Richie spent the following morning at home reading over the report that Shay had given him on Donovan Quan, the man who had offered a generous cash deal to buy Big Caesar’s.
He then spent most of that same afternoon with his thoughts jumping between Rebecca, now spending her fourth full day at work, and what to do about everything Shay had put in his report.
Richie learned that Quan had made a fortune as an exporter of computer parts from China to Singapore and then to the US. Too much of a fortune, many speculated, to be dealing solely with computer parts.
Quan’s Chinese father had been born in Singapore, his Irish mother now lived in America, so he had a foot in both countries. After graduating from Stanford, he returned to Singapore, and from there, using connections he’d made at the university with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and high-ranking government officials, he grew what had been a modest family fortune to a massive one. Now, he wanted a business in San Francisco, and for some reason had latched onto Richie’s. Richie couldn’t imagine why someone with Quan’s background would want Big Caesar’s, but based on Shay’s findings, he suspected it had to do with money laundering or drugs. Still, the amount Quan offered him was large enough for Richie to seriously consider it.
Richie had also asked Vito to see what he could learn about Quan. Vito could only give him the word on the street, not hard facts, but the word was, “Don’t trust the guy and steer clear.” Shay’s written report had taken 14,000 words to say what Vito had in seven.
Richie put down the write-up. A part of him said, “Who cares? Take the money and run.” Another part said, “Fuhgeddaboudit.” Granted, people who were in bed with both big business and international governments were rarely Mother Teresa clones, but Quan was off the charts.
Finally, Richie bit the bullet. He phoned Quan and said he’d decided not to sell. He couldn’t help but think that Rebecca would have been proud, if she still cared at all.
Damn, but he wished he hadn’t thought about Rebecca again. Of course, what ever happened to him that didn’t cause his thoughts to turn to her, or make him wonder what she’d say, or think, or do?
He missed her so damn much.
Even his home was no longer a refuge with Carmela hovering over him. She’d only been there one day, but he must have put on five pounds between the food she kept feeding him, and drinking too many beers to remain calm as she jabbered about all he “should” be doing, while telling him both to forget about Rebecca but to remember to look for Frankie Parks. He’d be damned if he knew or cared where the dipwad was. But he kept asking around for Carmela’s sake.
He saw Carmela go into the kitchen from the guestroom he’d given her on the far side of the house and knew she would want to join him in the living room any second now to talk. He hurried to his bedroom and began getting ready to go to work, even though it was early.
As he put on his black suit, he thought of how Rebecca’s fourth workday back in Homicide had probably just ended. He couldn’t help but wonder if being back had in any way changed her attitude about her job. And then he could have kicked himself. Thinking about Rebecca, again? Really?
But he couldn’t help remembering how, while she was stuck on administrative leave, she would lament at not being at work, and often talked about how much she liked and believed in the value of her job.
Yet, he also remembered the many days when working that he’d find her upset about the senseless deaths she was witnessing, and the questionable justice system in the city that was letting a lot of crimes go unchecked.
As he tugged the bow tie into place, he finally admitted to himself that not seeing her and not knowing how she was feeling had become unbearable. Plus, he couldn’t help but wonder, and hope, that being back in Homicide had somehow changed her mind about her job.
To Carmela’s horror, he left the house without eating dinner and drove to Mulford Alley. He usually found at least one empty parking space in it, but that day, there was none. He saw Rebecca’s black Ford Explorer, so he knew she was home.
He drove around the block a couple of times until he spotted a car pulling out of a space and immediately took it. To end up only two blocks from Rebecca’s apartment wasn’t bad for this neighborhood.
A new spring came to his step at the thought of seeing her again. He turned the corner onto Mulford and froze. She stood on the sidewalk, and she wasn’t alone.
Jared Woolridge was with her, talking to her.
What the hell is that POS doing there?
If Richie had his way, Woolridge would be locked up for the negligence he’d displayed as Rebecca’s partner.
Woolridge then placed his hand on Rebecca’s arm, and she let him leave it there as they talked. What the…? Richie’s blood began to boil. He was about to march down the street and demand to know what was going on when the two of them parted and hurried across the alleyway to their parked cars.
The realization that Woolridge’s black RAV4 was the one taking up the “extra” parking space that was usually Richie’s, only added to his fury. He quickly back-pedaled out of the alley and peered around the corner to watch. Sure enough, both cars were making three-point turns to leave. He darted away, hoping to get back to his car in time to follow them. He jumped in and drove like a maniac back toward Mulford, but when he reached it, he could find no sign of them. He drove around, hoping against hope to spot them, but no such luck.
Dejected, he was about to head for Big Caesar’s when he remembered something. He phoned Shay.
Rebecca drove to a coffee shop on upper Grant Avenue, not the famous part of Grant that was the heart of Chinatown, but the no longer well-known section adjacent to North Beach. The Caffe Trieste was one of the few places surviving after its heyday as a popular hangout during the city’s “beatnik” days when writers and poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder frequented the area.
Rebecca arrived before Jared and ordered a latte and a cannoli, a treat Richie had introduced her to, and then impatiently sat to wait for Jared and his friend to arrive. She wasn’t happy about any of this.
A short while earlier, Jared had once again appeared, uninvited, at her apartment, and this time he was quite insistent that she meet his friend who was worried about two people she knew. Finally, Rebecca had agreed, but only if she could take her own car. “If this meeting is nonsense,” she told him, “I’m leaving.”
After giving their coffee orders, Jared and Willow joined her at her table. Willow Kassel was an attractive woman with generous proportions. Definitely plus-size. The name Willow didn’t fit at all. She was a blue-eyed blonde, with hair and makeup so flawless she could have been going to a photo shoot.
Jared quickly introduced the two. Rebecca soon realized Willow wasn’t romantically interested in Jared, and vice versa. The possibility that Willow had contacted Jared because she was attracted to him had been front and center in Rebecca’s mind. Although Rebecca might dislike him, she had to admit he was good-looking and did have a certain charm… others might say.
Because of that, she resisted going to the coffee shop. Although, truthfully, she hadn’t resisted very hard. She hadn’t relished the idea of yet another evening sitting alone in her apartment imagining Richie at Big Caesar’s surrounded by women. She’d seen how captivating many of them found him. And why wouldn’t they? He was charming, funny, and handsome, not to mention, fairly wealthy. With a sigh, she supposed he wasn’t fending them off the way he had when she was in the picture. But, why should he? She’d walked out on him because he’d been unreasonable. Now, he was, obviously, free to be unreasonable with whomever he wanted.
After introductions, Jared began droning on about how he and Willow had been friends for years. Rebecca could feel her patience wearing thin when Jared abruptly switched to the reason they were meeting. Jared faced Willow. “Tell Rebecca the story you told me.”
Willow shifted nervously. “I don’t exactly have proof, but when I heard that Jared had been transferred to the city, and is a detective, I thought it was worth giving him a call.” She paused. “Let me start by saying I’m not proud of what goes on at the place where I work, okay?”
Rebecca was taken aback at those words, but she nodded.
Willow bit her bottom lip. “I needed money. The city is tough to find a job that pays enough to live well. To live at all, in fact. I was a waitress, but those jobs are getting more and more difficult to make a living off of. So when I heard about a company looking for escorts for wealthy men and women, I went after the job and got it. I went out a couple of nights a week and made good money for the first time in my life.”
She stopped, eyeing Rebecca and Jared to make sure they were both listening and interested, then continued. “Over time, I learned more about the business. Too much, I’m afraid. I even became friends with the owners, probably because I refused to date one of them which was, I guess, kind of funny given it's a dating site. But I learned years ago not to mix business and pleasure. It always comes back to bite you in the… butt. Anyway, I think because of that, and because they learned I can keep my mouth shut if I needed to, they threw extra business my way and had me help them out at times.”
She took a deep breath, then continued. “I learned the business has a legitimate dating site, the company’s public face. That’s where the business collects data about the wealth of the customers as well as their success or lack of success on the dating site. Basically, they were looking for likely prospects to move over to their expensive escort services, or their much more costly ‘escorts with benefits’ services.”
Rebecca’s eyebrows rose.
Willow swallowed. “Yeah, looks like you’ve got the picture, all right. Of course, I only work on the legit escort service. I have nothing to do with anything illegal.”
“Of course not,” Jared quickly said. “We understand.”
“I needed the money, as I said, or I would’ve walked out immediately and had nothing at all to do with any of this.”
“That sort of thing does tend to happen with escort services,” Rebecca said as she and Jared caught each other’s eyes. They both knew of escort services that had moved into outright prostitution.
Willow shrugged. “I know. I’m not naïve, believe me. But for a wealthy, lonely man such a service is a lot safer than driving the streets to pick up a hooker. And for the women, the company provided a safe, vetted network of johns.”
“Win-win,” Rebecca murmured, keeping her sarcasm fairly well in check.
“Exactly.”
The three sat quietly for a moment. “So why are we here?” Rebecca asked.
Willow’s hands wrapped around her coffee cup as if needing its warmth. “As much as the escort-plus service made money, the real money came when the johns were interested in cocaine and designer drugs. That’s where our company made out big.”
Rebecca nodded. More par-for-the-course news. There truly was nothing new under the sun.
“Anyway, some five, six months back, I met a super great guy down on his luck,” Willow said. “To make ends meet, he was forced to deal in drugs. He knew a lot of people, and how to move product. When I heard my bosses complaining about a supply issue, I told them I had a solution. I introduced my friend to them.
“They hit it off, I knew they would, and slowly but surely my friend became their supplier.
“All was going well, I thought. But then Frank, my friend, told me about a guy, a client, that the company supplied with opioids, who really creeped him out. The guy was close to the bosses, so he said nothing. But then, a week or so ago, he heard the weirdo was matched with a nice woman. Frank got worried and said it wouldn’t end well. I tried to reach her to prove she was fine, but I couldn’t. And now, I can’t reach Frank! I’m worried about him. That’s why I’m here, to ask you to find him.”
“Do you know the name of the man who scared Frank?” Rebecca asked
“I do. But if I tell you, can you promise you won’t let anyone know that I was your source?”
“If it’s at all possible,” Jared said, “we’ll do our best to leave your name completely out of any investigation that might happen.”
Willow nodded, then licked her lips, and said, “Cato Wilde.”
“Cato Wilde?” Rebecca repeated.
“It’s probably fake,” Willow said. “Most guys use fake names unless they need an escort for a social event where they’re forced to give their real name. I’ve never seen him, but I understand he’s probably in his forties, a big guy—tall-hefty. Fairly good looking until he goes weird.”
“In what way weird?” Rebecca asked.
“Kinky.”
Jared spoke. “Hair color? Eyes? Anything distinctive?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
Rebecca jumped back in with questions. “Did you ask your boss or anyone about him? About his real name or address?”
“No. As I said, he and my boss are friends. I didn’t dare question him.”
“What’s the business’s name?” Rebecca asked.
Willow’s eyes darted from side to side. “I don’t…”
“I need something to go on,” Rebecca urged. “The business? Your boss’s name? Anything?”
“Look,” Willow said, “I probably shouldn’t even be here talking to you. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize my job, okay? All I want is for you to find Frank. I… I really like the guy. It’s not like him to stay away this long.”
Rebecca’s lips pursed as she glanced at Jared with a shake of her head. Jared spoke up. “Did you check the hospitals, Willow? Did you try the police? If he’s dealing, maybe he was arrested.”
“I tried both. Nothing.”
“You need to at least tell us his last name,” Rebecca said.
Willow’s voice was soft as she said, “It’s Parks. Frank Parks.”
“Do you have his address?”
“No, I think he lives with friends or family. We were talking about him moving in with me, in fact. But all I have is his phone number, the number he’s not answering.”
“Give it to me,” Rebecca said. “It might help.”
Richie was in such a bad mood after seeing Rebecca with that buttagazz’ Woolridge, he stopped at a bar in North Beach for a whiskey and water. He was afraid, if he went straight to work in the mood he was in, he’d fire everyone on the spot and give the damned club to Donovan Quan for free.
A lot of old friends from the neighborhood were sitting at Nico’s bar, even though few of them still lived in the area. But, like Richie, they enjoyed keeping in touch with each other and reliving the old days.
Richie soon asked if anyone had seen Frankie Parks lately.
A couple of pisan’ immediately piped up. They told him Frankie had been dealing on the street like any low-level dealer, making twenty bucks here and there. When it added up to enough money to afford a hit for himself, he would take off for a few days, and then go back to the streets and start all over.
That was Frankie’s life until about four or five months ago.
But then, he changed. And it didn’t happen slowly, they both insisted. One day he was the usual, messed up Frankie, and the next time they saw him he’d cleaned himself up. They could scarcely believe the transformation.
“It’s got to be a new woman in his life,” one guy said, as the other nodded. Everyone, even Richie, knew without saying the improvement wasn’t for the sake of his family. His stepmom and his Uncle Matteo had wasted many hours fighting with him over his drug use.
Also, for the first time, he actually had money in his pocket. Not only did he stop asking others for a loan—he had always used the word “loan” even though everyone knew he’d never pay them back—but he would pull out greenbacks and offer to pay for others’ drinks.
Some wondered if he’d robbed a bank, but most assumed he wasn’t bright enough to do such a thing and not get caught.
The one thing that most struck Richie, though, as people talked about Frankie, was that none of them were at all surprised that he had now gone missing.