Now my attacker actually squealed. “Shit!” he gasped, curling over. Mr. Smith’s voice, definitely. And it smelled like him. I pushed him away, grabbed the sap from my pocket, and swung it wildly. It was too dark to see more than vague outlines. The sap didn’t connect. I took a step back and turned my head, following a faint movement. A shadow the size of a truck coming back to hurt me. I swung again. The sap came down with a wet crunch on Smith’s clutching hand. He drew back and squealed again, so much like a pig. I zeroed in on his head and swung again. He fell with a heavy thump, like so much dead meat.
The back door swung open and Mrs. Smith peered out. “George? George!” she called. “Are you all right?”
I ran for the gate and fled down the street. There was a tiny sliver of light in the upstairs window at the corner grocery. As instructed, I pounded on the side door. The window raised with a high squeak of old wood on wood and Mrs. Giordano peered out. “Now look here,” she called, “this is far too late!”
“Do you have a phone? I have to call the police! Let me in,” I begged.
“What’s this about? Who’s there? Laura, is it?” Her gray hair hung down in a long braid as she leaned out the window, and I wished it were long enough to clamber up, like Rapunzel’s.
“It’s an emergency, let me in! Someone’s going to kill me.”
“Well, we’ll have none of that—this is a nice neighborhood! The mister’ll be right down.” I could hear her yell something in Italian to her husband, then his heavy steps on the side stairs. The door opened and I dashed in past him. I hoped I wasn’t leaping from the frying pan into the fire. Mr. Giordano was short and round. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and suspenderless twill workpants that exposed a great deal of pale, hairy belly.
“Come in, missy, what’s the trouble?” he asked, and I felt like crawling into his big arms for protection.
“I … I just need to use the phone. And maybe wait for the police.” I began to shake. Mr. Giordano shooed me upstairs into the apartment. Mrs. Giordano put the kettle on while I used the phone. She looked at the curtained window and the darkness behind it while the tea water boiled. “They should just try it,” she muttered, holding up the biggest butcher knife I’d ever seen. “Let them try it!”
“Watch that thing,” her husband said.
I gave a deposition about what I’d seen and a judge issued a search warrant for the house and yard. Then I headed back to the office. Now I had to wait and see if it was Mary’s body I’d found—and if there were any others there. The police brought in a team of men to shovel deep into the lush garden. They found the body in the dirt pile right away and arrested the Smiths on suspicion of murder. They kept on digging—in the dirt pile, in the lush garden beds, under the bower where Nancy had hidden Spot. The final count was six.
Six lost women. Six human beings, like me, like the girl next door, like all the rootless, hopeful young women in this goddamned country, this goddamned world.
Goddamn Bill for not telling me how bad it could get. Goddamn me for my happy little smart-girl moxie.
Mike McGowan called me with the news. “Good work, Laura. You really uncovered a can of worms. Bill would be proud.”
Bill could sleep at night after this kind of thing.
“You were lucky to get away in one piece,” Mike went on.
“A little luck,” I said, my stomach taking a twist. Mike knew about the sap, which wasn’t strictly legal. We both knew that if I hadn’t had it, I would have ended up in the garden as number seven. “Any idea what the Smiths were up to?”
“Well, it seems they were taking a novel approach to war profiteering. Girls who disappear don’t take their room deposits. Or their purses. They had a tidy sum tucked away.”
“That’s awful! Those poor girls.”
“It’s not a pretty world out there, Laura. So, you going to call Przybilski first or do you want us to do it? He’ll have to come down and see if he can ID his sister’s body. Not that there’s much recognizable to ID with. We’ll probably need dental records.”
“I’ll call him, Mike. Thanks.” I rang off and stared at the phone. Then I called the navy base and left a message for Przybilski to come see me.
I rehearsed a hundred different ways of breaking the news. Przybilski showed up later that afternoon. There was no easy way, so I told him straight out.
“I’m so sorry, but I think your sister’s dead.”
“What! What happened?”
I explained. He sat and hung his head as he turned his cap around in circles, his hands sliding over the stitched brim with a tiny rasping noise. I offered to come down to the coroner’s office with him, but he said he’d go by himself. I gave him back the picture of Mary and he stared sadly at the bright face of his sister. “I guess that’s it, then.”
“One more thing.” I felt like a rat, a war profiteer myself, but this was a business, after all. “Here’s my bill.” I slid the invoice across the desk.
“I don’t get paid again till the end of the month. But I’ll be back with it.”
“Okay, Navy, I trust you.” We shook hands and he walked out into the sunny afternoon. The bay was still sparkling.
GOLD SHIELD BLUES
BY JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE
Mount Soledad
Mount Soledad was a cushy gig.
Mostly, it was a matter of driving around in a company car with a light bar on top and the Gold Shield Security logo emblazoned across the doors. Occasionally, I had to interrupt drag-racing teenagers, and even more occasionally respond to a dispatch call, which more often than not turned out to be raccoons or feral cats, rather than genuine intruders. What security companies never tell their customers is that most actual break-ins take place in lower-middle-class and poor neighborhoods, where the loss of property can do real damage to a family’s shaky financial status. The rich have fences and walls and alarms, buttressed by decent police response times and private security companies like Gold Shield. The bad guys know that, and since your high-class cat burglars are mostly fictional, most real-life burglars don’t bother trying to hit the mansions of the rich.
So when I got a call from dispatch, one overly warm August night, sending me to a house on Via Capri—a reported intruder—I wasn’t too worried about what I’d find when I got there. I knew the place from the outside, high up on the hill, facing west-northwest for the primo ocean view. An eight-foot masonry wall, spiked on top, surrounded the property, and a cobblestone drive led through double wrought-iron gates before sweeping up to the house.
When I arrived, less than five minutes after taking the call (my strobes slicing the darkness into ribbons of tinted black), the gates were closed. I pulled up to the call box mounted on a post, and pressed a button. In a moment, a crackly voice responded. I identified myself and was buzzed in. The gates parted with a slow majesty, and I drove through into a lushly landscaped estate full of mature trees and what looked like enough lawn to graze cattle on.
It was hardly unique in that. Some of the priciest real estate in La Jolla—itself one of the most expensive enclaves in the United States—was on Mount Soledad. Dr. Seuss had lived here; I sometimes saw his widow out and about in their Caddy with the GRINCH license plate.
Every light in the place was burning, showing me a three-story Tuscan-style home, all vast slabs of stucco in a dark mustard color with turrets and red-tile roof and all the extras. I parked between the house and a fountain that looked like it belonged on a postcard from Rome. By the time I was out of the car, flashlight in hand, a front door opened that two Los Angeles Lakers could have passed through, one standing on the other’s shoulders.
A man stood in the doorway. He was probably in his late sixties, trim, with neat gray hair, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back over his forearms, dress pants, and leather slippers. Well put together, the way wealthy men often are; plenty of time playing tennis or golf helping keep them in shape. I couldn’t tell if his tan had come from the sun or a spray, but it was rich and even. I had checked the dispatch report as I made my way down the driveway, and the homeowner’s name was Terrance Paulson.