Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (15 page)

I got home fifteen minutes before Sally was due, jumped into the shower, scrubbed until the stink of hot dogs, peanuts, barbecue smoke, sweat, and stupidity was mostly gone, pulled a Mt. Tarn ale from the fridge, and sat my clean jeans down on the front stoop to wait.

She pushed open the sticky gate right on time, gave me a cheery smile, plunked her briefcase down on the steps, and asked me if I had another ale. It was all I could do not to trip over my own feet jumping up to get her one. I was wishing I’d had the foresight to stick a couple of steins in the freezer, but I brought her an un-iced one anyway.

The buyer, she told me, had called her cell phone on his cell phone to say he was stuck in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge and would be a few minutes late.

Now I understand how that kind of thing can happen, especially at the height of the tourist season. The Vista Point parking lot is full, people from Hamburg and Yokohama and Milwaukee are driving slow to get a look over the railings, and the sight of San Francisco— Babylon, Oz, Shangri-La— well, it’s enough to make you gasp, and it’s hard to drive when you’re gasping. Then of course there’s the additional sight of all the other tourists from Hamburg, Yokohama, and Milwaukee strolling across the bridge, smiling like lunatics, taking each other’s pictures.

But I really hate it when people are late. It’s not just a matter of cranky middle age, either. I’ve always hated it. I hate waiting. I can never think of anything to do that will fill the time in any reasonable way, so I just wait, life on hold.

It should have helped that I was drinking ale with a gorgeous, leggy redhead— she wasn’t wearing hiking shorts today, but the skirt was short enough and the sandals showed off pink-painted toenails and a red rose— I guess they were decals?— on each big toe. Made me wonder if she had a tattoo somewhere and if I’d ever get to see it. Anyway, being there with her should have helped, and it did, a little, but the thing was, I wanted to concentrate on Sally and on the evening together. I didn’t want to be interrupted by the guy showing up in the middle of telling her a great story or making meaningful eye contact.

So we talked about the buyer. He was a stockbroker, she said, worked in The City, wanted a house in Marin. He was ready to buy, easy to qualify, and didn’t want to spend the extra bucks to live a quarter-hour closer to the bridge in Sausalito or Mill Valley.

He showed up half an hour late, and he was driving a BMW, which I thought was not a good sign. Sally had left the gate open, but he hesitated a minute anyway, taking a squinty look at the front of the house, eyeing the perfectly good roof, shooting a speculative glance my way. Oh good, I thought, he was going to play Shrewd Businessman. I took a breath and began pretending I didn’t care whether he bought the place or not.

After that little pause, he marched up the walk. Assertion. Confidence. No-nonsense kind of guy. I stood up. So did Sally. We all shook hands. Well, I didn’t shake hands with Sally, but I wanted to. His name was Mark David. Figured. He looked like a Mark. He was wearing Dockers and Top-Siders without socks and a green T-shirt that said BAY TO BREAKERS. His teeth were perfect. He was shorter than me but in better shape. It was clear he liked looking at Sally. I snarled internally and asked a silent question: “Think you can fix a gate, asshole?”

Sally pulled a stack of flyers from her briefcase and handed one to Mark and one to me. She also gave him a copy of the termite report. I already had one of those. There was a picture of the house, the asking price— $250,000— and a description. Potential, potential, potential. Charming two-bedroom fixer in the heart of Marin, bring your hammer. We walked into the house. Sally put the rest of the flyers on my coffee table.

“For the open house tomorrow, Jake.”

Oh, yeah, the open house. Once, in Oakland, I’d made the mistake of sticking around for that. Four hours of listening to people whine about my home. One woman sat in the living room for twenty minutes looking sad, then angry, and finally said she couldn’t buy the place because my furniture suited the house so well she could never compete. Then there was the guy who sneered, giggled, and offered me $100,000 under asking. I’d find something else to do on Sunday.

Mark didn’t giggle. On the contrary, he was one serious thirty-year-old. He pulled a little notepad out of his pants pocket and asked questions about the age of the appliances. He studied the termite report and said he wanted to inspect every spot it mentioned. Hey, a little rot here. A little beetle damage there. Big deal. This was, after all, the urban forest. I decided to watch TV and leave Sally to it.

At one point I saw the two of them walk by the living room window. He was shaking his perfectly clipped head.

Half an hour later, he stuck that same obnoxious head in the front door.

“Just wanted to get another look at, you know, how it is when you walk in.”

“Sure, Mark.”

I watched through the open door as Sally escorted him to the gate. He couldn’t let it be, oh no, not Mark. He tried to close it behind him. It balked. It dragged on the ground. It squealed. He shook his head again, said something to Sally, got in his tan Beamer, and eased off down the street.

“What do you think?” I asked her when she came back in the house.

“I think he likes it.”

I didn’t want to tell the woman her business, so I changed the subject. “What do you feel like eating?”

I’ve dated a lot of women. I’ve gone out with the ones whose only answer to that question is “expensively,” although they never use that exact word. I’ve gone out with strict vegans, and with those who won’t settle for anything more conventional than East Cumquat fried ants, or anything less trendy than whatever’s
nouvelle
at the moment.

This one took another little chunk of my heart by saying, “I’ve been craving Chinese lately, although I’d go for Thai if you’d rather.”

Fairfax has both, along with the requisite Marin Italian, a couple of diners, a brew pub, and two places where you can get falafel, salads, herb tea, live native musicians, and the lowdown on the latest local political issue.

I said I’d drive, and she climbed into my Falcon.

“A classic,” she said.

“You’re amazing,” I said. We settled on one of the two Chinese places on Bolinas Avenue, the dark one that occupies its own little house.

We’d started the evening with ale, but red wine seemed like a better idea now. She suggested merlot. They didn’t have any, but they had a decent cabernet and we ordered that. No, I’m not a wine maven. But you can’t live in Northern California without learning something. Even people who live here wander around the wine country sometimes on a free afternoon. Which was one thought for a second date, if we had one. Maybe we’d see a black helicopter scoping out the grapes.

“So, Jake— where are you from?” This is a pretty standard question for one Californian to ask another. Sometimes someone says, “California,” or even “Marin County,” where people seem to go on for generations. But more often the answer is someplace far away.

She was born in Minneapolis, grew up there, moved to the Bay Area right out of college. She knew Chicago. I’d been to her town once or twice.

“Minneapolis is a great place, Sally. Why’d you leave?”

She laughed. “Chicago’s great too, Jake; why did you leave?”

“I came here in 1970. Everyone was coming here then, so I did it too.”

“Well, they were still coming in 1978, and you could still buy a house.”

I topped off our glasses. “Did you get into real estate right away?”

“Just one house, then, but that was all it took.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I knew about that. If you bought the right house in the Bay Area in 1978, and I had by pure dumb luck, you’d have made a $200,000 profit by 1990. Of course, it was all play money, because if you wanted to buy a house again you’d have to spend it all. Some people took the money, ran back to Ohio, bought for $80,000, and held onto the rest. But some of us had fallen in love with Oz and couldn’t leave for anything. “Ever think about going somewhere else?”

She smiled. “No. And now the market’s soaring again.”

I smiled back at her. It sure was. But I figured she was still talking about real estate.

Then we played “what do you miss about your home town.” She missed all the pretty little parks, the lakes, Minnehaha Falls, she said.

Chicago was known for something else. “I miss the smell of corruption in the morning.”

Sally laughed. “Funny.
Apocalypse Now,
right? Only that was napalm?”

“Got it in one. I don’t miss the cold and the heat, and if I want snow I can drive a few hours and find it. But I miss a few things. There’s a smell and feel of summer you carry with you from childhood that’s never the same somewhere else.”

She brightened, nodding. “Yes! That midwest humidity, the greenness in the heat. Here, when it’s hot, it’s not green, usually.”

Exactly. Our food came. She’d ordered something with tofu and eggplant and garlic. I’d ordered something with green beans and prawns. We each took a bite. Good? Good.

“And,” I said, “I miss Midwestern chow mein.”

She put down her chopsticks and positively glowed at me. “There’s nothing here like it. Did you ever actually try to order chow mein in California?”

“Noodles,” I said with disdain. “Pale noodles and things.” I hate West Coast chow mein.

She made a face. “Awful. I’ve always thought of the good stuff as Minneapolis chow mein, but I guess you had in in Chicago too.”

“Oh, yeah. If I were a rich man—”

“Fiddler on the Roof
.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, if I were, I’d have it flown out here once a week.”

“You could make it yourself. I do. Not as good as the old Nankin in Minneapolis, but I wing it.”

Oh, God, was I dreaming? Had I died? “How. How do you make it?”

“The key ingredients are celery— lots of celery— onion, mushrooms, some kind of protein— beef, chicken, whatever— lots of soy sauce. And then there’s the one thing that makes it right, the ingredient you might never guess is there. Molasses.”

“Molasses? Really?” Of course. See, the sauce just has to be brown.

“Really. And it should be cooked in a cast-iron Dutch oven and served only over crispy fried noodles.”

The kind you buy in a bag at the supermarket.

My prawns and green beans dish was tasty. We get great Chinese food in the Bay Area. But it was all ashes in my mouth, as memories of takeout from that place on Diversey drifted in out of the past to haunt my taste buds. I slugged down more wine.

I wanted to say, “Will you make it for me?” But I knew that was sexist and presumptuous and she’d probably hate me. So instead, I said, “How about helping me make it some time?”

“Sure.” Just like that. Sure. And we had a second date. Between that reality and the thought of the chow mein, I was a very happy man.

As we picked at our food, we talked about her work, about the open house the next day, about my current and future houses. Then came the question I never quite knew how to answer: “And what exactly is it that you do, Jake?”

I tend to lead up to it slow and easy. “I used to be a cop. In Chicago.”

“That’s some place to be a cop.” No shit. “And what do you do now?”

“I do things for people. Help them out.”

“Like a consultant, or like a hit man?” She was kidding, but she looked a little nervous.

“I do investigative work.”

“You’re a private investigator?”

“Yes.” I didn’t tell her I’m unlicensed. I figured she could wait until the second date to hear my political philosophy. Or whatever the hell it is.

“That’s amazing. What are you working on now?”

I don’t usually talk about current cases much, but I wanted to talk to her. I thought about it, looking into her gorgeous blue eyes.

“I don’t know if I want to tell you.”

“Now I’m even more interested.”

Those eyes. Hypnotic. But I was working undercover. What if she was connected with someone who was connected with the Command? What if…? Oh, horseshit, I thought. She couldn’t be.

She stared into my eyes, I stared into hers. Finally, I shook my head, reluctantly.

“I’m dealing with some nasty people, Sally. I will tell you, but not yet. Not until I know you better.”

Her glance fell and she looked into her wine. We sat silent. When she looked up again, I saw the mix I’d dreaded seeing: Distrust. Skepticism. Disinterest. She thought I was bullshitting. A loser with a big story.

“Sally, I’m telling you the truth. You met Rosie.”

“Yes.”

“She has an agency. We work together.”

“She does? You do?”

“She does and we do. Ask her. Really.”

“Will you tell me what you’re working on if I make the chow mein for you and only ask you to chop celery?”

Things were good and warm and connected, and I could breathe again.

“I think for now I’ll do all the chopping and keep my options open.”

“If you must.” The words were harsh, but the look was sweet.

So was the brief kiss she gave me when I dropped her at her car in front of my house.

The date had ended pretty early, and rather than obsess about Sally, I tended to a couple of chores. I moved the breakfast dishes from the sink to the dishwasher, fed the cats, and made a phone call. Harry George still hadn’t called back, so I punched in his number and left another message, repeating everything I’d said before. Then I popped a can of Diet Pepsi and tuned in Preston Switcher’s Saturday night show.

He was already blathering, had apparently been blathering for some time. The topic was once again jobs, and affirmative action, briefly. Gross discrimination, he called it, and he warned his listeners that enemies of America were trying to get it back on the ballot. That lasted for a few minutes. Feminism. That took him another five, followed by a commercial for a brand of soup I would never buy again.

The gays. Wow, he really got swinging on that one. I wondered how anyone could live in the Bay Area and stay so stupid about a big chunk of the population. My mind wandered, tuning him out. Then I heard something that made me tune back in real fast.