The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  This was a place for one-percenters. Denny had come a long way since their days on the Jumping Frog.

  Frost let himself inside the guest quarters, which were equally lavish. The living room was decorated in white leather, with a well-stocked bar, 4K satellite television, and shining fixtures in cherrywood and stainless steel. The area didn’t just look clean. It looked sanitized. He pulled one of the cushions from the leather sofa and found that the base of the furniture had been vacuumed so thoroughly that there wasn’t even a crumb of food or strand of hair.

  The next room was a dining area with tables that could serve at least sixteen people. Steps led down to the crew deck and kitchen. Beyond the dining room was a master suite with a queen-sized bed and mirrored ceiling. The bed was made with brightly colored sheets and a mountain of pillows. Jade sculptures and silk birds-of-paradise decorated the dressers. Soft overhead lights gave the room a romantic glow. Another flat-screen television was built into the wall, and above the television was a geometric wall sculpture made of mirrored glass. The sculpture hung slightly askew, as if it had been recently moved. Frost looked behind it and spotted a small rectangular plastic panel. One corner of the panel was loose. With gloves on, Frost took down the sculpture and pried away the black panel to see what was behind it.

  He found the ends of an electrical power cord and a USB cable that ran back behind the wall. Neither cable was connected to a device, but when he shined his light on the small shelf, he could see a circular dust outline. Something electronic had been situated here and recently taken away. Based on the size and location, facing the bed through the mirrored glass, Frost had a suspicion about the missing equipment.

  A video camera.

  If Denny had been spying on his elite guests, that was definitely a motive for murder.

  When Frost finished upstairs, he returned to the dining room and took the stairs to the lower deck. The kitchen was here, gleaming with stainless steel appliances, and it had the functionality to prepare a gourmet meal. There were other, plainer bedrooms for crew and serving staff. He found Denny’s bedroom and office aft, where a locked door led to the boat’s mechanical equipment area. He sat down in the comfortable swivel chair behind the desk and tried to get a sense of Denny’s life.

  The first thing he noticed on the desk was a photograph of Carla. Despite the years in between, he recognized her immediately, tall and slim, with long, straight sandy hair and a sarcastic smirk that was always on her lips. The smirk covered darker, scarier things. He sat there, staring at the picture, and eventually realized that several minutes had gone by while he was lost in the past.

  He shook himself out of it and examined the rest of the desk. Like the hidden camera—if it really was a camera—Denny’s computer was gone, which likely meant that any video records had disappeared. Probably Denny’s ship logs had been there, too. Frost began to think that someone had beaten him to the boat in order to erase the evidence.

  He opened each drawer of the desk but found nothing except loose paper clips, open boxes of printer ink, USB cables, and a pair of mini binoculars. There was also a blue box with an expensive Waterman pen that Denny’s mother had given to him as a high school graduation gift. Even back in the days of the Jumping Frog, the pen had been Denny’s prized possession. Some things never changed.

  The lowest drawer of the desk felt oddly heavy as Frost opened it. He removed it and turned it over so that he could check the panel underneath.

  Duct-taped to the bottom of the drawer was a small brick of cocaine.

  Frost leaned back in the chair and shook his head. He’d already talked about the possibility of Denny smuggling drugs with Captain Hayden, and now here was a supply of cocaine to back up that theory. Even so, something didn’t feel right to him. The evidence of Denny’s yacht business had been carefully removed, but the drugs had been left behind in a way that no one doing a routine search could fail to find them.

  Too easy.

  He slipped an evidence bag out of his pocket to secure the cocaine but froze when he heard a footstep on the stairs that led up to the main deck. He wasn’t alone on the boat anymore. Whoever had made the footstep above him froze, too, as if he knew he’d given himself away. Frost reached into his jacket and slid his gun into his hand. He waited in the silence and then called out, “This is the police. Come down here slowly and show yourself.”

  The warning didn’t work. Instead, the person above him ran. Frost leaped to his feet and gave chase. He took the steps two at a time on the twisting staircase and reached the boat’s dining room just as he saw the shadow of a figure disappearing through the doors to the open deck. He crossed the space and burst into the pink light of morning. When he spun around the corner, he saw someone sprinting down the starboard gangway between the ship’s railing and the slanting wall of the cabin.

  “Stop!”

  The man was halfway along the length of the boat when he glanced back and saw the gun in Frost’s hands. He weighed his chances and gave up. He froze where he was, turned around, and put his hands in the air.

  Frost closed in on him along the length of the gangway. As he got closer, he realized that the man looked more like a boy, probably no more than five feet tall and fourteen years old. He was Asian, dressed all in black in a tank top, cycling tights, and black sneakers. His dark hair was bushy and styled. A gold chain hung around his neck, and one gold stud dotted his ear. His skin had an almost plastic glow, as if he were wearing makeup, and his eyes were alert and suspicious.

  “Who the hell are you?” the boy demanded, like a dog standing up to a bear.

  Frost smiled. He replaced his gun in his holster and took out his badge instead. “I told you, I’m a cop. My name’s Frost.”

  The badge didn’t do anything to ease the boy’s suspicion. “Yeah, so? This ain’t your boat.”

  “It’s not yours, either,” Frost replied. “Who are you?”

  The boy set his mouth in a tough line and didn’t answer.

  “Just tell me your name and what you’re doing here,” Frost said. “Do you know Denny Clark?”

  A long silence passed. The morning sky got lighter as the clouds moved. The boy’s eyes darted between the boat and the water of the harbor. “Sure, I know Denny,” he said finally.

  “What’s your name?” Frost asked again.

  “Fox.”

  “Okay. Why are you here, Fox?”

  “First, you tell me why the cops are on Denny’s boat,” the boy demanded. “What’s up? Is he dead?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I hear things. Word on the street is that somebody whacked him last night.”

  “Yeah? Did you get a name?”

  “I just heard he was dead.” The boy drew his index finger across his throat and made a gurgling noise.

  “Why would someone want to kill Denny?” Frost asked.

  “No idea.”

  “So what are you doing on his boat?”

  “My father did a job for him,” Fox replied. “Now he’s missing, and I’m trying to find him. I figured maybe Denny left something behind that would give me a clue about where he is.”

  “Who’s your father?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Fox, if your father worked with Denny, I need to talk to him,” Frost insisted.

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’m here to help. You’re not in any trouble. How about you and me sit down and talk?”

  Fox shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

  Frost reached out a hand to the boy’s shoulder, but that was a mistake. The next movement happened so quickly and unexpectedly that Frost had no time to react. Fox cartwheeled in place. His leg rocketed through the air, and his shoe crashed heavily into the side of Frost’s head. The blow knocked Frost sideways and toppled him over the railing, airborne. A second later, his body splashed into the cold water of the harbor. He sank below the surface and then kicked his way up, coughing and spitting. His he
ad spun as he struggled to stay afloat, and the side of his skull throbbed. His clothes and shoes weighed him down. He swam clumsily around the aft section of the boat and then dragged himself onto the pier. The water gave up his body with a loud sucking sound.

  He stood up, drenched from head to toe and freezing. He looked around at the yacht and the pier and saw that he was already alone again.

  Fox had vanished.

  4

  “A fourteen-year-old kid dumped you in the water?” Frost’s brother, Duane, chuckled to him over the phone. “I’m sorry, bro, but I really wish I’d been there to see that. I’m never going to let you hear the end of it, you know.”

  “I’m sure you won’t be the only one,” Frost replied.

  He’d draped a towel over the driver’s seat of his Suburban, but his wet clothes had soaked through it. Heat blasted through the vents, but the air barely warmed him, and cold drips of harbor water continued to trickle from his hair. He’d been angry at first; then he’d felt like an idiot; now he was finally able to laugh at himself.

  It was seven thirty in the morning under a clear blue sky. The Saturday streets were still mostly empty of traffic. He headed south out of the marina, and when he reached the intersection at Lombard, he decided to turn. He was still trying to decipher Denny’s message.

  “Seriously, are you okay?” Duane asked him.

  “Nothing but wounded pride and a splitting headache.”

  “And the kid?”

  “Long gone. I don’t know who he is or how to find him.”

  “Well, when you do find him, run him over to meet the Niners. We could use a kicker like that.” Duane laughed again.

  Frost heard the metal bang of kitchen pans in the background of the call. Duane was a San Francisco chef who’d sold his brick-and-mortar restaurant several years earlier to open up a food truck in the city’s SoMa District. He changed his menus daily to accommodate whatever food was freshest, and the result was long lines of organic-loving twenty-somethings crowding the truck at lunch and dinner. Duane didn’t make half the money he once did, but he loved it and didn’t seem to mind working eighteen hours a day. Sometimes he slept in his truck rather than make the hike back to his fashionable Marina condo in the middle of the night.

  “You should come to dinner tonight,” Duane went on. “We haven’t seen you in a while. Don’t worry, the menu won’t be too gourmet for your Oscar Mayer palate.”

  Frost chuckled. “What are you serving?”

  “I’m bringing an Asian-Mediterranean spin to all things Canadian.”

  “Why Canadian?” Frost asked.

  “My new sous chef, Raymonde, is from Montreal, so I figured, what the hell.”

  “What do they eat in Canada, other than moose?”

  Duane snickered. “I’m still working up the menu. We’ll have some kind of poutine, I guess. Maybe I’ll do a pad thai version. Raymonde’s doing smoked meat. It’s Canada, so I’ll probably have to put a maple glaze on everything. I’m going to see if I can get a Mountie to show up, too. What’s Canada without a little Dudley Do-Right?”

  “Well, I’ll be there if I can,” Frost said.

  “Perfect. Tabby will be there, too. I want to see her face when you tell her about getting dunked in the harbor by a kid.”

  “Sure,” Frost replied in a flat voice.

  He knew there was no way he could avoid seeing Tabby Blaine. She and Duane were almost always together. Even so, she was the most dangerous person in Frost’s life. Just the mention of her name conjured the girl in his mind so vividly that she felt close enough to touch. She had lush shoulder-length hair that was mahogany red. She wore her emotions on her face, and her green eyes could go from innocent to wicked to funny to sad like the bay waters changing colors. From the moment he’d met her, they’d connected in a way that was intimate and deep. Talking to her was easy for him in a way that it had never been with any other woman.

  That was a big problem because Tabby was Duane’s fiancée.

  When Frost didn’t say anything more on the phone, Duane took that as an invitation to offer extra details about his Canadian menu and the intricacies of some odd pork spread made in Quebec called cretons. Meanwhile, Frost watched Lombard Street passing outside his truck. He climbed the hill at Larkin and found himself facing the famous intersection that wriggled down the other side. Apartment buildings stepped down the slope beside the red cobblestones. At this early hour, tourists hadn’t mobbed the area yet. He drove across the cable car tracks and down Lombard turn by sharp turn, eight turns in all, past green hedgerows that lined the winding avenue.

  When he reached the bottom, he pulled to the curb and craned his neck to look behind him. He shook his head because he hadn’t learned a thing. Lombard was famous to outsiders, but it had no special meaning for him. He had no idea what Denny had meant with his message. He drove one more block and turned for home. Driving up and down the peaks of Russian Hill made him feel as if he were in a Steve McQueen movie.

  On the phone, Duane was still talking about Canada.

  “So, poutine,” Frost broke in finally when he couldn’t take any more. “That’s like French fries with gunk on top, right?”

  “Don’t let Raymonde hear you say that, but yeah, that’s about the size of it. Plus cheese curds, don’t forget the cheese curds.”

  “Well, count me in, eh?”

  “Good. We’ll see you tonight. Oh, by the way, I heard something on the radio this morning about a murder in Russian Hill. Was that anywhere near you?”

  “Inside my front door,” Frost replied.

  Duane was silent. Then he said, “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The guy died in my house.” Frost waited a beat before adding, “It was Denny.”

  “Denny Clark?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you two talking again?”

  “No,” Frost said.

  “So why was he there? What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Wow, Denny Clark. That’s unbelievable. I’m really sorry, Frost. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just strange, you know? There was still bad blood between us.”

  “No kidding.”

  Frost drove the last hill at Green Street. The yellow police tape still cordoned off the sidewalk, but the squad cars were gone. In the daylight, he could see the dark red of bloodstains running like a thin ribbon from the hillside stairs. Then he looked up at the steps of his house and had to cut off his brother.

  “Duane? I have to go. I’ll see you tonight if I can.”

  He didn’t wait for Duane to say anything more. He hung up the phone and swung his truck to the curb. Then he got out and ran.

  The front door of his house was wide open.

  Frost dripped on the white tile as he crept into the foyer. He closed the door silently behind him. His gun was in his hand again. One by one, he checked each room on the lower level. He started at the front of the house in the dining room that doubled as his office, then moved through the kitchen and living room. No one was downstairs. The blanket on the sofa was still crumpled where he’d thrown it off as Denny rang the doorbell in the middle of the night. The glass door leading out to the patio was securely locked. Nothing looked disturbed.

  Then his eyes shot to the ceiling as the timbers of the old house groaned over his head. Someone was upstairs.

  The hinges of the master bedroom door squealed as the intruder pushed it open. Frost could have told whoever it was that they were making a mistake. He waited. It didn’t take long. Above him, he heard the unmistakable hiss of an angry cat and a throaty growl that meant Shack was on the hunt. Someone howled in pain, and footsteps thundered in retreat from the bedroom. A man practically threw himself down the stairs to get away from Shack, and Frost launched across the floor, colliding with the man’s shoulder and knocking him to the carpet. He stood over him, his gun pointed at the man’s face, which bled in thin stripes from a swipe of the cat’s claws
. The short, plump man threw his hands above his head in surrender.

  “Who the hell are you?” Frost demanded.

  The man winced at the stinging wounds on his face. “Holy crap, is that some kind of tiger you’ve got up there? You should have a warning on your door. That thing could have killed me.”

  Shack took that opportunity to hop happily down the stairs. He climbed up Frost’s soaking-wet jeans and planted himself calmly on Frost’s shoulder and began licking his face to welcome him home. The tuxedo cat was full grown but unusually small, barely a foot from nose to tail; he had a black stomach with a single white stripe and white cheeks with a black chin. His tail was short, and he had stubby little ears.

  “Meet the tiger,” Frost said. “Now, who are you?”

  “My name’s Coyle. Dick Coyle.”

  “Do you have ID?”

  “Sure I do. Look, I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but could you stop pointing that gun at me? I’m not armed. And I’m not a thief.”

  “Then why’d you break into my house, Coyle?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that. It was stupid, I know. I rang the bell, but you weren’t home. Sometimes I can’t resist showing off my lockpick skills. I figured I’d be in and out before you were back.”

  “And why exactly do you know how to pick locks?” Frost asked.

  “I’m a private detective,” the man replied.

  Frost groaned loudly as he holstered his weapon. If there was one thing he had no time for, it was private detectives. They all thought they were Sam Spade living in 1920s San Francisco. Frost stretched out a hand and helped Coyle back to his feet. The man eyed Shack nervously but didn’t protest as Frost steered him to the dining room and dropped him down in one of the wooden chairs.

  “ID,” Frost repeated.

  Coyle pushed his wallet across the table. His driver’s license showed that he was twenty-six years old with an address in an industrial section of town. Coyle’s dark hair was already thinning, and he had it greased over his head with a part on the side. He had skimpy stubble pretending to be a beard and deer-in-the-headlights brown eyes. His face was full, round, and flushed, and Shack had made sharp cuts down the side of his forehead. He wore a chocolate-colored mock turtleneck and khakis, both in extra-large sizes to accommodate his heavy frame.