Angie sat at a table in The Wings Of An Angel, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to pull herself together after the horrible night she’d had. Paavo had left for work before she woke up, so she took a cab back to her apartment. But thoughts of Stan plagued her, and she decided to go out for an hour or two.
She vaguely recalled Paavo’s question at the hospital about roses, but everything had been in such a muddle she wasn’t sure. Still, even today, she didn’t remember Stan mentioning roses. He had said something about a strange deliveryman, though, hadn’t he? What was it? When was it?
A customer walked in—the man with the lopsided glasses and the puppy-dog eyes she’d met a couple of days earlier. Earl showed him to a nearby table.
“You’re crying.” Puppy-dog eyes stopped as he passed her, his voice soft. “Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you? Some water, perhaps?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
Earl pulled out a chair and waited impatiently until the customer sat. But he immediately turned in his chair and faced her again. “Would you like to talk about it?”
She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and shook her head.
“I’m sorry.” He folded his hands. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You didn’t really,” she said. “A friend of mine was…was hurt last night. He’s in the hospital.”
“How terrible! I’m so sorry. Will he be all right?”
“The doctors say so.”
“Was it an accident?”
She sat up straight in the chair. The man was probably simply trying to be nice, but there was something about him she didn’t care for. “No. He was attacked by someone. Some monster of a human being.”
His eyes showed surprise. “Maybe it was a mistake.”
“I don’t care what it was. Whoever did it was evil, horrible!”
He reached for his water glass.
“Miss Angie.” Earl stepped up to her with some coffee and a piece of pound cake. “Me an’ Butch was hopin’ dis might make you feel a little better. I tol’ him how your friend was hurt an’ dat you went up to da church dis mornin’. He said you was a good woman.”
“I don’t know about that, but thank you both. You’re very thoughtful.”
“You must be a regular here,” the customer said, interrupting again. “Miss…Angie, is it?”
Earl stepped between the two tables. “Miss Angie don’t wanna be distoibed. Is dere somet’in’ you wanna eat or not?”
“Uh, yes. I do.”
Earl handed him a menu. “I’d recommend da spaghetti an’ meatballs.”
He handed the menu back. “Fine.”
Once Earl was back in the kitchen, the customer smiled at her. “My name’s Carter, by the way.”
She nodded and went back to reading the newspaper she’d brought in with her. The North Beach Shopper was new, a local advertiser that was given away door to door and left on sidewalk racks. She’d had a food column in an advertiser once. Didn’t work out too well, though.
“I see you reading a neighborhood paper. I live near here myself,” Carter added. “It’s sure nice to have an inexpensive restaurant nearby.”
“Yes, it is.” She tasted the pound cake. As she suspected—straight from a grocery store shelf to her plate. Well, at least Butch and Earl had tried. She’d come here for nothing more than to spend a moment pulling herself together before calling Paavo and telling him that she was doing fine and was going back to her apartment. The attack on Stan had affected her deeply, but she understood that Paavo needed to concentrate on his cases and couldn’t do it if he felt he’d have to hurry home to play nursemaid to her. The attack wasn’t on her, after all. She had to get over the shock of Stan’s being attacked. It was just that there were people in this world you never expect anything bad to happen to. Stan was one of them.
“Do you live nearby, Angie?” Carter interrupted again. “You seem to come here a lot.”
“Not far.”
“Maybe we’re neighbors?” He gave her another of his puppy-dog smiles, yet his eyes had a hardness to them, a knowing glint at odds with the affable slackness of his mouth and jowls.
Something about the shape of his lips, the tone of his voice as he said her name was disarmingly familiar. Why? Where could she have met him previously?
They’d talked here once before. That must be what she was remembering. She tried to shake off the uneasiness she felt.
“I know all my neighbors,” she said, making it clear the subject was closed.
“Oh, but—” He glanced past her, then turned around, suddenly finding the need to study his cutlery.
Peering over her shoulder, she followed his gaze to see Earl frowning fiercely at Carter. Earl walked over to her. “Miss Angie, I t’ink Butch could use a little help”—he cocked his head toward Carter—“if you’d like to come back into da kitchen.”
“I’d love to.”
“Just in time,” Butch said as she entered. He stood over a large kettle with a wooden spoon. “I’m tryin’ some polenta like you suggested.”
Angie looked at the huge pot of golden polenta. He’d made enough to feed half of Italy. “Good. We’ll use just a small batch of it to start. Did you roast any peppers?”
“They’re in the oven right now.”
Angie opened the oven door and found six large Fresno chilies. They’d softened nicely. She took them out and easily peeled off the hard, outer skin.
“You don’t hafta let dat guy bug you none,” Earl said, dishing out some spaghetti and meatballs.
“I don’t want to be rude to your customers, Oil.”
“What oil?” Butch asked.
“Him.” Angie pointed.
“Earl?” Butch asked.
“Earl?” Angie repeated.
“Yeah, Oil. You was pronouncin’ it jus’ right, Miss Angie,” Earl said.
She nodded. “Ah. I see. Anyway, I can handle that guy Carter.”
“He’s a bad egg, Miss Angie.” Earl stated. “You keep away from him when I ain’t around to look after you, okay?”
Butch hurled himself at the back door. “’Ey, Vinnie, get up here quick,” he yelled. “You gotta come hear this!”
“Who’s Vinnie?” Angie asked, stirring the polenta. “And why is he in the basement?”
“Yeah, Butch,” Earl said. “You’re so smart, tell da lady what’s he doin’ in da basement.”
“It, uh”—Butch looked at the door to the basement then back at Angie—“it ain’t a basement. It’s an apartment. We stay down there to save money on rent.”
“Oh? How clever. Restaurants are expensive to start up, that’s for sure.”
“What’s all the yellin’?” Vinnie stepped into the kitchen.
“This is the Fed we was tellin’ you about,” Butch said. “Angelina Amalfi, meet Vinnie Freiman.”
Vinnie frowned as they shook hands. “You called me to meet a Fed? Thanks, Butch. Just what I always wanted to do.”
“Yeah, well, wait ’til you hear Earl. He’s protectin’ her from the other customers.”
“Yeah?” Vinnie looked from Earl to Angie. “But if she’s a Fed, maybe the other customers need protection from her?”
“I just don’t like da looksa dat guy,” Earl protested.
Angie mixed the pepper and polenta in a bowl. “You think he’s some kind of crook?”
“Takes one to know one,” Butch muttered, whereupon Vinnie stomped on his foot. Butch yelped.
Earl poured a glass of red wine and put it on the tray he was preparing.
“So,” Vinnie said to Angie, “you teachin’ Butch here how to cook?”
“I know how!” Butch grumbled.
“He’s not bad,” Angie said. She put some of her polenta and pepper on a plate, heaped grated Romano cheese on top, then spooned some of Butch’s special spaghetti sauce over it and handed the plate to Vinnie. “Try it.”
He took a spoonful. “Hey, this is good.”
“What a screwball! Didn’t I tell you dat guy’s no good?” Earl came back into the kitchen, the tray still full of food. “Here I do all dis woik an’ he takes off wit’out eatin’. He shoulda tol’ me he was tireda waitin’.”
Paavo walked into Homicide and tossed his notebook on his desk. Frustration was evident in every step he took.
“I guess it didn’t go so well,” Yosh said.
“No. St. Clair couldn’t pick out anyone in the mug shots who resembled the guy he’d seen outside his place. We doubted he could. Sometimes I don’t like being right.”
“I’m not having any luck either,” Yosh said. “The car registration was filled out a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco. We tried to lift prints off the form, but it’s been through too many hands. A handwriting analyst is looking over the writing, for whatever that’s supposed to be worth.”
“It’ll give the chief something to say at the next briefing—police bring in handwriting expert to help solve vicious murders. Why does the public think some quack can do it better than us?”
“Because superstition is easier than hard work.”
“Good point.”
Paavo picked up the drawing the police artist had done based on St. Clair’s description. There were no distinctive features shown—only a baseball cap shading the eyes, aviator sunglasses to cover the cheekbones, a straight nose, full lips, and a heavy jaw. The guy was apparently around six feet, muscular arms and shoulders, but slim waist and hips. Sounded like someone who worked out.
He could stop by a few gyms, Nautilus, whatever, and pass around the artist’s sketch. A long shot, but maybe worth a try. There were a lot of those places, though. And would someone with such a clunker of a car have money for expensive gyms?
He could concentrate on inexpensive ones. Start with the Y, maybe? Where else? Heck, the cheapest places he knew of with workout equipment were prisons.
Prisons. An ex-con? Hanging around a judge? Possible. Very possible, in fact.
What if Angie was right about the DA? Fletcher and Tiffany’s boss, Supervisor Wainwright, were friends—Paavo saw them at the Court House together. And Tiffany got the job through “connections.” A judge and a DA. Interesting. Could there have been some trial, some case, they were both involved in?
But it wasn’t the DA or the judge who were killed. It was their women. Was that the connection? Or, was it a coincidence?
Damn. Much as he hated to think it, he had to believe that a criminal case, a trial, was the connection. He didn’t have anything else to go on. And he never did like coincidence.
He tried reaching Angie again. She wasn’t at her place or his. Where could she have gone—and would she tell him this time where she’d gone, or would she give him more of her mysterious nonanswers?
He tried the hospital. Stan hadn’t awakened yet.
Paavo put down the phone in frustration. It was going to be another one of those days.
Myron Liu had worked in the computer center at the Hall of Justice for nineteen years, starting as a clerk and working his way up to the prime programmer in the department. He should have been made supervisor last month. Instead, he was passed over, again. This time for a woman brought in from San Francisco State University who didn’t even know the police administration’s computer system. He was sick and tired of it.
He watched Homicide Inspector Smith walk into their shop. He rose from his desk to help, when Ms. Smart-stuff stood up and gave him a look that told him to sit the hell back down and get to work.
He’d been helping Homicide for fifteen years. No one was better at filling their requests than him. Now, she was going to cut him out of this part of his job as well. What was up? Did they want to fire him?
He kept his head down as Smart-stuff came up to him a couple of minutes later.
“Here’s a request from Homicide that I want you to get right on.” She slapped a form on his desk. “I want a computer printout of every case that Judge Lucas St. Clair and attorney Lloyd Fletcher were involved in together.”
“When Lloyd Fletcher was DA or even before that?” Liu asked.
“I said all of them, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “You want complete SF records?”
“I want it as complete as you can make it!”
He lowered his gaze once more. “Really? As complete as that?”
“You do understand English, don’t you?”
His cheeks burned. “I’ll start the search immediately.”
“Good.”
Clenching his teeth to stop himself from telling his boss exactly what he thought of her, he began the development of a search program that accessed court databases throughout California, from tiny Yolo County, to the city and county of Los Angeles.
He looked over what he’d done. On second thought, she’d said she wanted it as complete as he could make it. He changed “California” to “US.” Yes, Ms. Smart-stuff, he thought, I do understand English. I can make this search very complete indeed. He just hoped Inspector Smith wasn’t in too much of a hurry.