Aces and Knaves

Chapter 31 FLORA

There was nothing like walking the hills of San Francisco to clear the head. When all your energy is required just to get to the top of a hill where the cars parked perpendicular to the street tilt so much that the slightest touch will tip them over you don't have any energy left for negative thoughts.

Such as what would happen if I lost the bet and actually had to go to work for James. That thought had come to me during the night and I was trying to expel it now.

I finally sat down in a small park to rest, fearful that I would exhaust myself so much I wouldn't be at my best at the blackjack table. I watched two hummingbirds play tag in the air and reviewed the last few weeks.

The day my peaceful world had turned upside down was the day my father had come to me for help. That was the day Ned had been murdered. Since then, I had been told by my father and others not to try to solve the murder. But here I was doing just that, more to save my own skin than anything else.

If I knew James had ordered Ned’s murder, somehow I thought that would free me of any obligation to James, such as the money I owed him or my agreement to obtain Elma's proxy. Even if I couldn't prove it in a court of law. But it was naive of me to think that James would actually tell the truth, even if I won the bet.

So what else could I do? There was at least one string that hadn't been explored, I was sure, by the police. That was the mysterious Chinese lady who had Ned's gun in her possession. She and Ned must have been old friends. Or were they more than friends?

It occurred to me that the woman with James at Ned's funeral could have been Chinese. I hadn't gotten a good look at her, but she definitely had Asian features. Was this another case of James and Ned sharing a woman? There was certainly precedent for it.

Suddenly, I wanted to find and talk to this woman. But how? I remembered that I had passed an Internet cafe a few blocks back. Sip cappuccino and check stocks and email. I got up and headed in that direction.

I bought an iced tea at the counter and headed for an available personal computer. It took me only a few seconds to access the Tartan corporate website. I looked at the site index. There were pages listed with the information you would expect: financial reports, recent acquisitions, profiles of James and other corporate officers. What wasn't there was what I was looking for: a sub-index with names and addresses of clients and other people and organizations important to Tartan and James.

Of course this was confidential information and wouldn't be made available to the world. But I knew it was on the website because the night Ned was murdered James had accessed the telephone numbers of Ned's hotel and the police from it. I had been looking over his shoulder when he did it.

Then he had made another phone call he had later denied making. Was that call to the Chinese lady? From James' side of the conversation I had gathered that the caller had seen Ned that evening. My recollection was that James didn't look up her phone number on the website; he knew it by heart. But still, it could be there.

What had James done to get to the private part of the website? He had gone to a certain page and entered a password. That page wouldn't be in the index but now I could remember James entering the Tartan URL and the word "private."

I typed in the Tartan URL followed by a slash and "private." The page I remembered seeing came up, containing a place to enter a password. What was the password? Of course the password had appeared as x's on the screen when James had entered it, but maybe I could reconstruct it.

I didn't have a computer program like you see in the movies that tries every possible combination of characters until it finds the correct password. The technology wouldn't allow me to do that, anyway. That was fiction. But most passwords were made simple so they would be easy to remember. And apparently all Tartan staff members knew it.

Now what? I could actually see James type in the password. I'm a nosy guy and I had watched him. And James wasn't a fast typist so it was possible to follow the keys he struck. I remembered at the time thinking that the password was an actual word and too obvious.

Except I couldn't remember what word it was. Six characters, I thought. I tried "tartan" and received an error message. Those weren't the keys James had pressed, anyway. He had started with the forefinger of his left hand, but not the "t." I checked the keyboard. That finger is used to type seven different letters. Great.

What words started with those letters? I drew a blank on all of them until I got to "c." "Casino." Of course. I typed "casino" and clicked Enter. Another error message. Damn.

The more I recalled the night of Ned's murder the more I was sure that "casino" was correct. So why was I getting an error message? Persnickety computer. I tried "casino" again. Same result. Think, Patterson. I thought about smashing the computer, which was not logical. And computers are logical, if nothing else.

I typed in "casino" again but didn't click Enter. Why wasn't this correct? It seemed so right. But of course memories can be self-fulfilling. I stared at the word and noticed that there was still a space remaining in the password box. Another character was needed.

I typed in a "1" after "casino" and clicked Enter.

Error.

I poured ice from the bottom of my glass into my mouth, crunched on it and froze my mouth.

Then it came to me; I remembered how awkward it had been for James to type an "s" because the tip of the fourth finger on his left hand was missing. And he'd had to use that finger twice when entering the password.

"I typed in "casinos" and clicked Enter. No error message. The index page of organizations and people that I had seen James refer to appeared, in alphabetical order. It was many screens long. I scrolled down and scanned the names, looking for Chinese-sounding names.

I wrote one down and kept going. I came to my own name, "Patterson, Karl." I clicked on it and went to my page. It contained my address, telephone number, email address and the fact that I was Richard Patterson's son. It noted that I drank iced tea and that I was a card counter. So James did care about that, even though he pretended indifference.

I continued down the list and wrote another name. I finished the list, went back and clicked on the first of the two names. A personal page appeared. The woman lived in Paso Robles, well south of San Francisco.

I clicked on the other name, Flora Sung. Her address was San Francisco, but I didn't recognize the street, so I looked it up on my map. It was just two blocks from Grant Avenue and less than a block from where Ned had parked his car. And close to the spot where he had been murdered.

I walked up a few steps to the front door of the row house, into a sheltered entryway. There were two buttons beside the intercom. Evidently, the house contained two apartments. I matched one of the buttons to the street address I had and pressed it.

The house had been here for a while, but it was freshly painted and well cared for. A green plant grew out of a pot on the landing.

"Who is it?" a female voice asked. I detected a slight accent, probably Chinese, even through the questionable sound quality of the intercom.

"My name is Karl Patterson," I said. "I'm a friend of James Buchanan."

"What do you want?"

That could be the stopper. However, I had nothing to lose. "I…I'd like to talk to you about Ned Mackay."

Silence. It appeared that I had struck out. Then, "Are you from the police?"

"No, ma'am. I am…I was a friend of Ned's." Better not say anything more.

Finally, the welcome sound of a click and the voice saying, "Come up the stairs."

I opened the door and found the stairs directly in front of me. They creaked as I ascended them. The dark brown color of the wooden stairs and paneled walls didn't lighten the gloom. Nor did several dim lights mounted on a wall.

The door at the top of the stairs opened, letting out welcome light from the room beyond. In the doorway stood a small woman with short, dark hair and bangs, wearing a skirt and blouse. I couldn't see her face clearly because her back was to the light, but it was round and could be Asian. The sound of opera emanated from beyond the doorway, featuring a man and woman dueling with their exquisite voices.

"How did you find me?" the woman asked as I climbed the steps toward her.

"Uh, it's a long story," I said, "but James didn't give me your name, if that's what you're thinking."

"I wouldn't expect him to," the woman said, holding the door open so I could precede her inside. "He wouldn't want to identify anyone who could bring him into this."

That was an interesting statement. I walked into a beautifully decorated room, with expensive furniture and trappings. The voices of the opera singers filled the parts of the room not occupied by furniture.

"I'll turn that down," the woman said, going over to a cabinet and twisting a button on an amplifier. "Would you like some tea, Mr. umm…"

"Patterson. Yes, if it's no trouble. And you are Flora Sung?"

"I am she." She gave me a smile that lit up her face and then disappeared into the next room. Her small size tempted one to describe her as cute, a word that is overused, but in her case it fit. I guessed that her age placed her in the same generation with Ned and James.

When she returned she caught me looking at a somewhat abstract painting on the wall.

"That's a Joan Miro original," she said. "I bought it one time when I was feeling giddy."

She ushered me to a seat on a large sofa, sat down beside me and poured tea into china cups.

"So, do the police know about me?" she asked.

"No…that is, I don't think so."

"Are you going to tell them?"

That was a stumper. "I…don't expect to," I said, hedging a little.

"Well, you're a nice looking boy so I hope I can trust you. Tell me how you knew Ned." Her voice had a musical sound now that she had accepted me.

"He worked with my father, Richard Patterson."

"Oh, that Patterson. I thought your name sounded familiar." She looked at my face with her dark eyes. "Yes, you do resemble your father."

"So you know him."

"I've met him a couple of times. And I own some stock in Dionysus. Tell me, has he recovered from his stroke?"

"Er, yes," I said, caught off guard. "He's back at work. Ms. Sung, I wanted to ask you about the night Ned died. I heard that he might have come here before he was shot, to get a gun."

"My, you're just a fountain of information, aren't you?" Ms. Sung said, looking at me with surprise. "Tell me what else you know."

"That's all."

"That's a relief. For a minute there I thought you were going to tell me my life story. The gun actually belonged to Ned. He insisted that I keep it to defend myself because I live alone. But I can't picture myself ever shooting anyone."

Ms. Sung stopped talking and sipped her tea. I didn't say anything, hoping she'd continue.

"I don't think Ned intended to take the gun when he first arrived," she said, and then apparently rethinking the way that sounded, continued, "I've known Ned almost forever. James, too. Anyway, the phone rang and I answered it. It was a woman who said she had a message for Ned from James, or Mr. Buchanan, as she called him. I thought that was strange because, as you know if you know James at all, he surrounds himself with young, good-looking men like yourself."

"But he does have a woman receptionist."

"Anyway, I gave the phone to Ned. He talked for a minute, then hung up and asked me for the gun. Naturally, I was concerned so I asked him why he wanted it. He said James wanted to meet him in a questionable part of town so he felt safer carrying the gun. He said he would return it later in the evening." Her voice faltered when she said the last.

"But you didn't see him again."

"No." Softly.

"Do you know what time that was?"

"A little before nine, I think."

"Did Ned say why he was meeting James?"

"They had been talking together about a possible takeover of Dionysus by Tartan, James' company. Ned would have become CEO of Dionysus. Your father would have been out but he would have been left financially well off so I didn't feel too sorry for him. But then Ned had a change of heart and decided he didn't want to team up with James again. I think he was going to tell James this."

"You know more about what Ned was doing than his wife," I blurted.

"I've known him longer than his wife-at least in this country," Ms. Sung said, an inscrutable look in her eyes.

She had been honest with me, as far as I could tell. Should I ask the definitive question? Why not? "Do you think James had Ned killed?"

Her dark eyes studied me. "No, James isn't a killer. What I do think is this. I think Ned may have taken the gun to give him the guts to tell James off. Not that he would have ever used it against James."

"But then, was the telephone message from James legitimate or not? I don't think James left his house all evening." A fact easily verified.

"James told me the message did not come from him. I believe him."

Then who did it come from?"

Ms. Sung smiled, sadly. "If you can answer that question you can probably find the killer."

"Shouldn't you go to the police and tell them what you know?"

"I don't know anything that would help. It is too late to trace the telephone call and I don't believe James did it so I am not going to implicate him."

"But it was you that James called when he was looking for-or pretended to be looking for-Ned."

"Yes."

"So he knew Ned had been here."

"But that was no surprise. Ned visited me every time he came to San Francisco. And James, bless his sexually mixed-up little heart, knew that."

I tried not to show a reaction. "What about the cocaine?"

She shrugged. "Ned was as clean as a newly diapered baby. I don't know anything about the cocaine."

I couldn't think of any more questions. I said, "Ms. Sung, thank you for your time." I stood up.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked, also standing. "Are you going to tell the police about me?"

"No. Although…I would like to reserve the right to do so if I can find out who made the phone call-so that you can verify that the phone call was actually made."

"If it will clear James I will testify. But I don't think my testimony would make Ned's wife very happy."

"Probably not. But I guess that's a chance we'd have to take."