Cook's Night Out

by Joanne Pence

  “When I heard you’d be here, Klaw, I just couldn’t keep away,” Paavo said, his gaze cold as ice.

  “Let me get that for you,” Klaw said abruptly. He pulled out a thick roll of money and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” he said to the barman as he tossed the money down.

  “Why bother to gamble here, Klaw?” Paavo said. “Isn’t the mission good enough for you?”

  Klaw blinked rapidly, then his eyes narrowed. “You’ve got it wrong, Smith. The mission is exactly what it looks like, or will look like after the auction.”

  Klaw’s mention of the auction was a surprise—Paavo hadn’t thought it could matter enough for him to remember it. “It doesn’t look like anything much to me.”

  Klaw smirked. “Very observant, Smith. It’s a plaything for wealthy men and women who don’t have anything better to do than volunteer work. What makes it so appealing is that it’s supposedly for a good cause but the volunteers don’t have to get their hands dirty. You wouldn’t want your little Angie to get her hands dirty, now would you?”

  “You’re there, Klaw. That pollutes it as far as I’m concerned,” Paavo said. “But you won’t be there much longer.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Smith.” He chuckled. “Not with all the troubles of your own you’ve got to deal with. Murder charges against cops don’t get swept under the rug in this town. They’re taken seriously. Very seriously.”

  Klaw’s statement confirmed Paavo’s suspicion about his involvement. The events had happened so recently, Klaw couldn’t have known about them otherwise. Paavo hadn’t even mentioned it yet to Angie. He didn’t want to spoil this evening for her. She loved to dress up and go dancing, and even though tonight’s date was basically to see what Klaw was up to, he could still pretend, for her sake, that it was a special date.

  “You’re wondering how I found out, aren’t you? I’ll tell you, I know a lot. Enough to give you some advice. You should worry, Smith. Your whole career’s going to hell. Soon, you’ll be a nothing.”

  Paavo’s voice turned low and deadly. “I’ll still be enough to put you exactly where I want you, Klaw.”

  Klaw’s cheek muscles twitched convulsively. Abruptly, he turned and walked toward the exit. Van Warren appeared from nowhere, joined him, and they left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Paavo rang the bell to Peewee’s mother’s flat. To his surprise, Peewee himself opened the door. He peered nervously past Paavo and Yosh toward the street, then met their eyes. “What do you two want?”

  “We want to talk,” Paavo said. He and Yosh still had a job to do: Sarah Ann Cribbs was still dead, and her killer walked around a free man. Despite IA’s trying to implicate him in the bookie’s murder, there was no evidence and he still had his badge.

  “How many times I got to tell you?” Peewee whined. “I ain’t got nothing to say.”

  “Can we come in?” Yosh asked. “Or do you want all your neighbors to see you talking to the police? Might ruin your reputation, Peewee.”

  They followed Peewee upstairs to the living room. The three sat and faced each other.

  “I guess you’ve heard Dennis O’Leary was killed,” Paavo began.

  “What do I care?” Peewee asked.

  “Three of his regular customers said you were another regular. Do you want their names?”

  Peewee fidgeted. “No. I know who you mean. I know someone fingered him. Same with Haram Sayir, who owned a liquor store. He was a nice guy. Too bad somebody wanted him dead.”

  Paavo caught Yosh’s eye. The last thing he’d ever expected was for Peewee to volunteer information. “Then you know Sayir was also in the numbers racket?”

  “Yeah. So what?” Peewee said. “It used to be harmless. A few guys pooling their money, having a little fun. Nobody got hurt. Not the way they used to do it.”

  “You’re saying things changed?” Yosh asked the question expectantly, as if anything Peewee might say would be the height of intelligence and foresight.

  “Lots of guys are dead. Ain’t that proof enough?”

  “But why are they dead?” Yosh asked. “That’s what we need to find out.”

  Peewee cast his small, piggy eyes on Yosh. “You should know. Look around you. Can’t you see?”

  Yosh glanced at Paavo, then back to Peewee. “There are new players in town, is that it?”

  Peewee gave a humorless chuckle as he rubbed his palms against his jeans. “Yeah, man. You could say that.” He stood up and glanced at the windows. “Lots of new players. Even cops.”

  “It’s not going to play, Peewee,” Paavo said. “I know what’s being said on the street. We want the truth this time.”

  Peewee turned on him. “Sure you know. You know a lot more than anyone else here, don’t you?” He kept fidgeting as if he was expecting someone, waiting for something to happen. “Why don’t you tell your partner about it? Why keep him in the dark?”

  “Sit down, Peewee,” Paavo said, holding his growing anger in check. “Who gave you this idea that I was involved? Where did you first hear it?”

  “Dennis O’Leary told me. He said you were one of his biggest customers. That you needed the money because you were trying to impress some rich girlfriend. But when you kept losing, you got more and more angry. You threatened him. You wanted a cut of his numbers share, and if he didn’t pay up, you’d have him killed. I guess he wouldn’t give in to you, would he?”

  “You piece of scum!” Paavo said, standing. Fury burned in him.

  “Don’t hit me!” Peewee yelled.

  Paavo froze. He was about five feet from Peewee and had done nothing that should make Peewee cry out like that. Unless…

  “Hit you, Peewee?” he said, walking over to the window, then standing against the wall beside it. “I wouldn’t want to touch you. Might get some disease that’d make my hand fall off.” He peeked out the window. A year-old blue Ford with a couple of men inside was parked halfway down the block. He gestured to Yosh to take a look.

  “What are you looking at?” Peewee asked.

  “Vermin,” Paavo said, his cold eyes on the man. “I’m looking at something so small and so low it can be squashed without even messing up the sole of my shoe.”

  Yosh nodded.

  “We’ll be back, Peewee, when you’re ready to tell the truth, not some lies someone told you to say.”

  The two left Peewee’s flat and got into their car, Paavo at the wheel. He pulled out of the parking space, but instead of driving off, he spun the wheel into a tight U-turn and roared down the block, slamming on the brakes when he reached the blue Ford. Leaving his car in the middle of the street, he got out and in a cold rage walked up to the car.

  The IA man at the wheel, LeRoy Davis, rolled down his window. “Hello, Smith.”

  Mitch Connors sat in the seat beside him.

  “Get an earful?” Paavo asked.

  “We got it all on tape,” Davis answered. “Now we just need to get it verified.”

  “You won’t. It’s not true, and you know it.”

  “Sounded true to me.”

  “Peewee mouthed off everything you told him to say,” Paavo said quietly, contemptuously.

  “He spoke the truth, Smith. We’ll get proof soon enough.”

  “You’re getting in my way with these games,” Paavo said.

  Davis chuckled and looked at his partner, then turned back to Paavo. “Soon, you won’t have a way, Smith. You’ll be history.”

  “Stay clear, Davis.” With the ice-laden warning hanging in the air, Paavo turned back to the car.

  “What’s the matter, Smith?” David taunted. “Can’t take being watched? Too hot for you? Maybe Peewee was on to something there. We’ve all heard about your rich girlfriend. Wouldn’t be the first time a woman’s made a cop go bad.”

  Yosh spun around. “You son of a—”

  Paavo touched his partner’s arm. “They’re doing it on purpose. They aren’t worth it.”

  Paavo’s gaze
narrowed as he silently stared down at Davis, then he turned back to his car.

  “I’m not going to do it!” Connie folded her arms.

  “Push!” Angie cried. “I can’t maneuver two at once.”

  “What if we get caught?”

  “Connie, you’ve got to. No one will stop us. We have our dignity, you know.”

  “But Angie, it’s a Safeway shopping cart. It says so in big letters on the front and on the handle. They aren’t going to let us walk off the parking lot with them!”

  “Look at us. Who would dare stop us?” Angie held out her arms for Connie to better see her. She was wearing oversized black trousers, holey black high-tops, and a dark blue sweatshirt that hung almost to her knees. Over all that was a brown moth-eaten cardigan; over the cardigan, a black coat. Around her neck was a grimy long red woolen scarf. She wore a wig of long, straight black hair, topped off by a ragged blue woolen cap with a big tassel on top.

  Connie wore once-white sneakers with thick woolen socks; beige polyester tights; an enormous dark brown, heavy woolen skirt; a man’s plaid cotton shirt; a man’s plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned; a filthy gray jacket; a wig of long brown hair pulled back in a bun; and over it, a grungy black beret.

  They had smeared dirt on their faces and wore no makeup. Angie also wore a pair of granny sunglasses—the ultimate negative fashion statement.

  “We’ve got to do it, Connie,” Angie insisted. “We’ve got to do all we can to figure out what’s going on with Klaw. I tell you, when I came out of the women’s room and saw Paavo and Klaw facing each other last night, I thought my heart would stop.”

  “I don’t know about this, Angie. We could end up in jail.”

  “Don’t worry,” Angie said. “If anyone tries to stop us, I’ll start acting really crazy. They’ll gladly let us go on our way. Trust me on that. I do good crazy.”

  “Why don’t we just buy the carts?” Connie suggested.

  “Buy them? Why? We only need to borrow them a little while. They’re our cover, that’s all. Safeway won’t even know they’re gone. Now push.”

  Angie drove the U-Haul truck to within two blocks of the mission. She’d never driven a truck before, and only slightly mangled a side mirror on a car that had been parked a little too far from the curb. If the driver had done a better job of parking, nothing would have happened at all. She figured he’d probably never even notice, but she got out and left a card with her insurance company’s name anyway. She got plenty of strange looks from pedestrians and other drivers, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of her dress or her honesty. Sometimes honesty was a random act of stupidity these days.

  She couldn’t believe the difficulties involved in simply trying to look like a proper bag lady. She and Connie had planned to hang around outside the mission, but they wanted to look like everyone else in the neighborhood so that they wouldn’t attract too much attention. That meant they needed carts. And because there was no supermarket within walking distance of the mission, that meant she’d had to rent a truck to transport the carts.

  She parked the truck two blocks from the mission. She and Connie pushed the carts to within a few doors of their destination, then stopped and waited. And waited some more.

  “You’re sure she’s going out today?” Connie asked, leaning on her cart. Luckily, it was a typically chilly San Francisco summer day, or the two of them would have been sweltering in their layered finery.

  “That’s what she told me yesterday,” Angie said. She reached into the cart and pushed aside a pile of rags covering an ice chest. Opening it, she took out two bottles of Perrier, placed each in a paper bag, and gave one to Connie—Perrier disguised as muscatel.

  “I hope we didn’t miss Lili.” Angie stared at the mission awhile. “She isn’t too good about keeping her days straight.”

  “Great! Angie, if you expect me to get dressed up like this again—”

  “Look!” Angie whispered, grabbing Connie’s arm. “There she is! Action.”

  Lili had stepped out of the mission and turned toward Market Street, walking at a fast clip despite her high heels and tight skirt.

  Angie and Connie trundled after her, holding their hats and wigs on with one hand, steering around potholes and negotiating curbs with the other. Their carts careened over the rough pavement with a deafening clatter—enough to have alerted anyone but Lili, who seemed totally out of it as she teetered along on her four-inch stilettos, hips swinging, humming a little tune.

  They were a little way down Market when Lili turned into the Muni subway.

  “Park the carts by this lamppost,” Angie yelled. “We can’t lose her.”

  “But what if somebody steals them?” Connie asked.

  “Who’d want Safeway shopping carts? Come on!”

  They ran down the stairs, paid the fare, and reached the platform just as Lili was stepping onto an N car, headed out toward Judah Street. They jumped on as well, immediately sending six people to the back of the street car, as far upwind from them as possible.

  At Van Ness Street, Lili got off and, back on street level, transferred to a 49 Mission bus. So did Angie and Connie.

  Lili still seemed to have no idea she was being followed, not even when they followed her off the bus at Twenty-second Street. She walked up a side street to a small older home and rang the bell. As she waited, she examined her face in a small hand mirror, turning her head this way and that while she chewed her gum.

  Ducking into a doorway, Angie and Connie watched.

  An old man answered. Her father? Angie wondered, but only for a second. He kissed her on the lips, and the way his fingers splayed across her behind as he pulled her into the house dismissed any thought of a family relationship.

  “Sheesh,” Connie wailed. “Does everyone at that mission have more than one lover? Maybe I should join. Heck, I’d be happy with one at this point in my life.”

  “Stan’s sweet on you,” Angie said.

  “On the other hand, my goldfish is very nice company. Quiet, I’ll admit, but nice.”

  They waited for nearly an hour before the door opened again and Lili came out. She gave the man a quick kiss and a good-bye waggle of her fingers, then sauntered back toward the bus stop.

  She rode back to Market Street, but this time, instead of transferring to another bus or street car, she went to the BART station. If she’d had one ounce of street smarts, Angie thought, she’d have realized by now she was being followed. Two bag ladies taking all the same buses, getting off on the same streets, and now riding the same BART train? Where was her head? True, most people did all they could to avoid noticing bag ladies as individuals. But Lili certainly didn’t pay any attention at all.

  She kept an eye on her watch and let two trains go by, then boarded the third one, a Fremont-bound train. It was commute time, and the train was packed with people leaving the city to go home to the suburbs. Nevertheless, Angie and Connie pushed their way onto the same car as Lili, cutting a swath through an army of horrified commuters and managing to keep an eye on the quarry the whole time.

  She didn’t ride very far, just three stops to the Embarcadero Station. When she got off the train, she had a Macy’s shopping bag in her hand.

  “Where did she pick that up?” Angie cried as they hurried up the stairs to street level. “Did you notice who was holding the shopping bag before her?”

  “A lot of people had shopping bags,” Connie said. “Plus briefcases, backpacks, tote bags, paper bags. Who knows?”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” They emerged on Market Street. Lili was making a beeline for the Embarcadero and the mission.

  “We’ve got to find out what’s inside that Macy’s bag,” Angie announced, hurrying after Lili as she sauntered down the street, the Macy’s bag sagging heavily from one hand as if its contents were about to burst its bottom.

  “Oh, no!” Connie cried.

  Angie froze. “What is it?”

  “Our shopping carts! Somebo
dy stole them!”

  Angie grabbed Connie’s hand and pulled her gaze away from the lonely lamppost on the opposite side of the street. “Forget about them. She’s getting away. I’ll stop her; you grab the Macy’s bag, then run like hell.”

  “Where to?” asked Connie, huffing and puffing as Angie dragged her along after Lili.

  “How about the truck?”

  “I don’t think a U-Haul makes a good getaway car.”

  Angie handed her the truck keys. “If you get enough of a head start, climb into the passenger side and hide on the floor. No one will think to look for you there.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Create a diversion. Then I’ll work my way to you. If I don’t, call Paavo to bail me out, okay?”

  “Oh, God,” Connie groaned.

  “Don’t worry about it. If we get caught, at least we’ll get a great headline in the newspaper.”

  “Oh?”

  Angie grinned whimsically. “Sure—‘Bag Ladies Bagged Bagging Bag.’”

  Connie covered her ears. “I’m not listening to any more of this.”

  “Okay. Ready?” Angie asked.

  “Why me, Lord?” Connie took a deep breath. “All right.”

  Lili turned onto the Embarcadero.

  “Now!” Angie yelled. The two of them ran toward Lili, who stopped walking and turned around to see what the commotion was about. Angie, her raggedy clothes flapping and looking like a nightmare bird of prey, made a kamikaze dive right at Lili’s knees. The two of them went down with a thud.

  Connie plucked the shopping bag from Lili’s hand and started to run, swinging the bag by the handle in order to lift it up into her arms. Angie scrambled to her feet and was right behind her, picking up speed, when Connie abruptly stopped.

  Van Warren had stepped out of a car parked directly in front of them, a cannon-sized gun in his hand. Angie slammed into Connie’s back, causing the still-swinging shopping bag to fly from Connie’s hand and right at Warren.