Page 8 of Hero

He decided to set Justine Poole aside for the moment and looked at one more thing. The news woman had mentioned Benjamin Spengler, the owner of the security company. He wondered what role Spengler was playing in this mess. If the agency had been founded in 1922, he must be either the third- or fourth-generation owner. He was probably rich enough to be living on a yacht anchored off a Greek island, but the news reporters seemed to have been in touch with him as though he was in the office. Sealy went on several online directories to look for an entry for Benjamin Spengler. He could find plenty of references to him in articles, but nothing personal. He tried another way. He ran a search to find a photograph of Spengler from a newspaper article about a fundraising event for a children’s hospital. He was a big man with blond hair and a beard, like an aging tackle from some old football team. NowSealy knew what he looked like, but what drew Sealy’s attention was the article that went with the picture. He had given a donation that had made them name something the Spengler Clinic. That meant he had serious money. The money gave Sealy another idea.

He went to Google and typed in “Spengler Foundation.” All those rich guys seemed to have a foundation. There was nothing. He tried Spengler Mansion, then Spengler House, but got nothing. Then he tried “Spengler Estate.” That brought something, but not exactly what he was looking for. It was an article from the February 12, 1948,Los Angeles Evening Heraldabout the death of David Martin Spengler, the cofounder of the Spengler-Nash Guardian Company. He and his partner Francis X. Nash had been comrades in World War I, both members of the first force of Marines sent to France, and after the armistice founded Spengler-Nash Guardian in 1922. Nash had died in 1936, and Spengler had carried on without him. His estate, it said, included not only the company building on Broadway in Los Angeles, but also the family home at 567 Roe Street. Sealy took a screenshot and then left the computer.

He drove east and south into the heart of the old downtown and moved along Broadway to the Spengler-Nash building. He parked in an alley near the Grand Central Market and walked back. He needed this Justine Poole’s address, and he needed it tonight. There was potentially a huge advantage to making his move now, before all of the news organizations found the address and converged there. Once that happened, there would be no easy way to get to her.

Leo Sealy had spent years working to make himself into a reliable operator anywhere in the country and a perfect operator for Los Angeles, where he knew the spaces and felt the pulse. Tonight he knew that if he got her address he would only have exclusive access to it for a short time, probably until daylight.

When he got to the Spengler-Nash building he saw a white panel truck pull up in front. The painting on the broad side said “Morgell,” and underneath in letters only about five inches high, “Commercial Dry Cleaning.” He timed his steps so he would pass near the back of the truck at the moment when the driver pushed his rolling rack out of it. Sealy could see that many of the clothes on hangers that the driver was delivering were black uniforms. Others were dresses, or men’s suits. All of them had clear plastic covers and tags attached to the middle of the hangers. He paused as though to avoid a collision, but he was reading the tag on the end. Along the top was “Spengler-Nash.” The next line was “William Finn,” and the third an address on Santa Monica Boulevard, apartment 17.

Sealy stepped aside as the rack swept past him and then took two steps away. At the rear of the rack, pushing the rack toward the door, was the driver. He was about fifty and chubby with dark hair. As the driver passed the point where Sealy was out of his field of vision, Sealy spun, hooked his right arm around the man’s neck, and squeezed, cutting off the circulation for a minute or so until the driver passed out, and then broke his neck. He dragged the body through the back door of the van and pulled it to a spot on the floor behind the driver’s seat, went back out and rolled the clothes rack back into the van, closed the door, and sat in the driver’s seat. He started the van and drove it around the block to a space along the curb.

He used the light of his phone to look at the tags, searching for the right name. After about thirty tags he saw it. There were three tags attached to stretchy black uniforms, but all they said was “Spengler-Nash” and “Justine Poole.” Then there was a gray women’s business suit, and it was the same, except that it also said “5794 Ashburton St., #8.” He used his phone to take a picture of it, looked to see if the shot was clear, then pocketed his phone, got out of the van, and walked to his car.

He drove about a mile, parked, and studied Google pictures of Justine Poole’s building and the neighborhood around it. The streets were lined with well-kept smaller houses and, on her street only, a couple of other fairly new apartment or condominium buildings. Hers had an underground parking lot with a barred gate across the entrance, and an eight-foot pedestrian gate that led to a walkway along the side of the building. He assumed that after his visit the police would take a look at the recordings from the security cameras mounted along the front to identify the cars that had passed by that night, so he had to be sure his would not be one of them. He parked on a side street three blocks away in a row of other cars and walked.

He wore dark clothes, a baseball cap, a surgical mask, and sneakers. He had clear surgical gloves on his hands and kept his hands in his jacket pockets. He knew from the photographs that the building had a pool, a spa, and a big patio with two stainless steel propane grills. He approached the building from the alley behind it, stepped to the wall surrounding the pool area, pulled himself to the top of it, swung his legs over, and lowered himself instead of dropping, to prevent even the smallest sound. The windows in the building were all dark. The whole neighborhood was almost certainly asleep at this hour, and he didn’t want to wake anyone.

Sealy stood still and studied the building. When a man who made his living murdering people studied a building, it was a particular kind of view. He looked for openings and irregularities in walls that could be handholds or footholds, vents that could be wide enough for a human body if the covers were unscrewed. He liked louvered kitchen windows, because the frames could be bent with a knife and the strips of glass removed. He liked sliding glass doors on patios and balconies, because most of them had only a single latch by the door handle, which was reallyonly a hook that went over a bar. Other sliders had deadbolts, but their owners were lazy about setting them.

Tonight, he was interested in balconies. The parking garage was about a half-story above ground level, so the second-floor balconies were an extra six or seven feet up. He stayed back near the wall beyond the pool and walked along beside it looking at the balconies. Each was about six feet by three feet of flat space with a steel railing. There were eight condos, four on each of the two floors. Numbers one through four would be on the first floor. Numbers five and six should be on the second floor, at the front corners. Eight should be on the back right corner. He stopped and looked at that balcony and was satisfied that it was the one. No security expert, especially a woman, would live in a ground floor condo in a big city. If she had enemies, she would want her windows to face the pool rather than the street, so she couldn’t get popped from a parked vehicle while looking outside to check the weather.

He saw his way up. He didn’t like it, but he could do it. There was a ladder made of steel bars built into the left side of the building so repair men could go up to work on the central air conditioning or patch the roof. It was not close to the balconies, but he could see that there was an architectural detail, a recessed line about an inch wide and an inch deep running around the building just below the level of the balcony, and another about six feet above it.

Sealy walked to the enclosure where the pool motor and filters were and found the leaf skimmer. It was about twelve feet long. He unscrewed the net and then collapsed the pole so it was only around four feet long. He judged that with the pole at three times its extended thickness, it would be strong enough. He slid it into the back of his belt, so it was out of his way, and went to the ladder. He climbed to the right height andstepped off the ladder to the wall, sticking his toes into the lower groove and gripping the upper groove above his head with his fingertips.

As he edged along the wall he felt fear, and it made him angry that he had to take so much risk for this. The anger made him more determined than ever to kill this woman. He hated her. He hated her most of all when he came to the corner of the building and had to reach around it and set his right hand and right foot in the continuation of the grooves he could only locate by feel and ease himself around. Six feet beyond it he arrived at the first balcony and climbed over the railing.

He began to pull the aluminum handle of the pool skimmer out of his belt so he could lay it from the railing of this balcony to Justine Poole’s balcony, but then he noticed something that surprised him. The sliding glass door beside him was not closed. The screen was closed, but the glass door was open to let the night air into the bedroom.

Sealy leaned the aluminum pole against the wall, took out his pocketknife, and opened the blade. He tested the screen and realized it wasn’t even latched. Why should it be? he thought. Few people could even get up here, and nobody but him would want to. He remained still for a moment, listening. Then he slowly moved the screen to the side on its rollers and track, stepped into the room, and slid the screen shut.

He gripped the knife as he looked at the couple on the bed. If he had to kill them, it would be with the knife, and the big danger was to have a loose hold on the knife so it slipped and cut his own fingers. The two people were older, the husband bald and the wife’s bleached blond hair cut short. Both had sleep masks over their eyes.

He didn’t hurry as he walked past the foot of the bed. He loved the way this condominium building had been constructed. They had used rebar and reinforced concrete instead of a cheap wood frame, so the floorsdidn’t creak. He made his way out of the bedroom and then across the living room. He unlocked the door, opened it slowly, and stepped out. He made a point of not resetting the hand lock in case he needed to get out through this condo later.

He moved to the door with a metal “8” on it and looked at the lock. It was the same model as the older couple’s lock, which was crap. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and found the membership rewards card from a liquor store that he had discovered to be perfect for this purpose. It was thinner and more flexible than a credit card, so he could get it into the narrow space between the door and jamb and bow it a little to slip into the depression where the plunger went into the frame. He worked it for a few seconds and opened the door.

He pivoted into the condo, shut the door, and stood still. He reached for the revolver he preferred for killing, but left it in his jacket pocket and instead took out the semiautomatic and attached the silencer to the muzzle. He was going to have to kill at least one, maybe two, people and get out before the noise woke the neighborhood. A silencer wouldn’t be silent enough, but it would help. He looked around the living room for something else to help muffle the sound. He felt the pillows on the couch until he found one he could wrap around the pistol. Sealy held it in place and moved slowly toward the rear of the condo, then stepped into the bedroom with the bulky pillow-wrapped pistol aimed at the bed.

The bed was empty. The blanket and sheets were tight and neat across the mattress, the way soldiers did it. She was not home. He stepped closer and verified what he thought he had seen in the dim light from the window. There was only one nightstand and one pillow. He went to the closet and opened it. There weren’t any male clothes and not enough female clothes for two women.

He stepped out to the hallway to look for a second bedroom. There wasn’t a second bedroom. One woman lived here, but she wasn’t here now. He decided to search the condominium and see what he could learn about her.

He returned to the bedroom, opened the drawer of the nightstand, and found a flashlight. He looked at his watch. He could afford to give himself an hour.

6

Sealy searched the condominium for anything that would help him find Justine Poole. There were a desk and a filing cabinet in an alcove off the living room. She had kept the desk’s surface clear, but the filing cabinet gave him hope. The file drawers were probably full of folders that held pay stubs, receipts, and bills with notations and check numbers written in. He opened the bottom drawer first. It held three blue folders with labels that said “Taxes” and a year. Copies of tax returns would have Social Security numbers, birth dates, accounts. He opened them, but there was nothing inside. Had she scanned them into her computer?

He looked at the front of the first blue folder again. The name on the folders wasn’t hers. The taxpayer was a woman named Anna Sophia Kepka. He looked at the other two folders. They were for this Kepka woman too. Had he broken into the wrong condo? He went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. He turned on the flashlight and ran it along the rack of clothes. He found a woman’s suit, navy blue, with a laundry tag on it. He looked closely at the tag. The name was JustinePoole. Anna Kepka could be a current or former girlfriend, a relative or something.

He opened the file cabinet again and went through the other drawers. There was a pink slip for a car, and it was in both women’s names. He found the deed for the condominium, and again there were both names. He found printed copies of a MasterCard and a Visa, front and back. He set them on the desk and photographed each of them, the pink slip, the deed, and the car registration. He didn’t want any of this crap. He wanted things like bank statements, restaurant receipts—things he could use to find her. He used the flashlight to look for other places where she might keep such things and noticed the black shredder she had beside the desk. It fit his growing impression that she didn’t like allowing clutter and piles of paper to build up.

What he needed most right now were photographs of her. He moved the beam of the flashlight to sweep the walls for framed pictures, searched the desk and the file drawers for an envelope or file of them, then looked for a passport, for an album, and then for a zip drive or other digital storage device, but found none of them.

She had gotten herself into trouble firing a pistol, but he had found no pistol here. He supposed the police must have taken her gun for ballistic testing, and if she had another, she had taken it with her. He’d found no ammunition either, but if she knew she might be in danger, she had probably taken her supply with her. He supposed it was possible that Spengler-Nash issued its agents firearms and had them turn in their weapons at the end of each shift. If that was the system, the gun wouldn’t even be hers. Bodyguards didn’t have any responsibility to protect anybody when they weren’t on the clock, the way LA cops did.

Sealy checked his watch. He had already used up his hour. He took a last walk through the condo with the flashlight and made a videoof the trip with his phone. He didn’t expect to be able to come back, but if he did, he would have a record of where everything was. As he passed through the little office area, he noticed the shredder again. He stopped and lifted the motorized part that held the blades and looked down into the wastebasket part. There was only a small mound of shredded paper in it. He returned the flashlight to the nightstand beside her bed, went to the front door, opened it and relocked it, then went out and closed it.

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