Hellbender Read online

  I didn’t find a laptop, or a pad, or the phone.

  I did make one very interesting discovery, hidden in a place so clever I nearly missed it myself—inside the heater vent, under a false side that looked exactly like the other three. I pulled it out, and sat on the floor to look at it: a nine-by-twelve envelope of printouts and clippings, nineteen of them, that made my brain whir around for a while until a little voice told me it might be a good time to leave. Taking the envelope with me.

  Maybe I needed to take a look at the other names on that list, after all.

  When I finally slipped back through my own front door, late that night, I stood in the dark for the longest time, straining to hear over the pounding in my heart. Stupid, to leave my gun in the safe. Stupid, stupid, to let the habits of paranoia go rusty.

  After the longest time, my eyes showed no motion. No intruder shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned me, and I heard nothing outside my own skin. When I forced my hand to flip on the light, the only thing that looked back at me was my wild-eyed reflection in the mirror—good thing I didn’t have a gun in my hand, I told myself, or I’d have blown a hole in the wall.

  But just because there was no one waiting for me (and no one in the bathroom or in the closet) didn’t mean I was safe. In ninety seconds I had my gun, my hat, my go-bag of cash, and a clean shirt, and I was out the door.

  I left my car where I’d parked it, and went away on foot.

  Which took care of my own safety; now for that of my client. It always looks bad when a PI loses a client. And anyway, she was probably going to owe me plenty by the time I’d finished.

  She was asleep, of course, since it was just shy of two in the morning. Anyway, I hoped she was only asleep. Her small house up in Sausalito (another place with damp air and tolerant attitudes) was dark, like all of its neighbors, so I fiddled with the lock on her front door and let myself in—if I knocked loud enough to wake her, I’d wake the neighbors as well, to say nothing of giving warning to any unfriendlies who might be listening. Her cat nearly gave me a heart attack, a flash of near-ultraviolet motion followed by a slapping noise from the next room, and I came maybe half a micron from squeezing the trigger into action before my brain translated the motion and screamed at me to lay off. I eased back the pressure, feeling a little shaky: lucky she didn’t have a Rottweiler.

  I breathed in the air for a while, sniffing for any trace of death and blood and terror, but the house smelled good, like cooking and flowers. Like her, in fact. And only like her, which suggested that she lived alone.

  So I cleared my throat and started talking in a low voice. “Ms. Savoy? Elizabeth? This is Mike Heller, the investigator you hired. Elizabeth, please, if you’re here I need you to wake up. This is Mike Heller, and I found out some things that make me think you’re not safe here. Sorry about breaking in like this, I sort of needed to. Um, Ms. Savoy? You there? This is Mike—”

  The lights went on abruptly, dazzling my dark-adapted eyes. My right hand jerked again, and I blinked hard.

  “Mr. Heller? What are you doing here?”

  I blew out a breath. I was going to have to go someplace nice and quiet at the end of this damn case. Assuming I was still alive, of course. I let my gun drop to my side, although I didn’t put it away.

  “Ms. Savoy, I’m afraid you may be in danger. I need you to throw a few things in a bag and come with me.”

  “What, now? What time is it, anyway?”

  “Time to go, if you want to live.”

  Motion in the dark doorway resolved into a figure, dressed in slinky pajamas. Her hair was every which way, her face was bare of makeup, and she had a red pillow line across one cheek. She was absolutely gorgeous.

  “It’s Harry, isn’t it? What did you find?”

  “I’m leaving here in two minutes, with or without you. I can tell you about Harry later, once I’m sure we’re safe. You coming or not?”

  “I can’t . . . How do you . . . You broke into my house!”

  “I couldn’t be sure you weren’t being watched. Still can’t be sure.”

  “Get out!”

  I took a step back toward the door. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave. But I won’t be able to keep you safe if you’re not with me.”

  “I can’t just leave. And anyway, I have to be at work in a few hours!”

  “Call in sick. Ms. Savoy, I really wish you would trust me on this. I swear, you’re honestly not safe here.” I could feel the seconds ticking away on the clock, but what could I do? Knock her out and carry her away? All I could do was try to look honest, and wait for her to make up her mind.

  The way she did it shook me more than anything that had yet happened in that already busy twenty-four hours. She glanced at the gun dangling at the end of my arm, then undulated across the room in those slinky pajamas to stand in front of me, studying my face with her human-looking eyes. Then she reached up both hands to pull my face to hers, and kissed me.

  Interesting fact: What’s unpredictable about genetic splicing is the distribution of each side’s characteristics. Salamanders have a whole lot of DNA packed into their cells—probably the reason they combine readily with others—but very few of us came out of our foster wombs looking like lizards (very few who lived, anyway.) And only a handful of us have tails, or spots, or four fingers instead of five. And although I have heard of the occasional poor bastard whose tail insists on regenerating after that particular surgery, I’ve never believed that any of us actually shoot out our tongues or ooze poison from our skin.

  But there’s no doubt, many of us do things differently from your average Homo sapiens.

  Now, a major side effect of that Supreme Court victory was that we had as much right as anyone else to keep out of the hands of scientists (which is the reason you sometimes see ads on WeWeb and Facebook, begging for SalaMan volunteers). Science eyes us with a longing that verges on lust. It offers us considerable sums to participate in studies, then gleefully writes learned papers about our every oddity from pheromones and internal sex organs (science being as fascinated by our pre-Surgery organs as the tabloids are) to the ability to stretch the visible realm into the ultraviolet. Any of us who can prove that we’ve lost a scar or regenerated a finger, and don’t mind spending the rest of our lives under a microscope, would never have to work another day.

  But one thing I’ve never read about in the literature, probably because the scientists never thought to ask about it, is the odd uses of some SalaMan mucous membranes.

  Elizabeth Savoy was not kissing me, she was tasting the truth on me. She took her time about it, and for sure both of us enjoyed it, but we both knew what she was doing. And we both knew what she tasted.

  Without a word, she walked back into the bedroom. I heard a drawer open.

  I turned off the overhead light that she’d switched on with some kind of remote, and went into the room where the cat had disappeared. A neighbor’s outdoor light gave shape to kitchen cabinets, and I opened them until I found a bag of kibble, which I set on the floor with the top open. I took a big bowl and filled it with water, setting it next to the bag. My client’s feline responsibilities taken care of, I pressed my face to the windows, studying the possibilities. Wondering if what I’d found at Eileen Jacobs’s house was just brother Harry’s coffee having its way with my nerves. But I didn’t think so.

  It was more than the two minutes I’d given her, but less than three, when I heard the toilet flush and feet wearing shoes coming across the room. My client fished a jacket out of the front-door closet, put it on, and picked up the small bag.

  “Did you bring whatever cash you have?” I asked her. “Necessary pills, glasses, your ID?”

  “Cash, a bit of jewelry, and my license and passport. No pills or glasses.”

  “Turn off your cell phone. Better yet, take out the battery.”

  She took out a pricey-looking slip of plastic, thumbing open the back and dropping the battery and the now-inert machine back into the bag’s pocket
.

  We went out her back door, around the tiny garden, through the gate, and up the winding stairway leading away from the water, to the place I had left the motorcycle I’d borrowed from an unwitting friend in Berkeley. On two wheels, and later four, I took my client out of the Bay Area, doubling back, going as invisibly as I knew how, spending all my attention on the rearview mirror and giving out just enough information to keep her with me. Finally, late that afternoon we went to ground in a middle-of-the-road motel in Sacramento, registering as a husband and wife, in a room with two beds.

  She turned on me the instant the door was shut. “Okay, all day you’ve been putting me off about this because you needed to concentrate on our backs. So are we now, finally, safe enough that you can answer one or two damn questions?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but—”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Look, Elizabeth. I’m tired and I’m cranky. Even you look like you could stomp a puppy. You go take a shower, I’ll rustle up some food, we’ll have a drink, and after that we’ll talk as long as you like.”

  She wavered, but she was honest enough with herself that the call of the shower overcame her impatience.

  I phoned a nearby Chinese place that delivered, and told the guy I’d add a hefty tip if he’d pick up a cold six-pack and something chocolate and girly on his way. The food and drink arrived as my client was finishing her long, steamy shower; I paid him cash, keeping my head a bit down in case someone out there flashed around a picture of my face. When she came out of the bathroom, I went in; as I closed the door, I heard the sound of a beer cap coming off.

  I’ll admit it: I spend most of my life pretending I don’t feel the tightness of my skin and the sandpaper dryness of the air, but sometimes I can’t help reveling in the luxury of water. This was one of those.

  I was only half dry when I heard her call my name, in a voice that had me out of there with the gun in one hand and the corners of the towel in the other.

  She was staring at the television, tuned to the six o’clock news. The young reporter stood in front of a place I did not at first recognize, and only partly because I’d just seen it at night. The main reason was, the house that had been there, wasn’t.

  “. . . called 911, but by the time the vehicles could get up the narrow hills of this community of artists and bohemians, the house was already engulfed with flames. Neighbor Alison Stanford describes the scene.”

  Neighbor Alison Stanford was a petite Japanese woman of about sixty wearing artistic clothing and a thrilled expression. She earnestly described waking to sirens, seeing the leap of flames (she actually used the phrase) from the street, and was now waiting to see if the nice woman who lived there had survived. “I found her cat in my backyard,” said Ms. Stanford. “It took a while before it would let me come near, but I picked it up and took it inside. I hope the owner’s all right.”

  Ms. Stanford seemed more excited at the brush with fame than she was worried at her neighbor’s safety. I stepped back inside the bathroom to exchange the towel for my trousers and add the clean shirt, then came out and took the remote control from my client’s grip, pressing the power button. Silence fell.

  Elizabeth drew a shaky breath, then lifted her eyes to mine. “Harry’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know yet. Finding that out comes second on my list of things to do. First is keeping you alive.”

  “But why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “Your brother’s place was searched. So was Eileen’s.” I handed her the envelope of printouts. “Harry hid these, really well.”

  She pulled the pages out, fourteen printouts and three actual newspaper clippings, all news articles from across the country. It didn’t take long for her to get the gist of them, since all the stories followed the same lines: Someone died, or someone disappeared, or someone disappeared and was later found dead.

  Four of the names had been on the list my client had given me in my office, the previous morning.

  The stories ranged from two column inches to half the front page of a small-town paper. She read three, then read sections of the next five, and after that she just skimmed them. At the end, she folded them together and looked up at me. She looked lost—and scared. Which was good.

  “They’re all . . . us, aren’t they?”

  “SalaMen? Hard to be sure, but I’d guess so.”

  Only two of the stories said it openly, but three others described the victim as “private” (meaning: nervous about inviting people home) and five of them had quotes about the missing or dead person’s unconventional beauty: that sinuous appeal doing its subliminal work.

  “But, so many? How could the police not know?”

  That was the real question. The cops, I could understand not catching it, since any database of crimes needs some point of similarity to send up a warning flag, and these were just eight unrelated people, from all over the country, who’d disappeared. The only thing that linked them was—if Harry and his sister were right—their genetic makeup. And if the feds raised that flag themselves, they were admitting that their hands-off policy toward the SalaMan community wasn’t quite as complete as they said.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a governmental agency had chosen cold-blooded self-protection over humanitarian concerns. Especially when a lot of the population wouldn’t exactly consider us human.

  My client sniffed. I looked over and saw her staring down at her beer bottle, one tear snaking down her cheek. “At least my cat is okay,” she said.

  With that, I realized that I was holding the neck of my beer bottle so hard my fingers were going numb. I was mad, madder than I’d been in a lot of years. If the feds could’ve stopped this and didn’t—if the feds sat back while Elizabeth Savoy went onto some Salaphobe’s dirty little list . . .

  I put down the bottle and handed my client a box of the takeaway and a pair of chopsticks. “Eat,” I ordered, and sat down to do the same.

  When we had both slowed down a little, I said, “Okay. Tell me again how you know the people on Harry’s list.”

  “As I said, I only know Eileen and Harry. Two of the others, Imogen and Barbara, I went to college with, although I haven’t seen them for years. And now I think about it, the guy named Hal Andrews? Imogen dated a guy named Hal for a while, and his name night have been Andrews, although I’m not sure. And the guy named Benny? Well, I vaguely remember Harry mentioning someone with that name from when he lived in L.A. The others don’t ring any bells.”

  “You kept in touch with people from college, but didn’t see them?”

  “Oh, we lost track of each other a long time ago, but then they joined Harry’s group on WeWeb, and we reconnected.”

  “Tell me about Harry’s WeWeb group. “

  “If you’re thinking that some hate group is targeting us through that, I don’t think so. Harry was—is—very careful. Anyone who applies for membership has to wait until they have a face-to-face meeting. He has to be sure. No, it would be really tough to crash that party.”

  I pinched up a few more bites of cold kung pao beef, reflecting that, no, crashing a party wasn’t precisely what I had in mind.

  I could feel in my pocket the two printouts I’d removed from Harry’s envelope before handing it to his sister.

  They were both page captures from the social networking site WeWeb. One of those belonged to Eileen Jacobs and followed a discussion about a movie she’d been working on, doing set design. The other belonged to a guy named Bill Mayer, who posted mostly about a kids’ baseball team that I guessed he coached.

  But the reason I’d taken them out of the envelope before handing it to my client, and the reason I thought they were in Harry’s secret collection to begin with, was not the brief chats the two WeWeb members had posted. It was the advertisements in the two sidebars. The first one, from Bill Mayer’s page dated the previous fall, read:

  SALAMAN? $500 AN HOUR FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN A STUDY.

  EASY, QUICK, UNOBT
RUSIVE, PRIVATE, YOU CAN HELP OTHERS

  AND EARN HARD CASH FAST.

  The ad ended with a linked contact address. The second page, taken from Eileen’s page two months ago, had the same wording except for one thing.

  The payment offered had gone up tenfold, to $5,000.

  I fed my client another beer, then the chocolate. Before long her eyelids drooped into the relief of sleep. I pulled the covers over her, dropped the empty boxes into the wastebasket, and stretched out on the adjacent bed.

  “Thank you, Mike,” she said, her voice drowsy.

  “Sure, honey. Hey, tell me something?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How’d you find me? When you came to my office?”

  “Saw you in a bar, about six months ago. Someone I was with pointed you out, said you were a private investigator. One look, and I knew.”

  “Took you all that time to come up with an excuse to hire me, huh?”

  “Hmm,” she mumbled, and a minute later she was snoring into her pillow.

  The kiss she’d given me had nothing to do with romance. I knew that. Still, I couldn’t help the memory of it on my mouth as I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, six chaste feet away from her.

  The next day, my first order of business was to stash my client someplace safe. It took me twenty minutes driving in circles before I found that endangered species, a pay phone, but once I’d made a call, it was only a matter of a few hours before one of the two guys I’d trust with my life showed up and took her away. She didn’t want to go, but in the end, she did.

  Step two, a public computer.

  I’m a big fan of libraries: information, comfort, and safety, all in one place. And over the years, library associations have fought hard for privacy rights, which makes them more secure from snoops than any cyber café. This library even had a coffee bar attached to it, which was good because what I was doing wasn’t going to be quick.