Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)
Authors: Julie Smith
Tags: #Mystery, #comic mystery, #Jewish mystery, #romantic suspense, #Edgar winner, #series Rebecca Schwartz series, #amateur sleuth, #funny mystery, #Jewish, #chick lit, #San Francisco, #Jewish sleuth, #legal thriller, #female sleuth, #lawyer sleuth
Praise for Julie Smith and DEATH TURNS A TRICK
“Funny and witty, with a clever, outspoken heroine.” — Library Journal
“A lively romp of a novel which heralds an interesting new detective personality … Smith shows an Agatha Christie-like capacity for making much ado about clues, concocting straw hypotheses, and surprising us, in the end … Smith’s crisp storytelling, her easy knowledge of local practices, and her likable, unpredictable heroine will make readers look forward to more of sleuth Schwartz’s adventures.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“The book gives readers an unusual look at San Francisco and introduces them to a delightfully modern sleuth.” — Minneapolis Tribune
“Rebecca’s lively first-person narration brands her a new detective to watch.” — Wilson Library Bulletin
(in order of publication)
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
DEATH TURNS A TRICKNEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)
A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery
BY
JULIE SMITH
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
Death Turns A Trick
Copyright © 1982 by Julie Smith
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN: 9781617507915
Originally published by Walker & Co., a division of Walker Publishing Co
First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: 2012
Cover by Nevada Barr
eBook editions by eBooks by Barb for
booknook.biz
All the characters and events portrayed in this story are fictitious.
THIS BOOK IS FOR MY PARENTS, with gratitude for invaluable assistance with motivation and character development; also for many clues, a few red herrings, and the occasional solution.
ContentsSpecial thanks to five people whose good advice helped shape this book: Inspector Dave Toschi, Betsy Petersen, Jon Carroll, Mary Jean Haley, and Mickey Friedman.
The argument was getting loud, so I played loud to drown it out. I was looking at the keyboard, I guess, or maybe staring into space, I don’t know which. Anyway, I didn’t see two uniformed cops come in the door with guns drawn. I just heard a hush and then some screams. That made me look up. I saw them and stopped playing. People in the foyer were crowding back toward the stairs. Elena Mooney was backing toward the fireplace.
“Awright, everybody quiet,” said one of the cops. “This is a raid.” Those very words.
It’s funny how you react in a situation like that. I should have been terrified. I should have had visions of lurid headlines: “Lawyer Caught in Bordello Raid.” I should have despaired of my Martindale-Hubbell rating and started planning how I was going to explain to my mother. But I didn’t. I was looking down the barrel of a gun and hearing someone say “This is a raid”—a thing I’d done a million times in movie theaters. I gripped the piano so I wouldn’t holler, “Cheezit, the cops!”
Then the lights went out. I don’t mean I fainted; I mean it got dark. A hand closed over my forearm, jerked me to my feet and started pulling. People started screaming again, and one of the cops fired. I didn’t know if anybody was hit or not, but the reality of the situation dawned on me and I offered whoever was pulling me no resistance. We bumped into a lot of people getting through the saloon room, but it took about two seconds, I guess. I vaguely heard things like “Don’t panic” and “Be quiet,” which I suppose came from the cops, and I heard two more shots and a lot more screaming.
My rescuer pulled the kitchen door open and me through it. The kitchen window had cafe curtains, and there was a little light from outside, enough to see that I was with Elena. She dropped my arm, grabbed a flashlight from the top of the refrigerator, and opened a door that I imagined led to a pantry. But I was wrong. Elena shone the light on steps descending to a basement.
She gestured for me to go first, then followed, locking the door behind us. There was a tiny landing at the bottom of the stairway and, on the right, a doorway to the basement itself. You couldn’t see into it from the stairs.
When I got to the landing, I waited for Elena to join me with the light, but she turned it off as soon as she got there. I noticed a faint glow coming from the doorway to the basement. Elena put a finger to her lips and squeezed past me into the room. I followed.
The room was unfinished, but the plasterboard was painted. The light came from a silver candelabrum on the floor, with all its black candles lighted. Attached to two beams on the far wall were manacles at ankle and shoulder level. Some scary-looking hoists and pulleys hung from ceiling beams, but I can’t say I was in a mood to examine them too closely. In fact, it’s a miracle I noticed them at all, considering what else was in the room—a brass bed with a naked man lying face up, spread-eagled on it.
His wrists were tied to the headboard and his ankles to the footboards. Even without his customary conservative suit, I recognized him. He was State Senator Calvin Handley. That same week I’d seen him on TV holding a press conference about the bill he’d just introduced to legalize prostitution. At least he wasn’t a hypocrite.
Elena still had her finger to her lips for his benefit. She removed it and started untying his wrists. “Rebecca, get his ankles.”
She spoke to the client, without addressing him as “Senator”—on the off chance, I suppose, that I wouldn’t recognize him. “There’s been some trouble. The cops are here, but the door’s locked and we’ll have time to get you out of here. Where are your clothes?”
“I think Kandi forgot to bring them down. We came down the usual way.”
“Damn her!” Elena finished freeing the senator’s hands, and he sat up and rubbed them. She looked in an armoire at the front of the room. “She forgot, all right. You’ll have to wear this.”
She picked up something black from a low chair. In the chair underneath the black garment were a pair of handcuffs and a square of black fabric fashioned into a blindfold. I figured it must be quite a trick to negotiate those stairs coming down “the usual way,” but
chacun a son gout
. Consenting adults and all that.
I finished with the senatorial ankle bonds, and the lawmaker slipped the black garment on. It was a floor-length robe with full sleeves and a hood, perfectly decent but damn-all odd.
“Shoes?” asked Elena. The senator shook his head. “Okay, come on. You too, Rebecca.”
She pushed aside the armoire, revealing a crude passageway—a tunnel, really. She gave me the flashlight and fished a key from her bodice. As she handed it over, I could see that her hand was shaking. “Listen, both of you,” she whispered. “Shots were fired up there. For all I know, someone may be dead or hurt. This is my house and I can’t leave. Rebecca, this is… Joe. I’m depending on you to get him to his car. Then go home, change into street clothes, and get back here. We’ll be needing you. The door at the end of the tunnel is padlocked, and this is the key. My car is parked almost dead against the door. It’s unlocked and the keys are in it. Take the padlock with you; we may need to use the tunnel again tonight. Just get the sen—get Joe out of here. I’ll wait five minutes after I hear the car drive off before I go back up. Good luck.” She squeezed my hand.
We had to bend nearly double in the tunnel. I went first with the light, the senator following with a hand on each of my hips. I felt this was not completely necessary, but I put up with it. It was the least of my problems at the moment. I cursed whatever insanity had made me comply with Elena’s request, and I cursed Elena for making it sound so safe.
She hadn’t exactly lied. It was true no one was turning tricks at the party. But leaving out a naked senator in the basement seemed a rather serious sin of omission,
Senator
alter kocker
took his hands off me long enough to hold the light while I unlocked the door. Elena’s Mustang was parked close, all right, but not close enough to avoid stepping in a mud puddle getting in. Since I had on sandals and the senator was barefoot, it was deuced inconvenient.
The Mustang snorted a couple of times, then laid back its ears and reared. We were in a lane that led to Broderick Street.
“Where’s your car?” I asked as we reached the street.
“Oh my God. I’ve got to go back—I haven’t got my keys.”
“Keys, hell. You can’t go back. I’ll take you home.”
“But my money! My ID! They’ll find it. I’ve got to get it. Turn around.”
“No.”
“I said turn around.”
“Look,” I said. “The cops don’t care about johns. They’ll probably just return your things discreetly. It’ll be embarrassing, but nothing compared to being caught traipsing around a bordello in that outfit.”
“Goddammit, turn around.”
A citizen likes to think her elected officials have at least a minimal amount of brains in their tiny heads, whatever their sexual proclivities. But this guy had fried eggs. I stopped trying to reason with him. I could see he wasn’t used to taking orders, except maybe from Kandi when they played amusing games, so I stopped being firm. I just drove, more or less in the direction of my apartment, and carefully, because of the rain.