A Wild and Lonely Place (13 page)

Lateef hurried from the room, a sly, malicious smile on his lips.

Hamid watched him—marking down that smile on a mental balance sheet. When she turned back to me, her face was composed. “You
will wait in the reception hall for them. Do not return here. Any further communication between my country and RKI will be
brief and final.”

I nodded curtly and went out to the reception area, where I sat down on a small velvet-cushioned bench. Ten minutes passed.
Fifteen. Twenty. I was growing impatient when a gray-haired woman dressed in a white uniform hurried down the wide staircase,
followed by Lateef.

Habiba was nowhere to be found, they told me. Her mother had vanished, too.

All at once the reception area was full of people, most of whom were yelling. I remained by the bench, watching RKI’s shift
supervisor attempt to restore order and waiting for Malika Hamid to make her entrance. The door to the library stayed closed,
and after a minute Kahlil Lateef went in to her.

Curious.

Nobody was paying any attention to me, so I moved toward the rear of the house, past archways opening onto formal rooms to
a swinging door that led to the service area. I slipped past the laundry and pantry and took the back stairs to the second
floor.

The door to Mavis’s room stood open. I stepped inside and surveyed the disorder. A vodka bottle lay on its side on an end
table, clear liquid puddled beneath it; a glass and a lamp were in pieces on the floor. Mavis throwing a tantrum, or Mavis
being forcibly removed? Impossible to say.

Quickly I went back to the hall and moved along, opening doors until I came to a yellow-and-white child’s room. Habiba had
been subjected to the same overdone decor as her mother: canopied bed, skirted dressing table, organdy curtains, reproductions
of Degas ballerinas. A bookcase held dozens of insipid-faced dolls that looked as though they’d never been played with; the
bed was mounded with too-cute stuffed animals. I’d have thought the pathologically neat room uninhabited, perhaps a shrine
to a long-grown girl, had it not been for the area by the window bay.

Books were stacked on the floor around the window seat, as though Habiba had forted herself up there. I went over and examined
them: some school texts, bearing the stamp of an exclusive private institution nearby; a few Nancy Drews and Judy Blumes.
But mostly they were adult nonfiction on a variety of subjects ranging from oceanography to ecology to natural history. Beside
them was a stack of
National Geographies
and a pile of jigsaw puzzles depicting foreign scenes. Imaginary travels to relieve the tedium of Habiba’s restricted life.

I moved around the stacks to the window. It overlooked a backyard that fell away in terraces to the rear of the house behind
it, which appeared to be an annex to the consulate. In between was the old-fashioned gazebo where Habiba used to meet secretly
with her mother. A stout wisteria vine scaled the wall not two feet from the window—the perfect escape route for an agile
little girl, and why hadn’t anyone recognized that?

As I turned, something brushed my leg. A telltale piece of paper protruded from under the seat cushion. When I pulled it out
I saw it was a math test with an A + penciled in red at the top. The bench was actually a chest with a hinged lid; I lifted
it and found Habiba’s treasure trove.

It contained the usual things kids save: report cards and more school papers; birthday cards and wallet-sized pictures of
classmates and souvenirs of field trips. Ticket stubs and theater programs and a Forty-niner pennant. In one five-by-seven
photograph a younger Habiba posed shyly with Donald Duck at Disneyland.

In a gift box decorated with jungle animals I found more interesting items: a picture of Mavis showed her smiling broadly
and holding up her book of poetry; she had been almost beautiful before the booze exacted its price. In another photo she
held hands on a beach with a darkly handsome man, presumably Dawud Hamid. A posed studio portrait of the young family when
Habiba was a toddler confirmed his identity. Hamid had a high brow, thick sensual lips, and a wavy mane of dark hair; the
square shape of his face and the stockiness of his body were his mother’s. The way he held his head was highly stylized, as
though he’d practiced it many times in front of a mirror; his eyes held a brooding intensity. In both pictures he looked directly
into the camera lens, communing with it while Mavis stared at him with frank admiration.

The way a person poses for a photograph can tell you a great deal about him and how he relates to others. Hamid’s told me
that he was proud of his good looks, aware of their impact on both men and women, and would use them to get whatever he wanted.
It also said that he placed his interests well ahead of his wife’s and child’s.

After memorizing Hamid’s features, I returned the pictures to the box and shut the window seat.

Before I left the room I checked a few more things. Nothing seemed to be missing from the closet, but it was so jammed with
clothing—including a large number of frilly pastel dresses that I was willing to bet Habiba hated— that I couldn’t conclude
anything. In the adjacent bathroom I found a still-damp toothbrush and a nightgown on a hook behind the door. I looked in
all the usual hiding places, hoping to find another cache of treasures, but came up empty-handed.

Time to see what was going on downstairs.

The only person in the reception area was the RKI operative on door duty. I identified myself and asked for his supervisor.
He pointed me toward the library. I went over there, knocked, and stepped inside without waiting for an invitation.

Malika Hamid sat on the sofa, her posture rigid. The air in the room was charged with anger. A man in an RKI blazer with a
nametag that said “S. Long” stood behind one of the chairs as if he were using it as a shield against the consul general’s
wrath, and Kahlil Lateef had resumed his position in front of Mr. Ed. When she saw me, Hamid’s brows pulled together as though
I was one more cross she had to bear. If I hadn’t seen her genuinely enraged, I would have bought her act.

I told Long who I was and asked, “Have you been in touch with Mr. Renshaw?”

“He’s winding things up in Irvine, and the company jet is standing by at John Wayne. He should be here in”—he consulted his
watch—“approximately two and a half hours.”

“What about the police?”

“No police—standard operating procedure. We’re waiting for a ransom demand, and when it arrives, we’ll meet it and make a
recovery.”

Unlike other international security firms—who were required by the insurance carriers who underwrote their clients’ antiterrorism
policies to immediately report kidnapings to the FBI—RKI had more leeway. Their clients tended to be marginal or very vulnerable
or to prefer to rely on their security firm’s protection rather than insurance. RKI operated independent of the authorities,
taking advantage of a legal loophole that provides no penalty for either failing to report a kidnaping or making a good-faith
attempt to recover the victim. I didn’t wholly approve of their method—it involved too much risk for my taste—but I had to
admit that more often than not it worked.

Long added, “We’ve already got our monitoring equipment in place, and our top man in that line is flying in from Denver. Our
operatives are canvassing the neighbors to see if anyone noticed anything. Everything’s under control.”

Everything was under control, but it didn’t matter. There would be no ransom demand and no one in the neighborhood would report
having seen Mavis and Habiba leave the consulate. Their disappearance had the feel of an inside job— probably engineered by
Malika Hamid in order to retain custody of them.

The consul general was looking at Long and me, eyes watchful. I looked back, taking in her body language and facial expression.
For a moment she met my gaze as if daring me to speak; then she lowered her eyelids in feigned weariness. Hamid knew what
I suspected.

I turned to Long. “When Mr. Renshaw gets here, tell him I need to talk with him. I’ll be at Green Street, Charlotte Keim’s
extension.”

* * *

Keim said, “Your assistant’s as cute as a bug’s butt.”

The saying had to be straight out of Texas because she spoke it with a trace of the drawl that she’d once told me she’d worked
to lose after leaving home. “You’ve met Mick?”

“Uh-huh. He stopped by this morning on the way to the office and left off your list.” She swiveled away from her desk, tossing
her long brunette curls. “How old is he, anyway?”

“Eighteen.” I parked myself on the straightbacked chair that was sandwiched between the desk and the wall of the cubicle.
RKI’s data-search people didn’t labor in spacious surroundings.

“Well, he plays older. He involved with anybody?”

“Living with someone, yes. Don’t tell me you’re interested?”

“Why not?”

“The age difference.”

Keim threw back her head and laughed—a deep, uninhibited sound. “Christ, Sharon, I’m only twenty-five. And younger men, they’re
so adoring—and so grateful.”

I was about to warn her off Mick, but then I told myself to mind my own business. Last fall I’d made a promise to cut the
already frayed apron strings, and so far I’d kept it. Besides, with her upturned nose and wickedly sparkling eyes, Keim didn’t
fit the role of evil temptress.

“Well, just don’t break his heart,” I said. “You mind if I make a few calls?”

“I’ll be gentle with him.” She motioned toward the phone. “While you’re doing that, I’ll print out the info I’ve got for you.”

I thanked her and dialed Greg Marcus. There had been no message from him on either of my machines; I assumed the checks he’d
made for me had turned up nothing, but I wanted to confirm that. Greg, however, was out of the office. Next I called Mick.
Business was slow, he said, and he was bored. My only call had been from Hy, who was at my house and waiting to hear from
me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I probably won’t be in today.”

“No problem. It’s so quiet here that I’m playing solitaire on the computer. By the way, I took the list of stuff you wanted
to Charlotte Keim in person.”

“I know; I’m calling from her office.”

He lowered his voice as though he thought I was calling from a speakerphone. “Uh, how old is she?”

“Twenty-five.” I threw an amused glance at Keim, who abruptly looked over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Uh-huh. Roving eyes so early in your relationship with Maggie?”

“Shar, I hardly ever see Maggie, she works such long hours. I’ve got to look at
somebody.
”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

He snorted and hung up on me.

“One more call,” I told Keim, dialing my home phone.

When he heard my voice Hy said, “Okay—what did you do with them?”

“Do with what?”

“The keys to the Citabria.”

“Oh, God.” I could picture them resting at the bottom of my purse.

“I thought as much. One loan of my airplane and you appropriate it. And I went to the trouble of leaving the MG at All Souls
and taking a cab over here.”

“Hy, I’m sorry. Are you in a hurry to leave?”

“Not really. I’m feeling kind of feverish again, so I’m wrapped in an afghan on your couch with Ralph lying on my chest. In
a minute I’m going to send him to the kitchen to make a hot toddy.”

“You really should see a doctor.”

“It’s just a bug; I’ll get over it. What time d’you think you’ll be home?”

I explained about the new developments in the case. When I finished he said, “Sounds like you’ve got a full plate. Speaking
of that, I found the lasagna you’ve been promising to make me in your freezer. If you want, I’ll make a salad and we can heat
the lasagna up in the microwave when you get here.”

“Great. There’re plenty of salad things in the fridge, and I’ll pick up some sourdough. See you whenever.”

As I hung up Keim commented, “A man who can make a salad—all right!”

“And a decent one, no less. Both the salad and the man, I mean.” I motioned at the printout that she’d spread on her desk.
“So what have we got here?”

“Well, I’m not coming up with anything on this Dawud Hamid or any of the other Azadis, except for the usual society-column
stuff. But I ran a year’s search to either side of the date he disappeared for the first name Klaus. What I got was Klaus
Schechtmann—Speed Schechtmann, to his friends.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar.”

“Ought to. Up till six months before your guy disappeared Schechtmann operated a high-tech sports book out of his German restaurant
on Vallejo above the Broadway Tunnel. The whole second floor of the building was given over to operators answering toll-free
lines and taking bets on everything from college football to the Kentucky Derby. Speed was raking in over a billion a year,
plus his restaurant was
the
in spot for the international set.”

“Meaning diplomats?”

“Diplomats, Eurotrash, any fast-living foreigners.”

“What was the name of the place?”

Keim grinned. “Das Glücksspiel.”

“What’s so funny?”

“It translates to ‘game of chance.’”

“Talk about red-flagging the place!”

“I’ve got a hunch old Speed suffers from the typically Teutonic ailment of thinking he’s a superior creature and thus untouchable.
I had a couple of uncles who thought the same way—till they got sent to the slammer for embezzlement. Speed learned the same
lesson when his crowd was infiltrated by a couple of undercover inspectors from Vice; the week before the D.A. took the case
to the grand jury, he closed up shop and ran.”

“Where to?”

“The Caribbean, initially. In November of eighty-nine he was spotted on St. Maarten, the Dutch side of one of the Leeward
Islands. They’ve got legalized gambling there, but it’s tightly controlled. Nothing flashy enough for the likes of Speed.
After that he dropped out of sight.”

Except for occasional appearances at Malika Hamid’s luncheon table.