Spit In The Ocean: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 4) Read online

  Praise for SPIT IN THE OCEAN, the FOURTH novel in the Jake Samson mystery series:

  “…one of the nicer guys in the private eye business, who operates in a relaxed, casual style without need for macho posturing.”

  -Washington Post

  “Jake Samson is sensitive and funny, a little wise, a little wary and pretty wonderful.”

  -Publishers Weekly

  “A well-plotted and lively story.”

  -Mystery Scene

  SPIT

  IN THE

  OCEAN

  A Jake Samson Mystery

  BY

  SHELLEY SINGER

  booksBnimble Publishing

  New Orleans, La.

  Spit in the Ocean

  Copyright © 1987 by Shelley Singer

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover by Andy Brown

  eBook ISBN: 9781625173560

  Originally published by St. Martin’s Press

  www.booksbnimble.com

  First booksBnimble electronic publication: January, 2014

  Digital Editions (epub and mobi formats) produced by Booknook.biz

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Full Table of Contents

  – 1 –

  Nothing is colder, windier, wetter, and more miserable than the northern California coast in January.

  Nothing is more beautiful.

  So it was with mixed emotions, heavy boots, and a long yellow slicker that I drove splashing down the main street of Wheeler just a few days after New Year’s, headed for the Oceanview Motel.

  A motel, yes, but the trip had nothing to do with a love affair— at least not mine. It had everything to do with the sex lives of hundreds of people I had never met.

  I had seen the story in the San Francisco Chronicle just a couple of days before I got the phone call from my pal Chloe Giannapoulos. It seemed that a friend of hers was the founder of a company called the North Coast Sperm Bank, which had been the victim of an act of vandalism. Someone had broken into their storage area, stolen all their frozen stock, and left a note saying they were “setting it free” in the ocean. There was no reason not to believe the note, since the local law had found the containers littering the water along the beach.

  Apparently, though, Chloe’s friend was not satisfied with what the police had done, or not done, since then. She felt, Chloe said, that they just weren’t taking the crime seriously enough.

  Chloe told her friend that she knew a guy who would, for a fee, take the crime very seriously and probably even solve it. So there I was.

  I parked my car in the side lot of the Oceanview, near the office, pulled my suitcase and yellow slicker out of the backseat, and made my way through a rising wind up slick wooden steps to a door so swollen with wetness it took a well-placed foot to get it open.

  The man at the desk smiled a “welcome traveler” smile that broadened into a “welcome tourist” smile when he realized I was going to be staying for a while. I figured he didn’t see many tourists this time of year. During the rainy season not many outlanders stop by for a bite of seafood and long walks on the beach. No tourists from the Midwest, and damned few from Oakland.

  “Hope you enjoy your visit,” he said. “Looks like you’re in for some bad weather.”

  I assured him that I would have a good time anyway.

  “Any place good to pick up a fast lunch around here?” I asked. I hadn’t eaten before leaving home, and I had an hour before my three o’clock appointment with Chloe’s friend. I’d noticed a cafe just down the street, but I wanted a local recommendation. He said Georgia’s Cafe—the one I’d spotted—was very good.

  My room looked out on the parking lot. I tossed my stuff on the bed and went to the window. There were a couple of big, brittle eucalyptus trees at the edge of the lot, not fifty feet from my car. Eucalyptus tends to leave pieces of itself lying around in good weather, and in bad it can lose very large pieces. I could only pray that these would aim no limbs at my 1953 blue and white Chevy Bel Air.

  I left it sitting there and walked the block and a half to Georgia’s through a steady rain. Just inside the door were a couple of bentwood hat racks hung with dripping rainwear. I added mine and took a two-person booth.

  Half a dozen people were scattered around a room that could hold maybe three dozen. The bits of conversation I could hear were all about the weather.

  The waitress brought me a menu, said hello pleasantly, and, as though she were continuing an earlier conversation, told me it looked like we were in for a gale. I ordered a hamburger with everything, for sustenance. She went away again and I tuned in on a nearby group of three men, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts.

  “…never washed away yet,” a large, white-faced man was saying.

  One of his friends laughed. “There’s always a first time, Henry. I’ve seen waves hit that spit hard enough and high enough to wash right across the road. I never could understand why you picked that spot to build on.”

  Henry shrugged. “The houses are on high ground. And I like it out there. It’s pretty.”

  His friend laughed again. “You just like the company.” He turned to the third man. “He likes living around the rich and famous, like you do.” The third man shook his gray head and took another bite of his doughnut, another sip of his coffee. His fingernails were black. “I just hope none of those rich and famous houses wash away tonight.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the third man grunted, wiping his mouth with his dirty hand. “They don’t live there anyway. Besides, might be God’s judgment.”

  “Oh, come on, Frank, you don’t believe that,” Henry said.

  The second man, the youngest of the three, shook his head and spoke— petulantly, I thought. “Problem is, while they’re flying around in jet planes, I’m the guy who has to keep an eye on their investments.” He stood up and turned to go, and that was when I noticed that his khaki shirt was part of a uniform and that a badge was pinned to it. He said good-bye to his friends.

  They finished their coffee in silence. I finished my meal, had a second cup of coffee, and decided, despite the weather, to walk to my appointment. According to the directions I’d gotten over the phone the day before, my destination was a good half mile away, near the other end of the business section. But I’d be walking away from the ocean, with the wind at my back, and after a better-than-two-hour drive from Oakland in the first place, I wanted the exercise.

  – 2 –

  The sperm bank was located, appropriately enough, in a building that had once served as another kind of bank, a now-defunct financial institution whose name, carved into the stone above the door, remained. All very solid, right down to the phony columns on either side of the glass door, which was now lettered with the words, “North Coast Cryobank.” The rest of the block looked less than prosperous: to the left, a vacant lot; to the right, a tired-looking dress shop.

  The bank’s first floor had been cut up and walled so the visitor saw nothing on entering but a reception desk, a five-foot schefflera in a plastic planter, and a few chairs. When I walked in, the woman behind the desk smiled warmly, glanced to her left to make sure the lounging private guard hadn’t gone to the toilet or anything, and asked what she could do for me. I told her. She pushed some buttons, got an okay to send
me along, and directed me to an exit door to my right. “Just go up the stairs, third office on the left.”

  I knocked on the partly open door, right below the little plastic placard that said “Nora Canfield,” no title, and was told to “come right in.”

  Canfield, I knew, was the executive director. I expected to see some kind of secretarial desk right inside, but instead walked directly into the executive office. I didn’t know how to feel about that. Was I supposed to be impressed by the lack of pretension? Was all this informality really un-self-conscious?

  She stood and extended her hand across the desk. “Nora Canfield,” she said. “I’m glad you could come, Mr. Samson.”

  We got past all the “no, just call me Jake” stuff and I sat down, on a comfortable California-style first-name basis with the boss of what looked to be a pretty good-sized business.

  Despite the casual office setup, this was not a particularly casual woman. She was dressed in neat slacks with a sharp crease and a tailored blouse of some silky material. She had soft-looking dark brown hair, cut short, brown eyes, and a full mouth. She did not smile, and the brown eyes and full mouth were all business. So was her office, which was painted in muted, tranquil colors and contained little in the way of ornament. She had one window, which looked out over the backyard of some kind of shop that fronted the main street.

  She got right to it.

  “Chloe tells me you’ve had a lot of experience in this sort of thing.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Murders and disappearances, that’s what I’ve handled so far. I don’t know anything about your business, and I’ve never dealt with burglary. And you should know I have no license to operate as a private detective.”

  She waved a hand at me. “I don’t care how you operate, as long as you do it efficiently. And as long as you don’t get us involved in any criminal activity. I’m acting solely on Chloe’s recommendation. Shall we talk price?”

  We talked price. By the day, three hundred dollars for me and my partner, who had not yet arrived. Plus expenses, which would, since we were away from home, be considerable. She had no problems with my terms and I was sorry I hadn’t asked for more.

  I was looking her over carefully, without, I hoped, showing it. She was doing the same to me. I thought she was in her late thirties, judging by the small wrinkles around her eyes. Eyes which were trained assertively on my own as we talked. She wanted me to understand that she was in charge. That was all right with me, since she was, but her insistence that I roll over under her gaze probably meant one of two things: either she was a bit unsure of herself or she didn’t trust a man to take her position seriously. I decided to go for the second option, at least for the time being.

  I told her I knew the very rough outline of the story, but needed some details.

  “First of all,” I began, “how did the thief get in?”

  “Come with me.” She got up and headed for the door. “I’ll show you.”

  I followed her along a hallway and down a back stairway to the first floor, where she pushed open an unmarked door. We entered a large room that contained at least a dozen file cabinets, a table, and a chair. Over in a corner, a woman sat at a desk typing file-folder labels. There was another door in the wall to my right.

  “This is the file room,” Nora said unnecessarily, nodding a greeting to the woman at the typewriter. “That’s the window they broke to get in.” She pointed to a barred window. I looked through the bars onto the same backyard I’d seen from her office. A business on the first floor, apartment on the second, small yellow car parked near the back door. I stuck my face up against the bars and looked down. The window was no more than four feet from the ground. “The bars are new, since the break-in. Then they went into the tank room and took everything back out through here, and apparently went out through the same window again. Because the door to this room was still locked from the outside in the morning.”

  “Tank room?”

  “In there.” She pointed toward the door I’d noticed earlier.

  “Where was the broken glass?”

  “Mostly on the inside.”

  “Who was the first person to come in here that morning?”

  “I was.”

  “Did you notice any marks on the wall?”

  “Not in here.”

  “What about outside?”

  “A few scratches, I think.”

  “Where was the note?”

  “Right here on the table.”

  “What about the security guard I saw downstairs? Wasn’t there one here that night?”

  She shook her head. “We didn’t have one before the break-in. We’ve never been terribly concerned with security before. It’s not that kind of town. At least we didn’t think it was. I have to admit we’re all feeling pretty nervous now.” I could believe it. She was tense, like someone in a hurry. I remembered the receptionist’s nervous glance at the guard.

  “But you say this room is kept locked— and was, before the break-in?”

  “Of course. This is not a public area. Confidentiality is very important in this field.”

  I could see I was going to have to learn more about her field. “But the door to the tank room— what is a tank room, anyway?— isn’t kept locked?”

  “The only way you can get to it is through this room. I’m afraid it never occurred to us that someone would come in the window.”

  Again, I asked, “What’s the tank room?”

  “That’s where the sperm is stored.” Once again, she led the way.

  The room had no other doors and no windows. It was entirely bare except for half a dozen three-foot-tall objects that looked like heavy-duty milk cans. Each one had a number on it.

  I walked over to the nearest one. “It looks like a milk can.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” She was not amused. I wondered if she ever was.

  “No. A creative observation. And the thieves just came in and opened this up…” I felt around the edges. “How does it open?”

  She lifted the lid. A cloud of very cold vapor seeped out. Through the mist I could just make out a few long rods with numbered vials, each about the size of my little finger, attached to them. The rods were set in a rack that looked like it would hold a hundred times as many. She closed the lid again before I could get a better look.

  “Those vials. Is the sperm in those?” She nodded.

  “Frozen?”

  She nodded again. “Hard as glass. In liquid nitrogen at minus one hundred ninety-six degrees centigrade. It’s called cryopreservation.”

  “Like that cryo-something where they freeze people? So they can thaw them out when there’s a cure for whatever killed them?”

  “Yes. Suspended animation.”

  “Minus one ninety-six. Centigrade. I guess that’s pretty cold. These tanks must be unique.”

  “Not really. They’re just like the ones the cattle industry uses to store bull sperm.”

  And that, I thought, was also pretty cold. “How many samples can you store in one of these things?”

  “A lot.”

  “And the few I saw in there?”

  “Donated since the break-in.” I took out my notebook and jotted down some of the information she’d given me. Then, since there wasn’t anything else to see in the dim, chilly little room, we went back out.

  “What’s in these files?”

  The woman who had been typing labels was painstakingly sticking them onto file folders.

  “Donor information. Medical background, legal agreement. Each donor has a number for his file and his sample. Copies of donor profiles. That’s how the recipients make their selections, by numbered donor profiles. No names. Just numbers. Totally anonymous.”

  “And the numbers on the cans?”

  “They refer to the classifications— private rental storage, for example, or available to the public.”

  I nosed around the file room window for a while. One small scratch on the sill. Then I s
uggested we go back up to her office, sit down, and talk some more. She sighed. Clearly, I was taking too much of her time.

  “Tell me this,” I said as we walked up the steps. “Why would a guy do that? Donate?”

  “Lots of reasons. Some men are donors for specific women. Some do it for the money. Twenty-five dollars. Some do it because they’re starting cancer therapy or getting vasectomies or going to work at jobs where they may be exposed to chemical or radioactive mutagens.”

  We were settled in her office again. “Why is it frozen?”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “So it will live long enough to be used.”

  I was not intimidated. “Could you elaborate?” I snapped.

  She looked at me, startled. “Oh. I’m sorry. Of course. I’m afraid I’m distracted. There’s so much work to do to make up for the damage. That break-in cost us a great deal of money.”

  I nodded kindly, and waited for her to go on.

  “It’s frozen for two reasons, really. Logistics, first of all. It can’t live more than a day unfrozen. We store it for doctors and researchers as well as for private parties. Sometimes we ship it out of town, frozen. We rent the storage space to the doctors, and the researchers, and the men I mentioned before, who need to store their sperm for one reason or another. And to women with private donors. And of course we need to store a great deal of it, from a variety of donors, for the women who come here, the ones who want to have a child by an anonymous donor with no paternal rights.” The words “over-the-counter sales” occurred to me. “Sometimes, two or three years down the line, a woman who’s already had one child through us wants to have another one by the same donor.” She must have noticed that I’d raised my eyebrows, because she added, “We can store, long-term, for up to seven years.”

  “Who are most of these women? I mean—”

  “Most of them are women with infertile partners.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Well, if you mean insemination, that’s been going on for a couple of centuries. But modern cryopreservation is relatively new— since the early sixties.”