The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  This all happened in the time it took for the second ball to rise up and drop casually back into Fox’s hand.

  “Lead pellets,” Fox told him with a smile. “They give these things the kick of a mule.”

  Frost charged across the space between them. He was far bigger than Fox, but size didn’t matter. As Frost leaped, Fox’s foot jabbed like a piston underneath Frost’s rib cage, and the air burst from his lungs. Fox’s arm spun into a roundhouse and hammered the back of Frost’s head, driving him face-first to the ground. The impact shuddered through his skull and bloodied his forehead. Frost rolled away just as Fox’s next kick flew by his head. He staggered to his feet and backed up, gasping for breath and trying to shake off a wave of nausea.

  Fox hadn’t even broken a sweat. He tossed the second leather ball up and down in his hand.

  “Had enough? I mean, after a while, I’m going to get bored with kicking your ass, Frost. Eventually, the cat always kills the mouse. You know that, right? You’ve got a cat.”

  Frost charged again.

  Fox’s left leg flew upward, and his whole body followed it around. This time, the kick landed against Frost’s shoulder and threw him sideways against the elevator doors. He slammed hard and had to brace himself not to slip down to the floor of the platform. Blood dripped down his face, mixed with sweat. His broken finger throbbed like the searing burn of a cattle brand. His head spun. He could barely move his arm.

  Fox still casually juggled the leather ball in his hand.

  “How do you want this, Inspector? Fast or slow?”

  Frost smiled and spat out the words. “You just made a mistake.”

  Fox cocked his head warily. “A mistake?”

  “You missed something.”

  “Yeah? What’d I miss?”

  The voice came from behind Fox. It came from Fawn.

  “I have a gun, too, you son of a bitch,” she told him.

  And she began to fire.

  Her first two bullets went wide. She wasn’t a good shot. But the next blast from her revolver slammed the meat of Fox’s shoulder, and the bullet exited his body with a spray of blood and ricocheted off the steel of the elevator bank near Frost’s head. Fawn fired one more time, searing Fox’s thigh, before he spun around and whipped the second leather ball squarely into her forehead. It landed like a hammer, and she fell straight back and hit the floor of the platform, unconscious.

  Ignoring the screams of pain in his body, Frost launched himself off the elevator bank and crashed into Fox’s back and took him down. He shot an elbow into Fox’s face, buried a thumb in his wounded shoulder, then turned him over and rained down blow after blow with his uninjured fist. Fox took the assault without flinching, but Frost’s strength quickly waned, and the killer wriggled out of his grip and clapped both sides of Frost’s head sharply with his feet. It felt like a tornado in Frost’s brain. He threw his head back in agony, and instantly, Fox squirmed free and was on his feet.

  Frost stood up, too. They circled each other like wounded prizefighters. Fox was losing blood that soaked through his black clothes and puddled on the platform floor, but Frost could hardly keep the world in focus.

  When he saw an opening, he attacked again. It was a mistake.

  Fox nimbly sidestepped his charge and delivered another ferocious kick that landed in the middle of Frost’s back. The impact drove him into the air and off the platform, and he landed in the dust and dirt on the far side of the train tracks. He got up but then collapsed. The same thing happened when he tried again. And then he was finally on his feet, propped against the wall of the tunnel.

  Everything began to happen at once. He tried to make sense of it.

  A wail sounded, muffled and distant in his ears. He stared into the blackness of the tunnel hole and saw two glowing eyes growing larger and brighter. The BART train whistled, screeched, and roared as it flew from under the bay and closed in on the Embarcadero Station.

  Meanwhile, on the platform, Fox bent over Fawn, dripping blood onto her body. He reached for her head. He was going to break her neck.

  Frost couldn’t get to them in time. He had only seconds to leap off the tracks and escape the oncoming train. He was frozen with indecision, but then he looked down and spotted his gun where it had landed between the rails. He took two steps, picked it up in his right hand, and tried to steady his arm as he aimed at Fox, but his index finger had swelled, and he couldn’t move it or fit it inside the trigger guard.

  The train stormed closer. Its whistle shrieked. Its headlights bathed him in light.

  Fox had his hands on either side of Fawn’s skull, ready to twist. She was awake now, frozen in terror, her eyes wide.

  Frost threw the gun into his left hand and fired and fired. He was a terrible shot with his other hand, but he got lucky. After missing three times, one bullet shattered Fox’s elbow, and another burned through the flesh of his stomach. Fox howled and fell, writhing on the ground.

  The train clattered and bore down on him with a hurricane of air exploding from the tunnel.

  With his gun still in his hand, Frost took two steps and jumped for the platform. His heels barely cleared the sleek silver body of the train. He rolled, and his broken finger jammed into the floor like a shock of lightning. Before he even came to a stop, he passed out from the pain.

  When Frost opened his eyes, half a dozen faces loomed over him. They were passengers from the train.

  “I called 911, Officer,” someone said, who’d obviously spotted the badge on his belt. “The cops and the ambulance should be here soon. Just hang tight.”

  He blinked, remembering where he was and what had happened. He pushed himself to his elbows, but as he did, his finger delivered another shock of pain that almost split him in half. He touched his face, which was wet with ribbons of blood. His whole body felt pummeled.

  “Whoa, hang on, man,” someone else said. “You probably shouldn’t move.”

  Frost turned his head sideways, feeling the effort in his neck. He looked through the legs of the people clustered around him, and the floor of the platform was empty. Fawn was gone. He scrambled to his feet and nearly collapsed, and one of the men nearby grabbed him and propped him up.

  “The girl,” Frost said urgently. “Where’s the girl?”

  The people around him looked at each other, and then a woman said, “The pretty one with the big bump on her forehead? She took off.”

  “Where? Where did she go?”

  The passenger from the train shrugged. “I don’t know. It was crazy town around here. She got up and ran for the escalator.”

  Frost swung his head in the other direction, and again his knees buckled.

  Fox was gone, too. The blood trail led into the elevator. Frost broke free from the crowd and followed the trail. Several of the people shouted after him, but he didn’t pay any attention. He limped, trying to stay upright, trying to stay conscious. He jabbed the elevator button again and again, as if that would make it come faster. When the doors finally opened, he piled inside. He crumpled against the far wall and closed his eyes as the car went upward. It only took a few seconds, but it felt like an hour.

  The trail of blood continued into the lobby of the station. Romeo and Moreno were both gone. The Lombard presence had melted away as the emergency sirens got closer.

  Frost tracked Fox all the way to the escalator leading up to the street, but when he climbed the steps to the sidewalk outside, the rain had washed away the blood trail. The ambulances were coming. So were the police. He couldn’t wait for them. He squinted into the pounding rain, which had driven away the late-night people. The streets looked empty. At first, he thought Fox had vanished again, but then he spotted a shadow near the wall of the Hyatt hotel, staggering toward the Embarcadero.

  Frost took off after Fox. It was a battle to see which one could stay on their feet longer. Frost felt thunder behind his eyes with each step, but he sprinted anyway. Fox passed under a streetlight and looked back and saw Frost
gaining ground behind him. The killer tried to run, but the loss of blood had caught up to him, and all he could manage were stutter steps. He made it to the empty plaza beyond the hotel, and so did Frost, only a few yards behind him.

  At the edge of the street, under the palm trees, Fox stopped. He turned on his heel to face Frost. His one arm hung limply at his side. As he bled, the rain washed it away. Frost kept a wary distance, not trusting the man’s tricks, but Fox had no tricks left. Behind him, cars splashed along the southbound lane of the Embarcadero, their headlights washing over his body. The clock tower of the Ferry Building gleamed with yellow light across the street.

  “You think you’ve won?” Fox called. “You’re wrong.”

  Rain shined on his face, which was half in shadow. His whole body shivered as he tried to stay standing.

  “This is the end,” Frost told him. “It starts with you.”

  “I’m already dead,” Fox said.

  Frost shook his head. “No way. You are not going to die. I’m not going to let you. The surgeons are going to fix you up, and then I’m going to put you in a room, and you’re going to tell me how it all works. You’re going to tell me everything, Fox.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Fox shouted.

  The traffic roared. The rain sheeted down, and wind rocked the palm trees. The gauzy lights made the sidewalk look like a carnival.

  “Get what?”

  “He’s coming.”

  “Who?”

  Fox gave him a bloody grin. “Lombard.”

  Frost twisted his neck to survey their surroundings. They were alone. He took a step closer to Fox. The man looked serene in the midst of his pain.

  “No one’s here,” Frost said.

  “You’re wrong. He’s always watching.”

  Over the driving rain, Frost heard the muffled ping of a text message arriving on his phone. Fox heard it, too.

  “You better get that,” Fox warned him.

  Frost yanked the phone out of his pocket, and the screen lit up. He didn’t recognize the number. The message itself was only three words.

  King takes pawn.

  Frost spun, looking for a ghost. He still saw nothing and no one.

  “You should duck,” Fox went on, making no attempt to run, “unless you want to die, too.”

  That was when it happened.

  Among the flood of cars kicking up torrents of spray on the Embarcadero, one car squealed to a stop at the curb barely ten feet away from them. It was a Bugatti, black, low, sleek, and incredibly expensive. Its passenger-side window was already down, and Frost hurled himself to the ground, knowing what came next. Gunfire erupted from inside with bursts of fire and noise. Fox shuddered like a puppet on strings as multiple bullets riddled his back, and by the time the Bugatti sped away, the young killer twitched and crumpled sideways. It all took less than ten seconds.

  Frost pushed himself out of the mud and ran to Fox, but there was no hope of saving him. Fox had taken a dozen new bullet wounds. Bile and blood bubbled from his mouth. He managed a few gasping breaths but didn’t say a word, and his eyes lit up with an odd gleam of victory before they froze in place.

  Then he was dead, and all the secrets died with him.

  Frost slumped to the ground. The rain poured in waves over his head. His phone sang again like a taunt as he clutched it in his hand. It was another message from the same phone number as before.

  He read the text as he sat next to Fox’s lifeless body.

  A pleasure to finally meet you, Inspector.

  Lombard.

  45

  Three days passed. There was no sign of Fawn.

  Frost left multiple messages on her phone, but he got no reply, and he assumed that she’d long since disposed of it. He was able to get a copy of the security video from Embarcadero Station on the night of the incident, and he spotted Fawn running for the exit along with others from the Oakland train. He saw no evidence that she’d been followed from the station by anyone from Lombard.

  Even so, she was still missing.

  When he couldn’t reach her, he went to her sister’s house. He drove to Presidio Heights at seven in the morning and found a large moving van parked outside and a “For Sale” sign in the window. He squeezed past the moving team and discovered that the house was already empty. Everything was gone. He went up to Fawn’s bedroom on the second floor. It had been stripped clean.

  Prisha Anand was standing in the foyer when he came back downstairs. She had her coat on and her purse over her shoulder. She was dressed down, in jeans and a simple cotton top, with her black hair tied behind her head. She didn’t look surprised to see him.

  “So you’re leaving?” he asked.

  “Yes. It’s time for a new life.”

  “You’re quitting Zelyx, too?”

  “It’s already done. I’m out.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Prisha shrugged. “Somewhere else. Far away.”

  He could see in her face that she knew Zara was alive. She knew where her sister was hiding. The two of them were selling the house and making their escape together. They were trying to run from Lombard.

  “You won’t be safe no matter where you go,” Frost told her. “Distance won’t protect you.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Prisha replied. “I’ve taken care of everything.”

  “How?”

  “The situation is complicated, Frost. That’s all I can say.”

  He exhaled in frustration. “You’re not going to pretend with me, are you? You know that Zara’s alive. You know what happened at the Embarcadero.”

  Prisha made sure the movers were nowhere nearby. She hooded her eyes, and then she gently reached out and touched his elbow. “Of course I do. Zara came directly to me from the station. She wants you to know—we both want you to know—how grateful we are. You saved her life.”

  “Then take me to her, and let me talk to her. The only way to keep her safe is to let her go public with what she knows. These people won’t take it on faith that she’ll stay quiet. As long as she’s alive, she’s a threat to them.”

  Prisha didn’t say anything immediately. She took his hand and led him out of the house, and they crossed the street to where Frost’s Suburban was parked. She looked up and down Clay Street, which was free of pedestrians. The red dome of the synagogue shone in the sun two blocks away. It was a calm, unusually warm morning, as if summer had jumped ahead of spring in the seasonal lineup.

  “I’m sorry, Frost,” Prisha said. “You can’t see Zara, and I can’t tell you where we’re going. That’s part of the deal.”

  “The deal?” he asked.

  “I made a deal with Lombard.”

  “You know about him?”

  “Yes. Zara told me everything. Lombard and I worked out a mutually agreeable solution to our problem.”

  Frost shook his head. “How did you contact a man that no one can find?”

  “Actually, he called me,” Prisha said.

  “Lombard called you?”

  “He figured Zara would come to me, and he was right.”

  “What did he want?” Frost asked.

  “To put an end to this. He said that the cruise on Tuesday had gotten out of hand and put everyone in far more jeopardy than was necessary. He wanted to close the book on it once and for all. So we negotiated the terms of Zara’s safety. I’m a lawyer, Frost. Negotiating is what I do, and I’m very good at it. I did a deal that keeps us safe. We all get what we want.”

  “You can’t trust him.”

  “Deals aren’t done on trust. They’re done on parties acting in their own self-interest. That includes Lombard.”

  “What did he offer you for Zara’s silence? Money? That’s how it starts. He gives you money, and you think you’re safe, but you’re not.”

  “Zara and I don’t need money,” Prisha replied. “We have far more than we’d ever want. In fact, you have it backward. We purchased our safety.”


  “You paid Lombard for your freedom?” Frost said. “You’re kidding yourself if you think that will work. I don’t care how much you gave him. It won’t be enough.”

  “No, this is different. I paid Lombard to solve a problem for us. That’s what he does, after all. He’s a fixer.”

  “And what did you want him to fix?”

  “I told you, it’s complicated.”

  “He’ll still kill you both, Prisha,” Frost insisted. “Wherever you go, he’ll track you down.”

  “No. He won’t. I’m satisfied that it’s not in his interest to harm us after we leave, because he knows that it’s not in our interest that Zara ever say another word about the cruise on Tuesday or about him. You’ll never see her again. You’ll never see me again. Don’t bother looking for us, because you won’t find us.”

  Frost felt a wave of concern. “What did you do, Prisha? Tell me.”

  “Really, Frost, it’s better that you not know the details. Zara and I can live with what we’ve done, but I know you couldn’t. You’re too honorable. So it’s time to drop it. Walk away. Zara and I would hate to see you come to any harm. We’re both fond of you.”

  “This is a mistake,” he said.

  She gave him an uncomfortable smile. “It’s sweet of you to worry about us, but there’s no need. Please don’t hate us when you learn the truth. I know it’s not the choice you’d make, but it’s the best thing for everyone. And now I’m sorry, but I have to say good-bye.”

  Prisha dashed across the street with quick little steps. There was a white Jaguar convertible parked in front of the moving van, and she climbed inside. She threw a little wave at Frost, and then she fired up the engine and sped away.

  He was pretty sure she was never coming back.

  Frost spent the rest of the day investigating Bugatti registrations. Given that it was a multimillion-dollar vehicle, he was surprised at how many there were throughout the state, but California was home to the crazy rich of both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He pulled the license information on every owner and made a list for follow-up, but there was nothing to suggest that any of the Bugatti drivers was Lombard.