The Crooked Street

21

When Frost drove toward the headquarters building in Mission Bay, the charcoal BMW showed up on his tail again, as he’d expected. The driver played it smarter this time, leaving several cars between them. Frost had to keep a careful eye on his mirror to see the BMW come and go in traffic. The car was far enough away to disappear if necessary, but close enough to listen in on the bug.

When he reached Mission Bay, Frost didn’t stop. He headed past the police headquarters building and continued south on Third Street. His wary follower stayed a couple of blocks behind him.

Frost tapped a button on the steering wheel and used the voice commands to dial his brother.

“Bro!” Duane answered, and Frost could hear a crowd of voices in the background. “I’m wrapping up the lunch rush. You okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“I asked Tabs to check on you. Did she show up?”

“She did.”

He heard a metallic bang as Duane put down the phone, and his brother’s irritated voice grew muffled in the background. “Raymonde, you call this al dente on the linguine? Are you kidding me? Dump it, start over, hand this crap out to the kids as shoelaces.”

Frost smiled to himself. In the kitchen, Duane was still the Beast. But his smile faded as he thought about his conversation with Tabby.

His brother came back on the line. “Sorry. Usual craziness. What’s up?”

“I have a question. Tabby mentioned an Asian chef named Mr. Jin. Do you know him?”

“Sure. Man’s a genius. First time I had his xiaolongbao, I swear I cried. Why, what’s up?”

“He’s missing, and I’m trying to find him,” Frost explained, and then he shifted into a lie for whoever was listening in the BMW behind him. “I got a text from a guy who claims he’s a sous chef for Mr. Jin and might know where he is. I’m meeting him down at Candlestick Point. I thought maybe you knew some of the chefs on Mr. Jin’s team.”

“Sorry, bro. I don’t.” Duane’s voice became muffled again. “There’s too much ginger beer in the marinade, damn it! You’re not making a fricking Moscow Mule!”

“I’ll let you go,” Frost said.

“Yeah, sorry to rush you off. Glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks,” Frost said, but then he continued before his brother could hang up, “How about you, Duane? Are you okay?”

“Me? Great, never better. Why?”

“It’s just something Tabby said.”

“She told you about our fight, huh? Don’t sweat it. The harder we fight, the hotter it is when we make up. We’re fine.”

Frost knew that wasn’t true, but he didn’t know how to tell his brother. He wanted to say something more, but he didn’t want to say it this way, and he didn’t want to say it with someone listening to every word. “Well, good.”

“I’m glad she talks to you, you know,” Duane went on. “You need somebody to talk to, Frost. Nobody’s ever going to replace Katie, but I like that you and Tabby are already like brother and sister.”

“Yeah,” Frost replied, his voice clipped. “I like that, too. Later, Duane.”

“Later.”

He clicked on the wheel to end the call.

He cleared his head and checked the mirror again. The BMW lagged behind him, but it was still there. The trap was laid, and now it was a question of who walked into it. He turned off Third Street as he approached the waterside trails near the old site of the Candlestick Park stadium. This was an area that had a lot of memories for him. As a teenager in the 1990s, he’d gone to dozens of Giants and 49ers games at Candlestick, huddled under thick blankets against the frigid night winds off the bay. Sometimes it was the whole family. Sometimes it was just him and Katie. She’d always been the rabid sports fan between the two of them, yelling herself hoarse at every game.

Driving past the land where the stadium had been, he could picture Katie with her Giants cap tugged low over her blond hair and mustard on her face as she ate a foot-long hot dog. Duane was right. He missed Katie; he missed having a sister he could talk to.

Duane was also wrong. Frost didn’t see Tabby as a sister at all, and the guilt behind his feelings was eating away at him.

He pulled into a parking area practically across the street from the old stadium site. He was alone for now. He took his sport jacket and slipped it on as he got out. The wind blew in from the water not even a hundred yards away. The sun was high, but the air was cold. He followed a paved trail past flat marshland that was emerald green after a winter of rains. He didn’t look back to see if anyone had shown up behind him. When he reached the water’s edge, he tramped off the trail into the shelter of a thick stand of fir trees, where he was invisible.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Another man appeared on the walkway that led to the bay. Frost peered through the branches at him. He was young, probably not more than twenty-five years old, with tanned Hispanic skin, glasses, and a trimmed businessman’s haircut. He wore a suit, which was unusual in San Francisco, but he also wore athletic shoes that muffled his footsteps. He wasn’t tall or muscled; he was the kind of unmemorable man who would blend in with just about any surroundings. The cords of his earphones wound from his suit pocket to his ears, as if he were listening to music on his phone, but Frost knew he was listening to something else.

Him.

He could see a flash of puzzlement in the man’s eyes as he studied the trail ahead of him. He was wondering where Frost had gone.

In the trees, Frost murmured aloud, “That’s far enough. Stop right there.”

The man was good. He covered his shocked reaction so quickly that Frost would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching carefully. The man stopped dead on the trail. He removed his phone from inside his suit pocket and fiddled with the buttons as if he were simply switching songs on his playlist. But his eyes were moving, and he glanced sharply in every direction around him.

Frost took out his gun and badge and emerged from the trees.

“Looking for me?” he asked.

The man slid his earphones out of his ears. His gaze shifted to the badge and the gun in turn, and he demonstrated just the right amount of surprise and fear. He let the earphone wires hang down his suitcoat and raised both arms in the air with his fingers spread wide. “I’m sorry, Officer, is there a problem?”

Frost pushed through the brush to the paved trail. He kept his gun pointed at the ground. “I know you’ve been following me,” he said. “Let’s not pretend, okay? I found the bug.”

The man acted his part. His eyes widened. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m just here taking a walk.”

“What’s your name?” Frost asked.

“Luis Moreno.”

“What kind of car do you drive, Mr. Moreno?”

“A gray BMW.”

“And where were you coming from?”

“Nowhere, really. I mean, my last job was in South Beach, so I thought I’d come down here and take a hike on my lunch hour.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a city inspector,” Moreno replied. “I can show you identification.”

Frost nodded. “Slowly, please.”

“Oh yeah. Of course.”

Moreno did as he was told. He peeled back the flap of his suit coat and carefully removed his wallet using two fingers. Awkwardly, he flipped it open and held out his driver’s license and city identification for Frost to see. He was telling the truth. Luis Moreno worked in code enforcement for the city’s Department of Building Inspection.

“Hand me the earphones,” Frost told him.

“What?”

“I want to hear what you’re listening to.”

Moreno’s brow wrinkled with confusion, but he held the purple earbuds out to Frost, who held one of them close enough to hear the beat of loud music. He recognized a song by Pitbull, rather than an echo of their own conversation. Moreno had already switched away from the listening device as soon as he knew Frost had spotted him. Frost was sure that the man had also deleted the app on his phone that controlled the electronic surveillance.

These people were professionals.

Professional spies. Professional assassins.

“Are you armed, Mr. Moreno?” Frost asked.

“What, like a gun? No, of course not.”

“Gun, knife, any kind of weapon,” Frost said.

“Well, I carry pepper spray. It’s for self-defense. I deal with a lot of people who aren’t too happy to see me, and I’m often inside abandoned buildings where criminal activity goes on.”

The man had an answer for everything. His cover story was perfect. He was also a liar, but Frost knew he was never going to prove it.

“Let me see your fingernails,” Frost said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Moreno held out his hands, and Frost checked the nails carefully. There were no traces of blood. If Moreno had been the man to kill Coyle, he’d cleaned up well, but Frost didn’t think this was the same man. Even so, there was one way to be certain.

“Untuck your shirt, lift it up. Let me see your stomach.”

“Look, Officer, I’ve been very patient—”

“We can do this here, or we can do it at our central processing facility, Mr. Moreno.”

The man nodded quickly. He yanked the flaps of his dress shirt out of his belt and bunched the fabric so that his midriff was revealed. Frost checked his stomach and sides and saw no bruises. He’d landed a solid blow on the body of the man last night, and there would have been evidence of where the golf club had hit him. Moreno wasn’t the killer.

Frost reached behind his collar and slid the small listening device into his hand. He dropped it on the concrete trail and crushed it under his shoe. Then he waved his hand toward the marshland on the other side of the trees.

“Get the hell out of here, Mr. Moreno. I better not see your car behind me again, okay?”

“Um, sure, yes,” the man replied.

Moreno stuffed part of his shirt into his pants again and backed up awkwardly, just like an innocent man who’d been accosted by the police. But he wasn’t innocent. Frost knew that. When he was a few yards away, Moreno turned and half walked, half ran toward the parking area.

“Hey, Moreno,” Frost called after him.

The man looked over his shoulder. At that distance, Frost could see a glint of the truth in the man’s eyes. The I-know-nothing expression on his face had disappeared, and his mouth had hardened into an arrogant smirk. Moreno knew he’d won.

“I’ve got a message for you,” Frost said.

“What kind of message?”

“I’m coming for Lombard,” Frost told him. “Pass it along.”