Chasing Charlie Chan - Special Edition: Includes Catching Water in a Net

by J. L. Abramo

  “Consider yourself fortunate,” says Samson. “Thanks for your help.”

  Detective Ivanov returns to her car as Officers Landis and Mendez come out of the building.

  The steeple bell at Most Precious Blood Church peals four times.

  “No luck, Lieutenant,” says Officer Landis. “Not many people are back home from work yet. The few we found at home had nothing to contribute. A few apartments had kids back from school waiting for their parents and smart enough not to open the door to us. We’ll have to return later to do the rest.”

  “Okay, let’s leave four officers here to clear the street. Why don’t you guys get some dinner and start up again in an hour or so.”

  “The body is on the way down,” says Rey Mendez. “The forensic team is going to stay up there and get whatever they can while there’s still daylight.”

  “Good. Lou and I are going back to the Precinct to see if Murphy has come up with any missing kids,” says Samson. “Call me after you canvas and feel free to call me at home.”

  Officers Landis and Mendez walk off to instruct the other uniforms, still struggling with the crowd, as the ambulance men come out with the gurney. They hurry the small body into the vehicle and drive quickly away from the scene. The uniformed officers are trying to dodge questions and get the people on the street to return to their homes.

  “What do you think, Sam?” asks Lou Vota.

  “My daughter Kayla is that boy’s age. What am I supposed to think? And when we learn who the child was, we have notifying his parents to look forward to. What do you think?”

  All Vota can think about is the finger.

  Back to TOC

  A sample from fourth JAKE DIAMOND novel, CIRCLING THE RUNWAY coming in 2014.

  ONE

  James Bingham stood at the curb in front of the high-rise residence, talking with the taxi driver who had dropped off the occupant of apartment 3501 a few minutes earlier. Bingham was inquiring into the availability of deeply discounted cartons of cigarettes. The cab driver assured Bingham he would hook him up that weekend.

  Bingham walked back into the lobby as the cab pulled away.

  As James Bingham approached the security desk, he heard footsteps approaching from behind. Before Bingham could turn around, his head was clamped between two large hands, and with the twist of two powerful wrists Bingham was dead.

  The woman opened the door leading from the stairwell to the thirty-fifth floor apartments just wide enough to see the hallway in both directions. Finding the hallway deserted, she pushed the door open just wide enough to slip through. She moved down the hall to the right and she stopped in front of the door marked 3501. She then pulled a plain white letter-sized envelope from the pocket of her coat and slipped it under the door. She returned to the stairwell doorway, passed through it and started down the stairs. She looked at her wristwatch—it was twenty-six minutes after midnight. She walked down to the thirty-second floor and took the elevator to the lobby. She glanced out of the elevator door; the security guard station was still unoccupied. She quickly exited, nearly colliding with a man walking a dog in front of the building.

  The dog walker, Ethan Lloyd, would later say he saw a woman wearing a long blue coat at nearly half-past twelve, alone, sporting sunglasses. A blue scarf wrapped around her head. Ethan considered the coat unnecessarily heavy for such a mild evening, thought the dark glasses were oddly inappropriate for the time of night and added that the scarf did a very good job of hiding her face and hair. He watched the woman as she moved away from the building along Third Street. Lloyd lost sight of her heading north toward Market Street.

  Ethan Lloyd entered the building, wondering, as he had wondered going out less than twenty minutes earlier, why James Bingham, the lobby doorman, was not at his post.

  Bingham was actually there, but Ethan Lloyd could not see him. James was on the floor, hidden behind the large desk with a broken neck.

  The man who had unceremoniously snapped James Bingham’s neck moved to the door of apartment 3501, and he used a key to enter. Less than three minutes later he was just about to open the apartment door to leave when he saw a white envelope slide under the door. He stood perfectly still. He heard footsteps moving away from the door, and he heard the stairwell door close. He waited a full fifteen minutes before leaving and, as instructed, used a shoe found in a hall closet to keep the door from shutting completely.

  The man left the building through the parking garage and he walked calmly down Third Street to Howard Street. Before reaching the intersection of Third and Hawthorne, just beyond the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company, the passenger door of a parked Cadillac opened to the sidewalk and he was beckoned by the driver to get in.

  “Well?” the driver asked.

  “Done deal,” Sal DiMarco answered.

  “Did you ditch the key?”

  “I did.”

  Fuck me, Sal thought; remembering he had forgotten to ditch the key.

  He carefully slipped the apartment key from his pocket and dropped it under the seat of the Cadillac while the driver was occupied watching for an opening in the busy street traffic.

  “Any problems?”

  “A bit of collateral damage, no worries.”

  “Tell me about it,” the driver said as he pulled away from the curb.

  The woman in blue continued walking up Third Street to Market Street, crossed Market to O’Farrell Street, went west to Powell Street and circled back down to Market.

  The woman disappeared down into the Powell Street BART Station.

  At half-past midnight the raucous crowd at Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub and Restaurant was so deafening that Tom Romano, Ira Fennessy and Jake Diamond had to escape. They clawed their way out onto O’Farrell Street, heading for the Powell Street BART Station, one block away, to grab a taxi.

  “Did you see that woman?” asked Ira, as they crawled into a cab.

  “What woman?” Tom asked.

  “Going down into the station. Did you see her, Jake?”

  “I can’t see anything, Ira. What about her?”

  “She was all in blue.”

  “And...”

  “Should have been green, don’t you think.”

  “I can’t think,” Diamond said.

  “Where to?” asked the cabbie.

  “O’Reilly’s Bar, Green Street, North Beach,” Ira answered.

  “Jesus, Ira, have a heart,” Jake pleaded. “Let’s end this nightmare.”

  “Not until the fat lady sings Danny Boy.”

  “God forgive us,” said Diamond. “We should have played pinochle.”

  “Anyone in the market for cheap cigarettes?” the taxi driver asked as he pointed the cab toward Broadway.

  Benny Carlucci stumbled out of The Chieftain Irish Pub on Third and Howard Streets. Carlucci was asked to leave; not very politely. He found himself out on the street alone. He tried to remember if he had arrived with anyone, but he soon gave up trying.

  He walked west on Howard Street toward Fourth, passing the Moscone Center on his left and the Metreon to his right. Benny walked down Fourth toward the train station at King Street. He spotted a black Cadillac parked halfway up on the sidewalk between Harrison and Bryant under the Highway 80 overpass.

  There was definitely something not right about that car in that place at that time.

  Benny was a curious kid. The vehicle stimulated his interest.

  Carlucci casually approached the Cadillac, looking up and down Fourth Street as he moved. Other than what appeared to be three teenage boys horsing around a few streets down toward the train station, the area was deserted.

  Benny expected to find another drunk, like so many others running and falling all over town; this one most likely passed out cold behind the wheel of the big car. Carlucci peered into the passenger door window; the vehicle was unoccupied, the keys dangled from the ignition. He quickly surveyed the street once again and tried the door. It was unlocked. Carlucci pulled it open and slipped into
the driver’s seat. He was thinking that a ride home in a Coupe de Ville would beat the hell out of a long drunken trip on the train and then a bus ride from the train station to his place on Cole Street off Fulton. The car started with the first turn of the key.

  Carlucci turned left onto Bryant Street, turned up Third, one block to Harrison, then Harrison onto Ninth Street heading toward Market. Market onto Hayes onto Franklin to Fulton Street and Benny Carlucci was on his way home in style.

  The police cruiser, siren blaring, pulled Carlucci over at Masonic Avenue, across from the University of San Francisco, just three short blocks from Benny’s apartment.

  The attractive woman who came out of the Civic Center BART station had little resemblance to the woman who had walked down into the Powell Street station twenty minutes earlier. Gone were the dark glasses. Also gone were the heavy blue coat and the blue scarf, replaced by an emerald green two-piece jogging suit and a mane of strawberry blond hair tied back with a green elastic terrycloth band. The .38 caliber Smith and Wesson was now strapped around her ankle.

  Once above ground on Hyde across from the plaza, she jogged in place for a minute before starting up McAllister to the Civic Center Parking Garage. She picked up her car and drove out Geary Boulevard to 25th and then up Lincoln Boulevard to Baker Beach for a solitary run in the sand.

  Just before one in the morning, Blake Sanchez stood at a dark street corner in Oakland and watched as one of his least favorite neighbors moved the doormat on his porch and lifted a loose board. Sanchez saw the man place something through the opening and under the porch and then replace the board and the mat before entering the house.

  Sanchez took another deep pull off his dope pipe and made a mental note.

  What I don’t know would fill a book. What I didn’t know about her could fill a library. It felt as if I was getting closer to her, but it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. She had constructed so many layers of self-deception, she could deflect a jackhammer. I had no idea what she wanted and I convinced myself I didn’t care. It was not an attraction based on the intellectual or the spiritual. It was nothing logical, just biological. The sex wasn’t all that great, come to think of it—and I was thinking about it too often. I thought I was in love with her long after I was sure I didn’t like her. If she had any idea about what she wanted, she kept it a deep dark secret from herself. At first I saw something in her, honesty, selflessness—something she couldn’t see, because it was never really there.

  “What do you think?”

  “About what?” asked Ira Fennessy.

  “I wrote that,” Tom Romano said, sitting between Jake and Ira in the back seat of the taxicab, holding a tattered sheet of paper in his hand.

  “Why would you write something like that?” Ira asked.

  Jake decided to stay out of it; his head felt the size of the Trans America Pyramid, point and all.

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “For fun I guess.”

  The taxi pulled up in front of O’Reilly’s to let them out. The insane crowd was spilling out onto Green Street.

  “You have no idea what fun is,” Ira said, “but you are about to find out.”

  Jake wanted to protest. He desperately wanted to say something, anything that might rescue them.

  But he couldn’t get his tongue to work.

  “I liked what you wrote,” said the cab driver as they piled out of the taxi to join the mob.

  It was well past midnight, a new day—but it was still St. Patrick’s Day in San Francisco.

  TWO

  Thursday, March 18, 2004.

  Trouble is like rain.

  It arrives when you least need it.

  And when you are least prepared for it.

  I opened my eyes and looked up.

  6:04 A.M.

  The time was projected on the ceiling in large bright green numbers and letters from the clock radio beside the bed; a birthday gift I thought was cute for about two days. It was like an advertisement for unfulfilled wishes. I had hoped it would be much later. I wanted to close my eyes again. Not move. But my bladder was a merciless bully.

  I tossed off the bed covers and the cold hit me like an ice cream truck. I discovered I was dressed for going out; or at least dressed the way I had dressed to go out the night before.

  I felt infinitely worse than I had when I fell into the bed only three hours earlier; which seemed incredible though not surprising. I tried remembering how I had made it home, but gave up on it quickly. Not a clue.

  It had been nearly two years since I’d moved back into the house near the Presidio, but I often woke up forgetting where I was. At that particular moment I was having a lot of trouble remembering who I was.

  I slipped on my baby blue Crocs and staggered to the bathroom to urinate, intending to be back in the sack in record time. Instead, I finished my business and stumbled down the stairs, found my jacket on the steps halfway down, tried keeping my balance as I put it on, and made it out to the front porch for more self-abuse.

  I lit a Camel non-filtered cigarette.

  It was colder outside than in, but wouldn’t be for long. The porch faced east and once the morning haze burned off it would be drenched in sunlight. The house had been marketed as being cool in summer; the pitch neglected to publicize the frigid in all other seasons feature. On a balmy day in late winter, which this day promised to be, when you entered the house was when you battled the elements.

  Both cars were safe in the driveway, which led me to believe I had not driven either one the night before. If I had, one or both would have been twisted knots of tortured rubber, glass, vinyl and steel. Most of the automobiles in the neighborhood were less than two years old and had names that were German or Swedish. My vehicles were a brown 1978 Toyota Corona four-door sedan and a red 1963 Chevy Impala convertible. I loved them both for different reasons and used them accordingly. I was relieved to find them both intact after a stupidly excessive night of green beer and Jameson’s Irish whiskey. I am not a big drinker, but give me a good excuse like St. Patrick’s Day, a pal’s birthday, a Friday or Saturday night or the joyful sounds of birds singing and I can usually keep up with the Jones’.

  I dropped my unfinished cigarette to the ground—to be picked up and discarded at some later time—and returned to the chill inside. I removed the jacket, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and I carefully negotiated the stairway. Up. I washed down a couple of Excedrin to ease my aching body—understanding it was like using a Band-Aid to treat a severed limb.

  I struggled free of my party clothes and into sweat pants and shirt. There are many good things to say about down comforters which you forget completely when you are not under one. I covered myself to my chin in an urgent attempt to recall the wonders of goose feathers. I used the remote control to start up a Five For Fighting CD and prayed against all odds that the gentle piano would quiet the drum beating in my head. The projection on the ceiling insisted it was twenty-three minutes after six. I promised myself I would figure out how to disable the slideshow as soon as humanly possible. I closed my eyes and begged for sleep.

  My prayers were answered for precisely six minutes.

  My eyes popped open. I looked up. The lit numbers on the ceiling screamed 6:29. Judging by the sound that woke me, I expected to find myself sitting beside Quasimodo atop the cathedral tower—him pulling the rope with one hand and punching me in the side of my head with the other. Another peel of the deafening bell and another sock in the ear and then another. When it happened the fifth time, I realized at last it was the telephone. I struggled to grab the receiver and hit the talk button; it reduced the buzzing in my head by fifty percent.

  “Jake.”

  “Darlene?”

  “Since when does my name have five syllables?”

  “Give me a break, Darlene. I’m not doing very well.”

  “I’ll say. I’ve heard myna birds with better diction.”

  “Did you call this early to torture me?�
�

  “I called this early because Joey tried calling you and when he couldn’t reach you, he called me.”

  “I was outside smoking and must have missed the call.”

  “Well, I was having a very pleasant dream featuring Hugh Jackman.”

  “What’s so special about Hugh Jackman?”

  “You’ll never know until you see the X-Men movies.”

  “And what is it with grown women dreaming about movie stars?”

  “It’s probably a bit like a World War Two G.I. keeping a photo of Betty Grable in his locker…or like the picture of Rachel Weisz you keep in your wallet. Are you going to ask why Joey called or do you want to continue trying to beat the subject of idol worship to death?”

  “Why did Joey call?” I asked.

  “Tony Carlucci called Joey so Joey called you.”

  “I’m having some difficulty putting the two actions together.”

  “The way you’re slurring your words makes me wonder if you could manage to put your two hands together,” Darlene said, without a hint of sarcasm. “Call Joey.”

  “Are you going back to sleep?”

  “Too late for that, Hugh’s gone. I may as well go for my morning run and get ready to go to the office. Pay some bills, stare at a silent telephone and calculate the odds that you will show up there before noon. Call Joey.”

  The line went dead.

  Joey was Joseph Vongoli a.k.a. Joey Russo a.k.a. Joey Clams.

  From the day I met him, and for the next five years, he was Joey Russo. Nearly two years ago he took a trip to Chicago to save my neck and while he was at it, he avenged the death of his sister and reinstated the family name.

  Joey’s father, Louis Vongoli, a.k.a. Louie Clams, was forced out of the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois, by the Giancana family in the thirties. Vongoli relocated to San Francisco with his wife and son and he changed his name to Russo for protection against reprisal. When Joey reclaimed the name Vongoli, he went from being known as Joey Russo to being known as Joey Clams, vongoli being the Italian word for clams, and clams being easier to pronounce for Anglos.