The Baker Street Letters Read online

  “Roughly.”

  Krendall shakes his head. “It just astonishes me. I mean, I know you get a great return—just as long as the world operates the way it’s supposed to—but if something truly spectacular and out of the ordinary comes along, your personal fortune can be on the hook. Right?”

  Reggie said nothing.

  “It’s the most amazing thing that you do it that way. Like I said, we would never open ourselves to something like that here. Corporate is corporate, and personal is personal, and if you’re going to take a risk, you’d better do it in corporate.” He paused, then: “You’re heavily into the Blackthorne Syndicate, I’m told.”

  “Told by whom?” said Reggie. Krendall had his attention now.

  “Doesn’t matter who,” said Krendall. “But before you start telling the authorities what you think you know, I suggest you ask about your holdings.”

  Krendall smiled in an irritatingly confident sort of way. “It’s one thing to turn down a whole bunch of money when you have a stash of your own,” he said. “Perhaps it’s something else to lose what you already have. Take care, Mr. Heath, and have a really great day.”

  Krendall pressed a button on his desk, and Reggie heard the door lock unlatch.

  “Oh, wait, just one more thing. Do you guys really eat a dessert called spotted Dick? Just curious.”

  Reggie hated to leave on such a dismissal—but no adequate response came to mind.

  Reggie sat in the penthouse lounge of the Bonaventure, slowly turning a glass of gin and tonic.

  The lounge was turning, too—it was known for that, locally. It rotated so that one could watch through the windows and see all aspects of the city, appearing, disappearing, and then coming round again.

  Or one could have if the Santa Anas were still blowing. But they had stopped. Now the air was still, the gray haze was getting thicker and dirtier by the minute, and no matter where you were in the rotation, it was just more haze.

  Reggie checked his watch impatiently. The Lloyd’s agent was due any moment.

  From Paradigm Pictures, Reggie had returned to his hotel room and phoned London, in an attempt to speak to the broker who headed his Name syndicate at Lloyd’s.

  Reggie’s broker was unavailable owing to an impending hernia operation; that was the bad news.

  The good news was that Lloyd’s did have a representative in the area; Mr. John Wellingham was seeing to a major client in Los Angeles, and he could speak for the syndicate. Reggie’s documents would be faxed there, and Wellingham would meet Reggie at the Bonaventure late that afternoon.

  So Reggie waited.

  He could have had someone verify the details over the phone, but he wanted to see this for himself.

  He had always been so bloody careful about his investments. He hadn’t been one of those so enamored by the prestige or profit of being a Name in Lloyd’s that he would jump into just any syndicate. He’d chosen his carefully.

  Surely Krendall was bluffing.

  Reggie watched through the revolving window as the Hollywood sign slowly passed by.

  Now the lift doors opened, and a man stepped out who Reggie guessed had to be the Lloyd’s agent—no tan whatsoever on his face, wearing a traditionally tailored Gieves & Hawkes suit, a dark narrow tie, and a Turnbull & Asser shirt that looked as if it were finally getting a bit tight in the collar, having been in use, probably, for the past ten or fifteen years.

  This had to be Wellingham.

  The man paused and looked about—and then walked directly to Reggie’s table and introduced himself.

  “I understand you have some questions about your portfolio, Mr. Heath?”

  “I do,” said Reggie, motioning impatiently for Wellingham to sit down. The man was much too upbeat.

  “I trust I’ll be able to answer them for you,” Wellingham said with an ingratiating smile. He opened his briefcase and took out a folder.

  “Ah yes,” he said, looking inside. “I believe I do have it all here.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Your returns so far this year are very slightly lower—less than a single percentage point in difference—from last year in this quarter. And I apologize for that, but I’m sure you realize that the proper way to view this is over the long term, and—”

  “I’m not concerned about the rate of return.”

  “Oh. Well, that certainly is taking a very long-term view, then.”

  “I want you to confirm for me exactly where my allocations are placed.”

  “Where your allocations are placed?”

  “Tell me,” said Reggie, leaning forward on the table, “just exactly which risks have I bought into?”

  “Oh. I had assumed you were quite familiar with that.”

  “And so had I also assumed, but let’s just check it now, shall we?”

  “Of course,” said Wellingham, his professional cheeriness giving way to a professional officiousness reserved for troublesome clients. He pulled another folder from the briefcase.

  “We opened your account in 1991, with instructions from you not to accept any risks in certain specified areas, among them new medical devices, especially those related to cosmetic enhancements—well, you dodged the whole silicone implant bullet on that one, didn’t you? Also, no pesticide manufacturing, no asbestos-related products—now that was a truly brilliant exclusion, Mr. Heath, are you using some sort of crystal ball?”

  “Was that rhetorical?”

  “Yes, of course. But I must say, these were very wise exclusions on your part, as it would turn out. Some of those syndicates have had a rough go.”

  “Just tell me this: Am I in any way on the hook for damages connected with the blasted tube they’re building here?”

  Wellingham raised an eyebrow. “An underground? In this city? Really?”

  “Yes,” Reggie said impatiently. “Please have a look.”

  Wellingham looked. He studied the papers for a moment, shaking his head, then nodding, then shaking his head again.

  “Well?”

  “No,” Wellingham said finally, looking up from the brief. “I don’t see anything at all like that.”

  “What about the Blackthorne Syndicate?”

  “Interesting you should ask. That’s why you find me in Los Angeles at the moment; one of our larger corporate clients for Blackthorne called just yesterday, needing some very specific details on his company policy. Now, let’s see . . . yes, you do have a substantial portion there. But it has no involvement with construction risks. It’s quite conservative stuff, really, as you insisted. Only the safest of industries. Entertainment. I’m surprised you don’t remember it. You signed into it just last week, after we responded to your initial inquiry.”

  “I made no inquiry.”

  “Yes, I believe you did,” said Wellingham, consulting his notes. “Your Ms. Brinks phoned in the request. Our representative sent the details over, and you signed the forms the next day.”

  “Ms. Brinks made the inquiry.”

  “Well, yes. But of course, making the inquiry wasn’t binding. No one could do that on your behalf. What was binding, of course, was your signature on this form. It is your signature, isn’t it?”

  Reggie knew it was. He remembered signing in the lift. He didn’t really want to ask the next question, but there was no avoiding it.

  “Do I cover Paradigm Pictures?” he asked.

  “Now there’s a coincidence; they are precisely the client I was visiting. Ahh, let me see . . . yes, you do cover them. But only for the most egregious and unlikely of possible events. To invoke your responsibilities would take something along the order of maliciously negligent or criminal acts by their board of directors, or a member thereof, or a highly placed manager with power to . . .” Wellingham paused and sat back in his chair. “My word, those are precisely the sorts of acts their representative was asking about.”

  Reggie looked away for a moment, then drew a tight, shallow breath.

  “At what level is
my financial interest in this syndicate?”

  “Well, of course, at the standard level for Names.”

  “By ‘standard level,’ ” said Reggie, “you mean there is no limit on the amount for which I am liable?”

  “Ahh . . . theoretically, yes.”

  “So I am liable for a bloody one hundred percent of my assets.”

  “If the damages are larger than the combined value of the syndicate’s Names . . . well, yes. That is quite so. But after all, what is the likelihood of something like that? Oh, look—is that the Hollywood sign I see over there? Why, in a few moments, I think we will have come full circle.”

  It was Monday morning in London, and Reggie knew he must be coming down with something.

  After the conversation with Wellingham, he had sat in the rotating lounge for several minutes, absorbing what the Lloyd’s agent had said, and watching the setting Los Angeles sun flash repeatedly before his eyes.

  Then he had roused himself and delivered the original map to Lieutenant Mendoza. He took a copy of them to Sanger—whom he found on the platform above the scorched tunnels at Lankershim. Sanger stood watching at nightfall as inspectors with flashlights and clipboards continued to crawl about the pit, and all the machines at his disposal sat idle. He accepted the map from Reggie without a word, and just looked away.

  Then, finally, Reggie had returned to his hotel and collapsed into an exhausted sleep, barely waking in time the next morning to catch his flight to London.

  As Reggie drove now from Heathrow to Baker Street, the morning air felt unusually chilly, tickling the back of his throat.

  Or maybe it just seemed that way after the dry Los Angeles heat.

  Reggie checked his watch as he drove. He had asked Wembley to meet him at Ms. Brinks’s secretarial bay. If everything was on schedule, Ms. Brinks was just now arriving, and Wembley was already there, and not in a good mood.

  Reggie himself was running late for the meeting, and this was by design. The best way to convince Wembley of anything was to let him discover it for himself.

  When Reggie reached the lobby on Baker Street, he was almost thirty minutes late for the appointment.

  With luck, that would be just enough.

  But perhaps that would be a good thing.

  As Reggie got in the lift, he was joined by a man in his fifties—smallish, in impeccably conservative attire—whom Reggie did not immediately recognize.

  The doors closed, and then the smaller man spoke.

  “Heath, isn’t it?” he said, extending his hand.

  “Yes,” said Reggie.

  “Alan Rafferty. Dorset National Internal Leasing Division. I believe we met once.”

  “Yes,” said Reggie. “At the lease signing.”

  “Stop by for a chat, won’t you? I’m on the top floor.”

  “Certainly,” said Reggie. “I’ll pop in first chance.”

  The lift doors had opened, and Reggie stepped out.

  “Hear you’re doing a bang-up job with the letters,” said Rafferty.

  Then the lift doors closed. Reggie wondered what Rafferty meant—but it would have to wait.

  He walked quickly down the corridor and approached the secretarial bay outside Nigel’s office.

  He paused at Ms. Brinks’s desk.

  She wasn’t there. The lamp was out; no flowers in the vase; even her porcelain cow pencil-holder was empty.

  There was no light coming from Nigel’s office, either, and the door was closed. But Reggie saw the blinds move. Someone inside had bumped the window.

  And then someone bumped it again.

  Reggie opened the door.

  And there was Wembley.

  “Take your feet off the desk, please,” said Reggie. Wembley was not so casual as to naturally prop his legs on anyone’s desk, and Reggie knew he had done so for effect.

  “You might have made an effort to be on time, Heath,” said Wembley. “Rather than count on me breaking her down without even trying.”

  “Seemed unnecessary,” said Reggie. “If I find you frightening, you can imagine how poor Ms. Brinks must feel.”

  “Poor Ms. Brinks indeed. She must do her jog with hand weights, to have done that to Ocher with just one blow.”

  “I believe she does. Did she go quietly?”

  “No, she made rather a scene. She wasn’t pleased at all with your Mr. Ocher. He was getting between her and two hundred thousand pounds. Apparently the American entertainment executive offered her that much to find that document everyone was so worried about it. She was to verify that Nigel was sending the thing back as requested—or to pilfer it if he wasn’t cooperating, which he wasn’t. But Ocher caught her in the act of stealing it from your brother’s files—good soldier, that Ocher.”

  “Yes,” said Reggie.

  “Your brother might have caught her, too, if he’d taken the time to look around. Apparently she was still here—hiding behind the tall file cabinet, with the documents in hand, when your brother came in and rushed out that morning. But then Ocher came in right after, and did catch her—and she bashed him as soon as he turned his back to call it in. She delivered the documents to the American, who’d flown out for that purpose. I expect he wouldn’t have paid so much if he’d known this wasn’t the original.”

  “Very American approach,” said Reggie. “Just buy your way out.”

  “She was none too happy with you, either, you know.”

  “Me?”

  “She thought it was due time you made her an office manager.”

  “To manage who, herself? She was the only staff.”

  Wembley shrugged. “Employee morale, you know. I suppose you’re lucky she didn’t just go postal, as the Americans call it—interesting phrase in the circumstances—and bash you instead.”

  “My brother will appreciate the bronze back when you’re done.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll send you an address.”

  “Oh? Not coming back, then, is he?”

  “I don’t think soon.”

  “Hmm. Your clerk dead. Your brother in America. Your secretary in the nick. I expect you’ll be needing some office help.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Too bad about the Lloyd’s thing.”

  “What?”

  “Ms. Brinks said a few things on the way out. She said you could lose everything. She said you will no longer be able to pay your hires.”

  “I’ll manage,” Reggie said again. “Was there anything else? I have a plane to catch.”

  “The post appears to be piling up,” said Wembley, getting up, finally, from the desk.

  Reggie looked at the letters stacked in Nigel’s in-basket. “Yes,” he said.

  Wembley stopped. He picked up a couple of letters off the top.

  “Heath, I take it you know who these are addressed to?”

  “Yes,” said Reggie.

  “Bloody hell,” said Wembley.

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Reggie. “Now put them down, please.”

  The fire smoke rising from the lot in Century City might or might not have been part of a shoot, but Reggie could see the flames, and they were real, regardless of the cause.

  He walked toward them.

  Against the backdrop of the fire, Laura was in the embrace of a popular American action hero, whom Reggie recognized but did not consider to be competition. Laura did not take actors seriously.

  The director called a break; Laura saw Reggie from the set, and she crossed toward him on the sidelines. She stopped several feet away and just appraised him for a moment.

  “That’s the look I want,” said the director, passing by.

  “Can we talk?” asked Reggie.

  They walked away from the shooting set to a side street on the lot. They were alone.

  “Did you identify your mysterious snitch?” said Laura.

  “Ms. Brinks.”

  “Ahh. Of course.”

  “She’s been building a pot of resent
ment for years. I should have seen it.”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “But the gradual things are so hard to recognize.”

  “My apologies for supposing it was your friend,” he said.

  “You’re still referring to him that way, as if he were especially significant.”

  “Is he?”

  “Probably not in the way you suppose.” Then Laura smiled slightly and added, “It isn’t someone else, Reggie. It’s just that it’s been a long while on a roller coaster.”

  “If you were looking for a steadier ride,” said Reggie, taking that in, “I don’t know why you didn’t choose Nigel at the time.”

  Laura looked surprised at that remark. “There are those moments when a woman wants to be nurtured, Reggie,” she said, considering it, “and those moments when she wants to be . . . well, trifled with, I suppose. There’s a certain freedom in that, and when one is very young, freedom can be more important than comfort.” She paused. “You both presented yourselves to me with bright feathers flashing in the sun; I had to choose. And God help me, I chose you. I chose the trifler.”

  Reggie stepped toward her on that, but he paused when he heard what she said next.

  “I suppose I’ve lived with that kind of insecurity long enough that I’ve gotten used to it,” she said. “That’s an odd thing, isn’t it? But it might be true.”

  “It doesn’t need to be—,” began Reggie, but she stopped him.

  “In any case—I’ve been offered another role. I mean, literally. After New York, I can have two months’ work in the South Seas. It will be a shameful amount of money, and for just a few shoots and languishing in the sun.”

  Laura paused. Reggie had the sense that she was waiting for a very specific response from him.

  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that at this moment she was waiting out of mere curiosity.

  “I don’t see how I can top that,” he said.

  She seemed annoyed by this, and she looked away for a moment. Then she said, “Have you ever noticed, Reggie—how your brother will take the chance even when he’s sure he’s got none?”