To forestall Tamara’s lecture, I said quickly, “Did you tell her she could come in and pick up her money?”
“I told her.”
“And?”
“She wants you to deliver it. Sounded kind of upset, second time she called.”
“Upset?”
“You know, nervous, like something was bothering her.”
“Her husband, maybe. Is she home now?”
“Said she was. Wanted me to bring the money out to her, but I told her that wasn’t my job. This girl don’t make no house calls with bags full of cash.”
“You’re right, it’s my job. Okay, I’ll swing in now and pick up the money and deliver it. If she calls again, tell her I’m on my way.”
“Want me to wait til you get here?”
“No need. Go ahead and lock up when you’re ready.”
I would have preferred to drop Emily off at the condo, but when I called I got the machine and then remembered that Kerry’d said she might have to work late tonight. Emily said she didn’t mind going with me. In fact, the prospect seemed to please her — a way to prolong our day together.
So we drove downtown and I took her upstairs to the office. She’d been there once before — I felt she ought to see where I conducted the business part of my life — and she hadn’t seemed particularly impressed. You couldn’t blame her. It was a big, old-fashioned loft, once an artist’s studio, with a high ceiling, nondescript decor, a couple of windows that offered an impressive view of the ass-end of the federal building downhill, and a suspended light fixture that looked like a grappling hook surrounded by clusters of brass testicles. Emily had grown up in a deliberately shelted environment in Greenwood, an affluent community down the Peninsula; this was a whole new world to her.
Tamara was gone, so we had the place to ourselves. While I opened the safe, Emily fetched Cohalan’s briefcase from under my desk. Then she stood quietly watching as I transferred the stacks of currency.
When I was done she said, “Why do people think money is so important?”
“Not everybody does. Just some people.”
“Like my mom and dad.”
I was not about to go there with her. “They think that if you have enough of it, you can buy all the things you want and it’ll solve all your problems. But they’re wrong. What they don’t realize is that money can only change the outside of you. You’re still the same person inside, rich or poor, good or bad.”
She nodded. “I don’t want a lot of money when I get older.”
I didn’t ask her what she did want because I was pretty sure I knew — the basics, anyway. She wanted stability and the illusion of safety. She wanted people she cared about not to die suddenly. She wanted to be noticed and nurtured and allowed to grow up to be her own person. She wanted not to be hurt any more. She wanted to be loved.
But I would not go there with her, either. Not verbally. Actions were what counted, not words. So I said, “That’s a good attitude to have,” and smiled at her and let it go at that.
Daly City was gray and wet with fog and black with early night. When the beachfront stables of the San Francisco Riding Academy loomed spectrally ahead, I slowed and made the first inland turn off Skyline. It occurred to me as I did that Emily might like to take lessons at the academy, since she’d been enrolled at one of the exclusive stables in horsy Greenwood. I asked her, and she said, “Well, maybe.” She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. Could be riding was a pursuit Sheila or Jack Hunter had pressed on her in their desire to fit in with Greenwood’s elite. I wouldn’t make the same mistake. If Emily decided she wanted to join the academy here, the decision would be entirely hers.
Carolyn Dain and Jay Cohalan lived in a modest tract home a couple of streets to the east. I found the place and pulled up in front. The house was painted a yellow color that had a faint greenish tinge in the fog; the only other thing that distinguished it from the lines of single-family dwellings in the neighborhood was a ow of cypress shrubs that had been trimmed into topiary shapes in the narrow front yard. The driveway was empty, but light shone behind drawn drapes in the picture window.
Emily asked, “Can I come with you?”
“Better if you wait here. I won’t be long.”
She said, “Okay,” and settled down with her hands folded in her lap. She was good at waiting, being by herself. She’d had plenty of practice when her selfish, fearful parents had been alive.
I got the briefcase from the trunk, hurried through the windy drizzle of fog. The doorbell made a discordant noise inside, as if there was something wrong with the chiming mechanism. Almost immediately the door opened inward. I said, “Ms. Dain?” because I couldn’t see her behind it, and at the same time took a couple of steps into a dim hallway lit only by a spill of lampglow from the living room.
As soon as I cleared the far edge, my head swiveling to look around the door, it came swinging past me with enough force to create a swishing sound. I heard it slam, saw a dark shape moving — registered man, not woman — and in the next instant something slammed across the side of my neck and jaw. Slash of pain, flare like lightning behind my eyes, and I was off balance, stumbling, throwing an arm up as the shape crowded in on me. Grunt, his or mine. A downsweeping blur—
This time the blow glanced off my upraised elbow, cracked hard across my ear, knocked me down in a roaring confusion of heat and sparks and black-streaked hurt.
6
I did not lose consciousness even for a second, but I was cockeyed and disoriented, trying to crawl and get up at the same time. I heard and felt him scrabbling above me, the onion-laden hiss and pant of his breath. He tore the briefcase out of my grasp. I tried to fight him, but my body wouldn’t obey the command; the only motor responses it seemed capable of in those first few seconds were crawling and struggling to rise.
My head bumped into something, wall, and just as that happened, his weight came down hard on my back, crushed me flat to the floor. I heard myself gasping and choking for air. A knee bored between my shoulder blades, something hard jabbed the nape of my neck. Words filtered through the addled haze, the noise I was making: “Lay still, you old fuck.” I’d been squirming; I quit that, not because he’d told me to but because my wind and strength were starting to come back. The object moved higher on my neck, to the bone above my left ear. Steadied there, digging into skin and hair. I knew what it was then: the muzzle of a short-barreled revolver.
“All right,” he said.
Clicking sound, soft and yet as loud as an explosion — the hammer being thumbed back to cock.
He’s going to kill me!
Terror mushroomed. My body surged in a wild effort to twist, turn, roll away, get my hands up.
He squeezed the trigger.
The hammer fell, I heard or thought I heard the click as it fell. Then I heard him say “Shit!” because nothing had happened, the gun hadn’t fired, it must have jammed jammed jammed—