The Crooked Street

42

The giant lobby of the Hyatt Regency across from the Ferry Building was mostly empty. It was nearly midnight. A few businessmen lingered over cocktails in the bar, but their loud voices sounded far away. The white floors of the hotel rose over Frost’s head on all sides like the ivory keys of a piano, and ribbons of green foliage dripped from the railings. A three-story sculpted metal globe called Eclipse loomed over the lobby floor and gave the space a purple glow.

He walked the entire length of the atrium, which was the equivalent of walking a full city block. A glass elevator took him to the fifteenth floor near the top of the building. He emerged to a deserted hallway and a tomb-like quiet. He walked along the corridor beside the closed hotel room doors, looking down at the lobby far below him. He found Fawn’s room near the end of the hallway, and he knocked.

She answered the door with a gun pointed at his face.

“Identification,” she snapped.

Frost shook his head. “Trent tried that with me, too. I’m not part of Lombard. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

Fawn breathed slowly, but she didn’t lower the gun. “Move back,” she told him.

Frost raised his arms and backed up until he stood against the railing. “This is as far as I can go.”

She looked both ways down the corridor to confirm that Frost hadn’t brought anyone with him. Then she opened the door wider, but she kept the gun pointed at his chest. “Okay, come in.”

He did. It was an elegant hotel suite. The television was on, with the sound muted. The bed was perfectly made. He saw the balcony beyond a set of glass doors, and the nighttime view overlooked the Ferry Building and the bay. The room smelled of perfume drifting from her skin, and he’d smelled that aroma twice before. Once in her bedroom in Pacific Heights. Once in Trent Gorham’s house.

“Do you prefer Fawn or Zara?” he asked her.

“For now, let’s stick with Fawn. I can’t exactly go back to my life as Zara now, can I? And I guess soon I may need a third identity.”

“Well, Fawn, why don’t you put the gun down, and let’s talk.”

She hesitated and then pointed the small revolver at the floor. With her defenses down, her emotions welled to the surface. She wasn’t a rock. Her dark eyes filled with tears. “Is it really true about Trent?” she asked.

“Yes, it is. I’m sorry.”

Her foot tapped the carpet in a nervous tic as she dealt with the reality of losing him. “I thought — I hoped — maybe it was another trick. I’m supposed to be dead, too.”

“It isn’t a trick,” Frost said.

Her breath caught in her chest. She couldn’t speak for a while. He waited, giving her time, and he felt the aura of her presence. She looked a lot like her sister, with sweeping black hair, a honey-colored angular face, and hooked, wicked eyebrows. She was a small woman but lithe and athletic. She wore tight-fitting blue jeans, an off-the-shoulders black knit sweater, and high-top red sneakers. Like Prisha, she was attractive, but she also had something undefinable that lifted her into a rarefied world. If she looked right at you, you remembered the experience.

“I loved Trent,” Fawn murmured. “I suppose that must strike you as funny.”

“Not at all.”

“It’s not like we could tell anyone. I never even told Prisha.”

“How long were you two together?” Frost asked.

“Three years. Practically from the day we met. There was an instant chemistry between us. Most men look at me like fine china, like something fragile that you need to keep behind glass. Even the ones that buy me sometimes can’t even talk to me. But Trent was different. He saw me as a person. He didn’t care what I did. Most guys would never be able to handle it. The jealousy would eat them up. Trent never gave me grief, never told me to quit. It was my job, that was all. I was able to be normal with him, and trust me, that’s a rare thing in my life.”

“I’m sure.”

She shook her head. “That bastard Filko.”

“Lombard, too,” Frost said.

“I don’t care about Lombard. That was Trent. For me, it was all about taking down Martin Filko. I meet some sleazy characters in my line of work, but Filko is in a category by himself. The bro culture in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is so disgusting. People have no idea. But I’m going to make Filko pay. Count on it. I’m bringing him down whatever it takes.”

Her anger was like a fire shooting sparks from her small body. She had an intensity about her that was both attractive and a little unstable. Where her sister was cool, Fawn was hot.

“Maybe you should go back to the beginning,” Frost said. “Tell me what happened.”

Fawn sat on the bed. She stared at the silent television and then switched it off. She looked at Frost. “Do you know about Naomi?”

“She was an escort who was killed.”

Fawn nodded. “Naomi and I were close. She was a couple years older than me, and she’d been in the business longer than I had. Her advice saved me more than once when I was starting out. Three years ago, I was at a Zelyx party with Prisha, and I bumped into Naomi there. She was working. And by working, I mean she was with Filko. I knew something was wrong. I could see it in her face. We had a few minutes alone while he was making his remarks to the team, and she told me what was going on. The things he did to her. She’d had enough, and she was going to expose him. That was big. Believe me, if you’re in my business, you don’t come to that decision lightly. For Naomi, it meant she’d never work again, but she was willing to go that far to make sure people knew the kind of man Filko is. Only she never got the chance.”

“The overdose,” Frost said.

Fawn’s lip curled with contempt. “It was murder, pure and simple. Naomi never took drugs. Never. I knew what had happened. Filko found out she was planning to expose him, and he had her killed.”

“So what did you do?” Frost asked, although he knew exactly what she’d done.

“I talked to a vice cop I knew. Alan Detlowe. Alan was a good guy. I mean, no offense, but some cops are pigs and want a quid pro quo for keeping quiet, if you know what I mean. Alan was more concerned with us being safe and whether we were being treated right. He kept an eye on the escort scene to make sure organized crime wasn’t moving in, but otherwise, he didn’t hassle us. I told Alan what was going on and what I suspected about Naomi and Filko. He said he’d look into it, and he obviously did, because the next week, they killed him, too.”

Frost nodded. “That’s how you met Trent?”

“Yes. He found out that I’d been talking to Alan, and he wanted to know what it was about.”

“You told him?”

“Oh yeah. I told him everything.”

“Trent kept it quiet,” Frost said. “Nothing went into his reports.”

“That’s because we already knew there was something between the two of us. We liked each other. We began dating. It wasn’t quite the Montagues and Capulets, but it was close. Cops don’t date hookers, and hookers don’t date cops. We had to be really careful. And we were worried about what might happen to us. Naomi and Alan both got killed. So Trent kept his whole investigation under wraps. He told me what he’d found out about Lombard and the snakes, but I was the only person he trusted with it. He didn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Keeping it quiet meant you couldn’t do anything about Filko.”

“I know. I hated it, but I was falling in love with Trent, and that was more important. I was willing to put Filko on the back burner for him.”

“So what changed?” Frost asked.

“Last summer, I met Filko myself,” Fawn said, and he could hear the contempt in her voice.

“Was that on the cruise with Greg Howell?”

“Yes.” She looked surprised that he knew that. “Belinda Drake set it up for me. I didn’t know who the client was going to be. She just said he was ‘difficult’ and she needed someone who could handle him. I don’t intimidate easily. Then it turned out to be Filko. Being with him, knowing what he’d done, brought it all back for me. Every second I was with him, I kept thinking about Naomi. When I got back, I told Trent that we had to do something. We had to get him, no matter what the risks were. And that was when he came up with the plan.”

“A sting,” Frost said.

Fawn nodded fiercely. “Yes, exactly. Trent said if we found the right opportunity, we could set a trap to get both of them. Filko and Lombard. So I told Belinda Drake that I was willing to see Filko again when he was in town. Believe me, most girls were one-and-out when it came to him. I knew she’d call me in, and she did. It was going to be on Denny Clark’s boat again. Late night. Small party. Trent put the screws on Denny to install cameras so we’d have proof of what the son of a bitch did to me. And he came up with the idea of faking my death. He figured if Filko was face-to-face with a disaster like that, he’d have to call in Lombard to fix it like he did with Alan. And then Trent would be able to expose the whole operation.”

“So what really happened on Tuesday?” Frost asked.

“At first, it went off just like we planned. When I saw the mayor with Filko, I couldn’t believe our luck. This was big. There was no way they wouldn’t call for Lombard’s help when I disappeared. So I did my thing with the two of them all evening, and when Filko and I were alone, I knew the cameras were getting everything. It would ruin him when it came out.”

“How bad was it?”

“Bad. I deal with my share of freaks, but I knew why Naomi was so desperate to take him down. Even so, I didn’t care. When Filko finally passed out, I slipped up top to find Denny on the bridge, and he took me below deck. We’d arranged it all in advance. Everyone else was asleep. He hid me in the engine room, and after that, he sounded the alarm that I’d gone overboard. As far as the others were concerned, I was dead in the ocean.”

“And when the boat came back in?” Frost asked.

“Trent was in the harbor waiting for us. He’d given me and Denny special phones. As soon as the trouble was starting, we could speed-dial Trent and get him in there with the whole damn cavalry. We could nail Lombard. We could nail Filko. But it didn’t work that way. Nobody got hurt. Belinda handed out cash to keep everyone quiet. And the cleanup crew found the cameras, so that meant we had nothing on Filko. The whole thing was a bust. We couldn’t prove a thing.”

“Except Lombard wasn’t done,” Frost said.

“Yeah. Trent was afraid of that. That’s why he hid me here for a few days while we waited to see what happened next.”

“Why didn’t he watch the witnesses? He had to know they were in danger.”

“He didn’t want to scare off Lombard. They didn’t know Trent, they knew Denny. He was their contact. Trent told Denny to make sure everybody kept their eyes open and to call if they noticed anything weird. Nobody did. Except once Lombard went into action, he moved as fast as a snake. Trent didn’t know anything was going on until Denny called him on Friday night, and by then, it was too late to stop it. I’ve been lying low ever since, until Trent could figure out what to do. As long as I was still dead, I was safe.”

Frost shook his head. “Trent should have told me the truth.”

“He wasn’t sure if he could trust you.”

“And I didn’t trust him, because I knew he was keeping things from me,” Frost said. “Instead, we all got played by Lombard.”

Fawn got up from the bed and came over to him. “It’s time for me to come back to life. I can blow the lid off the whole thing. I can tell everyone what happened on the boat, and we can tie it to Trent, Denny, Chester, Carla, Mr. Jin, all of them. The only way for Lombard to fix it was to eliminate every witness. Well, he missed one. Me.”

“It might be safer for you to stay dead,” Frost told her.

“I know, but I can’t do that. I won’t hide from these people anymore.” She brushed her hair from her face and then went on. “Besides, it’s too late. There’s no going back now.”

Frost looked at her sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“I called Martin Filko. He knows I’m alive.”

“What? Fawn, why did you do that?”

Her mouth hardened into a scowl that was a defiant mix of guilt and pride. She knew she’d been foolish, but she didn’t care. “Don’t you get it? Trent’s dead! The man I loved is gone because of Martin Filko. I wanted him to know I was coming for him.”

“Did you actually talk to him? What did you say?”

“I asked if he was afraid of ghosts,” she said with a smirk, “and believe me, he was. It scared the crap out of him to hear my voice.”

Frost shook his head. The hotel had just become a trap, and he wondered how much time they had before it sprang shut. “When did you call him?”

“Tonight before I talked to you,” Fawn said. “But I didn’t tell him where I was.”

Frost hurried to the hotel room door, checked the peephole, and put his ear to the door to listen to the hallway. He heard nothing on the other side. “That doesn’t matter. They’ll be able to pinpoint your cell location. They’re probably on their way.”

A crack broke through Fawn’s studied composure. Her eyes blinked rapidly. She bit down nervously on her lower lip and joined him by the door, where her face was in shadow. “So what do we do?”

He slid his gun out of his holster, and he took Fawn’s hand. “We need to get you out of here. Right now.”