Chocolate Quake (15 page)

“Lucky none of the labs blew up a bunch of kids,” I remarked. “So if I wanted to get hold of Freddie, where would I look?”

“If I knew, I’d pick him up myself,” Burl retorted.

“Yeah, right. How many parolees you got on your list right now?”

“Point taken. You could ask Araña Morales at the Tres Hermanos pool hall. He used to hang with Freddie.”

“Thanks, Kalton. I owe you one.” Should I take the neatly turned out Mrs. Blue to Tres Hermanos with me? I’d give it some thought.

Next I called the cell phone of a contact in the Russian community, hanger-on to better-connected criminal types. “Boris, my friend, it’s Sam Flamboise. How’re they hangin’? You sellin’ lots of rock to kids on street corners?” Boris wasn’t amused, although I could tell by the background noise that he was on a street corner. “Listen,
tovarish,
you wanna do a little job for me?” Boris was interested. “Ask around about a guy named Alexi Timatovich, immigrant from Siberia, works security for a women’s center on Union, might have something going there. I wanna know if he’s killed anyone lately, or ever. If he knows anyone who would. If he’s been drinking too much and telling stories about illegal activities. . . . Yeah, call me back. There’s a couple a hundred in it if you find me anything good.”

Then I dialed our architecturally challenged Hall of Justice. What can you say about a city that builds a jail that’s better looking than its courthouse? “Harry Yu in?” I was transferred. “Harry, it’s Sam Flamboise. I’ve been hired to prove you made a mistake in hanging that old lady out to dry for the Faulk killing. . . . Yeah, well, I would too if I saw that much blood on someone kneeling over the body, but a job is a job, and this one was wished on me by a client with deep pockets. . . . No, he never met your alleged murderer. He’s old buddies with the lady’s ex, who doesn’t want his grandkids embarrassed by a killer grandma. You know how it goes.

“How about I come down and take a look at the evidence? Or have you really got a hard-on over sending the old girl up for the rest of her golden years? . . . Hell, you know me, Harry. I find it’s someone else did the crime, you’ll get the credit. I’m only in this for the money. . . . So I’ll see you in fifteen, OK?”

Five minutes, and I was heading out, enjoying the nice weather and the rumble of my Harley. I parked in back where the cops do and went through the open grassed area to the hall and an elevator up to Homicide. While I was there, I’d see what Harry knew about Marcus Croker. What I knew wasn’t that great, like some brutality complaints in the past, but not against women as far as I knew.

I’ll swear Harry was chunkier than ever. “Hey, man, how’re they hanging?”

“No use asking a guy my age that question, Sam. Here, take a quick look.” He handed me a folder of photos. “My partner wouldn’t approve, but she’s out on a case with Kliner, arm in a Dumpster. No body attached.”

“Better her than you.” I flipped through the photos. “Jesus, Harry, this poor woman was cut to pieces. You really think an old lady could have done this?”

“Take a look at the pictures of the old lady,” Harry advised.

He had a point. She was not only bloody, but she had a mean look to her. Carolyn Blue would be disappointed if I proved her mother-in-law really was the murderer.

“Coroner thinks Faulk was down for some of the wounds,” Harry added.

“I guess the old lady could have inflicted that much damage if she managed to knock the victim down first, but how’d she do that?” I asked.

“Threw a glass paperweight at her? We found one on the floor.”

“Bruises?”

“One.”

“Could have happened when she went down.”

“Could have.”

“Prints on the paperweight?”

“The victim’s were the only usable ones. It was broken, and she bled on it.”

“No knife?”

“Not yet.”

“How about other people? You find anyone else who could have done it?”

“No one else was seen in or near Faulk’s office.”

“Listen, you know a cop named Marcus Croker?”

“Sam, are you saying you think one of ours did it? The only cop in the building was my partner. She was upstairs taking a makeup class from some big-time black model, heard the commotion, and went down. And she didn’t see any suspects except the one we arrested.”

“Croker was signed in, Harry. And he wasn’t signed out.”

Harry gave me a disgusted look and began to tap computer keys. “Marcus Croker was on duty. Four to twelve. That pretty much eliminates him as a suspect, unless you think Arbus Penn, his partner, was in on the murder, too.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks, Harry. I’ll be in touch if I get anything.”

“You won’t,” said Harry.

As I was leaving, I ran into Harry’s partner, Camron Cheever. “Hey, Cam,” I called. “Lookin’ good.”

She liked that. Cammie is a real pretty black woman, and she knows it. Late twenties, early thirties, and a smart detective. Not many women that young make inspector. “What were you doing over at that center Thursday night? You don’t need any lessons on looking first-rate.”

“How come you know about my case?” she demanded. “Harry an’ me don’t need any hotshot, football-player private eyes screwing with our busts.”

“Oh, now you’re hurting my feelings, baby. I thought we were in love.”

“Yeah?” She gave me a saucy grin. “If you weren’t white an’ gay, we would be, Sammie.”

23

An Exotic Kind of Hot

 

D
id Sam have
a car, I wondered, but choose the motorcycle to, as my son Chris says, “yank my chain?” Off we went, riding the hills to the Lower Haight and Gondar, the Ethiopian restaurant. Fortunately, I couldn’t see over Sam’s shoulder, so I was spared the sensation one experiences when almost at the crest of a hill in San Francisco, a queasy conviction that there is nothing beyond the skyline but sky and that one’s vehicle will simply fly off into nothingness. Rudyard Kipling described San Francisco as a city one-fourth reclaimed from the sea and the rest, sand hills held down by houses with no attempt to grade the hills and build streets at sensible angles.

“You OK, chickie?” Sam shouted.

My imaginings had caused me to tighten my grip. “Fine,” I shouted back.

“Then retract your nails. You just hit flesh.”

“Sorry.” I tried to relax one hand, then the other, without, of course, letting go.

I needn’t have worried about proper attire. The staff at Gondar wore tunic-like garments, under which the women had long skirts and the men tight trousers. The customers were numerous and dressed, to say the least, casually. Very reasonable menu prices explained Gondar’s popularity.

“Combination plates for three and diet Cokes,” said Sam to a young waitress. Obviously I was not to be allowed my own selections. “Tell Kebra we’d like to talk to her when she’s free,” he continued. When the silent girl nodded, he turned back to me. “Since we’ll be eating with our hands, it’s considered impolite not to wash first.”

I followed him to the restrooms and washed my hands, keeping an interested eye on the “décor” both coming and going. The tables were topped with aging linoleum. The mismatched chairs had plastic-covered seats and backs, with aluminum legs and frames. Exotic, pseudo-Tibetan lanterns hung from the ceiling. On walls painted as yellow as a desert sun were paintings and enlarged photos: two men in rags and chains, dark-skinned and bearded, being led away from an ancient, oar-powered ship; another man in monk’s robes, wearing a high, white, brimless hat; photos of castle ruins; a round church; and ancient, humble dwellings among large rocks on the curve of a river. Last was a framed flag: green, yellow, and red horizontal bands with a yellow pentagram sending out rays on a light-blue disk.

Our waitress followed us to our table with cans of diet Coke and a large, round platter lined with
injerra,
the flat, unleavened bread of the country. It was topped with varieties of
wat,
hot curries made in different colors and from different vegetables. All burned the throat, but many were enchantingly tasty. We tore pieces off the bread to dip in the pastes. I disliked the spinach but liked the chewy and flavorful cabbage, also the beany hot lentils, chickpeas that tasted slightly of vinegar, and best of all, the mushrooms. Never had mushrooms burned so rich or so hot on the tongue. “Amazing,” I said when I had tried each selection and washed them down with Coke. Between us we had almost finished the platter.

No sooner had we wiped up the last smudges with bread than a different woman arrived with another platter. “Kebra, love. Join us. This is Carolyn Blue. It’s her mother-in-law who was arrested for Denise’s murder. Carolyn, Kebra Zenawi.”

She was a beautiful woman with a thin, fine-featured face, creamy brown skin, full lips, and the most amazing dark eyes, large and thickly lashed. Kebra slid the platter onto the table and sat down with us. “My heart aches at the terrible death of my friend Denise, and I pray for her soul each day.” She spoke very precise English, but with an interesting lilt. “Nor do I believe, Mrs. Blue, that the mother of your husband would have killed Denise. A scholar does not wield a knife, nor does a woman who speaks for all women kill a sister.”

“Thank you. Since you were in the building that night, we—”

Sam cut me off by saying, “We’ll eat first.” Evidently I had committed a faux pas, so I scooped up some mushrooms and complimented Mrs. Zenawi on the dish. “I’m a food writer,” I explained. “I’d love to write a column about Ethiopian food and include a recipe if you’d be willing to provide me with one.”

“I am desolated to say that the recipes are shared only among women of my family. If I were ever to have a daughter, I could tell her, or if I returned to my country, I could tell the daughter of my sister, but—”

“Of course,” I interrupted hurriedly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“How could you know?” she replied politely.

“So what do you hear from Menelik?” Sam asked. “Did they send him off to the border to fight the evil Er itreans?”

Before she answered Sam, she explained to me, “Menelik Zenawi was my husband. Together we fled to the United States because our lives were endangered during the coups that racked our country. However, Menelik was not happy here, although San Francisco is, in some ways, like Ethiopia—because of the earthquakes and droughts.”

“Earthquakes here are caused by the tectonic plates grinding together,” said Sam. “In Ethiopia the Great Rift, where the land pulls apart, causes quakes.”

“To the man who is killed by the heaving and splitting of the earth, it little matters what happens far below to cause his death,” she replied serenely.

“What she’s telling you, in a roundabout way, is that Menelik, who thought he was hot stuff because he was named after some king who was the son of Solomon and Sheba—”

“I too am proud of my name,” said Kebra, “for I was named for a queen in that dynasty. Mesqel Kebra is a saint in our church, as well.” She turned to me. “Ethiopia is a Christian country, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian denominations, although we are Monophysites and have some differences of belief from the Western sects.”

Wondering what a Monophysite was, I smiled and looked interested.

To Sam she said, “Will you come for the feast of Mesqel?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he replied. “And if I forget, Paul will remind me.” Then he explained to me, “It’s the celebration of somebody going to the Holy Land and finding the True Cross.”

“St. Helena,” said Kebra. “But we were speaking of Menelik, whose unhappiness in the United States was not so much that no one recognized the importance of his name and family, but that no one had any interest in his academic credentials. Menelik is a noted scholar of Ge’ez, the ancient religious and literary language of our country. Alas, there was no job in San Francisco for a scholar of Ge’ez, so we opened a restaurant, a calling which he felt beneath him.”

“Then he took it out on Kebra by beating her up,” said Sam.

“True. Menelik did not feel that I was a properly humble woman. He felt that I was picking up unseemly attitudes here in the United States, which he thought to beat out of me. It was then that Denise came to my rescue. She secreted me in a house for women in danger of being killed by their husbands and sent the police to remonstrate with mine. Unhappily, Menelik would not be appeased or turned from what he considered his right and duty as a husband. Then Margaret Hanrahan was recruited by my friend and defender, Denise. Margaret had my husband deported and our restaurant put legally into my hands. I am a very lucky woman to have such friends.”

“And Menelik?” asked Sam.

“Menelik too is safe and happy, for his political enemies are no longer in power, and the church has granted him an annulment from his undutiful, barren wife. He has become a monk and will no doubt find a life of chastity and scholarship to his taste.”

“All’s well that ends well,” said Sam, grinning. “If he’s taken vows, he’s not likely to show up and give you grief.”

“Indeed,” said Kebra and turned to me. “I observed when you came in that you took note of my pictures. Would you like to know what they represent?”

“Yes, please.” Anything to keep on a subject that wasn’t impolite.

She nodded. “The two men led from their boat in captivity are St. Frumentius and his brother, who became favorites of the king and converted my country to Christianity in the fourth century A.D. The bearded man in the white hat and robe is a monk, such as my former husband is now. The castle is in Gondar, once the capital of our country. The picture of the round dwellings with conical roofs is of Aksum, a holy city. These photos I took from the Internet and had made large. The paintings I commissioned from a fellow Ethiopian.”

“Fascinating,” I murmured and embarrassed myself by impolitely scooping up the last of the mushroom curry. I was distracted by trying to reconcile the idea of this exotic woman, with her unusual clothing and adventurous history, decorating her walls with photos from the Internet.