“Whatever lawful way you can.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
“You’re welcome.”
I scrunched my nose and sighed. “Thanks in advance. Sorry to be such a bitch.”
That hand-shrug came again. “So tell me about how your car came to contain a body.”
I went through the tale, leaving nothing out, not so much because I trusted him, but because unlike Jay, he had no reason to wish me ill. Quite the opposite, actually. It was clear he had a thing for me, even if it was mere chemistry.
Okay, and vice versa.
By the time I’d finished, he’d done a surreptitious survey of our surroundings, turning to gaze out the plate glass window in a slow, careful sweep. “We’re safe here for the moment,” he said.
“Good to know.” Our plates arrived then, piled high with eggs, black beans, grilled plantain cake topped with tamarind sour cream, and corn tortillas. I dug in.
Thomas switched seats, putting his back to the wall and sliding another small table over next to mine so he could continue watching the street. He ate one-handed, his other in his jacket pocket.
“Why the extreme vigilance?”
“Finish your food.”
“Mm-kay.” Hell, it was broad daylight. What did he expect, a drive-by? Not in San Fran. Unlike Oakland, there were only so many getaway paths off the peninsula. Property crime could be a problem here, but open, daylight violence was rare outside the Tenderloin.
“I’m done,” I said as I finished. “Now, what’s going on? Something’s spooked you.”
“You’re the detective, Cal. You figure it out.”
“I’m not in very good form today.”
“Clearly.” He threw money onto the table. “I suggest we go someplace less public.”
“My office.”
“Very well.”
Thomas was as twitchy as a crack addict on the short walk to my place of business, eyes roving the streets, checking behind us every few seconds. He wasn’t trying to spot a tail, not with such obvious counter-surveillance. In fact, his actions seemed meant for deterrence.
When we arrived, he closed the blinds, checking through the slits for more than a minute, and then climbed the stairs to the second floor, which consisted mostly of kitchen, pantry, dining space and balcony. He made sure the blinds were shut there too.
“All right, what’s with the witness protection routine?”
Thomas began punching buttons on my espresso machine, but I grabbed him by the arm. “Quit stalling and tell me what the hell is going on.”
“A woman who shares your age, height, weight, build and hair color is found dead in your car, Cal. This doesn’t bother you?”
Belated alarm bells began ringing in my head, and they must have shown in my eyes because he nodded in acknowledgement.
“You think I was the target?”
“I do.”
“Who wants me dead?”
“That’s not the only question you should be asking.”
“Okay, Socrates. What other question should I be asking?”
“Who wants to hurt you?”
“Isn’t that more or less the same thing?”
“Are you usually this thick, or is it merely today?”
I let go of Thomas and stepped back. “If this is some reverse psychology ploy to get in my pants again, it’s not working.”
“As I recall, you wanted in my pants as well.”
“As I recall, you weren’t wearing pants at all, just a skirt that looked better on you than it would have on me.”
“Touché. The point is, you need to snap out of this funk you’re in and start thinking. I won’t be able to protect you if you don’t get your head in the game.”
“I can protect myself,” I snapped. “I don’t need some white knight hovering around, hoping for the favor of the princess.”
A shadow of hurt crossed his face, quickly replaced by a professional smile. “There are worse ways to be seen, I suppose. I tell you what, Cal. I’ll pay you for your services.”
“Oh, that’s rich. You think I’m some kind of whore?”
“Investigative services, I mean. You are a private investigator, I believe?”
“Not that private.”
“Could we please move on from your reflexive emotional defenses?”
I took a deep breath and turned to the espresso machine, using the pause to get off the treadmill of argument. “You want to hire me for a case?”
“Yes. I want you to solve your own murder.”
Chapter 3
When Thomas told me he wanted me to investigate my own murder, I almost said I wasn’t dead, but that would be pedantic, stomping all over his poetic license. “The cops are looking into Dalonia Hade’s death. They don’t like it when civilians go poking their noses in.”
“That never stopped you before.” Reaching into his jacket, Thomas pulled out a packet wrapped with rubber bands and dropped it on the table. “There’s twenty thousand dollars as a retainer and my new cell number. Now I’m your client. Charge me whatever you like, but get working.” He turned to go, a determined expression on his face.
“Where will you be?” I asked.
“Hovering.”
After he left, I sat down with my espresso to think. Who wanted to hurt me? That’s what Thomas had indicated was the important question, rather than the more obvious one of who wanted to kill me.
Deciding to run with his advice, I pushed aside my inclination to start trying to figure out who killed Hade. I knew I wasn’t at my best right now, and besides, the cops were working on the presumed murder. Hopefully I could come at it from a different angle.
So who wanted to hurt me, but not kill me? Just off the top of my head I could think of several, starting with Jay Allsop and Nina Stanger, and a couple dozen more of the old guard within SFPD that considered me a traitor to the force.
There were some bikers in the Niners motorcycle club up in the foothills I’d inconvenienced with my investigations at Granger’s Ford, as well as a couple of nomads who may or may not be undercover law enforcement. Someone had taken a rifle shot at me up there as well.
I’d brought heat on Jerry Conrad, who was probably an ex-Mafioso, and I’d indirectly triggered the death of his purported nephew Kerry. Jerry’s wife Carol hadn’t been too happy with me either.
I’d also shot Linda Davis, though she’d survived, and her father, Deputy Mike Davis, didn’t seem the type to hold a grudge about that, as I’d been defending myself at the time. Then there was Houdini, the shadowy drug lord I’d interfered with trying to find a kidnapped girl, though I’d have thought Thomas would be a more fit target for his ire.
And what about the men whose advances I’d turned down recently? There was the security guard Tyrell, whom I’d never called, and Red the poker player who’d introduced me to Luger the neo-Nazi, a guy I’d had one very strange dinner with. In a different category were all the fugitives I’d skip-traced and captured, any of which might have held a grudge for being picked up.
It occurred to me to wonder how Thomas meant I’d been hurt. The fight with my mother certainly hadn’t helped with my karmic piggy bank, but I didn’t see her reaction as anything preplanned or malicious. I’d hurt her, mostly, not the other way around.
Having a body turn up in my car might hurt my business, I supposed. The Chronicle was bound to be setting up at least four column inches for tomorrow morning’s edition, possibly under Cole Sage’s byline. But killing someone in order to damage me seemed like quite an indirect approach, especially as there wasn’t anything that implicated me. I mean, if I’d been trying to do an enemy dirty, I’d have planted evidence pointing directly to her.
No, that wasn’t it.
Which brought me to losing Madge in the first place. Or, thinking more generally, to losing a serious sum of money, which just happened to be composed of my classic car, in a high-stakes poker game.
High stakes for middle-class me, anyway.
How would that be arranged?
I reviewed the poker game in my mind. The dealer was one of Sergei’s boys, a guy named Iosif, though I think he went by Joe. If there were any cheating involved, the dealer would be the first suspect. A good mechanic could manipulate the deck to set up a big pot with a chosen winner. I’d have to check that angle.
But whether or not the dealer was in on it, my money and my car went to Dalonia Hade, a woman from out of town who carried tens of thousands of dollars in cash. I’d been so unsettled by losing Madge that until now I hadn’t asked myself who she was. After all, poker players often hunted up games when they traveled, hoping their unknown status would give them an initial advantage at the table. Often they relished the variety, playing the big shot if the stakes were small, or hoping for a score above their usual range if the players were flush.
And she’d certainly been the agent of my injury, especially when she’d refused to take a premium in cash for the car…but perhaps she wasn’t the instigator.
I called Mickey Tucker, my research assistant. Today, thanks to Thomas’ cash, I could afford to hire him, even to be generous.
He picked up after three rings, sounding sluggish. “Yo.”
“Mickey, I have a case and I need you. Good money, too.”
“You just said the magic word. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“How about you make it thirty so you can shower and put on clean clothes. And deodorant.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. I can do that if you want.”
“I want. I’ll have Kung Pao and fresh Diet Coke waiting for you on my desk.”
“Cool!” He hung up.
If only all men were so easy to please.
Okay, most of them are, I guess. It was me that wasn’t easy to please, I’m sure you’re thinking.
Mom always said I was too picky, but considering the source was a woman who would get high and sleep with just about anyone – what they called “free love” back then, but now just sounded like being a druggie slut – I didn’t give her opinion much credit.
Thank God she stayed faithful to Dad after they married, at least as far as I knew.
I ordered the Chinese for Mickey and me, and it arrived shortly before he did. I set it on my desk and waited there, checking my email.
“What’s up, boss?” Mickey said on his way up the basement steps after letting himself in from the back entrance. I’d given him a key recently, but put a separate lock on the door at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t that I distrusted him in major matters, but I could see him raiding my kitchen or accidentally leaving a window open.
I guess I’d call it the difference between trustworthiness and reliability.
“Like I told you,” I said, “I have a case. I’m trying to find out who murdered me.”
Mickey stared. “Huh?”
He reached for his bag of food and began to paw through it, so I said, “Take that downstairs and I’ll fill you in.” I didn’t want the office carpet stained with sauce.
Once he was settled in his chair and had begun eating, I told him about the last day’s happenings. Once I’d filled him in, I handed him an envelope. “There’s a thousand bucks to start with. I need to know everything possible about the dead Ms. Hade. Who is she, what was her job or profession, why was she in town, who’s she connected to, the works.”
“You want me to hack into SFPD’s system? I got a good back door in.”
“Yes, but leave that until last. I doubt there’s much in there yet anyway; the investigation’s only a few hours old and cops are hardly ever current on filing their paperwork. Once you’ve run out of other leads, see what you can find out without getting caught. Remember, they don’t give you internet access at San Quentin.”
“Aw, Cal. They don’t put white collar criminals in maximum security.”
“They might if they convicted you of interfering with a murder investigation. Don’t get caught. Think what it would do to your mother.”
“Probably be happy to have me out of the house,” he mumbled.
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Boyfriend.”
“Hers, not yours?”
Mickey laughed uproariously. “Funny, boss. You know I’m straight.”
“Yes, mostly. I’ve seen your browser history.”
“Ha, ha. Wait. What?”
“Never mind. Just do a good job and there’s more where that came from. Maybe enough to move out of your mom’s house.”
“Sweet!” Mickey stuffed the envelope in his pants pocket, and then began eating with one hand while working his mouse and keyboard with the other.
“I’ll be on my cell.” I left him to it, impatient to see what he’d find out about the player who’d beat me. Until then, though, I had other things to do.
I walked through the city to the Tenderloin, safe enough before the sun went down and things got more dangerous. Street people eyed me with that familiar mix of sly, hopeful resentment peculiar to those in the niche of the scavenger. Some approached me shuffling, sob stories on their lips and hands outstretched.
To my streetwise eyes, not a one of them looked genuinely in need, unless it was in need of a fix.
Some were startlingly clean and tidy, which told me they actually had homes and panhandling was a “job” more lucrative than flipping burgers, with no paperwork, taxes or bosses.
Others, the nervous, sallow, skinny ones, showed needle tracks and rotting teeth, hallmarks of junkies everywhere. The winos were distinguishable by their flab, their filthy hair and clothes.
Then there were the small-time dealers and the hookers, easy to spot by their outfits and their put-on confidence and bravado. I ignored all these bottom feeders, keeping my eyes open for those with violence lurking just below the surface, the pimps and the muggers, or those staring at me for a bit too long. Pickpockets were common as well, preying on the tourists who flocked like sheep from landmark to landmark, soaking up vicarious thrills from the lurid history of the area.
Don’t get me wrong; like Soho in London or the Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, the Tenderloin wasn’t all that dangerous if you knew what to watch for and projected an air of alertness. Twenty-five thousand people packed into fifty blocks, and the average murder rate was only one a month. Those were pretty good odds.
The lights of the strip joints, bars and restaurants were aglow already in the late afternoon, competing with street preachers and poets spouting strings of words that I did my best to ignore. I shouldered my way past, gave a light-fingered urchin a warning glare, and rounded a corner to see a beat cop handcuffing a protesting gang member, two more officers nearby facing off with several other young men cut from the same cloth.
If I’d still been on the force I’d have helped, and the urge was there. It would probably never go away, but after a quick look told me they had it under control, I walked on by to Vyazma.
Inside, I waved Sergei to a section of the bar where we could talk in relative privacy. “Did you hear?”
“I hear many things,” he replied.
“About the dead woman.”
“In your car?”
“Yes.”
“Then no, I not hear of it.”
“Funny, Uncle Sergei. Listen, I’ve been thinking about the game last night. Maybe I got set up to be taken, big. Is there any chance your dealer was in on it? That he was paid off? And is he a good enough mechanic to cold-deck on the fly?”
Sergei’s brow furrowed. “Maybe small chance. He never has enough money. But he knows you are my favorite, solntse, and that I would cut off his balls if he harmed you.”
“I’d appreciate it if you leaned on him to find out for sure.”
“Is easier to believe somebody cheated than that this woman outplayed you, yes?”
I made a sour face. “Yes. By the way, how did she end up here?”
“The concierge at the Vitale is friend of ours. He referred her.”
“There are half a dozen closer games in more
upscale locations, no offense –”
“– none taken –”
“– so why did she come here? Did the concierge steer her here intentionally, or did she insist on coming here?”
Sergei shook his finger at me. “This is good question. I will ask my friend.” He picked up the ancient landline from under the bar.
The phone itself had a rotary dial. It had probably been put in fifty years ago by Ma Bell. They built things to last back then. I watched in idle fascination as Sergei stuck his index finger in a hole and spun the plastic circle seven times.
When he was done speaking into the receiver in Russian, he told me, “My friend remembers the woman. Asked specifically for Vyazma. Paid him one hundred dollars for referral.”
“Interesting. And you have no idea who she was otherwise?”
Without answering, he reached below the bar again and brought out a clipboard. He then laboriously copied out a number onto a piece of notebook paper and handed it to me. “This is serial number on gun.”
“Sergei, you old dog! I never knew you kept records like this.”
“Comes in handy sometimes.”
“So I see. Thanks. It might help.”
“Just remember one thing, Cal.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone still want you dead. Keep your eyes open.”
I shivered, realizing he was right. I’d become so interested in my investigation that I’d forgotten I might be a target. “Can Rostislav run me back, then?”
“Of course.” He signaled the big man across the room.
Back at my office, Mickey waved me off with a mumble, head buried in his research, so I called Tanner Brody to see if Homicide had turned up anything.
“Security camera footage from Coit Tower itself shows she didn’t come into the building,” he told me. “We’re enhancing the long-range shots of the parking lot to try to see if she met anyone out there.”
“Any more on cause of death?”
“ME says her heart looked healthy as a horse in the autopsy. Ditto for other organs. They’re running an extended tox panel, because his working theory is some kind of drug.”
“Poison, you mean.”
Slipknot: A Private Investigator Crime and Suspense Mystery Thriller (California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series Book 3) Page 3