Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (21 page)

“You’re an astute observer, Elena. I wouldn’t have come unless it was a life-or-death matter. Stacy may be in danger.”

“What sort?”

“I can’t talk about it, or tell you how I got the information, but I want to warn her.”

“And you want me to deliver that message?” Elena looked puzzled.

“No, no—there’s a specific message, and I—well—to tell you might endanger you as well. I must talk to her myself.” Elena shrugged. “I can give you her address and phone number, but I sent her out on a dinner date, and she won’t be home for hours.”

“Uh—forgive my ignorance, but how does a dinner date work?”

“Just like the amateur kind, only the guy pays for the pleasure of your company. Mostly guys from out of town. They want to take a good-looking woman to an expensive restaurant like Amelio’s, which is where I sent Stacy, and they want to make damn sure the evening’s going to end up with sex.”

“At his hotel?”

“Usually, yes.”

“And does the woman stay all night?”

“If the john pays for it. This guy didn’t, so Stacy ought to be home by about one o’clock at the latest.”

I’d heard enough. I told Rob and Mickey to let me down. Rob was so excited he was practically doing a jig. “What’s going on in there?”

“That man is going to commit a murder tonight, unless we stop him,” I said. “Rob, you wait for him to leave and then bang on the door until Elena answers. Tell her to call Stacy immediately and tell her I’m on my way to get her at Amelio’s. Tell her to tell Stacy to get rid of the john and come with me, and not to leave under any circumstances until I get there.”

“What? Are you crazy? I’m supposed to be following the senator. Also, I haven’t a clue who Stacy is or what any of that means.”

“It’s an emergency, okay? Come on, Mickey.”

But she balked. “Don’t you think we should call the cops?”

“I’m damned if I’m going to make a fool of myself again. We’ll just pick up Miss Stacy Clayton and take her to the nearest cop shop, which I believe is Central Station. Why don’t you meet us there, Rob, and I’ll explain everything? No time now.”

“Fuck!” said Rob Burns of the
Chronicle
.

I had in mind to leave with a great screeching of tires, but the Volvo stalled. It’s an eccentric car and does this sometimes.

It took about five minutes to get the damn thing started, and I kept telling myself I wasn’t worried. I trusted Rob to deliver the message and Elena to be forceful enough to convince Stacy of the urgency of the situation and Stacy to be smart enough to wait for me and the senator to be canny enough to go immediately to Stacy’s and start booby-trapping her house or something. It would hardly serve his purpose—which was keeping her quiet—to hie his Mercedes over to Amelio’s and march in and gun her down.

As I said, that’s what I was telling myself. But the urgency to get there was almost unbearable. What if Stacy left the restaurant before Elena could call? What if Rob decided I was crazy and carried out his assignment of following the senator and didn’t even deliver the message? Oh God, what if the Volvo just plain gave up?

I heard a car start in the alley behind Elena’s.

“That must be the senator,” said Mickey in a controlled voice. “Let’s try it again.”

I shifted and the Volvo started, and we did great for four blocks until we hit a red light at Fillmore.

“God damn it!” I said. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

“Easy, girl,” said Mickey, who apparently had appointed herself my caretaker. “The thing I don’t get—”

The Volvo screeched forward again, faster than it should have with an officer of the court at the wheel, but Mickey kept on talking, either in a frantic effort to get me interested in something besides killing us both or in blind ignorance of the danger she was in; it couldn’t have been faith in my driving. “The thing I don’t get—”

“Christ on a crutch!” Some idiot was stopped in my lane, talking to someone on the sidewalk. I leaned on my horn. He didn’t budge. I kept going, and Mickey covered her head with her hands.

At the last second, I had to swing into the left lane to go around him, no matter if there was an oncoming car. There was. His brakes screeched. So did mine.

We both stopped in time, but it was a good thing Mickey and I had our seatbelts on, or we’d have ejected like a couple of characters in a James Bond movie.

The other driver—a large and angry-looking black man—got out of his car and came forward, no doubt with the intention of giving me a well-deserved piece of his mind, or possibly a rap in the teeth. I leaned on my horn.

“What you think you doin’, bitch?” he shouted over the din.

“My sister’s having a baby,” I shouted back, still honking. Mickey cowered in the shotgun seat.

“I don’t care if she’s havin’ a epileptic fit. You oughta know better—”

“Now,
Rebecca!” shouted Mickey.

The car in the right lane had taken the hint and left rubber all over the street. I swung back into that lane and followed suit, fighting down the urge to give the other driver the finger. Sure, he was a jerk who’d have let Mickey give birth right in the Volvo, but after all, the whole thing
was
my fault.

It was a good thing I let him off, too, because I hit another red light at the corner, and he could have caught up with us and killed us if he’d wanted to. I swore and Mickey kept cowering until we got on the freeway at Gough Street and I got in the fast lane and gunned that little gray mother, a good fifteen minutes from takeoff.

Amelio’s was in North Beach, nestled on Powell Street just south of Washington Square. The senator could have already been there if he’d had any better luck than we had. But he wouldn’t be, I told myself. What was the point?

“What I don’t understand,” said Mickey, “is how he can kill Stacy now that Elena knows he was asking about her. I mean, doesn’t he have to kill her to cover his tracks?”

I’d thought of that too. “He’s not going to get the chance,” I said. “He doesn’t know we know what he’s up to, and if Stacy gets it, I’ve got an idea the police will listen to me for once.”

“Yes, but unless he’s gone completely mad, surely he wouldn’t take the risk. It doesn’t make sense, Rebecca. And neither does the other part, really. He’s always been a decent politician. Unless he’s in some terrible financial difficulty, why would he sell out to the mob?”

“Dammit, Mickey, we just saw him feeding Elena a cockamamie story. What kind of proof do you want?”

“I don’t say you’re wrong,” she said in a hurt voice. “I just don’t understand
why
, that’s all.”

“Power corrupts,” I snapped, aware that it was a facile answer, but I was tired out from thinking too much. I’d have to worry about that part later.

Mickey didn’t answer, and we were silent as we fetched up at the Broadway exit and began fighting our way through the North Beach traffic. It was much too slow going for my peace of mind, so I turned right on Sansome and went to Union, so as to approach from the north. We turned off Union Street onto Powell, and I pulled up kitty-corner to the restaurant. I couldn’t get directly across the street because of the parking garage there that’s always debouching cars at unsafe speeds, but it didn’t matter; we had a clear view of Amelio’s. Stacy wasn’t outside.

“I’ll have to go in and get her,” I said. “Take the wheel, and be ready to scratch off when we come out.”

“We’re in that big a hurry?”

I nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“I’m not sure I can handle your car.” She had a point. When the Volvo gets temperamental, no one but me can figure out how to coax it into submission. “Okay, you go,” I said.

“But she doesn’t know me. Elena told her to wait for
you
, remember?”

“Damn! Okay, here—take my driver’s license for proof you’re with me.” I fumbled for it and described Stacy briefly.

“If she has any doubts, just have her peek out the door and I’ll wave.”

“Okay.” She darted across the street, slender and lithe in her jeans.

I waited about five minutes, clenching my teeth and every now and then taking my hands off the steering wheel and wiping them on my pants. I also kept glancing at my watch, which is how I know how long I waited. I don’t have to tell you how long it felt like.

Mickey and Stacy came out looking like a couple of old-fashioned butch-femme lesbians having a lover’s quarrel, the way they were dressed—Stacy was in some sort of floaty white dress—and the way Mickey was practically dragging her kicking and screaming. Stacy looked briefly my way, and I waved as promised, but that didn’t seem to relieve her mind any. Apparently, the problem wasn’t whether the right person was calling for her; she didn’t seem to want to be called for at all. I figured it had something to do with the hundred bucks she stood to lose by cutting the date short, and shifted into drive as they started across the street.

As I glanced back up from the gearshift, a Mercedes whipped out of the parking lot, heading right for them.

I made no decision, or if I did, I don’t remember it. All I remember is stomping the accelerator flush with the floor, and then a godawful crunch as I hit the Mercedes broadside.

I couldn’t see if the driver was the senator, or if Mickey and Stacy were safe. I don’t remember seeing anything at all. All I really know about what happened next was that someone lost her cool and screamed. The way I knew it was me was I noticed my mouth had filled up with glass.

I spent the second longest night of my life lying on a gurney at San Francisco General Hospital, also known as Mission Emergency. I don’t remember getting there, so I can’t tell you what that was like. I just remember feeling I was going to throw up, which is how concussion sometimes affects you, and holding Mickey’s hand.

I’d managed to break the senator’s hip, which I’m not the least bit sorry about to this day. The sonofabitch would have killed my sister if I hadn’t rammed him. He got most of the attention in the emergency room, and I vaguely remember Jodie Handley coming in at some point. Mom and Dad didn’t, because Mickey and I decided not to call them till we got back to my house. As it turned out, that was around daylight.

Mickey made breakfast and brought it to me, and we both got under Aunt Ellen’s satin comforter to eat it. I felt a lot better after a couple of poached eggs on toast, but not well enough to call the folks.

Mickey did, and laid it on so thick about how I’d saved her life that they were scarcely any trouble at all. Mom did say she’d be over later with soup, but I suppose that was inevitable. Dad just kept repeating Calvin Handley’s name in disbelief.

They were so grateful about my saving Mickey that I decided I was a heroine and called Chris with quite a spirited version, heavy on grisly details but light on explanations. Unfortunately, I still needed some.

Then I got a call myself—from a steaming Rob Burns wanting to know why I hadn’t turned up at Central Station. Imagine the fun I had with that one! In the course of it, I also learned that he’d heard about the senator’s mob connections from “sources,” which is why he was carrying on like some character from the Lou Grant show the night before. He never has named the sources—either to me or to the police.

By then I was a big fan of Rob’s, but I could hardly wait to get him off the phone, which wasn’t easy considering he’d stumbled on a page-one story. Of course, in a couple of hours he could have gotten it from the cops, but then so could any other reporter, and he’d sewed it up for himself just by dialing my number.

The reason I was so eager to get rid of him was that I wanted to call Martinez. I wanted to relish informing him from my bed of pain how his cockamamie theory about Parker had nearly caused two more murders, including that of my own sister, and how I had risked my life to straighten out his botched investigation and how if he didn’t let Parker loose in the next five minutes, I’d have his job.

But it wasn’t any fun at all. It seems Jodie Handley had had a heart-to-heart with her hubby, and she’d called Martinez at home. Even as we talked, Martinez gave me to understand that my client was being released. Somehow he managed to convey that he’d solved the case himself, and he didn’t say he was sorry or even ask how my head was. The horse’s ass.

I stayed in bed that day and the next, and Mom came, and so did Chris and Rob and a lot of other reporters, but I had Mom send them all away but Rob.

Parker came too, with a couple dozen roses, but he didn’t stay long. We were distant with each other, both knew the romance was over. It would it be putting it mildly to say the time wasn’t right for it?

The person I was happiest to see was Uncle Walter. He took my hand and ’fessed up and said he was sorry for the way he’d treated me. I said I was sorry for what I’d done too—suspecting him of murder and all—and we got back on solid uncle-niece ground again. Kandi’d tried to blackmail him, all right, but he hadn’t given her a cent. I’m proud of him. And I’m happy to say the police found his watch and gave it back.

The senator pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a few lesser charges. I was exactly right about what happened:

He’d panhandled some change after he left me, called Elena, and gone back to the bordello to find his clothes with Kandi’s apricot feathers on them and the money missing. Then he’d gone out the back door again, retrieved his car, and waited for Kandi at the front of the house. When she came out with Stacy, he saw he couldn’t accost her on the street, so he followed her to my apartment. She went in immediately, leaving the note for me, and he rang my bell. She let him in, apparently stashing the money in the fern pot while he mounted the stairs. She told him she didn’t have it, they quarreled, and he lost his temper and hit her with the statue, holding it by the head as I’d postulated. He took out his handkerchief and wiped it immediately, unknowingly leaving Parker’s print on it. Then he went into the kitchen and found my rubber gloves to wear while he looked for the money.

He lied to Elena and me about telling the police he was at the bordello the night of the murder.