Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (8 page)

Zack and his friends got their beers and headed for the hallway, swaggering.

To the back room, I supposed. I really wanted to get a look at that back room.

“They’re something, those kids,” I said, smiling after them.

“Hope of the world,” Steve snarled. I couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not. I didn’t think I would ever be able to tell, with Steve.

Zack seemed like a smart enough boy. He apparently had a great future as a leader of creeps.

“These warriors,” I said. “I bet they’re very loyal to each other, aren’t they?” Would Zack stand by Royal if he found out he wanted to leave the Command? I doubted it. I thought the Command would come first.

“To the death,” Red said. “To the death. That’s the whole point. One of them gets jumped, his buddies fight alongside. That little guy?” He jerked a thumb in the direction of where the kids had gone. “Saw him take on a couple of big guys once. Washburn, he don’t look tough, but he is. They all are. Have to be. A real pleasure to work with.”

“But isn’t it Ebner who works with them? Isn’t he their leader?”

Suddenly Red was less affable. “Hey, I am too. Those kids look up to me. When it hits the fan, it’s me and them. And don’t forget it. You can’t always tell who’s really in charge.”

“Sorry. I’m new here. Can’t see the forest for the trees, maybe.”

“Yeah. Well. Got to go have a few words with the boys now, matter of fact.” Red slid off his bar stool, his belly jiggling, and followed the warriors to the back.

Steve leaned on the bar. “You meeting Royal here?”

“Just thought I might run into him. Hey, I’m confused. Isn’t Ebner in charge of the warriors?”

His lip curled in a smile. “Everybody wants the good jobs. You want another coffee?”

“Yeah.” He poured me one. I sat and nursed it until Red and the three warriors came back and sat down together at a round table near the front door. They were talking low and grinning and looking edgy.

A couple of seconds later, she came in.

The woman I’d seen the night before. The beautiful one with the warm gold shoulder-length hair.

Steve wiped the bar in front of her. “What’ll you have, Gilly?”

“Club soda.”

Gilly glanced at me and smiled. I smiled back.

“Afternoon. I’m Gilly Johns.”

Steve handed the woman her club soda. “This here’s Jase. He’s a cousin of Royal’s, just moved here, right, Jase?”

“Right, Steve.”

Gilly picked up her drink and moved down to sit beside me. Her eyes were hazel, her hair fine and soft-looking. She had perfect teeth too. I could see that when she smiled.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Jase.”

I noticed that Steve was grinning and shaking his head.

“You’re something, Gilly, you know that?” he said.

“That’s right.” Gilly winked at me. “I am.”

There was nothing subtle about the hormones the woman was shooting at me, but they hit the mark anyway. I leaned away from her, trying to escape those estrogen rays. The last thing I wanted was to actually be attracted to one of these people. And how could I be? Brainless lust.

“What do you do, Jase?”

I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t tell this woman I rang up canned goods. I opted for mysterious. “Oh, lots of things. I’m looking for work now.” She nodded. “You?”

“I’m a bookkeeper. I balance the books. Credits, debits, credits, debits…” She laughed softly. She could have been saying, “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo” and it would have sounded sexy.

Fortunately, just at that moment, the stumpy-looking female skinhead walked in. No danger of feeling any lust in that direction. Today she was wearing a black T-shirt with two lightning flashes crossed on a red and black shield. Around the shield were the words THUNDERSKIN NATION. I wondered what that was about. She tossed a casual wave toward the round table and its knights and walked up to the bar, nodding to Gilly, and to Steve. Then she eyed me.

“See you came back.”

Flattery had worked on Red. No harm in trying it again. “Maybe I came looking for you, beautiful.”

She looked past my shoulder at Gilly, smirking.

Gilly laughed. “Jase, this is Leslie.”

Leslie didn’t like the laugh, but she took advantage of the invitation to sit on my other side. Gilly got up and wandered toward the back of the bar, and Leslie scooted a little closer.

“You really Royal’s cousin?”

“Yeah. I am. Why?”

“He’s a sexy guy. Very tough. Real masculine, the way I like them.”

What was she trying to prove, I wondered, and to whom?

I laughed and took a sip of my coffee. “I guess he is. But you know, it’s not like I see him that way.”

“Yeah.” Not the littlest laugh. I guessed that kind of thing was not to be joked about in Thor’s. “Why are you hanging here?”

I gazed around the bar. “The people. The politics and the people. No mush-brained liberals in here.”

“Yeah.” She pulled meditatively on her nose ring. “Maybe you can tell me something, though?”

“Probably not.”

She ignored that. “It’s about Royal. I met that stupid, wimpy, straight-edge little bitch he goes with. Deeanne, her name is.”

“Straight-edge?”

Leslie sneered at my freshcut ignorance. “Preppy. Conservative.”

Wow. Deeanne straight-edge. Preppy. Artie would love to hear that. It might give him hope. It was giving me some. Not a good thing that she remembered Deeanne that well, though.

“And what I wonder is, why does he want her?”

“When here you are, this terrific skinhead girl, just ready and waiting?”

“Something like that, yeah. Maybe not exactly waiting. Sexy kinda runs in Royal’s family.” She leered at me.

“Well, Leslie, maybe he’ll come around if you wait for him to.”

She narrowed her eyes and flexed her hands. “Maybe I should just stomp her.”

“Maybe he likes delicate and ladylike women.” She snorted. I pointed at the symbol on her chest. “What’s that?”

“Thunderskins. We’re worldwide. Whites only, dedicated to the race. No druggies, Jews, homos, government leeches, or niggers allowed. Worldwide. I got this shirt in London.” Light dawned. Thunder. Lightning. Skins. Thor’s. Thor made lightning and thunder with his hammer. I tried to look impressed.

Gilly returned from the rest room and sat next to me again. “London?” she asked.

Leslie ignored her. “You’re new in town, Jase. Maybe I should show you around a little, you know, for Royal. Go someplace nice.”

“Hey!’ Steve had come back to our end of the bar. “You’re someplace nice now.”

Leslie glowered at him. “You know what I mean. What do you think?”

“Well, I think that’s a pretty good idea.” Like shaving my head and growing leaves.

“What are you doing tonight, like for dinner?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m busy.”

“Really?” She flashed an angry look at Gilly. “Who with?”

“My dad. Got to take him to see someone. Tomorrow night too.” What can I say? I panicked.

The crease between her eyebrows flattened out again, and the heavy ridge over her eyes relaxed. I saw a forehead like that once on a statue at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, in an exhibit with a cave in the background.

“Oh. Well, another time, then.”

I looked at my watch. I didn’t have to. I knew what time it was. “In fact, I need to be going now.”

Leslie slid off her stool and looked me up and down in a way that could have been a challenge. “See you?”

“Sure.”

It was unavoidable.

She headed toward Red’s table, swaying her chunky little hips all the way. A couple of the guys eyed her, but only for a second. They didn’t look interested enough to follow through.

Isn’t that always the way? You dress in the style they supposedly like, you pierce your nose, you shave your head, and the damn men still don’t ask you out.

But I’d said I was leaving. “ ’Bye, Gilly.”

“ ’Bye, Jase.” She didn’t look up.

I pushed through the front door. There was something I’d been meaning to do. Before I headed off for dinner with Royal, I needed to scope the place out better. I sauntered across the sidewalk and put my foot up on a fireplug, facing the front of the bar, untying and re-tying my bootlaces.

When I’d reconnoitered the hallway at Thor’s, I’d noticed, along with the doors to the toilets and the back room, another door, the exit way at the back, with a deadlock and a bolt on the inside.

A PI never knows when he’ll have to use a back door.

First, I took a good look at the front of the building. On the north, an eight-foot fence inches from the bar marked the boundary between Thor’s and the auto repair shop next door. On the south, another tall piece of fence, this one with a gate, ran from the corner of Thor’s and across the front of the bar’s narrow side yard. But the tall fencing ended there. The piece with the gate joined a flimsy four-foot tall fence that enclosed the yard of the rundown cottage next door. The four-foot fence was all that separated the cottage lot from the bar’s side yard. I glanced around. No one was in sight, so I gave the gate a nudge. Locked.

Casually, I strolled past the cottage. The driveway was open and gateless. There was nothing but that four-foot fence between the street and the side and back of Thor’s.

If I ever needed to slide out and run like hell, this would be the way.

Royal and I had planned to meet at an Oakland Chinatown restaurant that I knew would be empty.

It was. He wasn’t there yet, so I ordered some tea and spring rolls.

When Royal walked in, the man who’d brought my order— waiter, manager, owner?— hurried to intercept him. Royal jerked a thumb in my direction, and earned an escort to my table. A nervous escort. Apparently the addition of Royal’s youth and baldness to the leather and boots we both wore made the mix a bit too strong for the poor guy.

And the boy was looking particularly skin-ish that day. The stitching on his greasy Doc Martens looked a brighter yellow, his flight jacket gave him a powerful, broad-shouldered look, his jeans had been ironed, and his head gleamed.

He grabbed a spring roll before he even sat down, dunked it in the sweet red sauce, and chewed. The waiter handed us menus, asked Royal if he wanted anything to drink, and zipped off toward the kitchen to get the milk he’d ordered.

Royal handed me a fat envelope. I looked inside. A wad of bills.

“Five thousand in cash,” he mumbled. I’d count it later.

“We’ll be depositing this in the agency account, Royal, so there will be a record of it. I don’t know why you’re paying with cash, but—”

“It don’t matter.”

He took off his jacket. He had taken me seriously when I’d insisted that he wear a Band-Aid over his tattoo when he was with me. We’d had to modify that agreement so he could wave the damned thing in front of his cronies, even if I was around. But now there was no one to wave it at.

Kid-like, though, or maybe just Royal-like, he’d half messed up. He was wearing only one Band-Aid, which covered the center of the thing and left one bent piece of arm, or leg, or whatever it was, and one straight piece sticking out of both the bottom and the top. Anyone who bothered to really think about how those bits might connect would get the idea.

“You need two bandages, Royal.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Guess so. Sorry.”

“So you and Zack are supposed to kill Preston Switcher.”

He jerked his head around, scared that I’d said it, and realized there was no one in the place but us and the waiter, who was taking a long time to come back with that milk.

“Yeah. How you going to get me out of this?”

“I’ve passed what you’ve given me on to the cops, along with descriptions of you and Zack.” I would have passed it on to the FBI if Harry George had called me back. I had to assume, for the time being, that the cops would take care of that.

“No! You didn’t!”

“Damn it, Royal, I had to. If there’s no way to get you out of this, no way to stop it— look, even if you don’t pull the trigger, Zack will. Switcher’s life is in danger. The police need to keep an eye on him. And he needs to know that he has to be careful. Maybe that way, he’ll leave town, disappear, and solve the whole problem.” Maybe he’d disappear forever and solve a lot of problems.

Royal didn’t seem convinced. “Why do you care about Preston Switcher?”

Tough question. “Don’t you?”

“No. Well, maybe. I mean, I got a lot of respect for the guy. But even if I, like, thought he was bogus, I just don’t want to kill anybody.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I care about him. I think he’s an idiot, and dangerous to boot, but the death penalty seems a bit harsh, even for his radio show.”

Royal smiled a little and shook his head. “Come on, Jake, he’s just a conservative. He don’t say people should kill people.”

“Not directly.”

He looked puzzled.

“Just slowly, with frustration and rage.”

“Sometimes I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

“I know, Royal. Maybe you will some day.”

He rolled his eyes. A look that every grown-up knows means, “Right, when I’m a big, smart adult.”

“Well, I really don’t get why you told the cops. That envelope I gave you?” His voice rose half an octave. “I guess I just paid you to get me killed.” I knew he was thinking about that mythical pipeline between the Command and the cops. He didn’t look angry, just sad. This kid was not meant to be a Nazi. I had a quick flash of fear and doubt. What if there really was a pipeline? It wasn’t impossible. I pushed the doubt away. The fear stayed. But I’d had no choice.

The waiter came back to take our orders. He must have heard Royal’s last few words, because now he was looking at me nervously too. He wrote down our choices and went away again.

“I did it to protect you.” Partly. I also did it to protect myself and Rosie and Rosie’s license. “I had to do it. There was no choice, and you’re safer this way.” Or at least I thought so. “Now tell me the rest of the plan. What did Zack have to say?”

Royal sighed and drank some of his milk. “A little more. Switcher comes back into town. We know what day, and we can find out what time— there’s a guy who works at the airport, he says he can get passenger lists— and we sit outside his house and we wait. He shows up, he’s alone, we shoot him dead, burn rubber outa there. We’re supposed to spray his house, write something like ‘Racist white pig,’ you know, so the cops will think maybe some Muslim or something killed him, and the papers will pick up on it, and all kinds of white people will get really pissed off.”