Chapter 6

The Never-Ending Party

June 24: San Francisco

I woke up early and took my coffee to the roof. The bay was fogged in and the big boats were visible only by their lights, spectral in the haze. The ladies were beginning to arrive for work downstairs. I listened to them chatter, coming up the street. Far from annoying me, their voices sounded like home. I knew there were plenty of people who would find my living arrangement difficult to understand. My two-story cinder block box suited me perfectly. Still, buildings were growing up all around—four, five, six stories tall. More people were in the neighborhood all the time. The families were leaving and the twenty and thirty something party people were moving in. A friend who taught dance to kids at a local studio had told me that they were cutting back hours and staff. There weren’t enough kids in the city anymore. The demographics were shifting. It was like Logan’s Run but the old people weren’t euthanized, they just buckled their kids into their car seats and went to the East Bay. Still, I would remain as long as possible, like one of those old ladies in a little Victorian house completely surrounded by concrete walls. They would have to force me out by eminent domain.

I was about to go in when my phone pinged with an incoming text from Ashna. She had figured out the identity of enigma_admin. Weirdly enough, she had his email address in her own contact list.

—This f*ing guy! I’ve been to parties at his place a few times. James Ringold. Everybody calls him Molly (for obvious reasons). He’s a real weirdo. Lives on top of a building in SOMA. One of those dudes who made millions in the first dot com boom and retired to a life of non-stop partying. He was employee number five at PayPal or eBay or something. A crypto nerd like me. He was into that sex cult for incels back in the day. And burning man. He’s a no sleeve burner—

—no sleeve burner?—

—Yeah man. No sleeves. They never have sleeves! I don’t know. They cut them off of all their shirts. Or maybe there’s a shop that sells them that way, artfully ripped with threads all hanging off. Not a bad look if you have the shoulders for it. Anyway, it’s been a couple of years since I attended any parties at his place but I just asked a friend at work and he says the party has not stopped. The EDM and MDMA are strong with this one. You should check him out before you go to Seattle. It was the solstice a few days ago. The party should still be going strong—

Ashna sent me the address and I replied that I would go by and see if I could scare up any clues. From the description, he didn’t sound like a strong suspect but I had a couple of days free so it couldn’t hurt to check it out.

I spent the day working, grinding and smoothing welded joints. By five o’clock I was ready to quit. I had texted my friend Roberto earlier to see if he wanted to crash the party with me and he was an enthusiastic yes. He was coming over from Oakland and we were meeting for tacos in the Mission, then heading to Molly’s rooftop pleasure palace.

We met at Taqueria El Buen Sabor on Valencia. Roberto didn’t like fancy restaurants—especially the ones in the Mission district that catered to the tech crowd—so we compromised on my favorite taqueria. It didn’t have much atmosphere but you could sit at the counter that faced the street and watch people pass by out on Valencia.

“The pollo verde’s better at Taqueria Cancun,” Roberto said, poking at his taco, perched on his stool like a malnourished buzzard with a toreador’s pompadour. “Not enough cumin in this.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“How was the food in LA?”

“No idea. I just ate take out and room service.”

“A wasted trip.”

“Not completely. I met a guy down there who asked me to do a job for him.”

“One of your secret jobs.”

“Yeah. That’s why I need to go to this party house tonight. The guy who lives there might have some info.”

“Interesting. If you need me to cause a distraction let me know. I’ll knock over a potted palm and start screaming.”

We caught the BART two stops, getting off at Powell and walking down into SOMA. The address was on Howard Street. When we reached it, we found an old, six story brick apartment building. I could see from the street that there was a kind of penthouse sprouting up from the roof. A weird structure built up out of steel girders, big panes of glass, cinder block, and corrugated metal roof panels, it didn’t look new but it didn’t look original either. Through the windows I could see lights flashing purple and blue.

“Is that where we’re going?” Robert asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Just need to figure out how to get in.”

“I bet those two can help.” Roberto pointed down the street. Two women were approaching. They looked like jeans and T-shirt software architects who had gotten dressed up for a night out and had a few drinks on their way over. They stopped in front of the main entrance while one of them looked something up on her phone. Roberto and I wandered over.

“Going to Molly’s?” I asked.

“Yeah. Just need to find the code,” said the taller one, not looking up.

“Hi,” said the shorter, drunker one, peeking around her friend. She wore what I thought might be a Doctor Who cosplay outfit—suspenders with culottes, rainbow shirt, and a long coat.

“Hello!” Roberto answered. “I want to dance with you. You look like fun.”

“Found it!” Exclaimed the taller one who, in fact, looked much more like Doctor Who than her companion but wore a more traditional burner outfit in the steampunk genre that included leather pants and World War One pilot goggles. She typed a five digit code on the keypad by the door while I reflexively memorized it.

We rode up to the sixth floor together in a rattletrap elevator, then climbed a set of dank stairs to the roof where we found a crowd already assembled, lounging on chaises that looked like they were made out of reclaimed pallet wood, milling around the edges, and dancing in twos or threes to the steady thump of bass heavy EDM coming from an open, roll up metal door leading into the penthouse. As we moved into the mix, I realized that many of the partiers looked older, like they might have been into the scene all the way back at the beginning in the early to mid-nineties. There were plenty of younger people though, like the two we had entered with, sprinkled into the mix amongst the grizzled OG burners. Nearly everyone was in glorious regalia. There were fake fur leg warmers, dresses made of silver metallic fabrics shimmering like fish scales, leather vests weathered by alkali dust, top hats, Edwardian trench coats fitted at the waist and flaring out below, chainmail bikinis, neon colored booty shorts, and, as Ashna had mentioned, plenty of missing sleeves. I admired their devotion to creative self-expression. Strolling through the crowd toward the open door, I saw lots of dilated pupils and blissed out faces shiny with perspiration.

“OMFG Justin,” Roberto said into my ear, clutching my arm. “I feel like I just stepped back in time to two thousand two. I’m sure I went to this exact same party my first year in art school.”

“Yeah, I went to this party about twenty times my first year. We probably went together. These might even be the same people.”

“I’m glad they found something that works for them.”

Inside, the penthouse was one huge, open space—hardwood floor, stained and scuffed by years of parties, eighteen foot ceiling at the center with exposed girders and insulation, unpainted cinder block walls, alternating with giant, wood framed windows that looked out over the rooftops of SOMA to the south and the downtown skyline to the north. A DJ was set up in one corner on what looked like a permanent platform. The music, crisp and chest thumping, came from speakers mounted near the roof throughout the space. A thick crowd surrounded the platform, leaping, cavorting, and spinning in trance like movements. A kitchen took up the opposite corner with stainless counters, huge refrigerator, and butcher block island. To the left of the roll up door was a chill out area with a massive super shag carpet and innumerable pillows and bean bags scattered around for lounging. To the right stood a cube structure on hefty casters made of clear pine and plywood, maybe ten feet by ten feet, fully enclosed, with an open door through which I could see soft light and white linens.

“I’m going to go dance,” Roberto said.

“Okay, I’m going to wander for a while,” I replied, moving off toward the cube. I paused outside, curious. The interior seemed quiet and serene in contrast to the chaos of the party.

“That’s Molly’s mobile bedroom pod,” a voice behind me said, close to my ear. I turned to face the speaker. It was the tall woman who had gotten us into the building. “Completely soundproof. You can go in there and close the door and you won’t hear the music at all. You’ve never been here before, have you?”

“No. First time. What’s that?” I asked, pointing to an enclosed loft above the DJ stage.

“That’s Molly’s sanctuary. He never lets anyone in there. Computers and stuff I think. I’m Anna by the way.” She held her hand out.

“Justin,” I said as she twined her long fingers around mine. “Interesting. Where is he? I’ve never met him.”

“He’s dancing.” She pointed. “The guy with the cowboy shirt and beard.”

He was a big guy—the kind of person who was born to plow fields and hunt wooly mammoths with a stone tipped spear. The sleeves of his cowboy shirt were, indeed, missing. He jumped from one foot to the other, turning in circles like a Russian dancing bear. Nearby, I saw Roberto dancing with the Doctor Who cosplayer. She was a good dancer, animating and doing isolations. Roberto was good too, moving his lanky frame around in sinuous waves.

“Do you think he keeps the sleeves? After he rips them off?”

“What?” The music had gotten louder all of a sudden, killing any possibility of communication.

“Going outside,” I yelled, pointing toward the door. Anna nodded, mouthed something that looked like ‘see you later’ and turned away, headed for the dance floor.

Fog rolled in, cold and damp. The party had mostly moved inside. A few stragglers were leaning on the parapet that wrapped around the edge of the roof, smoking or just staring at the city lights. The outside area took up about a third of the roof with the penthouse covering the other two thirds except for a narrow walkway on both sides. I strolled casually around to the right and followed the walkway all the way to the back edge of the building where it turned ninety degrees and continued. With the outside wall of the penthouse on my left and the parapet on my right, I continued on.

There were no windows on this side except for one, high up and near the northeast corner about where Molly’s loft sanctuary should be. It was a multi-paned casement window with hinges on the left, open a few inches. The wall was smooth blockwork but there was a metal pipe that ran up through the roof near my feet, continued to about where the floor of the loft would be, made a ninety degree bend, and poked through the wall. It was probably carrying a fiber internet connection up to his work area. Fiber was often run through heavy duty steel conduit because it was expensive to fix if cut or chewed through by mice looking for nest material. The pipe was attached to the building every few feet with metal harnesses. I was pretty sure it would hold my weight but getting from the pipe to the window ledge would be difficult. I would have to wedge a toe between the pipe and the wall, essentially standing on the topmost harness, then push myself up to the left and get my hands on the window ledge. My Stan Smiths would probably get scuffed. I looked up at the window for a moment longer, gauging distances and considering best options. If I was going to do it I needed to do it then, before someone else wandered around the building or Molly decided to take a break in his sanctuary. I looked over the edge. Two stories down, the roof of the neighboring building stretched away, fading into the fog. If I screwed up, that was where I would land. If he had Wolhardt’s notes they had to be up there. Where else would he keep them? His house had only two places where he could have any privacy. I doubted he would keep them in his rolling bed pod. I shrugged, grasped the pipe, and started climbing, leaning out with my feet against the wall, hand over hand. I reached the top quickly, placed my toe on the harness I had scoped out, and pushed off, straightening my leg and reaching for the window sill. My fingers wrapped around it and I hung for a moment, then let go with my left hand and quickly pulled the window open wide enough to get my body through. Hand back on the sill, I hung for another moment, then pulled up, reached in, got one foot up on the sill then the other, and crouched in the opening, hands bracing me on either side, breathing heavily.

The loft was dark inside except for a lot of glowing LEDs. I fished my keys out of my jacket pocket and turned on the tiny flashlight I kept on the ring. The beam illuminated a room maybe twelve feet wide by eight deep. A counter height workbench ran the whole width of the loft. Beyond that, a short section of varnished plywood floor, then built in shelves on the far wall. I hopped off the sill, clearing the workbench and landing softly on the plywood. Not wanting to waste time, I began to search quickly and systematically. There was a lot of equipment under the workbench and on top of it—computers, laptops, two giant monitors on movable wall mounted arms, soldering iron, 3D printer, laser cutter, a few technical manuals, but nothing that looked like Wolhardt’s notes. I turned to the shelves. They were almost completely taken up with a vast collection of vinyl, CDs, and DVDs. On the floor below the shelves were three plastic file bins. I flipped through the neatly organized files—phone bills, bank statements, taxes, correspondence, investment accounts. At the right edge of the shelves was a small section devoted to books. There were several on cryptography, a biography of Edward Elgar, some programming language references, a dictionary. I did another search around the room and found a safe I had missed earlier. It was under the workbench and had several old, partly disassembled laptops stacked on top of it. The door hung partly open. I had stopped being surprised by safes left open or unlocked long ago. People with safes often left them open, only locking them when they would be gone for an extended period. Inside, I found two big kilo bags full of off white powder, a lot of smaller Ziploc bags, a .45 caliber handgun, a tidy stack of cash, passport, and a file folder containing Molly’s birth certificate and social security card. The powder, I guessed from his nickname, was probably ecstasy. Unfortunately, I was not interested in stealing his identity or becoming a drug dealer. Why, though, was he dealing drugs on this level if he was a dot com millionaire? The answer was probably in his bank and investment statements if I wanted to hang around and look. He had probably blown all his money. I emphatically did not want to hang around though. The never-ending party made a lot of sense now. It brought with it a never-ending supply of customers. Molly had an interesting game going on, one I wanted nothing to do with.

I went back to the window, checked to make sure no one was below, then climbed out and lowered myself, grasping the sill and dangling. One handed, I pushed the window back where it had been then let go, rotating as I fell. It was about a six or seven foot drop. I felt a jolt of pain in my knees when my feet hit the roof but I rolled through, somersaulting and coming back up to standing. I shook my legs out then started back along the walkway, heart rate slowing. Halfway around, I met Molly coming fast toward me.

“What are you doing back here buddy? Snooping around?”

I stopped. He took up the full width of the walkway. “Just getting some air,” I answered. “I got a little hot inside.”

“I don’t like people back here.” He stepped forward. Even in the dark I could tell he was very high. I could almost feel the quivering energy bursting off him. He pushed past me and glanced around the corner. “Go back to the party buddy. Nothing worth seeing around here.”

“Okay,” I replied.

Molly turned the corner and disappeared from sight, moving fast. I took a deep breath, norepinephrine levels stabilizing, and walked back toward the front. The music had grown more robotic, mixing metallic clanks and pings with weird phased bass and drum beats.

“Hey, I was looking for you.” It was Anna again.

“You found me.”

“Can I ask you a question? Is your friend gay? My friend thinks he’s coming on to her but he gives off major gay vibes to me.”

“Roberto? Yes, very gay. Sorry. He likes to dance with girls but he doesn’t like to do anything else with them. This has happened before believe it or not.”

“Oh well. Are you headed back in?”

“Yeah, I was just getting some air.”