Cook's Night Out

by Joanne Pence

“He’s not there!”

  Paavo turned toward the sound of the voice. A paunchy man stood on the doorstep of the next house up the block. “Do you know when he’ll be back?” Paavo called.

  “No,” the man said. “I saw him go out last night but didn’t see him come home. He didn’t even pick up his newspaper this morning.”

  “Does he go away overnight often?”

  “He works nights. He almost never goes out in the day, though.”

  Paavo walked over to the neighbor and presented his badge. “I’m trying to find Buyat or the woman who visits him. Do you know her?”

  “The blond bombshell? Wish I did. Ruiz is a nice old guy, but I don’t know what a fox like her’s doing with someone like him. She can’t be after his money. He don’t have any.”

  Paavo handed him a business card. “If you see Buyat, the woman, or anything out of the ordinary over here, will you give me a call?”

  The neighbor’s eyes widened at the word Homicide on the card. “Sure.”

  “He’s not wanted for anything,” Paavo said. “I just need to ask him a couple of questions.”

  “Whew! That’s a relief! I’d hate to think I was living next door to the Hillside Strangler or something.”

  Paavo and Yosh got back into their unmarked car. “Where to, partner?” Yosh asked.

  “Let’s go see if Peewee’s still wearing a wire,” Paavo suggested.

  “I thought Hollins told you to stay away from him while he’s working with Internal Affairs,” Yosh warned. “Hollins doesn’t want Peewee spooked.”

  “Peewee’s already spooked,” Paavo said. “Didn’t you notice how nervous he was? As bad-ass as our friends in IA think they are, they aren’t tough enough to cause Peewee to break out in a cold sweat. There’s something more going on. I want to find out what it is.”

  “You’re asking for trouble, pal,” Yosh warned.

  “We can watch Peewee’s place awhile. He might take another little BART ride, and if he does and Lili Charmaine gets on the same train, we’ll nail them both.”

  “What charge?”

  “Indecent exposure.”

  They drove over to Peewee’s house. They had been parked only a couple of minutes when a young man in a black leather jacket with the word Aces across the back walked up to Peewee’s front door and rang the bell. He waited awhile, then knocked. When nothing happened, he leaned for a long time on the bell and pounded hard on the door. Finally, he took some kind of metal pin out of his pocket. Glancing guiltily up and down the street, he pressed his shoulder to the door, worked the lock until it sprang open, then slipped inside.

  “Breaking and entering,” Yosh said joyfully. “We got him—whoever he is.”

  They got out of the car and cautiously approached the house. What did the kid want there? His illegal entry gave Paavo a good reason to find out.

  Suddenly, the door burst open. The kid bounded out, turned onto the sidewalk, and ran straight at Yosh. Yosh stuck out his foot and the kid went sprawling. He was handcuffed before he could even think about trying to stand up and run off again.

  “I didn’t do it!” he yelled. “Not me. I don’t know who.”

  “What are you talking about?” Paavo asked.

  “You’re not pinning this on me. I was just going to try to get the money Peewee owed me ’cause my numbers came up. That’s all. I didn’t do nothing!”

  “Stop whining and tell us what you’re talking about,” Yosh yelled.

  “In there. Peewee…”

  Paavo and Yosh exchanged glances. Yosh took the young man to the car while Paavo went back to Peewee’s house. The front door was still open.

  Paavo pulled out his .38 and slowly walked up the dark, paneled staircase, listening for any noise or movement. The upstairs flat was quiet.

  The small, shabby living room was empty. Next to it was the dining room. Also empty.

  He stepped into the kitchen. Hardened though he was after years in Homicide, he couldn’t help feeling disgust, anger, and then sorrow at the sight that met him. Peewee’s mother lay in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, gunshot wounds to the head and chest. On the stove sat a red-hot pot, a lit flame under it, its contents cooked to a cinder.

  He shut off the gas.

  In the back of the house he found Peewee sprawled out on his bed, riddled with bullet holes. Peewee had probably been asleep when hit, but that didn’t explain how his mother could have been killed in the kitchen. She wouldn’t have stayed there cooking while bullets were flying in the back bedroom. Unless she’d been hit first with a silencer so as not to alert Peewee.

  Of course, there could have been two or more gunmen hitting them at the same time. But considering that no one had called the police after hearing gunshots, the silencer theory made more sense. A lone gunman could have broken into the house as easily as that young man just had.

  Paavo went back into the kitchen and looked at the pot again, then at the table. Oatmeal. So the hit had been made that morning.

  He telephoned Homicide and called for the medical examiner, the crime scene investigators, and a couple of patrol officers to secure the area and convey the young man to city prison to book him. Yosh was needed to help with the homicide investigation.

  Next, he phoned Lieutenant Hollins. “This is Smith. We’re at Peewee Clayton’s—”

  “What! I told you—”

  “He’s dead. Shot. His mother was killed, too.”

  “Shit! Are any of the boys from IA around? Maybe they saw something.”

  “They aren’t here. But Chief, there’s something else you need to do. Somebody needs a warrant to check on a janitor who works at the Hall named Ruiz Buyat. He didn’t show up for work last night, and his neighbor hasn’t seen him since yesterday.” He gave Hollins the address and more information about Buyat. “It’s just a hunch,” Paavo said, “but somebody needs to get inside that house. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”

  It was late by the time Paavo arrived home. Exhausted, he pulled his mail out of the box and unlocked the door to his house. When he flicked on the lights, his big yellow tabby, Hercules, bounded off his usual spot on the easy chair to follow Paavo into the kitchen, complaining loudly the whole time.

  “You think you’ve had a rough day?” Paavo said as he wearily opened a can of Kitty Queen Liver Dinner. Hercules had probably spent the day hunting vermin, mice and miscellaneous rodents, in between tormenting the German shepherd that lived down the street. As he dumped the liver into Hercules’s bowl it occurred to Paavo that, except for the German shepherd, their days were more similar than he had ever realized.

  It was odd how the two pieces of this puzzle had finally come together in the guise of a Hall of Justice janitor. From Buyat he could follow a squiggly trail right back to Axel Klaw. Klaw, his nemesis. Klaw, the man who, years ago, had first caused him to think about joining the police department—to right the wrong done to his family. As he got older Paavo had realized he’d been wrong about the power of a policeman, yet the interest in the job stayed with him, and eventually he did join.

  Now the revenge he’d yearned for years ago was within reach. Now he had to find a way to bring Klaw down. A way to rid the world of the cancer that was Klaw. A cold, black rage burned in him, deadly as dry ice. He would see this through and end it one way or the other.

  Curiosity about the charity auction had been growing within him ever since Klaw mentioned it at the supper club. Klaw never paid attention to anything unless there was a reason. Paavo wanted to know the reason, especially since Angie was planning to be there. He needed to talk to her about it soon—face-to-face.

  He flipped through his mail and stopped at a large plain envelope—unaddressed. He put down the bills and advertisements and tore open the envelope.

  Inside was a black-and-white photograph. As he pulled it out, time seemed to stand still. He knew he must have continued to breathe, his heart continued to beat, but he was aware of nothing but the s
light quiver in his hands, the deadly silence of the room.

  He sat down on the sofa, his gaze never leaving the picture. He’d never seen this particular one before. It reminded him once again of how beautiful she had been, and how full of life. Her mouth was full and smiling, her nose small and lightly rounded at the tip. Her eyes were heavily made up in the style of the times, but that made their color, almost the exact same shade of blue as his own, even more startling and vibrant against her flawless skin. Her brows were wide and winged, her cheekbones high—another family characteristic. Where that bone structure made him look stern, it gave her face an elegant beauty. But the resemblance was marked.

  Her hair, though, was very different from his soft, wavy brown strands. Their hair was the most obvious evidence that different men had fathered them. Hers was black and thick. She used to spend hours with all kinds of conditioners and gels, trying to make it smooth and elegant.

  There was only one person he could think of who might have sent this photo to him: Axel Klaw. He’d done it to torment him.

  Paavo smiled coldly. Once again, Klaw had underestimated him. Instead of making him crumble, to Paavo the photo was a gift. Although it brought back the agony of his loss, it helped him target the full measure of his hatred and of his revenge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Angie was waiting outside Everyone’s Fancy when Connie arrived at work the next morning. Angie had no time to waste—the auction was tomorrow. She bought a statue of a winged angel in flowing robes, her hands devoutly clasped and her head slightly tilted as if listening to people’s prayers.

  The day before, on the way home from the mission, she had visited a party supply store, and they had put her in contact with a manufacturer of Mylar balloons.

  Now, using the statue as a model, she whipped up an enormous batch of white chocolate fudge. Treating it like clay, she sculpted it into the general form of the statue, making her angel about a foot tall. Once the fudge hardened, she carefully spread melted Lindt Blancor white chocolate over it to give it a smooth, almost translucent appearance. The angel blurred into a soft, abstract shape, creamy and beautiful.

  “Perfect,” Angie said. But it wasn’t unique yet, and her angelina needed to be special.

  She made a circular wooden “fence” of twenty-inch-tall shish kebab sticks loosely tied together and then dropped the high fence over the angel, being careful of the wings. While she was working on the chocolate angel, the balloon she had had custom-made had been delivered. The balloon was deflated when she received it. It had an enormous mouth that could stretch around the stick fence; when inflated, the balloon would be almost two feet in diameter. When she thought big, she thought really big.

  Working carefully, she eased the Mylar balloon over the stick fence. Using an air pump, she filled the balloon until it was round and solid, then tied the mouth shut.

  Next came the part she was worried about. She laid strips of white chocolate over the balloon in a lattice pattern, making the chocolate thick enough that it would stand on its own, yet thin enough that it looked delicate and not chunky. She waited until the chocolate was hard and then stuck a pin in the Mylar, making a small hole for the air to seep out.

  As the air left, she practically held her breath as she watched the Mylar pull away from the chocolate, leaving the angel encased in a delicate lattice design. Lifting the chocolate ball just a bit off the table she was working on, she carefully slid her stick fence, stick by stick, out the bottom of the ball, and then used a razor to slash the Mylar so that it, too, came off the angel and out the bottom of the lattice ball.

  As the finishing touch, she turned a wooden box upside-down, spread thick white chocolate fudge over it to form a base, then carefully placed the angel and the ball that surrounded it onto the base. As the chocolate on the base hardened, it looked like it all became one piece—a large winged angel inside a seamless ball sitting on a square pedestal. An angel in a globe instead of a ship in a bottle. Thank you, Stan and Lili. The whole thing was so clever, she did the macarena around the kitchen a couple of times.

  It had been a hell of a way to spend a day, though.

  Even though she was tired from doing the careful, detailed work with chocolate all day, she had to tell the reverend about her angelic centerpiece. If he didn’t like it, he’d have to settle for a floral bouquet. There was no time for anything else.

  She stuck her head into the mission. The last people she wanted to encounter were Klaw, Warren, and Lili. When she didn’t see any of them, she ran down the hall to Reverend Hodge’s office. “I’ve got it!” she cried, bursting in on him.

  “You’ve got what?”

  “The centerpiece. Klaw—I mean, Clausen—isn’t around, is he? I don’t want to see that man!”

  He looked around his office. “No, I don’t—”

  “Anyway, it’s a white chocolate angel inside a latticework ball. It’s meaningful—angels being helpful, charitable, and all—and pretty, if I say so myself.” She looked over her shoulder at the open office door. “What about Van Warren? Have you seen him?”

  “The centerpiece sounds good. But why are you asking about those two?”

  “Reverend Hodge.” She dragged the spare chair to his side. “They aren’t what they seem. You’ve got to get away from them. They’re dangerous men.”

  “We’ve been through this before—” he began.

  “Please listen to me.”

  “I won’t. I can’t.” Hodge jumped up and moved away from her. “Mr. Clausen is the one paying for all this. I need him. The mission needs him. Maybe after the auction, things will change. But not before. Afterward, if he’s gone…if I’m gone…I know that people like Sheila Chatsworth, Mary Ellen Hitchcock, and others will run the mission and make it prosper. Have no worries about that.”

  “What do you mean, if you’re gone?”

  “Nothing, Miss Amalfi. Nothing at all.” He checked his watch. “Oh, dear, it’s getting late. I’ve got to see about the movers who’ll be packing all the goods to be auctioned off.”

  Angie stood up to leave. “And I want to get out of here before Clausen and his pals return. Since you like the chocolate angel centerpiece—my angel-ina, angelina, get it?—I think I’ll hire someone to deliver the centerpiece to the Palace of the Legion of Honor for me. Maybe I can trust someone who usually transports nitroglycerine.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be there if they dropped it,” Hodge said.

  “No one would,” Angie agreed. “Anyway, I’m going to go over to the Palace to figure out exactly where I want it placed, along with all the catered food. I was told we could set up the tables this evening. That way it’ll be easier tomorrow when the food starts arriving.”

  “Good, good. That’s one less thing to worry about, at least. Maybe, somehow, this will all come together. If it does, it’s going to be a big night for all of us. A very big night.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she said. “See you tomorrow!”

  “Good-bye,” he said, then murmured to himself, “finally—the big night is almost here.”

  Paavo stood in Ruiz Buyat’s kitchen. Mail, bills, and receipts were piled up on a counter. He slipped on gloves and began going through them, looking for material that might breathe any hint of a connection between Buyat and Klaw.

  Paavo’s bad feeling about Buyat’s disappearance had proved prophetic. Not until that morning had the police reached Buyat’s landlord and obtained entry to the house. They found him dead, shot once in the back of the head. Another professional-looking hit, just like the dead numbers runners, just like Peewee.

  The on-call homicide team, Benson and Calderon, had contacted Hollins, who sent Paavo to the scene.

  Paavo quickly explained to them the connection between Buyat and Lili Charmaine. Looking at Buyat’s body, he remembered talking to the man while he was investigating the handling of evidence at the Hall of Justice. Buyat had been evasive, but then, a lot of people had that reaction to police questions.


  Now, as he leafed through the papers, he found a deposit slip from the Bank of America branch near his home. He lifted it out and could scarcely believe what he saw. Dated the day after he and Angie went to the Isle of Capri restaurant, it showed a deposit of five thousand dollars into his account.

  It made sense, he realized. No one would question Buyat’s access to the fourth floor or to the Homicide Bureau. After all, he was the janitorial supervisor. Paavo, like a lot of others in the bureau, often brought personal paperwork into the office. He would read his mail there, and pay bills, especially during the on-call week, when he spent more time at work than at home. Buyat could have easily learned little details such as his bank account number just by going through the trash. Paavo had never thought about destroying the carbons from credit card charges and so on, in an office surrounded by cops.

  There wasn’t anything more for him to learn at Buyat’s place. Leaving the homicide investigation in capable hands, he returned to the Hall and met with Yosh to fill him in on the situation. They each sat at their desks, across a narrow aisle from each other. Each sat on a swivel chair, tilted way back, and talked.

  “We need evidence,” Paavo said, “but I think I know what’s happening.”

  “I’m glad somebody does.” Yosh tapped his pencil against his desktop.

  “Since Klaw’s been here, everyone on the street’s been talking about a new banker moving in, trying to take over the numbers racket in the city. I’m sure he’s using his girlfriend to collect receipts from the runners, and I suspect the empty apartment is his counting house—his bank. But he’s losing control.”

  “Talk to me,” Yosh said.

  Paavo thought a moment before putting his suspicions into words. “The first few men he killed—Devlin, O’Leary, probably even Sayir—wouldn’t go along with him as banker. He got rid of them. Peewee worked for him as a runner. But then IA contacted Peewee, made him work for them. Peewee was scared, but I think it was because of Klaw and Warren, not IA. Peewee was afraid that once he wore a wire for IA, Klaw wouldn’t trust him anymore. He was right.”