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
“It has come to my attention, ladies and gentlemen, that there are some people who are going to make an attempt on my life, or so they say. Or so the police tell me.” Uh-oh. This was bad. Very bad. “And who are these people? Are they left-wing terrorists? Radical homosexuals? Inner-city hoodlums? Militant unionists? No, according to the report I heard, they are supposed to be a right-wing, white-power organization. Or so they say.
“Now should I believe that? Should I believe, my friends, that the right is out to get me?
“No, I won’t believe that. What I will believe, though, is that this threat is real, and that it comes from someone else. Someone, something, some group on the far, far left that wants the world to believe they are what they are not. So I’m going to say to you people, you who say you are going to kill me, right here and now— I am not afraid of you. You are liars. And you are cowards. And I have soldiers of my own, friends who will catch you in your vicious lies, protect my life, and send you back to the welfare rolls, or the unemployment lines, or the AIDS clinic.
“Preston Switcher has enemies, there’s no doubt of that. And I am proud of the enemies I’ve made.
“But Preston Switcher relies on his friends. Friends like all of you out there. And the right, my friends, knows right from wrong.”
I hadn’t made Royal get a beeper any too soon. He had to know, right now, that the plan had leaked in a big, public way. The Aryan Command would be spinning in its boots. And Pete Ebner would be looking hard at everyone who knew about it— including the warriors who were supposed to do the killing. Royal. And by extension, maybe Royal’s cousin, Jase.
After I’d beeped the kid, I left a quick message on Rosie’s home machine. She needed to know and she needed to call Pauline. If the cops had made it clear to Switcher that broadcasting their warning to him would endanger our lives, he’d somehow failed to listen.
I waited up, hoping Royal would call. An hour later I was worried enough to call Artie’s place, late as it was. I woke him up; he woke up Deeanne. I didn’t want to worry her, so I told her it was no big deal, I just had to make a plan with Royal for the next day. She yawned a couple of times and offered to call his house.
Five minutes later, she got back to me. Royal wasn’t home. His dad didn’t know where he was and told her he didn’t give a damn, either. Somehow, that wasn’t a big surprise.
I stuck around the house all morning, and paged Royal a couple more times. Finally, he got back to me. He sounded weird but he said he was okay, that he knew about Switcher and wanted me to meet him at a hot dog and burger place in San Rafael at noon.
That worked for me. Noon to four was a hole in the day. There would be a stream— I hoped— of strangers trooping through my house counting beetle holes. And after that was over, Rosie, Sally, and I had a date to go to the cottage-and-cottage on Scenic and negotiate with the sellers.
I dressed in my Thor’s clothes, so if anyone who knew Royal saw me with him I’d be good old Cousin Jase.
It took me ten minutes to get to Frank’s Franks. Royal sat slouched at a table, unchewed burger in hand, staring down at the fries in the cardboard boat beside his paper plate. When I walked in, his glance shot to the doorway like he was a deer expecting a pack of dogs, focused on me, and slid from panicky to pitiful as I crossed the room.
He looked bad, pale and bruised. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty, and I noticed a small spot of blood on the front of his shirt. Not his usual almost compulsive and ironed tidiness. Not at all.
I sat down and thought about getting some food, but the burger looked gray, the tomato pale pink, and the fries were shiny with grease and underdone.
He didn’t seem to notice that the food wasn’t good. He shoved down a few large bites, quickly, like it was the first food he’d seen in a while.
I decided not to order anything. “Tell me,” I said.
He swallowed and rubbed his eyes. “Spent the night being questioned. By Ebner. And by Red.” Inner Circle business. Big time. “Me and Zack. I swore that I didn’t tell nobody nothing. Swore that I didn’t know how Switcher found out. Said what’s true— maybe not everybody knew there was a plan, but a lot of guys did, even if they didn’t know exactly when it was going down. I was, like, did he say Wednesday on his radio show? They said, no, and I was all, see? I even said, yeah, there must be a ringer in the group— but it isn’t me. Ebner didn’t believe me. He said maybe I don’t want to do the job, you know, the killing. Said I been acting funny about it. He hit me a few times, son of a bitch. Once in the face.” He touched a bruise on his cheek. “And a bunch of times in the gut. Till I threw up.”
“I tried to call you.”
“Yeah. I know. I was at Thor’s. I went for the phone to call you, but that was when Pete grabbed me, took me to the back room.”
I’d been worried about Royal’s ability to play this game convincingly. Looked like I’d had good reason to worry. “Okay, so he didn’t believe you. Or seemed like he didn’t, anyway. He may be pulling that with everyone. But how’d they leave it— what did they say when they stopped pushing you around?”
“They said they’d find out who it was, but they acted like they really thought it was me. They’re gonna be testing people, you know? Loyalty tests.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means they could, like, give me a really bad assignment and see if I do it. Or they could just tell me bullshit, maybe tell other people bullshit, and then see if it goes anywhere. Now they’re all, ‘Hey, the hit on Switcher’s off,’ you know? But I don’t know whether that’s true or not, like if they’re just trying to pass on a bogus message.”
“Probably true, at least for the moment. But the police will cover the original day.” At least I hoped so. I was feeling just a tad out of the loop at the moment.
“So I’m not gonna hear nothing about nothing until they trust me again. There’s meetings and stuff they won’t let me near.”
This was very bad. I was losing my major access to information about their plans. But it was hard to tell from Royal’s story whether they really suspected him or were just leaning on everyone in sight.
“Do you think you’re in any real danger? Will they try to kill you?”
“You mean like poor old Rich? I asked Zack what he thought. He said no. ’Cause they don’t know it’s me. And ’cause they’ll want to see if anyone else is in it with me. Better believe you’re not going to be trusted now, either, not for a while anyway.” He hesitated, and the anger seemed to drain out of him, making him look small and slumped. “I’m really sorry this happened, Jake.” He turned sad, damp blue eyes on me. “I would understand if you wanted to just, like, dump the whole thing.”
I wanted to but I wouldn’t. “Do they suspect Zack at all?”
“Nobody hit Zack. And he says we’re not friends anymore till this is settled.”
I didn’t ask if Zack had returned the $200 loan. Somehow, I doubted it. “Well, lie low for a few days. Act normal, like you’re still in the group, but try to stay out of their way.”
“What about you?”
What about me? I thought for a minute. There seemed only one way to go. “I’m not supposed to know anything about the Switcher hit. So I’m going to act like I know you got beat up, but that it doesn’t involve me and I don’t know what it’s about.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Go home and go to bed, Royal.”
“Yeah.”
I, unfortunately, could not go home. I didn’t know who would be around the bar midafternoon, but I needed to start re-establishing my credentials somewhere and sometime, and I had a few hours to kill.
Steve was, as usual, behind the bar. He gave me a dead look that could have meant, “You ringer, me kill ringers.” Then again, it could have meant, “You’re turning into a lush. Get a life.”
A boy and girl were sitting at a table. He was wearing red braces. That’s what they call their suspenders in skinhead-speak, probably because the Brits seem to be the ones who started all this skin stuff— at least according to one of the web pages I’d checked out. Both the kids were wearing boots, jeans, and leather jackets. He was bald, she had a little hair. Kind of reminded me of the old days, when straights would joke about the hippies— “Can’t tell one sex from the other.”
Then it was because everybody’s hair was long. Everything changes and everything stays the same.
I don’t know, hairy, hairless, whatever, I didn’t have a lot of trouble telling the difference between girls and boys. Not then, not now.
I didn’t remember seeing the boy before, but the girl was the friend of Leslie’s who’d been hanging around the protest in Berkeley. I felt pretty sure she’d never made me as the brown-haired guy in the crowd, but I turned away anyhow. As I sat there watching Steve wash glasses and thinking about hair, Preston Switcher, and Cousin Royal, Floyd came strolling out of the back of the place and sat down next to me. Along came a spider…
“What’s up, Jason?”
“Not much, Floyd. What’s up with you?”
“Heard your cousin got himself in a little trouble.”
“You mean Royal?”
“You got a lot of cousins in trouble?”
“Sure. All of ’em. The kid got beat up. Happens to kids all the time.” I laughed.
Floyd stared at me for a minute, then he decided to laugh too. Har-har. “Listened to Preston Switcher lately?”
I gave him a “what’s that got to do with anything” look. “Off and on, yeah.”
“Did you hear him say the cops told him someone was trying to kill him?”
I let my jaw drop. “Jesus. Who’d want to do that?”
“Jews. Niggers. Lefties.”
It was hard to listen to the names that came so easy out of Floyd’s mouth. I shook my head and let my attention drift back to the kids at the table. They were kissing. Interesting sight. Kind of like being in one of those science fiction movies where the space crews hang out in weird multiplanetary bars.
Steve was watching the couple, scowling. Floyd was watching them too, but he was smirking. I concentrated on my beer. A few seconds later, something the pair did pushed Steve over the edge.
“Okay, you two. Get a room. This is a clean, decent place.”
I kept my eyes on Steve.
The boy spoke up. “Hey, man, we’re customers.”
“Yeah? I never seen you before. And this ain’t no house of prostitution.”
“Listen, man…”
Steve got a cold and scary look on his face. He flipped the end of the bar up and moved toward them.
“Whoa,” Floyd said, punching me on the arm. “Watch this. Steve’s in no mood today, man. You’re gonna see him in action.” I shifted my face halfway toward the kids. Halfway interested. Halfway scornful, cold. What would I do if Steve really hurt the boy? I couldn’t do anything. The damnfool girl had picked a bad day to bring in a stranger.
The kids stood their ground. Steve grabbed the boy by his jacket collar and shoved his own jowly face in close.
“My customers are the kind of people who know how to behave. And they know how to take orders. My customers are not whiny little kids who dress up, shave their heads, come for a visit, and pretend to be something they’re not.”
“He’s a skin, just like me. And I’m here all the time!” the girl protested.
“Yeah, little girl? Maryanne, isn’t that your name? And what kind of skins are you? SHARPS, maybe? Druggies?”
I whispered to Floyd, “What are sharps?”
He snickered. “Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice.”
“I ain’t no druggie and I ain’t no SHARP,” the boy said. “I don’t do politics.”
Floyd snorted. “College kid.” No. I didn’t think he was that old. Neither was she. They weren’t old enough to be in a bar. When this was over, at the very least I was going to make sure Thor’s lost its liquor license.
Steve was still holding the boy’s collar, laughing. His laugh— I’d never heard it before— was a creepy and probably calculated “Heh-heh-heh.” He let go of the boy’s collar.
“No politics. No brains. Go on home, little no-brains.”
The boy swung at him. Floyd jumped off his bar stool and shoved the kid away from Steve. Maybe he was trying to protect Steve, but the kid was the one who needed protecting, so I was glad to see Floyd separate them.
Then Floyd pushed the kid, hard, toward the door. He stumbled, fell to his knees, and jumped up again, his face red with rage and probably embarrassment.
Floyd put his hands on his hips and stared the kid down. “Get out.”
“Come on, Jay, let’s get out of this hole.” The girl had had enough. Her friend shrugged, sneered, and followed her out the door.
Steve moved back behind the bar and began lining the clean glasses up on a towel. Floyd came and sat beside me again.
“That Maryanne,” Steve said. “That’s the last time she gets let in here.” He tossed a significant look toward Floyd. “I don’t trust her.”
Floyd stared back at him. “You think she’s a ringer, maybe?”
“Bet she is,” I said, grabbing my chance to spread the suspicion around a little. “You got a lot of loose ends around here, public place, people come in, how can you tell…”
Steve pointed a glass at me like it was a gun. “We don’t got a lot of loose ends. Someone, some
one,
is a traitor.”
“What’s this about, Steve? Why you looking at me?”
“We got a problem, Jason. Someone’s been telling stories to the police.” I let the tiniest bit of light dawn in Jason’s dumb eyes, and turned to Floyd.
“What kind of stories?”
He shot a glance toward Steve, and must have gotten the okay. “Someone told the cops we wanted to kill Switcher.”
“Us? They said it was us? Did he believe it?”
“No.”
“Who would lie about us like that?” I figured that Jason, not knowing about the hit plan, would automatically assume it was a lie. And that Steve and Floyd would not hurry to correct him.
Floyd shrugged. “Maybe Royal, huh?” I turned back to Steve.
“Is that why Royal got beat up? Someone thinks he’s a liar? A traitor?”
We stared, eye to eye, like a pair of dogs. “You want me to leave?” I asked him.
Steve grinned. I was beginning to think this guy was as loopy as Helen. “No. You stick around, Jase. I want you where I can keep an eye on you.” He moved off toward the other end of the bar and picked up a magazine.