“Four.”
“That you know of, you mean,” Carver said.
Mia had perched herself on the cushion so that one hip rested against it, and her knees were tucked away to her left. She was watching him closely.
“What are you talking about?” Houston asked.
“I’m a homicide inspector. Jenner, too. That’s all we do. So if we were there, and if we had our scene bag out, then we were there for a dead body.”
The waitress came back with a tray. She knelt on the cushion next to Houston and served them the first course of the omakase that Carver had ordered. When the waitress left, Carver picked up his chopsticks and rubbed them together. The fish was probably farm-raised, but a farm was better than a lab. Even Mia was picking up her chopsticks.
“Let me give you a hypothetical.”
“Okay.”
“Someone hears shots fired, and calls 911,” Carver said. “You and Roper are the nearest unit. How do you get the call?”
“Over the radio.”
“Then what do you do?”
“We respond.”
“You go to the scene. Dispatch gives you an address over the radio, tells you it’s a two-sixteen—shots fired. You check it out. And you find a dead body,” Carver said. “What’s the first thing you do?”
“Secure the scene.”
“And then?”
“I’d call Homicide, on my cell. The radio’s an open channel. Anyone with a police scanner can listen in.”
“You call Homicide to give the details on a private line,” Carver said. “Sure. I get that. But you’re married to the radio, right? You’ve got to say something to dispatch, or it’s your ass. What do you say?”
“If Roper and I found a body?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d call in, give my twenty, and tell dispatch I had an eight-oh-two. And then I’d call Homicide on the private line.”
“When you call that eight-oh-two, that goes out on the public channel.”
Houston nodded.
“So your unit number, location, and the fact that you’ve got a dead body—all that goes out over the public channel,” Carver said. “And anyone with a police scanner can listen in.”
“I understand that,” Houston said. “But I don’t see how it’ll help us.”
“If we had the dispatch logs, we could find out where you went that night, and why they sent you. There’d be a callback from you, saying what you found. You can’t get the logs, and neither can I. But what if there’s another log out there?”
“Is there?”
“Anyone with a police scanner could make a log.”
“You think you can find someone who’s got one,” Houston said. “You and Jenner. And Mia.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you need?”
“Your unit call sign. For when I get the log.”
“Adam-Five-David,” Houston said. She poured the rest of her beer into the little glass and drank it off. “What else?”
“Just try not to get suspended,” Carver said. “Keep your ass one step ahead of your sergeant’s boot. Do you know the Irish Bank?”
“The bar?”
Carver nodded.
“It has a private booth, the one in the old Catholic confessional. That’ll be our next meeting place. But we have to be careful how we set that up. If someone could send emails from our accounts, they might still be reading them. Same goes for our cell phones.”
“So how do we contact each other?”
“I’ll call from a pay phone. I’ll say I’ve got the wrong number, and hang up. Then we’ll meet an hour later.”
“If I can’t come?”
“Then you can’t come.”
“All right.”
“And let me know if anything changes with Roper,” Mia said. “Use a pay phone to call Ross, and set up a meeting.”
“What for?”
“If he gets worse,” Mia said, looking at Carver, “he can bring me out. Right?”
Carver nodded.
“And then maybe I could help.”
Houston looked at Mia, and Carver watched the distrust and caution fade from her face. She looked relieved, but she didn’t acknowledge it to Mia, except by lowering her eyes. After a moment, she turned to Carver.
“I gotta go—it’s a long ride back, and he needs me. I’ll be in touch. But don’t leave yet. I don’t want anyone to see me within a mile of either of you.”
She got up and showed herself out.
12
WHEN THEY GOT back to the car, Carver let Mia in and then stood on the sidewalk a moment, using his phone to look up an address. He had an idea Mia would be more comfortable if he didn’t use it in the car. She was in the passenger seat, her hands folded on her lap and her face turned down. She’d been fine in the restaurant, fine with Houston. She clearly hadn’t shut herself off in her apartment because she was afraid of people. She didn’t seem to be a recluse by nature.
He looked at his phone’s search results and found the address he needed. He got in the car and put the phone away.
“This guy’s a cop?” Mia said.
“Was a cop,” Carver answered. He checked his mirrors and then did a U-turn from his parking spot. “He quit five years ago and became a PI. Most of his clients are defense attorneys.”
“That’s how you know him?”
Carver nodded and took a right onto Broadway.
“He’s got a bone to pick with the city—with the department. He’ll take any case if he thinks he can score one against us.”
“What makes you think he’ll help you?”
“We’ll see—maybe he won’t.”
“You weren’t friends?”
“Not even close.”
The address was at Noriega and Forty-Fifth, in the Sunset. They parked up the street and looked at it from the car. It was a townhouse that had been small to start with, and now was broken up into apartments. Dave Fremont was in what used to be the garage. The rolling door had been paneled over with pressboard. There was a narrow door to the side.
“You want me to come, or wait here?”
“If you’re willing, I’d like you to come.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt and started to open the door, but he put his hand on her wrist to stop her.
“I like to watch a minute or two before I go up to a door and knock.”
“Okay.”
She pulled her door closed and turned back to the windshield. They watched the house together for five minutes, but saw no movement in Dave Fremont’s windows. There was a TV in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and there were lights on in the houses on either side, but nobody moved into view. Nobody was out walking and they only saw one car pass. Its taillights quickly disappeared into the weather.
“All right,” Carver said. “We’ll go see if he’s home.”
They were only four blocks from the ocean, and Carver could smell it when he got out of the car. Curtains of mist gusted down Noriega. A block down, a Japanese karaoke bar and a pizza parlor faced off on either side of the street, their neon signs the only lights shining against the night.
They went up to Dave Fremont’s door and Carver knocked. He was standing in front of the peephole, with Mia next to him. She took hold of his arm when they heard footsteps come to the other side of the door. The outside light flicked on, an old incandescent bulb inside a glass and tin cover. There was a pause, and then Fremont spoke through the closed door.
“Ross Carver?”
“That’s right, Dave.”
“The hell do you want?”
“To hire you.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“A friend.”
Fremont switched off the light, then twisted the deadbolt and slid the chain off its catch. He opened the door and stepped out. His hair was whiter than it had been the last time Carver had seen him, and there was less of it. But he was still a big man, taller than Carver and heavier than Carver and Mia combined.
>
“You’re still lifting weights, I guess,” Carver said. When Fremont just looked down at him, his back resting against the door, Carver added, “Aren’t you going to ask us in?”
“I let clients in,” Fremont said. “And I let my friends in. Speaking of, no hard feelings about Tipton. Right?”
“None from me,” Carver said. “You caught them, and they deserved what they got.”
“And since when did the SFPD hire me?”
“It’s not the department. This is just me. I’m suspended—as of last night.”
“Suspended? You?”
“Jenner, too.”
“You should get a lawyer,” Fremont said. “For the hearing. You need a name?”
“If they have a hearing, I’ll talk to the union guys and see what they say. I know your guy must’ve been good.”
If Fremont noticed the dig, he didn’t show it.
“What do you mean, if? They’ve got to give you a hearing. You should talk to the union now.”
“Later, maybe. But I need your help first. Actually, I’m here because of Tipton—you still making those recordings?”
Fremont nodded. “It’ll cost you.”
“I didn’t expect favors,” Carver said. He’d stopped at an ATM on the way, and his wallet was as fat as he’d felt it in a long time. “How much?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“Twelve hours. Last Thursday night, starting at six, into Friday morning. How much for that?”
“For all districts?”
“Southern, Central, Park, and Northern.”
Fremont looked at Carver and then glanced at Mia, trying to gauge how much this was worth to them. There were no set prices in this market.
“A thousand.”
“Five hundred.”
“Seven fifty,” Fremont said. “That’s final.”
Carver put out his hand and they shook.
“Now can we come in?”
“You’re still not a client. Not till you give me the cash.”
Fremont left them on a coffee-stained couch in his living room while he went into his bedroom to transfer the recording files onto Carver’s memory card. Mia looked around the little room, taking it in. There was a weight bench against one of the wood-paneled walls, facing a TV mounted close enough to the ceiling that Fremont would be able to see it from his back while doing presses. The kitchen was just a sideboard in the rear of the room. A little sink, with barely enough counter space next to it to hold a hotplate. Her gaze paused at the shelf above the sink. It was made of unfinished pine, and had twenty-five bottles of Kinclaith scotch whiskey on it, all but one of them unopened. She looked at them for a moment, then turned back to Carver.
“Who’s Tipton?” she whispered.
“A kid, went to trial two years ago for shooting a store clerk. He was probably good for it, but he walked.”
“Because of —” She lowered her voice to nothing, and glanced toward the bedroom.
Carver nodded. He remembered everything about the trial, especially the look on Fremont’s face when he took the stand.
“Tipton’s lawyer thought one of our guys was lying—this kid from patrol testified in the preliminary hearing that he saw Tipton go into the store five minutes before the shooting. Said he recognized him from a prior, so he remembered it. The lawyer heard it and called bullshit. But she didn’t cross him at the preliminary.”
“Because she didn’t have anything yet,” Mia said.
“That’s right—but before trial, she subpoenaed transcripts of the dispatch tapes. They didn’t disprove anything. The cop could’ve been there, could’ve seen what he claimed.”
“I don’t get it. How’s that —”
“Because she didn’t believe what she saw on the transcript any more than she believed the cop,” Carver said. “So she hired Fremont, because she knew he recorded the scanner feeds. And his recording wasn’t doctored. It put the officer on the other side of town, serving a no-knock warrant. Exactly when Tipton was supposed to be pulling the trigger.”
“They changed the transcript?” Mia asked. “They didn’t think his lawyer could find her own copy?”
It still shamed him, just thinking about it. As he’d watched his case fall apart, he’d realized that the men above him had known all along. They’d fed him a lying witness and a garbage transcript, and when they got caught, he was the only man from the SFPD standing in front of a camera.
“We looked so bad, it didn’t matter how guilty Tipton was. The jury acquitted him to convict us.”
“You know he wasn’t guilty,” Fremont said, coming out of the bedroom. “Or why’d they do it?”
Carver stood up, pointing to Fremont’s closed left hand.
“That it?”
“Twelve hours, starting Thursday night,” Fremont said. He tossed the memory card in the air and caught it, palm down. “You don’t find what you’re looking for, come back and we’ll deal.”
Fremont gave Carver the memory card.
“You didn’t say why you got suspended,” Fremont said.
“And I won’t,” Carver answered. “Thanks for this.”
Mia followed him to the door.
They were driving back to their building, rolling east down Lincoln with the park a dark blur to their left. The streets were busier and better lit as they came deeper into the city.
“Do you know Kinclaith?” Mia asked. “What Fremont had in there?”
“I know it’s a scotch.”
“It’s what they call a silent still,” she said. “The distillery’s gone, so whatever’s left gets more valuable any time someone takes a sip. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“You know a lot about scotch?”
“My husband knew scotch.”
“Okay.”
He wasn’t sure what else to say, or where she was taking this. He wanted to know more about her husband, what he might have had to do with Mia’s decision three months ago to cloister herself in an apartment. Haunting the lobby, peeking out at the street from the windows without ever going outside. But he didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is those things are valuable. A bottle of Kinclaith might go for ten thousand dollars. More, maybe. We might’ve just seen the entire world supply of Kinclaith on a homemade shelf in a garage apartment in the Outer Sunset. An ex-cop who takes work sometimes as a PI but looks like he’s scratching for it—and he’s got his retirement tied up in scotch. Does he have something going on the side?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then you have to question his financial decisions.”
He understood what she was getting at, but his mind went first to his own cabinets and closets. There were watches he never wore, bottles of bourbon that belonged in a railroad magnate’s library but not in a police inspector’s kitchen. A year ago he had sold his parents’ wedding rings for the weight of their gold; he couldn’t remember what he’d bought with the money. It had seemed important at the time.
“What are you thinking about, Ross?” she asked, quietly.
“Sleeping.”
“You just woke up.”
“I know.”
He thought she might invite him in, or ask to come into his apartment so she could listen to the radio calls with him. But she didn’t. Instead, when they got to the space between their front doors, she took his hand in hers and then held their interlaced fingers against his chest. She leaned up and kissed his cheek.
“Thank you, Ross,” she said, drawing away without releasing his hand. “I’m glad I came.”
“Should I —”
“Yes,” she said. “Knock tomorrow.”
“All right.”
She let go of him and unlocked her door. He didn’t turn to his own apartment until she was gone.
13
CARVER PUT THE memory card into his computer, opened the file, and hit play. He turned up the volume and switched the fee
d to the wireless speakers so the audio would play in every room of the apartment. Then he went into the kitchen and put coffee on to brew. The dispatcher on duty sounded young, but she spoke calmly and patiently, moving officers throughout the city to keep up with an incident board that only she could see. She was busy, but she was good, and he could tell the squads liked her for it.
It sounded like the beginning of any other night in the city. A homeless person on the corner of Post and Mason was trying to burn passersby with a lit cigarette. Dispatch sent a foot patrolman. A man outside a bar on Columbus had cornered a woman in the doorway of the abandoned liquor store next door and was badgering her for money and sex. The dispatcher sent a radio car and noted that the victim was not a 647b—it shouldn’t matter if the victim was a prostitute or a schoolgirl, but the dispatcher knew her job. She could get patrol moving.
After two hours, the young dispatcher wished everyone a good night and signed off, and a new woman came on the air. Her voice was different but her demeanor was the same, and the night plowed forward, each incident reported and recorded over the radio. The hours grew stranger—and more dangerous. Carver made a second pot of coffee and listened as dispatch sent units to an armed robbery on Russian Hill, to a smash-and-grab in Japantown, to a stabbing at Embarcadero and Market. In the Stockton Tunnel, a naked man with a wooden club was blocking both lanes of traffic and shouting in a language no one understood.
After three hours, he heard Houston’s voice for the first time.
“Adam-Five-David—we are ten-seven-M at one fifty-seven Columbus.”
“Adam-Five-David, ten-four,” the dispatcher responded.
They were calling in their dinner break, which reminded him he hadn’t eaten in hours. He went back into the study with his coffee and paused the recording, then called an Italian delivery service he sometimes used. After he ordered, he hung up and called Glenn, asked him to ring up when his food arrived.
For the next half hour, he listened to the dispatcher run the board. Adam-5-David called in toward the end of that time, reporting a 10-8. Their meal was done and they were back in service. The dispatcher sent them up to Nob Hill to monitor a crowd gathering outside the Fairmont Hotel.
The Night Market Page 12
