The Baker Street Letters Read online

  “Which way did he walk?”

  “He just stood there, like you’re doing. That’s where I left him. And I work on the clock.”

  Reggie looked to the north, up the street, where an entire city block had vanished into a massive excavation. The site was surrounded by a board fence crowned with razor wire; from the center towered an eighty-foot mustard yellow excavation crane.

  The gated entrance was a few dozen yards down the street. But Reggie could see no reason for that to be Nigel’s destination.

  Reggie looked south. For two blocks in that direction there was nothing but razed, fenced ground, where the original buildings had been leveled in preparation for new construction. But some distance farther was a corporate tower with walls of reflective glass, rising up thirty-odd stories from the floor of the Valley, dominating the skyline like a citadel. It shone dark like obsidian on the shaded side, but bright like steel on the sunlit side, reflecting images of the sage-covered hills and the solidifying layer of smog to the east.

  The name of the building glinted in silver block letters on the top floor.

  But if that had been Nigel’s destination, why would he get out here, a quarter mile away?

  “What’s in the Paradigm building?” Reggie asked the driver.

  “I don’t know. Movies, maybe?”

  “Take me there,” said Reggie.

  He got in the cab and rode the quarter mile to the Paradigm tower. It would have been a bit of a walk from Nigel’s drop-off point, but perhaps he had gotten out at the wrong spot by mistake.

  They drove south past the two blocks that had been flattened for new construction. In the next block—immediately adjacent to the reflecting tower—construction was already complete, and the new businesses here were apparently flourishing. There was a huge car park and a café that had customers queued up clear onto the pavement.

  Reggie paid the driver to wait and got out of the cab at the tower entrance. He entered the lobby, and on a hunch, he pulled out the phone list from Nigel’s hotel and carefully perused the building’s roster for the production company names Nigel had called.

  Nothing. There was no match. It was a bust.

  Reggie had the driver take him back to the point where he had dropped Nigel. He got out and looked across at the massive excavation site.

  “What are they digging?” he asked the driver.

  “Subway terminal,” the driver said. “Seen enough?”

  “No,” said Reggie. “Wait for me.”

  Reggie crossed the street, his footsteps reverberating on the wooden planking, to the entrance for the construction site.

  The excavation pit was more than fifty yards across and at least a hundred in length, with sheer vertical sides. The perimeter was fenced, but through the gate Reggie could see a construction bungalow. He walked through the gate, heading toward the bungalow.

  A pleasant young woman in an orange hard hat and security guard’s vest stopped him and asked if she could be of assistance.

  Reggie said he wanted to see the foreman. The young woman didn’t ask why; she just gave Reggie a quick visual once-over, then turned and went right back into the bungalow.

  In an instant she appeared again in the doorway, pointed in Reggie’s direction, and then stepped aside as a tall man, face deeply tanned and lined from the sun, came charging down the steps.

  He was as much as sixty years old, Reggie judged from the white hair showing under the hard hat, but he could have been much younger from the energy in his stride.

  “I’m Sanger,” he said, sticking out his hand, “and you are . . . ?”

  Reggie gave his name. Sanger had a grip like stone.

  “What station are you with?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I put out a statement this morning. You want more, here’s your quote, and get it right: ‘Shit happens.’ End quote. You want this on tape, you wait till I break for lunch. That’s in about six hours. Unless I get busy. Right now I’m due in the pit. Excuse me.”

  Sanger began to walk away toward the excavation, and Reggie followed quickly.

  “I’m not a reporter,” he said as they strode toward the edge of the pit.

  “You’re not from Channel Seven?”

  “Do I look like a television reporter?”

  Sanger stopped and appraised Reggie quickly. “Yes,” he said. “Except for that thing on your forehead.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Sound like one, too. CNN?”

  “I’m not from a news agency of any kind.”

  “This is not about Sunset Boulevard?”

  “I’m just looking for someone,” said Reggie.

  Sanger paused. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said with a sort of sheepish grin. “I’ve had reporters up the wazoo, and I guess I’m beginning to see ’em behind every rock.”

  “That would be annoying.”

  “It is. Every damn little thing gets reported. Last week someone broke in here and figured it would be fun to pour five pounds of damn sugar into the mole’s gas tank. Standard high school prank, but it made the five o’clock news. Then two nights ago an underground water main ruptures next to the new tunnel between the downtown and Hollywood sites, creating a sinkhole clear across Sunset, and some poor hooker tripped and mussed herself falling in. That made the five o’clock, the six, the ten, and the eleven o’clock news.”

  “Of course,” said Reggie. “Nothing gets media attention like water-damaged hookers.”

  “Yeah, and I just hope she doesn’t sue me for missing a night’s work.”

  Sanger looked down into the construction pit now, whistled to workers below, and a motor connected to the platform whirred into gear. “So who did you say you’re looking for?”

  “My brother, Nigel Heath.”

  “Don’t know the name.”

  “I think he might have come here yesterday.”

  “For what?”

  Reggie had no good answer. “He was looking for work, I suspect.”

  “All we’re hiring is subsoil engineers. That what he’s looking for?”

  “Possibly.”

  Sanger leaned casually against the precariously low guardrail. He looked Reggie up and down. “Your brother’s a sandhog?”

  “We don’t call them sandhogs at home.”

  “What do you call them?”

  “Subsoil engineers.”

  Sanger put two fingers to his lips and let out a loud and commanding whistle.

  The young woman in the orange vest hurried over.

  “You see somebody looks like this guy yesterday?” said Sanger.

  “Hmm.”

  “Or sounds like him?”

  “Well, I don’t know until I hear—”

  “He means a British accent,” said Reggie, “like mine.”

  “Oh, yeah. There was this guy I caught running around between the cars.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Sanger. “And was that just his way of asking for a job?”

  “I don’t think so. He said he was tracking a hit-and-run. Or something like that; he was kind of evasive about it. I threw him out.”

  “Yeah, thought so.” Sanger gave Reggie a hard look, and then he said to the guard, “Do the same for this one.”

  “Thank you for your time,” said Reggie, and the security guard escorted him to the gate.

  Sweating from the afternoon heat, Reggie got in his taxi and told the driver to take him back to downtown L.A.

  Reggie returned to downtown Los Angeles and booked into the Bonaventure.

  It was less than a mile from the Roosevelt Arms, where Nigel had stayed, but it was a world of difference.

  A desk clerk in the spacious lobby looked askance at Reggie’s bruised forehead and mentioned, with more suspicion than concern, that the hotel had a licensed nurse on staff.

  “I’m fine,” said Reggie, “if you have aspirins and ice.”

  They did have these things, the clerk said. And with a little effort, they could set him
up on an American cell phone as well.

  Reggie took the glass lift up more than twenty floors.

  Then he sat in a deep chair with a bag of ice and a glass of dark port.

  With the uncomfortably long flight and layover, he had not slept in any meaningful way in more than thirty-six hours. Jet lag and the wine were stronger than the pain in his head, and though he did not intend to, he faded.

  Then he woke with a start. The hotel phone was ringing.

  He picked up.

  It was Wembley.

  “What time is it?” said Reggie.

  “Just past eight in the morning here,” Heath said cheerily. “Not sure what it is in your zone. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No,” said Reggie. He knew Wembley bloody well knew it was after midnight.

  “On holiday, are you, Heath?”

  “Yes,” Reggie said tightly.

  “Might have let me know. If I hadn’t managed to pry your number out of Ms. Brinks, I wouldn’t be able to inform you now that we’re going for a warrant on your brother.”

  “On what evidence?” said Reggie.

  “Seems there was a dispute between the two of them—Ocher and your brother—in your brother’s office, the Friday before the murder.”

  “What about?”

  “I was rather hoping you’d fill that in for me, Heath.”

  Reggie presumed this was the conversation Ocher had related in the lift. It was hardly a motive for murder, and for a moment he considered trying to explain that tiff away for Wembley: Ocher trying to get Nigel to concentrate on his primary work, but Nigel being obsessed with these bloody letters that a girl had written to Sherlock Holmes.

  That was all there was to it.

  Well, perhaps “obsessed” would not be the best word to use.

  “Still there, Heath?” said Wembley.

  “Can’t help you there,” said Reggie. “And if that’s all you’ve got, I’d say a warrant is premature.”

  “We know voices were raised; they were overheard. We’ve got the dispute, whatever the specifics turn out to be, and we’ve got his fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

  “Nigel’s fingerprints on a sculpture in Nigel’s office? You’ve got nothing.”

  “I’ve got enough,” said Wembley, and the cheerfulness was gone. “You’d be doing your brother a favor if you put us in touch with him.”

  “I’ve no idea where he is,” said Reggie.

  “I’m sure you’ll hear from him. Do let us know.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” said Reggie.

  “Enjoy your holiday,” said Wembley. “I’ll be in touch.” And he hung up.

  Reggie remained seated in his chair, and now he took the remaining gulp of the port.

  He had no choice but to try a look at it from Wembley’s point of view—or the point of view Wembley would likely take once he knew all that Reggie already knew—and the picture was this: Nigel continuing to play around with those bloody letters. Ocher coming in Monday morning and once again berating Nigel over a requisition form or some other such nonsense (sounding, in Reggie’s imagination, uncomfortably like Reggie himself); Nigel finally deciding in a violent impulse that he would take no more of it and rising, bronze Remington of Indians hunting buffalo in hand, to bash Ocher’s head in.

  Utter nonsense. Nigel was not capable of it. He was not impulsive.

  Well, perhaps occasionally impulsive. But he’d never done a violent act in his life. Reggie could not recall Nigel ever being in so much as a schoolyard fight.

  Of course, there would not have been the time or the energy, it occurred to him now. Growing up, he and his brother had always been too busy fighting each other.

  But that didn’t count. Between brothers, fighting was a means of conversation. There was a familiarity that erased barriers and made some low level of violence possible between siblings that did not apply to outsiders.

  Massaging a bump still present on the top of his head from the time his eight-year-old brother had knocked him with a cricket bat, Reggie insisted on his original hypothesis: Nigel was not capable of it.

  Remaining certain of that would make things simpler. Instead of worrying about the possibility of Nigel being guilty, he would worry only about proving that he was not.

  Now the hotel phone rang again.

  Reggie picked up. It was the desk clerk. There was a fax for Reggie in the lobby.

  “A fax?”

  “Yes, sir. Marked ‘Urgent.’ ”

  “Who—”

  “You did say that if someone named Nigel Heath tried to contact you—”

  “Send it up.”

  The desk clerk did so. Five minutes later, Reggie stood in his room staring at the message from his brother.

  “Meet me at foot of 2nd Street. 2:00 AM. Nigel.”

  Bloody damn. A street meeting in the middle of the night.

  Why couldn’t Nigel learn to carry a mobile?

  Reggie got his coat, went downstairs, and was lucky enough to find a taxi in front of the hotel.

  It was little more than a mile, and just five minutes of the hour, when the cab approached the foot of 2nd Street.

  The street ended on the same frontage road Reggie had been on when he first arrived. Farther south was the fence that bordered the concrete riverbed, and to the east was the block of flats where Reggie had tumbled down the stairs.

  The taxi stopped beneath the last weak yellow streetlamp. The cabbie apparently did not care for the area and drove away immediately.

  Reggie stood for several moments at the corner. There was no other traffic on the street: no cars, no pedestrians, and no lights of any establishment.

  In London, this would have been the place to go to purchase something illegal.

  And as if to confirm that opinion, Reggie saw the black-and-white panels of a Los Angles police car cruise through the intersection at the next block down.

  Reggie waited a moment, but the squad car did not turn again and come back in his direction.

  He looked at his watch. Now it was five minutes after. And there was no sign of Nigel.

  Somewhere on the next street over, a dog was barking.

  He looked at the street signs over his head. Yes, this was the foot of 2nd Street.

  Reggie looked southwest, toward the fence. Well, he wasn’t quite standing at the foot of 2nd Street. The actual foot of 2nd Street was at the fence, another fifty yards or so, under the dark of the bridge overpass. Surely this was putting too fine a point on it, but Reggie began to walk in that direction.

  As he approached, he could make out details that hadn’t been visible from a distance—shards of broken bottles, newspaper that stirred in the slight wind, a couple of flattened, refrigerator-size cardboard boxes, a discarded automobile bench seat propped against one of the concrete supports.

  At the end of the street, a sizable hole was visible at the bottom of the wire fence. The wind carried a stale, dank odor of old food and urine.

  Odd choice of a meeting place, even for Nigel.

  Reggie began to turn back toward the corner, but then he stopped—at the edge of the concrete support, next to the car seat, something appeared to move.

  It was the wind, probably, but he stepped toward it.

  He saw now that it was just the torn corner of a green garbage bag, covering the rubbishy contents of a banged-up shopping cart. One edge of the garbage bag had been hooked over a bent orange-and-white sign for the grocery from which it had been taken. There was a slight breeze, and the corner edge of the bag flapped slightly.

  Something was odd—the sound of the flapping vinyl, perhaps.

  Reggie reached down to the edge of the garbage bag—but then his fingertips touched a texture that caused him to pull back immediately.

  In the dark beneath the slick black-green bag was a pale human face.

  This time it was not like finding Ocher in the brightly lit office. This time it was different.

  Reggie steadied himself wi
th one arm against the concrete wall. He managed to draw a breath, and he looked again.

  No, it was not Nigel. It was not.

  This realization had barely taken hold when, from just yards away, brakes screeched, and the moan of an American police siren reverberated off the concrete walls.

  Reggie looked up directly into the squad car’s spotlight. For a blinking moment he could see nothing but that light, and his first instinct was to put up an arm to shield it.

  “Freeze!”

  Reggie did so. He heard car doors slam; one of the officers approached.

  Reggie expected there was going to be a further reaction when the officer got a few steps closer, and there was.

  “Freeze, freeze, freeze!” shouted the officer, who must have now seen the body. “Don’t move! Put your hands on the wall!”

  Reggie did not move at all. He could hear the adrenaline in the officer’s voice, and through the glare of the spotlight he could see that the very young officer had his revolver drawn.

  Reggie thought it wise to ask, as loudly as he could, which of the two contrary instructions they preferred he should obey first. “Put your hands on the wall,” said the voice again. He carefully raised his right hand in full view of the squad car and placed it on the wall next to his left.

  As he did so, something on the ground caught his eye. He had, in fact, almost stepped on them, and there was no question what they were.

  Someone had spilled Smarties. Green-, blue-, yellow-, and red-shelled chocolate disks—and half a dozen or so were scattered exactly where Reggie was standing and within just a few feet of the body in the cart.

  In the spotlight reflecting off the walls, they actually glistened.

  Reggie shuffled his feet, trying to push them out of sight.

  “Freeze!” shouted the officer again, and his voice had now climbed at least half an octave. Reggie hoped they would get on with it before the officer with the drawn gun could make a mistake.

  Finally, someone came and pulled Reggie’s arms down and cuffed them.

  As the police hustled him toward the squad car, Reggie managed to turn his head and look back.

  They had pulled the trash bag back from the body, and now Reggie caught a glimpse of what the man was wearing.

  Now he knew. He hadn’t recognized the facial features, but there was no mistaking the two-tone jacket: It was the man from Mara’s stairs.