Boxing the Octopus, page 3
Cape veered to his right, looking for the secret staircase.
A trampoline nestled in a corner of the pier, a teenage girl bouncing giddily as nervous parents counted out the twenty minutes that cost them thirty dollars. Past the trampoline was the stairway.
Adjacent to the stairs was a small booth, its sides covered in aerial shots of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz. A man in his twenties was calling out to passersby.
“Ever take a ride in a float plane?” The guy looked more surfer than pilot.
Cape spotted the plane tethered in the marina behind the pier, bright yellow and white, a single engine two-seater. “Do you fly the plane?”
“Fuck, no.” The guy held up his hands. “Gerry’s the pilot, went home for the day.”
“How come you’re still here?”
“A lot of people book the night before, come back the next day.”
“How many?”
“Ten to fifteen a day, this time of year. High season we can turn twenty a day, easy.”
“How much?”
“Hundred bucks for thirty minutes, one-seventy-five an hour. That’s per person, but couples get a twenty percent discount.”
Cape’s eyebrows rose as he did the math.
“Interested?”
“Fascinated.” Cape turned slowly, scanning the myriad shops in his immediate vicinity. He lost count before his head turned ninety degrees.
The pier was an optical illusion.
At first glance it seemed to be a cluster of colorful stores and restaurants, but a few steps, twists, and turns revealed side alleys with smaller shops, open performance spaces, and free-standing carts.
By the time tourists reached the marina on the west side of the pier where the sea lions swam, they had passed through an endless gauntlet of temptation. It reminded Cape of the floor plan in a Vegas hotel, forcing guests to walk through the casino on their way to the elevators.
Cape studied the foot traffic and thought about armored cars. Even on a slow day, this place was a gold mine. Like the pier he was standing on, there was much more to this case than he first thought.
Cape took the stairs two at a time.
8
Anastasia arranged the children two at a time, until they were all standing in a perfectly straight line. Then she tore their heads off, one by one.
She was careful not to break a nail as she pried her fingers into their necks. It was delicate work, and their little bodies were fragile. She laid the heads next to the torsos, adjusting their positions so she could stare into their unblinking, lifeless eyes.
The nesting dolls were hand-painted, the largest as big as her open palm, the smallest no bigger than a thimble. These matryoshki were imported from Russia by her uncle, who owned the store. Her older cousin managed a similar store in Los Angeles, and her two siblings, Sergey and Eva, handled deliveries and distribution.
Anastasia managed the San Francisco store on the pier. She was also responsible for quality control.
Every nesting doll had to be taken apart and examined. Many were given to children as gifts, so if a single doll had two halves stuck together, it might ruin the magic. That fragile moment of wonder when a child discovered another doll inside the first, and the second, until the tiniest of dolls was revealed.
Each matryoshka in front of her was painted to resemble a Russian child in traditional dress, alternating girl-boy-girl-boy as they diminished in size. Anastasia stared at their eyes and smiled, thinking of the layers of clothes she wore as a young girl, remembering the braids in her hair.
The bell over the door chimed, breaking her reverie.
Anastasia scowled but kept her gaze on the dolls, fixing her place in memory. She took a breath, annoyed she hadn’t locked the door. She rarely had visitors this late, but spring and summer brought so many tourists to San Francisco that people sometimes stumbled in after closing.
Anastasia looked up and found Sergey and Eva staring back at her, amused expressions on their faces.
“How are your children, Nastya?” Eva always called her sister by her nickname, less from affection than because it sounded like nasty in English. “Have you given the new dolls names?”
“Will you read them a story before you put them to sleep?” Sergey, always trying to sound clever, never quite pulling it off. “How will the little ones breathe when you put them back together?”
Anastasia stuck out her tongue. “You clowns are back early. Did you learn anything?”
Sergey looked at his feet as Eva took a sudden interest in the matroyshki lining the shelves. It was Eva who finally spoke.
“Neither driver has been found. The politsiya don’t know anything.”
“You know this?” Anastasia felt her jaw tighten.
Sergey nodded. “Our contact at the precinct swears to their ignorance.”
“Chush’ sobach’ya!” Anastasia resisted the urge to sweep the nesting dolls from the counter. “The armored car company is not responsible for the money?”
“We have the receipt from the driver,” replied Eva. “From his pickup—but until the investigation is finished, insurance will not pay.”
“Money was stolen, what more do they need to know?”
Eva shrugged. “Until the drivers are found, nobody knows if they were in on it, so the car company can’t trust the receipts.”
Sergey nodded. “It’s a big circle of doubt.”
“We will get our money.” Eva held up her hands in appeasement. “Eventually.”
“This was not our money,” Anastasia snapped.
Sergey looked perplexed. “Of course not, Nastya, it was uncle’s money—we know you like to be responsible, but try being patient.”
“You don’t know, do you?” Anastasia looked into the biggest doll’s eyes as if they might hold the answer. “This last deposit, it wasn’t Uncle’s money.”
“But it came through the store,” said Eva. “Didn’t it?”
“It came from—” Anastasia started to say something but changed her mind. “It came from our new investors.”
“Like a loan?”
“Yes, Eva,” said Anastasia. “Exactly like a loan—a small business loan. So we can expand to new markets.”
“And these investors aren’t patient?”
“They are used to getting paid on time.” Anastasia switched her gaze back to Sergey, who suddenly looked like a scared little boy. “You see the problem now, govniuk?”
Sergey winced at the verbal castration. “What do you want us to do, Nastya?”
“Find the drivers.” Anastasia looked wistfully at her wooden children, each face alongside a matching body. On this counter, the world was still an orderly place. “Bring them here so I can tear their heads off.”
Sergey and Eva left without another word, the door chime signaling their flight.
Anastasia’s gaze drifted around the store. Hundreds of nesting dolls stared back in mute sympathy. She looked at their perfect braids and ran her fingers through her own hair, trying to remember the precise moment when her childhood was taken away.
Anastasia shook her head, turning her attention back to the disassembled figures on the counter. There was work to be done, and she was the responsible one.
She took a deep breath, flexed her fingers, and started putting the pieces back together.
9
Sally flexed her fingers and watched the pieces of dried blood crack and fall from her hands.
After the rusted flakes of the rapist’s DNA had fallen into the sink, Sally studied them as if reading her fortune in tea leaves. Then she opened the tap until the water turned into a pink tornado and disappeared down the drain.
She scrubbed her hands twice before soaking a washcloth in hot water and holding it against her face. The lampblack came off in ebony streaks. A look in the mirror confirmed she still looked like a chimney sweep. It was several minutes before she was clean enough to take a bath.
Sally took off her clothes and examined herself for injury. She lacked any western sense of vanity but liked what she saw, a nearly perfect physique marred only by a constellation of scar tissue. Smooth lines and taut muscle were punctuated by an occasional bruise here and there.
It was a body forged over a lifetime for a single purpose. After a wasted childhood she was finally putting it to good use.
In the Japanese tradition, the water was a few degrees above the temperature of blood, which always felt hotter when it was outside the body. Sally let herself slip underwater and closed her eyes, holding her breath until her past swam forward to the present.
Sally five years old, sits in the backseat, her parents driving.
Sally counted under the water. After a minute she opened her eyes but stayed beneath the surface, watching the bubbles escape from her nose.
Headlights fill the windshield as the sound of a truck’s horn fills her ears.
Sally let her buoyancy change as air fled her lungs. For a moment she hung suspended, weightless between the world of the living and the world below.
Orphaned, Sally travels to Hong Kong with her nanny, Li Mei.
She stayed perfectly still and kept counting. Two minutes is a lifetime when you can’t breathe.
Sally is enrolled in a school that teaches young girls how to defend themselves.
Images of friends flashed before her eyes as spots appeared at the edges of her vision. All ghosts, only their memories alive.
A school where girls learn how to kill with their hands but without remorse.
As Sally sank to the bottom of the tub, the room slipped away, and she saw the faces she’d been waiting for—her mother and father—telling her to wait just a little while longer.
A school run by the Chinese Triads.
Sally broke the surface and sucked a lungful of air, an involuntary smile breaking across her face. If your childhood friend was Death, there is nothing as nostalgic as drowning.
Sally, the star pupil, flees to America, the land of her father’s birth.
Sally grasped both sides of the tub and stood, feeling clear-headed and calm. Drying herself, she walked naked to her bedroom, a small chamber behind the dojo where she taught her students how to defend themselves. Her bed was a simple mattress on tatami mats.
Sally held the image of her parents as she closed her eyes, hoping for sweet dreams of a childhood that ended too soon.
10
Never was a childhood as magical as the window of a toy store.
Giraffe’s Best Friend was the second shop on the elevated walkway. Tiny mannequins frolicked alongside giant stuffed animals in a cardboard jungle, the eponymous giraffe front and center. The clothes on the plastic kids were playful and stylish, Baby Gap as reimagined by Willy Wonka and Donna Karan.
A sign flipped to Closed hung inside the glass door. Cape knocked and waited, idly wishing he could dress as well as a five-year-old.
Vera Young wasn’t as old as her telephone voice suggested. As she unlocked the door, Cape guessed she was about his age, old enough to know better but still young enough to make bad choices. Auburn hair and a figure somewhere between comfortable and distracting. As she stepped aside to let him in, Cape got a good look at her eyes, dark brown and impossibly sad.
“Mister Weathers?”
“Cape.” He shook her hand and forced a smile, which she returned with some effort.
“Vera.”
She relocked the door behind him. A cash register sat on a counter to the left, floor-to-ceiling clothing racks ran along each wall. In the center of the store, a sense of wonder was palpable even with no kids around.
Low tables and chairs covered with wooden blocks, puzzles, and games, too small for anyone over the age of six. Standing sentry around the table was a ring of stuffed animals, each one taller than any toddler by at least a foot. They looked noble but well-used, grateful recipients of daily hugs. Cape visualized parents trying in vain to get their kids to leave the store.
“Let’s go in back.” Vera led the way through a maze of clothing and toys. “I don’t want anyone to think we’re open.”
At the back of the store was a patchwork curtain, pulled aside to reveal a door. The back room was barely four by ten, just wide enough for a desk on the left and a small cot on the right. A single window overlooked the service road and marina below. Directly opposite, at eye level, was the outsized edifice of the aquarium.
Vera took the desk chair and gestured to the cot.
Cape sat down slowly. “You sleep here?”
“Not often.” She looked out the window. “Naps occasionally, after a long day when I know I’ll have to do paperwork later. I don’t like to work at home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Burlingame.”
“That’s quite a commute.”
“Forty minutes on a good day, but this is the best location for my store to turn a profit, though it’s barely a living since my rent increased.” Vera shrugged. “I get to make clothes, something I wanted to do since I was a kid.”
“You design these clothes yourself?”
“About half of what I sell in the store,” said Vera, with no small about of pride. “I work with a woman on the peninsula who does the manufacturing.”
‘That’s impressive,” said Cape, and it was. He was sitting across from a woman who ran a business and could make clothes, while the only thing he knew how to make was trouble. “You have kids of your own?”
“I had a daughter.” Vera’s face clouded and cleared in an instant.
Cape replayed her answer in his head to make sure he’d heard the tense correctly, then cursed himself for asking the wrong question. Small talk was meant to get clients relaxed before he transformed into an intrusive bastard.
“I don’t have kids,” said Cape.
“That’s too bad, they change everything.”
“I imagine they like coming to your store.” It was the best recovery he could manage. “But you called me about something else.”
Vera smiled, maybe at the compliment, more likely at finally cutting through the bullshit. She took a breath before letting the words rush across the room.
“Hank is innocent.”
Cape waited.
“Inspector Mango, and his partner—”
“Beau,” said Cape. “Inspector Jones, he’s also with the Personal Crimes Division. On bigger cases they often work together.”
“They were both very nice, but…” Her voice trailed off before regaining its pitch. “They don’t know a damn thing.”
“They only know what they know.” Cape chose his next words carefully. “That means what they can prove, not what someone tells them.”
“I told them Hank didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Does Hank own scuba gear?”
“I know how it looks.” She turned back toward the window. “He’s out there somewhere. They just haven’t found him.”
“They’re looking.”
“I don’t mean out there, hiding,” she said. “I mean out there, in the water.”
Cape studied her reflection in the window, distorted by imperfections in the glass. She had aged a thousand years since he’d arrived.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find Hank,” she said. “Prove he’s innocent.”
“What if he’s not?”
“The police said you were good.”
“I’m competent.”
“A good man. That’s what they said.”
“Maybe.” Cape paused. “That’s why I asked a question you chose not to answer.”
“You know these officers.”
“For many years,” said Cape. “If that’s a problem, I could recommend another private invest—”
“No,” said Vera. “I like that—I liked them. This isn’t personal, I just need someone who can talk to them, someone they might respect. Someone who isn’t me.” She tried again. “They have their job to do—”
“—and their job is to put someone in jail.”
“Yes.” Vera almost lunged out of her chair. “And Hank isn’t a criminal.”
“But he is a suspect.” It sounded harsh, but a delusional client was just a lawsuit waiting to happen. “I may not be able to help you.”
“You sound like you don’t want to help me.”
“I doubt I can,” said Cape. “Hank is missing, and even if you don’t believe everything you’ve seen on CSI, the police have more resources than I do.”
“How much do you charge?”
Cape considered inflating his day rate to discourage her, but Vinnie warned she wouldn’t take no for an answer. He quoted a number. She didn’t flinch.
“When can you start?”
Cape didn’t answer at first. He stood and looked out the window at the marina, a lone sailboat bobbing in the water, silver masts reflecting lights from the pier in a constantly shifting, drunken constellation. He thought of armored cars and millions in cash, ancient shipwrecks and lost gold, and wondered if mermaids played poker with the treasure they found on the sea floor.
He tried to think of anything other than the words he was about to say.
“I’ll get started right away.”
11
“Get started right away.”
The Doctor waited for the inevitable stream of expletives before saying anything else.
It came in a torrent of Cantonese that he struggled to follow, but the Doctor kept himself calm by counting from yat to sup before it came to a halt. He adjusted the phone against his ear and plowed ahead in English, in part to assert control over the conversation but also to annoy the bureaucrat on the other end of the line.
