Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) (4 page)

“Meals? Saving on meals?”

“Sure. You can just plug in a hot plate over there, or come here for lunch. Maybe you could even stay there tonight. If he comes home and sees the note. Or we could put you somewhere…” he looked around the kitchen.

“No,” I said quickly. “That’s okay. I’ve got to get back to the East Bay tonight. I’ll come over tomorrow. With my own car.”

“Okay.” He grinned happily. “But stay for dinner. To seal our bargain.”

I stayed for dinner, even though he was the only one who seemed to be getting a bargain.

It was after nine when I pulled up in front of my house. The flatlands of Oakland looked awfully damned flat and desolate after Foothill Canyon. Houses all on the same level. Streets. I felt deprived and tried to concentrate on the pluses. Occasionally, even in winter, my yard dried out. I didn’t have to stumble down a clay and rock incline or a hundred shaky wooden steps to go to the grocery store. Not to mention going up again.

Also, I had never found a corpse in my front yard. Not yet, anyway.

Rosie’s light was on, so I knocked. She and Alice were alone, and she invited me in. Rosie was wearing her favorite at-home outfit: cutoffs, cowboy boots, and Gertrude Stein T-shirt. I handed her the truck keys, she handed me a beer. Now, I do try to control my intake of beer, because in the past couple of years what used to be normal amounts of food and drink have begun to create abnormal conditions in my midsection. Somehow, my spare tire had become more easily inflatable. But my hesitation was brief. I figured that if I was going to spend the next couple of weeks hiking around in nature, I could probably afford a few more calories.

I sat down in Rosie’s one easy chair, and she sat on her bed, leaning back against the giant pillow that served as a bolster. I began to tell her about my new case. As she listened, she grew very still. The look she was giving me could have been misinterpreted as seductive if it had come from another woman, or, more to the point, if the look had been directed by Rosie at another woman. But she was looking at me, her old buddy, and I knew the speculative gleam in her eye was professional.

She’d worked with me once before, on the case of the previous fall, and had come up with some important leads by infiltrating a right-wing campus group. She’d nearly gotten her neck broken in the process, but it looked like old danger hadn’t discouraged her from the prospect of new adventure.

Maybe the lack of pay would discourage her, though. She’d gotten a percentage of a nice fee last time for a few days’ work.

She’d get a percentage of nothing this time, and I didn’t think Artie’d be willing to cover expenses for two. I could get by; I had the rent she paid for the cottage, another small piece of income from a trust fund my mother had set up for me before she died, and a few thousand left over from the last job. Rosie had only what she earned week to week, and maybe a little in the bank. I told her there was no money in it.

She grinned at me. “So? I don’t have anything much to do for the next couple of weeks, anyway.”

“I thought you had a basement to finish.”

“Not until April.”

“What about that addition you were telling me about?”

“After the basement.”

I explained about the expenses. She told me she could buy her own lunch.

I thought of something else. “Artie’s going to try to get me a room over there so I won’t have to travel back and forth all the time. Got any friends in Mill Valley?”

She got up to get us both another beer. “I used to,” she snapped, “but it doesn’t matter. Alice and I can commute.” She handed me my beer and put hers down on the table beside my chair. She didn’t sit down again, but stood over me, glaring. Now Rosie’s not tall. Only about five foot five. And she’s not muscular. And she’s not mean. But she’s got one hell of a powerful personality. And I knew what she was thinking.

“What is this, anyway?” she wanted to know. “Don’t you want my help?”

“Of course I do, you know—”

“Are you pulling that protective male shit on me again, Jake?”

“Jesus, Rosie—”

“I thought so.” She picked up her beer and sat down on the bed. “Look, you know I can take care of myself. I’m not talking about following you around every damn day. It’s your case. But there may be some angle you’ll want me to handle, and if there is, I’d be interested. Do you want me to help or not?” The glare had softened a little, but not much.

“Yeah. I do. And I’m not being… careful… because you’re a woman. It’s because you’re my friend.”

She laughed at me. “Drink your beer, friend.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay, so tell me more. What about the nephew? Could he have done it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, and I haven’t met the kid.”

“He sounds like a real jerk. Screaming and running away and lying to the sheriff. What about the woman who saw him running away? Is she a good witness? Is she nearsighted? Did she see anything else?”

I laughed. “I think you’ll have to meet her.”

Rosie sipped at her beer and nestled a little deeper into the pillow. She was looking pleased. “This is really going to be fun,” she said. “Maybe as much fun as the last time.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “At least this time it will be far enough away from home so we can escape if we have to.”

“Oh, come on. You know it’s fun.”

I shook my head. “Maybe. But I’m not crazy about risking my life. Not for free, anyway. Let’s not forget, in the midst of all this fun, that whoever killed the guy is a killer.”

“We can handle it,” she said confidently. “Oh, you’re not going to need my truck tomorrow, are you?”

“They swear my car will be ready in the morning, so maybe not. Why?”

“I’ve got a couple of estimates to do in the next day or so. By then, you should have a better handle on things, so we can figure out the plan of attack.”

Somebody very short scratched on the door about a foot above the threshold. My cats had found me. I got up and let them in. Ignoring me, they said hello to Alice, then to Rosie. The implication was clear. I had been gone for several hours more than what they thought was appropriate. They were wondering if Rosie or Alice knew where I might be, and who was this tall stranger standing near the door, anyway?

“I think I’ve just been collected,” I said. “See you in the morning. Come on, you two.” The cats looked at me with sudden recognition and followed me out the door.

After slapping some gooey, expensive food in their dishes, I checked my answering machine. A message from Artie that Alan was home but felt as though he was still under suspicion. A message from my father that said I could call any time before midnight, his time. That gave me fifteen minutes. I hoped nothing was wrong. Usually, since he calls collect “just to say hello,” he leaves no messages. The man doesn’t call collect from Chicago because he’s poor, but because he’s devious. He says if I can afford to accept a long-distance call, he knows I’m not starving to death.

Anyway, I figured I’d better call him, if only to let him know I was going to be in and out for a while. I dialed his number.

“Yeah?” That was the way he answered the phone.

“Hello, pa.”

“Oh, so there you are.”

“Yeah. Is everything all right?”

“What’s not to be all right?”

“Good. So, you called?”

“Sure I called. Two nights. I tried to call Thursday, too, but I didn’t talk to your machine.” Thursday night I’d had a date in Berkeley with my close friend Iris. “What’s the matter, you’re not living at home?”

I explained that I’d been kind of busy, and that I might not be home much for the next couple of weeks because I’d be spending a lot of time in Marin County, across the bay. Working.

“A job? You’re sleeping at a job?”

“I work late sometimes, it’s a long drive back here.”

He grunted. “So, you’ve got a
nafke.
So what’s the big deal?”

“Pa,” I said, laughing, “I’m working. I’m not staying with a woman.”

“Working, huh? What kind of work this time?”

“Same as last time. The magazine.” That was a mistake.

“So how come I never saw the write-up you did before? You’re working for a magazine and you don’t write anything? Are you ashamed to show it to me?”

I wasn’t about to tell him I was investigating a murder. He had nearly disowned me when I’d joined the Chicago police force. When I quit doing that in favor of wandering around California, he was sure I had become a dope fiend. He’d been relieved, in recent years, that I was at least staying at the same address for a while. He’s a pain in the ass, but I love him and would rather he didn’t worry.

“Mostly I just do the research, pa. There’s not much to show for that.”

There was a brief silence while he decided to drop the job subject. “Listen, your stepmother and I, we’re thinking of maybe coming out and visiting around the end of the year. She’s got a niece someplace out there, too, we can kill two birds.”

“Yeah? That would be terrific.”

“Maybe the niece isn’t married, you could meet her.”

“Sure. Where does she live?”

“Someplace out there. I’ll have to ask your stepmother.”

She took the receiver from him. “Hello, Jake.”

“Hi, Eva.” I’m fond of Eva. I was glad when my father remarried, some ten years after the death of my mother, because he was a man who needed to be married, needed to have someone to love. He and Eva were close, and, I thought sometimes, almost too much alike. The two of them together could be overwhelming.

“Listen,” she said, “it’s a good thing you called back. He almost called that friend of yours, that Rosie. Your tenant.”

A couple of years before, I’d given them Rosie’s number for emergency messages. They’d used it once when I’d spent two weeks at Tahoe without calling them.

“She’s still there, the tenant? What was her last name again?”

“Yeah, she’s still here. Her name is Vicente.”

“Such a nice girl. She’s good-looking?”

“Very.”

“And smart?”

“Yes.”

“You’re such good friends, maybe you should get married? A forty-year-old man, it’s time again. An Italian’s not so bad.”

“I’m thirty-nine.”

She snorted. “Thirty-nine. Like Jack Benny.” Then she handed the phone back to my father.

“So? You’re going back to this job tomorrow?”

“That’s right, don’t expect to get me at home for a while, okay? I’ll give you a call in a week or two.”

“Okay, okay. Listen, I’m going to say goodbye. Your stepmother’s got something she wants to say before we hang up.”

“Jakey?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it. You should think about the Italian. If you got married, you wouldn’t have to run to
nafkes
fifty miles away.”

“I’ll consider it,” I told her. “Goodbye, Eva.”

“Goodbye, Jake.”

Alan sat slumped forward on Artie’s couch, elbows resting on his thighs, wrists dangling, brown eyes peering out at me through a lock of straight brown hair that hung to his eyebrows. Everything about him drooped: his mouth, his hair, his hands. He was pale and he looked sick and scared.

I hadn’t been able to get back to Marin until midafternoon, because it took that long for my mechanic to actually finish working on the Chevy. Neither Alan nor Artie had gone to work, so everyone was waiting for me. Alan, Artie, Julia, Jennifer, Pete, and Berkeley. The twelve-year-old, Mike, had gone to school, probably so he could tell all his friends about the murder.

He was going to be upset when he got home. He’d missed seeing a whole new piece of the action. So had I. Sergeant Ricci had come by around noon to visit Alan again. Just a few more questions. Because the police had found out about Alan’s fight with Smith. I managed to drag Alan away from his family for a private talk in the bedroom.

He was sulky. “I don’t know why they don’t leave me alone. Can you imagine, someone actually told them about that stupid fight?”

“Well, you did lie to them. Maybe you should have told them about the argument before they heard it from someone else. On top of the lies…”

“Look, I know it was dumb, lying that way. But I’ve explained all that to them, about working for Artie. And shit, I panicked. Who wouldn’t?”

I didn’t know who wouldn’t, I only knew that he had.

“And how was I supposed to know someone saw me? She says she yelled at me, but there was this roaring in my ears, you know? I thought I was having a stroke or something. How could I hear anyone?”

So he’d holed up in Artie’s house and hoped for the best, which he hadn’t gotten.

“It was terrible, Jake. I’ve never been in jail. It was an unbelievably brutalizing experience. As a journalist, I guess it’s something I should know about, but even so…”

“Alan,” I said, “this is not Chicago. This is not New York. This is not even Des Moines. Sitting out a few hours of questioning in the for-Christ’s-sake Marin County Civic Center in a Frank Lloyd Wright building with a view of the hills is not exactly like ten years on Devil’s Island.”

He raised his chin a bit and actually stuck out his lower lip.

“Listen, Samson,” he said. I wasn’t Jake anymore. “I saw some pretty hard cases going in and out of there.”

I didn’t exactly dislike the kid, and I hoped he’d be able to go through an entire lifetime of privilege and security, but I thought maybe he needed a couple of kicks into the real world where being a nice kid wasn’t protection against death, disease, and violence.

“Did you get raped in the toilet during a coffee break?” I asked.

He turned red, jumped up, and paced, first away from me and then back again.

“Listen, I don’t need you to patronize me. I know a few things, too, you know.” I nodded. “And one of the things I know is that I don’t need the help of a middle-aged smartass.”

I smiled at him. “I’m not helping you. I’m helping Artie. And I’m not helping anybody by sitting here and listening to your George Raft fantasies.” He looked puzzled, and I realized that he wasn’t sure who George Raft might be. But he didn’t admit it. I continued.

“The first thing I want to know is what you saw when you found the body.”

He sat down again, narrowed his eyes at me so I wouldn’t think he was giving in too easily, and told me.