The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  “Ah. I’m sorry. Friend of yours?”

  “Not really, not anymore. I hadn’t seen him in years. You’re sure this is a homicide, Walt? It couldn’t be some strange disease?”

  The pathologist’s gloved hand turned Denny’s head sideways. “Oh no, he was murdered. See this little wound on the neck? He was shot with something. Probably some kind of dissolving gelatin pellet because there’s nothing inside the wound now. Was your friend a spy?”

  Frost shook his head. “Denny? Are you kidding? He ran fishing charters for tourists. Why would you think he was a spy?”

  “Well, his death looks to be the result of a rare kind of poison. I won’t know more for sure until I run tests in the lab, but based on the look of the body, I suspect it’s tetrodotoxin or something along those lines. It’s the kind of weapon you typically don’t see outside of Cold War political assassinations. Sticking people with lethal umbrellas, that kind of thing.”

  “Denny Clark wasn’t a deep-cover CIA operative,” Frost said. “He was just an ordinary guy with a boat.”

  There was a long stretch of silence between them. Then Dr. Finder shook his head, as if Frost couldn’t be more wrong. “Oh, believe me, there’s nothing ordinary here, Inspector.”

  Frost frowned and let the pathologist continue his work. He found it hard to identify the man he remembered from his youth in the face of the corpse at his feet. It wasn’t just the effects of the poison. More than a decade had passed since he’d seen Denny Clark, and his former friend had changed. Denny had put on weight and shaved off his fisherman’s beard. The man who’d never owned a shirt with a collar in his life wore a trendy Italian-made pullover. He’d traded contact lenses for cool lime-green glasses. Even so, he still smelled like the sea, the way he always had.

  The sadness that Frost felt wasn’t really grief. It was more like regret for how things had gone down. He’d known Denny in high school, but they’d lost touch while Frost went to college and law school. Then, when Frost was deciding what to do with his life, he’d hooked up with Denny again and spent a year living with him on a boat at Fisherman’s Wharf, taking tourists out on the bay. For eleven months of that year, he’d had the time of his life. The twelfth month was a different story. They’d broken up badly over a girl named Carla, and it was the kind of breakup that friends don’t come back from.

  Now they were both thirty-five years old. Frost was a cop. Denny was dead.

  Dr. Finder looked up and read the emotion on Frost’s face. “I don’t mean to make light of losing someone you were close to.”

  “We weren’t close,” Frost replied, too sharply. Then he went on, as much to himself as to the medical examiner. “I’m just saying it was a long time ago. Denny and I used to drink beer, steam crab, and listen to Nickelback, I’m ashamed to say. Every kid in his twenties should live like that for a while. We didn’t make a dime, but we didn’t care about money.”

  “Well, Mr. Clark is doing considerably better now,” Dr. Finder replied. “Present circumstances excepted, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Finder tapped the body’s leg. “He has cash in a money clip in his front right pocket. Looks like several thousand dollars.”

  Frost’s lips pressed into a frown. Money and Denny Clark had never gone hand in hand, at least not for long. He found it hard to believe that his old friend had changed that much, even after ten years apart.

  “I’m going to check on the investigation outside,” he told the pathologist. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “I do. Although since I’m here, I was hoping to meet the famous Shack.”

  Frost grinned. Everyone associated with the San Francisco police knew about Frost’s cat. They were an unlikely team, and on most days, Frost wasn’t entirely sure which one of them was in charge. “I had to put Shack in an upstairs bedroom, or he probably would have started the autopsy without you. I’ll introduce you before you go.”

  “Be sure you do,” Dr. Finder replied.

  Frost stepped around the body to the open front door and walked down the porch steps to Green Street. The road was crowded with police vehicles lighting up the cul-de-sac at the top of the hill. He saw plastic numbers on the sidewalk, marking evidence. In this case, it was Denny’s blood. He walked to the concrete railing that overlooked the rocky tree-lined slope and imagined the effort it had taken for Denny to climb the stairs with his last breaths.

  All to give Frost a message that made no sense at all.

  Lombard.

  To San Franciscans, Lombard was simply an east–west street heading across the city into the Presidio. Tourists knew the name Lombard because of its zigzag route down one of the sharp peaks of Russian Hill. City guides called it the crookedest street in the world.

  Frost shoved his hands in the pockets of his black jeans and blinked away his tiredness. He wore yesterday’s blue-checked button-down shirt, untucked. The wind riffled through his swept-back hair, which was a mixture of gold and brown and cut short on the sides. He had a high forehead, small ears, and a nose that made a sharp V on his face. His eyes were dark blue. His neatly trimmed beard hid his chin. He was almost six feet tall but a little skinny for his height.

  He turned around and leaned against the railing. The March night was cold and clear. Using his phone, he did a quick Google search for the name Denny Clark. The search led him to Denny’s website, which advertised custom charter excursions on the bay. Frost hadn’t kept up with Denny over the years—in fact, he’d deliberately made sure he didn’t know what Denny was doing—but he could see that his former partner had upgraded the business. Denny had exchanged their rusted forty-foot fishing boat at the wharf for a luxury one-hundred-foot party yacht docked in the marina. He catered to the San Francisco elite. Based on the cash in his pocket, it paid well.

  The name of Denny’s yacht was the Roughing It. Frost couldn’t help smiling. There was more to the name than just its sly irony for an upscale yacht. Frost had named their original fishing boat the Jumping Frog, which he’d taken from a Mark Twain story. Apparently, Denny had done the same thing with his new yacht, even though Denny’s knowledge of anyone named Twain probably began and ended with Shania. It made Frost wonder whether Denny had quietly been sending him an apology that he’d never received.

  “Inspector?”

  Frost looked up to find a uniformed police officer standing in front of him. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Captain Hayden wants to talk to you.”

  Frost nodded. “I’ll give him a call.”

  The police officer shook his head. “No, the captain is here.”

  “Here? At the crime scene?”

  “Yes, he just arrived.”

  Surprised, Frost checked his watch and saw that it was nearly two in the morning. He didn’t understand why the top cop in the major crimes unit—a man who was on track to be the next San Francisco police chief—would be visiting an ordinary homicide scene in the middle of the night.

  Then he remembered what Dr. Finder had told him: There’s nothing ordinary here.

  Frost spotted Hayden’s unmarked black town car beyond the crime scene tape. He marched toward the car and saw Hayden’s right-hand man vaping mist into the air from an e-cigarette as he stood on the sidewalk. The younger cop’s name was Cyril Timko. Hayden had plucked him from the officer ranks several months earlier and turned the twenty-nine-year-old into his assistant, enforcer, and chauffeur. Cyril had the tough, wiry look of a runner, all muscle and bone. In the police gym, he made up for his small stature with a reputation as a dirty fighter. He wore his black hair in a buzz cut that made a sharp point on his forehead. He had thick eyebrows and a five o’clock shadow. His blue uniform fit tightly, and his skin was pale white, as if the button of his shirt collar were cutting off the blood through his neck.

  “This is a surprise,” Frost said as he approached Cyril. “Why the late-night visit? I would have given the captain a report in the morning.”

  Cy
ril shrugged. “It’s Russian Hill. Lots of rich voters and rich politicians around here. They get nervous about murder. The captain wants to make sure we’re all over this one.”

  “Fair enough,” Frost said, but he didn’t think that was the real explanation.

  “What do you know so far?” Cyril asked him in a voice that had the raspiness of someone who used to smoke real cigarettes instead of the fake ones.

  “The victim came up the hillside stairs on foot. We’re still trying to trace his movements before that.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Not yet, but we’ll canvass the area in the morning.” Frost nodded at the town car. “The captain’s in the back?”

  “He is.” Cyril exhaled a cloud of vapor and secured the device in his pocket. He went to the rear door of the town car and swung it open. The interior lights were on, and Frost climbed inside.

  Captain Pruitt Hayden took up fully half of the back seat. He was huge, like the former Stanford linebacker that he was. His bald black head had patches of off-color skin like dark and milk chocolate mixed together. He wore Franklin reading glasses that looked oddly tiny on his face, and he perused the screen of his laptop with his lips pursed. His fingers tapped along to a piano concerto playing on the car’s speakers. Like his aide, he wore dress blues.

  A minute passed, and finally, the captain turned to stare at Frost over the rims of his glasses.

  “Easton,” he murmured in a voice that sounded like distant thunder. He said Frost’s name with the expression of someone who had stepped in something unpleasant. Frost and Hayden had never been friends.

  “Good evening, sir,” Frost said. “I appreciate the support, but there was no need for you to come out here personally in the middle of the night. We have the situation under control.”

  “When someone gets murdered in one of my detectives’ houses, I want to know what’s going on,” Hayden replied.

  “Well, he died at my house, but we don’t know where the actual crime took place yet.”

  Hayden didn’t seem impressed by the distinction. “You knew this man?”

  “I did, although we hadn’t spoken in a long time.”

  “So why did he come to you?”

  “I have no idea,” Frost replied. “I’m surprised he even knew where I lived.”

  “Can you think of a motive for his murder?”

  “Not yet. He was carrying plenty of money, but the killer didn’t bother taking it. Dr. Finder seems to think that an unusual type of poison was used. He said it reminded him of a political assassination.”

  “An assassination,” Hayden repeated, rolling the word around his mouth like a fine wine.

  “Yes, sir. Denny seems like an unlikely target for a professional hit. All he did was run charters from a yacht in the marina. I’ll see what I can find on his boat.”

  “Do that. And keep an eye out for drugs, weapons, or other contraband. If he’s out on the water regularly, trafficking of some kind could be a factor here.”

  “That was my first thought, too,” Frost agreed.

  “I want to be kept in the loop on this case,” Hayden told him. “Copy Cyril on your reports and give him a daily update on what you find. He’ll make sure the information gets to me.”

  “Of course,” Frost replied. He waited a beat before adding, “Do you mind if I ask why? No offense, sir, but you don’t typically get involved in a specific homicide investigation unless it has some broader political implications. Is there something here that I should know about?”

  “When there’s something you need to know, I’ll tell you.” Hayden focused on the glowing screen of his laptop again. “That’ll be all for now, Easton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Frost opened the rear door of the town car. The cool breeze blew in and mixed with Hayden’s cologne. He began to get out, but the captain reached out and closed a powerful hand around his wrist.

  “Wait, one more thing,” Hayden went on. “The victim, Denny Clark. Did he say anything to you before he died?”

  Frost heard Denny’s voice in his head again: Lombard.

  He was about to reply, but then he stopped himself.

  In his memory, he saw Denny’s twisted face as his friend battled for breath. His eyes were wide with the terror of someone who knew he was about to die. He looked as if he’d climbed a mountain and held off the end, just so that he could give Frost one last message.

  One odd, puzzling, meaningless message.

  Frost wasn’t going to say anything about it until he knew what it meant.

  “No,” he told the captain. “Denny said nothing at all.”

  3

  Dawn was still an hour away when Frost parked his Chevy Suburban on the narrow strip of road north of the San Francisco yacht harbor. On his right, the masts of dozens of sailboats bobbed like awkward ballerinas and made a clinking, metallic music. On his left, agitated waves slapped against the breakwater. He saw the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge through billowing fog, the low hills of the East Bay, and the grim outline of Alcatraz. The wind tried to knock him off his feet.

  He had no trouble identifying the sleek flybridge of the Roughing It, which had its own diagonal slip among the smaller profiles of private yachts. It was as white as a single cloud against a perfect blue sky. The bow tapered to a sharp, aerodynamic point like an arrowhead, and smoked windows stretched along the main deck. There was open space forward and aft where guests could soak up the sun and lean into the spray as if they were kings and queens of the world. Some of them probably were.

  The boat’s price tag had to be in the high seven figures. Frost wondered where Denny had found the money to buy it.

  As he waited near the locked gate leading to the piers, the engine of a golf cart rattled from the cypress trees near the marina clubhouse. The cart parked next to Frost’s truck, and a trim, white-haired security guard hopped down to join him. The man had a large loop of keys jangling from his belt. He took a close look at Frost’s badge, and then the two men shook hands.

  “Tom Hale,” the guard introduced himself. He was in his sixties, with a nimble step and an easy smile. “I’m the overnight security man at the harbor. Did I hear you right on the phone? Is Denny Clark dead?”

  “Yes, he is,” Frost said.

  “What an awful thing. Nice man, Mr. Clark. Down to earth. You can’t always say that about the people around this place.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday morning. Mr. Clark was usually on the boat every day before the night shift ended. He pampered his baby, that’s for sure. Of course, if I had a vessel like that, I’d be good to her, too.”

  “Was he alone?” Frost asked.

  “I think so. I didn’t see anyone with him.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “I waved. He waved. That was all.”

  “What about your shift last night?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Hale replied. “The boat didn’t go out. It’s still pretty early in the season. I don’t think the Roughing It has been out on the water since Tuesday.”

  “It’s an expensive boat,” Frost said. “Did Denny ever say where he got the money to buy it?”

  “People don’t talk about that kind of thing around here. Sometimes it’s family money. Sometimes it’s billionaire nerds from the valley. Or sometimes the things are simply in hock up to their flags. I don’t know about Mr. Clark, but he seemed to have the right contacts. No one at the marina gave him a hard time about getting a license to run charters out of here. Maybe he had partners with some deep pockets and political clout behind him.”

  “What about his crew?” Frost asked.

  “He’d hire people depending on the charter. Chefs, bartenders, that kind of thing. But Mr. Clark was the captain. He ran her himself.”

  Frost eyed the boat, which had the proud look of a Great Dane towering over lesser dogs. “What kind of charters are we talking about? Did you see people you know? Celebrities? Anyb
ody like that?”

  “Part of my job is not to notice things,” Hale replied. “The people that Mr. Clark took out valued their privacy. Most of the time, he’d have me close off the road while his guests loaded. I’d let in a couple limos, but I wouldn’t know who was in them. He wanted to make sure gawkers weren’t taking pictures.”

  Frost nodded. “Did Mr. Clark have any problems with anybody? Did you ever hear any arguments? Or did he complain about anyone to you?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Hale replied. “As far as I could tell, everybody liked him. And that’s a tough clientele to keep happy. Powerful people like things a certain way. If they don’t get what they want, you’ll hear about it.”

  “But you never heard any negative scuttlebutt about Mr. Clark around the marina? That’s hard to imagine. Denny and I used to run a fishing boat at the wharf. The one thing I remember is that the captains unloaded more crap on each other than the seagulls.”

  “Well, that’s the wharf, Inspector. This is the marina.”

  Frost smiled. “Is that a little slam, Tom?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  The security guard smiled, too, but he didn’t add anything more. Frost wasn’t sure whether Hale was telling the truth about the lack of gossip or whether the man had been tipped well enough by Denny and others to remain discreet about the comings and goings around here.

  “I need to take a look at the boat,” Frost added. “We’ll be out with a forensic team later today.”

  “Whatever you need, Inspector.”

  Hale unlocked the gate, and Frost walked down the ramp in the darkness. He could see a pink glow on the eastern horizon, behind the skyscrapers that jutted like broken teeth over the hills of the city. He made his way along the water to the pier where the Roughing It was tied up, and he stepped across the dock onto the platform at the stern. His weight didn’t even make the boat sway.

  He climbed the ladder to the main deck, which was damp with spray. Cushioned seats surrounded a vast stone-and-chrome fire pit that gleamed with red stones. It was easy to imagine the flames licking at the darkness out on the cold water. Above his head, the overhang of the flybridge was like a flying saucer, and he spotted the octagonal wall of a hot tub.