Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (19 page)

I shrugged. “Part of a master plan.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Because I’m an honest man. Ask anyone who knows me.” For some reason, he began flexing his right bicep. Nervous habit?

My patience, what there had been of it, was gone. “I’m tired of standing here talking to you, Switcher. Get to the point, if you have one. What do you want?”

“All right, here it is. Yes, I think these people are idiots who will most likely stumble over their own feet no matter what they try to do, and that any plan they come up with will be as full of holes as a liberal’s argument.” Wow. When I think of holes I think of bumpy roads. But then, I’m a practical kind of guy. He was still talking. “But at the same time, I wanted to be sure there’s nothing you know that I need to know to protect myself. Something you might, as you liberals like to say, share.”

“If I hear of another plan to kill you, with details, the police will know and they’ll warn you. Again. I would like it, though, if this time you could manage to keep your mouth shut.”

“Tough guy, huh? Maybe you act this way to cover a limp wrist.”

I started to walk away.

He grabbed my arm. “No, wait. I did have a purpose in calling you.”

I yanked my arm out of his fist. “Then maybe you’d like to stop wasting my time and tell me?”

“I want you to pass on everything you find out about the Command’s plans to me.”

“Why should I do that?”

He laughed. “For the reason everyone does everything, Jake. Money.”

“You want me to work for you?”

He nodded.

“I do things for reasons other than money, Switcher.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“And don’t call me Jake.”

“All right. Mr. Samson.”

“I have a client on this case already, Switcher. I don’t need another one.”

“Yes, but all you have to do for me is pass on whatever you learn working for the other client. Everything you find out. I think these people are harmful to the conservative cause. I want to know who they are and what they’re up to and how dangerous they are. This is a war of words too, and we were hurt by that bomb in Oklahoma City. We’d need ten Ruby Ridges to outweigh—”

“Well, I don’t want to work for you. And I don’t understand why you’d want to hire me. I’m a Democrat. Maybe even a Green. Isn’t that against your religion?”

“I’m a pragmatist. You’re on the case. Talking to you now, you seem competent.”

“Thank you so much.”

“And despite the fact that you obviously don’t like my views—” he flexed the bicep again “—I think you wouldn’t mind taking my money.”

What a disgusting twit. He turned around and hoisted himself up on the stone wall, facing away from Babylon across the Bay, getting his nice blue suit all dusty, flexing his calf muscles.

“I don’t want your money. I don’t want to work for you. I don’t even want to be standing here talking to you. As far as I know the plot to kill you is on hold. Stay in touch with the police. Have a nice day.”

Once again, I started to walk. Once again, he stopped me, catching up, getting in my way. I kept moving, but he didn’t grab my arm again.

He walked along beside me, brushing off the seat of his suit pants. “Five hundred dollars a day.”

“No.”

“What exactly is it about me you find so offensive? My views on welfare? Health care? Religion? Women? Gays?”

“Yes. But I wouldn’t find your views nearly so offensive if you kept them to yourself. You’re a rabble-rouser. And the rabble you rouse is violent. You don’t just want to ‘prune the tree of liberal government,’ as you like to say. You want to eliminate the constitutional protections of everyone you don’t understand or like, make sure that welfare goes to business only. That jobs go to heterosexual men. Only. That the schools teach fundamentalist propaganda and don’t teach anything that goes against it. You’re not just a bigot, Switcher— I heard you say one night that you’re a creationist. There’s just so much I can stand.”

He was staring at me, his mouth open. Then he burst out laughing.

“Well, at least you’ve got convictions. Look, I’ll be out of town for a day or two, but I will be back Wednesday, as planned.” He smirked. “If you change your mind, give me a call.”

“I won’t change my mind. My grandparents were immigrants who could barely speak English, and I had family on welfare during the Depression. We were poor when I was a kid. Fundamentalists called me names and tried to beat me up. I know enough about history to know how dangerous pricks like you really are. And my best friend’s a dyke who’s lived with as much crap in this enlightened damned day and age as my parents lived with in the Fifties. Because people like you make it okay to harass her. And that college kid in Wyoming? The one who was beaten to death because he maybe— maybe!— flirted with a man? Take your money and your red white and blue suit and your smug little ego and—”

“Why are you so angry with me? What have I ever done to you? Do you want them to kill me?” He let out a weird giggle.

We were at my car. I climbed inside, slammed the door in his face, and turned the key. He was still standing there, looking amused, and puzzled, and patronizing, when I roared out of the lot and headed north. I wanted to drive through the Marin landscape for a little while. Maybe take a back road or two. Maybe stop for lunch somewhere. Get the taste of Preston Switcher out of my mouth.

No, I didn’t want them to kill him. I just wanted all of them to go away and leave decent people alone.

I turned off Route 101 at the Sir Francis Drake exit, and once again, drove west. Past Fairfax, and Woodacre, and took the Nicasio turnoff. By the time I got to Rancho Nicasio I was ready for a meal and a glass of wine. On a bench outside the restaurant there was a copy of that day’s Marin
Independent Journal.
Good. Something to read with lunch.

Halfway through my fried oysters, I found a story about a murder victim found early Sunday evening at the Berkeley Marina. A man dressed in jeans and boots and a leather jacket, the story said, with a Confederate flag on the back. A friend had ID’d him but the name was being withheld pending notification of relatives.

He’d been stabbed in the back.

I called Royal one more time and left the number of the restaurant pay phone. I was just about finished with my meal when he called me back.

“Listen, Jake, we got to talk.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve been trying to reach you. Where have you been? I just saw Preston Switcher. And who is this guy they found at the Marina? Anyone I know?”

“Meet me somewhere? Where are you now?” I told him. “That’s kind of far. Let me think a minute.” I let him think. “Okay, I got it. There’s a good place in San Rafael.”

I agreed to meet him at an upscale pool hall on the west side of downtown. He said none of the skins or Command guys ever went there. It was a yuppie spot.

“The corpse, Royal?” I didn’t feel like waiting until I saw him to get an answer to that. “Who was it?”

“It was Pete Ebner.”

Ebner. Who would kill Pete Ebner? I didn’t think Red was too crazy about him, but suddenly, I wondered: Was this the way Royal was getting out of trouble with the Command? By killing his boss?

I decided to ask him straight out. “Royal, did you have anything to do with it?”

“Jesus, no! Why would I kill Pete? Just because he beat me up?”

“Seems like a reason to me.”

“Well, not to me. Jesus. I wouldn’t kill nobody. Not ever. Look, what I want is, you just meet me, okay? Me and Deeanne. I’m picking her up at school. I can be in San Rafael in an hour.”

“Okay. We’re going to talk more about Ebner and we’re going to talk about Switcher too— and why you opened your mouth to him.”

“Yeah. Okay. Yeah. ’Bye.”

I drank another cup of very good coffee and got back on the road.

Nice pool hall. I got there after Royal and Deeanne, and they were playing a game. Deeanne was standing, leaning on her stick like an old woman, watching Royal drift around the table, settle on a shot, and almost forget to watch the ball not go in. His walk was missing nearly all its swagger. He looked worse than he had the day before, and he had a five-o’clock shadow on his head.

Deeanne patted his arm and aimed her stick at the cue ball; I stopped a few feet away to let her shoot. The stick slipped, she ticked the cue ball, and it wiggled a couple of feet in the direction of the five.

That made it Royal’s turn again, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was staring at his boots, his forehead all wrinkled like he saw a sad, scary movie playing across the surface of the leather.

I sat down beside him.

“Murder, Royal. The police are in this now, big-time. Whether you like it or not.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Deeanne sat down on his other side and took his hand.

“That meeting at the bar last night— it was about Ebner, wasn’t it? He’d been found by then, right?”

“I don’t know about a meeting. I been hiding out at a motel. Zack beeped me, I called him, he asked me did I kill Pete. I said no. He said I was lying.”

“You answered Zack’s call but not mine?”

“He called first. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you didn’t mind talking to Preston Switcher either. What the hell was that all about? Are you out of your mind?”

“I thought he should know what he did so he wouldn’t do it again. I’ve always thought he was okay. I wanted to tell him I was looking out for him, but he had to look out for me too.”

“He doesn’t care about you.”

The kid shot me a hot look. “I don’t believe you.”

“He betrayed us. And then you gave him my name.”

“He said he’d keep it off the air now, and he said he wanted to talk to you.” Stubborn, sullen, like a five-year-old.

“Yeah. He called and we met. Fat waste of time. The man had nothing to say I wanted to hear. Listen, Royal, I’m saying this only one more time. You tell me everything you know every time you know something. You answer my calls. You don’t talk to anyone else about anything. You don’t jeopardize me and Rosie. Or we’re gone and you’re on your own. You got that?”

For a second I thought he was going to argue. Then he nodded and started to cry, silently. Deeanne leaned over, twisting in her chair, and rubbed his broad, rock-tense shoulders.

“Who killed Ebner?”

“I don’t know, Jake. Maybe the same guy that killed Richard.”

Richard. The kid who’d gone looking for new causes. “But why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to do better than that. Ebner had to have some enemies. In or out of the group.” To say the least. He must have walked through the world pissing people off.

When I’d called Rosie to tell her to check out the story in the paper, told her who the corpse was, she hadn’t said much. Just, “Could have been anybody, creep like that.”

“Even if he did have enemies,” Deeanne said, “it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s like, what just happened was Royal.” I must have looked confused. She went on a little more clearly. “Everyone thinks it’s Royal because it just happened, him beating on Royal and accusing him of being the snitch.”

“Does Zack think you killed Pete?”

“Well, yeah, he’s all, well, he kind of thinks so. I mean, he was there when Ebner beat on me. But he’s my friend, still. I think.”

Sure. “He ever give you back the money you loaned him?”

The kid shot me a hurt look. “He needed it for tools. He’s trying to, like, make something of himself.”

“Tools?” Wires? Timers? Explosives? “What kind of tools?”

“He’s learning to be a locksmith.”

Great. Just what the world needed. Zack knowing how to pick locks.

“Okay. So Zack kind of thinks maybe you did Ebner. Do all the others think so too?” I was wondering how long it would take the cops to hear about this and come looking for the Command’s most popular murder suspect.

“I don’t know who-all else. Steve, he told Zack that people are wondering. He goes, everybody’s pissed and a lot of them are looking at me, you know? But Zack, he says Steve wouldn’t say who, exactly, is looking at me, or maybe Zack won’t say. But we were, like, followed when we came here today. By Floyd. I recognized his shitty-looking car.”

“Followed!”

“Don’t worry. We lost him on Fourth Street.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Unless he changed cars or something.” That didn’t seem likely, but with this group, who knew?

Nothing we could do about it now. And why shouldn’t Royal be meeting his cousin? I decided to get back to Floyd in a minute. There was something else I wanted to know right now.

“The paper said a friend ID’d the body. Who was that?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, Pete had, like, Steve’s name and Thor’s phone number on him, so the cops called and Steve went.”

“Zack told you that too?” He nodded. Zack had been pretty damned chatty with the guy he thought killed Pete Ebner. The kid had a mouth as big as Royal’s. But Steve’s ID sounded okay— it wasn’t like the cops found him hiding in the bushes and asked him to look at the body.

“Okay. Tell me why you think Richard’s death is connected to Pete Ebner’s murder. There must be something that makes you think they’re related. Richard was shot, right?” He nodded. “And Ebner was stabbed. So that’s not it. Not the same M.O.”

Royal just shrugged.

“Look, pal, you’re going to have to be more willing to help, more willing to talk, more willing to take a little responsibility for your own life.”

“I am willing. I just don’t know anything. It just seems like there must be someone in the Command that had a reason to kill Richard and had a reason, like maybe the same reason, to kill Pete. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense. See, Rich was killed because he was pulling out. I can’t see Pete pulling out. Not ever. It was his whole life, man.”

“Pulling out. Yes, you said Richard was trying to leave the group and that was when he got killed. But I’ve been wondering about that. Why would they bother? Did he know too much?” And about what?

“Hey, he didn’t have to know nothing. He was just a warrior. But some of these guys don’t think killing’s such a big deal, you know? And loyalty is. A big deal.”