The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  She stopped.

  “Unless he catered a party where she was working?” Frost finished the sentence for her.

  “Yes. I suppose that’s possible, although Zara never mentioned it to me if he did. Not that she would.”

  Frost tried to connect the dots in his mind and see where they led him. There was a cruise on the Roughing It on Tuesday evening. Small group. Expensive, first-class tastes. Mr. Jin prepared the food. Frost imagined him meeting a beautiful young woman among the guests whom he already knows as Zara Anand. But before he can say anything, she introduces herself as Fawn and probably gives him a look with her eyes that asks him to remain silent.

  Later he writes the name in his notepad: Fawn.

  “What does your sister look like?” Frost asked.

  “Zara? She’s very distinctive. That’s the most memorable kind of beauty. You can find many pretty faces, but there aren’t many that would linger in your memory the way hers does.”

  “Do you have a photograph of her?”

  “I do.”

  Prisha leaned over and tapped a few keys on her laptop. She turned the screen so that Frost could see it, and he found himself staring at a young woman who was every bit as royal as her sister suggested. She could have fit in anywhere, from palaces to boardrooms. It was easy to see the family resemblance. Zara looked a lot like Prisha, with the same thick dark hair, but she also had a unique quality that would make a man stop and stare. Her long nose was slightly too long; her big brown eyes were slightly too big for her face; her angled cheekbones were so sharp they looked severe. And yet when it all came together in one package, she was like Helen of Troy launching a thousand ships.

  “See what I mean?” Prisha said with a smile.

  “I do. It’s also obvious that she’s your sister. You two look very much alike.”

  “That’s flattering, but I know the difference. Billionaires don’t pay to have me with them, but they do with Zara.”

  “Can you text me that photo?” Frost asked. “It may help me locate her.”

  “I can, but only if you stop keeping me in the dark. We’re talking about my sister. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  Frost chose his words carefully. “Two of the people who were part of that cruise on Tuesday are dead. Mr. Jin is missing. And I can’t reach your sister, which worries me.”

  Prisha’s brown eyes opened wide. “Oh no.”

  “That’s why it’s important that I find Zara right away. I need to know what happened on Tuesday, and frankly, I need to make sure she’s safe. Do you have any way of contacting her?”

  Prisha got up and paced. She rubbed her hands nervously together. “Only if she turns her phone on. Depending on where she is and what she’s doing, she stays off the grid. It’s part of the job.”

  “Is there anyone else she might reach out to? What about your parents?”

  “They died years ago.”

  “A boyfriend?” Frost asked.

  Prisha stopped. “Yes, she has a boyfriend. They’ve been together a few years.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never met him. Zara has never invited him to our house. She lives her life in compartments, Inspector. When you do what she does, you learn to be careful. I don’t know whether her boyfriend even knows about her ‘career.’ Very few people know anything about her life as Fawn. When she needs to be picked up for an engagement, she goes elsewhere. The limo doesn’t come here.”

  “Would you be able to figure out who her boyfriend is?”

  “I can try, but I can’t promise anything. Zara may have something in her room that would help me identify him. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You have me very scared now, Inspector,” Prisha admitted.

  “I understand. I apologize for alarming you further, but I need to ask you something else. Have you had any unusual experiences here at the house since Tuesday night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you noticed any strange cars on the street? Have you spotted anyone following you? Do you have any reason to think someone might have broken into your house while you were away?”

  Prisha thought about it. She wandered to the window and looked outside. “No, there hasn’t been anything like that. When you’re a single woman, you usually have radar for that kind of thing. I haven’t felt unsafe.”

  “Okay.”

  Frost didn’t tell her what he was thinking. If no one was looking for Fawn, that was probably because they knew she wasn’t a threat. She was one more loose end from the cruise on Tuesday that had already been tied off, like Denny and Carla.

  “This may seem like an odd question,” he said, “but do you ever recall Zara mentioning the name Lombard?”

  “You mean, like the street?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “It’s just something I’m following up on,” Frost said. He stood up from the sofa. “I appreciate your time, Ms. Anand. If you hear from your sister, I hope you’ll let me know right away. And please tell her to call me immediately. I don’t know whether she’s in danger, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

  Prisha nodded. “I will.”

  “By the way, you said that Zara looked nervous and upset before she left on Tuesday. You thought she was meeting a client who made her uncomfortable. What exactly did you mean? Has she ever felt in physical danger with any of her clients?”

  She looked as if she didn’t know how to answer. “You’d have to understand her world, Inspector.”

  “Explain it to me anyway,” Frost replied.

  Prisha stood close enough to him that he was in the cloud of her perfume. “The men who can afford a woman like Zara—Fawn—aren’t simply buying sex. That’s part of it, but they’re really buying an experience. And the experience needs to be perfect. When you pay that kind of money, you feel as if you own whoever is with you. They’re your slave. If a girl puts a foot wrong—even accidentally—terrible things can happen. I don’t know that Zara has ever felt in danger herself, but she knows girls who have. A few years ago, a girl was killed, in fact. It was someone Zara knew well. It affected her deeply.”

  “Who was this girl?” Frost asked.

  “I don’t know her real name. They only deal in aliases. Zara called her Naomi, that’s all I know. I only found out as much as I did because I found Zara crying in her room one evening. She was very upset about what had happened.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few years ago. Two, three, I’m not sure.”

  “How did Naomi die?”

  “The police said she overdosed, but Zara said that was a lie. She told me Naomi was clean. The fact is, most of the high-end escorts never do drugs. In Zara’s business, you have to be on your game all the time. Physically, socially, mentally, everything. Drugs don’t mix with that.”

  “So what did Zara think really happened to Naomi?” Frost asked.

  “She said Naomi was going to expose a client who was abusing her, and the client somehow arranged the overdose to prevent her from talking. Zara was devastated. And angry, too. I tried to talk her out of saying anything—I didn’t want her getting killed, too—but she swore she was going to do something about it. She wanted revenge.”

  Frost sat in his Suburban outside Fawn’s house. With his laptop open on the dashboard, it didn’t take him long to find Naomi.

  More than three years earlier, a twenty-one-year-old woman named LaHonda Duke had been found near the BART tracks in Balboa Park. She’d died of a heroin overdose. The investigation showed no evidence of foul play. There was nothing in the police file to indicate that LaHonda had led a separate life as a high-priced escort and nothing to confirm that her street name was Naomi.

  Even so, Frost knew he had the right victim. One hundred yards away from where her body had been found, Coyle had discovered a red snake on a concrete wall bordering the 280 freeway. La
Honda Duke was on his list.

  He dialed Coyle’s number.

  “It’s me,” he said when he heard the private detective’s voice. “Do you remember the LaHonda Duke case? It was an OD near Balboa Park. She’s one of the snake victims.”

  “Sure,” Coyle replied. “Accidental death, my ass. Someone shot her up.”

  “Did you look into LaHonda’s background? Did you find out anything else about her?”

  Coyle sounded as if he were gulping down a late dinner. “Like what?”

  “Like her being a high-end hooker.”

  “No. If she was, I never found it, but those girls are usually pretty good at keeping the secret.”

  “Do you remember anything else about her case that would connect her to what’s going on now? Anything that might tie her to Denny or Greg Howell or any of the other victims?”

  “I’ll have to pull my file,” Coyle replied, “but I don’t think so.”

  Frost sat in the truck and was silent for a moment. He was sure he was on to something. “I’m going to send you a photo. It’s a girl with the street name Fawn. She’s another upscale escort. I want to know if she came up in your research on any of the other snake cases.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Frost hung up the phone and sent the photo of Zara Anand to Coyle. Then he started up the SUV’s engine and was about to pull into traffic when his phone rang again. The private detective was already calling him back.

  “You better get over here,” Coyle told him. “We need to talk right away.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I got the photo, and I don’t need to check my files on this one.”

  “What do you mean? You know Fawn?”

  “I do. Remember I’d been following that vice cop for a couple weeks before he was murdered? I spotted him having dinner in Pacific Heights with a really stunning Indian brunette. Got some photos of her, too. She wasn’t the kind of girl you’ll ever forget once you lay eyes on her.”

  “Let me guess,” Frost said.

  “Yeah. The girl was Fawn. She was meeting with Alan Detlowe.”

  18

  The man in the charcoal-gray BMW watched Frost Easton drive away. He didn’t follow the Suburban. Instead, he opened the glove compartment of the car and pushed a button that released a false bottom. Inside was a cell phone. He powered it up and used the latest contact number to call in his report.

  “Identification,” the woman answered with her usual clipped, assured voice.

  “Sutter,” he said.

  “Password.”

  “87126.”

  “Status.”

  “Golden Gate.”

  “Report,” the woman said.

  She always wanted a clean update. Quick, focused, no unnecessary details, no speculation. His job was to say what happened. After that, the information got passed along, and it was up to Lombard to make the decision.

  “Easton went from Mr. Jin’s place to the girl’s house. Fawn. He met with her sister.”

  “Did you have ears on the conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did the sister tell him?”

  “Most of the conversation was harmless, but she mentioned Fawn’s interest in an earlier victim. Easton tied the reference back to LaHonda Duke. He knows she was one of the snakes.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” the woman said.

  “There’s more. Easton just talked to Coyle, and Coyle made a connection between Fawn and Alan Detlowe.”

  “Let me hear the conversation.”

  The man took his voice recorder out of his coat pocket. He held the machine up to the phone and played the most recent digital recording.

  When it was over, there was a long pause from the other end.

  “Hang on,” the woman told him.

  He waited. At least five minutes of silence passed. He knew not to hang up. The silence meant the woman was passing the information directly to Lombard and soliciting instructions.

  Finally, she came back on the line.

  “That’s all for now,” the woman said.

  “Do you want me to follow Easton again? He’s obviously heading to Coyle’s.”

  “No, you’re done for the night, so you can stand down,” the woman told him. “We need to keep the field clear for Geary. He’ll be delivering two snakes tonight.”

  19

  Coyle lived and worked on the upper floor of a two-story office building tucked among the industrial warehouses of Toland Street. His neighbors were electrical supply companies and food storage facilities. It was nearly midnight when Frost arrived, and the area was a ghost town of overhead electrical wires, corrugated metal walls, and empty loading docks. The only noise was the thunder of traffic on the elevated lanes of the 280 freeway a few blocks away.

  The building entrance was locked. He squinted to see a stairwell inside. Tall glass windows stretched along the offices on the first floor, but there were no lights. He pounded on the door, and not long after, he saw Coyle’s doughy frame as the detective hustled downstairs and let him into the building.

  “This is an interesting location,” Frost said.

  “Yeah, a buddy of mine owns the place. He was having trouble leasing the upstairs space after the last tenant went belly up. He lets me have it cheap, at least until he finds somebody else.”

  Coyle trotted up the stairs, and Frost followed. The first door in the drab corridor had a sign announcing COYLE INVESTIGATIONS. The detective showed him into a small anteroom. Coyle’s PI license was framed and hung above a tweed sofa. It looked like an office for someone who’d watched too many detective movies.

  “It’s not much to look at, but clients don’t usually come here,” Coyle told him. “I usually go to them.”

  He opened another door and led Frost into a larger room where Coyle obviously worked and slept. All the walls were covered in cheap wood paneling. Frost saw a messy twin bed shoved in one corner, a refrigerator, and a bathroom not much bigger than a phone booth. Two rectangular card tables were pushed together in the middle of the floor and covered with papers and books. There was a desk against the wall with an old Gateway computer and an electronic setup that included three monitors. On the screens, Frost could see video surveillance feeds of the street and parking lot surrounding the building. The windows in the office were covered over with plywood, making the space claustrophobic.

  Coyle popped open the refrigerator door. “You want a beer? I’ve got Coors. I’m not into all the IPAs and microbrews.”

  “No, thanks.” Frost nodded at the wooden barriers over the windows. “You’re taking some pretty serious precautions against spies.”

  “I suppose you think I’m paranoid.”

  Frost took a seat on a fold-up chair. “Well, I’m not sure you’re wrong to be cautious. I’ve already been followed myself.”

  Coyle straddled one of the other chairs and smoothed down his thinning hair. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Somebody’s been watching me, too.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I don’t, but I think there’s more than one. Like a network.” Coyle leaned forward, and his heavy face was flushed. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? We’re not talking about a serial killer.”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell is this, Inspector?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ve latched on to something big.”

  Coyle looked pleased with the compliment. “So what do you think it means that I saw this girl Fawn talking to Alan Detlowe?”

  “It could explain why Detlowe was killed,” Frost replied. “According to her sister, Fawn was upset about the death of her friend Naomi and wanted to do something about it. Then you saw Fawn talking to Detlowe and he wound up with his throat cut. I checked the dates. All of this happened within a one-week span. The timing can’t be coincidental.”

  Coyle rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “You think Fawn asked Detlowe to look into Naomi’s death?”

  “Could b
e. Then he started asking questions that made somebody nervous. The thing is, you were watching Detlowe that whole time. You were following him after he met with Fawn. So maybe you saw him checking out whatever she told him. That might give us a clue about what he found out.”

  Coyle hopped up from the chair. “Okay, let’s grab my Detlowe file. I keep all my cases on flash drives in the library. Notes, photos, videos, everything.”

  “Your library? Where’s your library?”

  Coyle’s eyebrows danced, and he gave Frost a little smirk. The detective went to the wood-paneled wall and tapped the base of one of the panels with the toe of his shoe. The panel clicked open and moved aside like an accordion, revealing a door built into the wall.

  “Come on, Coyle,” Frost laughed. “A hidden door? Really?”

  “Hey, I have to have some fun.”

  Coyle opened the next door and flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights in the adjacent room. Frost followed him inside and saw that the next room was at least three times larger than Coyle’s office. The space stretched to the far wall of the building. As in the office, the windows were nailed shut with heavy plywood, so the only light was from overhead. The room was a combination of library and gaming space. Built-in bookshelves lined three of the walls, stocked with hundreds of mystery and science fiction novels dating back decades. There was a huge array of collectible Hot Wheels cars on some of the shelves, too. The fourth wall featured a large flat-screen television with virtual-reality goggles slung over the screen. Frost saw a set of golf clubs, a putting green, and a treadmill that was being used to store boxes of DVDs and VHS tapes.

  “You realize you’re the ultimate nerd, don’t you?” Frost asked.

  “Guilty,” Coyle admitted.

  He crossed the concrete floor of the large library to a shelf that contained shoeboxes labeled by year. He opened a box marked three years earlier and dug inside it until he came out with a thumb drive labeled with black marker.