Kill Fee

Chapter 1: The Dying Man's Errand

The elevator in the Flood Building had been broken since Tuesday, which meant four flights of stairs to reach my office, which meant my knees reminded me every morning that thirty-eight wasn't twenty-five. I pushed through the frosted glass door — FRANK CAVETT, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS, the gold leaf already peeling at the edges — and found a note slipped under it. Cream-colored stationery, heavy as a slice of bread. The kind of paper that costs more per sheet than I charge per hour.

The note was brief: Mr. Cavett, your services are requested at the Bainbridge residence, 2200 Pacific Avenue, tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. A car will be sent. It was signed by someone named Poole, with the title "Secretary to Mr. Victor Bainbridge."

Victor Bainbridge. Even I knew that name, and I didn't exactly travel in the circles where shipping magnates held court. Bainbridge Pacific Lines had been moving cargo across the ocean since before the earthquake. The old man's face used to show up in the Chronicle every other week — christening a new vessel, shaking hands with the mayor, donating a wing to some hospital. Lately, though, the papers had gone quiet about him. Illness, the rumors said. The kind you don't recover from.

I set the note on my desk beside the morning's mail — two bills and a circular for a dance hall on Market Street — and poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot I'd brewed on the hot plate. It was bitter and lukewarm, which described most things in my life at that particular moment. Business had been thin. A few insurance fraud cases, a husband who wanted proof his wife was stepping out, which she was, enthusiastically and with his business partner. Nothing that paid enough to fix the elevator or my disposition.

A car from the Bainbridge residence. That meant money. Real money, the kind that didn't bounce.

I spent the rest of the day catching up on paperwork that didn't need catching up on, which is another way of saying I sat at my desk and smoked and looked out the window at the fog rolling in over the bay. San Francisco in November. The city wrapped itself in gray cotton and dared you to find anything cheerful about it.

The next morning, I put on my best suit — charcoal, single-breasted, only one cigarette burn on the left cuff if you knew where to look — and was standing outside my building at nine-thirty when a black Packard pulled to the curb. The driver was a broad-shouldered man in a chauffeur's cap who didn't say a word to me the entire ride. That was fine. I wasn't in a conversational mood.

Pacific Heights unfolded around us as we climbed the hills — mansions set back behind iron gates, manicured hedges, the kind of quiet that only real wealth can buy. The Bainbridge residence sat at the top of a sloping lawn, a three-story affair in the Beaux-Arts style, all limestone and columns and windows that looked down on the rest of the city like it was something to be tolerated.

Poole met me at the door. He was a thin, precise man in his sixties with silver hair combed flat against his skull and the careful bearing of someone who had spent decades making himself indispensable to people who barely noticed him.

"Mr. Cavett. Thank you for coming. Mr. Bainbridge is in the study. If you'll follow me."

The foyer was marble. The hallway was paneled in dark wood. Oil paintings lined the walls — ships, mostly, cutting through painted seas under painted skies. The whole place smelled of furniture polish and old money and something else underneath, something medicinal, the faint antiseptic tang of a sickroom.

Poole opened a set of double doors and stepped aside.

The study was large, lined with books that looked like they'd actually been read. A fire burned in the grate despite the mild temperature. And in front of that fire, in a wheelchair that probably cost more than my car, sat Victor Bainbridge.

He was smaller than I expected. The photographs in the papers had shown a big man, barrel-chested, with a jaw like the prow of one of his own ships. The man in the wheelchair was shrunken, his skin the color of old parchment, his hands resting on a wool blanket draped across his lap. But his eyes — his eyes were sharp. Dark and bright and watching me the way a hawk watches a field mouse.

"Mr. Cavett," he said. His voice was thin but steady. "Sit down."

I sat in the leather chair across from him. Poole withdrew and closed the doors behind him.

"I appreciate you coming on short notice," Bainbridge said. "I understand you come recommended. Lyle Fenmore at Pacific Mutual says you're discreet."

"Lyle's generous."

"Lyle doesn't waste words, and neither do I." Bainbridge shifted in his chair, and I saw the effort it cost him. "I need you to find a man. His name is Ned Wexler. He's a former business associate of mine. He owes me a considerable sum of money and has made himself scarce."

"How considerable?"

"Forty thousand dollars."

I kept my expression level, but forty thousand was a number that got my attention. "How long has he been missing?"

"Several weeks. Perhaps longer. Our last communication was in September."

"And you've tried the usual channels? Lawyers, collection agencies?"

"I don't want lawyers involved. I don't want this in any court or any newspaper. That's why I'm hiring you instead of a firm. I want the matter handled quietly."

"What can you tell me about Wexler? Description, habits, known associates?"

Bainbridge reached into the pocket of his robe and produced a small photograph, which he handed to me. It showed a man in his forties, lean-faced, with dark hair going gray at the temples and a thin mustache that looked like it required daily maintenance. He was smiling at the camera with the practiced ease of someone who smiled for a living.

"Ned Wexler," Bainbridge said. "Forty-four years old. He ran a small import-export business — or claimed to. He was useful to me in certain shipping matters. He has an apartment on Kearny Street. He frequented the waterfront bars and had connections in Chinatown."

"Any family?"

"None that I know of."

"And if I find him?"

"You report his location to me. Nothing more. I'll handle the rest through my own people."

I studied the photograph again. Wexler looked like a man who'd gotten by on charm and nerve, the kind who always had an angle working. San Francisco was full of them.

"My rate is twenty-five a day plus expenses," I said. "I'll need a retainer."

"Poole will provide whatever you need."

The study doors opened before I could respond, and two women entered. The first was tall, dark-haired, and immaculately dressed in a navy suit that fit her like it had been sewn onto her body. She moved with the controlled grace of someone who had been taught to enter rooms as though she owned them, which, given the circumstances, she probably did. Her face was handsome rather than beautiful — strong jaw, high cheekbones, cool gray eyes that assessed me the way you'd assess a piece of furniture you weren't sure about purchasing.

"My daughter Louise," Bainbridge said.

Louise Bainbridge — or Louise Hyatt, as I'd later learn her married name — gave me a nod that was polite and nothing more. "Mr. Cavett."

The second woman was younger, perhaps twenty-six, and everything her sister was not. Where Louise was composed, this one was in motion — fidgeting with her handbag, tugging at the collar of her blouse, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She was pretty in a scattered, unfinished way, with reddish-brown hair that hadn't been properly set and eyes that were too bright. She was also, I noticed, holding a cocktail glass at ten-fifteen in the morning. The liquid inside was the color of weak tea, which meant bourbon.

"And Cynthia," Bainbridge said, with a different tone. Wearier.

"Hello," Cynthia said, and smiled at me in a way that was either flirtatious or unfocused. Probably both. "Are you the detective? How exciting. Do you carry a gun?"

"When the occasion calls for it."

"Does this occasion call for it?"

"Your father wants me to find a man who owes him money. I don't usually need a gun for that."

Cynthia laughed, a bright, slightly jagged sound. "Everything in this family needs a gun. Or at least a stiff drink." She raised her glass in mock salute.

"Cynthia." Louise's voice was flat and final, like a door closing.

Cynthia rolled her eyes but said nothing more. She drifted to the window and stood there, looking out at the garden, sipping her bourbon.

Louise turned to her father. "Is there anything else Mr. Cavett needs?"

"I believe we've covered the essentials," Bainbridge said. He looked at me. "Find Wexler, Mr. Cavett. That's all I'm asking."

I stood, tucked the photograph into my jacket pocket, and shook his hand. His grip was surprisingly firm for a man who looked like he was being slowly consumed from the inside. I followed Poole back through the hallway to a small office near the kitchen, where he counted out two hundred dollars in crisp bills and slid them across the desk to me.

"Mr. Bainbridge values discretion above all else," Poole said. "I trust that's understood."

"Crystal clear."

"Very good. You may reach me at this number if you need to communicate with the household." He handed me a card. "Good day, Mr. Cavett."

The Packard took me back downtown. I sat in the back seat and turned the photograph of Ned Wexler over in my hands. On the back, someone had written an address in pencil: 814 Kearny St., Apt. 3B.

A simple skip trace. Find the man, report his location, collect my fee. The easiest money I'd made in months.

That was what I told myself as the car rolled through the fog. I believed it for almost twenty-four hours.