The Simeon Chamber (16 page)

“Murray says they’re for real. He took some scrapings and sent them off to a lab for final analysis, but I think at this point the results will be anticlimactic.”

“At least Pat didn’t die for some fake.” Sam’s words dripped with sarcasm.

Nick made no comment. There was nothing he could say that would ease the pain Sam was feeling.

Bogardus picked up a book lying open facedown on the table next to the parchments: __The Marine Corps Manual of Hand-to-Hand
Combat. A folded piece of tissue marked a page. He’d purchased the volume in the seventh grade after seeing a war movie featuring 181

Audie Murphy. It had gathered dust ever since on a forgotten shelf in his room.

“Is there any coffee in this place? For two days now that damn hospital has kept me on decaf. My head’s killing me. Must be going through withdrawal.” He slapped the book shut and reshelved it.

Nick rummaged through the cabinets over the sink and came up with a jar of instant coffee and three mugs. He filled the small metal teapot on the stove and turned the gas on high under the burner.

Sam’s mind was lost in the logistics of the next several days. “Tomorrow we pay a little visit to Chinatown and that shop Pat visited before she was killed. Then we’ll split up and chase down some loose leads.”

Sam looked at Jake Carns. “How would you like to go sleuthing?”

Jake said nothing, but nodded. Sam knew that Carns was a man of few words, as Pat’s killer would discover if Jake ever got his massive hands around the man’s throat. For the time being Bogardus would try to keep things tactful and Carns under control.

“I’d like to get some information on a guy by the name of George Johnson.” Jake had taken a small notepad and pencil from his coat pocket and was writing. “The guy shows an address on Olstead Street in San Francisco.

Don’t waste your time on it, the place doesn’t exist. My guess is that D.M.V. might show a name and address on Olstead with a post office box for receipt of mail. It’s just a hunch, but if he owns a car, he would have to be able to get vehicle registration mailed to an actual address. If you find it, stake out the box for a while and tail whoever shows up. And be careful. Unless I miss my bet this guy’s connected with Pat’s death. Don’t do anything to him.” Sam waited for some reply. Carns was noncommittal. “Jake.” Finally, Carns nodded his assent.

“Nick, I’ve got something else for you. i have an old friend down in the D.A4’s office.

We used to trade favors when I was with the P.D. He won’t give us a copy of the police report in Pat’s case, but he might feed us a few details out of the file. I’m going to call him and tell him that you’ll be 183

down to talk to him later today. Get whatever you can.”

“Like what?”

“Use your imagination.”

Bogardus sighed, knowing now it was his turn. “Guess I’m gonna have to go downtown and talk to the cops.”

“What are you gonna tell ‘em?” asked Nick.

“As little as possible, at least for the moment. We don’t really know anything.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“You’re not gonna let ‘em in on the parchments?”

“No. There’s no hard evidence that the parchments have anything to do with Pat’s murder or the assault in my apartment.”

Nick arched an eyebrow.

“You’ve got to let me handle this my way.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Nick raised his hands as if to ward off the accusation. He knew it was useless to try to convince Sam to go to the police with the parchments. Besides, Nick had his own reasons for not wanting to go to the cops. He wasn’t driven by revenge for Pat’s death the way Sam was. Instead he’d become seduced by his own curiosity. It had infected him from the moment that Tony Murray had pronounced the parchments real. He was now convinced that the four soiled and worn pages sealed in the tube from Murray’s lab contained the threads of a message that if fully revealed would unlock the legacy of Drake’s voyage to the Americas. 6

Jake Carns and Nick passed the time in a small coffee shop around the corner from the Jade House and took turns watching the street for Sam. Shortly before noon Nick saw the familiar blue Porsche pull up at the curb a half block away. He signaled to Jake and the two men walked briskly down the street toward Bogardus.

The color in Sam’s face was slowly returning after his bout of the hospital, and some of the spring was back in his walk.

“Anything going on across the street?” Sam nodded in the direction of the Jade House.

“People keep going in and out, mostly 5

shoppers from what I can see. Nothing unusual,” said Jake.

Sam looked down the street for Nick’s beat-up Ford but didn’t see it. “Where are you parked?”

“I’m in a garage about two blocks down.”

“Good.” Sam reached into his pocket.

“Here’s the key to my car.” The key was a spare in mint condition, as he’d not yet found his key ring. “I want you to stay in my car and watch the front of the shop. If we’re not out in half an hour you call the cops and tell ‘em to get over here on the double.”

“Hey, wait a second. I want to know what’s going on first.” Nick had no intention of sitting quietly in the car and playing lookout until he had some answers.

“Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that shop over there is connected to the parchments and it was the last place Pat visited before she was murdered. I figure that if push comes to shove Jake’s gonna be more use to me in there than you.”

Nick wasn’t about to argue the point.

“Okay, but we talk when you come out.”

“If I come out.” Sam winked at his bearded friend. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right.”

Nick headed for the car. Sam and Jake turned and walked across the street and down the narrow alley that was Chinatown Lane, disappearing through the front door of the Jade House.

There were several customers browsing in the well-lit shop. Sam and Jake didn’t waste time but headed for the clerk’s counter at the back of the store. A young woman with long, sleek black hair and a shapely figure stood at the cash register, bagging a purchase for an elderly man. Sam studied the woman as he waited in line behind the customer. She was attractive—

Eurasian, he guessed.

She handed the bag to the customer and looked up at Sam. “May I help you?”

“I’m trying to get some information about a friend who was in your shop a few days ago. A young woman, well-dressed, very pretty, about your height, with long dark hair.”

“Sir, we deal with many customers. I can’t remember all of them.”

“You would remember her. She was probably asking questions concerning some parchments bearing the 187

stamp of your shop, papers that may have belonged to the owner or may have been held on consignment by him many years ago.”

He could have stopped with the word “parchments.” The recognition registered on her face as he uttered it.

“You talked to her?”

“Yes, I wait on all of the customers in the shop.”

“What did she want?” asked Sam.

The woman hesitated. “As you say, she asked some questions about some papers. I couldn’t help her, and she left.”

“She didn’t speak to anyone else while she was here?”

“No.” The woman broke contact with Sam’s gaze immediately, unable to keep the lie out of her eyes.

“That woman was my law partner. She’s been murdered, and I’d like to know who she talked to when she came in here and what she talked about. Now you can either tell me or you can tell the police.”

With the mention of murder the woman’s expression of commercial complacency vanished. She hesitated for a moment and then spoke. “Please wait here.”

She left the counter and disappeared behind a curtain into a work area behind the shop. She was gone for several minutes. When she reappeared she was followed by an elderly man. He was frail and stooped, with a distinct hunch to his shoulders, but he was dressed elegantly in a blue sport coat and open-collared shirt.

“These are the men I was telling you about.” The woman gestured toward Sam. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know your name.”

“Bogardus—Sam Bogardus.”

“Mr. Bogardus, this is my uncle, Phillipe Lamonge, the owner of the shop.” The woman looked toward the older man. “i believe he can help you.”

The face of the old man took on a perplexed and anxious look. He lifted his downcast eyes toward Sam and then to his niece, but said nothing.

“You’ve got to talk to someone,” she said. “This has gone on too long, for too many years. If not these men, then the police.”

“No, we can’t go to the police,” said the old man. The strength and vigor of his voice startled Sam. It was in stark contrast to the stooped 189

posture and aged face. He spoke with a distinct French accent.

“Uncle, please.” The woman looked at him. The plaintive tone of her voice matched the appeal in her eyes.

The old man looked up into Sam’s face, hesitated for a moment and then said, “Monsieur, come with me.”

Sam and Jake followed the old man through the curtain into the back of the shop and up the flight of stairs to the living quarters on the second floor. Jake kept his right hand jammed into his coat pocket, clutching the handle of a nine-millimeter Browning automatic pistol. He began to relax as the old man led them into an ornately furnished study and beckoned them to take a seat on a couch behind an intricately carved coffee table. Sam sat on the couch.

Jake declined the invitation and instead took a seat on a large stuffed ottoman in the corner facing the door. He rested his back against the wall.

“I don’t know where to begin,” said the Frenchman. “Such a tangled web. So many mistakes. So many years of hiding the truth.

I’m not sure what the truth is anymore.”

Sam could sense a cathartic release in the man’s voice, the kind of peace that comes only with the unburdening of some forbidden secret.

“What can you tell us about the parchments?” asked Sam.

The Frenchman moved aimlessly into the center of the room and looked down at Sam seated on the couch. “Those cursed pieces of paper. Monsieur, I tell you those pages have the blood of centuries on them. It would be better for you if you had never seen them.” He paused thoughtfully. “Certainly better for your partner. You should burn them now before they bring more misery.”

“Why? What do you know about them?”

“It’s not what I know, monsieur, but what others know that you must fear if you have those pages.”

Sam was tired of receiving riddles in reply to his questions.

He spoke sharply. “Did you talk to Susan Paterson when she came here the other day?”

“I didn’t know her name. Yes, I spoke to her briefly.”

“What did you tell her?” 1

“I warned her as I am warning you now.”

Sam’s impatience was beginning to show, but he restrained himself, afraid to upset the old man and lose perhaps his only clue to Pat’s murder.

Lamonge wrung his hands and moved slowly to the chair behind the small writing table that was stacked high with loose papers and ledgers.

“What you see here in this shop is all that remains of a lifetime of work—all that remains of three lives. My brother and his wife are now dead because of those papers. I live in constant fear that their daughter, Jeannette, may be in jeopardy because of what I know. Are you sure you want to know, monsieur?”

“Yes.” Sam was insistent.

Resignation registered on the Frenchman’s face. “Very well, my friend, then you shall know. The papers—or parchments as you call them—came into our possession in 1942, but to understand our position at the time you have to go back before that, to the fall of 1941. The country was just emerging from the deepest days of the Depression, though we didn’t know it at the time. We had struggled for nearly five years, saving every penny to start this business, and we got it off the ground literally `on a hope and a prayer,` as you say. Things were not easy and business was not good. Survival meant doing some things that we were not proud of but they were necessary.”

Lamonge shook his head slowly as if perplexed, his eyes cast down at the tangle of papers on the desk before him. “We were not always engaged in the ordinary retail business you see today. We would probably not have survived except that America entered the war in December of that year and rationing followed shortly after that. My brother used contacts that he had developed on the docks to obtain items that were scarce—sacks of sugar, flour, rice, automobile tires. People are funny.” The Frenchman smiled. “They would kill for a set of automobile tires. There was a time when the storeroom of the shop and much of this second level were full to the ceiling with such things. As you can imagine, we had a brisk trade.”

The man pushed several of the loose papers on the desk to one side and lit a small desk lamp to brighten the corner of the room where he sat. He looked at Jake, whose eyes followed every movement of his hands upon the desk.

“Our business brought us into contact with 193

many different kinds of people—buyers and sellers.

They were not always people that you wanted to deal with, but as I said it was necessary. One of these people was a military man, a member of your navy. He had access to depots and stores of military supplies, and for the right price anything was available to him.

“He called himself Jones. Of course, we all knew that wasn’t his real name. He was stationed at Treasure Island and he routinely brought us sacks of sugar and sides of beef. We paid him well.

“He was a tall man, slender. I only dealt with him three times, when my brother was not in the shop. But I will never forget him. Even before my brother’s death I thought there was something sinister about this sailor. If I’d only known then …”

The Frenchman reached behind him and uncorked a bottle of distilled water, pouring himself a small glass, then raising the bottle toward Sam and Jake.

Sam shook his head. “Please continue.”

“Our dealings with this man went on for several months. After a time he approached my brother and said that he had other things that he wanted us to take on consignment, as he called it—objects of art that he would place with us to hold and to sell, but only to one particular buyer. He offered us a great deal of money for these transactions.” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “So we closed our eyes, asked no questions and entered the art business. It seemed harmless enough—vases, small statuary, and over a period of time the trade with this man Jones grew to include oil paintings, many of them never unwrapped, just delivered to the shop, held for a brief period of time and ultimately collected by this special buyer.”