The Hunt

16

It’s not easy to make a quick getaway from the San Francisco Four Seasons, because the lobby’s on the fifth floor. Separate elevator banks lead from the guestrooms to the lobby and then from the lobby to the street, and changing elevator banks requires a trip from one corner of the lobby to another. But as trips go, it’s a relatively painless one, a short stroll in a tasteful setting, and it shouldn’t be particularly dangerous.

Unless, that is, it’s late on a Sunday night. The hotel is a favorite of Wall Street types, and while a day trip to the West Coast isn’t out of the question for those accustomed to traveling in first class when a private jet is unavailable, morning meetings can make an overnight stay inevitable. And there must have been a lot of meetings scheduled for Monday morning, because the lobby was thick with bankers just arrived from the last flight from New York. It was probably inevitable I’d run into someone I knew, and sure enough, I did.

I was following everyone out of the first set of elevators when I spotted Clay Finch, an acquaintance from a prep course I’d taken years ago for the Series Seven exam, a securities-industry accreditation. Clay was an enormously tall and extremely serious guy with a nonexistent sense of humor, although its absence might have been less noticeable if he hadn’t insisted on wearing bow ties. I thought a sense of humor was a prerequisite for wearing bow ties, both generally and about the bow ties, but either Clay felt differently or he mistakenly believed his sense of humor was present and intact.

I hardly came up to his waist, so it was possible I could slip by unseen, and I briefly toyed with the idea of pretending I hadn’t noticed him. But subterfuge always backfired, at least when I practiced it, and networking was supposed to be important in my line of work. I told my friends I’d meet them downstairs and stopped to say hello.

“Rachel. How nice to see you.” Coming from most people, Clay’s formal greeting and professional handshake would have seemed icy, but from him it was the equivalent of a kiss on the mouth, albeit without tongue.

“What brings you to town?” I asked.

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” said Clay. Investment bankers were supposed to keep their clients’ business confidential, and his was the standard reply to questions like mine, but it was usually delivered with a smile and a chuckle. Clay didn’t smile much, and he never chuckled.

The conversation quickly dried up from there, and, having satisfied any networking obligations, I started on my goodbyes. “Well, Clay, it was great to run into you-” I was saying when I noticed a familiar-looking envelope tucked into the crook of his elbow, right at my eye level, and my words froze in my mouth.

His arm hid most of the address, but I could see all I needed to see: the tail end of Clay’s last name, INCH, written in large block letters.

I considered accidentally bumping into him in the hope he’d drop the envelope, but that would be like trying to fell a redwood by poking it with a Q-tip. Instead I simply pulled it out from under his arm. Fortunately, Clay was Clay, so if this bothered him it was impossible to tell.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, turning the small package over in my hands. It was another twin to the one in which I’d received my iPod, which I guessed made it the triplet to the one in which my Lincoln Memorial keychain had been delivered, and the handwriting spelling out Clay’s name was unmistakably the same.

“It was waiting for me when I checked in.”

“Do you know what it is or who it’s from?”

“I have no idea. I wasn’t expecting anything, and, as you can see, there’s no return address. The people at the front desk said it arrived this afternoon, but nobody could remember who made the delivery.”

“Let’s open it,” I suggested, as if opening other people’s mail was the most natural thing in the world.

“Uh-”

“Allow me.” And before Clay could protest, I pulled on the little tab, ripped open the top, and tipped the contents into my hand.

I wasn’t sure if I was hoping for a surprise, but I didn’t get one. Clay’s envelope held a Lincoln Memorial keychain, just like mine. The anonymous mastermind behind this particular scavenger hunt must have gotten a good deal at whichever novelty store he frequented, or perhaps he always bought in bulk.

“Isn’t that strange?” asked Clay, peering down at the keychain. Of course, he hadn’t even received the special Skater Girl treatment. “What do you think I’m supposed to do with this?”

I didn’t known what to tell him, but I didn’t get the chance to say anything anyway, because we were interrupted by someone calling our names at full volume from across the lobby. The shrill voice sounded as if it belonged to a particularly articulate and peppy macaw, but I would have known it anywhere and Clay probably would, too. We’d sat in the same classroom as its owner, Camilla Gergen, during our prep course, and nothing could make a room seem smaller than being trapped in it with Camilla Gergen’s voice.

She joined us with a level of excitement I found excessive given the occasion and the flimsy nature of our prior acquaintance. “Get OUT! I don’t BELIEVE it! What are you two DOING here?”

“Hello, Camilla,” said Clay. He had no “how nice to see you” to spare for her, but he bent stiffly when it became clear she intended to air kiss him on not one but both cheeks, whether he liked it or not.

“MUH!” she said to one cheek. “And MUH!” she said to the other.

“Hi,” I said, submitting to my own set of air kisses.

“This is SO weird. It’s the weirdest! All of us together again. It’s just like our Series Seven class!”

“Just like it,” I agreed amiably. The class had taken place eight years ago in an office building with thirty other people, an instructor and an overhead projector, but debating its resemblance to this encounter would only prolong it, and I now very much wanted to talk to Clay alone.

“Let’s grab a drink!” said Camilla. “It’s been way too long since I’ve seen you both. I think the lounge is still open.”

I fumbled for an excuse that would involve Camilla shutting up and going away. “Wow, does that sound like incredible fun, but-”

“Oh, my GOD! Did you get one of those, too?” She was pointing at the keychain resting in my palm.

“Too?”

Camilla held up her own padded envelope. CAMILLA GERGEN was printed on the front in the same distinctive handwriting. “I got one when I checked in. I thought it was a gift or something from the hotel, since I stay here so often. But it’s not from the hotel. I don’t know who it’s from. Isn’t that just the weirdest coincidence that you got one, too? What are you going to do with yours? I don’t know what I’m going to do with mine. I have the cutest little keychain already, with my initials on it and a little picture of my pug and me. See? Do you like pugs? Isn’t he just the cutest? Now, how about that drink? They have the yummiest olives in the lounge here. And pistachios. I love pistachios, don’t you?”

Her voice would make fingernails on a chalkboard sound like Chopin, and it didn’t help that she used it so liberally. But one word-coincidence-screeched into my ears and kept ricocheting off the walls of my skull.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that we’d all received the keychains. There had to be a connection, but that didn’t mean I knew what the connection was. My brain would have kicked into overdrive if it had been sufficiently nourished, trying to figure out what the three of us had in common besides our prep course and our profession more broadly. I scanned the lobby, checking to see if any other yuppies were holding padded envelopes or Lincoln Memorial keychains, but we seemed to be the lucky few.

Then Camilla unwittingly made up for the hours I’d spent in that classroom and the handfuls of aspirin I’d downed trying to remedy the headaches she’d caused.

“I bet you’re both here to pitch the Igobe IPO!” she squealed. “My firm’s scheduled for nine tomorrow morning. When are you two up?”

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” said Clay, stone-faced, but a muscle in his jaw twitched, and I knew Camilla had guessed it in one.

That Iggie had promised me that Winslow, Brown would be the first firm to make its presentation to Igobe was the least of my concerns. I could postpone getting angry about his scheduling at least two other firms ahead of mine once we’d found Hilary and straightened everything else out.

I said a hurried goodbye to Clay and Camilla, leaving Clay to extricate himself from Camilla’s grasp and without telling them about my own keychain, much less about the iPod video. Neither seemed particularly eager to figure out what their keychains meant, and I doubted they would be rushing over to the Martin Luther King memorial tonight, so if this was a contest I felt confident I’d maintain my lead.

The elevator took only a few seconds to descend from the lobby to the street, but that was all the time required for a couple of things to make themselves nice and clear. I still had more questions than answers, but I did know now that the keychains, and the scavenger hunt for which they were the first clue, had nothing to do with Hilary’s disappearance. They were messages from somebody not just to me, but to all of the investment bankers competing for the golden prize of handling Igobe’s IPO, and the messages seemed intended to make us think twice about the role we would play in making Iggie obscenely rich. Of course, the messenger had overlooked a critical factor: investment bankers, by definition, weren’t exactly fertile ground either for second thoughts or planting the seeds of social revolution. We were all about capitalism in its purest and least fettered form.

I now also knew that the messenger had to be related to Igobe in some way. How else could he-or she-know which firms would be pitching the Igobe IPO, who the contact person was for each firm, and where each could be found today? That was hardly public information. My whereabouts must have been especially challenging, since I wasn’t staying at a hotel, but somebody in Iggie’s office could probably have accessed his calendar and address book, tracked me down at the Forrests’ house, and even trailed me from there. It wouldn’t have been easy-in fact, it would have involved a lot of work-but this person seemed to be a man-or a woman-with a mission: specifically, to derail Igobe and its IPO.

I dashed through the elevator doors as they opened, eager to tell everyone else what I’d just learned, but when I raced out to Market Street, the only person there was a lone uniformed doorman. I looked up and down the nearly deserted street in confusion.

“May I help you, miss?” asked the doorman. His nametag read Dmitri.

“What?” I asked, distracted. Had they ditched me? Given Luisa’s current state of mind, it wouldn’t surprise me, and I couldn’t speak for Ben or Abigail, but it was hard to imagine Peter doing such a thing.

“May I help you?” Dmitri asked again.

“Oh. Sorry. Sure. By any chance were you on duty last night around this same time?”

He smiled and chuckled. He could have given Clay Finch some pointers. “Some people were here just a few minutes ago, asking me the same question.”

“Where did they go?”

He gestured back inside. “I sent them to the other entrance, on Stevenson Street. The guys there were on last night. I have Saturdays off.”

“Great, thanks.” It was a relief to know I hadn’t been abandoned, but I did have to wonder what Dr. Grout would make of the speed with which I’d entertained the possibility.

I hurried back inside and across the marble floors of the lower lobby to a rear entrance I’d never used before, although it was officially the main entrance to the hotel. A circular drive served as a drop-off and loading point for passengers, and I found my friends standing at the curb, talking to another doorman and the bell captain.

“What took you so long?” Luisa asked me, but she didn’t wait for my response. “You won’t believe it. These men say there were two Lamborghinis here last night, both black.”

“Just like the two at the party,” added Peter.

“They were both already parked here when we came on at twelve,” said this doorman, whose nametag read Gustav. “We see some nice cars around here, but two Lamborghinis together are pretty hard to miss.”

“Did you see the drivers?” asked Ben. “Or anyone getting in or out?”

“The cars had tinted windows, so there might have been other people inside I didn’t see, but both of the drivers got out,” said the bell captain. His name, according to his nametag, was Ray, which squashed my budding theory that the Four Seasons didn’t hire people with boring names. “One regular-looking guy, sort of preppie, and then a guy dressed head-to-toe in purple velvet.”

“That must have been Iggie,” said Luisa. “Unless there’s a purple-velvet trend of which I’m unaware, which would be disturbing.”

“On so many levels,” I agreed.

“Iggie sounds right,” said Gustav. “One of the cars had a vanity plate: IGSTER1. And now that I think about it, the other car had a vanity plate, too, but I can’t remember what it said.”

“Was it Alex something?” I suggested helpfully. Peter glanced at me, his expression unreadable.

“I don’t think so,” said Gustav, thinking. “I’d know it if I saw it, but I can’t remember it offhand. And the two guys seemed to know each other already. It wasn’t like they were meeting for the first time and bonding over their cars. They talked for a minute or two, and then they both got back into their cars and one drove away.”

“Which one?” Ben asked.

“I don’t remember,” said Gustav.

“Me, either,” said Ray. “But a blond lady came out a few minutes later and got into the car that was still there, and then that one drove away, too.”

“Was the blonde really tall? And wearing a really small dress?” I asked.

This elicited a smile from them both. “It was like something out of a ZZ Top video,” admitted Ray.

“Could you hear what the men said? When they got out of their cars?” asked Luisa.

They shook their heads. “And we couldn’t really tell where they were headed, either, if that’s what you’re going to ask next,” said Gustav. “The only way out of here is down Stevenson Street, and that dead-ends on Third, which is one-way. But once they were back on Market, they could have gone anywhere.”

A Town Car drew up to disgorge some more banker types, so we thanked them for their help and let them get back to work.

“Well, either Iggie was lying or Hilary got into the other Lamborghini,” said Abigail.

“Maybe we should ask your friend Alex what he’s driving these days,” I said to Peter. “He may not have been the preppie guy in the footage from Hilary’s floor, but he could be the preppie guy with the Lamborghini. We know there were two Lamborghinis at the party, and we know Alex knows Iggie. And that he’s preppie.”

Peter looked uncomfortable. “Listen, I know Alex about as well as you know Iggie. It’s not like he’s my best friend, but he already said he wasn’t here last night.”

Ben cleared his throat. “You know, I forgot to mention this before-it must have slipped my mind with everything else that’s happened, and at the time I didn’t think it was important-but I got a call from a friend of mine at the Bureau a couple of hours ago. He didn’t have any luck finding an address or phone number for Iggie, but he did manage to trace the number of the phone that sent the text messages. It’s registered to a company of some sort, but it just has letters for a name, no words at all.”

“What are the letters?” I asked.

“A-C-V-L-L-C.”

“That’s it!” It was Gustav, who had rejoined us after attending to the occupants of the Town Car. “That was the other plate! A-C-V-L-L-C!”

I turned to Peter. “The A and the C could be for Alex Cutler. And the V could be for Ventures, right? ACV, LLC. Is that the name of his firm?”

Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I think it’s something like that.”

“And he said his firm invested in Igobe, which means he’s looking at a big payoff from the IPO. So he’s probably as interested as Iggie in making sure there’s no bad news about the company.”

“Probably,” Peter agreed, but with reluctance. I guessed he didn’t like the idea of his former fraternity brother being on the side of evil, and I could understand that sort of loyalty.

But there were too many little clues leading to Alex to ignore. A quick phone call to directory assistance taught us that Alex was nearly as protective of his privacy as Iggie, and just as hard to locate. We thought about asking him directly, via phone or text, where he lived, whether he knew where Hilary was, or, at the very least, what kind of car he drove, but if he was a bad guy, these questions would tip our hand even more than we’d already tipped it by asking him if he’d been at the Four Seasons in the first place.

Which was why I said the words I thought I’d never hear myself say, although I probably didn’t get the inflection quite right. If anything, my tone was grim.

“Tennis, anyone?”