“We don’t have to decide tonight,” Brady said.
“Okay,” Yuki said, laughing. This guy was funny. She liked him. A lot.
The waiter brought the buttermilk-fried chicken, a side of sautéed greens, and creamy-looking yams, and Yuki felt herself on the verge of coming back to life. She hadn’t eaten all day.
Brady picked up his fork, paused with it in the air, and said, “I was going to tell you about Liz.”
“I know.”
“I was. And I want to ask you something.”
Yuki had a forkful of chicken in her mouth. She was getting high from the chicken. She turned her eyes on Brady.
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Will you come home with me tonight?” Brady said.
Chapter 97
RAIN WAS IN THE FORECAST, but it came down only when Cindy was leaving her office for the day. She stood at the curb under her red umbrella, cold rain blowing up the skirt of her raincoat and soaking her new shoes.
She pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and caught the long, high-pitched, trumpeting ahh-chooooooooo-ahh, a sneeze that just about took off the top of her head.
It looked like every damn cab in the city was taken or off duty. Cindy phoned All-City, the cab company she used regularly, and after listening to background music and ads, she was told, “Sorry, please call back later.”
Cindy sneezed again, damm it. Not only was she fighting a cold, she was also half starving and now late for dinner at Susie’s. She visualized the back room at Susie’s, that haven of warmth—and the name Quick Express leapt into her mind.
She pictured the cab company she’d visited earlier in the week when she was working on the drug-and-rape story. Since then, there had been no reports of the serial rapist, and the story had taken a dive off the front page.
That was the good news and the bad.
Good that she’d scared off that psycho by turning the brights on him with her three-part, above-the-fold story.
Bad because he’d gone underground—and that meant he might never be caught.
Meanwhile, she had a connection in the taxi business. It was just before six. With luck, the dispatcher she’d met, Al Wysocki, would still be on duty. Maybe he’d do her a favor.
Cindy pulled the number up from her phone list and pressed call. The phone rang and a voice she recognized answered, “Quick Express Taxi and Limo.”
“Al Wysocki?”
“This is Al.”
“Al, it’s Cindy Thomas from the Chronicle. I met you a few days ago while I was working on my story.”
“Yep, I remember you. Blonde.”
“That’s me, Al, and I’ve got a problem. Could you send a cab to the Chronicle? I’m soaked to my skin and I’m late for dinner.”
“No problem, Ms. Cindy. I’ll have someone there in five.”
Chapter 98
CINDY WAS DELIGHTED with herself. She described her raincoat and umbrella to Wysocki, folded her phone, put it in her pocket, and ducked back into the building, where she could see the traffic through the glass doors.
In five minutes, almost on the nose, a yellow Crown Vic pulled up and the window rolled down. She ran out to the street and immediately recognized the round face of the driver.
“Lady,” he said with a grin. “You called a cab?”
“Al, I didn’t mean you should come yourself, but thanks a ton. You’re too nice.”
Cindy closed her umbrella, reached for the door handle, and opened the back door.
“I was going off duty,” Wysocki said as Cindy settled into the backseat. “Happy to help you out. Hey. I gotta share this with someone who isn’t going to get jealous. Where are we going?”
Cindy gave Al Susie’s address, Jackson and Sansome, and leaned her umbrella against the door so the water would drip onto the mat.
“Share what?” Cindy asked, grabbing tissues from her pocket and blowing her nose.
“This is my lucky day,” Al told her, stopping at the red light on 2nd. “I won the lottery.”
“What?”
“Yeah, five hundred thousand dollars.”
“Come onnnn. You’re kidding me!”
“Seriously, I just kept playing my lucky numbers, and yahoo!—I won. I’m quitting tomorrow morning when I see the boss. This is Al Wysocki’s last fare. I got a bottle of schnapps,” he said. “Share a toast with me to my new life?”
“I don’t know how that’ll mix with Sudafed.”
“Hey, just a sip. It’ll do your cold good.”
“Okay, then. Hit me,” Cindy said. “You must be mind-boggled. Five hundred grand! So what are your plans?”
Wysocki opened the twist-off cap on the flask of high-octane spirits, poured Cindy a few ounces into a small plastic cup, and handed it to her through the partition.
“I’m going to buy a sailboat,” he said. He clinked the bottle against her plastic cup.
“To your new life,” she said.
“Thank you, Ms. Cindy. Yeah, I’ve been going to the boat shows for about eleven years. I know just the one I want.”
Cindy smiled and said “What… kind of… boat?”
“I want to get a sailing yacht. Small one, handmade, wooden hull,” Al said, looking at Cindy in the rearview mirror as the light turned green. He said, “You okay, back there?”
“No… ,” she said slowly, casting her eyes toward Wysocki’s mirrored reflection. What was wrong with her? She was having trouble focusing. “I… feel…”
Wysocki grinned.
“You should feel great,” he said. “You were looking for me, missy. And now you’ve found me.”
Chapter 99
CLAIRE AND I were at Susie’s, all by ourselves, alone. First Yuki had blown us off, and now Cindy was a no-show; no show, no call, no nothing. Getting stood up by both of them had never happened before.
Claire said of Yuki, “Stop worrying yourself. That girl needs to get naked with a man every now and then. You know that, Lindsay. It’s good for her.”
“I don’t have to like her getting naked with Jackson Brady, do I? I mean, come on. Of all the men in all the world, why him?”
Claire laughed. “A lot of girls would be clicking their heels to get naked with Brady.”
“It messes with the chain of command.”
“Anybody sleeps with anyone you know, it messes with the chain of command.”
I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. “Shut up,” I said.
She batted it back. “You are so crazy,” she said, still laughing.
I downed my Corona and said, “Let’s order. Cindy can just catch up.”
Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.
I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sautéed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, “You’re not going to believe this one, Linds. It’s right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road.”
“Hit and run?”
“It sure looked like a car accident,” she said, “but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an X on the back of it. And that’s all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap.”
“Heart attack? Aneurysm?”
“Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he’d been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic,” Claire said.
“So now I’m doing the post, looking over this young dude’s perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay.”
“I’m not believing in invisible bullets, butterfly.”
“It’s like this. The round goe
s into the corner of the eye,” Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. “Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it.”
“Huh. Interesting. So now you’re saying it’s a homicide.”
“Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help.”
“Did ballistics get a hit on the round?” I asked.
“Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.
“The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an X,” Claire said.
“So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he’s found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing.”
“Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?”
“Called it, ‘I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn’t mean to do it, yo.’ ”
“Come on,” I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.
“I know, but this is true. Here’s what happened in the missing middle of the story,” Claire said. “There was a near-miss traffic accident.
“Crank is fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn’t call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, ‘You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.’ I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, how’d he know he was going to hit a nerve? So Crank whips his gun out of the back of his jeans and says, ‘Well, this girl’s packin’,’ and he shoots the guy.”
“Oh, man.”
“Yeah. Somewhere in that shooting, his hat falls off, the one that was caught on tape in the robbery. If Crank hadn’t robbed that store, he would never have been caught for killing Civic.”
“He didn’t know his victim.”
“Bingo. Total stranger calls him a girly man. Bang.”
“And there you have an accidental shooting, yo.”
“And he blames the victim…”
Claire’s laugh cut off as she looked up at a spot right behind my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see Cindy. But it was Lorraine, coming to clear the table.
“You girls want coffee and dessert?” she asked.
“Hell, yes,” I said. “We’re eating for four.”
Lorraine laughed and read off the dessert menu. I picked chocolate mud pie, and Claire went for a spiced-apple tart.
I called Cindy while we were drinking our coffee and left her a snarky message. I left another one when we paid the check, and then my cell phone battery died.
I don’t know why, but I wasn’t worried about Cindy.
I should have been. But I never saw it coming.
Chapter 100
I GOT HOME at eight-something that evening, left my wet shoes on the doormat, and went inside. Martha came wiggling up to me, her fur still damp, and I bent to hug her and got my face washed for me.
I called out to Joe, “Hey, sweetie, thanks for walking Martha.”
I found him on the phone in the living room, teetering towers of papers stacked all around him. I heard him call the person on the phone “Bruno” and say something about containers, which meant he was talking to the director of Port of L.A. Security. This was Joe’s freelance job that was supposed to last a month but had been his steady paycheck for the better part of a year.
Joe waved at me, and I waved back and headed to the shower: a six-head, low-flow, spa-type contraption that made me feel like royalty. I took some time in what I liked to call the car wash, lathered my hair with a lavender shampoo I love, and let my mind drift in the steam.
I toweled off with a man-size bath sheet and threw on my favorite pj’s—blue flannel with clouds. Joe came in and hugged and kissed me and we got into it a little. Then Joe remembered and said, “Conklin called.”
“When was that?”
“Just before you came in.”
“Did he say what was up?”
“Nope. Just ‘tell Lindsay to call’ and ‘can you believe the Niners, that dumb play in the last quarter?’ ”
I said, “I’d better call him.”
Joe grabbed my ass and I smacked his. I wriggled out of his arms, saying, “Later, buddy.”
I called Conklin from the bedside phone.
He picked up on the first ring. “Cin?”
“It’s Lindsay,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I can’t reach her,” he said. “She’s not picking up, not returning my calls.”
I didn’t like the sound of his voice. He was scared, and that scared me.
“She didn’t show up to dinner, Rich. I called her a couple of times, left messages. Maybe her phone died. Did you try her at the office?”
“Yeah. I’ll try her there again.”
“Call me back.”
I was hunting for my softy spa socks when Conklin called again.
“I got her voice mail, Linds. This isn’t like Cindy. I called QT. I’m going over there.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked him.
“I’m thinking this is probably unfounded panic on my part and she’s going to be blistering mad. But what can I say? I love the girl.”
“I’ll see you at QT’s,” I said.
I took off my pj’s and hung them on a hook on the back of the bathroom door.
Chapter 101
I’D BEEN TO Quentin Tazio’s combination home and computer forensics lab many times, always when we were in a jam that required him to apply his skills in a strictly outside-the-box kind of a way.
His place is on Capp Street in the Mission, a former machine shop—squat, gray, two-story, and cement-faced with roll-up garage doors on the street level.
At nine-thirty at night, the streets were rockin’ with people going in and out of taquerias, galleries, restaurants, and bars. Traffic was clogged and impatient. A drunk peed against one of the young trees dotting the sidewalk.
As I parked my car parallel to Conklin’s, I told myself that Cindy was fine, that she’d just gotten involved in a story and lost track of the time. That said, Cindy pushed herself into ugly situations and always worked against her fear, a trait we shared. But there was a difference between us.
I was a trained cop with a gun and a badge and a department behind me. Cindy had a press pass and a BlackBerry.
I put an SFPD card on the dash, then went to the doorway and pressed the button next to Tazio’s name.
QT’s digitized voice came through the speaker, and a second later I was buzzed in.
I hooked a left at the end of a narrow hallway and stepped into a vast, cold space lit by the glow of plasma screens. Monitors hung edge-to-edge on the walls, a built-in desktop went around three sides of the space, and there was a staircase in the middle of the concrete floor that went up to QT’s living quarters.
Conklin called out to me and I crossed to the far side of the room, where he was standing behind QT.
“We’re getting somewhere,” Conklin said.
QT grinned up at me with his large, bright choppers. His bald head gleamed. His long white fingers spanned the curving keyboard. He was good-looking in a naked-mole-rat kind of way.
“Cindy has a GPS in her phone,” QT told me, “but it’s not sending a signal. It’s either turned off or underwater. I had to dump her phone logs to find her last ping.”
Dump her phone logs without a warrant, I thought. Whatever it took to find Cindy, to know that she was okay.
Peering over QT’s shoulder, I took in his computer screen, a map of San Francisco dotted with flags standing for cellular tower locations.
The best geek in the state of California clicked on an ic
on that stood for a tower in the Tenderloin. A circle appeared on the screen. He clicked on another tower, and then a third, and overlapping circles came up as he triangulated Cindy’s last cell phone signal. I saw one small irregular patch that was common to all three towers.
QT said, “I can get accuracy up to two hundred and fifty meters. The location of that last ping isn’t far from here. This is Turk,” QT said, pointing with the cursor.
“Turk and what?” Conklin asked, completely focused on the screen. “Turk and Jones?”
“Yeppers. You nailed it, Rich.”
“That’s where that cab company is.”
“What cab company?” I asked. “What’s this about?”
“Quick Express Taxi,” Quentin said, zooming in on the intersection, rolling his cursor over it.
“Her phone isn’t underwater,” Conklin said. “It’s underground.”
I didn’t understand any of this, but I read the urgency in my partner’s face.
“Let’s go,” he said to me.
Chapter 102
I’D GOTTEN INTO the passenger seat of Conklin’s unmarked car and barely closed the door when he jammed on the gas. The car leapt forward, slid sideways, then sent up a wake as we sped over the slick pavement.
Weaving around double-parked cars and inebriated pedestrians, Rich negotiated the six-minute drive through the traffic-choked streets toward an intersection in one of the roughest blocks in the Mission.
Conklin talked as he drove, telling me that Cindy had been poking around in taxi garages for a minivan cab with a movie ad on the back. So far, one vague sighting by one of the three rape victims was the slim and only clue to the identity of the rapist.
“She went to this hole-in-the-ground by herself on Monday,” Conklin said. “She talked to the day dispatcher. A guy name of Wysocki. If she came back today, it had to be to see him. What do you think, Lindsay? Has Cindy taken this investigative reporter crap too far? Am I wrong?”
I saw the blinking neon signs up ahead on Jones, QUICK EXPRESS TAXI and CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOME. Conklin parked at the curb in front of the grimy storefront before I could answer him.
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