Death in a Wine Dark Sea

by Lisa King

  Jean could see both pain and indecision on Spider’s face. “No way,” he finally answered. He turned and ran. The back of his shirt bore a big yellow rhinoceros logo.

  Jean looked at Zeppo. “So Oksana’s missing.”

  “Or maybe she took all the money for herself. Either way, we have to find her. Rudy must have called Spider and told him about us.”

  They got into the car and Zeppo headed toward Peter’s apartment in Pacific Heights.

  “Maybe you should talk to Rudy,” Jean said. “I couldn’t get anything out of him.”

  “Right. We should also check out Rhino Fitness. It’s in the Mission. Meanwhile, you set something up with Slick.”

  “Who?”

  “Emory. See what you can charm out of him.”

  In a few minutes they pulled up in front of Peter’s apartment building, a big white 1920s pile on Pacific.

  “Today went really well,” Zeppo said. “We got a lot of useful information. We’re a good team, huh, Jeannie?”

  “Maybe, but don’t get any ideas,” she said.

  “Too late. I’ve already got ideas.”

  She saw a hint of longing in his eyes as she got out of the car.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next morning Jean checked her email when she got home; Setrakian had answered. She read the note and called Zeppo.

  “Setrakian’s hot to trot,” she told him. “He wants me to come by his studio around two o’clock today.”

  “Good work, partner. I’ll give Rivenbark a call.”

  “Pick me up around noon, OK? I have to stop at Roman’s and get my bike.”

  “See you then,” Zeppo said.

  Jean phoned Peter to say goodbye. Last night they’d quarreled—Peter had tried to convince her to stop investigating, which had only made her more determined. But she’d ended up having a fine time once he calmed down and she got him out of his clothes and into his kingsized bed.

  Her next call was to Roman. “Hi, it’s me. Thanks again for saving my ass.”

  “De nada,” he said. “Yours is an ass that frequently needs saving.”

  “I need to get my bike around noon. OK with you?”

  “Sure, I’ll be here. Where are you going to ride?”

  “Zeppo and I have to talk to a couple of people about Martin, in Sonoma and Mendocino. We were hoping to get a ride in. It turns out Diane was right—Zeppo was in charge of the blue box. He did all Martin’s detective work.”

  “He must be a bright guy.”

  “He is. But it’s strange—he never talks about his family or where he’s from. And he doesn’t seem to have any friends.” She thought she could hear Roman pulling on a cigarette. He’d quit several years ago but had occasional lapses.

  “You know, Jean,” he said, “if he wants to get your attention, the best thing he can do is pretend to have a mysterious past. You’re a sucker for a secret.”

  “But he was doing this act long before he met me.”

  “What are you up to, anyway?” he asked. “Solving Martin’s murder or doing a background check on Zeppo?”

  “A little of both, I guess.”

  “Why hasn’t he told the police about the blue box?” She heard the puffing sound again.

  “He promised Martin he wouldn’t. Seems he has a sense of honor. Roman, are you smoking?”

  “Just having a little eye-opener.”

  “Dope or a cigarette?”

  “An unfiltered Camel, you nosy bitch.”

  “You keep that up and I’ll have to find a new cycling partner,” Jean said. “It’s bad enough that you’re nearly fifty.”

  He chuckled. “If you ever beat me to the top of Twin Peaks, I’ll let you complain.”

  “It’s a deal. See you later, Roman.”

  Jean pulled out her overnight bag and packed, a slow process because almost nothing was put away in the right place. Zeppo arrived on time, and she threw her toiletry kit into her bag and zipped it up. “OK, that’s everything. Let’s saddle up.”

  “Wait a minute. Is that what you’re going to wear when we talk to Setrakian?”

  She looked down at her ripped black jeans, old polo shirt, and sandals. “Yeah. Why not? You’re not dressed up either.” He wore jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and Adidas.

  “Put on a dress, OK? Something sexy. We know what he likes, so I want you to show some tits and ass.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I don’t do that kind of prickteasing bullshit unless I intend to follow through.”

  “What about at the nightclub?”

  “That was impersonal. Everyone was dressed that way.”

  “Look, Jeannie, we’ve got to use all the weapons we have, and that includes your distraction factor. It’ll be a lot easier to open him up if he’s thinking about getting into your pants. Nothing will happen—I’ll be there to defend your honor. Come on, it’s for the cause.”

  Jean didn’t like it, but she saw his logic. “OK, I’ll compromise. I’ll change my shirt.” She went into the bathroom and put on a snug red T-shirt with a low scoop neck that showed plenty of cleavage.

  “Wow,” Zeppo said when she emerged. “That’s better. He’ll never know what hit him.”

  Jean locked up her apartment and they walked to his car. His bike, locked to a metal rack on the back of the Jag, looked new and expensive.

  She snuggled into the car’s old leather seats and inhaled deeply—delicious. This was going to be a great car for a road trip.

  Zeppo pulled smoothly into traffic and headed over the hill to the Castro. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I downloaded a picture of Travis from the Net and drove over to the Cock and Bull.”

  “Without me?” Jean said indignantly.

  “You were busy.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “It’s a neighborhood dive with old-fashioned dart boards and ten kinds of British beer on tap. The bartender knows Felix and he recognized Travis, but couldn’t say if they’d been in that particular night. So that’s a dead end.”

  Jean directed him through the narrow streets off Castro toward Roman’s house. “Did you talk to Hugh Rivenbark?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He said we should come by around eight o’clock. He made us reservations in town.”

  “Great. OK, it’s the big blue and gray house on the right. Park in the driveway.”

  JEAN EMBRACED Roman as he let them in the gate. Luxuriant body hair poked out of his shorts and Bash Back T-shirt.

  “Hey, thanks for helping us out last night,” Zeppo said, shaking Roman’s hand.

  “I had no choice,” Roman said. “Jean owes me money. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thanks,” Jean said. “Black for Zeppo, too. And you’d better bring him something to eat. He requires about 10,000 calories a day.”

  Jean and Zeppo sat at the table under the big tree. The yard was still cool and shady; the sun wouldn’t reach it until midafternoon. Roman brought out a tray that held three mugs and a plate of almond biscotti and green grapes. As they sipped coffee, Jean told Roman about their visit to Sputnik and the people they’d spoken to. Zeppo added occasional asides and made steady progress through the biscotti.

  “A lot of people are going to be very irritated with the two of you,” Roman remarked.

  “Maybe,” Zeppo said, “but the only one who seems dangerous is Felix, and I think you took care of him.”

  “What about Emory?” Roman said. “If he’s harboring illegals from Eastern Europe, he might be mixed up with organized crime, and no one’s rougher than the Russian or Ukrainian mafiya.”

  “I thought about that when I was investigating him, but couldn’t find any connection at all,” Zeppo said. “Just that he hires a lot of illegals and is pretty good to them. He seems to be an independent operator. Of course, I didn’t go back very far—just enough for Martin’s purposes. But he’s definitely still on our list.”

  Roman drank his coffee. “I think you should look harder at the people clos
est to Martin. Kay Wingo, for instance. She is the ex-wife, after all. And wherever you find that kind of high-level money and power and ambition, you’ll find people with a lot at stake and a lot to lose.”

  Jean looked at Roman. “You wouldn’t be sending us after Kay just because the Rational Right thinks you’re a sorry degenerate who needs aversion therapy and chemical castration, would you?”

  “Of course not,” Roman said. “I’m much more highminded than that. Did Martin have anything on Kay, Zeppo?”

  “Nothing that I know about.”

  “But if she wanted to kill him, why not do it before the divorce so she’d end up with all the money instead of just half?” Jean said.

  “Good point.” Roman dipped a biscotti into his coffee and took a bite. “What about Martin’s partner, Frank Johansen? Maybe the reason he never challenged Martin about how he did business was that Martin had something on him.”

  Jean shook her head. “Even if he had it in for Martin, Frank would never kill Diane’s husband on her wedding day. He treats her like his own child.”

  “People have done worse to their children,” Zeppo said, taking another biscotti.

  “I was just going to say the same thing,” Roman said.

  Jean knew what Roman was talking about—his father had barred him from the house when he came out in high school, and most of his conservative Catholic family hadn’t spoken to him since. Zeppo was obviously alienated from his family, and that remark made it sound as if he, too, was the injured party. She added it to her list of clues about him.

  Roman drained his cup. “Jean, didn’t you tell me that Diane never knew her father? What if it’s Frank Johansen?”

  “Wow,” Jean said. “I never thought of that. But Frank is coarse-featured, big-boned, and pale-skinned—there’s nothing of him in Diane. Even if it’s true, where’s the motive for him to kill Martin? His wife died years ago, and who else would care?”

  “It’s just a thought,” Roman said.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Zeppo said. “We should talk to Frank and Kay when we get back from Mendocino.” He grabbed a handful of grapes and the last of the biscotti. “OK, let’s get going.”

  They thanked Roman and got Jean’s bike from his garage. As Zeppo loaded his rack, Jean gazed longingly at the sleek black car. “Zeppo, can I drive?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you roll your last car near Devil’s Slide?”

  “Everyone blames me for that. The Escort simply wasn’t a good enough machine for what I was trying to do.”

  “Which was what? Set a new land speed record?”

  “I was just having some fun. But I’ll be like a saint today. I’ve driven you around—haven’t I been good? All I’ve been driving lately is that crummy little Toyota, and Diane won’t let me near the Porsche. Please?”

  “On one condition. We play my music.”

  “I’d listen to country-western if you let me drive.” Jean felt a rush of excitement that was almost sexual as she slid into the driver’s seat.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jean took Highway 101 north out of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, the weather warming as they headed inland. She drove conservatively at first, but Zeppo seemed relaxed, so she pushed it. She sped up, testing his tolerance. He looked calmly out the window and listened to Bluesville on XM radio. By the time they hit Sonoma County she wasn’t pulling her punches. On an empty straightaway she floored it and watched the needle edge over a hundred before she had to slow for traffic. Zeppo didn’t bat an eye.

  “Whee!” Jean exclaimed. “This is the kind of car I need.”

  “Now that you know how fast it’ll go, can we slow down?”

  “Oh sure. Just testing.” She slowed to seventy-five.

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” Zeppo said. “I hope I can afford to keep it.”

  “This is turning into a fun trip, Zeppo. Fast car, good music, and I’ve even got a big nasty redhead by my side, just like the Randy Newman song.”

  Zeppo laughed. “And the best part is, we’re not in L.A.”

  “Or Indiana either.” They passed a spectacular vista of low rolling hills covered with vineyards and dotted with live oak trees. “Why would anybody live in the Midwest when they could live in Northern California? Of course, I’m glad most of them stay there.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Zeppo said. “It blew me away the first time I took a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was like living on a movie set.”

  Jean couldn’t restrain her curiosity. “Where are you from, Zeppo? Where’s your family?”

  “Aw, come on. You don’t really want to know all that boring stuff, do you?”

  “Sure I do. I’m nosy.”

  He looked out the window in silence for half a mile. Finally he said, “Jeannie, I don’t want to bullshit you, so can we please not talk about my family?”

  “OK,” she said. “How about after that? Where’d you go to college?”

  “Never did.”

  “You went to high school, didn’t you?”

  “Not really, not a regular one. But enough about me. You’re from Indiana, right? East Jesus or somewhere.”

  “West Chilton. OK, I give up. No more about your distant past. Can I ask how you ended up working for Martin?”

  “Sure. It’s kind of funny, actually. When I first moved to San Francisco I worked as a bike messenger, like I told you, and one of the guys, Sparky, was in this green group that fought development in San Francisco. They asked me to hack into Wingo-Johansen’s system and find out about a project that would involve relocating some businesses South of Market. It was a piece of cake and I got what Sparky and his pals wanted. I poked around some more and found some other interesting stuff.”

  “Where’d you learn so much about computers?”

  “I’m self-taught. Anyway, they used the material I got to stir up controversy and delay the project’s approval, which cost Wingo-Johansen a lot of money. So Martin did what he did best—he found out Sparky was dealing Ecstasy, and instead of turning him in he did a trade. He’d forget about it if Sparky told him how he got the info, so Sparky told him.

  “Martin came to my apartment. It blew my mind, this big honcho tracking me down like that. He wanted to do a deal. He wouldn’t press charges if I agreed to hack into some of his competitors’ systems. I made him a counter-offer. See, when I was fooling around in his system, I got into the personal files of his employees. One guy was double-billing for construction materials, charging for loads that were never delivered, logging in more workers than actually showed up, and pocketing the change. The moron left all his bogus bills on the company computer—I guess he thought he’d hidden them well. I told Martin if he wanted the name of someone who was cheating him, he had to leave me alone.

  “He agreed, and after we talked for a while, he asked if I’d work for him. He said he’d been looking for someone like me to help out with a special project. I said sure. I worked on minor stuff, and when he decided he could trust me, I got to see the blue box.”

  “I’ll bet he was glad to find you. It can’t be easy, filling a job like that.”

  “That’s what Martin said. And he didn’t fire the guy who was skimming, either. He let him quit, gave him great recommendations, and when he got hired somewhere else, Martin had another informant.”

  “The man was amazing.”

  “That he was.”

  Jean punched it on a brief straightaway, barely passing a lumbering RV before the road curved sharply. “Diane says there are no copies of the dirt. Is that really true?”

  “Yeah, it’s true. There were copies of some of the stuff on Martin’s computer at home, but when he saw how easily I hacked into his system and his competitors’ systems, he had me scrub the hard drive. I explained that I could make it pretty much impossible to hack into, but he said, ‘You’re smart, but there’s always somebody smarter out there.’ I couldn’t argue with that. I tried to talk him into having
some sort of backup copies. I mean, what if his house burned down? But he insisted one copy was enough. Did I mention that he was a control freak?”

  “I figured that out myself.”

  On the outskirts of Sonoma, Zeppo had her turn east, and they wound through the countryside past a big empty field studded with survey markers.

  “That’s Martin’s development,” he told her. “Work has stopped for now, of course.”

  Just beyond the field Jean pulled the Jag into a circular gravel drive in front of an old blue and white three-story clapboard house, complete with a broad porch and a bench swing. A classic red barn sat to the left of the house and a garage to the right. A well-kept lawn surrounded the buildings and mature trees provided shade. It reminded Jean of an Indiana farmhouse, except for the ancient vineyard beyond the lawn. Bud break had been early this year, and Jean could see tiny green leaves emerging from the gnarly black vines, which stood out starkly against the bright yellow mustard that grew between the rows.

  A big brown mutt ran up to the car, barking. Jean hesitated, her door half open, but Zeppo got out, knelt on the gravel, and talked softly to the animal. The dog stopped barking and went up to him. She sniffed his hand, then licked it, tail wagging. Zeppo ruffled the dog’s neck, calling her a good girl.

  A trim man about six feet tall in faded jeans and a light blue peasant shirt came out of the barn. He was in his late thirties, very tan, with a handsome, clean-shaven face, and he wore his dark brown hair in a ponytail. He smiled when he saw her. “Are you Jean Applequist?” he asked, extending a hand. “I’m Armand Setrakian.” They shook; he had a big silver and turquoise bracelet on his right wrist. He squeezed hard, holding on just a bit too long.

  His welcoming smile changed to an expression of surprise and suspicion, and Jean realized that Zeppo, initially out of sight on the other side of the car, had stood up.

  “I know you,” Setrakian said. He took a few steps toward Zeppo. “You’re that reporter who came up here asking questions. That was right before Martin Wingo paid me a visit. You worked for him, didn’t you?”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” Zeppo said.