The Crooked Street

24

Neon lit up the Embarcadero near the bay at Fisherman’s Wharf. It was late evening and cold. The restaurants and fish shacks were closed, the street performers were long gone, but the sidewalk was still crowded with tourists. Frost walked quickly beside the water, which glowed with hazy reflections. He was surrounded by silhouettes and drunken laughter. He passed between the bright lights of the Franciscan restaurant and the Boudin bakery and headed toward the deserted warehouse buildings of Pier 45. No one followed him.

At the pier, seagulls huddled near the concrete walls, and the pavement was dotted with dried guano. A salty, fishy smell blew in with the wind. The alley between the warehouses was empty. He didn’t see Trent Gorham among the loading docks, and he glanced at his watch. It was exactly ten o’clock.

Frost waited for the other detective by a wooden railing that bordered the inner harbor. The sand-colored warehouse buildings were behind him. Beyond the wharf, high-rises climbed the city hills like dominoes. He leaned on the railing and watched the spars of the fishing boats sway in their slips. This was where he and Denny had berthed the Jumping Frog. They’d lived on the boat, eating, drinking, and playing poker until the early hours. Sometimes they’d been alone; sometimes tourist girls had joined them for the night. He could remember the sweet taste of Dungeness crab claws fresh out of the pot, dripping butter and garlic. They’d played their music loud. They’d slept in their clothes. For a few months, he’d never been happier in his life.

He recognized their old boat in the harbor. It was still there, still in the same berth, years after Denny had sold it. The new owners had fixed it up with fresh paint and rechristened it. The Jumping Frog was now Daze Gone By, which seemed appropriate. The boat was dark; no one was sleeping on it now.

When he checked his watch again, he saw that it was ten fifteen. Gorham was late. He wondered if the other detective was coming at all, and the worry crept into his mind that the meeting might be a trap. He thought about leaving, but then his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

It was from Gorham.

Frost continued along the harbor past the warehouse building. Where the road ended, a narrow driveway led between the warehouse wall and the green waters of the inlet that led out to the bay. He saw Gorham standing twenty feet away. The other cop wore a tan windbreaker zipped to his neck and black khakis. The yellow lights made his blond hair look snow white.

As Frost came closer, Gorham took one hand out of his jacket pocket and pointed a gun at Frost’s chest.

Frost stopped dead and raised his hands slowly. He’d been certain all along that Gorham was hiding things from him, but he hadn’t expected this. “Are you going to shoot me, Trent? Is that the plan?”

“I’m just being cautious. Take your gun out of your holster and put it on the ground.”

“Okay.”

“No sudden moves, Easton.”

“Whatever you say.”

Frost used one hand to open the flap of his jacket, and he carefully withdrew his gun with two fingers. He bent his knees, not taking his eyes off Gorham, and put the gun on the ground.

“Back up,” the other detective instructed.

Frost did. Gorham walked closer until he was standing beside Frost’s gun. He hadn’t lowered his own weapon yet; it was still pointed at Frost’s heart at a range from which the other cop couldn’t miss. Gorham’s long arm was stretched straight out and as solid as an arrow.

“Identification,” Gorham barked.

“What?”

“Identification,” Gorham repeated sharply.

“What the hell are you talking about, Trent?”

Gorham’s pale eyes narrowed. His finger was bent around the trigger. Frost felt sweat gathering on his neck, and his heartbeat accelerated. The silence between them stretched out, long and dangerous. Then Gorham’s head tilted slightly back, and the cop’s face softened. His elbow dipped, and he secured his gun and slipped it inside his jacket again. He squatted and retrieved Frost’s gun and passed it to him by the handle.

“Sorry,” Gorham told him, “but I’ve learned the hard way not to trust anyone.”

“I don’t trust people, either,” Frost replied, “especially not cops who pull their weapons on me.”

“I’ll explain, but I needed to make sure you weren’t playing me. I’ve been watching you for twenty minutes. If you had someone with you or if you’d been followed, I would have spotted it. But I still didn’t know if you were one of Lombard’s operatives. They all have special ID codes to identify themselves. I had to find out if you were clean.”

“And I passed the test?” Frost asked.

“So far. I hope I’m right about you, because I’m betting my life on it.”

The two men wandered to the edge of the water. There was no railing here. Debris floated below them.

“You’re pretty paranoid over a myth,” Frost said.

“Lombard’s not a myth. He’s as real and as lethal as it gets.”

“He? Lombard is one person?”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Gorham said. He turned to face Frost. “I’ve never met anyone who has actually seen him or knows who he is. His network is blind. No one knows who’s in and who’s not. There’s a central admin who manages them by phone, but she’s as anonymous as Lombard is.”

“How do you know all this?” Frost asked.

“I stumbled onto one person who was part of the network, and she told me how it worked. She said every operative has a unique identification code based on the names of San Francisco streets. This woman’s ID was Folsom. They also use a numeric password and a separate code to indicate whether they’re safe or under pressure when they make a report.”

“What happened to this woman?”

“I tried to use her as a mole to penetrate the network. Lombard found out and killed her.”

“So if I’d said a street name like Market or Stockton when you asked for my identification?”

“You’d be dead down there in the bay right now,” Gorham replied.

Frost stared into the water. “You better tell me what this is all about. How did it start? How did you get involved?”

“You know how,” Gorham said. “Coyle.”

“He told you about the snakes after Alan Detlowe was murdered?”

“That’s right. Alan’s wife, Marjorie, told me about hiring Coyle, and I wanted to see his surveillance notes. That was when he sprang the snake thing on me. I didn’t believe him at first, but when I looked into it, I felt like you did. It was too strange to be just a coincidence. Not that I was going to tell him that. Coyle was a loose cannon, and the safest thing was for him to chase his crackpot theories by himself. But I began looking into the backgrounds of the victims to see if I could figure out why they were targeted.”

“Did you find anything about Detlowe?” Frost asked.

“No, I never figured out why Alan was killed. He was a cop. Too many people had beefs with him.”

“What about Fawn? Did you talk to her?”

“Sure I did. She said her conversation with Alan was routine. He was trolling for contacts in the escort world, who the big players were, how the technology works. She didn’t say anything about him looking into the death of her friend Naomi.”

“So how did you find out about Lombard?” Frost asked.

“I got lucky. I was digging into the murder of a plumber in Mission Terrace. It was a stabbing death, looked like a home invasion, but there was a snake painted nearby. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want this guy dead. I was actually starting to think Coyle might be right about a serial killer picking victims at random. Then I found out the guy had been on a jury in a political corruption trial a few months earlier. Remember the guy on the city council accused of taking bribes? The jury hung, and the councilman walked. That was the only thing in this guy’s life that didn’t revolve around toilets and leaky faucets, so I decided to talk to one of the staff attorneys in the prosecutor’s office. I didn’t really suspect anything. I just wanted to see if this plumber could have been influenced.”

“What did you find?”

“Like I said, I got lucky. The staff attorney cracked like an egg. I talked to her at home, and she thought I was there to kill her. She asked if Lombard had sent me, and she was crying and said she’d done everything they’d asked. By the time she realized she’d screwed up, she’d already dug a hole for herself. I got her to spill everything she knew.”

Frost waited. Gorham checked the pier again to make sure they were still alone.

“She was an operative. She’d been recruited by someone she called Lombard to provide information from the prosecutor’s office on certain cases. Strategies, witnesses, juror personal data. It had been going on for two years. She claimed she had no choice but to do what he asked. Lombard had leverage over her.”

“What kind of leverage?” Frost asked.

“Her son. He’d been the driver in a hit-and-run a couple of years earlier and never went to the cops to confess. Somehow, Lombard knew about it. If she didn’t cooperate, her son was headed to prison for a long time.”

“This sounds like the way the mafia operates,” Frost said. “Or the Russians.”

“That was my thought, too, but if it’s organized crime, it’s not any of the usual suspects. This lawyer only knew the name Lombard. She didn’t think it was a group; she said it seemed to be one person who made all the decisions. All she knew was her protocol. Burner phones, coded identifications, reports and instructions. I could have brought her in, but I decided to use her as a double agent to see if she could unearth more details about Lombard. Instead, a week later, she washed up out of the bay in San Mateo.”

“How did Lombard know she’d been turned?” Frost asked.

“That’s the problem. I only told one person what I was doing.”

“Who?”

“Captain Hayden. I told him I was looking at a staff attorney in the prosecutor’s office who might be able to lead us to a crime ring involving corruption and murder.”

“You think Hayden’s connected to Lombard?” Frost asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. If he’s not, then he passed along the information to someone who is. Nobody else knew. From that point forward, I didn’t trust anybody, and I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. My investigation was completely off the books. I figured if Lombard saw me as a threat, I’d be the next one with a snake painted on the wall. So publicly, I treated the whole thing as a dead-end conspiracy.”

“And what have you found out behind the scenes?” Frost asked.

“Not much. That’s the frustrating thing. I can’t find anybody in the network to lead the way in and help me find out who Lombard really is and what he’s doing. The only thing that makes sense to me is that Lombard is some kind of fixer. In one way or another, all of the victims have been problems for prominent people in the city. Lombard solved them. Mostly with murder.”

Frost frowned. “What about Denny Clark? How does he fit in?”

“You said it yourself. Something happened on his boat on Tuesday night. Denny became a problem to be solved. So did the others who were there. Lombard has been tying up the loose ends ever since.”

Frost studied Gorham’s face in the evening lights. “That’s not what I mean, Trent. You called Denny. Why? That wasn’t a follow-up on a drug homicide. You were looking for something else.”

Gorham walked into the middle of the alley and shoved his hands in his pockets. Frost called to the man’s back. “If you expect me to trust you, then you need to tell me what’s really going on.”

“All right,” Gorham replied impatiently. “All right, yeah, I called Denny. I asked him to be on the lookout for Lombard. I wanted him to call me if he heard anyone using Lombard’s name. I knew Denny’s business. I knew a lot of movers and shakers in the city used his boat. I wanted him to work as my spy. I gave him a burner phone so we could communicate securely. And yeah, I put pressure on him. He was vulnerable on drug charges, and he knew I could get him busted whenever I wanted. I didn’t give him a choice.”

“Is that all? What happened next?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did Denny reach out to you after the cruise on Tuesday? He knew people were after him. He went to find Mr. Jin, and he called Chester Bagley. I’m sure he knew Carla was dead, too. Are you saying he never talked to you about any of this?”

Gorham turned around. “Okay, you’re right. He called me.”

“When?”

“Friday evening. He was in Chinatown. He was terrified. He said they were killing everyone.”

Frost shook his head. “Why keep that back? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I already told you that I didn’t trust anyone. That includes you. And what the hell difference does it make? I was too late.”

“You weren’t too late on Friday. Denny called you and needed help. He was still alive.”

“I know, and I offered to come get him and protect him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He thought I was part of it, that they were tracking him through the phone I’d given him.”

Frost stared at him. “Were they?”

“Of course not. I’m not a spy, Frost. I want to catch this guy even more than you do, believe me.”

“Did Denny tell you why they wanted him dead? Did he tell you about the cruise?”

“No, he hung up without giving me any details.”

“Denny knew about Lombard. That was his last word.”

“That’s because I told him about Lombard,” Gorham said. “He must have guessed that there was a connection when people started going missing. Or maybe he heard someone talking about it on the boat. I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“So you don’t know what happened on Tuesday night?”

“The only thing I know for sure is that Lombard is active,” Gorham retorted. “We’re closer to him than we ever have been before. Denny’s murder can lead us straight to Lombard. You and I need to work together to find him and stop him.”

Frost’s phone rang before he could reply. It was as if he were still being watched, as if Lombard somehow knew everything he was doing and everyone he talked to. He checked the caller ID.

“Who is it?” Gorham asked with suspicion in his voice.

“Cyril Timko,” Frost told him.

“Did you tell him we were meeting?”

“No. Nobody knows.” Frost answered the phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear the call. “Cyril, it’s Frost Easton. What’s up?”

The raspy voice of the captain’s aide crackled through the phone. “I need you in Dolores Heights right away. We’ve got a dead drug dealer up here. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who killed Denny Clark.”