Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (7 page)

“He does have a certain boyish charm,” I said, scratching Lulu’s ears. “If you like six-year-olds.”

Mickey nodded. “It might wear thin after twenty or thirty years.”

“Make that twenty or thirty minutes. I figure if you can get past an hour, you might as well marry him.”

Mickey smiled. “How are you and Rob doing?”

“Ouch. When you change the subject, you don’t mess around.”

“Uh-oh. You two are fighting?”

“I think he’s dumped me, actually.”

“Whoa. Tell all, starting at the beginning.”

I did and it took a surprisingly long time—I had to explain about the Trapper and the poisonings and the press conference before I could even get to the good-bye scene. “Not good-bye,” said Mickey. “No way.”

Her theory was simple—Rob, though basically a prince of a fellow, simply turned into a sort of hairless werewolf when he was on a hot story, forgetting friends, loved ones, social conventions, obligations, and dates in his avid pursuit of the people’s right to know. No doubt he hadn’t dumped me at all, he’d be back soon, and wouldn’t even notice he’d been missing. In short, she thought I was upset about nothing.

I felt better. “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I should be glad he’s not Alan.”

“Oh, lay off Alan. He still might end up being your brother- in-law.”

“You’re still sure about the baby?”

“Absolutely.”

“Funny world, isn’t it? No wonder Mom has trouble adapting.”

Mickey shook a finger at me. “She’d be a lot happier if you’d just dump that blue-eyed half-breed.”

I left, laughing as I drove home. Poor Mom. She certainly did have trouble adapting. While it was true that Rob was only half Jewish and that was only half good enough for her, she’d admit it in the same breath she endorsed the Ku Klux Klan. Even to herself. Mom was a compassionate, caring, politically correct liberal, with heart perennially bleeding—and eight or ten nasty prejudices she didn’t even know she had. She was perfectly aware, though, that she didn’t much like her older daughter going out with Rob; and remembering that made me feel protective toward him, brought him back into my good graces.

Until I got home, that is, and found the swine hadn’t called. Calling him, I got the same old message: He was gone for the weekend. I supposed I’d better believe it, and better resign myself to going to dinner alone.

I met Chris and Bob at the Hayes Street Grill, one of the very few of the myriad newish eateries specializing in “California Cuisine” that, to me, managed to pull off the old San Francisco style—friendly, unpretentious decor (dark wood, white tablecloths) and a nice piece of fish. At the old-style restaurants—joints with names like Jack’s, Sam’s, John’s—your fish was simply grilled, and came, as likely as not, with thick, tempting fries. At the new joints, it had to be mesquite-grilled or, better yet, grilled over Nubian plumwood and garnished with an understated sprig of vitamin-packed cilantro. The fries were thinner, very crisp, very now, very today. Rarely were the customers grilled, but that night was an exception.

The others were bellied up to the bar, waiting for a table. When I came in alone, Chris raised her eyebrows. “Where’s Rob, darlin’? Parking?”

“I’m afraid he couldn’t make it.”

“He’s not ill, is he?”

“You had a fight!”

“No, it’s not that. He just wanted—I mean, he had to do something else.”

“You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine. Really.”

Bob cleared his throat: “Chris. Give her a break, okay?”

Bob’s outspoken style had turned Chris off at first, but she’d learned to respect it—especially after he’d joined a men’s consciousness group and done some serious work on his innate male chauvinism. He was now a budding feminist, but with a commanding way about him; Chris liked that a lot.

At the moment, I was grateful for it. I was still wearing the black velvet trench coat my mother had given me, and was beginning to perspire in it. I was aware, too, that my cheeks were flushed with the extreme discomfiture of having had to reveal a very shaky love life in front of a most attractive young man—Bob’s friend from Los Angeles, who was tall, well dressed, and single, judging from his naked ring finger.

“Jeff Simon,” said Bob.

Jewish. (If you cared about such things.)

“He’s with Backus and Weir.”

Another lawyer.

Cute—very cute. Both the situation and Jeff. He had brown crinkly hair, light brown eyes, and regular, not-quite-handsome features. He wore a dark gray suit that didn’t hide the fact that he was a man who took regular exercise seriously. He was smiling—whether at me or my predicament I couldn’t tell.

“Tosi,” said the maitre d’, and showed us to our table.

Jeff was an entertainment lawyer, a job that entitles its holder to dine out anywhere in the country—but particularly in San Francisco—on riveting tales of the follies and foibles of the famous. I say particularly San Francisco because we San Franciscans do, in accordance with Angeleno myth, have a bit of a small-town complex. We care not a fig for emulating Eastern sophistication, but desperately want to feel ourselves a part of what we Californians really think makes the world go around—The Industry, as they call it down south. We don’t like to admit it, but we love nothing more than movie gossip. We thrive on rumors of who’s gay and who’s bisexual, who’s stopped beating his wife, who’s pinching whose bottom, who’s burnt out on what drug. But with the snobbery bred of envy, we love best the stories that make Hollywood look silly and gauche and garish. Jeff had a million of them, and being a transplanted New Yorker, with his own geographic bigotry, told them with the same wicked delight that a native Californian might have. I was quiet for a while as he regaled us.

“So somebody at this studio got the idea to do
Catcher in the Rye
—not bad, huh? It spoke to the last generation, why not this one? Everybody thought it’d be a welcome relief from vampire demolition derby flicks—sort of a thinking kid’s movie. My client was very timid and insisted I go with him for a meeting. This studio exec says, ‘It’s hot, like, it’s the
E.T.
of the eighties, only the alien’s a kid, see? But we gotta make it eighties, not sixties, you know?’ I pointed out that we were really talking fifties, and the guy looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘Fifties?’ he says, like this is a new concept. The guy’s head of the studio and only twenty-seven years old. So I let it go, and he says, ‘Let’s do it like
Miami Vice
, or better yet,
Repo Man
. It’s gotta look like MTV, you know what I mean?’ So we say we’ll think about it and we leave, our heads kind of reeling.

“We don’t know what to think, maybe the guy’s burnt out on coke or something, but he says he’ll set up another meeting. However, he doesn’t and finally I call him. And guess what? The studio’s already sitting on a proposal for
Catcher in the Rye
. Somebody else got the idea five years ago, only they never made the movie for certain reasons that I’ll reveal in a minute. By now this baby mogul’s completely turned around—convinced the five-year-old idea is the way to go. Here’s what it is: an animated version in which all the characters are dogs.”

Bob said: “Give me a break!”

Jeff held up a hand. “This is the verbatim truth. I am not making up one word.”

“I suppose,” said Chris, “they’re going to call it
Fido
.”

“
Dufus
. Can you guess what the hang-up is?”

“The S.P.C.A.,” said Bob.

“The J. D. Salinger Anti-Defamation League,” said Chris.

I said, “Salinger.”

“Almost right. No one in the entire studio, located in fabulous Hollywood, the chutzpah capital of the world, has been able to work up the nerve to approach him.”

He had me pretty well charmed. I could easily have listened all night, but eventually he started, as politeness demanded, to draw me out. I talked about what was on my mind—the Trapper’s note.

It couldn’t yet be published, but there was nothing wrong with four pals chewing it over along with the thresher shark. Jeff thought it was hokum—the work of an attention-seeking nut. He also thought the wine a little fruity, the fish a trifle overdone. On the last two points, he was right, perhaps—and yet both were delicious. If it had been left to me, I simply would have enjoyed my dinner rather than dwelt on it. He was a man with a very analytical mind.

“But something did happen at Pier 39,” I insisted. “How do you explain that?”

“Simple. This Zimbardo character read about your Sanchez—the man on the cross—and cashed in on it.”

“But why? What did he have to gain by writing the note: He had everything to lose, it seems to me—he put the cops on guard; they might have stopped him.”

“I expect he just wanted a little attention. I can identify with that—can’t you?” He looked straight at me with those light brown eyes, and I won’t pretend I was entirely unmoved. I think perhaps I blushed, because suddenly he got very flustered, tripping all over himself with excuse me’s and I-didn’t-mean-it-that-ways. Which naturally caused both Chris and Bob practically to roll on the floor. Unnerved as much by their merriment as by Jeff’s blatant flirting, I stayed a polite fifteen minutes after the coffee arrived, and beat a cowardly retreat. I wasn’t used to being out on my own; it felt so good it made me nervous.

But if I thought I was getting away that easily, I was quite mistaken—Jeff insisted on walking me to my car, keeping up a running commentary on what a pleasure it was to meet another lawyer, and how very difficult it was to meet Jewish girls (why, I couldn’t imagine—I could have introduced him to fifteen or twenty), and how very nice it would be to see me again. I stuck my hand out when we got to the Volvo, just in case; obediently he took it, kissing me gently even as he shook it, leaving me thinking Rob wasn’t the only shrimp in the bay. And hating myself for thinking it. But dammit, Rob
had
deserted me.

The deserter phoned the next morning, about the time I’d finished reading my Sunday Exonicle (combined
Examiner
and
Chronicle
), learning that it was now official: The police were seeking kitchen worker Lou Zimbardo in connection with the Pier 39 poisonings. Rob’s voice was the croak of a beaten man, but I managed to control my sympathy for a moment or two: “Oh, Rob, how are you? Did you have a nice time alone?”

“Not too good, to tell you the truth. Things didn’t work out quite like I hoped.”

“Oh?”

“I got mugged.”

End of control: “Mugged! Are you hurt? Is anything broken? Oh, pussycat! Please say you’re okay!”

“I’m okay.” But he sounded so pathetic I had to fight back tears.

“You sound awful.”

“My jaw’s swollen. They hit me a little.”

“Oh, Rob! I’ll bring you some soup.”

“Soup!” He whooped. “You sound like your mom.”

“I didn’t mean chicken soup,” I said, very dignified. “I had in mind some thick and nourishing split pea. In the event of a concussion or broken leg, of course, I’d have offered to grill you a steak. But I thought with a bruised jaw you might not feel like chewing.”

“I don’t. But I don’t feel like sipping either, thanks. I’m sorry I teased you.”

“It’s okay. Or will be if you tell me what happened.”

“I guess I’d better. I sort of lied yesterday.”

“Oh.” Ouch.

“It wasn’t that I had to be alone, exactly. I had some work to do.”

“Is that all? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t approve. See, I think Miranda Warning is the key to this whole Trapper thing; so I went to find her.”

“How did you know where to look?”

“I didn’t. I just went to the Tenderloin and asked around—remember, we thought she must live there?”

“Did you get anywhere?”

“Mugged.”

“Poor baby.”

“Stupid baby.”

“No sign of Miranda?”

“Not a trace.”

“You’re sure I can’t bring you something?”

“Positive. I’m about to break the world’s indoor snoring record. How about lunch tomorrow?”

I didn’t like it at all—I wanted to see him desperately, to make sure he wasn’t maimed or disfigured, or if he was, to tell him I didn’t care, I’d love him anyway. But I realized that this time he probably very much wanted to be alone; I could certainly sympathize. “Okay,” I said. “Lunch by all means.”

But it wasn’t to be. I’d hardly gotten to the office on Monday when he phoned. “I got another note.”

“From the Trapper?”

“Yes. He’s real, Rebecca—I’m sure of it. Shall I read it to you?”

“Sure.”

“
‘Dear Mr. Burns: Ever since 1 came here I’ve had nothing but trouble and now the whole city is going to pay. What would this crummy joint be without tourists? Too bad a few of them have to suffer for the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah! But the more people who stay away, the better off they’ll be in the long run. The ones that don’t come here will thank me. Watch me close this hellhole down!’
It’s signed
‘The Trapper.’
”

“Ecch. Pretty awful—but he didn’t actually say he did the poisonings.”

“Listen to the P.S.:
‘By the way, I hope the tourists liked the local mussels. I put the good ones in the cabinet in the men’s room.’
”

“Mussels! They’re quarantined!”

“Right. The cops were being cagey about the poison to see if the Trapper would ’fess up. They got the hospital and the victims’ families to keep quiet, too. So now there’s absolutely no doubt.”

“The cops found good mussels in the men’s room?”

“Uh-huh. When the local mussels are quarantined, all the restaurants use Eastern ones. All the Trapper had to do was substitute a plastic bag of local ones for a bag of the Eastern ones—which he put in the men’s room. That’s why all the poisonings came at once. The restaurant opened the new bag and everyone who ate the first batch out of it got sick.”

“My God!”

“Feel a cold wind blowing down your neck, babe? That’s the start of a climate of fear. Listen, I’ve got to cancel lunch. Martinez and Curry are coming and someone from the mayor’s office. We’ve got to hash things out.”