Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

by Julie Smith

  “I know the cops are still looking for you,” I said. “Have you come for legal advice about what to do?”

  “Art said you wouldn’t give me any bum steers.”

  “I hope not. But there really isn’t much choice about this situation. Any lawyer will tell you the same thing.”

  “Give myself up.”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I know. You ain’t the first lawyer I been to—went to my old one first.”

  “And he gave you the same advice?”

  “Yeah. Also, he acted like I was going to pull a knife on him. Couldn’t wait to get me out of his office.”

  I winced, thinking I might have acted much the same way if the Trapper hadn’t been on the phone to Rob while Lou Zimbardo was sitting in my office.

  “Art said you wouldn’t be like that.”

  I smiled, feeling like a fraud. “I’ll try not to be.” Kruzick came in with the coffee, rather spoiling the whole effect of safety I was working on by staring first at me, then at Lou, then back at me again, like a Doberman trying to decide whether its mistress is about to be raped and mutilated. I would have been touched if the timing hadn’t been so bad. “Before you call the cops—”

  “I’m not going to call the cops unless you want me to.”

  “Okay, okay. Before you throw me out, then—could I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “It ain’t me that’s doing all this.”

  “You know something? I believe you.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I do, actually. But I want to hear your story before we talk about that.”

  He looked hunted and trapped, as if that was a worse idea than going back to prison. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about the restaurant on the night of the poisonings. What did you see?”

  He shrugged. “People getting sick.”

  “What did you do when you saw people start to get sick?”

  “Panicked.”

  “Uh-huh. And then what?”

  “I left.”

  “You left. How’d you do that?”

  “There’s a side door.”

  “Did you leave by the side door?”

  “I said I did.”

  “Funny, I didn’t hear you say that.”

  “It’s what I meant.”

  I stopped and counted to ten, mentally, very fast. I was beginning not to like this guy at all—he seemed about as interested in telling his own story, keeping his own hide from coming to grief, as I am normally interested in the Super Bowl. In fact, he seemed to have about as much life to him as a dead battery. And I figured he had a lot in common with one. He’d used up all the juice in himself—or someone had used it up for him. The fact that he seemed rude and sullen might not have anything to do with what he was really like—the older brother Art had known as a child—and I was a spoiled brat if I couldn’t remember that and do my job properly. I swallowed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t understand. It’s important for you to be as clear as possible about your story. Okay, you left by the side door. And went where?”

  “I walked.”

  “You walked. Back to your apartment?” I knew, of course, that he hadn’t, as I’d been there with his brother and Rob that night; but I thought if I gave him some guidance—something to push against—it might help.

  “Thought you were there that night.”

  Wrong approach. “Not all night. I thought maybe you were there before or after.”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Where did you go, then?”

  He shrugged again. “I just walked.”

  “All night?”

  “Almost.”

  “What did you do after you finished walking?”

  “Slept for a while.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Doorway, I think.”

  “I see. And where have you been staying all week?” I was shocked saying it—the disaster at Full Fathom Five had happened on a Friday and this was Thursday. Fear had stalked for nearly a week now. It was getting to be a way of life. “Doorways. Stuff like that. Around.”

  “Have you been in touch with Art at all?”

  Art shook his head, clearly distressed and growing nearly as impatient as I was. Lou said: “No. Not till after I saw that other guy.”

  “What other guy?”

  “Other lawyer.”

  He sounded at the end of his rope. Looking at Art, I saw the pain in his eyes. He knew Lou wouldn’t have called him if he’d had any other options.

  “All right, where are they?” It was a loud threatening voice from Alan’s reception area.

  Lou got up and ran to the window, looking for a way out. Alan buzzed me. “Miss Schwartz, a couple of—uh—chaps are here to see you.”

  Chaps, not gentlemen—as if I didn’t know already who was out there. “Tell Inspectors Martinez and Curry I’ll be right out.”

  But the door slammed open, knocking a hunk out of my nice paint. The chaps had their guns drawn. “You have no right to come in here,” I said, but my words were drowned out by Martinez.

  He was saying, “Lou Zimbardo, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney…”

  When they’d dragged him away, Art let his eyes smolder at me. He said: “Please help me.” Not even, “Rebecca, please help me,” or “Please help my brother.” Just the three simplest words that said what he wanted. I wanted to take him in my lap and rock him.

  I sent him home. Then I phoned Martinez and left a message. After that, I phoned Rob and filled him in. He, of course, had just left a message for Martinez as well, intending to tell him about the Trapper’s latest call, in which he claimed to have caused the cable car accident. The call had come through the switchboard and been transferred to the city desk before coming to Rob—all of Rob’s callers who didn’t use his extension were being treated this way now—just in case. And now the case had arisen. The time of the call had indeed been noted—and by someone other than Rob. That was good. What wasn’t so good was that there was no way to prove that Rob’s caller had been the Trapper.

  * * *

  Naturally, I got the bail machinery in motion right away, but the case against Lou looked awful. Which meant the D.A. must be rubbing his hands together in glee. What looked awful to me had to look terrific to him. It was this way: The night of the poisonings at Full Fathom Five, when the cops searched Lou’s flophouse room, they found the gun that had killed Sanchez. And, ominously, a book on bomb making. Martinez had also turned up another neat little circumstantial piece: It seemed that Lou Zimbardo, before taking up residence in San Quentin, had been a cable car gripman; in other words, one of the few people in the world who might know how to wreck a cable car. On learning that, I hopped into my gray Volvo and pointed it toward the Hall of Justice.

  Lou seemed more sullen than ever, and my heart sank. But could I blame him? The man had just gotten out of the joint and now it looked as if he was almost certainly on his way back—for six or eight decades, maybe, if he lived that long. A most unfortunate situation if one were innocent—and I believed he was—but maybe it wasn’t my problem.

  I started out with the basics. “Lou, do you want me to represent you?”

  He looked as if I’d whacked him with my briefcase. “Don’t you want to? I thought you thought I was innocent.”

  “I do.” I told him why, hoping it would make him open up. In a modest way, it worked. He closed his eyes and let his body sag back against the chair, as if the knowledge that one person in the world thought him innocent, and not because that person was his brother, but because there was actually some reason to believe him innocent, was all he’d ever wanted out of life. That gave me a lot of power; it also made me more vulnerable than anything else he could have done. I realized that I’d be his lawyer, not just till he could get another one, but all the way, if he really wanted me to. My parents h
ad raised me to have a social conscience and I still had it; this man was getting a bum rap and I didn’t want it to happen. I seized my temporary advantage.

  “Lou, do you really want me to represent you?”

  This time he nodded. “I don’t want no other lawyer.”

  “Okay. I’ll do the best I can. Let’s shake on it.” We did, and then I continued: “But you’re going to have to help me. You might have learned to keep your mouth shut in the joint, but you’re going back if you don’t start learning to talk, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Say it, please.”

  “Okay.”

  “How about, ‘Okay, Rebecca’?”

  “Okay, Rebecca.” He smiled. He was pleased, as I thought he’d be, that I wanted to be called by my first name.

  “Okay, Lou. You know the cops found the gun that killed Sanchez in your room?”

  “They’ve mentioned it once or twice.”

  “How’d it get there?”

  He shrugged.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  He stared at me, and I was looking at a desperate man. “I don’t know.” It was almost a whine. “I don’t have a gun. Never have.”

  “What were you in prison for?”

  “Assault.” He lowered his eyes, sullen again.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It wasn’t like this. I did it.”

  “Lou, could you tell me about it, please?” I spoke a little sharply, just to get my point across.

  And Mr. Leave-Me-Alone-Sister-I-Don’t-Need-You-Or- Anybody-Else started sobbing. I didn’t want to wait till it was over, knowing I’d lose some of the momentum I’d finally got going.

  “Tell me,” I said again, as gently as I could.

  And finally, he did, as if he’d been dying to tell someone for the last few years. “My wife left me.”

  I nodded encouragement.

  “It hit me hard; real hard, man. See, I didn’t think I’d miss her. I guess I sort of took her for granted. But then, all of a sudden she wasn’t there. She left me for another guy, see? Like… I don’t know. It just hit me real hard.

  “One night on the cable car there were all these drunks, singing and acting out of hand.”

  “Violent?”

  “No. Just loud. They get like that sometimes—you just have to put up with it. But my nerves were raw, man. I couldn’t take it worth a damn.”

  “So you told them to be quiet.”

  “Hell, no, you can’t do that. I didn’t do nothin’. I mean I didn’t do nothin’ till this other drunk starts getting abusive. See, he wasn’t with the group that was singing. He was pissed off about the singing and feeling sorry for himself, so he tries to get me to make them stop.”

  “And you told him it was a free country.”

  “Yeah. So then he starts getting abusive.”

  “What did he say?”

  Lou had more or less stopped crying, but now his eyes filled again. “He says, ‘I lost my wife, man. I lost my wife, and it’s your goddamn fault. It’s your fault, man; if you guys would do something about this kind of crap like you’re supposed to, do your goddamn jobs properly, I wouldna’ lost my goddamn wife.’”

  “Sounds exactly like a drunk rambling.”

  “Yeah, it does now. But, man, at the time it pushed all my buttons. See, I’d lost my wife, and now here were these drunks driving me crazy when I felt so low and he’s blaming me not only for the drunks, which are driving me out of my own fucking mind, but not only that, he says it’s my fault he lost his goddamn wife. You know what I mean? It pushed all my goddamn buttons.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I ordered him off the cable car.”

  “And then?”

  “He wouldn’t get off; just kept laying the same trip on me.”

  “So you hit him.”

  “Yeah, man, I hit him. I remember hitting him once, but I don’t remember nothin’ after that. Except things turned red.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know that expression, right? Seeing red. Well, it happened to me. It’s no joke, man. Everything turned red for me after I hit him and I don’t remember another goddamn thing.”

  I was beginning to have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “I kept hitting him, they told me later. Fractured his goddamn skull. The drunks had to sober up and pull me off of him or I guess I’d of killed him. They said I was beating his head against the concrete. But I don’t remember a goddamn thing about it. Just everything went red and then some people were holding me, waiting for the cops. I went nuts for a while, you know? My buttons got pushed.”

  “Did the guy recover okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. Testified against me. You know what? I didn’t hardly recognize him. He looked like some guy I’d never seen before in my life. I didn’t want to hurt him, man—we were just two guys on the wrong cable car at the wrong time. I’ve felt awful about it ever since. If there was anything I could do for him, I would.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Guy named Les Mathison.”

  “I like the name.”

  “You like the name? You’re my goddamn lawyer and all you can say is you like the name of the guy I beat up? What’s so great about the guy’s goddamn name?”

  “It sounds like ‘Lou.’ And also ‘Lee.’ ” I told him about Terry Yannarelli, who had been told the first name of the Trapper and had promptly forgotten it, just, I suspected, as he forgot the names of his sex partners.

  I was ready to call it a day as soon as I checked a couple of other points. “Sanchez was killed on Saturday, the night before Easter. Were you doing anything special that night? Seeing Art or anything? Maybe seeing a girlfriend?”

  “No. I don’t have no girlfriend and Art works Saturdays. I don’t know nobody else.”

  “Then what were you doing?”

  He shrugged. “Same thing as always. Watching television.”

  “Do you remember what you saw?”

  “Hell, no; it all runs together.”

  “Was that all you did that night? Watched television?”

  He brightened. “Probably not. It was Saturday, man. Once in a while on Saturday—I mean the few Saturdays since I been out—I treat myself to a few beers.”

  “Great. Where do you usually go?”

  “Different places. I’m looking for a place to hang out.”

  “So where were you that night?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Well, I want you to think about it, Lou. It might be extremely important.” I was stern, like a schoolmarm. Extremely important wasn’t the half of it. If I could find someone who saw him at the same time the Trapper was at the Yellow Parrot, I might have the beginnings of a defense.

  “Rebecca, tell me something.”

  “Sure.”

  “When you went out to ask for the coffee, did you tell your guy to call the cops?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how’d they know how to find me?”

  It was a question I’d been dreading. “They had Art’s phone tapped.” He looked down at his lap. That had to be a hard thing to learn for a man who clearly hated to ask for help as much as this one did.

  “Listen, Lou, I’m going to try to turn it to our advantage. You came to me because you wanted to turn yourself in, didn’t you?”

  I held my breath; I’d certainly been leading the witness—I hoped he’d pick up the lead.

  He gave me one of his shrugs. “Yeah. Why else?” Not only was it the right answer, I was pretty sure he meant it. “That should help us in the bail hearing.”

  But it didn’t. The city of San Francisco wanted blood, and Lou Zimbardo’s would do as nicely as anyone else’s. Bail was denied.

  11

  Chris and I kicked the thing around over a couple of glasses of wine. I had a very nasty little theory and I wanted to see how it hit her.

  “Tell me the truth. Do you think he’s guilty?” />
  “Rebecca, I know he’s a loner who doesn’t like to ask people for help. But he’s bound to have at least one friend—someone he could have gotten to call Rob when he was in your office. Or Art could have gotten someone to do it.”

  “Neither of them seems to have the guile for it.”

  “If Pigball’s the Trapper…”

  “Lou.”

  “…that’s the least guileful stunt he’s pulled—if you can call multiple murder a stunt.”

  “I just don’t think he did it.”

  “A good thing, too. You’re his lawyer.”

  “But do you really think he’s guilty?”

  “One thing—if the Trapper struck again, I’d think twice about it.”

  I shuddered. “Look. Suppose Lou isn’t the Trapper and yet the Trapper doesn’t strike again. Doesn’t it seem strange that he hasn’t already? After all, the three incidents came within a few days of each other. It’s been a week now and not a peep out of the Trapper. Which, of course, argues that Lou’s the bad guy. But suppose he isn’t. What would you think is going on? The Trapper seemed so proud of himself: Why wouldn’t he at least let Rob know he’s still out there?”

  “I have a hard time stretching that far. After all, Lou has good reason to have a grudge against the city—at least I think a twisted mind could see it that way. Lou knows enough about cable cars to have caused the crash—and what could be better poetic justice for that same twisted mind? And it was Lou’s restaurant where the poisonings took place.”

  “Yes, but how does the man on the cross fit in?”

  She drained her glass and shrugged. “The D.A.’s not asking that question.”

  “Right. But that’s because he doesn’t have to, to satisfy a jury. Nonetheless, the logical mind must ask it.”