Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (30 page)
Read Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) Online
Authors: Shelley Singer
Tags: #murder mystery, #mystery, #cozy mystery, #PI, #private investigator, #Jewish fiction, #skin heads, #neo-Nazis, #suspense, #California, #Bay area, #Oakland, #San Francisco, #Jake Samson, #mystery series, #extremist
“Mr. George?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe you really need to have more faith in your citizens. By the way, was Gilly Johns working for you?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Samson.”
“Good-bye, Mr. George.” You big purple glass-eyed ball of fuzz.
It was true about Steve. The owner of Thor’s and the visiting three little pigs had gotten away. Nobody seemed to know how that had happened.
I told Rosie that I would always wonder if Floyd-Byron had tipped them. She said Pauline was wondering the same thing, and so was Hank, and he had told her he wasn’t the only one in the Berkeley PD. And even though I didn’t want to give Pete Ebner credit for telling the truth about anything, I couldn’t forget what he’d said to Royal about the Command having cop members. Or at least, member.
But Red hadn’t been tipped off. They’d picked him up standing outside the bar, staring at the door. Probably wondering why it was closed.
Pauline also mentioned that the San Rafael PD had been bounced out of the game a little early when their undercover cop, Maryanne, got 86’d from Thor’s with her boyfriend. So I’d never had anything to fear from the skinny skin-chick with the buzz cut. She wasn’t even a kid. Turned out she was a young-looking twenty-seven.
Skink had been willing to tell the police anything they wanted to know about everyone, including Zack, to cut his own time. Desperate, I supposed, to get back to that big black motorcycle of his. He even talked about the just-for-fun vandalism some of his fellow warriors had committed, and about the attempted robbery at the Subic house.
The back of this local subgroup of subhumans was broken.
The police were puzzled by the object they’d found in Zack’s pocket, until Skink told them that Red had given Zack the photo to plant on Frasier’s corpse as the killer’s calling card. It was a newspaper picture of Desmond Tutu.
Royal was mending nicely. It was going to take a wad of his daddy’s ill-gotten cash to fix that mouth, and I wondered if he would always feel guilty about his expensive new teeth.
Maybe Rosie and I should have mentioned Subic’s supposed involvement in a years’-old robbery, but we didn’t. We decided to treat it like a figment of Deeanne’s imagination.
Although I suspected Leslie of taking part in all sorts of unpleasant Command activities, and knew she’d been in on Royal’s stomping, nobody mentioned her and nobody pinned anything on her, so she was still running loose. Somewhere. If the rest of this crowd was any indication, I expected to see her next at a high school pep rally wearing a ponytail and a letter sweater.
Ebner’s sister had taken his body back to Montana for burial in the family plot.
Sally and I made Minneapolis chow mein, and we ate it for dinner, and breakfast too.
The house I’m selling and the house I’m buying are both in escrow, which is a little like limbo except that there’s an end-date. To celebrate, Artie and Julia are throwing a dinner party next week for Sally and me and Rosie and a date— someone I haven’t met. And Deeanne and Royal.
Artie has turned one of his best staff writers loose on the Aryan Command story with a stack of my notes. Artie’s pleased with everything except the condition of Deeanne’s love life.
“Damn, Jake, couldn’t you have encouraged Royal to go for the skin-chick?” I’d told him about Leslie and how she’d been pursuing Royal for a while.
“Artie, I wouldn’t have encouraged Hitler himself to go for the skin-chick. And Royal’s really an okay kid. I think he saved Gilly’s life that night, and he says he’s going to volunteer at an old people’s home in Berkeley.”
“A guilty conscience is a wonderful thing.”
“In this case, yes. Too bad Richard had to die to give him one.”
“Sad, huh? About Richard?”
Karl had told the police that Ebner had killed the boy because, in his wanderings on the left, he was getting too close to ThePeople. He corroborated what Royal had told me: that it was Royal’s well-meant tip to Ebner that had led directly to the boy’s murder.
In a way I expected Karl to confess that he’d killed Pete Ebner, brag about it, claim credit for the death of the man who wanted Switcher dead, the Command destroyed, and his own version of political order established— no matter how, and no matter how much it hurt the group Ebner was supposed to be working for.
Karl didn’t confess, but Pauline told Rosie he was the major suspect. The Berkeley cops had found the knife that was used, she said, in the water near the Berkeley Marinas shore. It was a buck knife all right. I was guessing Karl’s choice of weapon had been a deliberate try at implicating Red.
But even if they couldn’t tie the knife to Karl, there was blood under one of Ebner’s fingernails that didn’t belong to the dead man himself.
I remembered the dirty Band-Aid on Karl’s neck. Poor Karl. His blood would tell. I wondered if he’d take Frasier down with him.
Thor’s was closed now. Someone else would open something there, a bar or a restaurant.
The back room was ready and waiting. With any luck, the next gathering it would see would be a drag show, or a rally against a zoning change, or a neighborhood watch meeting, or a psychic faire.
But I had a feeling about that place. A feeling that it should just be torn down and replaced with a playground. Or, like Rosie says, a dog park.
We’re fighting now over whether she should ask the Vicente World Secret Dictatorship to take care of it or if I should contact all those relatives I must have in ZOG.
THE END
For my daughter, Sonya.
Thanks to those who didn’t want their names used.
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What they said about SAMSON’S DEAL:
“…one of the nicer guys in the private eye business, who operates in a relaxed, casual style without need for macho posturing.”
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“Great bar scenes, a wonderfully wry narrative, and the obvious nonsexual affection between Jake and Rosie will have readers clamoring for more.”
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The Paul Mcdonald Series:
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Jake Samson Mysteries
Samson’s Deal
Free Draw
Full House
Spit in the Ocean
Suicide King
Royal Flush
Barrett Lake Mysteries
Following Jane
Picture of David
Searching for Sara
Interview With Mattie
Other novels
The Demeter Flower
Torch Song
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SHELLEY SINGER has had 13 novels, including a Shamus Award nominee, and several short stories published. Most are mysteries, including the six books in the Jake Samson series. Her most recent novel is
Torch Song
, a near-future thriller. She teaches writing online and does manuscript consulting. She has served as a judge in a number of fiction writing contests, including the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction writing competition. She lives in Petaluma, CA with two dogs and the love of her life.
