The Crooked Street

26

“They’re closing the case right out from under me,” Frost told Herb the next morning.

They sat at an outdoor table at a café on Cole Street. Herb nursed a large mug of chai tea that wafted cardamom into the chilly air. Frost had black coffee and a plate of eggs. It was barely past dawn, and the neighborhood around them was slow to wake up. Victorian homes made a side-by-side checkerboard down the street. Near the intersection at Haight, the walls of the shop buildings were painted with murals of rainbows and a guitar-playing Jerry Garcia.

“Captain Hayden thinks Denny’s murder is connected to drugs,” Frost went on, “and right on schedule, a dead drug dealer drops into our laps. As far as headquarters is concerned, it’s time for me to let it go.”

Herb didn’t say anything in response. His attention was focused on a two-story Victorian home almost directly across from the café. A black wrought-iron gate blocked the front steps. The lights behind the curtains were on, and children’s paintings were taped to the bay window. Herb’s mouth was pinched into a frown. He played with the beads that were strung into his long strands of gray hair.

“Herb?” Frost said. “Everything okay?”

His friend awakened as if from a trance. Herb adjusted his black glasses on his face. “Yes, yes, sorry. I’m somewhere else today. I understand your frustration, Frost, but isn’t it possible that Mr. Clark’s death is exactly what it appears to be? The result of his unfortunate dealings with a violent cocaine dealer?”

“You mean, instead of a cover-up contrived by a mysterious criminal mastermind with a network of operatives around the city?” Frost asked with a little smile. “I know, I sound as crazy as Coyle.”

“Well, Occam’s razor and all. The obvious answer is usually the right one.”

Frost shrugged. “Do you think I’m nuts? Should I forget about it?”

“Even if I thought you were wrong, Frost, you’ve earned the benefit of the doubt from me many times over. Besides, in this case, I think you’re correct. Lombard certainly seems to be real.”

“Unfortunately, I have no way to prove it,” Frost said. “Technically, I have nothing left to investigate with regard to Denny’s murder. I could keep trying to find witnesses who are probably dead, but even if I find their bodies, Romeo Laredo has already pinned the blame on Diego Casal. I could try to break Romeo’s story about the cruise, but that means interrogating Casal’s associates, most of whom are drug dealers themselves. Their word isn’t going to carry much weight if they tell me Casal wasn’t on that boat.”

“What about Inspector Gorham?”

“He has no proof about Lombard, either. His only contact was a dirty lawyer in the prosecutor’s office, and she’s dead. For all I know, she was being played by a defense attorney who knew about the Lombard myth and decided to use it as cover for a jury-tampering scheme.”

Herb stretched out his legs and his knees popped, making him grimace. His eyes drifted across the street again to the same Victorian home. He took another taste of chai and licked his lips.

“I remember the original Lombard story,” Herb said. “Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it, but after we talked last time, I recalled the exposé that hit the Chronicle. It must have been thirty years ago. It was the kind of story that made people run wild with conspiracies. Murder, corruption, political influence, all guided by an unseen hand. An invisible syndicate shaping the future of the city. Then the chief had to stand up and say, no, it was really just an inside joke that got out of control. The city council wasn’t amused. The chief took early retirement and said it was for health reasons, but in truth, it was the Lombard myth that brought him down.”

“Speaking of the city council, you said you were going to approach some of your contacts at city hall. Did you?”

Herb nodded. “I did, but I’m not sure what I found will help you. Most of the younger people in the building said they know nothing about it, and the original Lombard story was long before their time.”

“But?”

“But I did talk to one old codger like me. He goes back to my time, and he remembered the story. He’s been a true believer all these years. He described Lombard the way Inspector Gorham did, as a problem solver for the rich and powerful. As far as this man is concerned, it’s not clear whether the people who run the city are using Lombard to stay in power — or whether Lombard is using them for his own ends.”

“Do you trust this man?” Frost asked.

Herb’s eyes twinkled behind his black glasses. “Well, I recall an impassioned conversation with him in the 1970s about the authenticity of the moon landings. He was dubious.”

Frost shook his head. “Great.”

Herb chuckled as he finished his chai. “So what’s your next step?”

“I need to find out more about Alan Detlowe’s murder,” Frost said. “Even after three years, there’s something about that case that seems to make Lombard nervous. As soon as I found out that Fawn had met with Detlowe, they came after us and made sure Coyle’s surveillance notes disappeared. Plus, Fawn was in contact with Denny, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. There’s some kind of link between these cases.”

“If you don’t have Coyle’s notes, how do you proceed?” Herb asked.

“I’m going to talk to Detlowe’s wife. She hired Coyle, so maybe she has copies of what he found.”

Herb began to reply, but then he stopped in midsentence. Across the street, there was activity in the Victorian house he’d been watching. A woman came through the door with a young boy in tow, and she unlocked the gate at the bottom of the steps and headed for a blue Volkswagen parked up the street. Herb’s eyes followed mother and son until they got in the car and did a U-turn. Even after they were gone, Herb sat in silence, lost in another world, as if Frost weren’t there at all.

“Friends of yours?” Frost asked.

“What?” Herb looked startled by the question.

“You seemed very interested in that woman and her son.”

“Oh no, no,” Herb went on. “I don’t know who they are at all.”

“Well, you’ve hardly taken your eyes off their house since we got here,” Frost said.

Herb studied the house again. It was nothing special, just one of thousands of Victorian row homes dotting the city. Pea-green paint, beige trim, white columns on either side of the steps. And yet every time Herb looked at the house, something about it seemed to draw him into a tunnel where the opposite end was far away.

“Once upon a time, I lived there,” Herb murmured. “The upstairs apartment was mine.”

“When was this?” Frost asked.

“From 1967 to 1969.”

“That was your Summer of Love pad? Right there?”

Herb nodded. “Yes.”

“How come I didn’t know that?”

“Oh, I don’t remember a lot of that time,” Herb replied, “and much of what I do remember, I’d like to forget.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Frost had heard many stories over the years of Herb’s youth in the drug-crazed, free-love world of San Francisco in the 1960s. Herb had known everyone back then. The rockers. The politicians. The protesters. However, there was always a shadow surrounding Herb when he talked about those days. A reluctance, a sadness, a regret.

“So why are we here?” Frost asked.

Herb took off his black glasses. He wiped his eyes, which seemed to be tearing up. “I’ve told you about Silvia, haven’t I?”

“Yes, you have.”

Silvia had been Herb’s girlfriend for a sex-soaked summer of music, LSD, and protest in 1968. He’d described her as his one true love. She was the reason he’d never married anyone else. They’d been together for two months, but then she’d vanished without a word, a note, or an apology. He’d never seen her again.

“You remember the circumstances of her departure?”

“She disappeared,” Frost said.

“That’s right.” Herb was wearing a rust-colored button-down wool sweater, and he reached into one of the pockets and drew out a folded letter on heavy watermarked stationery. “This was delivered to me by courier yesterday. It’s from a lawyer in Houston. Apparently, Silvia’s brother hired him to look into the circumstances of her disappearance. The brother has cancer, you see, and is looking for some kind of closure about his sister before he dies. The lawyer wants to meet with me to talk about what happened to her. We lived together, and as far as I know, I was the last person to see her alive.”

Frost frowned. “Okay. That makes sense.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I assume you talked to the police back then.”

“Naturally,” Herb said, “but in those days, it wasn’t unusual for young people to pick up and disappear. If you wanted to vanish, it wasn’t particularly hard. There was no Internet watching our every breath. The police thought Silvia had gotten bored and moved on, but I never could bring myself to believe that she’d done that. We were in love.”

“What do you think happened to her?” Frost asked.

Herb’s eyes were dark and hooded. “I think someone killed her.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“No, but this lawyer obviously does.”

Frost took the letter from Herb’s hand and read it. He was a lawyer himself, although he’d graduated from law school with no interest in working as an attorney. However, his legal background meant that he knew exactly how lawyers layered their true meaning behind the bland words of their correspondence. Herb was right. The backstory to the letter practically screamed from the page. Silvia’s brother and his lawyer were both convinced that Herb had murdered Silvia.

“This is what you meant the other day, isn’t it?” Frost asked. “You were concerned about rumors. You thought they were leading up to some kind of specific accusation.”

Herb nodded. “The rumors soften people up to believe the worst about me. They’ll say I killed Silvia and hid her body.”

“But you’re innocent,” Frost said.

“Of murder? Yes, of course. But I already told you that I was a different man back then. After so much time, innocence becomes a slippery thing. Mark my words, Frost. They’re coming for me.”

Frost’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug. He took a sip, but it had turned cold in the morning air. “It can’t be a coincidence that this is happening right now.”

“Oh no. This had to have been planned for some time, but for them to pull the trigger now? In the midst of your investigation? That’s not an accident. It’s a shot across the bow. Someone is painting a target on me, Frost. Which also suggests they’re painting a target on you.”

“They want me to stop going after Lombard,” Frost said.

“Yes, I suspect that’s the message.”

“I walk away, and the lawyer goes away, too. The rumors about you stop.”

“Precisely.”

Frost studied the ordinary little Victorian house on the other side of the street. In his eyes, fifty years washed away. He could imagine it painted in wild colors, windows open in the summer, scratchy vinyl records playing Jefferson Airplane. He could see the young people on the hot streets, long haired, topless. And in the midst of it was Herb, when his hair wasn’t gray and his knees were good and there were no lines of wisdom and age on his skin.

“Do you want me to stop?” Frost asked. “Say the word, and I will. Headquarters thinks Diego Casal killed Denny. No one wants me to dig further. Lombard can stay a myth for all I care.”

Herb reached across the small table and took hold of Frost’s wrist. His grip was fiercely strong, and his gravelly voice was like a needle getting to the end of an old LP. “Absolutely, unequivocally, no.”

“You’re my best friend, Herb,” Frost told him. “I will not let these people destroy you.”

“Oh, I’m an old man. There’s very little they can do to me now. If I know one thing about you, Frost, it’s that you have a moral code. Remember what your old boss, Ms. Salceda, used to say? You’re a Boy Scout. You won’t compromise yourself. I certainly won’t have you do it for me.”

“If I talk to Detlowe’s wife,” Frost said, “they’ll know I haven’t given up. At that point, there’s no going back.”

“Then talk to her. Find the truth. We both know Lombard is real. You need to expose him.”

They sat in silence as the day brightened, and more people arrived at the café, and traffic began to fill the streets. Frost finished his cold coffee. He knew further argument was wasted with Herb, and in the end, his friend was right. Frost couldn’t stop. That wasn’t who he was.

He began to get up from the table, but as he did, Herb motioned him back.

“One more thing,” Herb murmured so that only the two of them could hear. “If Lombard is everything we suspect, then he’s a resourceful and violent enemy. You need to be extremely careful. He’s your Moriarty, Frost. Taking him down will be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done.”