Mitch’s house on Telegraph Hill was eerily quiet. It was midmorning and everybody on the Hill had left for work and their maids hadn’t yet arrived to clean up the mess from the night before. The BMW wasn’t parked on the street above, and Artie sat in his car for twenty minutes, just watching. There had been a black-and-white at the corner and Artie guessed that Schuler was finally going to bring him and Mitch in, that too many members of the Club had died for Schuler not to think they were involved in some way. Especially with Chandler’s death.
The police had left their squad car five minutes ago and sauntered down the hill to a coffee shop. They wouldn’t return for a good half hour. Artie still had the keys Mitch had lent him some time back, and he let himself in the back door, hesitating a long moment for any sound of Mitch in the bathroom or his office. Nothing. Nobody. As far as Artie could tell, the house was pretty much as he had left it three mornings before. The sink had a coffee cup in it, and a rinsed-out cereal bowl sat in the drainer. Artie opened the cupboard out of curiosity. One box of bran flakes. The life story of the American male: you started with Cocoa Puffs and ended with All-Bran.
He glanced around the kitchen again and noticed the Mr. Coffee still plugged in, the little On light glowing orange. The glass carafe was half full and Artie rummaged around in the cupboard for another cup, poured some of the coffee in it, and tasted it. It was still light colored and not bitter; the unit hadn’t been left on overnight. His guess was that Mitch had left the house probably not more than an hour before.
The good news was that Mitch was still alive. The bad news was that he had no idea where Mitch had gone.
Or why.
Artie wandered into the bedroom, feeling more like a spy than ever. Jesus, what was he doing here? For twenty years, Mitch Levin had been his best friend, ever since they had both collapsed in laughter watching old tapes of the Three Stooges in a crash pad just off Haight Street. For twenty years, they had been as close as brothers. He and Susan and Mitch had gone on vacations together, he had confided in Mitch about almost everything he had ever done or ever thought of doing, he had even asked Mitch to be a latter-day godfather to Mark.
He started for the door to leave, then shrugged. It was Mitch who’d failed to show up the other night, who had left him to face the Hound by himself. He didn’t owe Mitch any apologies.
He glanced around the bedroom again. What the hell did he hope to find?
He hadn’t been to Mitch’s house all that often—when Mitch had offered to let him spend the night, he’d been surprised and touched. He couldn’t remember Mitch ever throwing any parties there. But that made a sort of sense: it was easier for a bachelor to visit his married friends than the other way around. If you invited people over it meant you had to do the dishes and pick up your dirty underwear from where you’d dropped it on the floor.
He pulled open the drawers of the bureau and did a quick and careful search. Fancy-label boxers and T-shirts, a stack of carefully folded linen handkerchiefs. Along with his suits, Mitch’s shirts were hung in the closet on hangers; they didn’t come neatly folded with a thin paper band around them. Expensive designer shirts, Italian suits—nothing really ostentatious but enough good taste to choke on.
There were no surprises in the john. Two electric razors, one a barber’s special for trimming sideburns, an electric toothbrush, a stand-up canister of Mentadent, mint-flavored Listerine, dental floss, a row of nonprescription cure-alls for headaches, constipation, and diarrhea. A small prescription container of Valium, another of Percodan. Apparently psychiatry had its occupational hazards.
One thing was missing, which left Artie puzzled. There had been no condoms in the drawer of the bedside table and there were none in the medicine chest, which surprised him. Mitch wouldn’t have led a risky life in that respect. Which meant Mitch was something of an ascetic, reputation aside. Maybe it was a reputation he’d deliberately fostered, man-about-town, so none of the wives would keep asking why he didn’t settle down and they knew a woman he would love to meet. Or maybe after listening to hundreds of patients over the years, he’d just turned off to sex.
Or maybe his personal life was more professional than that. Casual encounters deliberately kept casual, maybe play for pay, though in that case you’d think his medicine chest would be loaded with condoms and ditto the bed table.
But there was nothing very exotic about the average man’s sexual life. It was when you looked at the emotional one that you found the variations, the odd and the unusual and the pathetic.
The largest room in the house was in the back, with a huge picture window overlooking the bay. Every
home had one room for show, the one that usually sold the house to prospective buyers. Mitch had taken it and turned it into a combination office and den. The desk was separate from the computer area and clean of papers. A small table radio, a combination phone and answering machine, a notepad, desk calendar …
And two photographs, one a candid shot in a small, black frame and the other a studio portrait sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic and standing upright in a black plastic base.
Artie picked up the smaller one first. The photograph was faded but he could make out a very young Captain Levin standing on the top of a small Japanese-style bridge in a city park, his arm around a young Oriental girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen. They were both smiling for the camera. There was an inscription in the lower right corner that he could barely make out.
Love you alway, your honeybunch Cleo … Saigon, 1975.
An unlikely partner for Mitchell Levin, but there it was. A wartime romance in which Madame Butterfly had disappeared completely when the city had fallen. No way for Mitch to trace her even if he had wanted to. If he did now and succeeded he’d probably discover she was forty and graying, had a husband and three kids but no memory of Mitch from among the hundreds of GIs she’d serviced when she was a working girl so many years before.
The studio portrait was signed simply For Mitch, all my love—Pat. No indication who she was or what part she had played in Mitch’s life, though it was obvious she must have had an important role. Artie started to replace it on the desk, then noticed a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the frame. It was dated September of 1981. A tabloid tragedy—Patricia Bailey had apparently dumped a boyfriend, who then showed up at her small carriage-house apartment late at night, dragged her into the courtyard, shot her, and then
shot himself. The boyfriend had been a law student at a local university and had a history of mental instability.
Artie knew who she had dumped him for. Mitch would have had his first courses in psychiatry by then. Maybe he’d taken it upon himself to suggest she drop the old boyfriend, about whom she must have already had her doubts, and take up with good old stable, lovable Mitch. Perhaps she already had, and the old b.f. had shown up one evening after weeks of brooding about it.
Mitch had never told anybody. But it was obvious that he’d never really been a man-about-town—that had been a role he’d played, helped along by Cathy Shea’s friendly praise when they were younger. In reality, he had been disappointed in love twice, and the last time must have been traumatic. After that he had become a man for whom life was all work and definitely little play. He was a top psychiatrist, but Artie now wondered whom he went to himself. It was like the quatrain from The Rubaiyat: “I often wonder what the Vintners buy one half so precious as the Goods they sell.”
But what about the stories Mitch had told him and the others about his affairs? Not that many, not that gamey, but enough so nobody would wonder about his personal life. Or lack of it.
Artie glanced around the room, frowning. He’d overlooked something. He went back to the bedroom and opened the doors of the chiffonier. Behind them was Mitch’s gun collection. Most of the guns dated from ’Nam, but the Uzi looked new and so did several of the others. All of them were polished and oiled and appeared ready for action. Disturbingly, there were four empty spaces, vague shadows on the wood indicating where the guns had been.
Artie hurried back to the closet and brushed aside the suits and shirts hanging in a neat row. At the back
were a Samsonite two-suiter and several briefcases. Mitch should have had an overnight bag or two to go along with them, but there weren’t any.
Among the lineup of suits and coats were several empty hangers, and Artie wondered what had been on them. One overcoat, that was for sure. Trousers, probably a jacket, and maybe a couple of sweaters.
When Mitch had left him in the Haight, he’d returned home and spent the rest of the day catching up on work and rescheduling appointments. This morning he had packed and left. For where? He’d taken an overnight bag and his car; he hadn’t packed for an extended trip nor had he chosen to fly. Wherever he had gone, it was relatively close by. Not more than a day’s driving, if that.
Artie wandered back to the office-den. Through the picture window he could see clouds rolling in from the ocean. The mist was turning into a light rain and he thanked God he’d stopped by the hotel to pick up his car. It would be hell trying to get a cab up there once the rain hit in earnest.
He looked around, then settled into the chair in the office area of the room. Unlike the desk, the computer table was cluttered with notebooks and a pile of opened letters. Mitch probably didn’t use his computer much except for typing and maybe billing—though Artie was sure Linda did that—and E-mail. There was a small stack of it that Mitch had printed out.
Artie hesitated, then picked up the stack. If you were going to be a snoop, you might as well be thorough. He’d already checked out Mitch’s sex life, or lack of one. This couldn’t be any more embarrassing.
He riffled through the stack, then stopped abruptly at one message. DOD, Department of Defense. From a colonel in Intelligence, somebody Mitch had apparently kept in touch with from his ’Nam days.
No, the colonel had written, they had no information on other species, aliens, or flying saucers. But if
Mitch had proof … The humor was heavy-handed but friendly. Artie checked the date. A little more than a week ago. It had been sent the day after they had first talked to Paschelke. Mitch had been a true believer after all. When he’d gotten home that night, it was too late to phone so he had told his old colonel all about it via E-mail.
Artie hastily leafed through the rest of the correspondence. The ones from Washington got increasingly serious, the bantering tone dropping away. Mitch had kept them fully apprised. Paschelke’s death, Hall’s murder, Lyle’s, Cathy’s, the near suicide with the bottle of Valium and the scotch.
Artie felt his face gradually go white. There were mentions of himself, references to the various incidents he had told Mitch about. Not all the mentions were flattering, and he felt his face flush. The last E-mail said simply that the information Mitch had fed them was being bucked upstairs, but that they needed proof for the situation to be taken seriously. If Levin could offer something really solid, they would move on it immediately.
They hadn’t trusted phones; they could be tapped. The E-mail had undoubtedly been encoded, and Mitch had a program for decoding when he printed it out.
Artie pulled open one of the drawers in the filing cabinet next to the table and started checking the correspondence at random. Mitch had never stopped playing the intelligence officer. He had kept a line open to Washington even after he had been mustered out, a part-time agent for the Bay Area. Attend the protest meetings for this and that—the Bay Area was full of them—and report back. He’d been something of an agent provocateur on at least one occasion. There had probably been others, but Artie didn’t bother checking the rest of the files.
Even after his two true romances had fallen apart, Mitch still had a life. A lousy one.
What was it Chandler had said? That he thought Artie had as much to fear from Mitch as he did from Chandler? That he was surprised Artie had trusted Mitch? Levin, he had said, was a Hound.
For the other side.
It didn’t make sense, Artie thought. He’d suggested to Mitch that they call in the Feds and Mitch had advised against it. Why? Because they hadn’t known enough about what was going on? So Mitch could hog all the glory? So he could still play the game of intelligence officer?
The answer was probably simpler than that. A good Hound wouldn’t trust anybody, and Mitch had never really trusted him. Mitch had wanted to watch him a little longer, see what he did, where he went, what happened to him. After Larry and Cathy, he had been the major player, and Mitch had treated him as bait.
Now Mitch had packed and split, and there was no indication of where he had gone. But after that morning, Artie knew it had to have something to do with him.
He leaned back in the chair and let the small stack of mail slip to the floor.
Twenty years of friendship had just turned to ashes. Twenty years of looking forward to nights of racquetball, to Sunday picnics, to drinking beer in one of the local bars and shooting the shit about the Good Old Days, which had never been all that good but you wanted to think they were. Susan had liked Mitch, had always looked forward to having him over for dinner. And when Mark had been younger, he’d doted on Mitch, who had played the role of uncle to perfection.
But the truth was that he’d been far more of a friend to Mitch than Mitch had ever been to him. He and Susan and Mark had been merely grist for Mitch’s psychological mill, a family that provided occasional companionship and amusement but was more important as a family to be watched and studied.
For twenty years Mitch had pretended to be his best friend.
And for twenty years Mitch had lied to him.
The campus of Bayview Academy was deserted; apparently everybody had left for the holidays. The day had turned sunny and there were few clouds; the view of San Francisco across the bay was dazzling. With a little imagination you could almost believe the claim that when some visitors first saw the city, it struck them as something out of The Arabian Nights.
Artie felt tired but, for the first time in more than a week, relaxed. Schuler was probably out there looking for him but at least the Hound was dead. And then he suddenly wondered about Schuler. Had Chandler reported to anybody higher up? He must have. And who better than Schuler, who knew everything that happened in the city, who knew where the bodies were buried—literally, where people might hide, the places where people might run to. Lyle had never trusted Schuler and Artie would be a fool if he did.
Schuler was probably as good an actor as Chandler, maybe better. Probably all the Old People were. Acting, the ability to convince the observer that you were somebody else, would have become second nature. Kids were natural actors, but most of them lost the ability as they grew up. The Old People hadn’t. For them the ability to masquerade as somebody else probably meant the difference between life and death. Schuler—
Paranoia. He would never be without it.
But at least he now had time to look up Susan and talk about any possible divorce. What had she chosen for grounds? The situation didn’t make any sense but she wouldn’t be at a loss for answers; he knew that. The immediate thing was to try to find Mark, put some pressure on Headmaster Fleming to tell him more than he had. He was Mark’s father—he had a right to
know everything that Fleming knew. Somebody at the school must know where Mark had gone.
Artie called out “Anybody home?” a couple of times, then circled the administration building looking for the caretaker. Nobody. At the rear, the door to the gym hung open, creaking back and forth slightly in the wind. Artie walked in.
The gym was empty. Even if nobody was there, he still had expected to see the equipment, the climbing ropes, the benches, the tumbling apparatus and trampoline, the barbells and exercise machines in the corner, the punching bag, the canvas-covered mats on the floor.
It had been cleaned out. There was nothing but the walls and the bare basketball floor.
The kitchen was as empty as the gymnasium. No pots, no pans, no knife racks, empty china cupboards. Artie opened several of the industrial-sized refrigerators that remained. Some shreds of lettuce in one of the bottom bins, a lone, half-filled plastic jug of spoiled milk, half a stick of butter.
Empty, all of it gone. No silverware, no boxes of cereal, no toasters, no waffle irons, no stainless-steel trays for the steam table.
He wandered into the big dining room. It was cleaned out to the walls. No tables, no chairs, no steam table, no setup for a cafeteria serving line. If he hadn’t had coffee there once, he wouldn’t know the room had ever been used as a dining hall.
The classrooms were just as barren, though the blackboards still remained. On one of them, somebody had chalked Have a Merry Christmas! and in another room a small plastic Santa Claus dangled from a window shade. But the teachers’ desks and the one-arm student chairs were gone.
Artie hurried down to the one room he had wanted to visit, the headmaster’s office. The neatly lettered inscription on the door reading HEADMASTER: SCOTT V.
FLEMING was all that remained. The inside of the office was vacant. No desk, no lamp, no chairs, no filing cabinets.
Schools closed for the holidays but there were usually caretakers, janitors, somebody around. And the equipment was usually still in place, the tables and chairs still there, the library still had books, the gym still had its equipment, the dining hall its steam table and the kitchen its pots and pans and knives.
Bayview Academy hadn’t closed for the holidays.
It had closed, period.
He walked outside to go back to his car when behind him, a familiar voice said, “What are you doing here?”
Artie turned. Collins.
“I could ask the same of you, Collins.”
The boy studied him, wary.
“You didn’t get the notice?”
“What notice?”
“The school’s closed for good. The notices were sent out a week ago.”
If Susan had gotten one, she would have told him. Christmas deliveries, the mails were slow.
“I haven’t been home the last few days.” But if the school had been due to close, it would have been discussed with the parents months ago to give them time to make other arrangements. He knew from experience there weren’t that many schools for handicapped kids. “Kind of sudden, wasn’t it?”
Collins shrugged. “I thought everybody knew.”
Everybody but himself, Artie thought.
“They cleaned it out in a hurry, didn’t they?”
Another shrug and Collins looked vague. He was an expert at looking vague.
“After the buildings and grounds were sold, I guess they sold the furnishings and equipment.”
They’d had a week to do it, Artie thought. Everything was probably on consignment with an auction warehouse, and in another week or two there would
be an ad in some newspaper. Or maybe a trade magazine that covered institutions; they would be the logical buyers.
“Somebody liked the view,” Collins added. “I think they’re going to turn the campus into a resort complex like the Claremont.”
The breeze had started to pick up and Artie buttoned his coat. Collins was wearing a wool sweater and the sudden chill to the air didn’t seem to bother him.
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing here, Collins. School’s out—in more ways than one. Why hang around?”
Collins was staring out at the bay. He didn’t look at Artie and Artie guessed that he didn’t like being asked questions. When he was seventeen he hadn’t liked talking to strangers either.
“Mr. Fleming asked me to drop around every few days, check for vandalism.”
Artie didn’t believe him. Collins was there because he was there.
“What does he care? It’s been sold.”
Another faint shrug. “I dunno, maybe the final papers haven’t been signed yet.”
When he’d seen the gymnasium door standing open, Artie had guessed that the school had closed for the holidays but had hoped that Fleming would still be there. When he hadn’t seen anybody around, he’d thought of breaking into Fleming’s office and going through the filing cabinets to see what records they kept on Mark. Maybe something in them would have given him a clue.
Now there was nothing at all. Except Collins, who had been something more than just a friend to Mark. Had Mark confided in Collins? And if so, what had he told him? Had he talked to Collins about running away, about the girl he was presumably running away with?
Hell, he must have. Kids didn’t talk to their parents,
they talked to each other, and a lot of what they thought they knew about the world they got from other kids as ignorant as themselves. He had, and so had everybody else he’d ever known. It took a lifetime to figure things out as they really were.
He’d expected Collins to turn and walk away but the boy had jammed his left fist in the pocket of his sweater and was staring out at San Francisco across the bay. He was, Artie suddenly realized, waiting.
“What’s your father do, Collins?”
“Nothing fancy, Mr. Banks.” Collins started to walk back to the gymnasium. Artie didn’t move. If Collins was really cutting him off, he’d chase after the little bastard and find out what he knew about Mark if he had to beat him bloody.
A dozen steps away, Collins stopped and waited for him to catch up.
They walked into the gymnasium together. Collins pulled the door closed after him. It was still cold—there was no heat in the empty building—but at least they were out of the wind.
Collins sat on the floor with his back to the wall. He pulled his legs up, gripped his right hand with his left, and wrapped his arms around his knees. Artie sat a few feet away.
“Your father, Collins.”
“I told you, nothing fancy—we’re not rich. He’s in construction.” He hesitated, as if he were trying to remember. “Dry wall, I think.”
Artie stared at him.
“Like the character in Roseanne.”
“The old TV show? I never watched it.”
“You’re putting me on, right, Collins?” He didn’t try to keep the menace out of his voice.
Collins managed to look both surprised and hurt. “I told you it was nothing fancy, that we weren’t rich.”
Artie turned away. “Right. Sorry, Collins.”
It was time for Collins to get up and split, saying he
had to be back home. Collins didn’t move.
“Where is he, Collins?”
Collins picked at his shoelaces.
“Where’s who?”
“Mark.”
Collins shrugged. “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. I wouldn’t rat on Mark.”
Collins knew all right. He was lying. Artie pulled the automatic out of his pocket and placed it on the floor in front of him, out of Collins’ reach or where his feet might kick it away.
“Mark is my son,” Artie said quietly. “I will do absolutely anything to find out where he is. Do you understand, Collins? We’re all alone; nobody saw me drive up. I don’t think anybody will see me drive away.”
Collins didn’t look impressed.
“Then I couldn’t tell you anything, could I?”
Artie kicked the gun across the floor and held his head in his hands.
“Okay, Collins, beat it.”
Collins didn’t move.
Collins was a lock and there had to be a key, Artie thought. Did he know where Mark had gone? Yes. Was Collins going to tell him? No. Why? Because Mark had told him not to tell anybody. But there was a key and Collins was waiting for him to use it.
Then he had the answer. All Collins really needed was an excuse.
“You love Mark, don’t you, Collins?”
Collins nodded, mute.
“I don’t care what happened,” Artie said.
“I told you. Not much.” Collins looked like he wanted to cry.
“Collins.” Artie hesitated. “I can’t tell you everything that’s been going on but I can tell you one thing. I don’t give a damn if Mark has chased off for a week’s fling. More power to him—I had my own when I was his age.”
He thought momentarily about Mary and wondered if his brief affair constituted a fling and if it had been anything like that for Mark. He doubted it; Mark seemed much more pragmatic about sex than he had ever been.
“I want to find Mark,” Artie continued, “because his life’s in danger.”
Collins looked worried. “Medication?”
Artie shook his head. “No.”
Collins said quietly, “Look me in the eyes and tell me his life’s in danger.”
Kid stuff, Artie thought with surprise; Collins was older than that. Then he looked into Collins’ eyes and changed his mind. The boy’s eyes were a steady gray, his face expressionless, and Artie had the uncomfortable feeling that Collins could tell a lie from the truth at a glance. For a moment all Artie could think about was Cathy and James and Andy and Chandler’s face just before Charlie Allen had shot him. There was a chance, maybe only a small chance, that another Hound for the Old People would come after him and by extension Susan and Mark. He wasn’t out of it; he’d probably never be out of it. But he desperately wanted them out of it. At the very least he owed it to them to tell them what they faced. There were no innocent bystanders, Chandler had made that pretty clear.
Artie said, “His life’s in danger, Collins.”
Collins stared at him a moment longer, then glanced away.
“Mark went up to Willow. To meet his mother.”
“When?”
“This morning. A friend drove him up.”
Nobody had answered when he’d called; communications had broken down somewhere up there. Mark’s weeklong fling was over, but Artie had the oppressive feeling that Mark was driving into danger and Susan was probably up to her neck in it.
He stood up.
“Thanks, Collins.”
What he had told Collins was the truth and it had been the key that had released Collins from whatever promise he’d given Mark. The thing that bothered Artie was the small expression of satisfaction on Collins’ face just before the boy had turned away.