Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (26 page)

The tension in the room was like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm—you could practically smell ozone and see heat lightning.

“We were just lying there on our pillows.” She dabbed at her eyes, but her voice was steady. “And he said, ‘Remember the last night you saw me? I killed the first one that night.’ He said he wrote to this reporter—Mr. Burns—and then he poisoned some people in a restaurant and wrecked a cable car. I knew he did all that. But then he told me he made the elevator crash at the Bonanza Inn, just a few weeks before. I didn’t know he did that, because I didn’t see anything in the paper about a note or phone call or anything. He said he’d already wreaked vengeance on his enemy—those were the words he used, ‘wreaked vengeance on my enemy’—but I didn’t know who he meant. Maybe Mr. Zimbardo, but I don’t know for sure. But he said he wasn’t finished. He said San Francisco was still a hellhole and he was still going to close it down, and how he was going to get revenge was he was going to make the city pay him off. He said now he’d seen to it they’d try his ‘enemy’ and convict him, but he could keep killing because he could pretend to be a copycat of his own self. He said he could get away with it, because now he was asking for money, which the Trapper hadn’t done before. So they’d still think his enemy was the Trapper and he was a Trapper copycat, but all the same, they’d still have to pay him off to get him to stop. He thought he was real clever. He said they didn’t pay attention the first time—when he bombed the elevator—but he was going to keep on trapping tourists till they had to. He used those words, too—‘trapping tourists.’ I just lay there, you know, real scared and still. Then he told me how he finally got up the nerve to call Mr. Burns—instead of just writing notes—after he wrecked the cable car, and Mr. Burns asked him my name.” At the recollection, his face contorted. “See, Les always called me Miranda Warning—that was his nickname for me. And that day at Mount Davidson, that was the name I gave Mr. Burns. So when he said Mr. Burns had asked him that, I knew that was why he’d tracked me down. He thought I suspected he was the Trapper and I’d told Mr. Burns about it. He came there to kill me!” She screamed the last sentence.

“How did you know that?”

“He said it! He kept saying it over and over and over.” She stopped for what seemed a long time and then began again, her voice dull. “But that was later. First he rolled over like he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t—he started strangling me. Then he started saying, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you,’ over and over again. He put both hands around my neck, and I tried to pull them off, but I couldn’t. But then I remembered the knife under the mattress.”

I was so stunned I couldn’t speak for a moment; my thoughts simply wouldn’t arrange themselves into patterns I could recognize. Miranda looked straight at me, not down in her lap. “He hardly bled at all,” she said. “We dumped the body in the woods. Mean-Mouth and me.”

If I hadn’t been in a half stupor, it would never have happened that way. The minute Miranda mentioned the knife, I would have smelled what was coming and asked the court to appoint a lawyer for her. The lawyer would have told her to take the Fifth and she would have. But as it happens, I wasn’t the only one who was too slow to stop the confession. Both Liz and the judge had as much obligation as I did to see that she didn’t incriminate herself. And neither of them thought quickly enough. The judge declared a mistrial.

As soon as I could get away, I went to Marin General, where I found Dad scheduled for surgery to clean out his left carotid artery. “Just like a rusty pipe, Beck,” he said. “They tell me it happens all the time, to people of a certain age. You have a little arteriosclerosis, your artery goes narrow on you, and you don’t get enough blood to the language center. So who needed me, anyway? Congratulations.”

He and Mom had already heard some of the story on the radio, but I filled them in on the details and watched them react in their accustomed ways—Mom having a near breakdown because I’d taken such a chance, Dad chuckling because I’d pulled it off. They could both have been furious for all I cared—my client was free and my dad was going to be fine.

The thing Dad had was called a transient ischemic attack, or TIA to the docs. It had happened to him once before, in Israel, for about ten minutes. He couldn’t speak and felt weak in his right arm and face. He got worried—thinking brain tumor thoughts—and got Mom to come home quickly without really explaining why. But then, when it didn’t recur at first, he got the feeling it was only his imagination. With Mom’s propensity for terror, I could understand why he’d kept it to himself.

I left feeling buoyant, but the mood lasted only as long as it took me to get to my car. Up till then, I’d had Lou on my mind, and Dad. With both worries removed, my mind switched to other things, and something began to nag at me. Something that still didn’t fit. I drove around a long time, thinking about it, and finally I headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge, feeling perfectly miserable. I found Art Zimbardo at Full Fathom Five.

He should have looked like the happiest man in the world, but he didn’t. His smoldering eyes seemed even bigger than usual, even darker, like a raccoon’s. He looked as if he’d been losing sleep. He said, “I couldn’t come to court today. I haven’t even talked to Lou yet.”

“But you’ve heard what happened?”

“Yes.” He tried to smile. “You got him off.”

If I had any doubts about the conclusion I’d come to, his odd, distant behavior was dispelling them. I said, “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

His face was sullen. “I’m working.”

“Art, do you remember what I told Lou when you two first came to me? I said I had to advise him to turn himself in. I’ve come to tell you the same thing.”

He turned around and walked back into the kitchen. I went outside the restaurant and stood blinking in the bright sun, not wanting to follow and create a scene, but not knowing what to do. I was still standing there when Art joined me, no longer wearing his waiter’s jacket. He looked about fourteen, and miserable. “You knew it was me when I called, didn’t you?”

I shook my head. “No. I figured it out after court today, when I found out Les had been dead for months the day someone threw that rock on the bridge. It might have been someone who was trying to cash in on the Trapper killings—Les had that idea himself—but that didn’t really make any sense at that point, with Lou right on the verge of conviction. Everyone already thought the real Trapper was behind bars and on his way to staying there. Everyone except you and me and Chris and Rob. We all thought the real Trapper was still out there somewhere. And you had a strong enough motive to commit murder yourself to spring Lou. Once I thought it might be you, I started playing with the idea. Both Rob and I had talked to the real Trapper, and he hadn’t whispered. But the person who called me did. So maybe it was someone whose voice I knew—once again, you. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it before. Throwing that rock wasn’t nearly as sophisticated, as well planned, as the Trapper’s other crimes. It was more like an act of desperation.”

“I had to do something, Rebecca! I couldn’t let him die. He was the only one who was nice to me when I was a kid. It just wasn’t fair.”

“What wasn’t?”

“He saved my life once. Maybe more than once. We had a stepfather who beat us—beat me, mostly, because I was younger. He’d get drunk and lose control—you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Lou stepped in and stopped him once. I ended up in the hospital with a couple of broken ribs. Another time, Lou hit him—just hit him because he was beating on me. The old man took it out on Lou.”

“So you tried to save Lou’s life in return.”

“I thought he deserved a chance. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”

“Tell me something. Why did you ask for the money?”

“I thought if Lou got loose, he and I could go somewhere. And be rich.”

I was reminded of the time more than twenty years ago, when my mother was sick and my father away on business. I thought and thought of what I could do to make things better for her and finally came up with a plan that thrilled me: I cut every flower in her garden and got Mickey to help me arrange them artfully. Nothing I’d experienced before or since had dismayed me so much as the look on her face when we bore them triumphantly into her bedroom. I knew I was going to see the same look when I talked to Lou.

THE END

Heartfelt thanks to Brian Rood for generous and valuable advice; to my editor Michael Seidman, whose good sense and sharp eyes are really very much appreciated; and to a blue-ribbon panel of expert witnesses: Diane Schneider, Cliff Sharp, Dr. Ronald Roberto, Dr. Steve Holtz, and Tom Wendt.

The next Rebecca Schwartz mystery is DEAD IN THE WATER; find it at
www.booksbnimble.com
or
www.juliesmithbooks.com

The Rebecca Schwartz Series

DEATH TURNS A TRICK

THE SOURDOUGH WARS

TOURIST TRAP

DEAD IN THE WATER

OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

The Skip Langdon Series

NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ

JAZZ FUNERAL

DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

HOUSE OF BLUES

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
(formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)

82 DESIRE

MEAN WOMAN BLUES

The Paul Macdonald Series

TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE

HUCKLEBERRY FIEND

The Talba Wallis Series

LOUISIANA HOTSHOT

LOUISIANA BIGSHOT

LOUISIANA LAMENT

P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF

As Well As

WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK

NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)

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JULIE SMITH is a New Orleans writer and former reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle
and the
Times-Picayune
.
New Orleans Mourning
, her first novel featuring New Orleans cop Skip Langdon, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and she has since published eight more highly-acclaimed books in the series, plus spun off a second New Orleans series featuring PI and poet Talba Wallis.

She is also the author of the Rebecca Schwartz series and the Paul Mcdonald series, plus the YA novels CURSEBUSTERS! and EXPOSED. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous essays and short stories and is the editor of NEW ORLEANS NOIR.

• Praise
  
• The Rebecca Schwartz Series
  
• Also by Julie Smith
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• The Rebecca Schwartz Series
  
• Also by Julie Smith
  
• Guarantee
  
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• About the Author