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“Danny... he always considered himself a tough guy. He wasn’t gonna take off,” William said. “But, maybe he did. He’s one of those guys who’s always around... Nobody’s seen him in almost a week.”
“What about his girlfriend, this Annie?”
“Able would know about her. She’s a sound engineer and she sings and plays the keyboards and so on. She’s in a band...”
She gave William the number of her burner, turned away and caught Able’s eye, and when she had him separated from the crowd,asked, “This Delph guy has a girlfriend who sings and does sound. What’s her name?”
“Annie Bell... though I think her last name was shortened from something else... nothing Russian,” Able said. “I don’t know what her real last name is, on her driver’s license.”
“You have a number for her?”
“No. I barely know her... You think the Russians got Danny? That they’re coming after all of us?”
“Read the papers, then put yourselves in the Russians’ shoes,” Letty said. “You don’t have to abandon your house, but I think you should go pack up, and hide. Your friend William may go to Vegas. Maybe you could share a space.”
“I dunno... this is fuckin’ crazy.”
“Or worse,” Letty said, as she turned to limp away. “I think you crazy hacker fuckers managed to stick your dicks into the beginning of a war.”
She milled around for a few more minutes, listening in, memorizing faces, realized nobody really knew anything about the murders or the disappearance of Delph—but all were involved with Ordinary People in some way. She grabbed Baxter, who was deep in a nonrelevant discussion with some other coders, and dragged him away, saying, “Let’s go to Seattle.”
They didn’t do that.
Letty led him back to the truck, where she ditched the cane and leg brace, changed into a different outfit, and rolled her hair up under a wide-brimmed white Tilley hat. She fished the camera out of the backseat, told Baxter to find something to eat, if he really thought he needed to, and then waited across the beach from the bar. The wait began to get long, then several people left within a few minutes. They walked off in different directions, to their cars,and she followed as many as she could, no limp, no cane, and shot their license tags.
She saw William and Melody leave with Able and another man, got William and Melody’s plate, then jogged the opposite direction to catch up with the unknown man they’d come out with, and got that plate.
That was the end of it. She called Baxter and said, “Come back. We need to find this Delph guy.”
While she waited for Baxter, she called Nowak. “I’ve got a whole batch of license tags from Ordinary People. I don’t know if that’s all of them, but it’s a bunch. Most of the people involved in the train hack, I think. They all knew about it.”
She told Nowak about the meeting at Poggers. “What do you want us to do now? We could check on this Delph guy, see if he’s really missing...”
“Do that,” Nowak said. “I’ll talk to people here and see what they think. Any additional information on the Russians would be extremely useful.”
When Baxter got back to the car, they used the Google mapping app to find Delph’s apartment, in an area called Ocean Park. The long, low gray building was five blocks back from the ocean, with a glass door, flanked by matching glass windows, all with decorative black steel bars behind the glass. Delph lived in Apartment 360, which Letty assumed was on the third floor.
She put on the Tilley hat with a covid mask, left the knee brace and cane in the car, and walked down to the building to take a close look at the glass and the door lock. The building’s mailboxes were on the outside, along with push buttons for individual occupants. Letty stood at the door, digging in her purse, as though looking for her keys, while she studied the problem.
One problem was immediately obvious: at one side of the lobby was an open door, and a shaft of light was coming from the opening. A sign to the side said “Manager.”
Letty called Baxter: “Gonna have to do some social engineering. Better come down now.”
“One minute.”
When Baxter walked up, Letty leaned on the doorbell that said “Building manager.” An older woman, gray hair, heavy, lined face, stuck her head out of the manager’s office, then walked down to the door and opened it.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“We’re friends with one of your tenants—Danny Delph in 360. He’s missed several appointments with a music group and nobody can get in touch with him. We checked his phone and it’s in his apartment, but nobody answered. This has been like a week. We’d like to look in his apartment and make sure, you know, he’s okay.”
“I can’t let you in...”
“That’s why we checked with you—we want you to look with us. If he’s okay, or if he’s just gone somewhere, that’s fine. But... we’re worried. He’s had some serious depression problems and, you know...”
“I’ll get the key,” the manager said, now looking worried herself.
She got a key and they took the elevator to the third floor. The manager led them to Delph’s door, pushed the doorbell. They heard a faint chiming from inside. The manager pushed the doorbell again, held it. No answer.
