The Crooked Street

13

Two hours after his meeting with Belinda Drake, Frost was back in his Suburban on his way to meet Herb in Golden Gate Park. That was when he noticed a charcoal-gray BMW on his tail. The car’s windows were smoked, so he couldn’t see the driver inside. He spotted it pulling away from the curb when he turned off Green Street onto Leavenworth, as if it had been waiting for him.

At first, he felt as paranoid as Coyle. The BMW stayed with him for several blocks, but that didn’t mean anything in the San Francisco traffic. Then he turned on Clay, and the BMW turned, too. When he turned again on Franklin, the car followed. They drove in tandem, but at the next stoplight, Frost timed his progress through the intersection to make sure the BMW had to stop behind him. He made several zigzag turns beyond the light to lose the other car in the maze of streets. By the time he headed south past Lafayette Park, he was sure he was alone.

That lasted two blocks.

Then the BMW appeared on his tail again. The driver behind the smoked windows wasn’t following him by sight; he already knew where Frost was.

Frost didn’t bother trying to lose the other car again. Instead, he headed south to Geary and turned right. He drove until he spotted a gas station on the street, where he pulled in and topped off his tank. The BMW disappeared, but Frost knew it wouldn’t be gone for long. At the pump, he purchased a drive-through car wash with an undercarriage spray, and he took the SUV through the wash, letting the jets of water hammer every inch of the chassis. If there was a GPS tracker hidden underneath the vehicle, he hoped it had been thoroughly drowned. Leaving the car wash, he made another series of quick turns with an eye on his rearview mirror.

This time, the BMW didn’t reappear.

With a tight smile, Frost returned to his original route and headed for Golden Gate Park.

He grabbed the first parking spot he found, even though it was a long walk to the de Young Museum. A few clouds dotted the blue sky, but the temperature was mild. He wandered through the Shakespeare Garden, where an early spring wedding was in progress, and then made his way into the large open garden between the de Young and the science academy. It was thick with people. He didn’t see Herb, but he spotted a crowd gathered near the central fountain and pushed his way to the center. Herb was there, painting on his knees as the tourists watched.

Frost stood over him, staying out of his light. Herb worked with quick, nimble brushstrokes. He was doing a reproduction of a famous painting called Boatmen on the Missouri that was housed in the de Young’s permanent collection. One of the boatmen steered, and two others took a break, as if watching a steamboat roll by on the lazy river. They were fashionably dressed, one in a black top hat, one in a red kerchief, and they had a small tuxedo cat sprawled across a stack of firewood between them. In Herb’s three-dimensional rendering, the nineteenth-century travelers on the raft seemed to rise out of the flat pavement and stare curiously at the people around them. It reminded him of what Herb said about perspective: you can trick your eyes into believing almost anything.

Herb glanced up from behind the magnifiers on his black glasses and spotted Frost. He rocked back on his knees and swigged coffee from his thermos. Frost squatted beside him. They talked under their breath.

“I was followed coming over here,” Frost told him. “You might want to keep an eye out yourself. If they’re interested in me, they might decide to take an interest in you, too.”

“Too late,” Herb replied.

“Someone followed you?”

“Yes, a red pickup was waiting outside the gallery. It stayed behind me all the way over here. I don’t know who was driving, but I imagine he’s watching us right now.”

Frost took a casual glance at the crowd, but there were too many faces to pick out any one of them as a spy.

“Exactly what have you gotten yourself into, Frost?” Herb went on.

“I wish I knew. Did you find out anything?”

“Let’s not talk here,” Herb replied. “I’ll meet you inside the museum in half an hour.”

Frost nodded. He stood up again and studied the three-dimensional painting taking shape on the concrete. “You know, I don’t remember a cat hanging out with the boatmen in the original.”

A little smirk played across Herb’s face as he picked up his brush. “You just never know where Shack will turn up, do you?”

Frost chuckled and headed in the direction of the de Young. He stopped periodically to glance behind him but couldn’t spot a tail among the crowd. He made his way inside the cool, quiet interior of the museum. Herb had helped him become an art lover over the years, and Frost had begun to think of some of the paintings as old friends.

He was standing in front of Albert Bierstadt’s California Spring when Herb eventually found him. Nearly an hour had passed in between. When Frost glanced at the doorway to the exhibit, he saw that a velvet rope had been placed across the entrance to the hall to give them privacy. Herb’s reputation as an artist won him special treatment at most of the city museums.

“Did you talk to Belinda Drake?” Herb asked. He wore overalls and sandals, and his long face was drawn with worry.

“I did,” Frost replied.

“Did she have any helpful information?”

“Information? No. But Drake is scared of something, and she doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who’s easily scared.”

“Interesting. I’ve been having a similar experience with my network.”

“How so?”

“I put out the word on the street,” Herb said. “I asked about snakes and Lombard, but people are very reluctant to talk. The name Lombard seems to freeze them into silence. I’ve never encountered anything like it. There’s a palpable fear out there, as if saying the name is enough to put you at risk.”

“Do you have any idea who or what Lombard represents?” Frost asked.

“Well, if people know, they won’t say a word about it.”

“Coyle thinks it’s a serial killer.”

“Is that what this feels like to you?” Herb asked.

Frost shook his head. “No. This is something else.”

“I agree. And something very strange is happening, too.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy, but I have the feeling that my network is somehow being used against me. Like someone else is infiltrating it like a virus. I put out my queries and got nothing back, which is unusual in itself. Then in the aftermath, other stories started rippling through the network. I wasn’t copied on the messages, but a few people told me about them.”

“What did they say?”

“They were rumors. About me. It started last night, and by this morning, everyone seemed to be sharing the gossip. I’ve been getting calls and texts from people saying I should be careful, that stories from my past are being dredged up and spread around the city. The word is that I’m not the man people think I am. That my image is a lie.”

“I can’t imagine anyone believing that,” Frost said. “What are they saying about you?”

“Someone is going back a long way to dig up dirt. The stories go back to the 1960s and 1970s. I’m hearing about violent outbursts during my heavier drug episodes as a young man. Fights. Even sexual abuse.”

Frost laughed at the thought of it. “You? That’s ridiculous.”

Herb frowned. “I’d like to say none of it is true, but the fact is, I was a different man in those days.”

“Different? Fine. Violent? I don’t believe that for a second.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but I had a short fuse in my youth. I was angry all the time. Back then, many of us were angry about what was happening in the country, and I wasn’t always able to bottle up that anger when it came to my personal life. It’s also true that my drug use back then was extreme. There are parts of my memory that are gone. I have certain stretches of my life where I can’t even tell you what I did.”

“Herb, I know you,” Frost insisted.

“You know me now, Frost. You know me after I had a spiritual awakening. I’ve lived a new life since those days, but that doesn’t change or excuse my past. I’d like to deny all of these rumors, but I don’t think I can. I’m sure some of the things that are being said about me are true, even if I don’t remember them.”

Frost turned his head to stare at his friend. He had the sense that Herb was holding back. “Is there something specific you’re thinking about?”

Herb’s eyes were lost in the green fields of the Bierstadt painting. “Possibly. We’ll see. Rumors like this don’t feel random. They feel as if they’re leading up to something. If they are, then I suspect I know what it is.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Later. Not now. Perhaps I’m being paranoid.”

“But why do you think this is coming out now?” Frost asked.

“I think we both know why.”

“Lombard,” Frost said.

“That’s my fear. Whatever or whoever Lombard is, I’m on their radar now.”

Frost shook his head. “Then drop it. Stop asking questions. This is my problem, not yours. I don’t want to put you at risk.”

“It’s too late for that,” Herb replied. “As far as these people are concerned, we’re joined at the hip. Besides, if we have an invisible enemy, I’d like to know who it is that we’re fighting. I’ve tried my street network and had no luck, so it’s time to see what happens on the other end of the scale. There are a lot of people around the city council who still owe me favors. I’ll see what they can tell me about Lombard.”

“Well, watch your back. Belinda Drake said I shouldn’t trust anyone.”

Herb made sure they had the museum hall to themselves. “That sounds like good advice. You said some of your colleagues in the police department may already know what’s going on. Do you still believe that?”

“I do,” Frost said.

“Then listen to your gut,” Herb replied. “I talked to a homeless man who haunts the Mission Bay neighborhood. He sees most of what comes and goes around there, including the cops.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He wouldn’t share anything on the network. He would only talk in person, and even then, he refused to give me any details about Lombard. He simply wanted to alert me to the rumors that were going around about my past. But he told me something else, too, and he was most emphatic about it.”

Frost frowned. “What did he say?”

“He said whatever I do, I shouldn’t say a word about any of this to the police. Apparently, Lombard has spies at Mission Bay.”