Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (18 page)

I put up a token fight. “Hey, listen, Steve…” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Ah, for Christ’s sake, come on, Rosie.” I jumped down off my bar stool, grabbed her arm, and started for the door.

“Wait a minute, Jase. Don’t you want to leave an answer for Floyd?”

No, I didn’t. He’d asked for my phone number. I was hoping getting pissed off would be a good enough excuse for blowing it off.

“Hey, I’m leaving. You tell Floyd I’ll see him here tomorrow.”

There was no way I was going to follow Steve’s orders and go home, though. Something was going on, and if Steve wouldn’t let us watch from inside the bar, we were damned well going to watch from outside. I pulled my car farther down the block and we kept our eyes on the entrance. Karl arrived. He looked furtive, but he always did. Zack. Hal and Helen. Zack was clearly agitated, walking stiffly, talking to Karl and pounding his fist into his palm. No sign of Royal.

I waited a while longer. No Ebner. He and Floyd were probably already in the back room.

Were they planning some mayhem? This seemed to be a very important meeting, and everyone who didn’t look angry looked solemn. Damn, I wanted to know what was going on.

Another fifteen minutes. No one else showed up.

On the drive home, I thought of calling Royal’s pager but I got a sudden fit of paranoia about it. He might be in that back room right now, with all the others. I didn’t want anyone ripping the beeper out of his hand and taking down my number. Instead, I phoned Deeanne and told her to have him call me. Rosie said she’d get hold of Pauline and let her know about the big meeting. We called it a day, and a night.

Over coffee the next morning, I obsessed over the meeting at Thor’s. Was it about The Leak? Probably. But what, exactly, about it? Steve had said all the members were going to be there, so the chances were good it was no strategy session. Maybe just a rally? A flag-waving? A little rousing of the rabble to get their morale back up to a goose step? The leak had to be devastating to a bunch of people who believed they had all the answers and were going to make the world theirs.

The speculation led where it almost always does: nowhere in particular. As far as I knew, Royal was still a member. So unless the Command made a distinction between members and members in good standing, he could have been at the meeting. If he was, I’d find out from him what happened there, if anything. And I had other things to obsess about, anyway.

Like the two kids Steve had tossed out of the bar the day before. As nasty as the scene had been, I realized I should be glad it had happened. I’d been nervous about the girl ever since I’d seen her at the Frasier protest. Better not to have her hanging around. The last thing I needed was another iffy teenager who could blow my cover. Royal was more than enough. Besides, I kept remembering that her boyfriend didn’t “do” politics. Maybe they’d both stay out of trouble from now on.

Royal. I still hadn’t heard from him. I paged him.

Then I started thinking about Preston Switcher.

It had occurred to me that maybe the silly son of a bitch needed to hear he’d screwed up, but I was afraid if I followed through with that thought, his next show would feature the news flash that a PI, an infiltrator of the group that wanted to kill him, had paid him a call to criticize his judgment. He’d probably accuse me of being a left-wing unemployed faggot malcontent too. Or a transexual welfare mother.

The thing that bothered me most about what he’d done was that his motivation was unclear. How dumb could he be? The more I hung around with the Command the more I wondered who was doing what to who. And why. For all I knew, the whole thing, including the broadcast, was part of an elaborate plot to expose Royal as a turncoat and me as a ringer. For all I knew, Preston Switcher was a member of the Aryan Command. That would not be surprising, considering his attitudes. But somehow I really didn’t think so. The Command was way outside the law, and held an element of danger a successful radio hero would have to be crazy to go near. I could see him lending them his support from time to time, but I couldn’t see him being an actual member.

Running the plot idea to its logical fantasy conclusion: The group hadn’t been sure about trusting Royal for a long time, because the turncoat Richard was his friend and it probably wasn’t too hard to see that Richard’s murder upset Royal. When I came along, they got even more suspicious, maybe even found out something about me, for all I knew. Then they set up a plot that led to Switcher’s broadcast and was going to end with Royal and me and Rosie getting scraped off the rocks under that gorgeous orange bridge we all love so much.

Well, it was possible.

Then again, were these people capable of such an elaborate scheme? I was getting fuzzy in the head. It was that old “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas” thing. I was lying down, so to speak, with Nazis, and I was getting up with a head full of plot and counter-plot. I reminded myself that I didn’t believe in conspiracy.

Switcher was probably just plain stupid or unbelievably vicious or overwhelmingly ambitious— maybe he’d seen a chance to get some publicity by getting a snitch killed.

I took my third cup of coffee outside, sat on my garden bench, and had another chat with the tomato hornworms. I told them that I hoped someone new would be moving in soon, and I wanted to warn them that not everyone was as merciful as I. They didn’t look scared. When I went back into the house I discovered I’d gotten two phone calls; neither of the messages was from Royal. Rosie had called to check in with me, and my father had called from Chicago. We try to talk once a week or so. I punched in the number.

“Hi, Pa, how’s it going?”

“Going good, Jakie. And you?”

“Good. How’s Eva?”

My stepmother had the constitution and strength of an ox. I got the answer I expected.

“Good. Wonderful.” She would live to be a hundred. Which was terrific because I didn’t think my father could make it through the death of another wife. He almost hadn’t lived through my mother’s, and that was a long time ago.

I heard her call out something in the background.

“She wants to know, you’re working? I want to know too. You got a case?” I’d managed to hide my job from them for a few years, but he’d figured it out. And he worried. So I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him I’d joined the Nazis.

“Just a little divorce thing. Nothing interesting.”

He repeated my words to Eva, and the next thing I knew, he’d lost possession of the phone. “Gimme the phone, Isaac.” Whoosh— just like that, I was talking to her.

“And it’s not dangerous, this divorce?”

“No. Not dangerous.”

“And how is Rosie?”

“She’s good.”

“Such a shame, such a wonderful Italian girl and she won’t marry you.”

“Eva…”

“I know, I know… you met anyone else?” She was terrified I’d slide into old age with no woman to take care of me. So was I, come to think about it.

I told them I was going out with a nice real estate woman who was selling my house. We jabbered about houses for a while and then my dad got back on the line, and as abruptly as always:

“Okay. So we’ll talk next week. Good-bye, Jake.” Clunk.

A while later, when I was in the middle of a very delicate omelette operation, and pondering again the motives of Preston Switcher, the phone purred. I let the machine take it, but I listened as the caller left a brief message. And damned near burned the omelette. Speak of the devil, as my mother used to say. Or in this case, think of the devil… The call was from Preston Switcher.

He said he wanted me to phone him at a San Francisco number “about Royal Subic.”

Now I was scared. Why was he calling me? If he wasn’t part of a plot, how would he even know I existed? My head was beginning to hurt. I would have to play dumb, which at this point was not so hard to do. I split the omelette with Tigris and Euphrates and returned the call.

Someone who might or might not carry the title of administrative assistant, someone whose boss probably still preferred the word “secretary,” informed me that Mr. Switcher would like to see me in his office as soon as possible— and when would be convenient?

The word was out of my mouth before I could catch it. “Never.” Quickly, I patched the damage. “I would be happy to talk to Mr. Switcher on the telephone.”

“He said if you were reluctant, to tell you he knows all about your undercover work and is not your enemy.”

Wiping cold sweat off my upper lip, I caught my breath and groped for an answer. Okay, playing dumb wouldn’t work. And maybe there was something here I needed to know.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but I’ll meet him. But not at his office. That place where the tourists go to look at the San Francisco view, on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Vista Point. There’s a parking lot. I can be there by noon.” Maybe the lot wouldn’t be full on a Monday.

The secretarial person advised me to do so. Had I ever seen Mr. Switcher?

I’d seen only one or two photos of the great man, mug shots, but I thought I’d recognize him when he appeared. He wore black-framed glasses and a gray crew cut. As for the rest of him, he was known to be muscular, a workout freak who had once said something about the body being “a church.” That’s right. Not a temple, a church. By way of further identification, the secretary told me he would be dressed in a blue suit and a red tie.

And, I presumed, a shirt with fifty white stars on it.

I described myself to the secretary. Then I got in the Falcon and drove to 101 and south to the bridge, parked, and began strolling around, looking casual and annoyed. What the hell was this Switcher guy yammering about, anyway? Sounded like a lunatic, with his crazy talk about my being undercover… and on and on until I was so deep into the role I believed it myself.

The point was fairly crowded. Several dozen tourists were wandering around in shorts. They do that in June and July too, and freeze their butts.

I wasn’t wearing shorts, but I was wearing my brown wig. I had been called to this meeting as Jake Samson, not as Jason Dormeister.

There he was, getting out of a large car, undoubtedly American… no! There was that distinctive hood ornament. It was a Mercedes. Blue suit, red tie, white shirt, no stars, glasses, muscles, bland and nondescript face. I walked toward him. When I got close enough, I raised my hand. For a moment, he looked alarmed, then his chunky facial muscles relaxed. The description I’d given his secretary had kicked in.

“Mr. Samson?”

I admitted it.

We strolled together to the wall, looking across the Bay at San Francisco, a sight way too pretty, in the noon sunlight, for this mean-spirited twerp.

I started at the beginning. “Where did you get my name?”

“From Royal Subic. He called me and told me what had happened after my show. He wanted me to know that there were people trying to keep me safe, that I’d put those people in danger.” He smirked and shook his head.

Oh, Lord. Royal had exposed us both to the plain view of someone who might be one of the enemy. Well, was one of the enemy, as far as I was concerned, but could also be one of the Aryan Command.

Carefully, coolly, my face expressionless: “What else did he tell you?”

“He told me that you were working for him, trying to keep the Command from carrying out some of their plans, including my murder. That you had infiltrated the group as his cousin.”

Nice going, Royal. Now maybe we’re both dead.

Switcher was studying my face. He laughed. Apparently expressionless is too hard for me.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not a member of that group of idiots and I have no interest in blowing your cover.”

“No interest? Why did you talk about the plot on your show? Do you know—”

“I’m sorry that the group suspects you now, or at least suspects the Subic boy.” He didn’t look sorry. Didn’t sound that way, either. “I’m sorry, but he’s a pretty foolish young man, don’t you think?”

Sure. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Royal was just a foolish kid. And this guy didn’t care what happened to him. “He’s been trying to keep you from getting killed.”

“Yes, he said he was an admirer of mine and wanted me to know what was happening to him because I mentioned this nonsense on the radio.”

“Nonsense?” He thought death threats were nonsense?

“That bunch of losers can’t hit the cup with the coffee. I’m not afraid of them.”

I glared at the man. “I am. And I’m afraid for Royal too. He may be stupid but his heart seems to be in the right place.”

“Meaning that mine is not? Royal and I, I’m sure, agree on most things. Especially now that he sees that group for what they are.”

“Losers.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe they’re more than that.”

“I don’t believe so. And you obviously don’t understand. It was important that they know I’m aware of their plans. I had to send a threat right back at them. They’re frauds.”

I hoped he was right, half believed it myself, but what was his stake in believing they were no more than incompetent clowns?

“Maybe the Holocaust was a fraud too?”

He smiled. “I think you’ve got me confused with someone else, Mr. Samson. I’m a conservative, not a fascist.”

“Right. I’ve heard your show. You’re an inch to the right of Mussolini.”

“You’re very emotional, aren’t you, Mr. Samson?”

I stared at San Francisco. Why wasn’t I there now? “All us Jews are.”

He laughed and shook his head.

I’d had enough. “Look, Switcher, I don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me. So far you haven’t said anything.”

The lunch hour crowd was beginning to fill the lot, local brown-baggers and tourists stopping by on their way to Marin, a bed and breakfast on the coast, a few days in Mendocino, or a tour of the Sonoma or Napa wineries. I needed a vacation.

The sun blazed down on us. In a couple of hours the fog would start threading its way through the Gate and the tourists would be pawing through their bags trying to find the sweatpants.

“I’m curious about why this bunch might want to kill me. The Subic boy told an incomprehensibly wild tale. Doesn’t it all seem a little strange to you?”