The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  “Did she?” Duane shrugged, as if he hadn’t noticed a thing. “You don’t look so good yourself, bro. Did you find out what happened to Denny?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Duane shook his head. “Pretty strange, though, huh? Him and Carla?”

  Frost’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? What about Carla?”

  His brother looked angry with himself for bringing it up. “Oh, crap, you don’t know? I got a call from her brother in Houston. He and I knew each other in high school, remember? We reconnected on Facebook a while back. Nice guy. He and his wife just had another baby.”

  “Duane, what about Carla?” Frost repeated.

  “I’m really sorry, bro. Carla’s dead. She killed herself.”

  Frost felt the news like a blow to the head. He had to dig down in his chest and find a breath. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. It’s awful, but come on, not a complete surprise, right? I mean, she tried once before. That girl was never all there.”

  All Frost heard was a roaring that drowned out the bluegrass music and the laughter around him. He thought he was going to be sick. “When?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s what’s so weird. I mean, what are the odds of her and Denny dying on the same day?”

  “Carla killed herself yesterday?” Frost asked.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, Frost. I figured you already knew about it.”

  “I didn’t know anything about Carla. What happened?”

  “Her brother didn’t give me details. He said she killed herself, that’s all. Does it matter? You weren’t there to save her this time. Her brother got a call from the Berkeley police to break the news.”

  Frost’s head snapped up. “Berkeley?”

  “Yeah, that’s where she was living,” Duane told him, but Frost was already on his feet. He grabbed the carrier with Shack and pushed away through the crowd.

  10

  Frost was so consumed with the news about Carla that he didn’t notice someone waiting for him near the driver’s door of his Suburban. He was parked in the shadows, and he was practically at his rear bumper before he saw a silhouette move away from the SUV in the darkness.

  It was Tabby.

  Her shoulder-length red hair had a deep shine. She wore black leggings shoved into knee-high leather boots and a dark-green knit sweater. She was half a foot shorter than Frost, but the heels on her boots made her tall enough to stare at him eye to eye. In the space between them, he breathed in her floral perfume. Tabby had a gift for looking at ease wherever she was, and any awkwardness she’d shown in the food park was gone now. She cocked her head and gave him a casual smile and a little wave.

  “I thought you left,” he said.

  “Well, I wanted to tell you again that I’m sorry. I was stupid to say what I did in there.”

  “You’re entitled to feel angry at losing a big part of your life.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m not angry at you,” Tabby said.

  “Forget it. You don’t need to worry about me. Did you solve your catering problem? Did you find another chef?”

  “Oh, I did,” she replied with an annoyed roll of her eyes. “At a ridiculous price, of course. But the guests want dim sum, and they shall have it.”

  Tabby squatted down in front of the cat carrier and used her slim fingers to open the door. She reached inside and pulled Shack into her arms. She hugged the black-and-white cat to her chest, and Shack stretched up his head and began licking her chin. “I miss this guy,” she said.

  “Obviously, he misses you, too.”

  “We haven’t seen you in a while,” Tabby pointed out. “Why is that? Is something wrong?”

  “I’ve been busy, that’s all.”

  “Are you heading home?” she asked. “Done for the day?”

  “No, I have to go to Berkeley. I need to check into something over there.”

  “Oh. Do you want company?”

  “You want to come with me?” Frost asked.

  “If I wouldn’t be in the way.”

  He hesitated. Saying no was the smart thing to do. Spending any time at all with Tabby was risky. He didn’t know where they stood with each other, and he didn’t dare find out. One time, just one time, she’d asked if the two of them had a problem, and there was no mistaking her meaning. He’d lied and said no. Since then, she’d acted as if there was nothing going on between them, and maybe for her, there wasn’t. Maybe this was all in his own head.

  “I wouldn’t want to take you away from something,” he said.

  “You’re not taking me away from anything at all,” Tabby replied. “I’d like to forget about my own problems for a while.”

  “Then okay. Why not?”

  Tabby looked pleased that he’d said yes. She carried Shack around to the other side of the truck and climbed inside. He got in behind the wheel. His radio was on as he started the engine, but he switched it off, leaving them in silence. The interior was cold, and he turned the vent on high to warm them.

  “What’s in Berkeley?” she asked.

  He explained about Carla’s suicide as he found the address for her apartment. He steered into the Saturday evening traffic and headed for the I-80 freeway that led toward the Bay Bridge.

  “What a terrible thing,” Tabby murmured. After a pause, she went on. “Duane told me a little about Carla. He called her a girl from your past.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t think you had a past, Frost. I thought you ran away from relationships.”

  “This one is complicated.”

  “He said Carla married your friend Denny.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Were you in love with her? Did she break your heart?”

  Frost shook his head. “No, that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t love her, but she loved me.”

  Tabby didn’t ask for more details. Not yet. A mile passed, and he merged onto the gray span of the bridge, where the dark vastness of the bay stretched out beneath them. Tabby stared out the window, which was open an inch, filling the interior with a loud, hissing wind. Shack crawled off her lap and curled into a tiny ball on the seat between them. The cat sighed as he drifted off to sleep.

  “So tell me more about you and Carla,” Tabby said finally.

  Frost tried to decide how much to say. As he drove, the truck began to feel warm. He saw the red taillights ahead of him blur through wisps of fog. The tall bridge span, lit with white lights, loomed over their heads. He hadn’t thought about Carla in a long time, but the memories felt fresh and bitter.

  “She started working for me and Denny halfway through our year on the boat,” he told Tabby. “Carla was the girl on the wharf, hawking customers. Most of the time she wore her bikini while she was doing it. Needless to say, she drummed up a lot of business that way. She began living on the boat with us. The three of us spent so much time together, we were practically inseparable. We were all really close.”

  “Close isn’t always so good when three people are involved,” Tabby said.

  Frost kept his eyes on the road. “No. It’s not. The thing is, Carla was very pretty, but she was unstable, too. You could just look at her and know there were demons rattling around in her head. Anyway, Denny began falling in love with Carla, which was fine, but for some reason Carla decided that she was in love with me.”

  “For some reason?” Tabby said.

  “I never encouraged her.”

  “Well, give yourself a little credit, Frost. I can think of a lot of reasons.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that.

  “I tried to let her down gently, but she got angry and desperate about the two of us. And all the while, Denny was pissed off that Carla was interested in me, not him. Everything began to fall apart. That’s when I decided to get out of the business and leave Denny on his own. Unfortunately, I was too late.”

  “What happened?”

  Frost could see it all replaying in his head as he told her. H
e looked down at the black water. It had happened down there, not far away, where the currents swirled around Treasure Island. They’d taken a moonlight cruise, just the three of them. Denny had gotten drunk. So had Carla, and she’d made another wild pass at Frost right in front of Denny. Frost had rejected her again. First, she’d become enraged, screaming and throwing things at him, and then she’d gone below to cry. When too much time passed, he’d gone to check on her. He found her in the cabin, where she’d hung herself from the shower pipe. She was unconscious, but he’d managed to revive her.

  “Oh, Frost,” Tabby whispered.

  “I felt guilty about that for a long time,” he said.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Maybe not, but I felt like I did.”

  “What about Denny?” Tabby asked. “What happened between the two of you?”

  “We took Carla to the hospital,” Frost continued, “and then we went back to the boat. Denny was still drunk and crazy. He jumped me from behind and started whaling on me. I fought him off, but I really think he would have killed me if he’d had the chance. That was the last time I set foot on the boat. I was done. I heard that Denny and Carla got married a couple of years later, and then they split up a couple of years after that. I never saw either of them again. Not until yesterday.”

  Tabby blinked. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  “Who else knows the whole story?”

  “Duane. Herb. Katie knew about it when she was alive. That’s all.”

  Tabby didn’t say anything more. He reached the eastern shore of the bay and merged north onto the I-580 freeway, heading for the Berkeley exits. The lights of heavy traffic surrounded them, and he had to slow down. He got off the freeway at University Avenue and headed east from the water. Even on one of its main streets, Berkeley still had the feel of a small town hidden inside a city. Like San Francisco, it was young, liberal, and quirky, but Berkeley hadn’t sold its soul to the tech gods the way San Francisco had. Life still revolved around the university campus and its earnest academics.

  He turned into a leafy residential area and made his way to a cul-de-sac beside the green ribbon of Strawberry Creek Park. He parked and confirmed Carla’s address. At the end of the street, he could make out a wooden bridge leading over the creek toward a stand of evergreens. He recognized the bridge from Coyle’s photo and knew there was a snake painted on the ground in front of it.

  They were in the right place.

  “Do you need me to stay here?” Tabby asked.

  “No, you can come with me if you’d like.”

  They both got out of the Suburban. Shack didn’t bother waking up. Frost led them into the parking lot of a five-story apartment building that was in need of a paint job. Carla’s place was on the top floor. The exterior door to the building was open, and the interior had an acrid ammonia smell. He saw no security cameras. They took the elevator, which was noisy and slow, and Frost found Carla’s apartment halfway down the hallway.

  A young man with bleached-white hair answered the door. He wore a flowered shirt and jean shorts, with bare feet. He had earrings through both nostrils and both ears. Behind him, Frost saw moving boxes on the apartment’s beige carpet.

  Frost showed him his badge. “I’m Homicide Inspector Frost Easton. This is Ms. Blaine. Did Carla Steiff live here?”

  The man didn’t question Frost’s credentials from the other side of the bay. “Yeah, Carla was my roommate.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  He shrugged. “Go for it. All I’m doing is packing up my crap. When somebody offs themselves in your bathtub, you don’t feel like sticking around, you know? My name’s Tony, by the way. Tony Frattalone.”

  Frost sat down on a sagging tweed sofa, and Tabby sat next to him. They could see the bathroom on the other side of the apartment, and Tabby kept watching it, as if a ghost might appear in the doorway. The room had the chemical smell of medical and police teams that had swarmed the place the previous day.

  “Did you know Ms. Steiff well?” Frost asked.

  “Not really,” Tony replied, “and that was fine with me.”

  “Oh? Why do you say that?”

  “The girl was weird, and that’s saying a lot around Berkeley, you know? Believe me, if it wasn’t for the cheap rent, I would have been out of here a long time ago.”

  “Did her suicide surprise you?” Frost asked.

  “It was gruesome to find, but surprising? No. She had issues.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “All I know is, I went to work on Friday. I got back early evening, and she was dead.”

  “Had anything been going on in her life that would have made her unhappy?” Frost asked.

  “There was nothing specific that I knew about. She wasn’t a happy person, that’s for sure. Gorgeous and hot, but not happy.”

  “Do you know a man named Denny Clark?”

  Tony nodded. “Carla’s ex. He was around here a lot. If you ask me, I can’t understand why someone who got dumped by that girl would keep coming back for more. Consider yourself lucky to get away, you know? But Clark kept hiring her for jobs on his boat. I think he was still hooked on her.”

  “What kind of jobs?”

  “Hostess. Greeter. Waitress. Eye candy. She looked the part, I’ll give her that.”

  “When did you last see Mr. Clark?” Frost asked.

  “Tuesday. He picked her up midafternoon for a job on the boat.”

  “Did he say anything about what the job was? Or did Carla?”

  Tony shook his head. “Not a word. Sounded like it was one of those ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’ kind of things. All I know is, Carla showed up on Wednesday with a crap load of cash. Must have been a few thousand bucks. I can’t imagine what type of job would pay like that. I asked her about it, and she just put her finger over her lips like I should shut up.”

  “And this job was last Tuesday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you have any reason to think that Mr. Clark was involved in any illegal activity? Or did Ms. Steiff say anything about that?”

  “What, like drugs?” Tony asked.

  “Anything.”

  “Not that I heard about, but something sure smelled funny about her coming back with that much dough.”

  “Did the Berkeley police take Carla’s computer and phone with them?” Frost asked.

  Tony stared at him as if that were a strange question. “You know, I didn’t see them do it, but yeah, they must have. They’re both gone now. I don’t know what else could have happened to them.”

  Frost stood up, and Tabby did, too. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Frattalone.”

  “Sure, whatever.” As Frost and Tabby headed for the door, Tony called out, “So why are the homicide cops in San Francisco so interested in Carla, anyway? I mean, she killed herself, right?”

  “It’s part of another case,” Frost replied.

  “Yeah, okay, but two cops in one day?”

  Frost stopped and turned around. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “One of your colleagues was already here a few hours ago. Same thing, homicide cop like you from San Francisco.”

  “What was his name?” Frost asked.

  “I don’t remember. Real tall guy, blond hair, athletic.”

  Frost knew who Tony was describing. It was Trent Gorham.

  Gorham had traveled to Berkeley to ask questions about Carla’s death. Frost couldn’t understand why he would do that, or why he would even have heard about a random suicide on the other side of the bay. Unless somehow he knew there was another red snake nearby.

  “We’re just covering all the bases,” Frost said. “Thanks again for your help.”

  He left Carla’s apartment with Tabby, and they headed downstairs into the dark parking lot. They were both quiet until they were back at his Suburban across from the park. Then, as he opened the door for her, Tabb
y put a hand on his arm.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Frost replied, still thinking about Trent Gorham visiting the apartment. Then he added, “But I’m not convinced that Carla’s death was really a suicide.”

  “You think she was killed? Like Denny? Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I want to find out more about this cruise on Denny’s boat last Tuesday,” Frost said. “Frattalone is right. That much cash changing hands smells funny.”

  He made sure Tabby was safely inside, and then he closed the door. As he made his way around the front of the truck, he glanced at the woods on the fringe of the neighborhood park. Under the glow of a streetlight, he saw a paved trail leading toward the wooden bridge. He could hear the gurgle of creek water beyond the fence. It was dark and peaceful.

  Frost took a few steps down the sidewalk. He wanted to see the snake. But he stopped short of the bridge because he sensed the presence of someone else in the park, staring back at him. He squinted to see deeper into the night, and as he did, he saw a shadow move.

  “Coyle?” he called. “Is that you?”

  He waited, but he knew it wasn’t Coyle. There was no answer.

  Instead, very clearly, he heard the thumping footsteps of someone running away through the trees.

  11

  When the man was clear of the park and sure that Frost Easton wasn’t following him, he slowed to a walk. His car was parked three blocks away on a residential street. He saw no one nearby when he reached it, but procedure said he should walk from one corner to the next to make sure there was no surveillance. He wasn’t going to take any shortcuts. One contact had ignored procedure on an operation in Lincoln Park, and word had gotten back to the boss. The contact had been found shot dead the next day.

  It was a lesson in following the rules.

  He checked the area, then got inside his car and removed a phone from underneath the front seat. The contact number changed every week, but he had the new number memorized. He punched in the digits and waited. The process was always the same. The voice on the other end was always the same.