Dead Midnight (3 page)

I took out the keys Glenn Solomon had given me, got the front door open. The lobby was small, perhaps ten feet square, and carpeted in threadbare brown that bunched up in the center, as if stretched out of shape by too many vigorous cleanings. An elevator with an accordion grille that screened a door with a porthole window was opposite the entrance, its cage waiting. I stepped inside, punched the button for the top floor, and it began a groaning ascent.

When I’d appeared at Glenn’s office in Four Embarcadero that morning, he’d betrayed no surprise that I’d decided to take the Nagasawa case. We agreed on business matters, signed a contract, and he promised to let the family know I’d be contacting them. Then he turned over the keys to Roger’s flat, which he had owned and his parents had left untouched since his suicide. I’d come directly here to commune with the dead.

The elevator jerked to a stop. I waited till it stopped bouncing, then stepped out into a tiny space where the sun glared down through a skylight. A fly buzzed fitfully against its glass, and dust motes danced on the warm air. A door was set into the wall to my left, an impressive collection of locks and numerous coats of paint—the latest being white—spoiling what must once have been a handsome piece of woodwork. I started keying locks from the top down.

The room beyond was white walled, with bleached pine floors and a long sofa of unnaturally dyed turquoise leather perched on a clear acrylic base. Cubes of the same acrylic were positioned to either side, their tops empty of anything but dust. I shut the door and walked to the center of the room, my footfalls loud on the bare boards. A state-of-theart entertainment center stood opposite the sofa, housed in more cubes.

Through wide archways I could see two other rooms: a bedroom at the front, with a door to a bathroom opening off it, and a dining-and-kitchen area. More skylights and windows at either end admitted light made harsh by the unadorned walls. I moved toward the dining area, where an oval glass table rested on a crimson lacquered base shaped like a piece of driftwood. The straight-backed chairs positioned around it were a matching crimson and looked uncomfortable. A galley kitchen with brushed chrome appliances ran along the wall to my left, separated from the main room by a white marble-topped bar.

I skirted the table and looked out the rear window. Five stories below in a small backyard someone had planted a garden with neatly spaced rows. An optimist, I thought. How could anything grow with the grimy walls of buildings towering over it on four sides and blocking out the sun?

There was a seat under the window. I perched on it, taking in the entire elongated space. Stark white walls. Minimal furnishings. Nothing on the table, nothing on the bar but a single crimson pottery bowl. Similarly bare counters behind it. Platform bed in the far room, covered in a violently yellow comforter. Three splashes of bright color, like paint splattered on a blank canvas. And where were the personal touches? Where were the objects that would tell me what kind of man Roger Nagasawa had been?

I went looking for them.

An hour later the picture I’d formed of Roger was still hazy, but fascinating. There were two sides of his personality represented in the flat—sides that most certainly had been at war with each other.

On the surface he’d been compulsively neat: Nothing was without its place, to the extent that he’d labeled where various plates and glasses went on his open-fronted shelves. The DVD and audio discs in the entertainment center were alphabetized, as were the books on the shelves in his bedroom. The computer workstation contained no discs whatsoever, and there was only a jumble of pens and pencils and a phone book in its drawer.

The machine was a Mac, like mine. I turned it on, clicked to his Internet server, found he’d stored his password. When the connection was made, I found he had no new e-mail— which was to be expected—and no old or sent mail either. I signed off and clicked on the icon for the hard drive; there were no files stored there. Most likely he’d deleted them before killing himself.

On the shelves in the small bathroom, personal-care items were neatly lined up by type. The cord to his blow-dryer was wound tightly around its handle, the way a maid in a hotel will leave it. The towels—yellow, to match the comforter—showed signs of use, but were folded and aligned on their bars so the edges met perfectly.

But then there was the other side of Roger: Anything that wasn’t in plain view was in a state of total disorder. A knee-high heap of dirty clothing in the bedroom closet, most other garments crooked on their hangers. Coats and hats and umbrellas dumped on top of a pile of papers and books in a closet off the living room. Utensils jumbled in the kitchen drawers. For a moment I wondered if someone hadn’t trashed the flat while looking for something, but there was no feel of such violation here. Roger, I decided, had simply been a clandestine slob.

A pantry off the kitchen was the absolute worst. Its small floorspace was covered with bundles of recyclables, gallon cans of dried and cracking white paint, dirty rags, flowerpots containing dead plants, and an oily pool of a substance that I didn’t care to get close enough to identify. Bags of pasta and rice were spilled on the shelves, a bottle of pancake syrup had tipped over and bonded to a can of tomato juice, a cereal box had been gnawed by mice, whose droppings lay everywhere. The top shelf was given over to paper products, which Roger apparently had bought in bulk. Sandwiched incongruously between the toilet tissue and paper towels was a leather binder.

I pulled the binder from the shelf and took it to the dining area, where I sat down in a chair that was as fully uncomfortable as it looked. The binder was tan, with the initials RJN stamped on it in gold—the sort of gift most men receive at some time or another but seldom use. I opened it randomly to a vellum page covered with a backhanded script.

May 28

I’m not as depressed since I moved into the flat. Sunny here South of Market, and there’s so much light in the space. Am painting the walls white and will use bright accent colors to keep the good moods coming. And when the bad moods set in there’s always a walk along the waterfront or bench-sitting in South Park. My fears about returning to the city were groundless.

I flipped ahead a number of pages, looking for evidence of a deteriorating emotional condition.

August 13

Dinner with the folks. Harry mercifully absent. But, God, that’s a depressing house! Full of all that clutter. Japanese crap, as if they’re trying to prove they haven’t lost touch with their roots. Why didn’t I notice it before? How did I breathe while I was living there? When I came home tonight I boxed up the few knicknacks I’d set out. None of that clutter for me.

September 15

I met a woman tonight. Lady in distress. She’s hip and beautiful. As we shared a glass of wine and conversation, I felt my reserve crumbling, that old magic returning. I’d better watch myself—it’s bound to turn out as badly as it always has.

October 17

I can’t believe the shit that’s going on at work. You have to be there awhile before you fully tap into it, but I’m tapped now. For a while I was stunned, then I got angry. There’s got to be a way to make those people act like human beings, but—

A knock at the door. I set the binder down and went to see who was there.

The woman who stood in the hallway was probably in her midtwenties: small, with closely cropped brown hair, large, thickly lashed hazel eyes, and multiple earrings in each lobe. Her stance was aggressive, one booted foot thrust forward, hands in the pockets of her black leather pants, but it didn’t mask her nervousness. She blinked when she saw me.

“Who’re you?” she asked in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

“A representative of the Nagasawa family’s attorney. And you are … ?”

Some of the tension left her features; she unpocketed her hands and crossed her arms over her loosely woven sweater. “Jody Houston. I live downstairs. What’re you doing here? Is the family getting ready to sell the flat?”

“Eventually.” I moved back and motioned her inside. She hesitated, looking around furtively, before stepping over the threshold. “Were you a friend of Roger’s?” I asked.

“Yeah, I was. Look, if they’re not planning to sell yet, what’re you doing here?”

I told her my name and occupation. “I’m trying to establish a profile of Roger, find out about his last days. The family would feel better if they knew why he killed himself.”

“He’s been dead for two months. Why the sudden interest now?”

Glenn had cautioned me against mentioning a potential suit against
InSite
to anyone. “I don’t know what prompted it. I haven’t talked with them yet.”

Jody Houston considered that, her expression thoughtful. She moved farther into the flat, and her gaze rested on the open journal on the table. “That’s Roger’s diary,” she said. “He always kept it hidden. And it’s supposed to be private.”

“I was hoping it would help me profile him.”

She moved swiftly toward the table, picked up the journal, and cradled it protectively. “He wouldn’t want a stranger reading it. If his parents are so interested in his reason for killing himself, why don’t they try to find out themselves, rather than hiring you?”

“Maybe it would be too painful for them.”

“Then they should leave well enough alone.”

“That’s not up to either you or me.” I went over to her and pried the journal out of her hands. “Rightfully, this belongs to Roger’s estate.”

“His estate.” She looked around the flat, sighed.

“Please,” I said,“won’t you help me? Tell me about Roger?”

Her eyes moved back to the journal, and for a moment I thought she might try to snatch it from me. Then she sighed again and leaned against the bar.

“Well, if you think I can help … Rog was a quiet guy. Sensitive. Not easy to get to know. We’d see each other coming and going, smile and nod, but that was it. Then one night I dropped my keys down the elevator shaft, through the gap between the cage and the floor. It’d been a really horrible day, and I went a little ballistic. Came up here and pounded on the door. He helped me fish the keys out of the shaft, I invited him in for a drink, and from then on we were friends.”

“Romantically involved?”

“No. He would’ve liked it that way. After a few days he came on to me. I told him no. I was getting over a bad relationship and … Well, that’s not important. So we agreed that we’d just hang together. But I knew that he thought he was in love with me, and he let the people at work think we were an item.”

So Jody was the hip, beautiful woman with whom things were bound to turn out badly. “So you hung out …”

“Yeah. We had keys to each other’s flats, came and went. I’m a graphic designer, work at home, so I was always here to turn off the coffeepot if he forgot to, stuff like that. And we’d go to the movies, have dinner. We even drove down to Big Sur for the weekend once.”

“You say you’re a graphic designer. You ever do any jobs for
InSite
?”

“Well, sure. At least for a while. But never again.”

“Why not?”

Her lips twisted and her eyes grew jumpy. “Because they’re a bunch of assholes, that’s why. They stiffed me on my last fee. I was lucky to be only a freelancer, though; that place is the office from hell.”

“How so?”

She seemed to be listening to her words, and when I repeated the question she shook her head. “I’ve said all I’m ever gonna say on that subject.” Quickly she pushed away from the bar and started toward the door. “There’s someplace I’ve got to be.”

“Can we talk another time?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry for Rog’s folks, but there’s really nothing I can say that will make them feel any better.”

I followed, hoping to persuade her, but she slammed the door behind her. It stuck, and by the time I got it open the elevator cage had begun its descent.

I was climbing the stairway to the second-story catwalk at Pier 24½ when I heard the voice of my office manager, Ted Smalley, yell
“Fuuuuck!”

Now that was cause for concern; Ted is not a man given to obscenities. I took the steps two at a time and hurried to the door of his office. No one was in the outer room, but from the back, where we kept the supplies, fax and copy machines, a black cloud drifted.

At first I thought something was on fire, but as the cloud wafted toward me I saw it was a gritty powder. I stepped out of its path and called, “Ted? What happened?”

He emerged from the back room, his face and clothing resembling an old-fashioned chimney sweep’s. His black hair and goatee, normally frosted with gray, looked like the recipients of a bad dye job.

He said, “I’m gonna
kill
him!”

“Who, for God’s sake?”

“Neal, that’s who!”

I’d been afraid of this.

The previous fall, Altman & Zahn, the legal firm with whom I’d shared the suite of offices, had moved to more spacious quarters across the Embarcadero, and I’d taken over their portion of the lease in order to expand my own operation. The first order of business was to hire an assistant for Ted, and as his partner, Neal Osborn, had recently been forced by rising rents to close his secondhand bookshop, Ted suggested they work together. I had reservations: Neal possessed no office skills, and I knew from experience with my nephew Mick and Charlotte Keim how lovers’ quarrels can disrupt a professional environment. But Ted had been at his most persuasive, and late in February I’d finally given in.

“What did he do this time?” I asked.

“The toner.” Ted ran his hand over his forehead, smearing the powder that adhered to it.

“The toner for the copy machine?”

“Right. It ran out this morning, and I asked him to replace it. He’d never done that before, but I figured anybody could follow the directions. He was back there hovering over the machine for quite a while, till it was time for his lunch break. After he left I saw the toner light was still flashing, so I decided to fix the damn thing myself.” He paused, out of breath.