I said nothing but stared down Potrero, lined with old cars and abandoned industrial hangars.
“We might be divorced, but ten years is ten years. There are reasons why it didn’t work. And it’s not just the baby. Maybe I didn’t end it nicely, but it was over. Even if Tina wasn’t in the picture. We didn’t have much left. It’s the idea of me rather than me, isn’t it?”
Liar, I wanted to scream at him, but somehow I couldn’t. I flashed on Sharon Brown sitting in her tastefully appointed living room, with grass-stained pants and dirty hair, and so much anger and bitterness in her heart that her only hope for redemption was in her husband’s death.
All of a sudden all that energy I’d expended in the last two years hating him seemed more self-destructive than anything else. It was time to release him—release myself.
“Is that Tina’s car?” I gestured in the direction of the blue van.
“Yeah. I told you, she and the kids are out of town. Do you think we could just talk to each other every now and then? Just to check and see how you’re doing. Your folks. Nora and Dan.”
He was so sweet and gentle, too gentle to be a cop. That sideways grin of his, the reddish-brown mop of hair, the blue eyes. I used to fantasize that our children would have his sense of humor, his smile, and my green eyes, my intellect, my drive.
“Come on, Miss Mary, Mary Quite Contrary.”
“Don’t call me that,” I whispered. That was his special little phrase he used over the years to tease me out of bad moods, political rants about the injustices of the world, and general ill humor. Since our divorce I had, indeed, become quite contrary.
“I’m sorry. That was out of line,” he said, pushing himself out of the car and quietly shutting the passenger door. “I just want to say hi now and then. That’s all.”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know, Jim. Call me in a couple of weeks. I’ve got to meet O’Connor at the restaurant.” I closed my door, put the car in gear and sped off, not wanting to hear any more. I watched him in the rearview mirror watching me. I turned at the first corner I could.
It was after eight by the time I made it to the restaurant. The fog had done its slinky dance through the Golden Gate; the alley glistened with the kind of fresh fog that creeps up your pant legs and makes you shiver. Winter was coming.
When I pulled up, O’Connor jumped out of his car. I didn’t even look at him. I headed for the front door of the restaurant, disabled the alarm, unlocked the restaurant, and sat down at a large table for eight. O’Connor picked up the hint and seated himself across the way.
“I expect an official apology from you, Inspector O’Connor. How dare you have me tailed without my permission? I’m two seconds away from reporting you to the Police Commission.” My anger had regenerated itself on the drive from the police station to the restaurant. I was mad enough to carve my initials on his forehead with a butter knife.
Instead of an apology, I got another reprimand.
“Your behavior today is exactly why I had Jim tailing you. Why aren’t you still at your mother’s house?”
“After my mother so generously offered Teri Baxter my old bedroom for the night, where did you think I was going to stay? You know that house has only two bedrooms. Didn’t hear an invitation leaping from your lips. My house is still off limits—the forensic boys have it trussed up in crime scene tape. I’m staying with Amos for a few days.”
“And how do Sharon Brown and San Francisco General figure into this equation?” He picked up a salt shaker, rolled it between his hands, and then slammed it hard on the table. “You’re still running around like a chicken without a head. Mary, two people are dead and you came close to being number three.”
He started shouting.
“I don’t know what to do with you. What if you had stumbled in on those guys as they were trashing Teri’s studio? My God, I couldn’t live with myself if you had been—” then his head nodded forward. Without lifting his head, he whispered, “Please listen to me. When I ask you to call me, call me. When I tell you to go straight home, go straight home. I’m not asking you as a homicide inspector, I’m begging you as….” He left the sentence unfinished. That, of course, was the $64,000 question. As what?
“All right,” I whispered back.
He stretched his hand across the table for my hand. I reached for his, but the table was too big, our hands were marooned in the middle. We looked at each other. The same confusion, guilt, and sadness I felt on my own face I saw on his.
After a few seconds he removed his hand.
“What’s next?” I asked quietly.
“The subpoenas were a bust. Drew gets ten thou every month from some trust fund, and by the thirtieth of every month it’s spent out. That got me hot and bothered, but when I checked Brent’s bank accounts they looked okay. He must have some accounts his wife doesn’t know about or he paid for all his toys in cash. Hunting for those hidden accounts will take time. For now that leaves Woods. You know Woods has an alibi?”
I nodded. “Amos told me.”
“Seems Amos is his alibi for Brent’s murder. What Amos doesn’t know is that his boyfriend is not in the clear by a long shot.”
I winced at the word “boyfriend.”
“Woods is running a little green card factory out of here.”
“Oh, really?” I tried to sound surprised. I didn’t want to get that cute young cop in trouble. I’d wait and see how much information O’Connor wrung out of Thom and then decide if Gilberto’s revelations were relevant. If O’Connor found out I’d finagled my way into Gilberto’s room, that guy’s next job would be as a security guard at a Target store.
“Apparently he’d stay after hours and print the cards up late at night. We’ve turned him over to the INS, assuming no further leads tie him in with Perez’s murder.”
“Have you questioned him?”
“Yeah. He admits to the green card fraud, but staunchly denies any connection to the murders. Looks like almost every Latino at the restaurant has fake I.D. He charges two thousand bucks a card and not just for the employees in this place. We have a nice little list of at least two hundred illegals he’s printed out I.D.’s for.”
Slime bucket.
“Did you check out the taqueria?”
“Yeah, nothing. The neighbors told us that the day you nearly got your head sliced open was the last day it was open and no one’s been back since. The owner of the building says they rented from month to month and always paid in cash. No paper trail.”
“I talked to Sharon Brown this afternoon,” I said. “She told me that Juan Vamos was Brent’s partner in the scam. Thom wasn’t in the picture at all.”
O’Connor rubbed his hands over his face.
“But Vamos has an alibi. Christ, I’m tired. Do you think there’s any connection between Woods’s green card operation and Brent’s wine scam?”
I’d been trying to make a connection between the two during the entire drive from S.F. General to the restaurant.
“No. Sharon was emphatic that the wine scam was Brent and Juan’s gig. The only possible connection I see is that Carlos was helping Juan and Brent and that he also had a fake green card from Thom, but that doesn’t implicate Thom in the wine deal.”
“I questioned Woods for several hours. The guy’s a real piece of work. Made all kinds of noises that he was going to rally the gay community behind him to stop this police harassment. Fortunately, INS showed up and educated Woods on the reality of counterfeiting. Like a million years in a federal penitentiary. I didn’t like him but he’s not capable of murder. I agree with you.”
“That’s a first.” I couldn’t resist.
“Cut the smart-ass remarks, Ryan. Let’s start at the beginning. How did Teri get pulled into this? The only connection I can think of is that Smyth-Sommers woman. She knew about Teri blabbing about the scam because you told her.”
“I think it’s bigger than that. Rosa knew Carlos was invol
ved in something, but she didn’t have a clue what it was, other than suspecting it was connected to his murder. I don’t think we can assume Drew is our only link to Teri. If Carlos’ murder is related to the wine scam, Brent might have told Juan that Teri knew.”
“What did Sharon Brown have to say?”
“Sharon told me that Brent and Juan ran the scam together. She and Brent had a big fight the day I discovered the body. Brent admitted he and Juan were in cahoots, but he refused to give her any details. Maybe he was protecting her. Brent knew and look where it got him.”
“You believe her?”
“Yeah, I do. What if Carlos threatened Brent and Juan with exposure or wanted a cut of the pie, so they killed him? Once everything started heating up, Juan knew that Brent would cave in so Juan killed him too,” I theorized. “But why would a lowly little pastry assistant like Carlos be part of a kickback scheme?”
O’Connor stood up.
“I’m going to ignore the green card thing and assume that both these murders tie into the wine. Any bright ideas how we can track down this specific wine? I boxed up all the wine invoices that forensics removed when they hauled away the file cabinets. They only go back a year, but it’s something. They’re in my car. But what we’re going to do with them, I haven’t a clue. I’ll be back in a minute.”
While O’Connor went out to his car, I recalled everything Brent had said to Sharon the night they surprised me in the office. Juan had erased the computer records, but hadn’t made up the fake invoices yet. The wine wasn’t on the menu, but it did come in with other wine shipments. So if the invoices hadn’t been switched yet, then the wine would be on the invoice but not on the wine list.
“Here,” said O’Connor, throwing a box on the table. “Take this upstairs. There’s one more in the car. I’ll meet you up there. Any bright ideas?”
“Oh, I think so. Although it will only work if you guys hauled away the file cabinets before Juan could replace the fake invoices.”
I grabbed a couple of wine lists from the waiters’ station and made my way upstairs to the office.
Wine sales are the real moneymaker in a restaurant. American Fare offers more than two hundred selections, excluding champagnes, ports, spirits and aperitifs. Why do you think corkage fees are so outrageous? To discourage you from drinking anything but what we stock. If your restaurant buys wine at ten dollars a bottle wholesale, they are going to charge you between twenty-five and thirty retail. Wine doesn’t have to be chopped, cooked, braised, or whipped. All a waiter has to do is remove the cork and pour.
“What’s the plan?” puffed O’Connor, as he dropped the second box at my feet.
I grinned. “Looks to me like Juan didn’t get here in time. All the invoices look genuine in my box. Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing if he’s pulled them completely, but we’ll have to take that chance. Your computer forensic guys might be able to salvage the erased stuff off of the hard drive, but until then we have no way of knowing whether these are complete or not.”
I was sitting on the floor piling invoices into two stacks. My hands were black from carbon residue. “Let’s limit the search to only those brokers who specialize in South American and Spanish wine. If Juan’s involved, there’s a good chance it’s a Latino connection.”
“Which would make sense with Carlos’ murder,” O’Connor agreed.
“Once we segregate out these brokers, we’ll compare the items on the invoices with the wine list. Because Sharon said the wine wasn’t on the menu, we’ll look for the wine not included on the wine list. Although not every wine we have in the cellar is on the wine list, it should narrow it down, or at the very least, give you a starting point on which broker to target. It can’t be the wine itself. It doesn’t make sense. It must be the name of the broker we’re after. If the current batch of brokers turns up bust, we’ll move on to another broker.”
Halfway through my stack I began to get hunger pangs.
“I need something to eat, O’Connor. Can I get you something from the kitchen?” He made a grunt in my direction. I assumed that meant yes. A gooey, hot omelet sounded just about perfect.
I whipped up those omelets in no time and was putting the dirty sauté pans in the sink when I hit my leg against a rack of glasses. I felt the old cut on my leg burst open. Shit, shit, shit. I limped over to the first aid station to stem the flow of blood and was throwing the tape back into the cabinet when it dawned on me. That guy with the dolly that ran into me wasn’t making a delivery, he was taking wine out of the restaurant.
Why in the hell would someone be taking wine out of the restaurant?
Maybe it wasn’t wine in those bottles.
I grabbed some silverware with one hand, balanced the plates on the other, and ran to the office screaming, “O’Connor, O’Connor, it’s not kickbacks. I know what I forgot to tell you.”
“And what was that, Mary?” Juan purred.
Chapter 22
Juan stood next to O’Connor, a gun six inches from his head. O’Connor’s hands were laced behind the back of his neck, the gun holster under his arm empty.
“I can’t believe my luck,” Juan smiled. “To catch you and Inspector O’Connor. The gods are smiling on me tonight.”
I stood there balancing the plates with one hand, clutching silverware with the other. I stared at the gun poised to blow a hole in O’Connor’s skull.
“I see I have your attention, Mary. Guns look so much more menacing in real life,” Juan commented.
I moved my eyes a fraction of an inch to O’Connor’s face. We locked eyes. I saw fear and anger. “Talk” he mouthed to me silently.
“What’s in those wine bottles, Juan? What exactly were you removing that day? Is that why you got so mad at that delivery guy? He wasn’t making a delivery, was he? He was removing wine.”
“I wondered when that would occur to you. I told Brent you weren’t stupid, that you would remember eventually, but he dismissed it. I see now he was trying to protect you. In fact, Mary, you have been most impressive throughout this whole affair.”
I waited for some signal from O’Connor. His face was like stone. I goaded Juan further. “Well, let’s make an educated guess. Something that could be put in a bottle. Drugs, maybe?”
“Correct, again. Cocaine. It’s quite an operation. We make sure that none of the cases is heavier than the others, the dogs can’t sniff it, and we are very careful not to make the whole shipment with doctored bottles. Only two cases in fifteen have contraband in them and some shipments have none,” he chuckled. “It’s been very successful. Too successful to let a cocky little prep cook ruin it for us.”
“So you ran a drug smuggling operation out of one of the top five restaurants in the country with no one the wiser. Pretty damn clever,” I conceded. “I suppose Carlos was blackmailing you?”
“Yes,” he sighed. “Carlos got a little greedy. He threatened to expose us if we didn’t give him a bigger cut. I think the pressure of another baby made him reckless. He supported quite a large family in El Salvador as well. Needless to say, you weren’t supposed to find him. He was going to be removed early that morning. No one would question a janitor hauling a laundry bag out the door. Carlos needed to be made an example of. If I had let him take an inch, the others would have taken a mile.”
It was as if he were talking about errant schoolboys leaving fingerprints on the walls.
“Others,” I repeated. “It was someone from the restaurant who trashed Teri Baxter’s apartment. She thought their voices sounded familiar.”
“Yes. Again, you were at the right place at the right time. That silly girl would have kept her mouth shut if you hadn’t rescued her. I sent them back to make sure she understood my message, but when they returned they saw you speeding away with her in your car.”
Don’t panic. Ignore the gun. Keep him talking, I told myself. He might let his guard down and give O’Connor a chance.
“Why d
id you kill Brent?” I demanded.
“I am sorry about Brent, we go back a long way,” Juan admitted. “But if there’s one person Brent was more afraid of than me it was Sharon. She had the cojones in that family.” His voice was thick with contempt. “I couldn’t rely on him anymore. He came crying to me that he’d promised Sharon he wouldn’t front the drugs anymore. He begged me to let him out of it. I saw the writing on the wall. Once the police started questioning him, he would have confessed in five minutes and begged for mercy. Being a nice white boy, he’d have gotten off with a slap on the wrists. Me, I’d be in Pelican Bay for the rest of my life. Why do you think I followed Brent from restaurant to restaurant? No one hires Latinos like me for any job higher than line cook.”
“But why the drugs?” I was genuinely puzzled. “Both of you were well paid.”
“I don’t think working a seventy-hour week and making sixty thousand a year is really worth it, do you? I wanted the big money,” he said simply. “That was the one thing Brent and I had in common. My mother worked like a dog to send me to the Jesuits. I was malnourished, but very well educated. Why do you think I speak English so well? Those priests beat proper Spanish and English into me. I had half a mind to become a Jesuit, they lead a very pampered life in Mexico.”
O’Connor moved his right elbow a millimeter.
Juan moved the gun until it was two inches from O’Connor’s head.
“Don’t move a muscle, Inspector O’Connor.” He turned back to me. “Brent and I were both very ambitious, something Sharon could never understand. Right away Brent and I realized we made a good team. Where do you think Brent got the money to open American Fare? Our colleagues in Chile fronted him the money.”
“Vino Blanco Corporation,” I said flatly.
Juan looked at me with unconcealed admiration.
“You should hire this woman, Inspector. She’s run rings around your department.” The fact that he was handing me bouquets of compliments didn’t give me any hope he wasn’t going to shoot me where I stood. “I was most alarmed when Pepe told me you showed up at the taqueria. Brent forced me to put Vino Blanco on the business license. Something about taxes and how if Vino Blanco didn’t put up the money he would be audited and our operation would crumble.”
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