“He’s a liar. Big liar,” Wong spit out, anger rising in his voice.
“About what?”
“He tell me he help with immigration problem for my cousin.”
“What sort of problem?”
“We do each other a favor, he say. If I drop charges against robber he help me get a work permit for cousin so he can stay in United States.”
“Cole’s not with immigration. He’s just a cop.”
“How I know who can do what? He say he can help. But he does nothing. That’s why I call him and yell at him. Then this morning he come back. Like you say. Tell me to leave him alone and not call him. Threaten to cause me trouble.”
“Cole came to you and asked you to drop the charges against Charlie Ramus, the guy who robbed you? I want to make sure. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And he is threatening you now?”
“What? You not listening? That’s what I say. He say he make me lose business license.”
“That won’t happen Mr. Wong,” I said. I had no authority to make promises, but I made them just the same. Just like Cole.
“Say you!” Wong said. Maybe he knew the situation better than I thought he did. He spun around on his stool, flicked on a table light, and focused on a gold clasp and necklace on his workbench. “You go now. We done talking.”
In the front of the store the sales girl was saying good-bye to her customers who seemed pleased with their new purchase. Everyone was smiling as the sales girl held the front door open. When she closed the door and turned toward me her smile disappeared. After a moment she reached back to the door and opened it and walked away from it. I was clearly not a popular guy in Lee Wong’s store.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Frank Cole was becoming more intriguing every day. He was involved with Ramus before his death, he’d lied to Wong and was now threatening him, and he was sleeping with Carol Rhodes under the pretense of helping Ray. He was not exactly the sort of cop most departments would consider an asset. I drove to the Vallejo Street station hoping to talk with Cole, but as luck would have it, at least my sort of luck, the desk Sergeant informed me he was not around.
“Frank was in early, but is up to Marin. Testifying in court up there. I know because he was bitching about it for half an hour before he left.”
I was so close to Cole’s place on Stockton Street I decided to visit. With Cole trapped in a Marin courthouse I would have plenty of time to peep around. As a former cop, I’m supposed to be vigilant about not breaking the law, but there are times when the more important issue is just not getting caught.
I found a place to park around the corner a block from Cole’s flat, guarded by a parking meter that had lost its coin box. A recent rash of thefts against the City had been in the form of parking meter coin boxes that were literally sawed off from their support poles. The entire block had been hit, and the grey metal poles lined the sidewalk like victims of a mass decapitation.
The street level door to Cole’s building was manned by an old Schlage lock above the door knob and a dead bolt lock. I’ve worked hundreds of locks over the years and learned most of the configurations. It took less than a minute to work the Schlage lock and the dead bolt had not been set. There are a lot more people who have dead bolts than those who use them.
The door to Cole’s second floor flat had a newer lock, but locks that somebody made are locks somebody can pick. It took a minute and a half and I was inside Cole’s flat. It was neat and spacious, but the furniture and the décor were undistinguished, except for what looked like a new black leather couch that was the center piece of the living room. A splash of magazines and newspapers littered the glass and metal coffee table sitting in front of the couch, and two mismatched chairs sat close to either end of the table. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but that can often be the case. I just poke around and see if anything speaks to me.
I looked in the thin single drawer of a small writing table, flipped through the three shelves of books stacked into a wooden bookcase, and drifted into a small dining alcove taken up by a round wooden table and two metal and cloth chairs. There was an old two drawer wooden chest sitting beneath the widow. The top drawer was filled with bills and envelopes and ink pens and stamps. The drawer below was more interesting. Tucked into the back corner of the drawer was a clear bag of what looked like more than an ounce of white powdered drugs. I opened the baggie, licked the tip of my little finger tapped into the powder. I put the finger to my tongue. It was cocaine. I shut the drawer and went through the kitchen, but found nothing I wouldn’t find in my own kitchen.
The door to the bedroom was closed, but when I pushed it open I almost knocked over a digital video camera perched on a tripod and pointing at the bed. I grabbed one of the three legs just in time to keep the whole contraption from crashing to the ground. I repositioned it. Next to the tripod, mounted on the wall, was a large flat screen television. A Blue-Ray DVD player rested on a mass produced entertainment center console. On a shelf below the DVD player was row of self-labeled DVD cases. The thirty or so cases were labeled with initials: C.S., D.K., E.L. P.B. and many others.
I flipped on the power to the television and the Blue-Ray and hit play. The disc already in the machine spun into action, and after a few seconds the television was filled with close-up images of Carol Rhodes and Frank Cole. They were in Cole’s bed, naked. Carol had her knees curled up under her ass and she was bending down. Cole was lying on his back, with one hand behind his head, smiling as Carol moved up and down on him.
I stopped the DVD, removed it from the machine and replaced it with one of the other discs. The scenario was roughly the same, but Cole was with a different girl. He was taking her from the rear while looking at himself on camera. Like Carol, this girl looked to be in her early twenty’s. Like Carol she was also too thin, and her skin was the same sort of unhealthy pasty white color. Cole started slapping the girl’s ass as he neared climax and I stopped the machine. I removed the disc, put it back into its case, and replaced the original disc.
I spent another ten minutes going through the place, but found nothing else of interest. Still, the discovery of the sex videos and the drugs more than made the visit worthwhile. I left the flat and was opening the door to my car when another car drove by. It was Marty Milner. I wasn’t sure if he saw me or recognized me, but he was looking in my direction.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
It was eleven in the morning when Marty Milner left Lucinda’s apartment. The two of them had finished Marty’s coke and eight bottles of beer. Lucinda finally passed out, naked on the floor while Marty tried to get an erection and failed. Milner felt like hell, tired but wide awake, stretched out on the edge of a dull knife. He drove to his apartment and took a shower. He drank the one beer he had left in his refrigerator and walked around, still on edge. From the brass bowl on his dresser in his bedroom he took the set of keys to Frank Cole’s apartment that Frank had given him few months earlier as a back-up set. Marty wanted some more coke, and he knew Frank was holding. He drove into North Beach, and was at a stop sign waiting for a mother pushing a baby carriage to pass through the crosswalk, when he saw who he thought was Lieutenant McNamara’s buddy Robert Lucas come out of Cole’s building. Lucas looked quickly up and down the street and then headed up Stockton Street, away from Milner. Milner drove slowly up Stockton. He watched Lucas turn the corner and move to a parked car. Milner drove past Lucas, circled the block and parked in the driveway of Cole’s building. Milner knew that Cole had been scheduled to be in court in Marin, but he also had no doubt he had seen Lucas come out of the building. Milner rang the doorbell for Cole’s apartment. There was no answer. He repeated the process. He wondered what the hell Lucas was doing at Frank’s place, when Cole was in Marin, and how he even knew where Frank lived. He was too wrecked to think deeply and settled on using his keys to Frank’s place and digging in for some more blow.
Milner went right for the stash parce
led out some from the baggie into the small tin canister he carried, and then chopped up two big rails on the coffee table and slid them home. The coke rebalanced the world and Milner stood up from the couch and smiled. “Yeah, that’s better.”
He went into the bedroom and bent down at the Blue Ray player. He flipped through the discs until he found the one he wanted. He replaced the disc inside the machine and pushed play. Two girls, one Black and one Chinese, moved about Frank’s bed, licking and kissing and probing each other.
Thirty minutes later Marty helped himself to another rail, grabbed a beer from Frank’s kitchen and stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans. He put everything in the apartment back in the original places and left. He climbed behind the wheel of his Mustang, popped the top of the can of beer, and backed out into the street. He never noticed the shiny black BMW pull away from the curb to follow him. In the backseat of the BMW Leon smoked a cigarette and scratched at the cast on his leg.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I don’t sleep as well as I used to, and usually it is more of a curse than a blessing. Tonight, however, my restlessness might have saved my life. It was a few minutes after three o’clock when I heard the first sounds. I sat up in bed and focused my attention toward the front of the house. There had been a quick snap, glass breaking. The front door to the house has six decorative window panes built in. I guessed one of them had been broken. Then I heard the front door swing open and make a familiar creaking sound as it dragged ever so slightly across the tiny warped spot in the wooden floor. And I heard two voices, whispering. I reached to bedside table and opened the top drawer. I cradled my Smith and Wesson. I removed the safety and slid out of bed. I stepped quietly across the carpeted floor to a spot by the bedroom door. From behind the half closed door I could peer through the opening between the door and its frame. There were two men, each dressed in dark clothes and ski masks. One of the two carried a large flashlight. The other one had a gun. The beam from the light swept the floor and the walls of the living room. After a moment the pair moved toward the rear of the house, and my bedroom.
I slowed down my breathing and stepped further behind the door, up against the wall. I could hear them cautiously, quietly, sliding their feet along the carpeted hallway. Another whisper I couldn’t decipher. Then they were in the bedroom. I moved from behind the door and said, “Drop the gun.”
They turned toward me. In the glow from the flashlight I saw the man with the gun raise it and aim. I fired once. I aimed for his upper chest, but he had moved, jumping into a crouch, and the bullet found his head. His gun flew from his hand as he went back and hit the floor. His partner immediately kicked at the base of the bedroom door and it slammed up against me. I was off balance and he swung the flashlight at me. I raised my arm just in time to avoid getting hit in the head. The industrial strength metal flashlight was heavy and the blow sent a screaming pain through my forearm and up my shoulder. I turned to my right and got caught by a kick that landed on my hip. I dropped to my knees and fired the gun. He was hit in his shoulder and it spun him around, but didn’t stop him. He dropped the flashlight, but we were both adjusted to the light. He reached behind his back and came up with a large hunting knife.
“Don’t do it,” I shouted. I thought I saw him smile through the mouth hole in his ski mask.
He bounced into some exotic martial arts spin and kicked out at me, catching my leg and sending me to the floor. I was on my back as he came at me, the blade of the knife in his hand ready to kill. I fired twice and he seemed to freeze in a pose just above me. The knife fell from his hand and landed beside my face. He collapsed on top of me, the blood from the bullet holes in his chest running down on me like two red rivers suddenly unclogged.
I pushed him to the floor and moved toward my bed. I sat propped up against the side of the bedframe. My pulse was racing. Everything had probably lasted no more than a minute, but there would be a hundred different details to later recall. The sound of the glass breaking. The door creaking. The flashlight. The gun shots. The knife. And on and on.
After a couple minutes, I slid over to the man closest to me, the first one to be shot. I pulled off his ski mask. He was Chinese, or maybe Vietnamese. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead and his eyes were still open. They seemed to be staring at the ceiling, at the unusual shadows cast by the moonlight coming through the window. The man with the flashlight and the knife was also Asian. He could have been his partner’s twin. They were both in their twenties, similar in size and build. They both had shiny black hair, cut short on the sides and left long in the back, and they both had small gold earrings in their left ear. It was only then that I heard Lou barking and growling and scratching at the back door.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The black body bags were zipped closed and the two corpses were wheeled out of my house around six o’clock in the morning. The normally quiet Sunset had been awakened by a double homicide, and there were neighbors standing on their front porches and front lawns in robes and pajamas drinking morning coffee, while others watched through the front windows of their homes. There were three black and whites, two unmarked cars, and an ambulance eating up space in their neighborhood.
I had little doubt that Frank Cole was behind the shooters. Their arrival was too soon after my talk with Carol and my second visit to Wong’s jewelry store. If either one of them had mentioned me to Cole he would have begun to put things together, and if Milner had recognized me in North Beach he might have also passed that information along to Cole.
I didn’t mention any of these ideas to the cops on the scene. I had no proof and they wouldn’t take kindly to any accusations against one of their own. I said I assumed they were thieves, or if not, maybe they were looking for someone in particular and had the wrong address. The homicide cops were less than convinced of either theory, but also not especially anxious to spend a hell of a lot of time worrying about it. From their perspective there were now two less bad guys running around causing trouble.
By seven o’clock I’d taken a shower, talked with Tetlow on the telephone, and was sitting in the kitchen with Lou at my feet having breakfast. It didn’t go down well. The emotional residue from the shootings was almost physical, almost concrete. It’d been ten years since I had fired a gun in any fashion other than target practice, and thirteen years since I’d shot and killed Stephan Rojak one night in Pasadena after he’d shot a liquor store owner and was fleeing on foot. Rojak was one of only two people I shot at during my career, and the only one I’d killed. This morning I’d done the only thing possible, but the knowledge wasn’t doing much for me. I’d killed two young men and I wasn’t happy about it. Cole had raised the stakes. If I was right, he might have killed Ramus and was now after me. Still, I had no proof, other than Lee Wong’s story. The video discs and the drugs in Cole’s apartment were not evidence linking him to bigger crimes, and I’d found that stuff by illegally entering his apartment. The telephone ringing interrupted my deep thinking.
“Lucky? It’s Jack. Didn’t wake you did I”
Jack Tanner was the cop in San Diego I’d called for background on Cole.
“No, I’ve been up,” I said, smiling to myself at the irony of my response.
“Good. Well, I’ve got some stuff on your friend. Or whoever he is.”
“Go ahead.” I reached to the counter and grabbed a pencil and note pad.
“Cole joined the San Diego department when he was twenty four, after some time in the Army. A pretty good cop, but liked to party and fancied himself a ladies man. He was partnered with another cop, Jack Lake, for a couple years. But, Lake died. In a boating accident of all things. Lost at sea. Anyway, eighteen months later Cole married Lake’s widow and adopted her ten year old daughter. Apparently, some cops thought it a little weird, but a lot weirder stuff than that goes on.”
“Sure.”
“Another six years pass, and then the wife commits suicide. Hooks up one e
nd of a hose to the car exhaust and runs the other end inside the car. Has the garage door shut, starts the car.”
“Who found her?”
“Next door neighbor. Walked by and heard the car running. Thought it weird and knocked on the front door. Got no answer and started looking around. One thing led to another.”
“She leave a note? Any reason?”
“Nope. My informant said Cole was seeing other women, but he also said that had been going on for a while.”
“So why kill yourself now? That it?”
“Yeah, sort of. Anyway, three years later he left San Diego and moved to San Francisco. Surprised people down here, but people move.”
“What about the daughter?”
“Don’t know. Nothing sure about her. Off on her own, probably.”
“That it?”
“All I got.”
“Thanks, Jack. I appreciate it.”
“Sure, Lucky. But fill me in. I thought you were retired? Living the easy life.”
“Yeah that’s me,” I said. Finding corpses in hotel rooms, early morning shoot outs. Just kickin’ back. “I’m just hooked into doing a favor for my daughter-in-law and this guy’s name came up. Why don’t you come up and visit sometime. We’ll take a boat ride out to Alcatraz and you can see where Al Capone used to reside.”
“Yeah? That’s right, huh?” Jack said. “I just might do that. Go to a ballgame, maybe. When the Padres are in town.”
“Let’s make it happen. Thanks again.” I hung up the telephone, and the house was quiet.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The background information on Cole didn’t give me anything. Lots of cops had trouble with marriages. Lots of them created or lived with broken or damaged families. I knew of cops committing suicide, and I knew of cops’ wives doing the same, and there were certainly plenty of cops who worked in more than one police department during their career. But Cole’s past was now of less interest to me than the present and the immediate future. Particularly my own. Since the first two assassins had failed to complete their job I was fairly sure Cole would be just as glad they were dead and unable to talk. What I was uncertain about was whether or not Cole would take another run. I decided to not wait for him to come again. I dug out my shoulder holster and slipped it on, reloaded the Smith and Wesson. I grabbed a light weight jacket and zipped it up and put Lou in the back yard.