
Huh
? Oh, that’s what the initials would form. Right!” And he laughed too, after a pause. “I guess we’ve witnessed enough financial scamming for one week.” 

He struck her as such a genuine, decent guy. Why was she always drawn instead to the cad, the blackguard – her ex from her last job being merely the most extreme case yet? All they’d ever shown her was a proven ability to wreck everything.

Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps she needed their darkness, to find her light.

Ben: “Meantime, I guess I should take the Occidental job. I mean a job’s a job, right?”

She wrinkled her nose affectionately, in assent.

A buzz came from her tote bag. She rootled around in it. Snapping her phone open: “Brastias!”

“I may have to ask for my spare weapon back,” her federal agent friend informed her.

“Of course.” He knew she was leaving? Funny, she hadn’t
told
him yet –

“Natalie, I think we got ‘em. – The suspects, for the Malovich and Vogel murders.”

W-o-w, she mouthed.

Ben looked on.

Adam: “I can’t tell you who yet, but –”

“But you can’t just call me up, and tell me … that you
can’t tell me
!” she fizzed.

“Sorry Natalie, I really can – not do so. But in all likelihood the coast is clear, so it would be great to get the Glock back. It was pretty irregular procedure handing it out to you like that.”

“Just give me a sign then, if I throw out a name: Wisnold!”

Adam said nothing.

“Well what about Rage, in the game? Did you get a warrant? Did you get into his
MultiQuest
account?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you about that either. But we’re real close to bringing charges. We just have to establish intent. We’ve got a top profiler out here from DC, looking at the homicides, Rage’s behaviour in the game and the likely character profile behind it all. It’s starting to piece together.”

Natalie tried to classify Wisnold’s profile there and then. He’d struck her as having Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism found among technologists in the Valley, characteristic of which were extreme intelligence and social impairment – and the impulse to seek attention and control through alternate channels of influence. She thought back to Wisnold’s behaviour at that Sunday strategy session – his bizarre mood swings, how transformed he’d been by a call from his publicist…

But Adam had said
suspects
, plural. Natalie couldn’t help but think of Wisnold and Nancy Wu sat in that same conference room together – the other day too, with Bob Swaine. Even stepping down from Clamor in tandem. She thought as well of her fake profile page, and that Wu symbol.

But still it didn’t seem to piece together.

For one thing, why go to the lengths of killing people involved with the company? Was it that Asperger’s sufferers had some need for space that no one else could intrude on? – that a switch had somehow flipped inside Wisnold? But how did that implicate Nancy?

So many questions. So much uncertainty and ambiguity. The beach in the Bahamas – her way out of all this – beckoned.

Adam was saying: “I just wanted you to know that you’re likely no longer in danger.”

“Well, is there nothing else I can do to help?” she said.

“Nope, we’re in good shape. We’re just trying to go slow with the interviews down here in San Jose, to get the cooperation going … It’s good cop all the way.”

Probably a good thing Pulver hadn’t been handling the interview then. Then again, where
was
the Pulverizer? Because of the institutional rivalry, Natalie didn’t like to ask. She said: “I can drop the Glock off later today. I have to make a last trip down to Monterey, to see one of Vogel’s neighbors. I could drop it by on the way back?”

“Good enough. Which neighbor?”

“Her name’s Star. I met her when I was down visiting Vogel one time. She runs the trust that will inherit his estate. She’s been a mess about it all, and asked for my advice.”

Ben was following her every word.

Adam said: “Star Williams?”

“Don’t know. Must be.”

“We interviewed her. Yep, she was taking Vogel’s passing real bad. I may be down that way myself, at the County Crime Scene lab.” He paused for a moment. “But yeah, probably best if you drop the gun off in its case, in a padded envelope, at the bureau office. These in-car meetings are starting to look a little clandestine. Mark it confidential and for my attention. Don’t leave your name.”

“No kidding! And no problem, will do.”

She closed her phone and pressed it against her pursed lips.

“What happened?” Ben asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think the FBI may have taken Dwayne Wisnold in for questioning. Maybe Nancy Wu too.”

He shook his head, like nothing could surprise him any more.

CHAPTER 30

Natalie approached Star Williams’ cottage gingerly. The older woman had sounded jumpy on the phone when asking for her advice. The horsebox was there and she could smell wood smoke too.

“Star?” she called out.

No answer.

She walked up to the back door. It was slightly ajar, and croaked as she eased it open. The main room was a mess. Notepads, documents and legal forms filled the space. “
Star
?” she called out again.

Still no answer.

She picked up one of the documents:
IRS Form 706
–
Federal Estate Tax Return
. Another:
Notice of Petition to Administer Estate
. Was that the
will
, sitting next to it?

“Star, are you here?

Suddenly the woman appeared behind her in silhouette, giving Natalie a start.

“It was good of you to come back,” she said, hugging Natalie close – in so doing, holding something behind her back.

Star turned, and set down the nobbly end of a carrot on the table. “Just keeping Festival warm and fed,” she smiled sadly. “That’s what it’s all about for me now. Please,” and she gestured for Natalie to sit. 

Natalie had been moved by the older woman’s plight during her last visit, right after Vogel’s death. Seeing Star all alone had recalled to Natalie the trials of probating her own father’s estate after his death.
Disappearance
rather. In any event, she’d found it almost impossible to refuse Star’s request for help.

But now she was left wondering why exactly she’d come all the way down here. She’d highly likely overestimated her ability to assist Star. Jon Vogel had died an extremely wealthy man. His estate was vastly more complex than her father’s had ever been, despite her dad’s trans-national lifestyle. The Vogel estate held significant sums of cash, liquid securities, illiquid investments, prime real estate, collectibles, exotic pets even. It was doubtless implicated in a web of social causes and other formal and informal obligations that Vogel had accumulated over the decades.

“Here,” and Star handed her another set of documents:
Offer to Buy 40,000,000 Clamor.us Inc. Shares
, for $25 each. “It was addressed to the trust.”

A cool billion dollars.

“The shares seem to have fallen so much,” Star fretted. “I’m worried there won’t be anything left by the time the Protectorate sees any of it.”

Natalie was careful not to say anything, to keep her suspicions about Paul Towse to herself.

“I know Jon disliked Towse intensely,” the older woman said. “Which was unusual for Jon. And yes, I have my own misgivings about anyone like that trying to turn our world into a machine for living in. Shoot, I hardly know how to use my cell phone! What use for me is there in a world like that?”

Natalie was silent.

“– I suddenly find it so hard, to
know
what Jon would have wanted. I find myself second guessing…” And she looked at Natalie searchingly.

What Star needed, Natalie reasoned, was an experienced probate lawyer practicing in California, a firm of tax accountants perhaps, an investment expert, possibly even a media-relations advisor for the press interest in Towse’s offer. She thought about getting a recommendation from Ben but remembered his romantic interest in her. She defaulted to Ray Ott: surely he’d have some good recommendations.

Yet, once again, she was struck by something being not quite right, like the last time here. She tried to analyze the feeling but, maddeningly, it defied categorization. She placed the tender documents back down, next to another set –
Proof of Holographic Instrument
. These would pertain to the will. A
written
will, apparently –

“Star, this is complicated,” she said. And, as naturally as possible: “
Could I see the will?”

Star hesitated, then handed it her. She was smiling curiously again. “He wrote it one night, back in the day, on the beach. Under a beautiful moon.” The handwriting was slanted, curvilinear. Contrasting with it was a typed, stapled back sheet that named Star Mary Williams as Estate Executor. It bore Vogel’s spidery signature.

Natalie paged gently through the ageing sheaves. In the preface, Vogel decreed that: “everything I own and will ever own shall pass into the Protectorate of the Eternal Now” – a crude pour-over provision, Natalie recognized. If legally binding – and she saw no reason why it shouldn’t be – then his net assets would automatically be distributed according to the terms of the living trust, the ‘Protectorate’. Star as trustee would soon have control over Vogel’s most valuable asset: the forty million Clamor shares.

“Of course, back then he only had his VW van and a guitar,” Star sighed.

From the corner of her eye, Natalie caught sight of another document:
Proof of Subscribing Witness
… She picked it up, perusing it briefly.

“Thing is,” Star said, “his witnesses were a cow at the end of the Wurlitzers’ field and a young traveler staying with us from Oregon. Rufus, I believe his name was. Only, I never learned Rufus’ last name. We never saw him again.”

“It may be that wills written in testators’ own handwriting don’t need to be signed in front of witnesses,” Natalie said, “so long as you can prove that it is indeed their handwriting.”

As Estate Executor, why wouldn’t she know this?

“Oh, I doubt that’ll be a problem. Such distinctive penmanship. Just a few burn marks from the beach fire,” the older lady gestured.

Hm. Natalie leafed further into the will, finding hieroglyphic-looking symbols.

“Covers a lot of philosophy, early mysticism and ancient pagan history,” she added.

What’s this
?

Right before the end
– the stapled back sheet – was what looked to be a handwritten addendum. The ink was darker. More recent. But it didn’t take a graphologist to tell it was Vogel’s writing: “I hereby leave one million dollars separately to Thomas Nguyen of San Francisco.”

“What’s this?” Natalie said.

“Something Jon felt he had to do.”

Natalie considered what that could mean. Was it some sort of ex-gratia payment, dating to Tom joining the company – back in Clamor’s early, freewheeling days? – Some wacky agreement originating on a bar napkin? Or something that Nguyen, a gifted technologist, had done for Vogel
outside
of the company?

But why in the will
?

Natalie said: “And Tom knows he inherited this money?”

“Sure,” Star said. “I already spoke with him about it. The day Jon died.”

There was a peculiar half-light in the cottage. Only, Natalie was pretty sure that this ink was fading as well. Not as much as the rest, still
…
did this addendum predate Clamor’s existence
?

In which case, what
would
the original relationship between these two men have been? It hit her like punch in the gut: that Nguyen was Vogel’s son.

The one in the photo.

Barely recognized to the end.

The name Nguyen being Vietnamese!

Vogel was over there, in what – ’74? Right around the time Tom Nguyen was born. Nguyen never talking about his family – but didn’t he say his father lived “nearby”? Her intuition told her strongly that it was so.

Odd that it wasn’t more widely known – or was it?

She was about to ask Star straight out, when she remembered again her own star-crossed relationship in her last job, and that fierce urge to keep a personal relationship personal. Probably the few who did know about it were sworn to secrecy, Star among them.

She felt a wave of empathy towards Nguyen. No wonder he’d been so preoccupied that last time she tried to visit him at his office. How Natalie knew what it all meant. ‘
Régime de l’absence: Présomption de décès après une période d’absence de dix ans
’ announced the document she’d received about her own dad, shortly before things
really
started to fall apart in her last job.
Presumption of death after 10 years’ absence.

No closure.

Zero
closure.

Just a
gnawing
, rodent-like
need to know, remaining.

She was indeed in some God-awful hall of mirrors, feeling a familiar urge to leave
– to get away from this place, Star’s cottage; “I’ll find you the name and number of a good attorney,” she said, hurriedly giving Star a goodbye hug.

The older woman watched Natalie drive back up towards Pine Glade Way.

She remained in Natalie’s rear view mirror, then turned slowly back towards her door.