Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (13 page)

So why was he always in Thor’s, and never with a woman?

And why couldn’t I manage to avoid him for even one day?

Leslie had finished her study of my face, and took a long, slow draught of her cheap beer. “We go lots of places, Jase honey.” She flicked a smug look at Rosie. Trying to make her jealous? “We go out to dinner, we go to movies. We go to ball games. You like movies? You like ball games?”

“Of course I do.” Hey, I’m an American kind of guy.

Floyd spoke up. “What about you, Rosie— you like ball games?”

“Sure.”

“Well, that’s good. A pretty lady like you would want to do something with your time besides sit around a dark bar with a buncha beer-soaked guys.” He grinned at me. Were these people trying to break us up? Did Floyd not have a girlfriend because he always went after lesbians?

Karl snorted. He was wearing a black shirt over a black T-shirt, black jeans, and black boots that looked more like combat boots than Docs.

“Beer-soaked guys,” he muttered. “Speak for yourself, Floyd.”

“Hey, Karl, climb down off it, okay? I was just trying to explain to Rosie here that we have interests that might, well, interest her. Social stuff, you know?”

“Ball games? Jesus, Floyd. She’s a woman.” Karl leered at her. “Bet you’d like to go hear some really good music, though, huh?”

Floyd swung his head around to face Karl. I couldn’t see his expression, but I could hear his words. “Back off, Karl. If she wants to hear some music, she don’t want to hear it with a skinny pervert like you.”

Karl snorted again; beer spurted out of his mouth and dripped off his chin. Beer-soaked, yeah. Floyd laughed and turned back to Rosie. He was still chuckling, but his eyes were cold.

“Pervert?” I asked.

“He’s a vegetarian! For Christ’s sake.”

“Hey, man, I got medical problems.”

“Okay, a skinny, sickly pervert.”

“You’re getting less funny every minute, Floyd.”

“Then go sit somewhere else, celery-sucker.”

“Hold on, Floyd.” Steve leaned over the bar and touched Floyd’s arm. Floyd shrugged and swung all the way around, his back to Karl. Tullis shook his head, climbed down off his bar stool, and wandered over to Ebner’s table. Ebner and Zack didn’t look all that happy to see him, either.

For a macho guy, Floyd had done a quick stand-down. Steve really did carry a lot of authority with these people. Maybe it was only the kind of power that goes with wielding the beer spigot. Maybe something more.

Gorgeous Gilly strolled in, gave me a lazy smile, and sat down on the stool Karl had just vacated. I had two thoughts: first, like Floyd, she was always alone; and second, I was really grateful that Sally had accepted a date with me. Save me, Sally.

Ebner hoisted himself to his feet and strolled casually over to the bar, placing himself between me and Leslie and giving Rosie a cool gaze. I introduced her to him. He nodded, but all he said was “Give me another beer, Steve.” Steve did and Ebner walked away without looking at either of us again.

Floyd picked up the conversation where we’d left off. “I believe we were talking about a ball game, isn’t that right, Rosie? And Jase?” He added my name as an obvious afterthought. Cute.

Rosie nodded and sipped at her red wine. “I believe we were.”

“Who do you like, the A’s or the Giants?”

He was talking to Rosie, but I answered before she could. “Who you got tickets to?”

“A’s. For tomorrow. Whole block of ’em. And we got a tailgate party happening. Eleven a.m.” He sneered. “You can come too, Jase.” Eleven would work. I could be back home by six, take a quick shower and change clothes, meet the prospective buyer by seven, go out with Sally at eight.

If Rosie and I had to go somewhere with this guy to work our way deeper into the group, a ball game sounded pretty harmless. Lots of people around, sunlight, hot dogs… I like the Oakland A’s. Of course, I really loved the ’89 A’s, saw every game I could. Carney Lansford. José Canseco. Rickey Henderson. Dave Stewart, Mark McGwire. Some of them were still around, some were back again, some were hitting them over the fence for other teams. McGwire— well, hitting them over the fence is, of course, putting it mildly. But together, way back then, they’d been the greatest.

They’d even caused a major earthquake.

Rosie smiled at Floyd. “A tailgate party. Sounds like fun.”

Right. A Nazi tailgate party in the heart of Oakland. Sounded like suicide.

I wanted to be sure it wasn’t just going to be me, Floyd, Rosie, and maybe Leslie. “Who’ll be there?”

“Well, I think Pete Ebner’s coming.” Wonderful. “And Gilly? What about you?”

Gilly shrugged. “Not sure.”

“I’m sure old Karl will be there. He don’t miss anything. And Leslie. She loves tailgate parties, don’t you, Leslie?”

“Love ’em.” She drooped her damned lashes at me again.

“And your cousin— he’d probably like to come.”

“I’ll mention it to him.”

“So I guess we just made a date, huh? Right, Rosie?” Again, that sly look toward me. I was having some trouble with this. If I declared that Rosie was my girlfriend it would limit my, well, movements around, well… Gilly. That was probably a good thing, but it would also limit Rosie’s movements in the group. We should have made a plan. For now, we’d have to play it kind of ambiguous.

I tossed him a sneer and a warning squint he could take any way he wanted to.

Floyd slid down off his stool. “Gotta go to the little boys’ room.” He headed for the back of the bar. Ebner was moving that way too, now.

Just as they were disappearing, Royal came in, nodded to me, said, “Hi” to Leslie, who flashed him the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her, must have moved her lips a quarter of an inch, and stopped at Zack’s table. He and Zack exchanged a few words. Royal nodded, dug out his wallet, and handed Zack a wad of bills. A few more words, and he headed toward me. I noticed that Leslie was following all his movements.

Steve drew him a beer and he stood between me and Leslie, chugging it. I told him about the tailgate party.

“Yeah,” he said between swallows. “Zack mentioned it.” He glanced at Rosie.

“You’ve met my friend, Rose.”

He almost said no, but caught himself and nodded.

“Why don’t we ride to the game together?”

“Yeah. I got to go. Talk to you tomorrow.” He swallowed the last of his beer, like it was medicine.

Leslie seemed to be watching his butt when he walked out.

She swung back around and stared at her beer. “You think Royal will come to the tailgate party?”

“Sounds like it.”

“Good. See you.” She glanced at Rosie and gave her the droopy lashes this time. “You too.” With that she took off, wandering in the direction of the jukebox.

Gilly looked over at me and smiled. A gorgeous smile. Just as I was about to start a conversation with her, she finished her wine and got up.

“Can’t stop to chat now, Jase, but I sure would like to another time.” There were those damned gold-flecked eyes again. I forced myself not to watch her go. I forced myself to think of the Aryan Command flag. I thought very hard about it.

Rosie broke into my thoughts by whispering in my ear, but not tenderly. “What’s that about? That woman? I’ve seen that look on your face before. I know what it means. Are you completely out of your mind?”

“Hasn’t got anything to do with my mind. Don’t worry. I’m cool.”

“She’s spectacular. Take care that you stay cool.”

Half an hour later, Floyd had not returned, and neither had Pete Ebner. Caught up in some backroom business, I supposed. Maybe a postmortem on the fight that morning.

We were walking to my car when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, Jase— Rosie! Wait up. I’ll walk with you. Streets are dangerous.”

Karl. By that I assumed he meant he was scared out there at night, not that he was coming along to protect us. We stopped and waited for him.

We exchanged the usual nice-night small talk, then he looked at me, his dark eyebrows all wrinkled up with sincerity.

“You know, Jase, you seem like an intelligent man to me.” Damn. I wanted to seem stupid. Was I failing? “Thank you, Karl.”

“A lot of these guys, well, they don’t have much education.”

“But you do?” Right. Royal had said that Karl was the brains of the group. The intellectual leader of the Aryan Command. What a distinction. I was surprised he hadn’t changed his name to Karl Goebbels.

“Sure. Can’t run a revolution if you don’t understand how things work.”

“And how do they work?”

“With great difficulty and in surprising ways.”

“So you’re running the revolution, right, Karl?”

“Only the mental part, Jase. I leave the physical side to the big and the strong. The warriors.”

“And Ebner.”

“Right. Ebner. And Red. And Floyd. Which brings up a point.”

I slowed down. “And what would that point be, Karl?”

“You and Floyd seem to be buddies. And he acts like he likes Rosie—” he almost bowed in her direction “—if you don’t mind my saying.”

“What’s your point, Karl?”

“No big point. I just think you might want to, well, be careful. Maybe be a little bit careful and maybe not trust Floyd too much.”

“Not trust him? What’s that supposed to mean? Not trust him how?”

We were a few yards from my car.

“Just be careful, okay?”

“Okay.” We had reached the Falcon. I unlocked the door.

“See you, then, Jase, Rosie.” Karl winked, and sauntered back a couple of cars, getting into an old brown VW fastback. He got in, started the engine, and pulled away.

Now what the hell was all that about?

Saturday was a pretty day. I couldn’t believe I was going to spend it watching a ball game at the Oakland Coliseum with a bunch of Nazis.

Royal was coming. He’d wanted to take his own car but I asked him to ride along with me and Rosie instead. I wanted to quiz him about the Command’s attack on Frasier’s ThePeople, among other things.

I picked Rosie up first. We had a lot to talk about.

“So you never heard back from Harry George?”

“Nope. But what the heck, it’s only been a couple of days. He could be out busting terrorists somewhere.”

“Or on vacation.”

I laughed. “Impossible. Our government never rests.”

“Looks like they were sound asleep on this one. I’m not looking forward to spending much more time with these jerks.” And she’d only spent one evening with them so far. It didn’t take much.

“Yeah. I want to turn this whole thing over to the Harry Guy, get Royal’s butt covered somehow, and watch from a safe distance while the FBI raids Thor’s back room. Maybe you should check again with Pauline to make sure Harry’s the guy I was supposed to call.”

“I’ll do that.”

From the FBI, we moved on to something that might have more immediate consequences— like today— Floyd’s interest in her and how we could deal with it. We decided that we would leave our relationship a semi-mystery, hinting that we were seeing each other just enough so she could put off Floyd, Karl, and anyone else who craved her shapely body and the favor of her pretty smile. But at the same time giving the impression that both of us were keeping our options open, in case we needed room to maneuver. I’d been happy the night before when Floyd had disappeared leaving things kind of vague, so I didn’t have to make a fast choice between acting like either the pissed-off boyfriend or the casual pal. And of course Rosie had been pretty damned relieved too.

I’d invented a sick old dad to keep people away from my house. Rosie might have to invent a psychotic mother.

Although that might not bother a member of the Aryan Command.

Royal was waiting on a street corner. I still didn’t know where he lived. As he slid into the back seat he handed me a scrap of paper. He’d written “Royal’s Beeper” and a number on it. At least I had that now.

“By the way, Royal, Rosie here runs the agency I work for, so she’s on the case too.”

“Oh. Okay. More the better, I guess.”

The three of us drove out to the Coliseum to meet the gang where Zack had told Royal they would be: in the general area of Section F, at the tailgate of Red’s truck.

“Same truck they used to carry troops to the Farrier’s protest? Big? Light blue?” Rosie asked.

“Yeah. Ford.”

“So that was Red driving in Berkeley yesterday? Rosie and I couldn’t tell.”

“Nah. What I heard, Red’s truck was there, but he wasn’t. Ebner was all, like, I got to do this. With the truck, you know, so the guys could just all jump out.” I wondered how Red felt about Ebner using his truck to take the warriors on a job.

“How come you weren’t there? You were thinking you might be.”

He didn’t answer for nearly a full minute. “I was afraid you might call the cops, Jake.” And so we had, but they hadn’t gotten there soon enough to make a difference. Not soon enough to jail the warriors or keep people from getting hurt.

Rosie filled the hole my thoughts were making in the conversation by asking, “How did this protest action get put together, Royal? Who came up with the idea?”

“Red saw this article in the paper last week, that Frasier guy saying they were going to do it,” he explained. “So he thought it would be fun, you know? They weren’t going to hurt anybody really bad or anything. Just make them look like a bunch of fools.” It had even been Red’s idea. He must have been really pissed off when Pete pulled it out from under him.

“Do you think Frasier’s group is a bunch of fools? About the child labor?” Rosie sounded like she was talking through her teeth. I knew she was left of neutral on that question.

“Yeah. I do. People are greedy. It’s stupid to think they can change that. Everybody’s got to make a buck, you know?”

What a bunch of crap. “Damn it, Royal, is that why you didn’t tell me about it at first? Because you thought they were right?” Could I trust him at all?

“No! I didn’t say they were right, I just mean you can’t change people. And I said I was sorry, Jake. I didn’t think it was worth it, to get them suspicious that someone’s snitching, just for that stupid protest. Okay?”

I glanced over at him. His hands were trembling. “Let me repeat this: Next time you let me make the decision. Okay?”