Loose Ends (19 page)

I jumped to my feet, putting my hand in my pocket on the derringer. Questions still seethed in my head. “You can’t just walk out.”

“Whyever not?” Thomas stared pointedly at my hand as if he knew what I had there, and then looked into my eyes.

“I…I need information. The mother. What about Mira?” Keep him talking, keep him engaged.

“What about her?”

“She was in on it somehow.”

Thomas raised one of those incongruous white eyebrows. “Oh?” Amusement danced in his eyes again.

“Yes. Something about her responses was off. And if it was me, my kid, I would have called the cops the next day, when she found out the heist hadn’t happened. Only she didn’t find out, because she only talked to the monitoring center for about five seconds, not long enough to really check to see if someone had opened the drug warehouse with her stolen identity like she claimed.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have?” I could tell he was grinning at me beneath that scarf.

“Ten grand.”

“Come again?”

“Mira said ‘ten grand.’ Most people would have said ‘ten thousand dollars.’ Who uses words like that?” I paused for his answer.

“Cops? Gamblers? The Mob? Or, people who have no lives outside of work? The ones who watch police shows, thrillers and organized crime dramas?”

I shook my head. “Maybe, but I don’t buy it. I think she was part of it somehow.”

Thomas cocked his head in apparent disbelief. “A mother using her own child like that?”

“A few years back a mother strapped her two kids into a Mazda and rolled it into a lake because her new boyfriend didn’t want a family.”

“Not this mother. She loves Talia, whatever her faults.” Thomas’s calm demeanor stirred slightly. “I’ll tell you something I shouldn’t, but you have to promise me you’ll leave well enough alone.”

I snorted. “A promise made at gunpoint is meaningless.”

“Do you see a weapon in my hand? Mine was just to make sure you put yours aside. You can walk out of here any time and you’ll never see me again.” He paused, then made a shooing motion. “Go on. Run along. Take your phone with you. Call the coppers. Or pull out your popgun and try to shoot me before I get away.”

I pressed my lips together and took my hand out of my pocket. “No thanks.”

“I figured. You want all the answers, but I’m not going to provide them. I’ll give you this, though, because I’d rather you didn’t dig further. You’re right. The plan did go wrong. The girl was never supposed to be part of it, but the crew wanted more leverage on the mother. She was going to get a cut for selling them the way in to the warehouse and deny all knowledge, but they wanted insurance so they took the girl.”

I leaned back against the doorframe, mind spinning. “Right. That fits. But Mira’s been sending all her extra money to her ex and if there’s no payoff to her…”

Thomas shrugged. “The check’s worthless. I doubt she has a thousand in her account, much less ten.”

“Crap.” The epithet thudded flatly.

“Indeed.
C’est la vie
.” He sidled toward the stairway, keeping me in sight. I suppose it was a trained habit; I had no intention of drawing on him.

“I wonder where the crew’s cash went,” I said with a cock of my head. “They must have collected when they gave Houdini the pills.”

“Yes…that
is
a mystery.”

I cleared my throat, lifting my chin. “Did you kill Bill?”

“No. That was the others being stupid and they’ve answered for their idiocy, don’t you think?” He turned to go.

“Wait, Thomas. Why did you do this? Why involve me?”

“I don’t want the authorities looking for the mysterious stranger that rescued the kidnapped girl, that’s all.”

“Bullshit. There’s something more.”

“Maybe you impressed me with your driving skills.”

“That was after you’d already started following me. Why even let yourself be seen?”

“A foolish impulse, I suppose. You’ve never had one of those?”

“Never,” I deadpanned, and he laughed.

“I could make a report about you,” I said.

“You won’t.”

“Why not?”

His face twitched beneath the scarf, perhaps the beginning of a smile. “Because you appreciate justice. Even if it’s imperfect.”

“Is that what this was?”

Thomas shrugged, backing down the steps. “You decide.”

“But why come talk to me?” I called.

“Toodle-oo,” was all he said, and then he was gone down the stairs and out the unlocked lower level door. I watched from the window as he fast-walked into the dimness.

I really needed to get that new hardware installed.

“Cheerio, guv’ner,” I breathed, and took the guns out of the freezer. Holstering the pistols the better for my body heat to rid them of chill, I shut the upstairs against the threat of further rain before putting my own mug in the sink and rinsing it, the ritual helping to calm me as excess adrenaline bled off.

His cup I slipped into a ziplock bag and then placed it in the rear of the refrigerator. He’d never taken his gloves off, so fingerprints were out, but DNA was the coming thing in solving crimes. Maybe his saliva would prove useful somewhere down the road.

Opening a cupboard, I brought out a bottle of wine, not even looking at the label. Though not much of a drinker, I grew up in California with Napa on my tongue and felt in need right now. Setting a wine glass on the table, I poured it full and then stared at the empty surface.

The check. The card. The bastard. He’d filched both of them.

Taking a long drink of my wine, I sat down at my kitchenette table and pulled out the photocopy of Mira’s business card I had made. I read it again, trying to fend off the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at the hit man’s theft of ten thousand dollars. Putting that aside with difficulty for the moment, I forced myself to think.

The photocopy of the card read,
Cole said you can help – PLEASE CALL RIGHT AWAY.
And what had Mira mentioned at her house? “Cole Sage was the only one who had connections to
people like you.
” Which was silly. Mira didn’t need any special connections to hire a P.I. And who would call me, a middle-class professional, “people like you”?

I stared at the copy of the card.

“
I suppose in your business…,” Mira had also said. As if the P.I. trade were unsavory.

But what if that wasn’t what she’d meant?

All the little clues added up suddenly. It had been staring me in the face the whole time.

The card had not been meant for me.

People in your business. People like you. Thought you would be a man.

The card had been for Thomas. Thomas who, in his line of work, wouldn’t want direct contact with a client. Who wouldn’t keep a phone number for long. Who might have a dead drop somewhere that Cole would know about, maybe activated by an anonymous web address. That’s how it would be done.

And Mira hadn’t written any words on the card. Just the number.

So, instead of calling Mira, Thomas had added the plea for help and the reference to Cole in order to thoroughly pique my interest. Then he had put the card in my office night drop, directing me onto the case. Then he deliberately let himself be seen in the Audi – perhaps not the first time, but certainly the last – provoking me into following him and leading me to the girl.

I shook my head to clear it and gulped more wine. Too many loose ends. Too many questions. I hated both, but unless I somehow found Thomas again I wasn’t likely to get any answers.

I can always call Cole, I thought. It’s a good excuse to see what he knows about it, or how Mira knows him.

Might Mira be one of Cole's conquests? No, Cole wasn’t really like that…I didn’t think. I could ask how he’s acquainted with Thomas, why he trusts him…meet Cole over coffee, maybe a light dinner. I’d put on a dress.

God, I hate dresses, I thought. Forget him. Just forget him. He’s as inaccessible as…

As Thomas?

Just my luck. All the genuinely interesting guys I’d met recently were out of reach – hooked up, anonymous, drunks, dead – okay, those last two overlapped – too young, too brash, too…something.

Was I too picky? Mom said so.

Glass in hand and half-empty bottle in the crook of my elbow, I descended the stairs to the main floor and my darkening office. Intending to throw back the curtains and enjoy what fading light made it past the drizzle, I placed the bottle and the glass on the desk and stopped, startled.

A neat, inch-thick pile of hundred-dollar bills sat in the exact middle of the desk calendar, bound with a rubber band. They didn’t have the fresh-printed look of a bank stack. Before I even picked up the bundle I knew what it would contain.

Ten thousand dollars.

I sat down in the dimness, forgetting the curtains and staring at the pile for a moment before picking it up and riffling it. Well, I had earned it…though Thomas might be setting me up for the future. Taking his money might give him leverage. But I had bills to pay and poker to play, not to mention the body shop for Molly.

Feeling suddenly generous, I pulled ten Benjamins out of the pile for Mickey and slipped them into an envelope, put the rest into the floor safe, and then refilled my glass, feeling the wine filtering into my bloodstream.

Looking at the phone, I contemplated calling the cops, my new buddy Brody perhaps. I had enough on Thomas to cause him trouble, with a physical description and that accent to identify him – unless that was as fake as the wig – but he was right.

I wouldn’t turn him in.

Why not? Not because of the money or his charm, his refraining from killing me or even because of a dozen loose ends I hoped he might someday tie up.

Because he was right. I do appreciate justice. Even if it is imperfect.

Chapter 16

Sitting on my office balcony sipping coffee, derriere in a cushioned chair and feet up on the rail, I gazed over Hill Street and across the roofs of the opposite row. The new morning sun had burned off the fog and I reveled in the magnificent view. One thing the City by the Bay never boasted was smog, unlike its bloated cousin in the L.A. basin to the south.

Three days had passed and Friday stared me in the face. I’d had time to mull over that frenetic day and concluded I’d not done too badly. I still had a boatload of questions that I knew would bother me for a while, but that was nothing new. When the next case came along, this one would go into the files, the old-fashioned paper ones.

Mickey said he’d digitize everything for me, but that would mean they’d be hackable. No, better to stick to manila folders.

I hadn’t yet decided what to do about Luger’s dinner invitation. The man was a creep, but a fascinating one who might be fun to get to know. I always did like to flirt with danger, and dangerous men, I admitted to myself.

A buzz at the front door brought me to my feet. I leaned over the rail and saw Jay Allsop and Tanner Brody in their cop-issue suits. With smooth-shaven faces, both seemed fresher than normal. I wondered if they’d cleaned up just for me. After taking one last drag and forcefully exhaling the smoke, Jay ground out a cigarette on my gray-painted wooden steps while Tanner chewed on a toothpick.

“You couldn’t do that on the sidewalk?” I called from the balcony.

“Sorry,” he said without any evidence of contrition. “You wanna let us in?”

“If you bring in my paper,” I said, pointing at the rolled
Chronicle
at his feet.

Brody picked it up and waved.

I put my cup in the sink and took my time descending the stairs. You could never be too careful in these old, creaky Victorians. Ushering them in, I waved them to seats on my office sofa before sitting down in my own chair, the desk between us as a psychological barrier. Brody tossed the newspaper on my desk. I pushed it to the side for later.

 “You here to harass me some more, Jay?” I said.

Smiling, Brody brought out his flip notebook as Allsop narrowed his eyes and spoke. “We’re still looking into this Bill Clawson death. You said you were working on a case with him. We have questions about it.”

“You know everything’s confidential.”

“I could get a subpoena. You’re not a lawyer or doctor, you know.”

I looked pointedly around the room as if searching for my identity. “Oh, yeah. I wondered why I had so few patients in this morning.”

Allsop’s face soured further. “Look, Cal, you know the drill. We need some information and if you want us off your back you’ll give it to us so we can move on. If not…” He looked around my office in deliberate imitation of my own gesture. “We might have to get a warrant. Turn this place upside down, you know? Could get messy. And the city tax authority might need to take a look at your paperwork. See if there’s anything that got missed.”

“That’s what I love about you, Jay. Your way with people. Straight from polite to threatening in one quick jump.”

“Whatever gets the job done.”

“Yeah, the job.” I sighed, feeling a bit of perverse sympathy for Allsop. He really wasn’t a bad cop. Not on the take as far as I knew, and he stayed reasonably near the straight and narrow. He was just such a gloomy and miserable son of a bitch. Brody’s bright optimism was probably driving him crazy.

That cheered me up.

Oddly, I’d probably been a better match as a partner.

I supposed I could play hardball, twisting Allsop up, but that would be exploiting my superior bargaining position merely for the fun of stepping on his neck. That didn’t seem smart. He was right, he could make my life miserable for a while. Better to build bridges than burn them, and though I’d probably never be a cop again I could get a lot out of a good working relationship with SFPD.

“Look, I’d like to help.” I said reasonably. “Why don’t you ask your questions? I’ll tell you as much as I can, but I’ll want to ask a few of my own. All off the record.” I gave Brody a significant look.

“Non-attribution. Right,” the rookie replied and grinned. Yeah, I think he’d drive me nuts too with all that cheerfulness.

Allsop nodded. “Okay. Did your case have anything to do with the drug heist at North Bay Distributors?”