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

by Julie Smith

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry! Not half as sorry as I am.” He stepped back from me. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I hadn’t the wit not to repeat myself. “I guess the timing wasn’t right.”

  “With everyone against you like this, and such a weak case and all—and that D.A.’s really doing a terrific job—”

  “Shut up!” I’m afraid I spoke a little more loudly than necessary. But by now I’d begun to notice him as Jeff again and the fury I hadn’t felt before had worked its way to the surface—that and a new batch.

  “Rebecca, there’s no need to raise your voice. I assure you my intentions were perfectly benign.”

  I said again, “I’m sorry.” Back in the same old rut.

  “I’m sure you’re not really a bad person—even an ungrateful person—just the sort who cracks under pressure. Maybe you’re not as strong as I thought you were. So I misjudged you—it’s my loss. I thought you were somebody I could really have a relationship with. All this time I’ve been thinking about you—I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I should have known when I heard you were defending this guy that I’d gotten stars in my eyes. That should have been a clue.”

  “A clue to what?”

  “Even before that—when I found out you were dating that newspaper guy—I should have realized that underneath the Superwoman image you’re really just another California loser.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Listen, don’t take it personally. It’s this state—it does something to people. Even Jews. You can’t help what you are”

  “Being a loser, you mean.”

  He shrugged.

  “But I gave some other impression before.”

  “You seemed sort of competent—on the surface.”

  “Did you say I had a Superwoman image?”

  “Not Superwoman, exactly. Just sort of superficially—”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “Sorry things turned out this way.”

  He left, imagining, I suppose, that he’d leveled me. But in a small way he’d made my day, as we say in California. I couldn’t get him to repeat the remark that was balm to my battered ears, but I like to think that the things people really mean come out under duress. I might not be Liz Hughes, but maybe I could fool some of the people some of the time.

  “Rebecca! Have you heard from Dad?” Mickey had come barreling in while I was congratulating myself. “Where’s Alan?”

  “Alan’s still at lunch, I think, but it’s nearly two. He ought to be back in a few minutes. And I just talked to Dad. Why—what’s up?”

  “You haven’t heard about the bridge?”

  “Mickey, you must be the only person in all of San Francisco who doesn’t listen to a news broadcast at least once a hour.”

  “I was just on my way to a late lunch when I heard some people talking about it. I heard twenty people were killed.”

  “No one was killed; Daddy was hardly inconvenienced—he played poker on the freeway.”

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t really think anything was wrong.”

  “You know what I did when I heard? Tried to drive to the accident.”

  She sighed. “We’re our mother’s daughters.”

  “Not really. Mom said she would strongly have advised me not to go there.”

  Mickey laughed. “As long as I’m here, have you had lunch yet?”

  “I’m starving.”

  A heaping spinach salad—one with lots of bacon—fixed me up. “I just got told I’m a loser by a guy who flew up from L.A. so I could cry on his shoulder.”

  “And did you?”

  “He’s going to have a great-granddaddy of a cleaning bill—as Chris would say.”

  “Whizbang.”

  “What?”

  “She’d really say ‘great-granddaddy of a whizbang.’”

  “So how’re you feeling?”

  “Fine. How about you?”

  “Awful. Rob’s disappeared.” I told her the whole story. “The Trapper didn’t get him,” she said. “Rob doesn’t know any more than you do. Why not kill you, too?”

  “He tried. I got mugged a while back.” And I told her that story.

  She said, “Pretty inept for a multiple murderer.”

  “Sometimes he’s not really all that slick. He caused the bridge pileup by throwing a rock.”

  “Simple. But undeniably effective. I think he does fine when he puts his mind to it. So he must not have really wanted to kill you. Or else you were mugged by a common thug.”

  “Maybe. But about Rob. You think Les really has no motive for killing him?”

  “Oh, he might. But he always moves fast—does the job, then claims credit. Or ‘responsibility’ as the newspapers say. He called you and didn’t say a word about Rob; ergo, he didn’t kill him.”

  I didn’t think it was quite that simple. The Trapper might have killed Rob. Still, Mickey had put the thing in perspective. He hadn’t necessarily done it. I felt better. “So if he isn’t dead, where is he?”

  “Same place he always is when he disappears—on a story.”

  “But he’s on leave.”

  “It doesn’t mean he’s off the story.”

  The ramifications of that sent me into a new depression. When I got back, there was a glass bowl on Kruzick’s desk. In the bowl was a large, nasty-looking rock, smeared with ketchup. Kruzick had affixed a typewritten label to the bowl: “Exhibit Z.”

  “I found the weapon,” said my faithful amanuensis.

  “Not funny, Alan. Distinctly not funny.”

  “Hey, listen. The ‘Z’ isn’t for Zimbardo. Honest. Chosen at random, you know what I mean?”

  “I’m not in the mood, Alan.”

  “Just trying to help. But listen, I’ve got another idea—in case you lose. I mean, you and I know that’s impossible, of course, but just in the slight eventuality. You could become a best-selling author. In fact, maybe you and Lou could collaborate. How’s this: The Tourist Trapper’s Guide to Scenic San Francisco… It could have, maybe, a little pop-up cable car, and when you open the book to the right page, not only does the cable car pop up, but little paper dolls spill out of it, you know? And then there’s the spin-offs. We could sell vials labeled ‘Paralytic Shellfish Toxin,’ and maybe some ‘Relics of the True Cross of Mount Davidson.’”

  “Alan, you’re fired.”

  “Hey, boss, you’re young yet. By real loose standards, I mean. It’s never too late to start a new career.”

  I ignored him, stalking in a dignified manner into my office and deeply regretting having thought well of him for half an hour several months ago.

  “You’re going to need a business manager.”

  I slammed my door.

  18

  Dad was already in court when I arrived the next day, wearing a tie with only one spot on it and looking ready for anything. I hoped he was—today Liz was scheduled to present the most damaging part of her case. The first witness was a man named George Henderson, manager of Full Fathom Five.

  “Mr. Henderson,” said Liz, “have you ever seen the defendant before?”

  “Yes. He worked in the kitchen at the restaurant for three days last April.”

  “Did anything out of the ordinary happen during those three days?”

  “On the third day, we inadvertently served quarantined mussels to some of our customers. Eleven people became ill, and of those, one died.”

  “Had you bought any local mussels during the previous few days?”

  “I hadn’t bought any in a month because of the quarantine. We’re very careful to use only eastern mussels if there’s any danger at all. In fact, we don’t even buy many of those when there’s a quarantine because fewer people order them then.”

  “When did you last see Mr. Zimbardo?”

  “He was there the night of the tragedy. But I don’t remember seeing him after people started getting sick.”

  “He left the re
staurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did any of the other employees leave the restaurant?”

  “No. They helped me take care of people until the paramedics came. Some of them helped calm people down. I don’t even think any customers left—everyone was kind of—uh—paralyzed.”

  A nervous titter rippled throughout the courtroom.

  “Did Mr. Zimbardo have access to the refrigerator where the mussels were kept?”

  “Yes.”

  “No further questions.”

  “Mr. Henderson,” I asked, “did anyone else have access to that refrigerator?”

  “All the employees did.”

  “How do the kitchen employees dress?”

  “In white. With white hats.”

  “Do you ever find it difficult to tell them apart—at a distance, say?”

  Henderson’s hands twitched. “Not particularly.”

  “From the back?”

  “They look fairly similar from the back.”

  “If someone had come into the kitchen dressed as an employee on the night of the shellfish poisonings, is it possible he or she wouldn’t have been noticed?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Were you very busy that night?”

  “Extremely.”

  “So an imposter might have gone unnoticed?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Mr. Henderson, do you pride yourself on fine service at your restaurant?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Would you say that most of your employees are very wrapped up in their jobs?”

  “They wouldn’t last a week if they weren’t.”

  I sat down, but Liz got up again: “Did you see a stranger in the kitchen the night of the poisonings?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did any of your employees report seeing one?”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I said to Dad, “Pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

  “It could have been worse.” He paused. “And it’s going to be.”

  The next scheduled witness was the medical examiner, then some doctors who’d taken care of the victims, and after that the big guns—an expert on paralytic shellfish poisoning, one of the surviving victims, and Mrs. Baskett, the wife of the man who died. “You take everybody but the last two,” said Dad. “I’ll do the victims.”

  The coroner’s man and the doctors were fairly technical, but the expert was another matter altogether. Dr. Dan Ervin was a physician who worked for the State Department of Health Services, a distinguished white-haired chap who looked as if he ought to smoke a pipe.

  For about ten minutes, Liz led him through the steps of his career, establishing his expertise on the subject of mussel neurotoxin. Then she got down to it: “Dr. Ervin, what causes paralytic shellfish poisoning?”

  “The substance is called saxitoxin. It’s produced by a land of plankton—a dinoflagellate that goes under the name of Gonyaulax catenella.”

  “Do shellfish feed on the plankton?”

  “Yes. Mussels are filter feeders; they concentrate what is in the water in their digestive systems.”

  “They’re not selective about what they eat?”

  “No. If the plankton is in what we call a ‘bloom’ stage, there’ll be a lot of plankton in their systems. If the level of toxin is eighty micrograms, then it has reached the alert standard.” Ervin crossed his legs and laid an elegant hand on the top knee. “But that’s well below the level at which people get sick; they develop real symptoms at a thousand micrograms. When it gets into the multi-thousands, then people begin to get seriously sick. Last spring we measured twenty thousand micrograms at Drake’s Estero—just north of Stinson Beach.”

  Liz was quiet for a moment, letting it sink in. Finally she said, “Twenty thousand micrograms!”

  The doctor nodded. Liz said: “If one mussel in a given area had that much toxin in it, would it follow that most of the others in the area would?”

  “It would vary with the size of the mussel, of course.”

  “But if you gathered mussels at Drake’s Estero last spring, you’d have been almost certain to gather—”

  “—a very deadly harvest,” finished the doctor.

  “Do the effects vary with each individual who eats mussels contaminated with the toxin?”

  “Yes. They vary with the number of mussels eaten, the size of the mussels, the concentration of the toxin, and the individual’s tolerance. People who eat a lot of shellfish tend to have more tolerance.”

  “Such as Bay Area natives.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Would you say that tourists would be particularly vulnerable to the effects of the toxin?”

  “Undoubtedly, if they came from inland areas. Unless, of course, they had their mussels flown in from one of the coasts, as restaurants do. But a tourist like that probably wouldn’t be at Pier 39.” He got a laugh on that one.

  “Dr. Ervin, why is it that the mussels are only dangerous at certain times?”

  “We don’t know, really. Our educated guess is that environmental factors come together to produce favorable growing conditions for the plankton. Sunny periods with calm seas, for instance, may be healthy for them. But no one knows for sure. So far we’ve had no luck in trying to predict the contamination, except from May 1 to October 31; that’s the normal quarantine.”

  “Is it unusual to have a mussel quarantine in April?”

  “It’s not common but it happens. It’s not impossible we might even have a quarantine in January. It’s simply related to how much of the plankton is available.”

  Liz sat down abruptly. I got up with a sigh, ready to play one of the games lawyers play. She hadn’t asked a word about the symptoms, so that the drama could come from the victims, the doctor who’d attended them, and the people who’d watched them get sick. It was up to me to take the sting out of the testimony to come. “Dr. Ervin,” I began, “is the shellfish neurotoxin a fast-acting poison?”

  “Very fast. It acts within minutes.”

  “How does the poison work?”

  “It acts on the human central nervous system, eventually causing a respiratory paralysis that makes it impossible to get air into the body.”

  I took him through the poison’s progress, symptom by symptom, and then asked, “Is there an antidote for it?”

  “Not an antidote. But there is a cure.”

  “And what is the cure?”

  “An iron lung.” Damn him, he got another laugh. He had an ironic delivery that could turn the simplest statement into black humor.

  “Is the paralysis reversible?”

  “Yes. If you can keep a victim breathing, he’ll probably be all right.”

  “You’ve studied the cases from Full Fathom Five?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And is that what happened?”

  “In six of the eleven cases, yes. Mr. Baskett didn’t respond to treatment. But six people were easily revived, and four had eaten only one or two or three of the mussels—they had seen other people get sick, had begun having symptoms themselves, and had stopped eating. They were not seriously ill.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  When the judge called the morning recess, I headed for the ladies’ room to wash my sweaty hands. The previous two had been damaging enough, but Liz’s next miracle was twenty-three-year-old Alice Jones, the very picture of Pepsi-generation wholesomeness. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, and a slight Oklahoma twang. She’d been in San Francisco on her honeymoon when she’d found herself in a restaurant suddenly transformed into a Bosch landscape; I was awfully glad I didn’t have to cross-examine her.

  Liz went through the honeymoon business (establishing that though the witness had ordered mussels, her new husband had had a perfectly harmless fillet of sole), and then asked Alice if she’d seen anything unusual that night.

  “My mussels had just come,” said Alice, “and Bob and I
were talking about what color to paint the house. I ate one and then stopped for a minute to listen to Bob; he had some art courses in school and knows a lot about color. Bob wanted to paint the trim terra-cotta and cobalt blue. I wasn’t sure exactly what color that was—the blue, that is—and it kind of gave me the creeps. Cobalt, I mean—it’s sort of dangerous or something”—she looked confused—“at least I thought so. My fingers started to tingle. I thought it was my imagination at first; but Bob took both my hands and held them—kissed them, you know. Then he said, ‘Your mussels are getting cold.’ So I picked up my fork, but I dropped it—I didn’t know why, I just couldn’t seem to hold it. I was going to ask the waiter for another, but then someone got up and started walking—toward the men’s room, I guess—and he was staggering; we thought he was drunk. He fell down and some people went to help him, and then I heard a scream—”

  Liz asked, “Was it a woman who screamed?”

  “Yes. I looked and saw she was flinging her hands about, as if she were shaking water off them—” Here, Alice demonstrated. “She was yelling something about electricity. I got real scared then, because that was the way my fingers felt—like I’d gotten a shock, or maybe hit my crazy bone. I started to feel sick.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I told Bob I was going to throw up. I knew I ought to go to the ladies’ room, but I was too scared to move. The woman at the next table, who’d just been sitting there up till then, all of a sudden fell out of her chair.”

  “In a faint?”

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t like that. She moved her chair back and tried to get out of it, but—I don’t know, it just seemed as if she’d lost her balance or something. She kind of fell over on her side. Bob went to help her, but she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her. She couldn’t get up at all, so finally her husband and Bob helped her lie down.”

  “Let’s reiterate a minute,” said Liz. “At this point, a man and a woman had collapsed and another woman was screaming about electric shock. You yourself were experiencing tingling and loss of coordination—”

  “And nausea,” said Alice.

  “And nausea. How would you describe the overall scene in the restaurant at that point?”