Scavenger hunt

Chapter 11

His phone was ringing again, but Jimmy still ignored it, focused on the eight-by-ten publicity photos of Samantha Packard on his desk. He'd picked up one from about eight or nine years ago, when she had a minor role in a thriller called Bloodletting. He barely remembered the film, and he didn't remember her being in it at all. Eight years ago… if she was the good wife, that was around the time she would have met Walsh. He peered at the woman in the photo. Her hair was shorter then, and even though she was beautiful, she seemed awkward, not really comfortable with the camera. Real stars bloomed for the lens. Maybe Samantha Packard bloomed in private. He laid the photo back on the desk.

After Walsh's funeral Jimmy had run a quick search on Mick and Samantha Packard. Packard was a martial artist and rumored ex-CIA operative. He had been hot box office at the tail end of the action-film era, but five consecutive flops had knocked him off the Hollywood radar screen. Now forty-five years old, no longer even a punch line on late-night TV, his screen output was limited to direct-to-video releases and Japanese commercials, where he still had a cult following. Samantha Packard was thirty-one, a marginally talented actress whose screen credits were limited to films in which her husband starred.

Jimmy straightened the publicity photos and lined them up. Mick and Samantha had been married ten years and had no children. Twice in the last five years the tabloids had done stories about their imminent divorce, but no papers had ever been filed. He was going to have to move cautiously. Mick Packard had been on full alert yesterday; if he got spooked, somebody could get hurt. Starting with the good wife. Samantha Packard looked back at him from one of the photos, her face softly lit, her eyes expectant. Jimmy had to turn away and stare out the window, but there was nothing in that clear blue sky that brought him any relief.

People worked all around him in the main editorial office of SLAP, chattering away, fielding calls, pounding their keyboards-they barely registered. He hadn't yet gotten started on the list of Walsh's cell phone calls that Rollo had given him at the funeral yesterday. The list was five pages of single-spaced calls without referents-just date, time of day, and duration. Jimmy was going to have to go through the reverse directory number by number, then call up and find out who Walsh had talked to, turn on the charm and the lies. He smiled to himself. It was terrible the things he was good at.

He looked at Samantha Packard's photos. If Jimmy had believed in prayer, he would have prayed that when he dialed one of the phone numbers on Walsh's list, Samantha Packard would answer. But Walsh wouldn't have been that direct, even if he knew her number after all those address changes. Jimmy whisked the photos into a stack with one sweep of his hand, slid them into his notebook, and turned to the computer. His phone rang again, but he kept typing, logging in.

Twenty minutes later Jimmy was still intent on the computer screen, scrolling through the California Department of Corrections database. Three hundred and eighty-nine Shafers had been processed through the system in the last twenty years, but only six had Harlen as a first or middle name. He accessed three files, but none of them fit the profile for the man Detective Katz said was Walsh's last visitor. Number four, Maxwell Harlen Shafer, didn't look too promising either.

"Jimmy?" Mai stood beside his desk, slim and straight as a needle, a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant, all eyes and ears and brains. No telling how long she had been standing there. "You are not answering your phone."

"That's right."

"Mr. Napitano wishes to speak with you."

"Tell the emperor that I'm busy, Mai."

"Mr. Napitano said it was important."

Jimmy tried to concentrate on the computer screen, but he could feel Mai's gaze at the center of his forehead, her intense quietude an irresistible force. He got up and followed her through the maze of desks and into the private elevator to Nino's penthouse office.

Mai punched in the proper numerical code on the elevator keypad, shielding the keys from view. (Three two nine nine five but who was counting?) She waited until the doors closed before speaking. "He was in a very good mood until you refused to answer your phone." It was a flat statement, devoid of recrimination or innuendo. "I am fluent in Italian, of course, but some of his curses-they are untranslatable."

"You don't have a dirty mind. It's a liability in dealing with Nino."

Mai just looked at him. Jimmy tried to imagine what she would look like smiling, but he couldn't conjure the image. Mai didn't smile, she didn't frown, and she didn't show surprise or disappointment. Her emotional responses were hooded-saved for someone more worthy of them, perhaps. Jimmy hoped there was someone. The elevator doors opened, and Mai walked quickly out, her footsteps silenced by the thick red carpet. She knocked once on the door to Napitano's office and strode away. Jimmy followed her with his eyes-for a small woman, she walked tall.

Jimmy opened the door and strolled into the office. The carpet and drapes were white as hoarfrost, Napitano's desk was cut from a single gigantic piece of polished ebony, and the sofas were covered in buttery black leather. The only vibrant bit of color in the room was a tiger skin draped across the back of Napitano's desk chair, ensconcing him in stripes.

Napitano greeted him with a wave, his bare feet up on his desk as he talked on a speakerphone, voice booming. He was a soft little man, barely five feet two, wearing pink cashmere pajamas, an autocrat with an oversize head and languorous eyes. His mouth was stuffed with tiny sharp teeth.

Jimmy sat down on the sofa nearest the desk, and hung one leg over the side.

"Just do what I tell you to," Napitano said to the phone, breaking the connection with his big toe. "Jimmy," he said, drawing out the word to obscene length, "so glad you could honor me with your presence." He held up a dark-gray, irregularly shaped rock the approximate size of a golf ball. "Do you know what this is?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Lava?"

"It is a moon rock. From the Sea of Tranquillity, to be exact."

"Sure it is."

"No, for true." Napitano cradled the rock in the palm of his hand. "This was torn off the craggy surface of the moon and brought back millions of miles to earth. Now it is mine."

"Did you get that from Rollo?"

Napitano nodded. "A gift."

Rollo and Napitano had become close a year ago after Jimmy had introduced them. Rollo had been hiding out and needed someplace safe to stay for a few days, and Napitano was eager to show off his new armored limousine. They were a good match. Both of them were smart and funny, with no respect for protocol or the common man, and Rollo, like Jimmy, wasn't intimidated by Napitano's wealth and power. Rollo was a free agent, a quality Napitano respected above all others.

Napitano caressed the lump of rock with his fingertips, his face glowing, probably imagining himself the lord of the moon. "Try to imagine where this has come from, the tales it could tell: the bitter chill of the lunar surface, the bombardment of meteor showers, the steady rain of cosmic rays-"

"Where would Rollo get a moon rock, Nino? All of them have been catalogued. They're either at the Smithsonian or on display at museums. Maybe the White House."

"Such naivete." Napitano carefully replaced the rock on his desk, then leaned back in his chair, his enormous head lolling against the tiger skin. "The more precious the cargo, the more likely that some percentage will be lost in transit. A tax of desire. That is what I wanted to talk with you about." He crossed his bare feet, the pink cashmere pajamas softly rustling. "I want you to do a story on sacred objects, objects of disputed provenance, things that don't belong in private hands."

"Looted artworks? Biological oddities? Necklaces of gold teeth and eagle headdresses? How about a vial of anthrax?" Jimmy shook his head. "I'm working on something, Nino."

Napitano caressed the underside of his soft throat, then thumped the underside of his double chin. "Put it aside."

"No."

"No?" Napitano wiggled his pink toes, soft baby toes that had never touched a bare floor or anything rougher than glove leather. "This project of yours, this secret thing-it must be quite important."

"It is."

"Dangerous too, perhaps?"

Jimmy didn't like Napitano's expression.

"I ask because the editorial receptionist has been receiving some very ugly phone messages for you."

"What else is new?"

"This man keeps calling. His threats have been quite explicit- and quite vulgar." Napitano ran a hand through his oiled locks, rearranging them across his forehead. "He won't leave his name, but this gentleman always calls from a phone booth, a di ferent phone booth each time, which would indicate a certain seriousness on his part."

"It just indicates he's got a pocket full of quarters."

"Ah, Jimmy's vaunted cowboy sangfroid."

"I'll do what I always do, Nino. Walk light, watch my back, and hope for the best."

"How deliciously optimistic of you, dear boy."