Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (20 page)

I thought of Red. Survivalist. Weapons expert.

“Okay. Think about it. Right now. Who do you think, who do you remember, was maybe especially mad at Richard for wanting to leave? Anyone. A warrior, Inner Circle. Whoever.”

“Well, Leslie found out, and she was real pissed. She and him, you know, for a while, but he backed off and you could tell he was on his way out of the Command, and she was real pissed.”

“Who else?”

“Pete didn’t like it. Pete was real mad at him.” He looked up, his brow furrowed. “Hey, maybe Pete killed Richard and some friend of Richard’s killed Pete?”

“You were a friend of Richard’s.”

“Yeah. See? No matter where you go with this, it looks like me!”

I got up and walked over to the pool table, thinking. “Okay if I take your shot, Royal?”

He shrugged again. Once I finished with this mess, I hoped I’d never see another shrug. I aimed and shot, sank the six. Tried a bank shot on the eight and blew it. Deeanne didn’t get up to take her turn. She was still rubbing Royal’s shoulders. Why can’t I ever find a woman like that? Should I shave my head? Learn to look sullen and dangerous?

I stayed standing, leaning against the table. “Let’s look at it another way. Who would benefit from Pete’s death? Who wanted his Command job or something else that he had?” Job. That brought up another question. I’d ask it when we finished this line of thought. Didn’t want to confuse the kid.

“Red did. Red benefited. He wanted to run the warriors. He told me that once.”

“Yeah. I was thinking along those lines too. And who else? Who else stood to gain in some way? Or had some kind of special grudge going against him?”

“Nothing real big, but Gilly. Her and Pete, they seemed to not exactly like each other— but it was hard to tell. They tried to hide it. And Karl didn’t like him, I thought sometimes, but if Karl killed anybody, I think it would be Floyd.”

Back to Floyd, then. “So you think Floyd tried to follow you today?”

“I know he did. It was that old green Camaro of his.” I thought I’d seen one of those parked near Thor’s, and near Red’s truck at the tailgate party, but I hadn’t known it was Floyd’s and hadn’t paid much attention to it. It looked pretty much like every other old Camaro I’d ever seen. Every green one, anyway.

“You think he followed you from your motel, or did he pick up on you along the way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Better find another motel.”

He just closed his eyes. Deeanne was working on his neck muscles now.

Gilly and Red.

And Karl. And Floyd. Following Royal? With what in mind?

“Royal, I know Steve hands out presents, but is there any other money floating around? I mean does anyone actually get paid for working for the Command? For Command jobs?”

“I don’t think so. People mostly work.”

“Even Ebner?”

“Yeah. He sold, like, car parts or something.” His eyes were still closed.

That was good. An army without pay is an army of deserters. Of course, Royal might not really know what was going on.

I thought I’d better be sure he’d heard me about finding a new place to hide. “Royal, go get another motel room and stay there. Do you hear me?” He opened his eyes, focused on me, and nodded. “And Deeanne, you go home.”

Royal jumped up, grabbed his cue stick, and bashed a couple of balls. Neither one of them went in. Then he swung around, legs spread as if he needed to work to keep his balance.

“I been thinking. I think I can’t do that. I think it was wrong to run away and hide out. I got to change my, you know, approach. I got to act normal, go back home. Go back to Thor’s. I got to act like what everybody’s saying isn’t true— just like you’re doing. I got to be around the guys and make them believe I didn’t snitch and I didn’t kill Pete.” He finished the longest speech I’d ever heard him make, turned back around, and bashed another ball. This one went in the side pocket.

For a kid with a minimum of smarts, Royal did a lot of thinking, most of it skewed. In this case, though, it was possible he was right. That was the way Cousin Jase had been playing it all along. I couldn’t keep Royal away, I couldn’t protect him by making him look guilty.

I gave in. It was his life. “All right, then. But understand you’re really risking your neck now. And Deeanne— you stay away from him until we see how this is going to fall.”

She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.

I left the two of them there, playing pool, and called Rosie from my car, leaving a message that I was headed toward Thor’s but I’d turn around and pick her up if she called before I got to the Richmond Bridge.

She didn’t. All the way to Berkeley, the possible killers and the possible reasons for the killing ran through my mind. Royal was absolutely the best suspect, if you weren’t in the mood to suspect Red. What did that make me? Anything different in the way I should be playing the game now? No. I was still innocent Cousin Jase. Ebner’s death didn’t change that.

There were a couple of motorcycles parked outside. Skink and two of his no-name warrior pals were sitting at a table drinking beer. All of them glared at me when I walked in.

Steve was wiping the bar, or maybe spit-shining it.

“You again, huh?”

“Steve, you could make me feel more welcome.”

“Guess I could. Don’t think I will, though.’’ There was that half smile again.

He didn’t seem to be mourning Ebner’s death. Except for closing the bar and tossing everyone out the night before, he didn’t seem to be affected by it at all. He served me the beer I ordered without another word, and this time he didn’t rip the stein out of my hand before I’d emptied it.

I waited to see who came in and what happened. Every time I glanced toward the warriors’ table, they were staring at me. Except once, when only two of them were staring at me and they both had to elbow the fat kid so he’d look up from his beer and help them.

Gilly showed up. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a tight black T-shirt. Her hazel eyes crinkled at me and she sat down on the next bar stool. She was looking friendlier than she had since I’d turned away her pass. Did I have the strength to do it more than once?

“Well, Jason, how’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess. Sorry to hear about Pete Ebner. That’s bad news.”

“Yes. It is. Can’t imagine who’d do a thing like that.” She was watching me slyly. “Some Jew. Someone from ZOG maybe.” She ordered a cola. ZOG. The secret Zionist Occupational Government. Imagine how these guys must have felt when the secretary of state found out she was Jewish. Bet they thought she knew it all along.

At least Gilly hadn’t said she was betting on my cousin Royal.

“There seem to be a lot of bad things happening to this group lately, you know, Jason? Kind of odd, all at once.” A sidelong look.

“Well, it seems like this group is doing some stuff all at once, too. Really good stuff. Maybe there’s a connection.”

“You mean the church and the cemetery and ThePeople?”

“Yes, I do.” I flashed an excited smile at her. Lust for vandalism. I hoped she didn’t mistake it for anything else.

“What makes you think we did all that?” She smiled at me.

“Just hoping, I guess.” That was true. Hoping this was the only group of fascist assholes in the Bay Area.

She laughed, but, like Deeanne, she didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. Then she changed the subject abruptly and threw me off balance.

“I suppose you’re still seeing Rosie?”

“I wouldn’t say seeing, exactly.” No, I sure wouldn’t.

“Find some time for me, all right?” There was that gorgeous grin again. Her teeth were perfect, her lips full. I kept repeating over and over in my mind— Nazi, Nazi, Nazi.

Steve was standing at the end of the bar watching our little love scene with a sardonic eye and a sour twist of the mouth.

Floyd appeared in the doorway, taking in the view. Then he pasted on his own version of Steve’s half smile and sauntered over.

“You didn’t leave a number last night, Jase. Wanted to ask you something.”

Gilly swung around to face Steve, backing off for the moment. Guess she figured it was Floyd’s turn to interrogate me.

“Ask away, Floyd.” Cool, unconcerned. Was he going to ask me when Royal murdered Ebner? Was he going to ask if I helped him do it? Was he going to ask why I’d met Royal and Deeanne at the pool hall and what we talked about?

Floyd dropped his arm down on my shoulder. A heavy, heavy arm. “There’s a show I wanted to take in tonight. Skink’s band, they got a gig. And how about we grab some dinner first? You, me, Rosie? She here?”

So Skink had a band. Wow. And Floyd was still my pal. Or even more interested in checking me out. I couldn’t say no. Not now. I was innocent. Royal was innocent. No reason to say no.

“No, she’s not here. The music sounds great. Dinner, too. Tell you what. I been running all day. Need to take care of some things first. How about I give Rosie a call, go back, take a shower, bring her along?”

“Yeah. Do that. How about I see you here in an hour, hour and a half?”

I looked at my watch. Four-thirty. “Make it two hours?”

He nodded, took his arm off my shoulder, and headed for the back of the bar. Not a word about Ebner. He hadn’t even left an opening for me to say anything about him. Maybe that would all come later.

Turned out it was a good thing I’d given myself some extra time. When I got home I discovered that Harry George, the FBI connection, had finally called me back. He had a slow, quiet voice. He wanted me to get back to him right away. First I called Rosie. She couldn’t wait to go to the show, said she wondered what kind of music these guys would play.

“Maybe,” she said, “it’ll be a tribute to Pete Ebner.”

“That ought to be fun.”

After we hung up, I started trying to call Harry George. I tried the number for half an hour. First it was busy. Then nobody answered.

Thor’s was jammed. Floyd was there waiting for us at a table near the jukebox, a long way from the door. As we walked through the place, I heard Ebner’s name spoken several times, and a stir of tension and suspicion followed us. Rosie must have felt it too, because she took my arm. Not something she usually does.

Skink and his buddies were still there, or had gone and come back, and now Zack and Leslie and a couple of other skin-kids— not Maryanne, the one who’d gotten tossed out with her boyfriend— were with them. Leslie, who I now knew was a former girlfriend of the murdered Richard.

The warriors had been busy working themselves up. One after the other, they turned and glared at me. When it was Zack’s turn to glare, I noticed he had a black eye. Well, fighting is a warrior’s job.

Rosie had found out a few things about Ebner’s murder. The cops had gotten a no-name public-phone call around 7:30 Sunday night, found his car, found his body behind a bunch of shrubs, found the Thor’s number, and called Steve. They didn’t find the murder weapon anywhere in the neighborhood. We’d gotten to the bar around 9:30, maybe 10:00, and Steve had the meeting all set up by then.

She didn’t have anything on what kind of knife had done the job or the exact time of death, but her Berkeley cop friend Hank had told her the body was “real fresh.”

We sat down with Floyd, who acted like he wasn’t noticing the atmosphere. He offered to go get us a couple beers, though, so maybe he thought we should just sit where we were for a while. The next time I glanced toward the bar, wondering what had happened to our drinks, I saw that Floyd had struck up a conversation with Red.

“Looks like Floyd’s going to keep us waiting,” I told Rosie.

She followed my gaze and rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s supposed to be some kind of torture.”

We were both pretty nervous. It was hard, sitting there and pretending to be totally innocent, trying to outstrut and outbluff, with nothing to lubricate the dryness in our mouths, nothing in our hands but air. Times like these I really miss cigarettes. So I was about to get up and go to the bar myself when Leslie stumped over to our table.

“Didn’t think I’d see you in here again, Jase.”

She stood too close, hands on hips, glaring.

“Why not?” I acted like I really didn’t know what she meant.

She snickered, but there was no laughter in her eyes. “Maybe you two really don’t know what’s going on.” She turned her head to look at her buddies, who were watching and sneering, and barked, “Not!”

“Listen, Leslie, I don’t know what you mean by ‘what’s going on.’ I know about what that Switcher guy said on his radio show. And a couple people seem to think Royal had something to do with that. And then I hear some people even think he’s got something to do with Ebner’s murder, which is pure bullshit. Why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about?”

“Yeah. That’s right. People think Royal had something to do with what Switcher said on the radio. And with Pete Ebner’s murder too.”

“I’m real sorry about Ebner, and—”

Rosie broke in. “Royal’s loyal to the Command, Leslie. Even I know that, and I don’t know him very well.” Sure. Loyal Royal. “It makes me kind of mad that some people don’t get that, you know?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think he’s loyal. I think he totally rolled on the Command. Or maybe he told you some garbage, and you rolled on us.” She was facing Rosie, but she was talking to both of us. I wondered: Did she know the Switcher plot was real? Hard to tell. But dumb Cousin Jase wasn’t touching that question. He had other fish to fry. A fish named Leslie.

I cranked my voice as loud as it would go without yelling. Her change of heart toward Royal gave me some idea of what might have happened between them in the last couple of days. I had to land on her and land hard. No more Mr. Nice Guy, no more Gentleman Jase. “Look, little girl, I know you’re pissed off at Royal because he didn’t go for it when you came on to him. That’s no reason to be bad-mouthing him.”

“Yeah,” Rosie picked it up. “Or maybe it is, huh? Maybe you want him blamed because he turned you down. Maybe none of this has anything to do with Switcher’s program at all.”

I noticed Floyd coming toward us, holding a beer in each hand. Then, with no warning that I caught, Leslie jumped Rosie, pummeling her shoulders and chest. Her chair fell backward and she was on the floor.