One O'Clock Hustle: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 1)

by Pence, Joanne

  “Actually, I don't think that's it,” Glickman said. “Reyes' man, Tomas was his name, just laughed. He said Reyes doesn't care anything about the IRS. That he figured out long ago how to neutralize them. But he said I needed to tell Danny that Mr. Reyes didn't like seeing his name in a book. That it would make him feel strange, like he should be dead or something. And Mr. Reyes didn't want to feel like he should be dead.”

  “I don't believe you!” Richie said.

  Glickman pouted. “There was a witness, but I don't know his name. If I did, you'd have to believe me.”

  This guy's story was even crazier than Rebecca imagined. “Someone watched as you talked to a drug lord's hit man?”

  “Hit man? You think that's what he was?” Glickman whispered.

  “Tell us about your witness,” Rebecca said, ignoring his question.

  “This guy, a stranger, was sitting far from me. At the end of the bar, in fact. But he could see there was some sort of ugliness going on. After Tomas left, he picked up his drink and sat near me, saying it seemed I could use a friend. He needed one, too. He bought me a drink—a much needed drink, I must admit. We talked a lot about his troubles with his wife. We also talked about how I wasn't married, and then my job. I said I was hoping to make some money—but he saw the result.”

  “Did you have more than one drink with him?” Richie asked.

  “Well, yes. But he was generous and enjoyed our conversation. He even said I was a big help to him.”

  “I'll bet you were.” Richie ran a hand over his mouth, then frowned. “What else did you spill?”

  “Nothing! The guy—oh, now I remember, his name was George—he kept talking about his wife, and buying more drinks. I nearly passed out but, before he called me a cab, we may have discussed how I was going to make some money and leave town.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Did you tell him about Danny's plans for a book?”

  Glickman looked from one to the other before answering, then down at his sandwich. “I had to, to explain what had just happened, but I hid it in general terms.”

  “Did you tell him about the list of names?” she asked.

  “Of course not! Not exactly. I mean, I didn't want to cause Danny any trouble!” Glickman's mouth opened and closed a few times.

  “What are you saying?” Richie fairly snarled the words.

  Glickman appeared ready to pass out. “I think he guessed that the names were stored someplace. He asked me if they were safely hidden, and we talked about how important it was to keep anything like that concealed. I remembered thinking he was right, which meant I couldn’t say that Danny or I had the list. That wouldn't have sounded smart.”

  “So what did you say?” Rebecca asked.

  Glickman glanced at Richie, his eyes wide and frightened. “I told him Danny gave it to a friend, a powerful friend, someone Danny liked and trusted.”

  In a voice so strained he could barely get out the words, Richie said, “A friend?”

  Glickman nodded.

  “Who?” Rebecca asked.

  Glickman barely moved his hand, but his index finger slowly uncurled and he pointed it at Richie.

  Richie lunged across the table, grabbed Glickman's jacket and lifted him out of his chair. Rebecca also jumped up, tugging at Richie hands until he let Glickman go.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Richie bellowed.

  The two customers and the wait staff glanced over at the table.

  Glickman scrunched low in his seat, his voice tiny. “I didn't think anyone would go after you! I mean, he was just a guy in a bar who was crying about his wife! How was I supposed to know?”

  “Give me your gun, Inspector.” Richie spoke through gritted teeth. “I'm not going to kill him, just kneecap him, so he won't go anywhere, and won't cause me any more trouble!”

  Glickman took a long slurp of his Coke with the straw, his eyes big and round as they jumped from Rebecca to Richie.

  “When did you tell your story to the guy in the bar?” Rebecca asked.

  “Friday.”

  “The day before Richie's date was killed,” Rebecca said. “Two days before Danny Pasternak's murder.”

  “And,” Richie said, “the day before my house was tossed by someone looking for something in it!”

  Glickman leaned as far back as he could from Richie. “Uh, yeah. I'd say that's right. But I'm sure it's not connected.”

  Richie sat, arms folded, glaring fiercely at Glickman.

  “Where's the disk now?” Rebecca asked.

  “It's actually a thumb drive,” Glickman said. “But I don't have it! Not me!”

  Like hell. “If you're writing the book, you've got to have a copy,” Rebecca stated.

  “But I don't. Really.”

  She kept an eye on Glickman as she took a notebook and pen from her purse and slapped it on the table in front of him. “Write down any names you can remember.”

  “Do I have to?” Glickman looked nervous and pale. “I really would like this to all just go away.”

  Richie stood up and loomed over him. “You little piss ant! You got my friend killed, my house nearly destroyed, and now you want to walk away!”

  Glickman slid so low in his chair he was about to disappear under the table.

  Rebecca tugged on the back of Richie's jacket. “Sit back down.”

  Glickman quickly scribbled down some names. He no sooner finished than Richie snatched it.

  “Let's see,” Richie said. “Johnny Huang. Great! Just great! His real name is Huang Lao-ming. He runs the Lo Fung Tong that started in Hong Kong. They've got their fingers in everything. Then we've got Teo Reyes, Columbian cartel cocaine and gun smuggler. Wonderful! We also have the top tort lawyer in the city, and a couple City Hall types.”

  “So if we pursue these people,” Rebecca said, taking the list from Richie, “we might be offed by the mob—Chinese or Columbian, take your pick—or I could be fired by the city, or any of us sued and left flat broke by a lawyer. Nothing like gazing into the future and finding it bleak.” She perused the list and was startled to see Supervisor Mark O'Brien on it. Meaghan Bishop had his address in her handbag, which meant, finally, she had found a connection between Bishop and Danny Pasternak.

  “This isn't good, Rebecca,” Richie said. “Any of those people would want to keep the whole thing quiet, and some would do anything it took to stop Danny.”

  “At least now we know why your house was searched,” she said.

  With that, the two left Glickman to his sandwich, with instructions to find himself a hotel and not tell anyone except Rebecca where he was hiding.

  At the moment, he looked more scared of Richie than anything.

  o0o

  After leaving Glickman, Richie said he was hungry, but he needed time to unwind before eating. He drove Rebecca's SUV across the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley where he knew several good restaurants. The town wasn't Richie's normal stomping grounds, or that of the SFPD, so he felt fairly certain he wouldn't be recognized.

  As they drove, Rebecca told him about finding Mark O'Brien's address in Meaghan Bishop's apartment, and that meant O'Brien knew both Pasternak and Bishop. Was it a coincidence or something more? She also told him about the bug in Meaghan Bishop's apartment.

  Richie nodded, filing away the information with everything else he had been learning about the murders.

  They went to a small French restaurant, and Rebecca was surprised to find that, away from his current troubles, Richie could be a charming dinner companion. They talked about movies, TV, music, even politics, especially San Francisco's. Through the meal, she found he had a rather remarkable ability to make her laugh. She wasn't sure how. Most men she went out with—not, heaven forbid, that she thought of their dinner as a date—were stultifyingly serious around her.

  The evening caused her to remember how she had spent the early hours of Christmas morning with him the first time they met, how he was fun and full of life, and how he had entertained her wit
h stories about himself and his friends, stories of adventures so quirky and amusing that she laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

  How had she forgotten all that?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning, Rebecca and Sutter decided to check out the relationship between Meaghan Bishop and Supervisor Mark O'Brien.

  The two detectives drove to O'Brien's stately home in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood edging the Presidio.

  Rebecca rang the doorbell and a woman answered.

  “Is Mr. O'Brien in?” Rebecca asked as she and Sutter identified themselves.

  The woman was a maid, and she led them into the living room. She lit the fireplace and they waited beside it until O'Brien entered the room. He could have been a political pin-up boy with his gray hair sporting a long comb-over, sprayed and shellacked to stay in place, plus enough wrinkle-erasing Botox to render his face as smooth and shiny as his hair.

  “Inspectors,” he said by way of greeting them both as he shook their hands with an iron grip. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have a few questions,” Rebecca said, taking the lead as usual. “Did you know a woman named Meaghan Bishop?”

  He looked puzzled. “No, not that I recall.”

  “What about Meaghan Blakely?” Sutter asked.

  “No. Why are you asking?”

  “Both names were used by the same woman,” Rebecca explained. “And she was murdered Saturday night.”

  “Oh, yes! That's why the name seemed somewhat familiar. Why are you asking me about her?”

  “Your address was found in her apartment,” Sutter said. “We're wondering why.”

  O'Brien blanched, then squared his shoulders. “Well, I certainly have no idea.”

  “We've also found another connection between the two of you,” Rebecca said. “Danny Pasternak.”

  O'Brien looked from one to the other before saying, “Pasternak?”

  “Your bookie,” Rebecca said.

  “I never—”

  “He listed your name in a book he planned to write on his career as a bookmaker.” As Rebecca said this, her partner gawked at her in surprise. She knew he would be angry that she hadn't told him anything, but she was still trying to figure out how to explain having learned about it.

  “He did?” O'Brien's voice was small. “Isn't he the man the newspaper wrote about who was found dead? A drive-by shooting?”

  “That's right,” Rebecca said. “It happened the day after Meaghan Bishop was shot to death in his office. You, Mr. O'Brien, are connected to both of them.”

  “That's a lie! A scurrilous, slanderous thing to say!” O'Brien thundered.

  “You realize,” Rebecca said calmly, “it would be better if you told us what was going on rather than having this blow up in the news. If you can explain the situation to us, I would certainly do all I could to keep my information quiet. Sometimes the best way to keep things quiet is to work with the police so we don't go poking around unnecessarily. Such searches may, at times, turn up a hornets' nest.”

  He didn't respond, but he continued to glare at her.

  “We're offering you a way to put this behind you. If nothing is there, that's great. But without firm knowledge of that, my colleagues and I will be doing all we can to find everything we can about your dealings with Danny Pasternak and Meaghan Bishop.”

  “Is that a threat?” he asked huffily.

  “Of course not. It's a fact.”

  “Look, I didn't know Pasternak was a bookie. Yes, I gave him money, but I thought it was nothing more than an office pool.”

  “Except that it wasn't in the office,” Rebecca added.

  He looked furious and she knew she had just made an enemy—an enemy who could affect her career in the city's police department. “It was harmless! Everybody bets on football games. Hell, you'd have to arrest half the men in this city if you were going to go after all of us.”

  “What about the ponies?” Rebecca asked.

  “Never! I did football pools, or what I was told were pools. Nothing else.”

  “Big money pools,” Rebecca said, doing a little guesswork. If Glickman remembered O'Brien's name, she doubted he bet small.

  “So? I have a lot of money. I need to make a game interesting, or why bother playing?”

  Rebecca and Sutter eyed each other. Sutter nodded. Rebecca said, “Tell us about Meaghan Bishop.”

  O'Brien walked over to the window and he stared out in silence for over a minute. When he faced them again, his gaze jumped from one to the other. “I'm a married man, a city official. It wouldn't do for my wife or my constituents to hear lies about any relationship between me and a woman like her.”

  Sutter spoke. “What kind of a woman is that, Mr. O'Brien?”

  O'Brien scowled at him. “A hustler.”

  Sutter and Rebecca looked at each other in surprise. Sutter said simply, “Go on.”

  “What the hell! One day, out of the blue, Meaghan showed up at my house, all wide-eyed about politics, like some sort of political groupie. My wife was out of town, and I let her in.”

  “Come on, Mr. O'Brien,” Rebecca said. “You can't be so foolish as to let a strange woman into your house without knowing who she was.”

  “She said”—he gulped—“she said she was a friend of Danny Pasternak's, and that she wanted to talk to me about the city's park services. I was intrigued.”

  “To talk about the park service,” Sutter said with a smirk.

  “That's right! I was set up! Things moved fast. We met a few times. She had ideas, schemes, ways to make money, things I should 'invest' in. When I wouldn't go along, she started making threats. Finally, there were photos. She was beautiful, and I was flattered and stupid. When the photos came, so did demands for money. I told her and whoever sent them to go to hell. I was willing to give up everything before I'd let myself be blackmailed. I never heard anything more.”

  “Do you still have the photos?”

  “No. I burned them.”

  “Do you know who sent them?”

  “I can't prove anything, but I'm sure it was her and Pasternak. She tried to hustle me, but I'm sure he was the one who came up with some of the plans. First, there were plans for ways to move city money to the three of us, and then when I wouldn't bite, she wanted money for the photos—money to make them go away. I thought Pasternak was a good guy, despite his line of business. I found out I was wrong.”

  “Why didn't you do anything about it?” Sutter asked. “Why not report what was happening to the authorities?”

  “Because I'd have looked like an old fool to have gotten involved with her in the first place. And damn it, anyone who thought that would have been right.”

  o0o

  After leaving O'Brien's home, Sutter returned to Homicide while Rebecca headed for North Beach. She drove around Sakura Gardens searching for a blue Prius. In a residential area two blocks away, the car sat collecting a fistful of tickets. She called CSI to pick it up and go through it with a fine tooth comb.

  Since she was in the area, she went back to Big Caesar's to speak with its manager.

  “You knew he was a bookie,” Rebecca said to Harrison Sidwell. “Don't lie to me again!”

  Sidwell sat morose and pouting behind his desk; Rebecca sat on a large, comfortable chair facing it. “I didn't have any actual proof, but I'll admit I didn't look for any. In fact, I purposefully looked the other way. What he did on his own time had nothing to do with me or with his job here.”

  “Even a Chronicle reporter knew he was a bookie,” Rebecca said. “How do you know he didn't use the club's phones to run his phone bank, or simply for collecting illegal bets?”

  “I don't know, and I don't care!” Sidwell cried. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a Kleenex. He looked as if he had aged about ten years with all the trouble going on around him, and he seemed thinner than ever. “It was a sideline for him, that's all. I'll admit, if some of his customers came here, they were big spenders
in a lot of ways. People like the woman's murderer, Richie Amalfi. I knew some of his customers might cause trouble, but I never expected murder!” He drew in his breath and in a shaky voice added, “I never used his services, and I didn't want to know about them. My hands are clean. If you want to arrest me for looking the other way, so be it. My lawyer will get me off very easily.”

  “What about the people who worked for you? They might not have been so prudent,” Rebecca said.

  He put the glasses back on. “The people who worked for me didn't make enough money to use a guy like Pasternak. He didn't bother with ten-dollar bets. Five hundred was the smallest he'd waste his time on. Or, so I've heard.”

  “And I've heard you like to gamble,” she said.

  “I did—too much. It was a sickness. I gave it up completely, which is why I turned my back on Pasternak's bookmaking.”

  “Okay.” Rebecca had tired of the subject. “Tell me about Carolina Fontana.”

  Sidwell's left eye twitched wildly. He gazed at the ceiling as if it might have his answer, then said, “I heard she was Pasternak's mistress. I also heard Danny's wife knew about her and hated her—and Danny.”

  “What about Meaghan Bishop? We've learned she knew Pasternak. Considering your background with the woman, how could you not know that?”

  “I didn't know it!” Sidwell cried. “Why should I? I told you I tried to ignore Pasternak's work and everything about it.”

  “Was Meaghan Bishop a gambler?”

  “I doubt it, but to tell the truth, I simply don't know. Meaghan was into a lot of things when I knew her. She was always coming up with ways to get ahead, to make money. She had big ideas.”

  “I've heard her described as a hustler,” Rebecca said.

  Sidwell chuckled. “That's probably one of the nicer things said about her. She wasn't a bad person, but she always thought she had gotten a raw deal in life. What can I say? When I think of how she ended up, I guess she was right.”

  “Why do you think Richie Amalfi might have killed her?” Rebecca asked.