by Joanne Pence
“You think Klaw killed Peewee, or had him killed.”
“Exactly. Same with Buyat. We were on to him. We asked questions at his house, at his job, so Klaw got rid of him, too.”
“Makes sense.”
Paavo pressed his fingertips together. “We can’t give Klaw any more warning than he’s already been given, though. We can’t move in on Warren yet. Hit men are a dime a dozen anyway. We arrest Warren, and Klaw will have someone else working for him before the day’s out. Instead, we’ve got to watch and wait. But not too long. Klaw’s involved in the auction that Hodge is holding. I don’t know how, or what it means, but it’s got to be a key part of Klaw’s scheme. At the same time, I don’t want to tip our hand too early. I want to find out what Klaw is up to and stop him completely, not just postpone his plans.”
Yosh took a deep breath as he pondered Paavo’s words. “Okay, Paavo,” he said finally. “So we’ve got to be ready to move on, or right after, the auction.”
“That’s right. Let’s just hope we stop him before anybody else is killed.”
Back at his desk, Paavo had a message on his answering machine. “This is Angie. I finished my centerpiece. My angelina. Wait till you see it! I’m going to the mission—hope I don’t run into Klaw, the creep. I’ll be home tonight. Can you come over? If not, don’t forget the auction tomorrow night. It starts at eight-thirty, food and cocktails at seven. Love you. Bye.”
Paavo couldn’t help shaking his head at the message. He had asked her time and again to keep away from Klaw. Now he was going to have to find a way to talk her out of going to that auction. He knew he’d have to handle it in person, though. He’d visit her as soon as he checked out a loose end one more time.
He and Yosh had tried a number of times to reach Klaw’s mysterious girlfriend, Gretchen, with no luck. There were four apartments in which no one ever answered the door or the phone. For all he knew the apartments were empty, or the renters were on vacation, or maybe they were occupied by paranoids who never faced the outside world. He decided to try one more time.
He knocked on the door of one of the apartments.
A young brown-haired woman looked at him, then her eyes went wide with recognition. “Inspector!” She tried to shut the door in his face.
“Gretchen, that’s no way to act.” He stuck out his arm, stopping the door from shutting.
“Get away from me!” She spun around, grabbed her coat and purse from a chair beside the door, and pushed past him, pulling the door shut as she left.
Much as he tried to remember who she was, he couldn’t. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her before. “Wait.” He grabbed her arm. “How do you know me?”
“You can’t touch me! I know my rights.” She pulled free.
“You do?” He held his hands out to show he wasn’t about to touch her or hurt her. “Good, then you know you need to answer when I tell you I want to question you about Axel Klaw.”
She looked at his hands. She was tall, but he was taller, bigger, stronger. “Who?”
“Alex Clausen—Axel Klaw, whatever he calls himself around you.”
She paled. “I don’t have to answer.”
“Maybe not now, but you will eventually.” She stepped back. He didn’t like strong-arming her, but that seemed to be the only way to get her to listen. “Let me see some ID,” he said.
She stared a moment, but as his words penetrated, she quickly pulled out her wallet and badge identification from her purse and handed them to him. Gretchen Ballard, police dispatcher, SFPD, Richmond station.
He stared at the badge, then at the young woman, and the pieces quickly slipped into place. “You do regular dispatcher duties at the station, I take it?”
She lifted her chin. “Of course.”
“You send officers out on calls, including Rosenberg and Kellogg.”
Her hands tightened on the strap of her purse. “They’re good men, good at their jobs. I don’t see that this is your business.”
He handed her wallet and badge back to her. “Sometimes you get a little help, don’t you, Gretchen? You hear that something will happen at a certain time and that you need to make sure Rosenberg and Kellogg are there.”
“It’s not illegal.” Her hands shook as she stuffed her belongings back into her purse. “I never did anything wrong.”
“Didn’t you, Gretchen?” he asked rhetorically. “And what about rumors—telling stories about things that happened, stories about the Isle of Capri? Do you like to spread rumors, Gretchen?”
“I never meant to hurt you, Inspector Smith.” Crying, she covered her face with her hands. “I never meant to!”
Paavo returned to the Hall after calming Gretchen down and having a long talk with her. He’d get Yosh to go out and take a formal statement. Maybe she was right, and what she did wasn’t actually illegal. But it was probably a job-ending offense.
She explained that Kellogg and Rosenberg had shown up like a pair of knights in shining armor, ready to clean up the world. Their sense of justice and honor made them especially horrified at what they saw as a rogue, crooked cop. They didn’t say anything to others unless asked, but what they said then—and the way they looked when Paavo’s name was mentioned—was enough to add a ton of coal to the hell Paavo’s life had become.
“If nothing else, we can bring Klaw in for questioning on this if we don’t learn what he’s really up to,” Paavo said. “Hit him with criminal conspiracy, bribery—if we have to, we can stretch it to obstruction of justice.”
“It’ll slow him down,” Yosh said. “And that’s what we want until we can hit him with a bigger crime—like murder.”
“Tomorrow night, at about eleven, show up at the auction,” Paavo said. “As soon as it’s over, we’ll nail him.”
“You’re on, partner,” Yosh said.
“Good.” Now he had another reason to make sure Angie stayed well away.
The phone rang.
He picked it up. “Smith here.”
“Hey, man. Get over here quick. I’m hurt bad…”
“Snake?”
The phone went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Fifteen minutes later Paavo was in the alley. He lit a cigarette and waited.
Snake carried a cell phone, so he could have called from almost anywhere. He wouldn’t have called Paavo, though, if he didn’t think Paavo could find him easily and quickly.
Paavo wasn’t wearing his black outfit, but instead wore a white shirt, tie, gray plaid sports jacket, and gray slacks. It wasn’t a smart way to dress around here. This was the kind of neighborhood where people got nervous seeing someone hanging around who didn’t belong. And for the one doing the hanging, it could get dangerous fast.
A dark figure filled the mouth of the alley. Paavo put his hand to his revolver, just to feel its presence, nothing more. The stranger began to walk toward him. He stepped on his cigarette and moved silently back, deeper into the alley. The man might be a friend of Snake. Or not.
Paavo braced himself, ready for the slightest movement.
“What you doing here?” The tough guy, now that Paavo could see him up close, looked about sixteen. Not even old enough to shave.
“Having a cigarette.” It might have been his no-nonsense tone, or the fact that he didn’t back off or cower, or simply one street-smart guy meeting another, but the kid held out his hands and backed up.
“Hey, man, just asking. No sweat, okay?” He turned and ran out of the alley.
Paavo realized he was wasting time standing around waiting. He had to try to find Snake Belly.
Since the Snake had always shown up from the back of the alley, that was the place to begin the search. Five buildings had back doors that opened onto the deadend alleyway. He tried the doors, but all were locked, as he would have expected them to be. A couple of the buildings looked as though they might have some small apartments or rooms in them.
He walked out of the alley and around the block, checking out t
he fronts of the buildings, trying to figure which might back onto the alley and, of those, which looked most likely to be a place Snake Belly might wait for him to show up. He stopped at an empty warehouse. The windows had been broken; some were boarded up, some not. He tried the side door. It was locked, so he stuck his arm through the broken window beside the door, found the inside doorknob, and turned. The door opened with a high-pitched squeal of its hinges. He stopped, listening, and was met with silence.
Cautiously, he crept inside.
With gun in one hand, high-powered pocket flashlight in the other, he walked, footsteps from his leathersoled Florsheims echoing through the building. The warehouse was thick with age-old dust. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling and covered stacks of boxes long left behind.
Some sixth sense, some cop instinct, made him continue on, deeper into the warehouse. He’d gone only a few steps when he saw the reason he’d come here. Snake Belly lay facedown on the floor, blood spilling from his mouth.
“Damn.” Paavo holstered his gun and knelt, touching Snake’s neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there but weak. Snake Belly’s face was battered, his eyes swollen shut, his cheeks raw. His clothes were torn, as if he’d been in a fight for his life. In his hand was his cell phone.
Paavo was reaching over to pick up the phone when he heard a noise behind him. He looked up. Four men rushed out from behind some nearby boxes. He landed an elbow in the groin of the first man before the second one jumped him, knocking him backward. The cell phone skittered across the concrete floor. All four men were on him before he could reach for the gun in his shoulder holster.
“Gun!” one man shouted. They fought hard to pin him down.
He knocked one man out with an uppercut to the jaw and almost broke free, but the others stopped him. Big and powerful, they grabbed his arms, taking his gun, two holding him while the third man pounded him mercilessly, using his ribs and stomach like a punching bag.
When they let go of him, he dropped to the floor, doubled over with pain, on his hands and knees looking down at his own blood and vomit.
“We knew you’d show up here, Smith.” One of the attackers had pulled a handgun from his pocket. “We had a little pool going on how long it’d take you to find us. You were fast. I won.”
He lashed out one more time, trying to stand, desperate to break free. But his legs, his body, felt too weak, too torn apart to move. Almost immediately, the man with the gun moved closer.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion. He felt sick at heart, not scared, but only infinitely sad that it might end here in an old warehouse, before he’d had a chance to settle his score with Klaw, and before he’d had a chance to tell Angie all she meant to him. That was the worst part. Leaving Angie.
“No,” Paavo whispered.
Then everything went black.
Angie couldn’t stand it any longer. It was nearly eleven at night. Where was Paavo?
She’d left the mission that afternoon filled with news for him, anxious to see him.
With the auction the following night, she was going to be busy, starting with supervising the move of her centerpiece at nine the next morning. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask Paavo if he’d be going to the auction with her. Since he was so irritated at her bag lady plan—though why he should be irritated when she was the one shot at was a mystery—their conversation had consisted of her talking to his answering machine and him talking to hers.
She’d been sure Paavo would show up at her apartment eventually, but the night had grown late without his even calling her. Finally, at eleven o’clock she called Homicide. Laurie, the night dispatcher, was already on duty.
“This is Angie Amalfi. I’m trying to locate Inspector Smith. Is he still working?”
“I’m not sure, Angie. I just came on an hour ago. Let’s see.” Angie was put on hold. “He’s not at his desk, but there was a homicide this afternoon and he got called to it. He might still be working on it.”
“I see. Thanks.” She hung up the phone.
A homicide. It was rare that an inspector who wasn’t on call was given a homicide to investigate, but it was known to happen, particularly when the on-call team was overwhelmed with a rash of murders. Knowing Paavo, he’d work on this new homicide all night, get a couple hours’ sleep around dawn, then get up and go back to work again.
It could be days before she’d see him. So much for their big night together.
But if she could reach him, maybe she could convince him to spend at least an hour or two at the auction. If nothing else, to eat dinner. Although billed as hors d’oeuvres, the food would be good and plentiful enough to make a satisfying meal. And she’d love to have him see her angelina. She was quite proud of it.
More than that, though, she was worried about him. She wanted to see him, talk to him about the constant craziness going on at his job, about Klaw. She didn’t want him to have to deal with all that alone. He was used to being alone—she understood that—but she wanted him to understand that he didn’t need to be anymore.
She had his key, just as he had hers, to use in case of emergency. Although they didn’t feel they should barge into each other’s homes unannounced, it felt good to have exchanged keys. Maybe it was only a quasi commitment, but it was a commitment nonetheless.
Looking at the key reminded her of how much she had wanted to talk to him about their plans for the future. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Reverend Hodge had told her she needed patience about their future, that someday, this time of waiting and anxiety would seem to have gone by quick as a wink. If that was the case, she must have the world’s slowest eyelids.
Enough moping around. She would simply go to his house and wait for him there. Surely, he’d come home eventually. On the off chance he might still stop by her apartment on his way home, she wrote a note:
Paavo,
You won t believe this, but I m at YOUR house right now!! Will we ever get our act together?!? I love you
Angie
There, she thought. That should make her feelings clear enough. Only a two-by-four would be less subtle.
When she arrived, Paavo’s bungalow was dark and his car wasn’t parked in the usual spot out in front. He didn’t have a driveway or a garage since the house had been built before cars were invented. She locked the Ferrari and went inside.
The house was empty. Not even Hercules was there. Aimlessly walking around, she ran her finger over the back of the sofa that faced the fireplace and perused the book he’d been reading, the latest Clancy. The silence was eerie.
Opening the front door, she stepped out into the night fog that had settled onto the streets, making the street lamps indistinct. She called several times for the cat, even got a can of 9-Lives and a can opener and rattled the two together—a combination usually guaranteed to bring him racing home. But not tonight.
“Just be safe, Hercules,” she whispered into the darkness. “You and Paavo both.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Angie switched on the radio as soon as she woke up the next morning. It was seven A.M., time for the hourly news. She’d sat up until nearly three waiting for Paavo. Finally, she’d put on a pair of his pajamas and gone to bed, hoping he’d come in and be pleasantly surprised to find her there.
Instead, when she awoke, Hercules was curled up at her feet, but Paavo hadn’t come home. She’d grown used to his working all night when it was his week for being on call. Most homicides seemed to occur in the night and evening hours. But he should have gotten a little sleep, at least. She could imagine him trying to sleep with his head on his desk instead of being here with her.
The best-laid plans, she thought with a sigh.
Since the local radio news had no reports of accidents or shoot-outs involving the police, she was able to breathe a bit easier. After making some coffee, she sat in the easy chair and phoned Homicide again. Laurie was still there. She’d be going off duty at eight, when the day shift took over. “This is Angie again. Has Pa
avo come in yet?”
“He hasn’t checked in with me if he is. Let me buzz Homicide.”
In a while she came back on the line. “Seems no one’s around yet. Give them another half hour or so.”
“Thanks.” She hung up. She had tried to sound cheerful and carefree talking to Laurie, but right now she could scarcely breathe. Her fingers gripped the arm of her chair so tightly they ached. It’s foolish to get so worked up. He’s all right. Out investigating. That’s what inspectors do. Investigate.
She took a quick shower, put on yesterday’s clothes, and hurried home to change and get ready for the men who would deliver her centerpiece.
About eight-thirty, back in her own apartment, she called Homicide again. This time she got Yosh.
“Hey, there, Angie, how ya doin’?” He sounded boisterous as always. Well, if he wasn’t worried…
“Just trying to find Paavo,” she said. “He didn’t go home last night. Do you know where he is?”
“He didn’t? Hmm.” Was that concern she heard in his voice? She pressed the receiver tighter against her ear. Was Yosh worried? “He left here after he got a call from a guy who helps him out on some cases from time to time. The guy had been hurt. Maybe Paavo took him to the hospital, decided to stay with him. We’ll check around, see what we find out.”
“I’d like to do some checking, too,” she said. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“You know what? I’m not so sure. I only hear what Paavo calls him.”
“What’s that?”
“Snake Belly.”
“Oh, dear.”
Angie hung up. The thought that Paavo had gone out in the middle of the night to care for someone called Snake Belly and hadn’t yet returned was not reassuring. Paavo was no Dr. Kildare. He was the take-’em-to-the-emergency-room type.
She called around to the big hospitals and asked if Inspector Paavo Smith was in the vicinity of the emergency room or the waiting area. He wasn’t.
