Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (26 page)

Artie wished me luck, and I wished him the same.

In the hour I’d been up the trail at Art’s house, the trees and the birds had added a few features to my car. I brushed redwood debris off the upholstery, including a few of those acorn-size cones— why do the biggest trees make the smallest seedpods? Or whatever they are?— and used a stick to pry a glob of birdshit off the dashboard. The disadvantages of a convertible. I put the car in gear and headed out between the giant trees, aiming for the road that would take me to Miller Avenue, which would, in turn, take me back to the freeway.

Suddenly, from the right, a familiar green Camaro pulled in front of my car. I was still going slowly enough to stop in time, but the driver just sat there, not moving out of the way. Floyd. A cold wash of adrenaline made my hands grip the wheel harder, but I couldn’t go anywhere unless I wanted to back up and try hiding behind a redwood. I yanked the brown wig off my head and fumbled with the glove box latch, which, true to form, refused to release.

He slid out of the Camaro and walked toward me, smiling. I dropped the wig on the floor and planted my foot on it. He was leaning in the window.

“Jason, as I live and breathe. Or is it Jake Samson, I presume?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s one hell of a funny-looking spider you’re squashing down there.”

He reached down toward the hairpiece under my foot. I stopped him by grabbing it myself and waving it in his face. The best defense being a good offense, as I’ve always said. When you’re dealing with terminal assholes, anyway.

“What’s your point, Floyd? That I shouldn’t go out with women who leave their wigs in my car?”

“Nice try, pal!” There was something different about the way he was talking.

“You followed me last night, didn’t you? You need to get your headlights fixed.”

He laughed.

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t be taking care of my cousin? He didn’t do anything wrong, you know.”

“No reason at all.” Still grinning. I kept expecting him to pull a gun and shoot me between the eyes. Maybe Rosie was right. Lie down with gun nuts, get up with guns. Or something.

“Did you sit outside my house all night?”

“Yeah, well, down the street. And I’m tired. I followed Rosie to her place, and checked out the address. Vicente. A PI. And I followed you here. And checked out the address. Arthur Perrine.
Probe.
Not exactly a right-wing publication.” Publication. That word was too big for the Floyd I knew and loved. “You a PI or a reporter? Who you working for, friend?”

“I’m working for myself, buddy.” My heart was pounding in my ears. I forced myself to stay cool. I was going to keep faking it until I couldn’t fake it anymore. Then what he’d just said registered. “You checked out the addresses?” Karl could have, with a computer. But… “How the hell did you do that?”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a Berkeley PD shield. The ID name was Byron Kern.

I stared at it, trying to decide if it was real. Waiting for the pounding of my heart to stop deafening me, waiting for the images of Royal’s bashed face, and my own face looking just like it, to go away. I’d been caught, but maybe not by a Nazi. My vitals began to simmer down.

But still, I thought, stirring up the juices again, maybe this was all part of a Command game, the ID was fake, and Floyd was trying to lull me into a false sense of security so he could kill me. Then again, what did he really have on me? A girlfriend who was a PI? An acquaintance who ran a magazine? That could be enough, if he looked a little closer at both the girlfriend and the magazine. I had to admit neither one of them was a great match-up for an apprentice Nazi like Jason Dormeister.

My heart started pounding again and the adrenaline gushed. I was sweating. My foot reached for the accelerator without my mind telling it to.

Floyd reached in and touched my arm. “It’s okay, Jake. I’m undercover in the group. Just like you. Nothing to fear from me.”

I wasn’t going to fall for that. A phony shield, a phony line, and I’d end up curb-stomped or worse. And so would Rosie and Artie— my God, this bastard knew where my friends lived. I’d screwed up. Royally.

Had I missed any news stories about a Berkeley cop named Byron Kern being killed and robbed of his wallet?

I decided to stay in character. Jason’s character. All this back and forth is-he-or-isn’t-he was exhausting me. “Undercover, huh? Thanks for telling me, cop. Or maybe I should say ‘spy.’ I think there’s some people who should know about that. I think you just confessed to the wrong person.” I could step on the throttle and get the hell out of there…

“Wow. You’re good.” He shook his head. Sumbitch was making fun of me.

Then, really fast, he reached over the steering column and yanked my keys out of the ignition. I grabbed for his hand, caught his wrist, and held on, hard.

“Take it easy. Jesus! Calm down, would you? Okay, I’m going to stop playing with you— though God knows you deserve it, hanging around with that bunch of killers. Guess you want proof, huh? Proof I didn’t buy the shield?”

“Sure— prove to me why a cop would blow his cover the way you just did.” I wasn’t ready to give up yet, and I was really getting into the sneering.

“I will. Why don’t you follow me up to San Rafael? There are some people I’m working with on this side of the Bay. Unless you’d rather go right to my own shop in Berkeley? Maybe that would be better?”

“Are you arresting me? Taking me in for questioning? Do you expect me to rat on someone? I don’t know enough about the group to do that. You’re the expert, you’re the guy on the inside. You’re the traitor.” If this was a test I was damned if I was going to fail. At the same time, I kept thinking,
Pauline, you screwed up.
How come you didn’t know about Floyd?

“Yeah. That’s right. Guy on the inside. Come in for questioning, will you?” He smirked at me. Jesus, how I hated this smug… cop? I had to admit I was beginning to believe him. This cop character was a pretty different guy from the Floyd character. Whoever Floyd was, he wasn’t what I’d thought.

Because there it was again, the subtle difference in his speech patterns, his facial expressions, his body language. Almost like he was a different man. He could be telling the truth.

Or the shift was designed to make me trust him, and this guy was a better actor than I’d ever thought he could be, a lot smarter or shrewder than I’d thought Floyd was.

“No. I’m not going with you. Not anywhere.”

“Okay, just a suggestion. Now you know. And I know, and we can pool our resources.” He looked more serious then. “I wanted you to understand you could count on me when the shit hits the fan, because I think it’s about to, real soon.”

“And what makes you think that?”

He just shrugged. Okay, no giveaways here.

“I’m a loyal member of the Command, Floyd.”

“Right. And the only way you can prove to me that you’re a loyal member of the Command is by snitching on me.” He was grinning. “You going to do that?”

Damn.

“There’s a memorial service for Pete Ebner today. At Hal and Helen’s. I’m going. Are you?”

“Nobody told me about it. What time?”

“One.”

“I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah. See you there.”

Fine. I still don’t trust you, Byron, Floyd, or whoever you are.

He got back in his car and drove down Montford toward Miller, while I sat watching and shaking with nerves. When he was out of sight, I used my car phone to call Rosie. I told her about Floyd and gave her the license number and description of the old green Camaro, including the headlight problem. She said she’d get on it right away. She also said she had talked to Pauline and was waiting for what she thought was going to be some very interesting information about Pete Ebner’s corpse. And oh, by the way, we had a new client. I told her I would be right there.

During the drive to San Rafael, I tried to get my head around the possibility that Floyd really was undercover. I was remembering, now, how Karl and Floyd had gotten into it at the ball game when Karl had said Floyd looked like a cop. Was he guessing, was it just his way of being insulting, or did he know something? I don’t much believe in coincidence.

Saturday at the Coliseum I’d seen Karl near the phones, and it was when he came back from there that he had attacked Floyd. Maybe he’d been talking to someone and got the word? But who from? And how?

And why? Why was he checking up on Floyd in the first place? Was that his job in the Command? His real job? And if it was his job, why hadn’t anyone killed Floyd yet? Why was he still a member of the Command? And, on the other hand, why was Karl still running around loose, free to expose Floyd-Byron to the group? None of this was making sense, as usual.

Rosie was sitting at her desk, Alice at her feet, when I walked in, my head still circling the possibilities, my nerves still buzzing. “You okay?”

“Sure, Rosie. What have you got?”

“About your friend Floyd, I gave Pauline the name he gave you and his description and she didn’t even have to ask around. She knows the guy. Byron Kern. A Berkeley cop. He’s done some undercover work in the past. She says she didn’t know he was doing any now, never heard he was working with San Rafael.”

“Whoa, that’s a relief. That he’s a cop. Not so good that Pauline was totally out of the loop.”

“I know. She says this is super-secret, though. She asked a couple questions and ran into a blank wall.” But Floyd-Byron had said he was working with some people in San Rafael. Were those people also in the Command? “By the way, Pauline doesn’t like the guy, this Floyd-Byron whoever, wouldn’t say why, just said he was a dickhead. But you’re probably okay.”

“There’s a thought. Me being okay. Anyway, Pauline doesn’t like me, either, so I won’t worry about that part.”

“It’s not that she doesn’t like you. She just has her ways. She’s still a good contact.”

“Right. A good contact who didn’t know her own shop was involved in the Aryan Command. A wonderful contact who thinks all men are slime, when she isn’t busy grabbing their butts. I’m going to go chip myself an ax-head now and grab her by the hair. Thanks.”

“Oh, I asked Pauline about Milly Levine. Says she’s not one of theirs. Says she got a hint, wouldn’t say where, that Gilly-Milly might be Israeli.” The woman who’d called her by name had said she was from Los Angeles. She could be both.

“One more little item— and we never heard this from her. In fact, we never heard it at all. The weapon. From the size and shape of Ebner’s wounds, a buck knife is a good possibility.”

“That’s not such a little item, Rosie. Kind of implicates old Red, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly. And I called it little because the big stuff is really big. You’re going to love this. The other thing I was waiting for?”

“Tell me already. I have to go to a memorial service.”

“For Ebner?”

“Yes.”

She grinned. “I’ll go with you and mourn his passing. I guess when they planned the memorial they were missing some information.”

“Which is?” She was enjoying this too much.

“Seems Ebner’s sister came to claim the body, and guess who was with her, all broken up?”

“Rosie!”

“Okay, no more guessing games, but I’m beginning to wonder if anyone who belongs to that group of jackasses
isn’t
working undercover. Pete Ebner’s sister showed up with Cary Frasier. And they were both real upset.”

Mulling that one over, I drove home to change clothes and get ready for the memorial service from hell.

Maybe Floyd didn’t know yet, about Ebner. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him.

At home, there was a message from Sally. The broker with the BMW, the guy with two first names, had made an offer on the house. A good one. We were ready to start dealing on the Scenic property.

Rosie was still chuckling when she came to pick me up for the drive to San Rafael in her six-cylinder marshmallow. She was glad to hear about the house, sure, but that news was running a slow second to the way the case was breaking. The last time I’d seen her so smug was the day I told her I’d decided to move to Marin and work for her.

“Pete Ebner!” she kept saying over and over again. “I can’t wait to see which one of those dorks turns out to be from the Polish Resistance.” Rosie liked old World War II movies.

When we got to Hal and Helen’s, the front door was standing open so we went in, stopping just inside the doorway to scope things out. The oversized Aryan Command flag was hanging in the living room and twenty or so folding chairs were lined up in rows facing it. They weren’t expecting much of a crowd. My original estimate of maybe two dozen members seemed to be holding pretty well. Deduct Ebner, Floyd, Gilly, and probably a San Rafael cop I still hadn’t pegged, deduct half a dozen who were probably just hangers-on who’d drift off to a new group in a few months, and this was a very small army, more than half of them stupid kids looking for excitement. And so far, the only “enemies” they’d managed to off were one of those kids and one of their own leaders, who was turning out to be— well, I didn’t know what Ebner was, yet.

I reminded myself that the world had underestimated Hitler, glanced at Rosie to make sure she wasn’t still giggling, and walked into the room. A few people, mostly warriors, were clumped around the wet bar, where Karl stood pouring beer. A table nearby was laid with a frayed white cloth and the requisite bowls of chips, puffs, and pretzels of many shapes and sizes.

I didn’t see Floyd, Hal, Helen, Red, or Steve. Karl saw me and waved. I went to the bar.

“Where’s everybody?”

“Big meeting. In the bedroom. There’s some out-of-town guys. It’s about Gilly. You know, about how could a thing like that happen, a ringer like her and nobody caught on. Not even me.” He smirked and shook his head. “And about Pete’s murder.”

“Out-of-town guys? Who’s at the meeting?” I was also wondering if anyone had heard anything about Ebner’s connections to Cary Frasier, whatever they were.

“Inner Circle. And the guys are from, I think, Chicago.” Karl raised his eyebrows, letting me know these were very important or very secret people.