The Trail to Buddha's Mirror Page 2

  “Is that really her name?”

  “Do I know? Wong, Wang, Ching, Chang, what’s the difference?”

  “Yeah, so? Doctor This, Doctor That, what’s the difference? I’ll bet you AgriTech has more than one biochemist.”

  “Not like Pendleton, they don’t. Besides, he took his notes with him.”

  Neal could see it coming and he didn’t want this job. Maybe Robert Pendleton didn’t want to finish his research, he thought, but I want to finish mine. Get my master’s and go on for the old Ph.D. Find a job in some little state college somewhere and spend the rest of my life reading books instead of running dirty errands for the Man.

  “Have the cops pick him up for theft, then. The notes are AgriTech’s property,” Neal said.

  Graham shook his head. “Then maybe he’d be too unhappy to play with his test tubes anymore. The AgriTech people don’t want their professor in the slammer; they want their chickenshit in the pot.”

  Graham took the bottle off the table and poured himself another drink. He was enjoying himself immensely. Aggravating Neal was almost worth the terrifying flight over, the endless trip to Yorkshire, and the hike up that damn hill. It was good to see the little shit again.

  “If he doesn’t want to come back, he doesn’t want to come back,” Neal said.

  Graham tossed back the whiskey.

  “You have to make him want to,” he said.

  “You mean ‘you’ in the collective sense, right? As in ‘one would have to make him want to.’”

  “I mean ‘you’ in the sense of you, Neal Carey.”

  All of a sudden, Neal Carey felt a lot of sympathy for Dr. Robert Pendleton. Each of them was shacked up with something he loved—Pendleton with his woman and Neal with his books—and now they were each being pulled back, kicking and screaming, to the chickenshit.

  Because of him, they get me, Neal thought, and because of me they’ll get him. It’s all done with mirrors. He reached for the bottle and poured a healthy drink into his coffee cup.

  “What if I don’t want to?” he asked.

  Graham started rubbing his fake hand into his real one. It was a habit he had when he was worried or had something unpleasant to say.

  Neal saved him the trouble. “Then you’ll have to make me want to?”

  Graham was really working on the hand now. Pissing Neal off was fun, but extorting him wasn’t. However, the Man, Levine, and Graham had agreed that Neal had been shut up with his books too long, and if they didn’t get him back into some kind of action, they would lose him. That happened sometimes; a first-class UC—an undercover guy—would be put on R-and-R after a tough job and never come back. Or, worse, the guy would come back dull and rusty and do something stupid and get hurt. Happened all the time, but Graham wasn’t going to let it happen to Neal. So he had come to fetch him for this dumb, chicken-shit job.

  “You been away from Columbia for what, a year now?” Graham asked.

  “About that. You sent me on a job, remember?”

  Neal sure as hell remembered. They had sent him to London on a hopeless search for the runaway daughter of a big-time politico—just to keep his wife content and quiet—and he had screwed up and actually found her. She was hooking and hooked, and he had wrenched her off her pimp and the junk and delivered her to her mother. Which was what the Man wanted him to do, but the politician was sure as hell pissed off, so Friends had to pretend that Neal had screwed them over, too. And so he had “disappeared.” Happily.

  “Can you do that?” Graham asked. “Just take off from gradu-ass school like that?”

  “No, Graham, you can’t. Friends of the Family fixed it. What am I telling you for? You’re the one who fixed it.”

  Graham smiled. “And now we’re asking you for a little favor.”

  “Or you’ll unfix it?”

  Graham shrugged a that’s-life shrug.

  “Why me?” Neal whined. “Why not you? Or Levine?”

  “The Man wants you.”

  “Why?”

  Because, Graham thought, we ain’t going to sit around with our hooters in our hands while you turn yourself into a hermit. I know you, son. You like to be alone so you can brood on things and get happily miserable. You need to get back to work and back to school—back with some people. Get your feet back on concrete.

  “You and Pendleton are both eggheads,” Graham said. “The Man figures he’s been paying for your expensive education for jobs just like this one.”

  Neal took a hit of scotch. He could feel Graham pulling in the line.

  “Pendleton’s some sort of biochemist. I study eighteenth-century English Lit!” Neal said. Tobias Smollett: The Outsider in Eighteenth-Century Literature: Neal’s thesis title and a sure cure for insomnia. Except, that is, for eighteenth-century buffs. Both of them would love it.

  “I guess all eggheads look alike to the Man.”

  Neal tried a different tack.

  “I’m out of shape, Graham. Very rusty. I’ve worked maybe two cases in the last two years and I screwed both of them up. You don’t want me.”

  “You brought Allie Chase home.”

  “Not before I botched it up and almost got us both killed. I’m no good at it anymore, Dad, I—”

  “Stop being such a crybaby! What are we asking here? You go to San Francisco and find the happy couple, which shouldn’t be too difficult even for you, seeing as they’re in the Chinatown Holiday Inn, Room ten-sixteen, right there in your file. You get the broad alone, you slip her some cash, and she dumps him. She’s no dope. She knows that money for nothing is better than money for something.

  “Then you buddy up to Pendleton, have a few shooters with him, listen to his sob story, and pour him onto a plane. What’ll it take? Three, four days?”

  Neal walked over to the window. The rain had let up a little bit, but the fog was heavier than ever.

  “I’m glad you have this all figured out, Graham. Are you going to do my research for me, too?”

  “Just do the job and come back. You can spend the whole summer here at the Mildew Hilton if you want. You have to be back at school September ninth, though.”

  He reached into his case and pulled out a large manila envelope.

  “The schedules and book lists for your—what do you call them?—your seminars. I worked it out with Boskin.”

  Graham is so damned good, Neal thought. Old Graham brings the prizes with him and dangles them in front of my nose: seminars, book lists…. You have to hand it to him—he knows his whores.

  “You’re too good to me, Dad.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  So there it is, Neal thought. A few days of sleazy work in California, then back to my happy monk’s cell on the moor. Finish my reading, then back to graduate school. Jesus, this double life of mine. Sometimes I feel like my own twin brother. Who’s insane.

  “Yeah, okay,” Neal said.

  “I’m telling you,” Graham said, “this one is a grounder, easy throw to first, out of the inning.”

  “Right.”

  So maybe it’s time to come down from the hill, Neal thought. Ease myself back into the world with this sleazy little job. Maybe it’s too easy up here, where I don’t have to deal with anything or anyone except writers who’ve been dead for a couple hundred years.

  He looked out the window and couldn’t tell whether he was looking at rain or fog. Both, he guessed.

  “Have you heard from Diane?” Graham asked.

  Neal thought about the letter that had sat unopened on the table for six months. He’d been afraid to read it.

  “I never answered her letter,” Neal said.

  “You’re a stooge.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Did you think she was just going to wait around for you?”

  “No. I didn’t think that.”

  He had left her with no explanation, just that he had to go do a job, and he’d been gone now for almost a year. Graham had contacted her, told her something, and fo
rwarded her letter. But Neal couldn’t bring himself to open it. He’d rather let the thing die than read that she was killing it. But she wasn’t the one who had killed it, he thought. She was just the one who had the guts to write the obituary.

  Graham wouldn’t let it drop. “She left the apartment.”

  “Diane wouldn’t be the kind to stay.”

  “She found a place on 104th, between Broadway and West End. She has a roommate. A woman.”

  “What did you do? Follow her?!”

  “Sure. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe look her up when you get back to the city.”

  “What are you, my mother?”

  Graham shook his head and poured himself another shot.

  “Way I look at it,” he said, “she’s a friend of the family.”

  He never should have opened the door.

  2

  She was a looker, all right, this Lila.

  That was her name, or the name she used working conventions, anyway. Neal learned this from the file Graham had given him, which he had ample time to peruse on the endless trip to San Francisco. It included a Polaroid taken at dinner by one of Pendleton’s AgriTech buddies, which showed Pendleton sitting at a banquet table with a striking Oriental woman. The buddy had scrawled “Robert and Lila” along the bottom.

  Looking at the photo, Neal couldn’t blame Pendleton for preferring Lila to his Bunsen burners. Her face was heart-shaped, her hair was long, straight, and satin black, swept up on the left by a blue cloisonné comb. She had beautiful, slanted eyes that gazed on Pendleton with what looked like affection as he struggled with his chopsticks. She was smiling at him. If she was a pro, Neal thought, she was a classy pro, and he liked her just from looking at her picture.

  He had no feel for Pendleton yet. The book on him was pretty simple. Forty-three years old, single, married to his work. Born in Chicago, B.S. from Colorado, M.S. from Illinois, Ph.D. from MIT. Taught for a couple of years at Kansas State and then went for the corporate bucks. First for Ciba-Geigy, then for Archer, Daniels Midland, and then AgriTech. Had been there for ten years before he ran into Lila. Lived in a condo, played a little tennis, drove a Volvo. No financial problems, credit hassles, debts. In fact, when you compared his salary and bonuses with his expenses, the guy should have a bunch of money in the bank. Drinks a beer on weekends. Friendly enough, but no close buddies. No women. No boys, either. Fertilizer was his life.

  Jesus, Neal thought, no wonder the guy went off the deep end when he discovered sex with a gorgeous, exotic woman in a city as beautiful as San Francisco.

  Neal had first gone to San Francisco back in 1970, seven years earlier, when the city was the counterculture capital. Sporting longish hair, denim, one tasteful strand of beads, and the hungry look of the fugitive, Neal was working point for Graham on your basic Haight-Ashbury runaway job. He located their particular flower child in an urban commune on Turk Street. She was the daughter of a Boston banker, and was trying hard to live down her capitalist heritage. Neal had shared a bowl of brown rice and a floor with her, gained her trust, and then ratted her out to Graham. Graham did the rest and Neal heard later that she ended up at Harvard. All betrayals should end so happily.

  His next trip to the city was even easier. He was a mature twenty then, and one of the Bank’s clients wanted to film a television commercial in front of a sculpture in Battery Park. Turned out the sculpture was the work of a San Francisco artist who didn’t like to open his mail or answer his phone. Neal found A. Brian Crowe at a coffee house on Columbus. The artist dressed all in black, of course, and hid behind his cape when Neal approached him. The two thousand dollars in cash persuaded him to come out, though, and they sealed the deal over two iced espressos. A. Brian Crowe left happy. Neal hung around the city for a week, and he left happy, which made this an unusual assignment all around.

  Neal figured you’d have to be a fool not to love San Francisco, and whatever else Dr. Robert Pendleton was or wasn’t, he was no fool. He was probably a man getting a little romance for the first time in his life and not wanting to let go of it, one of the lucky few who found a hooker who was also a courtesan, a true lady of the evening. She probably took presents instead of cash, or maybe a discreet check had been deposited in her account.

  So Neal would write her another check, and that would be that.

  Neal closed the file and cracked Fathom open. He fell asleep after a couple of chapters. The flight attendant woke him up to put his seat upright for the approach to San Francisco.

  Neal had never liked the Mark Hopkins Hotel. The bill was always as large as the room was small, and the Snob Hill address didn’t impress him. But it always helps a bribery deal to look like money, and he wanted to ask Lila to a quiet drink at the Top of the Mark and have quick access to a room where he could hand her some money in privacy, so he swallowed his distaste and checked in.

  He handed the Bank’s gold card to the precious clerk, confessed to having only one small bag, and found his own way to the sixth-floor room, which occupied a corner, so you could actually turn around in it without folding your arms across your chest. The windows allowed a view of the Oakland Bay Bridge and some nicely restored Victorian houses on Pine Street. Neal didn’t care much about the view, as he didn’t plan to spend a lot of time there. He wanted a slow shower and a quick meal before getting down to work.

  He called down to room service and ordered a Swiss cheese omelet with a plain, toasted bagel, a pot of coffee, and a Chronicle. Then he stripped off his airline-grody clothes and stepped into the shower. After months of heating his own water for barely tepid outdoor baths, the steaming spray felt great. He stayed in a little too long and was still shaving when the doorbell rang.

  He signed for the bill and the tip, poured a cup of black coffee, and sipped at it while he finished shaving. Then he sat down at the small table by the window to devour the food and the newspaper.

  Neal was a print junkie, which he figured came with being a native New Yorker. He bypassed the front page of the Chronicle in favor of Herb Caen’s column, enjoyed that, and then turned to the sports section. The baseball season was about to start, and the Yankees looked pretty good for ’77. That’s one of the great things about spring, he thought. All the home teams look like they have a shot. It’s only in the sere days of summer that hopes begin to wilt, then wither and die in fall. Unless, of course, you have relief pitching.

  After a thorough perusal of the sports pages, he turned to the front section to catch up on the news. Jimmy Carter really was President, wearing Ward Cleaver sweaters and treating the country like a collective Beaver. Mao was still dead, and his successors were squabbling over the remains. Brezhnev was ill. The same old same old.

  Which reminded him that he had the same old job to do: find some miscreant and bring him home. He used his third cup of coffee to come up with a plan.

  It wasn’t much of a plan. All he had to do was amble down to the Holiday Inn, trail them until he could find a way to contact her alone, and make his pitch. Then pick up the pieces of Pendleton’s shattered heart and check them through to Raleigh. Almost as easy as giving money to a starving artist.

  That’s when he got the bright idea to let his fingers do the walking. Why drag his ass all the way down the hill and waste time following them around? Call their room instead. If he answers, hang up. If she answers, say something like, “You don’t know me, but I have a thousand bucks in cash sitting under your water glass at a table at the Top of the Mark. The name is Neal Carey. One o’clock. Come alone.” There wasn’t a hooker in the world, no matter how classy, who wouldn’t make that appointment.

  Safe, simple and civilized, he thought. No point making this any harder than it has to be.

  He found the hotel number in the file and dialed the phone.

  “Room ten-sixteen, please,” he said.

  “I’ll transfer you to the operator.”

  He took a sip of coffee. />
  “Operator. May I help you?”

  “Room ten-sixteen, please.”

  “Thank you. One moment.”

  It was more than a moment. More like ten moments.

  “What party are you trying to reach, sir?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Dr. Robert Pendleton.”

  “Thank you. One moment.”

  Ten more moments. Long ones.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton has checked out.”

  Swell.

  “Uuuhh … when?”

  “This morning, sir.”

  While I was showering, filling my face, and lounging over the spring training reports, Neal thought.

  “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  “One moment.”

  Did he leave a forwarding address? Your basic desperation effort.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton left no forwarding address. Would you like to leave a message in case he calls in?”

  “No, thank you, and thanks for your help.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  “Right.”

  Neal poured another cup of coffee in the time it took to call himself an asshole. All right, think, he told himself. Pendleton’s checked out. Why? Maybe money. Hotels are expensive and he’s found himself a pad somewhere. Or maybe AgriTech kept bugging him, so he changed hotels. Or maybe the party is over and he’s on his way back to Raleigh. That’s the best maybe, but you can’t afford to count on it. So back to work.

  Pendleton isn’t a pro, so chances are he won’t think about covering his traces. He probably doesn’t know that anyone is on his trail. And there’s only one place to pick up his trail.

  Neal hustled to get dressed. He put on a powder blue button-down shirt, khaki slacks, and black loafers, slipped on a red-and-blue rep tie but left the knot open, and dumped half the stuff out of his canvas shoulder bag, leaving enough in to give it some weight. Sticking his airline ticket jacket into the pocket of his all-purpose, guaranteed-not-to-wrinkle blue blazer and shoving a ten-dollar bill in his pants pocket, he hoofed it to the elevator, which seemed to take forever to get there. He figured he was ten minutes away from his only shot at tracking Pendleton and he didn’t know if he had the ten minutes.