Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (28 page)

It was a hard call, and I was scared we were making the wrong decision, but after I told her what was up, we agreed that we shouldn’t blow our cover with the Command by calling the San Rafael cops.

We were a block behind when they zoomed across Grand and into the Canal district. Skink was in and out of lanes, skimming close to the slow-moving traffic. He may have been reluctant to join Zack at first, but he seemed to be getting into the spirit of it all now.

Now I was sure. Zack and Skink were headed for Royal’s house.

Without the cops, all we could do was shoo the boys away with Rosie’s Smith and Wesson ten-millimeter and hope they didn’t come back anytime soon.

I’d never seen either of them with a gun, only with the nightsticks they’d used at Frasier’s demonstration. There was no telling what Skink was packing on that hog, though. When we pulled up, I noticed Royal’s car in the driveway. Who’d brought it from the hospital? The boys were at the door of the Subic house. Rosie skidded to the curb and I jumped out.

I heard Zack saying, “…apologize to you, man…” and before I could yell out a warning, someone had opened the door and let them in.

Was it true? Were they there to apologize to Royal, now that they knew the truth about Ebner? Why didn’t I believe that?

I believed it even less when I heard a woman scream.

The door had not closed entirely behind them. Rosie kicked it open and drew the ten millimeter out of her gun-carrying-woman jacket, all in one movement.

What a picture, and everyone staring at us. On the floor, holding his head, was Mr. Subic. Zack was standing over him brandishing his nightstick. Skink had Royal pinned to the floor. Deeanne stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, a big iron pan in her hand, Mrs. Subic peering out from behind her. It was true what Royal had told us: The warriors didn’t carry guns except for special assignments. It occurred to me that might have been Ebner’s doing, one way he could keep them under some kind of control and make sure they only killed people he wanted them to kill.

“Drop the stick, Zack.” Rosie waved the gun at him.

Zack didn’t move, didn’t answer.

“They’re robbing Mr. Subic,” Deeanne said. “They came for his money.”

Somehow, I had to keep up the cousin act with Rosie standing next to me aiming a pistol. The scenario still had to be: Cousin Jase and his tough girlfriend, loyal Command hangers-on, racing to stop the warriors from making a terrible mistake. I didn’t believe it myself.

“Jesus, Zack,” I said. “You swallowed all that crap? There’s no money. Not anywhere. Except for whatever Royal steals. I can’t believe you thought it was true. He made the story up.”

The hand holding the nightstick wavered, but just for a second.

“Bullshit! Bullshit! It’s here.”

“Zack, maybe…”

“Shut up, Skink. It’s here. Lots of it. Why would Royal make it up?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I just kept on talking. “You gonna beat the old guy to death trying to get it off him?”

“Maybe.”

Rosie pointed the pistol at a spot in the floor between his feet, and fired. The wood splintered.

He dropped the nightstick.

She was the gun, I was the mouth: “Now get out of here and leave my family alone, you little shit. And let me tell you, Red’s gonna hear about this. And Floyd too.” I wasn’t sure what I meant by that threat: that the big guys would kick their butts, or would even kick them out of the Command? I left it vague. Like I knew something they didn’t. Which was, of course, true, at least about Floyd.

“We were gonna give some of it to the Command,” Skink protested.

But they were on their way out the door when he said it.

Subic got up, wiping blood off his brow, insisting that he was okay. His wife brought him a plastic bag of ice, which he held to his head.

I helped Royal get up and gave him his orders. “Lock all the doors and windows, and keep them locked, and don’t let anyone from the Command in. If someone shows up again, call the cops.” The motorcycle popped, sputtered, and roared, and its noise faded as it rolled away. Clowns. All of them.

I turned toward Artie’s wayward ward. “And Deeanne. How did you get here? Artie was going to take away your car.”

“I took a cab to Royal’s car and used that.” There was my answer to one question.

“You get home. And you stay there. And you go to school in the morning. And you stay away from this house. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be grounded for the rest of your life.”

Deeanne didn’t say anything. She was staring at Rosie’s Smith and Wesson.

Mrs. Subic did, though. “I didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to come here.” She sounded mildly, peacefully insulted.

“Not for a while, anyway. Let me put it this way, Deeanne. Deeanne, look at me.” She raised her eyes from Rosie’s pistol. “You come near this house again and I personally will go to the police and tell them all about the Subics’ cash stash, and where it came from.”

Subic glared at me, then at Deeanne. He pointed at the door with his ice bag. “Get out. All of you.”

We did.

We took Deeanne home, calling ahead to make sure someone was there. Julia was, and she was waiting when we climbed the steps. We handed Deeanne over and didn’t stick around to hear what Julia said to her.

Rosie dropped me off at home and went back to the office. I told her I’d heard Red tell Zack to be at the bar at 7:00, in the back room, and said I’d pick her up at 5:45. I went inside, fed Tigris and Euphrates, took off my shoes and socks, and lay back on the couch to think.

When I woke up, I was depressed.

Sure, it was all pretty funny. Seductive Jewish spies. Left-wing crazies masquerading as right-wing crazies and sending skinhead punks on political suicide missions. Cops and PIs chasing each other around in circles. Warriors trying to steal from thieves. Rosie and I were working with the police in the person of Floyd-Byron, but he wasn’t giving us much in the way of either help or information. I couldn’t stand him, I didn’t trust him, and we hadn’t felt free to call the San Rafael cops for help.

From the beginning, nobody was who he was supposed to be. Zack was supposed to be Royal’s friend; Gilly was supposed to be a Nazi. Pete Ebner, it seemed, had belonged to the lunatic or semi-lunatic left, and not to the altogether lunatic right. Could have fooled me.

Did Ebner kill Royal’s friend Richard? If he did, the motive for that murder, and for his own, depended on who and what Pete Ebner really was, and why he was a member of the Aryan Command. He’d been leader of the warriors, and that made him responsible for a lot of violence and fear. For swastikas in a cemetery, a fire in a church. People had gotten hurt. Even Cary Frasier had gotten hurt. Had that been staged? Was Pete’s violence encouraged and maybe even planned by Frasier and ThePeople? Or was it Pete’s own idea to lead the Command to a political cliff and right on over the edge?

Crazy, twisted thinking. With human sacrifices.

Either way, Richard had been getting too close to Ebner’s real territory, and Ebner would have been afraid he’d be exposed somehow to the Command.

On the other hand, if Ebner was a double— triple? I’d lost track— agent, maybe it was Frasier’s group he was afraid of.

One thing was sure: Ebner was somebody’s renegade. So if there was any sense to any of this, that somebody was the most likely killer, or had sent the killer. I thought of Zack. Too bad his shock and grief at the memorial service had looked so real. He’d be the perfect hit man. Just tell him his hero was a traitor, hand him a knife, and send him off. But I was pretty sure he’d been unaware of Ebner’s betrayal until he saw the story in the paper.

Red? Red, who wanted Ebner’s job with the warriors. Red, who didn’t like Ebner very much. Red, who had a buck knife.

I shook my head to clear it and looked at my watch. Five o’clock. I made a pot of coffee and a smoked turkey sandwich with pickles, tomatoes, and mustard.

But the truth of it was, I didn’t have to care about Ebner. Figuring out what he was and finding his killer was not my job. Floyd could do that. The Berkeley homicide people could do that. Protecting Royal and getting him out of the mess he’d made of his life— that was my job.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t done it very well so far.

At this point, the only way to save Royal, not to mention Deeanne and Rosie and me, was to be sure the Command’s fangs—
all
their teeth— were pulled. That way, we might be safe. And that way, Royal could maybe ease his load of guilt over Richard.

So far all we’d managed to achieve was the dubious accomplishment of saving Preston Switcher’s life, or at least postponing his death. Oh, yeah. We’d also protected a man guilty of armed robbery, kept him from getting mugged by Nazi skinheads, and gotten thrown out of his house by way of thanks. And what about the men from Chicago? Would they make sure someone paid for the trouble the local group was having or would they just shrug, go home, and go bowling?

And we still didn’t have a handle on whether the Command planned to kill Switcher or another target, and what changes they’d made in the schedule.

Five-thirty. I put on my shoes and went to get Rosie.

Thor’s was nearly empty. Steve was behind the bar. He grunted at us but gave us coffee. Karl was there, slumped in a chair at a table near the jukebox. Before we could sit down with him, he mumbled something about the bathroom and took off. I thought he’d had too much to drink.

This was going to be tough, but we had a plan. Rosie was going to hang around the bar, talking, watching, and listening, and making sure there was jukebox noise to cover any I might make. I was going to do something else. About five minutes into the coffee, I got up and went to the men’s room— and past it. I pushed the door to the back room, lightly. Unlocked. The rear exit, on the other hand, was locked from the inside, and I didn’t want it to be. I yanked the bolts and turned the knob button. Ready for business.

Then I returned, slugged back my cold coffee, told Rosie I had a couple of errands to run and I’d see her in an hour or so, and went out the front door, over the fence next door, and around to the back.

Through the barred, dirty window, I saw Karl coming out of the toilet, and waited until he’d gone back into the bar and the hallway was clear.

The outside door squeaked, but the jukebox was playing heavy metal and I felt fairly safe. I slid quickly along the hall to the
EMPLOYEES ONLY
door and pushed, praying that no one had showed up early and blown our scheme. If someone was in there, I’d have to say, “Oops, sorry, silly me, wrong door,” and back out again. It opened quietly and I peered inside. The back room was empty.

Six-thirty. I had to make a quick decision: The door I’d noticed before at the back of the room— a closet?— or the stage. I didn’t know where the door led, and I didn’t have the time now to pick the wrong hiding place. I went straight to the plywood stage. Eight feet long. Probably just two-by-four framing. I could lift it if it wasn’t nailed to the floor. It wasn’t. I squatted, got my fingers painfully under the side, heaved, got down on my knees, wrestled the plywood over one shoulder, bruising myself for certain, and swung around inside, losing my grip at the last minute and getting a bashed calf as I slid under.

The stage was about two feet high, and big enough, I thought, so I wouldn’t run out of air soon. Once I was under it, in the dark, I could see that the corner to my left was warped enough to let in plenty of oxygen and also give me a very narrow view of that side of the room.

There were no knotholes, no other gaps anywhere. I would not be able to see anyone coming in the door. I put my face close to the crack and waited. Just a few minutes later, the hallway door opened and someone came in, very quietly. Halting footsteps crossed the room to the right of the stage, still out of my field of vision, all the way to the back. The door, the one to the hiding place I’d decided not to use, opened and closed.

I waited to hear someone rummaging around, to hear the door open again, but there was nothing.

I held my watch up to the crack of light but couldn’t read it. A few more minutes passed, and the hallway door banged open. Nothing sneaky about this entrance. This was someone who knew he belonged.

“Shut the door good.” Red’s voice. Another invisible person complied.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna forget all that crap Ebner planned. We’re gonna go right to Plan B, if you understand my point.”

No! I don’t! Whoever he’s talking to— make him explain.

Zack obliged. “You mean Frasier? When do you want us to do it?”

“Tonight. He always leaves home at eight o’clock Tuesday nights for one of his meetings. We know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What time you got?”

“Seven sharp.”

“Your car running?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I got guns in the truck, outside. Get your troops together and get to his house by eight o’clock. Catch him outside. On his way to his little meeting. That way you won’t have to worry about getting in.”

“We got in at Subics’.”

“That’s ’cause Royal let you in, dumb fuck that he is.”

So Red knew about the boys’ raid on the Subic house. Maybe the Command needed money. Or maybe Red did.

“Any special orders?”

“Yeah. Leave this on his body.”

This? This what?

Zack giggled. “Shit, that’s a good one.”

“Get moving.”

The hallway door opened and closed again. I thought, from the sounds, that they had both gone out. But I couldn’t be sure. I lay there, waiting a little longer. Then I heard the other door, the door at the back of the room, open, and the sneaky someone— who was it? I couldn’t see!— moved to the hallway door. Soft, hesitating footsteps. I could barely hear the door close behind him or her. If it was safe for the creeper to leave, it was safe for me.

Getting out was not as easy as getting under. No room to maneuver, no leverage. I gripped a two-by-four corner, lifted, and got a few fingers, then a forearm under the rough edge. Then both arms. I stuck my head out like a turtle peeking out of its shell, and scraped my shoulders through.