The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  “Is that all? What happened next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did Denny reach out to you after the cruise on Tuesday? He knew people were after him. He went to find Mr. Jin, and he called Chester Bagley. I’m sure he knew Carla was dead, too. Are you saying he never talked to you about any of this?”

  Gorham turned around. “Okay, you’re right. He called me.”

  “When?”

  “Friday evening. He was in Chinatown. He was terrified. He said they were killing everyone.”

  Frost shook his head. “Why keep that back? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “I already told you that I didn’t trust anyone. That includes you. And what the hell difference does it make? I was too late.”

  “You weren’t too late on Friday. Denny called you and needed help. He was still alive.”

  “I know, and I offered to come get him and protect him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He thought I was part of it, that they were tracking him through the phone I’d given him.”

  Frost stared at him. “Were they?”

  “Of course not. I’m not a spy, Frost. I want to catch this guy even more than you do, believe me.”

  “Did Denny tell you why they wanted him dead? Did he tell you about the cruise?”

  “No, he hung up without giving me any details.”

  “Denny knew about Lombard. That was his last word.”

  “That’s because I told him about Lombard,” Gorham said. “He must have guessed that there was a connection when people started going missing. Or maybe he heard someone talking about it on the boat. I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “So you don’t know what happened on Tuesday night?”

  “The only thing I know for sure is that Lombard is active,” Gorham retorted. “We’re closer to him than we ever have been before. Denny’s murder can lead us straight to Lombard. You and I need to work together to find him and stop him.”

  Frost’s phone rang before he could reply. It was as if he were still being watched, as if Lombard somehow knew everything he was doing and everyone he talked to. He checked the caller ID.

  “Who is it?” Gorham asked with suspicion in his voice.

  “Cyril Timko,” Frost told him.

  “Did you tell him we were meeting?”

  “No. Nobody knows.” Frost answered the phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear the call. “Cyril, it’s Frost Easton. What’s up?”

  The raspy voice of the captain’s aide crackled through the phone. “I need you in Dolores Heights right away. We’ve got a dead drug dealer up here. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who killed Denny Clark.”

  25

  Nobody had moved the body yet. It still lay sprawled across the train tracks where the MUNI J line came down the hill into Mission Dolores Park. Dr. Finder from the medical examiner’s office, who had studied the body of Denny Clark in Frost’s foyer, was crouched over this body, too. The remains were gruesome. The man on the ground had no face, just an unrecognizable jam of blood, bone, and cartilage. One arm had been scissored from his body and lay with its shirt sleeve still intact on the redbrick sidewalk leading into the park.

  “Heart attack?” Frost asked.

  Dr. Finder chuckled behind his mask. A plastic cap struggled to contain the halo of hair sprouting like wheatgrass from his head. “Well, I guess his heart might have stopped in the second or so before he got run over. But let’s assume not. Tonight MUNI stands for man underneath it. He was hit as the trolley came down the hill and then dragged here before the undercarriage spit him loose. Or most of him, anyway.”

  “Was this an accident? Was he playing chicken with the train?”

  The pathologist shook his head. “Not according to the MUNI driver. He says there were two men struggling near the tracks, and one pushed the other. There was no way to stop. I believe Officer Timko has the man who did the pushing in a squad car over there. Apparently, the man claims it was self-defense. He’s the one who called the cops after it happened.”

  “What about the pushee?” Frost asked. “Who is he?”

  “According to his driver’s license, our deceased’s name was Diego Casal. Twenty-three years old. He’s well known to our friends in vice.”

  “Why does Cyril think Diego was involved in Denny Clark’s murder?” Frost asked.

  “Probably because of what I found in Mr. Casal’s pocket. Namely a long-barreled pellet pistol that would have worked very nicely to fire the kind of gel round that poisoned Mr. Clark. And if that weren’t enough, there was a dissolving pellet left in the chamber. I won’t know until I test it in the lab, of course, but I won’t be at all surprised if we find a matching poison.”

  “Hmm,” Frost said dubiously.

  “You don’t sound pleased, Inspector.”

  “When I was a kid and Santa got me exactly what I wanted for Christmas, I always wondered how he knew.”

  “What a suspicious boy you were,” the pathologist chided him. “Me, I’m pleased to have a corpse with no mystery for once. And if it wraps up the saga of Mr. Clark, that’s an added bonus.”

  “Yes, all neatly tied up with a bow,” Frost said. “Ho, ho, ho.”

  He left Dr. Finder to continue his work with the body, and he headed across the green grass of Mission Dolores Park to find Cyril Timko. The park overlooked the glowing city skyline. Around him, the J line was shut down, and half a dozen squad cars surrounded the intersection at Twentieth Street. Gawkers ringed the area with cameras that flashed like lightning. He suspected that pictures of Casal’s mangled body had already made their way onto social media.

  Captain Hayden’s aide stood alone in the middle of the park, sucking on his e-cigarette. The streetlights made his badge glow like a gold star on the breast of his uniform. He had perfect posture, as always. His face was bony and white, except for the dark stubble at his beard line. The widow’s peak in the middle of his forehead looked sharp enough to cut glass.

  “Looks like you’ve been busy doing my job, Cyril,” Frost said.

  The man’s eyebrow cocked as he tried to decide if Frost was annoyed. “I called you as soon as we realized there was a connection to Denny Clark. When the report first came in, we had no idea.”

  “So what do we know?”

  “I assume Dr. Finder already told you about the pellet gun and the gel cartridge?”

  “He did.”

  Cyril blew out a cloud of vapor. “Well, there’s a lot more. I checked Casal’s phone. Denny Clark is among his contacts. There’s a record of calls between them going back for months. According to vice, Casal is a known dealer, so if you found cocaine on Denny’s boat, it’s a good bet it came from him. He has a reputation for violence, too. He’s a suspect in at least two drug-related homicides in the past year.”

  “Did either of those killings involve poison?” Frost asked. “Poison’s an odd weapon of choice for a dealer. If it was Casal, why not just shoot Denny and be done with it?”

  “I don’t know, but the poison was slow and nasty, right? Bitch of a way to die. Maybe Casal wanted to send a message. The word is that the guy ran on a short fuse. It could have been a fight over pricing. It could be that Casal thought Denny was freelancing and moving in on his turf.”

  “In other words, Captain Hayden was right all along about the drug angle,” Frost said.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  Frost frowned. “What about my three other missing persons? Why would this Diego Casal want them dead?”

  “I think we can explain that, too.” Cyril nodded his head toward one of the squad cars parked on Church Street. “We’ve got the guy who pushed Casal in front of the train. He calls himself Romeo Laredo. Hell of a name, huh? He’s a hotshot IT guy with an apartment in the Presidio.”

  “What’s Romeo’s connection to Diego Casal?” Frost asked.

  “He says he doesn’t have one. Romeo was at a party in the Castro a few blocks away, and when he left
, he noticed this guy following him. He figured he was being stalked for a mugging. Romeo’s a big guy, so he stopped and confronted him. Casal tried to pull out the pellet gun, and it turned into a struggle. That’s how Casal wound up eating the train.”

  Frost shook his head. “What does that have to do with my missing persons?”

  “Romeo says he doesn’t know Diego Casal,” Cyril continued, “but he recognized him.”

  “From where?”

  “The guy’s a jogger. He does an early morning run from his apartment down along the Golden Gate Promenade. That includes running past the yacht harbor on most days. He says last Wednesday morning, somewhere around five thirty, he was doing his usual run when a limousine with its lights off nearly clipped him. He got steamed. He chased down the limo where it pulled in to park and started laying into the driver. It was pretty hot between them. Then a few tough guys in suits arrived from one of the boats tied up in the harbor. The leader of the pack suggested that Romeo move along, and he backed up the suggestion with a knife in his hand.”

  “Casal?” Frost said.

  “That’s right. Romeo swears it was Diego Casal, says he wasn’t likely to forget a guy who made a threat like that. That puts Casal down near Denny’s boat on the morning after this mystery cruise. Casal must have started taking out the witnesses, probably including your missing persons. Then he came to get Romeo, but ended up on the losing end of the fight.”

  Frost thought again, All neatly tied up with a bow.

  “Do you believe this guy?” he asked.

  “I don’t think he has any reason to lie,” Cyril replied. “The guy’s not a gangbanger. He’s a fricking coder who makes more than the two of us combined. And it all fits, doesn’t it? We’ve got Casal, the boat, the witnesses, the drugs, the phone contacts, the poison.”

  “Yes, it all fits,” Frost agreed. “Do you mind if I talk to this Romeo for a couple of minutes?”

  Cyril shrugged. “Knock yourself out. We’ll do a full interview at the station. Assuming that checks out, we’ll cut him loose. We don’t have any witnesses, but so far, what we’ve got adds up to self-defense.”

  Frost felt like Coyle, obsessed with paranoid conspiracies. Yes, everything fit, but it fit too well. It fit like loose ends being tied up. He said nothing more to Cyril. He walked through the wet grass of the park and across the MUNI tracks. He climbed a shallow slope to Church Street, where a squad car was parked at the curb. The uniformed officer outside unlocked the rear door. Frost got inside with Romeo Laredo.

  Romeo didn’t look like an IT nerd. He looked like Chris Hemsworth. He was bulky and big, with messy blond hair and blue eyes. He was probably in his late twenties. He wore a snug pale-blue T-shirt and jeans, and he had the muscled physique of a weightlifter. Diego Casal would have been crazy to take him on in a fight.

  “Hey, how are you?” the man said politely, extending his hand with a winning smile. “I’m Romeo Laredo.”

  Frost made no effort to shake the man’s hand. He waited until Romeo pulled his arm back with a puzzled expression on his face. The man was obviously used to disarming people with his earnest charm, and he didn’t know what to do when it failed him.

  Then Frost said, “Identification.”

  Romeo’s eyes widened with surprise. It was obvious that he’d heard that demand before, but not in this context, and he wasn’t sure what to believe.

  “Identification!” Frost snapped again, broaching no hesitation.

  The man’s whole body stiffened. He became a soldier, obeying orders. “Guerrero.”

  Frost nodded slowly without saying anything more, and Romeo realized that he’d tipped his hand with the wrong person. The eager mask disappeared from his face. He was a big, strong man who was suddenly scared.

  “So,” Frost said. “You work for Lombard.”

  “Who? I don’t know who that is.”

  “Come on, Romeo. Don’t play games with me. You screwed up, but you’re in too deep now. You might as well talk to me. Lombard came up with the whole cover story, right? He told you what to say about Wednesday morning. You never saw Diego Casal at the harbor, did you? That was a lie.”

  “No, I did. The guy threatened me, and then tonight he came after me.”

  “Really? See, I think it was the other way around. You came after him, Romeo. Lombard told you where to find Diego Casal, and then you followed him here and pushed him in front of the train. Did Lombard give you the pellet gun to plant on him, too?”

  Romeo held up both hands. “Whoa, dude, you are freaking me out. I’m the victim here. This Casal guy was going to kill me.”

  “Then what’s Guerrero? Most people would pull out their driver’s license when a cop asks for identification. Instead, you said Guerrero. Why?”

  The man grasped furiously for a lie. “I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s been a hell of a night, okay? Some dude tried to kill me, and then I watched his brains get squirted out by the train. I said the first thing that popped into my head. I spotted this guy following me over on Guerrero. That’s where I identified him. It was a brain fart, man, that’s all.”

  Frost shook his head. “That’s the best story you’ve got?”

  “What can I tell you? It’s the truth.”

  “So you won’t mind if I put the word out on the street that Guerrero is talking to the police? That won’t mean anything? That won’t make you nervous?”

  Romeo rubbed his fingers. He was sweating. “Say whatever you like. I’m innocent, man. I just want to go home and have a beer and forget about this whole night.”

  Frost shrugged. He wasn’t going to get anything more out of Romeo Laredo. He was sure the man’s biography would check out. He was sure they wouldn’t find anything to disprove his story. Lombard didn’t leave things like that to chance. The pieces of the puzzle that was Denny Clark’s death were falling into place one after another.

  They had a killer—Diego Casal—and the killer wasn’t around to say he was innocent.

  They had a motive. Drugs.

  They had evidence and a witness tying the killer to Denny and the boat. Everything was in a pretty package. And it was all a lie.

  He opened the back door of the squad car again.

  “Watch your back, Guerrero,” he told the man as he got out. “You made a mistake by opening your mouth tonight. We both know that Lombard doesn’t like mistakes.”

  26

  “They’re closing the case right out from under me,” Frost told Herb the next morning.

  They sat at an outdoor table at a café on Cole Street. Herb nursed a large mug of chai tea that wafted cardamom into the chilly air. Frost had black coffee and a plate of eggs. It was barely past dawn, and the neighborhood around them was slow to wake up. Victorian homes made a side-by-side checkerboard down the street. Near the intersection at Haight, the walls of the shop buildings were painted with murals of rainbows and a guitar-playing Jerry Garcia.

  “Captain Hayden thinks Denny’s murder is connected to drugs,” Frost went on, “and right on schedule, a dead drug dealer drops into our laps. As far as headquarters is concerned, it’s time for me to let it go.”

  Herb didn’t say anything in response. His attention was focused on a two-story Victorian home almost directly across from the café. A black wrought-iron gate blocked the front steps. The lights behind the curtains were on, and children’s paintings were taped to the bay window. Herb’s mouth was pinched into a frown. He played with the beads that were strung into his long strands of gray hair.

  “Herb?” Frost said. “Everything okay?”

  His friend awakened as if from a trance. Herb adjusted his black glasses on his face. “Yes, yes, sorry. I’m somewhere else today. I understand your frustration, Frost, but isn’t it possible that Mr. Clark’s death is exactly what it appears to be? The result of his unfortunate dealings with a violent cocaine dealer?”

  “You mean, instead of a cover-up contrived by a mysterious criminal mastermind with a network of
operatives around the city?” Frost asked with a little smile. “I know, I sound as crazy as Coyle.”

  “Well, Occam’s razor and all. The obvious answer is usually the right one.”

  Frost shrugged. “Do you think I’m nuts? Should I forget about it?”

  “Even if I thought you were wrong, Frost, you’ve earned the benefit of the doubt from me many times over. Besides, in this case, I think you’re correct. Lombard certainly seems to be real.”

  “Unfortunately, I have no way to prove it,” Frost said. “Technically, I have nothing left to investigate with regard to Denny’s murder. I could keep trying to find witnesses who are probably dead, but even if I find their bodies, Romeo Laredo has already pinned the blame on Diego Casal. I could try to break Romeo’s story about the cruise, but that means interrogating Casal’s associates, most of whom are drug dealers themselves. Their word isn’t going to carry much weight if they tell me Casal wasn’t on that boat.”

  “What about Inspector Gorham?”

  “He has no proof about Lombard, either. His only contact was a dirty lawyer in the prosecutor’s office, and she’s dead. For all I know, she was being played by a defense attorney who knew about the Lombard myth and decided to use it as cover for a jury-tampering scheme.”

  Herb stretched out his legs and his knees popped, making him grimace. His eyes drifted across the street again to the same Victorian home. He took another taste of chai and licked his lips.

  “I remember the original Lombard story,” Herb said. “Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it, but after we talked last time, I recalled the exposé that hit the Chronicle. It must have been thirty years ago. It was the kind of story that made people run wild with conspiracies. Murder, corruption, political influence, all guided by an unseen hand. An invisible syndicate shaping the future of the city. Then the chief had to stand up and say, no, it was really just an inside joke that got out of control. The city council wasn’t amused. The chief took early retirement and said it was for health reasons, but in truth, it was the Lombard myth that brought him down.”