Foreign Relations: A Finn O'Brien Thriller (Finn O'Brien Thriller Series Book 2)

by Rebecca Forster

  "Oh, show them," she said. Geoffrey flared his nostrils, whistled and shook his head. Andrew offered a heartfelt 'ouch'.

  "What you been doin' to be hurt so?" Geoffrey asked.

  "He was helping out at the pile-up on the 110 and got burned," Cori answered.

  "You were the one near the car that blew up?" Andrew paused before he took a drink. "That was awesome. It looked just like the movies."

  "Not quite like the movies." Finn put his hand back on his knee. Tragedy was always fascinating from afar and seldom impressive close up. He hoped Andrew would never learn the difference.

  "Terrible. Terrible," Geoffrey chimed in. "Dat woman, she kill herself and make de whole city crazy. Crazy woman. Stupid woman."

  "Maybe," Finn said and then added 'maybe not' as he raised his glass again.

  "Oh-ho," Geoffrey wheezed, rolling his head and showing Finn the back of his beanie as he spoke to the ceiling. "I don' be likin' dat you say dat." He rolled back Finn's way and shook his finger. "I know what dat be meanin'."

  "I think he's got your number," Cori said.

  "What does that mean?" Andrew asked.

  "His heart be bleedin', and dat's no good. O'Brien's bloody heart get him in trouble before wit dem folk wit no home, doncha know."

  Geoffrey listed toward Finn and tapped the bar with one finger, tapped it like a angry woodpecker.

  "I tell you, O'Brien, dat's no good. Dat crazy woman thinkin' of nobody but herself. She not worth de paper you print her on, and she sure not be worth any hurt she cause you. "

  "And how would you know that woman isn't worth my time, Geoffrey?" Finn asked. Beside him Cori rested her head on her upturned hand, happy to be an observer of Geoffrey's ire instead of a recipient.

  "Oh, I knowd. Yes, I knowd." He tapped his nose again and his tone was as dark as the shine on the mahogany. "Dose people wit no home, dey be up to no good. All of dem – man, woman – dey all worth no spit. I knowd because my own good heart be bleedin' once. Oh, yes, yes. I saw de sadness, I saw de hunger and I try to help."

  Now his whole hand was waving and then he slapped the bar.

  "Dey say, work for food. Ha! No, no. Dey don't work for food. Dey only want money. Dey just want de money to get booze. But do dey buy booze from de person who try to give dem money to work? Do dey spend dat money in my place where I try to help? No!"

  Geoffrey slapped the bar once more. There were few things that could put a dent in his good humor but being wronged after a kindness was at the top of the list.

  "Tell us what you really think, Geoffrey," Cori said and Andrew chuckled. Geoffrey paid her no mind because he was down with Finn.

  "Your dada and muma work hard when dey come from de Irish, O'Brien. Nobody give me de dime when I come here to dis country. Now I have dis place and dey don' buy my booze and dey mess in my doorway. I work hard. Dey should be workin' hard and dey wouldn' be sleepin' on de street."

  Geoffrey finished up with a bullish snort. He rotated his skinny shoulders under his loose fitting shirt. He raised his chin. No one did indignation better than Geoffrey Baptiste and Finn respected that it had to run its course. Andrew, however, had no such appreciation. He squinted his eyes, thought as hard as a thirty-year-old man dressed like a comic book character could, and asked:

  "So why don't you just give them a drink and call it even?"

  "Give! Give! Mon, you want me bein' bankrupt?" Geoffrey's arms flailed in frustration.

  "Well, no," Andrew admitted. "But if you were going to have those homeless people work, and you were going to pay them with your money knowing they were going to buy your booze, then why go through all the trouble of handing them money so they can hand it back to you? It's all your money and your booze anyway. Wouldn't it be easier just to give them a drink? No harm no foul."

  "I like your logic, Andrew. The shortest distance between two points." Cori laughed and dropped her hand. She pulled her glass close, holding it in two hands while she put in her two cents. "Don't worry, though, O'Brien's heart isn't bleeding. We're just trying to identify the woman who jumped. We're not even sure she was homeless, Geoffrey."

  "If she be on de bridge den she not be just takin' a walk," Geoffrey assured her.

  "Even if she were homeless," Cori argued. "She might have family who will want to know what happened to her. She might have people somewhere."

  "I agree with that," Andrew said. "I mean, if I got hit by a car looking like this people might jump to some weird conclusions."

  Cori poked Finn.

  "Show him the picture, O'Brien."

  Finn took the photo of the dead woman out of his pocket and pushed it across the bar. Cori pointed to it.

  "Look at her hair, Geoffrey. I'm no expert but those braids are pretty great. She had to have help to do that, didn't she? And her face. Look at her face. She's beat up but she hasn't been outside long. Look at her skin. Come on. Cut her some slack. I think she's got people. If it were you, wouldn't you want your people to know what happened to you?"

  Geoffrey pulled the picture closer. Andrew craned his neck to get a look.

  "Nice looking lady," he said and there was a note of sadness in his voice. It was hard to look at a picture of a dead person, harder still when that person was young and had been beautiful and had been abused.

  Finn drank his beer and watched Geoffrey closely, surprised that he hadn't shoved the picture right back. When Geoffrey Baptiste got an idea in his head there was usually no talking him out of it, but Finn could see that he was reconsidering now that Cori had mentioned his people. For Geoffrey, it was a wife and children back in Trinidad that he hoped would be sad to hear of his demise.

  Geoffrey's face was like elastic. When he laughed his wide mouth split his jaw in two, when he was sad, his cheeks fell over his sharp bones and seemed to bleed down his face. When he was wrong, his face tightened and his neck lengthened as if being wrong was the hardest thing in the world to swallow. Finally, he pushed the picture across the bar and sniffed.

  "If she be havin' family, I know where you be findin' dem. You and dat bloody heart, O'Brien."

  CHAPTER 8

  Los Angeles is high on signs.

  There are big ones – the Hollywood sign being the mother of them all – and there are small ones. Adopt-a-freeway signs, memorial roadway signs, restaurant signs, and gas station signs. There are lodging/food/fun/rest stop signs on the highways and byways. Missing cat signs, rave posters, and yard sale flyers are taped to lampposts. Telephone poles are mutilated with staples and scraps of signs that have been ripped off to make way for new ones.

  There are street sweeping signs, passenger loading zone notices, emergency vehicle signs. There are parking signs and no parking signs and sometimes those signs are on the same pole, affixed above and/or below one another. Motorists have a fifty/fifty chance of being ticketed if they park within a hundred yards of those signs because parking enforcement can't figure them out either. All of this gives Los Angeles a brought-to-you-by vibe, a small-plates approach to urban planning.

  And then there are the signs that leave people scratching their heads, wondering why they even exist.

  On a nugget of real estate between West Olympic and Whitworth Drive on Fairfax Boulevard is a community that has its own, very important looking sign that flummoxes those who gaze upon it. That sign is blue and white and crowned with the seal of Los Angeles. The city popped to have it cast, mounted and stamped with the words Little Ethiopia. No one is sure why the local government felt a need to call out this section of the city, but that is not the point. The sign exists so that means that the half a block of restaurants, a dusty, seldom open community center and a market that sells clothes colored in the yellow, green and red of the Ethiopian flag must be important. The neighborhood is five minutes east of Beverly Hills, ten minutes south of Hollywood, and fifteen minutes from downtown. Fairfax, a two-lane street that should have been widened to four decades ago, bottlenecks right at Little Ethiopia making the gridlock chr
onic and putting parking at a premium.

  The gridlock annoys everyone – including Finn O'Brien and Cori Anderson – but the lack of parking didn't bother the detectives. The park-it-anywhere privilege was one of the only decent perks of being a cop. They left their car in red in front of a hydrant, which was in front of The Mercato Restaurant. They were there because Geoffrey pointed to Little Ethiopia as the place they should start looking for people who might know their Jane Doe.

  "We're eating here," Cori declared as Finn joined her on the sidewalk.

  "I'm thinking this place isn't even open, Cori. If it is, all they'll be serving is dust."

  Finn gestured to three small tables on the sidewalk, metal and rusting, almost hidden behind long, low planters filled with some kind of cactus that had grown into a wall as high as a man. The door into the restaurant was narrow, made of glass and unwashed. Someone had etched initials in the grime. Beyond that, it was impossible to see anything except black because the glass was covered with film to block the sun. To Finn's eye the restaurant looked abandoned; to Cori it looked like an adventure.

  "I guess we won't know until we try to get in. Come on."

  Cori reached for the door but Finn got it first. To his surprise it opened smoothly.

  "Oh ye of little faith," Cori smirked as she passed him. Finn followed, having no doubt they would be leaving fast if the inside was as sad as the outside. It wasn't.

  The Mercato wasn't an Ethiopian restaurant it was Ethiopia. Smoky with incense, draped wall and ceiling with raw burlap, Finn was sure they had walked into some grand tent in the middle of the Dark Continent. African art hung on the walls: masks and etchings, paintings of warriors, women and animals. The centerpiece was a black velvet picture embedded with flickering, colored lights. The floor was bare, the tables and chairs were plain and wooden.

  A middle-aged woman in a loose fitting yellow dress stood at a counter. Her hair was parted in the middle and plaited into short dreadlocks. A young woman – a girl, really, and one looking much like the picture in Finn's pocket – waited a table where two bearded men and a woman in a headscarf ate from a communal platter. It was early so it was no surprise that the place was quiet. Because of that, Finn was taken aback when the woman with the dreadlocks seemed unhappy to see them. By the time she invited them 'sit where you please' she had managed a small smile.

  Cori and Finn took a table against the far wall and settled themselves. The waitress had disappeared but a man had materialized. He looked their way as the older woman whispered to him. The next time Finn looked up the man was gone. Finn looked over his shoulder at the other diners. They ate silently, their eyes downcast. When the woman caught Finn's eye, she instantly averted her gaze.

  "'Tisn't exactly a joyful place, now is it?" Finn said after a bit.

  "A little light on service, too." Cori pushed back her chair, got up and went to the counter. She came back with two menus and handed one to Finn.

  "She says the vegetarian is the most popular."

  "I'm needing to put my teeth into something more substantial." He opened the menu, happy to see that it was printed both in Ethiopian and English and that there were pictures. "Number nine for me. It looks like stew."

  Cori's brow went up. She read the menu while her opinion tumbled out of her mouth.

  "Why do men do that? They just pick something. No thought, no…"

  Finn propped his elbows on the table and half listened to her go on about men and their thoughtless thought process. She was wrong, of course. His brain was working just fine, thank you very much; he just wasn't thinking about food. There was an unsettling vibe in The Mercato that had him curious. It wasn't a cultural difference he was feeling, it wasn't that there had been some spat among the staff. Whatever was going on had these people balanced on a tightrope that was fraying beneath their feet. Before Finn could identify the source of unease, the waitress came for their order. Number nine for Finn and Number three for Cori after a bit more discussion than Finn thought was necessary. When the girl was about to leave, Cori had one more question.

  "Before you go, could you help us with something?"

  The girl's eyes darted to the older woman. Finn's gaze followed. He noted the family resemblance and realized that they should have approached the mother first with their errand. The mother nodded. The girl looked back and Finn drew the picture out of his pocket.

  "We were wondering," he said, "if you might know this lady."

  "No, I'm sorry. I don't know her." The girl's face shuttered and she changed tracks before Finn could ask her to look again. "Would you like honey wine? It goes well with the spice."

  "But this woman is—" Cori began only to have her partner interrupt.

  "We would very much like to try the honey wine." Finn smiled and put the picture away. Cori cocked her head. He raised a brow. "Honey wine? Sure, it sounds good doesn't it, Cori?"

  "Why not?" As soon as the girl was away, Cori propped her elbows on the table, and talked through her frozen smile. "So that was weird all around. She knows who our Jane Doe is, O'Brien. Why didn't you use all that charm of yours to crack her since you didn't like the way I was handling it?"

  Finn didn't answer because the girl was back, bringing a bottle of sweet wine. On her next pass, she brought two round wooden platters. The big one held both their orders and was a pinwheel of stewed meat, lentils and vegetables. On the smaller platter was a pyramid of rolled, unleavened bread that had a brownish tinge. The bread was to pick up the meat and vegetables, the waitress explained and then she was gone again, ensuring they could ask no more questions.

  "Looks like they really want us out of here. Guess we hit a sore spot with our picture." Cori picked up a tube of bread and unwrapped it. She looked at the pockmarked surface and wiggled it. "It feels like a wet suit. Kind of spongy."

  Finn tore off a piece. "It tastes like a vinegar sponge."

  They both dug into the meat and vegetables.

  "But good with the meat. I could get to like this," Cori said. "I'd never have to wash dishes again."

  Finn didn't argue. If this had been any other night, it would have been fun to dine like this, eating with his hands, trying something new. But this wasn't any other night. While the food was delicious it wasn't enough to distract him. Across the way, the other three patrons had finished their meal. The waitress cleared that table immediately, taking the platters and the glasses and leaving the check that was paid quickly. When they were gone, Finn and Cori were left to themselves in the cavernous, burlap draped room.

  Finn scooped up more meat with his last bit of bread, used his napkin to wipe his mouth and tossed it back on the table. He pushed his chair back and the legs scraped on the linoleum floor.

  "I think I'll be doing a little exploring, Cori."

  She gave him a nod as he stood up and looked around. To his left was the front door and the counter where the older woman had been; over his shoulder to the right was a curtain that led to the back of the restaurant. Finn went for the curtain. Behind it was a narrow hallway that could use a dusting, two unisex bathrooms, boxes of supplies stacked neatly against one wall, a mop, a bucket and a high chair. A life-size, gold-framed picture of Haile Selassie, the deposed Ethiopian Emperor, revered by the Rastafarians as a god and dead now for decades, had been propped up against the opposite wall. Leaning up against the picture was a 'parking in the back' sign. Finn thought a sign like that would be better displayed in the front of the establishment and yet here it was, hidden away.

  Finn walked down the short hall, opened the wooden door and peered through the screen door. There were four parking spaces directly behind The Mercato. The lot was ill kept but it was still a luxury to have the space at all in Los Angeles. A black town car, big and new, was parked parallel to the back door. The three diners had left through the front and the car remained, so it was a good bet it didn't belong to them.

  Finn closed the door and retraced his steps, pausing when he parted the curtains. The wom
an with the short dreadlocks was back at the counter, looking to her right, looking through a doorway that Finn hadn't noticed when they came in. Cori had finished eating. The platters were still in front of her. She sipped her wine and checked out her phone, putting it aside to glance at Finn as he passed. She kept her eyes on him as he walked up to the lady who also watched him approach. Cori expected him to show the woman the picture of their Jane Doe; the woman looked like she expected him to rob her. Finn O'Brien smiled and kept smiling when she tried to stop him from going into the room he had overlooked.

  CHAPTER 9

  From Finn's vantage point in the dining room he had thought the opening was an ordinary doorway, but what he passed through was a framed out hole in the wall that connected the restaurant to a long and narrow bowling alley of a space. Packaged food and bottles of honey wine lined the walls on the right. On the left were T-shirts, baseball hats and baby bibs all made from red, yellow and green fabric stamped with the word Ethiopia. The flag of Ethiopia was thumbtacked to the wall above a pegboard that was draped with beaded necklaces and earrings.

  Directly in front of Finn was a bar with four stools and behind that was a big machine brewing coffee. On the wall above the machine was a giant chalkboard with a handwritten menu that might as well have been hieroglyphics as far as Finn was concerned. The young waitress stood at the end of the bar. Behind her was the kitchen. The man Finn had seen talking to the mother was behind the bar. He served coffee in a small cup to a short, portly, well-dressed black man sitting at the bar. That man had two friends: one was white and fair-haired, the other black as black could be. The white man lounged on the stool, arms thrown over the bar, both hands on a tumbler of whiskey. He looked like the boyo no decent woman would want the attention of should they find themselves in the same room with him. The tall black man had come from Finn's left and stood between him and the men at the bar, he was muscle if Finn had ever seen it.