Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (9 page)

“Yeah? Then what?” Simpleminded crap. I didn’t think most people got that excited about other people’s deaths. The Aryan Command was judging the general population’s boiling point by its own warped thermometer. “What’s supposed to happen after that?”

Our food came. Royal waited while the man put our plates on the table, waited until he had gone back to the kitchen.

“That’s just part of it, see, part of the plan. First Switcher. Then this lefty guy and then a black church. If that doesn’t start something, we do more, until people are screaming and yelling and looting and shit. See, we’re trying to make them all think that the lefty and the church thing is payback for Switcher. Then we’ll do something that looks like payback for the church.”

“Who’s the lefty they’ve got in mind— anyone in particular?”

“I don’t know. But someone mentioned that People guy, Corey— um— or maybe someone else, I don’t know…”

“You mean Cary Frasier, the one with that group he calls ThePeople?”

“Yeah.” He began to eat. “But maybe not.”

“We need to know that.” He nodded, his mouth full. “Okay. So exactly when are you supposed to kill Switcher?”

“Next Wednesday, the twenty-third. He’ll be out of town for, like, a day or two, then home on Wednesday. But like I said, I don’t have a time yet.”

“What if it’s broad daylight?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we wait until he goes out at night. None of that’s set yet.”

Which might mean we wouldn’t get a lot of notice.

Aside from the fuzziness around the actual time of this supposed assassination, the overall rabble-rousing plan as laid out by Royal was more than a little vague. But still… maybe enough of that kind of thing, getting enough of the right people excited, could start a pretty big ruckus. Not to mention that at least two people would be killed or injured before the big ruckus even started.

“And the man giving the orders is…?”

“Pete Ebner. He’s our commander. I told you that.”

“You’re supposed to shoot the man— you’ve got a gun?”

“Not yet, no. We get them special for the job. From Red. He runs the arsenal. Guns, knives, all that shit. He’s in charge.” Why wasn’t I surprised? He sighed heavily. “Jesus, it scares me to death just telling you about all this. You know what they’d do to me…?”

“Why don’t you just take off, now? Leave town? Get out of sight? For good, if necessary.” And get me off the hook.

“I can’t do that. There’s Deeanne. She won’t leave.” Well, that was something positive to report to Artie. “And there’s my dad. He relies on me for stuff. And I’m not willing to take off and give up my inheritance.”

“Inheritance? You mean your dad’s money?”

“Yeah.” He laughed bitterly. “My inheritance.”

I remembered the last time we’d talked about his money. Something about it felt bad to him. “What’s wrong with the money, Royal?”

“Nothing. It’s just money. And it’s paying you.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about that.

“Royal, I’m sorry I had to let the cops in on this. The one cop we told I know can be trusted.” Well, Rosie trusted her. I’d never met her and I couldn’t stand her. “But I understand why you’re scared. Tell me about your friend. The one who was in the group, and got killed.”

Royal pawed at his face, like a dog with an itchy nose.

“What do you want to know?”

“Who he was, what he was in the Command, when he was killed, how, and why you think it happened.”

“That’s a lot of questions. Okay. Who he was. He was Richard Kramer. Rich. A good guy. Eighteen, I think he was. A skin.”

“Was he a warrior?”

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“Couple years. Ebner was always saying he was the best. He was, too. Man, he was really tough. Got in a fight once, on the street, with some— well, he was tough.”

“Who do you think killed him?”

“I don’t know. Someone in the Command.”

“Why do you say that? What makes you think someone in the group killed your friend?”

“Because he started thinking he wanted to do something else, you know? There was this fire they set, before I was in, and he told Ebner he didn’t want to be a warrior anymore after that.”

“Tell me about the fire.”

“No big thing, just a Dumpster in back of a church. But, like, the building caught fire and some guy was hurt trying to put it out before the fire department got there, and… he just decided he didn’t feel real great about that, so he told Ebner he maybe wanted to not be a warrior anymore. And he told me he was thinking of going way over the other way.” Royal wasn’t meeting my eyes. What was he hiding? “Some lefty gang, can’t remember which one, maybe that People thing. He said they did really cool things. I told him that was stupid. He said he was after adventure, man. Anyway, couple weeks later he was dead.”

Ebner. I could see Ebner killing someone. I remembered the church fire too. In Oakland. The janitor had been burned pretty bad.

“How was Rich killed, Royal?”

“He was shot.” Royal was crying. “In the head. Some guy found his body down in the Emeryville mud flats, you know, where all those statues are?”

Sure I knew. Emeryville is a small town tacked onto the edge of Oakland, right on the Bay. Condos. Restaurants. Old homes. And the mud flats had been turned into an alfresco sculpture gallery years before. The wooden works of art had been erected by, so far, a couple of generations’ worth of rogue artists— wildly imaginative airplanes, figures, animals rising out of the mud between the Bay and the freeway.

A desolate area too. Lonely even with the statues.

I could understand Royal’s feeling bad about a friend getting killed, but his grief had a taste of something else about it. “Royal, what is there about Richard you’re not telling me?”

The boy wiped his eyes, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “It was my fault.” I could barely hear him.

“What do you mean?”

“I got kind of drunk one night, you know. And I told some guys, I don’t even remember who. Red. Maybe Ebner. What Richard said about, you know, like going over to the other side. I just wanted someone to talk him out of it or something, you know? Somebody’s just got to pay for this.”

Someone besides himself. That was Royal’s stake in stopping the Command. Not just fear for his own life, fear that they’d find out he had doubts just like Richard and kill him. But guilt too. He was carrying a heavy load. Royal was saying something about Pete Ebner.

“Sorry. What was that?”

He looked hurt that I hadn’t been listening. “I said, I got Pete Ebner to agree that you could come to a warriors’ meeting tomorrow night.”

“How’d you get him to agree to that?”

“Said you wanted to help.”

“As a warrior?” That was all I needed.

He shrugged. “No. You’re too old.” For once, then, middle age was a good thing. “Anyway, first he said no. But I convinced him you could be useful.”

“How?” Could Royal really convince Ebner of anything? Why was the man letting me come to the meeting?

“I said you were smart. Look, it’s not that big a deal. It’s just kind of a party, you know?”

A warriors’ party. Just me, Ebner, skins, maybe some camp followers? Well, nothing ventured.

Then I remembered what I’d told Leslie in the bar. “Will Leslie be there? At the party?”

“Probably.”

I’d have to think of some way to explain why I wasn’t spending the evening with Dad.

“Speaking of Leslie… she was wearing this T-shirt, Thunderskins?” He nodded. “So that’s about Thor’s thunder and lightning, right? And that’s how Thor’s got named? Because Aryan Command is a Thunderskin group?”

He scratched his head and squinted at me. “Huh? No. Well, not exactly. Some people are like, Thunderskins, too, maybe— they’ve got like a website Leslie’s into— but Aryan Command is, well, Aryan Command. People belong to all kinds of shit, and it’s all kind of connected, and Thor was, you know, Aryan or something, so everybody’s all… Thor and Odin and those guys.”

Between Leslie’s explanation and Royal’s, I felt like I was trying to get a grip on an oil slick. And come to think of it, that was a pretty good comparison all the way around. Poison. Spreading.

It was my turn to host the poker game, so I had to run home from dinner and throw chips and dip together and make sure I had enough cold beer and wine and sodas.

Artie showed up first. He glanced at my hair. “Washing away the gray?”

“Rinsing away the genes.”

“You still resemble yourself.”

“Maybe not from a distance.”

He looked doubtful, but dropped it. He was a lot more interested in up-to-the-minute news about the case. I didn’t tell him that one of the female skins remembered Deeanne, and worse yet, remembered her first name. I did tell him about the assassination plans, leaving out the identity of the intended victim. This upset him.

“Jesus, Jake! You have to tell me! This could be big.”

A big story was what he meant. In exchange for the press card he had given me, Artie expected stories for his people to pursue. He got annoyed when I wouldn’t tell him things he wanted me to tell him. I got cranky if he pushed me when I wasn’t ready. It was a fine friendship, nevertheless, and a good professional deal for both of us.

“Lives at stake, Art. Including maybe Deeanne’s. You’re going to have to let me decide when I can talk about what.”

He grabbed a beer from the fridge. Ale, actually. Mount Tam pale. “When did I ever get into something before it was okay? When did I ever turn a writer loose on something prematurely? When did I ever run a story—”

“Never, never, and never. Just give me a few days to see what’s really going on, okay? I don’t trust anything at this point. The whole thing could be bullshit.” Always the optimist.

That backed him off a little, but I knew he wouldn’t stay backed off for long.

Dan Lopez arrived next. He pointed at my hair and laughed, and I told him it was for a job.

“Cool with me, Jake. It’s pretty. Going to pierce something next?” He laughed some more. Dan’s a freelance photographer who sometimes works for Artie. He’s in his forties, a scrawny little guy who eats everything and a lot of it and never seems to add any meat to his bones. A few years back, he did a series of portraits of street people that won some kind of award. I was thinking how much he’d love a few shots of Royal and his buddies.

Rosie showed up with a friend, a handsome, stocky woman with long dark hair and a sweater the color of a clown’s nose.

“Jake, this is Pauline.”

“The
Pauline?” It was. The San Rafael cop. The one whose divorce had been so drawn out and vicious that she swore off men, she’d told Rosie, for anything but the quickest of flings. The one who supplied information only through Rosie, even if it was on its way to me.

She laughed. “That’s right, Jake, I’m
the
Pauline.” Then she reached over and pinched my butt. I jumped away. She laughed again. But when we all sat down at the poker table with drinks, cards, chips, and attitude gripped firmly, it was Dan she sat next to. He actually looked happy about it. Maybe he was sizing her up for a portrait. Portrait of a heartbreaker. Portrait of a clown’s nose. I would make a point of warning him that she hated men, although he was going to find that hard to believe, considering. Still, if she pinched him hard enough…

I’d once asked Rosie why, if Pauline hated men so much, she didn’t switch to women. Rosie was patient with me. I had to know, she said, that lust and hate were not mutually exclusive. I also had to know that she, Rosie, loved me very much, which proved that love and lust could, on the other hand, be totally unconnected.

Sure. I knew all that. I wasn’t so sure about the totally unconnected part, though, speaking for myself.

Before we sat down to play, I pulled Rosie into the kitchen and quickly told her what Royal had said about Cary Frasier and about the date of the Switcher hit. She said she’d pass it on to
the
Pauline.

We drew for the deal and Rosie won it. Dealer’s choice, five-card stud, nothing wild. I get the jack of hearts down, the eight of spades up, Pauline shows the king of hearts and she opens for a quarter. Dan folds. Rosie folds. By the fourth card, Artie’s out too, and Pauline is showing the king of hearts, the two of hearts, the three of clubs. I’ve got three high cards but nothing else. I bet another buck and she calls. Next card, she gets the queen of clubs, I get the ten of diamonds. Still no pair. I toss four more quarter chips onto the table, giving her the dead-eye. She gives it right back, and raises me a quarter. Does she have a pair of kings? Does she have a pair of anything? I refuse to back down. I raise her a dollar. She hesitates… and folds! Yes! Try bluffing me, huh? The king of bluffers? Forget it.

When it’s my deal I call night baseball, just to do something different. In the stretch, it’s Rosie with two kings and three cards to go against Pauline with three queens and none to go. Rosie gets a three— wild card. Three kings. And her seventh card is icing: another king.

Nice pot.

Dan deals five stud, deuces wild. I get the queen of clubs to go with my ten of clubs and my wild card in the hole. Dan deals himself the jack of spades for a pair. Another card up all around and here’s the way it stands: Dan a pair of jacks and a five, Artie three hearts, Rosie showing a five and nine of spades and an ace of diamonds, Pauline a pair of eights and a wild card— three of a kind. And Dan deals me another deuce, which also gives me three of a kind, only higher than Pauline’s— and I’m only showing a pair. The chip bowls are empty; I ignore them. Pauline bets on her three eights, the only three of a kind showing. Rosie folds. I’ve got one hell of a hand. Three queens for sure, a possible flush. Last card: Artie gets a spade to ruin the flush he’s working on, Pauline gets a three that’s no help. I get the king of clubs. With the two wild cards and my ten, queen and king, I’ve got a royal flush. Pauline bets on her three of a kind showing. I raise. Dan raises again. Artie folds. Pauline calls. I raise again and Dan and Pauline stay in.

Dan had been hanging in with three jacks, Pauline only had the three eights.