The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  “I have a name for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Trent Gorham.”

  “What about him? According to the news, he’s the one who killed Mr. Jin.”

  “That’s my question. Was Gorham part of Lombard?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied.

  “Gorham was at the yacht harbor on Wednesday morning when the boat came in. Did you call him? Was he part of the cleanup crew?”

  “No, he wasn’t with me, but that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes Lombard sends observers to make sure things go according to plan. Now I really have to go, Frost.”

  “Wait, I’m not done. What about Cyril Timko? He’s the personal aide to Captain Hayden. Could he be part of Lombard?”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know,” she replied impatiently. “Do you think the left hand knows anything about the right hand? We don’t. We’re all separate tentacles. That’s why it’s so easy to cut one of us off if we cause any problems.”

  “I want to meet. We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything else you can tell me,” Frost said.

  “I can’t give you anything more than I already have.”

  “I still have questions, Belinda. Right now, you’re the only one with answers. Please.”

  In the silence, he heard the wind whistling around her. He could picture her alone on the balcony, debating with herself. He knew he was asking her to take a risk. Then she said softly, “Fine. Be here in one hour.”

  He hung up.

  He didn’t have time to go home before their meeting. He got out of his SUV and walked past police headquarters toward China Basin. He didn’t really think about where he was going, but three blocks later, he found himself across the street from the Zelyx construction site. It was a multimillion-dollar building project for a multibillion-dollar company. Thousands of new jobs would keep the city’s tech economy humming along, and it was happening here, not in Austin, not in Denver, not in Charleston. All because of Martin Filko and the mayor. And Lombard.

  If you got in the way, you were expendable.

  Frost watched the construction activity for several minutes, and then he turned around and went back to his truck and headed uptown. While he drove, Tabby called again. This time, she left a message, and he played it over the speakerphone as he sat in traffic.

  “I need to see you, Frost. Call me as soon as you get this.”

  But he didn’t know what to say to her.

  Ten minutes later, he crossed into the Financial Center, where the pyramid top of the Transamerica building peeked above the other skyscrapers. It was almost the thick of rush hour, and the streets and sidewalks were dense with people. The rain had stopped, but dark clouds still blotted out the sun and made the afternoon look like dusk.

  He’d nearly reached the alley behind Belinda’s building when he realized that something was wrong.

  On the sidewalks near the pyramid, he saw people running.

  Through his open window, he heard the wail of sirens. Ahead of him, on the cross street, a police vehicle screamed through the intersection. Only seconds later, an ambulance followed.

  Frost drove up onto the sidewalk. He bolted from the car and followed the crowd. He sprinted through the plaza at the base of the Transamerica building. The white high-rise climbed above him against the black sky.

  Across the street, people swarmed around an Acura sedan, its car alarm blaring. Police and EMTs tried to hold a perimeter around the car. Frost shoved his way in and yanked out his badge when a uniformed officer tried to hold him back. He pushed to the front and saw the damage to the car up close, its roof flattened, its windows shattered. Glass littered the street.

  Belinda Drake lay atop the sedan.

  She was on her back where she’d fallen thirty stories from the balcony above the street. Her limbs were spread. Her head was turned, her eyes wide open and staring at him. Blood made a lake underneath her, but her face was untouched, without even a scratch. Her lips were bent into the tiniest smile.

  He remembered what she’d told him about going off the building.

  You get one last exhilarating ride, and then you’re dead before you feel the pain.

  40

  Frost crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to find Trent Gorham’s house in the hills of Tamalpais Valley, tucked among tall trees that towered over the roof. It was small and old, but the neighborhood alone meant it was worth more than a million dollars. Cyril and Hayden were both right about one thing. Gorham, who was single and on a cop’s salary, should never have been able to afford it.

  He parked in the driveway. There were no streetlights nearby, and the neighborhood was dark. The first thing he noticed when he approached the house was that the window next to the front door had been smashed, and the door was ajar. He took out his gun and cautiously went inside, but the house itself was empty. Whoever had broken in had already come and gone.

  This wasn’t a robbery. Gorham had a seventy-inch Ultra HD television in the living room—also unusual for a cop—and it hadn’t been touched. The intruders had ignored other expensive items, too. He saw a high-end Blu-ray player, vintage rock albums, a cherrywood humidor, and several bottles of single-malt scotch on a mirrored bar. Gorham had lived well. Too well.

  As Frost searched the house, he kept seeing Belinda Drake’s face in his memory. She’d looked alive enough to open her mouth and talk to him. He could hear her voice in his head. An hour earlier, they’d been on the phone; now she was dead. He felt responsible. It was sharing secrets with Frost that had led to her death.

  Another loose end tied up by Lombard.

  He checked Gorham’s office. This was where the intruders had done their work. His computer and printer were gone. There were charging cables on the desk but no devices. The drawers of two steel file cabinets were open and empty. A section of the hardwood floor had been pried up, leaving an empty hole that Gorham had obviously used to hide things he didn’t want found. It didn’t work. The intruders had taken whatever was inside.

  Gorham’s life had been sanitized, much like Denny’s boat. The thoroughness of the job—and the evidence of Gorham living beyond his means—led Frost to think that Gorham was dirty, just as the captain believed. If so, he wondered how far back the corruption extended into Gorham’s past.

  What if Alan Detlowe really had gone to Gorham with his suspicions about Martin Filko?

  What if that was what got Detlowe killed?

  Frost shook his head. Trust no one.

  He checked the kitchen. Gorham was surprisingly neat. There wasn’t a dirty dish anywhere, the stainless steel appliances gleamed, and the refrigerator was perfectly organized. Frost studied the contents and had a hard time imagining a high school jock like Gorham drinking soy milk and eating takeaway vegan meals from Trader Joe’s, but this was California. Anything was possible.

  The last room to search was Gorham’s bedroom.

  Most of the memorabilia inside was sports related. He saw photographs and trophies from Gorham’s days on the college track team. There were also pictures of him and Alan Detlowe drinking beer at a Giants game, which didn’t make sense. Frost couldn’t imagine Gorham killing Detlowe and still keeping pictures of the two of them on his dresser. He was missing something.

  He studied the other items, which included a beer stein filled with loose change, a baseball signed by Madison Bumgarner, and two objects that felt out of place among Gorham’s possessions. One was a Middle Eastern music box, obviously expensive, inlaid with colored gems. The other was a wood carving of an African elephant.

  Frost picked up both of the items as if they could speak to him, and then he put them down. He felt an odd, cresting wave of adrenaline that he couldn’t explain. The clues in this room were pointing him to something, but he didn’t know what.

  He noted two nightstands on either side of the king-sized Tempur-Pedic bed. The one closest to him was obviously used by Gorham and included a man’s dr
ess watch and diamond cuff links. On the other nightstand, he saw a bottle of hand cream and Jean Patou Joy perfume.

  That was the missing link.

  A woman.

  Gorham didn’t live alone in this house. He was unmarried, but a woman obviously spent time here, too. Frost went to the closet and opened the doors, and among the clothes that Gorham would wear, he also saw a lineup of sexy, elegant dresses. He opened the built-in drawers and found lace lingerie.

  Soy milk. Vegan dinners.

  Not Gorham. Gorham’s girlfriend.

  Frost took another long look at the bedroom, and the truth came to him in a rush. It wasn’t just hand cream on the nightstand next to the perfume. It was Bulgari hand cream. He stared at the Middle Eastern music box and the African elephant, and he could hear the voice of Prisha Anand in his head.

  Men fly her around the world. Africa. The Middle East. South America.

  He thought about the indications of money in the house. The expensive toys. Even the house itself. It wasn’t Trent’s money. It wasn’t a payoff for his work for Lombard. It came from somewhere else. Someone else. A woman with highbrow tastes and the means to pay for it.

  Fawn.

  Gorham’s bedroom door was wide open, but behind it, Frost could see the wooden edge of a picture frame. He went over and pushed the door aside, and there on the wall was a sketch of Trent Gorham, black-and-white except for his sky-blue eyes. The style, the picture, the pose were all a match for another picture he’d seen two days earlier. In Fawn’s bedroom.

  Trent Gorham. Zara Anand.

  They were in love. He could see that in the eyes of each sketch, as if they were looking at each other across the miles. It was a relationship they’d kept secret, the escort and the cop. She’d kept her own portrait, and he kept his, the opposite of what couples would usually do.

  Trent and Fawn.

  This changed everything.

  Yes, Gorham had been waiting at the yacht harbor on Wednesday morning, but not because he was in league with Lombard. He’d been waiting for his girlfriend to return from the Tuesday-night cruise. And knowing that secret led Frost to a cascade of other questions.

  Why did Fawn agree to go on a cruise with Martin Filko, a man she hated and feared?

  Why did Gorham call Denny before the cruise?

  Why were there hidden cameras on the boat?

  He began to realize that he’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong about Trent. Wrong about Fawn. And all wrong about the cruise on Tuesday. He could only think of one explanation that tied everything together. One answer to solve the mysteries.

  The cruise had been a sting.

  A setup.

  It was Trent Gorham’s plan to trap Martin Filko and lure Lombard out of hiding.

  The night was dark on the Roughing It.

  The only lights were from the city on the other side of the harbor. There was no moon and no stars overhead. The bay was angry, slapping against the breakwater with gusts of wind and surging across the pier into clouds of spray. When Frost climbed onto the yacht, he tried the lights, but the power was off. All he had was his flashlight to guide him.

  The windswept sway of the boat took him back to his own past. He could remember being out in the open water with Denny, where the ocean would come to life without warning and toss you around like a cork. He remembered the loneliness out there with no other crafts around, out of sight of land. He wondered if Denny had thought about those days, too, when he took the Roughing It under the Golden Gate Bridge that night and out to sea.

  Frost cast his light around the luxury interior. He knew there would be nothing to find on the upper decks. Lombard’s team had been here to remove the evidence, and they’d been thorough. He descended to the bowels of the boat, following the beam of his flashlight. He passed the crew quarters and could imagine Chester there, playing cards with Carla and Mr. Jin. He wondered if the awful noise from upstairs would have carried to the lower deck for the others to hear. Martin Filko, alone with Fawn. The sex. The drugs. The abuse.

  All with cameras secretly rolling in a panel on the wall.

  Fawn had been on the boat for a reason. There was no way Trent Gorham would have let his girlfriend walk into harm’s way without some other motive. There was no way Fawn would have agreed if she didn’t think that the night would end in revenge against Martin Filko and justice for Naomi.

  But how had it all gone wrong?

  Sooner or later, the people on the boat would have gone to sleep. Except for Denny. He was the captain, and the captain was always awake. The Roughing It would have been dead silent, the way it was now, riding the swells of the Pacific. Denny would have been on the flybridge, keyed up and nervous, alone with the ocean and the night.

  And then what?

  What happened next?

  Frost made his way to Denny’s office at the rear of the boat. There wasn’t much to find. Denny’s bunk. A filing cabinet. His desk. Pictures on the wall. Behind the desk, tightly locked, was a narrow door that led to the mechanical areas of the ship. No one went there without the captain opening the door. It was the one place on the ship that Denny always kept private and secure.

  Frost could have picked the lock, but he knew Denny. Some things never changed. He opened the desk drawer and located the blue gift box that housed Denny’s silver Waterman pen. He opened the box top and lifted out the cardboard platform where the fountain pen was nestled among velvet.

  Underneath the velvet layer was a Schlage key. Same old Denny.

  He put the key in the engine room door and unlocked it. It was cold on the other side. Iron steps took him down below the waterline. He was surrounded by gleaming silver ductwork reflecting his flashlight, propulsion engines, heat exchangers, and electrical generators. Everything was squeezed together. The corridor among the machinery was narrow, and he had to turn sideways. When the boat was operating, the throbbing noise would be deafening down here, but now it was silent, and he could hear every one of his footsteps.

  He followed his flashlight.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. Maybe Denny had been able to grab the cameras before Lombard’s team arrived. Maybe the evidence was still here. Or maybe there was nothing left and the plan had ended in failure.

  But no.

  This was something completely different.

  At the very end of the engine room, where the ceiling narrowed with the shape of the boat, was a makeshift cot. It had a four-inch foam mattress and a single pillow. He examined every inch of the cot, looking for clues to who had been hiding here. At first, he came up empty, but when he yanked the mattress off the frame, he saw a few strands of long hair caught in the coils of the spring. Most were jet-black, her natural color, but one was tinted red.

  Just as it had been in the portrait on her bedroom wall.

  Fawn.

  Frost took out his phone in the silent darkness of the boat. He dialed the number and got her message. The same message he’d heard every time he called her all week. This time he knew what to say.

  “Fawn, this is Frost Easton again,” he said. “You’re in danger, and you have to call me right now. I know about you and Trent. I know about the cruise on Tuesday. And I know you’re alive.”

  41

  Frost didn’t know when or if Fawn would call him back. His phone was dead quiet as he drove home from the yacht harbor. The rain had started again. The next wave of the storm was stronger and harder than the morning showers. A deluge poured across his windshield. He climbed the sharp peaks of Russian Hill and watched rivers flooding back down the asphalt. It wasn’t even safe to stop at the uphill intersections; all he could do was slow down and keep driving upward with his foot on the gas. By the time he arrived home, it was almost eleven o’clock. He opened his truck door and ran for the stairs, and in the few fast paces it took him to get there, he was drenched.

  Someone was waiting for him.

  She sat in the pouring rain at the top of the steps. Her red hair was pasted to
her face and neck. She stood up as he climbed to his front door.

  Tabby.

  “I’m sorry to ambush you,” she said.

  Frost shrugged. “It’s fine.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I know. Come on in.”

  He let them both inside, where it was warm. She wasn’t dressed for the downpour. All she wore was a simple blue dress with spaghetti straps. She shivered, and water dripped from her skin in the foyer.

  “Do you want some dry clothes?” he asked. “I probably have something upstairs you could put on.”

  “No. Not right now.” Her voice sounded low and distressed. She kicked off her heels; her feet were bare. She was nothing like the girl who’d danced and sung with him two days earlier.

  “Well, wrap yourself in a blanket,” he said. “I have to go rescue Shack.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I made a little nest for him in the attic. I couldn’t take him with me today, and I wanted him out of the way in case I had visitors.”

  Tabby made no effort to move from the foyer, and he went to the living room and grabbed a fleece blanket and came back and wrapped it around her. He led her to the sofa, where she sat down and made a cocoon around herself. He got a towel from the kitchen, and she used it to dry her face.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Frost ran upstairs. There was a drop-down ladder in the walk-in closet that led to the attic, and he lowered it to the floor, leaving a rectangular hole above him. Shack’s unhappy face peered over the edge. Frost climbed to the top of the ladder and let the cat hop onto his shoulder.

  “Sorry about that, buddy,” he said. “This was for your own good.”

  He descended to the closet floor, and Shack jumped down and began to review the house to make sure nothing had changed while he was locked away. Frost didn’t bother changing his own wet clothes. He went downstairs and poured two glasses of brandy at the bar for himself and Tabby.

  When he handed it to her, he watched her silently close her eyes as she took a sip. He did, too, feeling a river of warmth in his chest. Shack walked along the top edge of the sofa and shoved his nose into Tabby’s wet hair. It was enough to bring a fleeting smile to her lips.