Cook's Night Out Page 9

  “Look over there, Yosh,” Paavo said, pointing toward the left. “Our boy is about to take his evening constitutional.”

  Peewee walked jauntily down the street to the corner, then stopped and waited at the bus stop.

  “Hey, all right, pal.” Yosh swung the car into a driveway and out of Peewee’s sight. “Let’s see where he’s off to.”

  The bus soon came, and Yosh stayed a reasonable distance behind it. Peewee got off twice, each time running into a mom-and-pop grocery store. The second time, instead of waiting for yet another bus to show up, he walked up to a black 1972 Firebird parked on the street, unlocked the door, and drove it to one pool hall, one bar, two liquor stores, and a doughnut shop.

  “Nothing like following a numbers runner to find out who to turn over to Vice,” Paavo said with grim satisfaction.

  “You think that’s what this is, do you?” Yosh asked.

  “He’s not shopping for his mother,” Paavo said.

  “He keeps this up, we might be able to follow him straight to the banker,” Yosh said.

  “It couldn’t be that easy. There’s usually a switch somewhere. We’ve got to watch Peewee carefully—see where it’s made.”

  “I’m all eyes, partner,” Yosh said.

  Peewee’s journey was structured to look as though he were buying goods at each stop. Eventually, he parked the car in a lot and, carrying a Macy’s shopping bag, disappeared into a BART station.

  Paavo and Yosh did the same. They huddled on the stairway, trying to stay hidden while keeping an eye on him, since there was no place to hide on the train platform.

  Finally, Peewee got on a Fremont-bound train. They raced down the stairs and jumped on at the last moment, making sure he stayed on it. They moved closer to the car he was on as the train moved. It wasn’t too long before it zipped underneath San Francisco Bay, headed toward Oakland.

  Paavo hated riding BART. As strange as it felt traveling in any subway’s hole in the ground, traveling in a tube skimming the bottom of the bay was even worse. Too many submarine movies about water pressure and leaks sprang to mind. The underwater ride was only five minutes or so, but he felt as if he should hold his breath the whole way. He’d rather face a murderer than a BART train headed for the East Bay.

  But if he could keep track of Peewee, this might be the big break he needed in this case. The break that would give him some answers for Hollins.

  They didn’t see Peewee get off at the West Oakland or Eleventh Street stops, but just as the train began to pull out of the MacArthur station, they saw him sprint away from the tall, overweight woman who had shielded him from their view. He ran down the stairs. They tried to open the car doors, but it was too late.

  They noticed, though, that Peewee no longer held his bag of goodies. The switch had to have been made on the train or at one of the stations. Getting the money from the runners to the counting house was the trickiest part of the numbers business. Other crooks, as well as the police, had an abiding interest in the cash-filled counting house location—the police to shut it down, and others to rob it. Since the easiest way to find it was simply to follow the runners, the runners had to be experts at quick shifts of money from one to another. Only the most trusted lieutenants of the banker made the final delivery.

  Peewee had skunked them.

  At the next stop, Yosh and Paavo got off the train, crossed to the opposite side of the platform, and spent a long, miserable return trip to San Francisco.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “We’ve got three main questions, Angie,” Paavo said as he pushed his chair back a bit from the dining table. Angie had prepared what she called one of her “simple” meals—rigatoni, veal cutlets, and a radicchio salad. “Who is Peewee working with? Why are numbers runners and gamblers turning up dead all over the city? And why in the hell does my name keep showing up in the middle of all this mess?”

  The anger on his face tore at her. He was a proud man, and being the brunt of whispers and innuendos ate at him. She stood and began stacking the dinner plates. Paavo picked up some condiments to carry to the refrigerator. “No.” She placed her hand on his, then lifted them from him and kissed him lightly.

  “Go relax on the sofa,” she said.

  He did as she asked, and she put the Fifth Symphony of the Finnish composer Sibelius on the stereo, then continued cleaning up the dinner dishes.

  Paavo leaned his head back against the sofa and shut his eyes. Earlier that evening he had stood outside Angie’s apartment for a long time, wondering if he should go in. He was in such a foul mood after facing Hollins and his questions, and then losing Peewee, he knew he wouldn’t be good company for her. Heck, he didn’t even want to be with himself tonight.

  But then, when he’d seen her, held her, the world seemed a little bit better. Finally, he felt himself beginning to relax. He tried to clear his mind of work, shut his eyes, and simply enjoy his strange affinity with the music Angie had put on the stereo. Not that he was Finnish—he was pretty sure he wasn’t, despite his first name. In fact, he had no idea what nationality he was, which made him more of an outcast than ever in this multicultural age when everyone else seemed to be a something-hyphen-American.

  An elderly Finnish gentleman had raised him and his older sister, Jessica, when their mother abandoned them. Aulis Kokkonen had been the first to call him Paavo, and Aulis, in turn, was the only man Paavo had ever called father. There was a quality to Sibelius’s music that reminded him of Aulis, and of the mystical land, the sagas and myths, that Aulis used to tell him about when he was a boy.

  With a sigh, he walked over to the large picture window. Angie’s apartment was on the twelfth floor of a building near the very top of Russian Hill. The northern sector of the city stretched out before him, and the view of San Francisco Bay extended from the Golden Gate Bridge to Treasure Island.

  It was all of a piece, he thought, this coming to Angie, her apartment, her world. High in this aerie, this small, inviolate place, he could look down on the city far below and pretend it was no more than a thousand bright lights that held not a hint of crime or violence or poverty. Up here, he could relax and allow himself a moment, at least, of warmth and love.

  “Better?” she asked, placing her hand on his arm.

  He turned to her, reaching out to touch her face, the thick brown waves of her hair, to run his thumb against her bottom lip, to cup her jaw with his hand. “Why do you bother with me, Angie?” His voice was low, husky. “I’m foul-tempered, I have a season in hell for a job, I don’t have the time to give you what you deserve or the money to spend on you that I’d like to. Now I’m even losing my good name around the Hall—for whatever that was worth.”

  She stepped closer, resting her hands against his broad chest. “You have your good name among everyone who counts, and always will. And you give me more than you’ll ever know, just being here for me.”

  “I love you, you know.” He kissed her lightly. “That’s why I want everything to be perfect for you, why I want—”

  She put her fingertips to his lips, stopping him. “It’s all right. This will all work out. You always tell me to have patience. There are times, Inspector, when you need to take your own advice.”

  “Angie.” He ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders, then down her back, easing her closer and closer until he could feel the contours of her body molded snugly against his own. “You’re growing wise, woman. That’s very sexy.”

  “In that case…” She kissed him as she started backing him toward her bedroom. “I know a place I can be a veritable Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

  Angie lifted her head off the pillow and looked at the fluorescent readout on her clock radio. “It’s only eleven, Paavo,” she said. “If you stayed here tonight, we could fall asleep soon, and you might even get a good night’s sleep for once.”

  He put his arms around her. It was becoming more and more difficult for him to leave her each night—almost half the time he didn’t. They wer
e going to have to come to some resolution of this situation soon, but with the possibility of his job on the line, he didn’t think that this was the right time to talk of long-term commitments. He wanted to leave as little room as possible for regrets later.

  But she was soft and warm, and it took him no time at all to realize that he could no more get out of this bed and go home than fly to the moon on his own power. He forced himself away from her for just a moment and sat up. “I’ll check my messages, then we can shut down the apartment and…sleep….”

  She ran her hand over his belly. “Sounds good.”

  At her touch he nearly said to hell with the messages, but then she withdrew her hand, got up, put on her velour robe, and went out to the kitchen to turn off the coffeepot, shut off the lights, and lock up the apartment. She flipped on the small TV in the bedroom as she went, knowing he liked to check in on the local news each night. Half the time, it seemed almost as important to keep up with the political scene in the city as with the crime scene in order to do his job right.

  As he listened to his messages, none of which couldn’t wait until the next day, he watched the newscaster Emerald Yeh talk about a foiled bank robbery attempt, a traffic accident on the Golden Gate Bridge that snarled the commute, and a dog who rescued a kid who had toppled into the water fountain at Yerba Buena Center. Not a big news day, thank goodness. He was more ready than ever to…relax…once more with Angie.

  He curled the pillow under his head, so that he was propped up slightly when she came back into the bedroom. Makeup off, her hair mussed, her mouth soft from being kissed, the long robe covering her, making her seem to float by—she was more beautiful than ever. “Everything’s off, and the deadbolt is on the front door,” she said as she reached his side of the bed. She shut off the lamp and he took her wrist, drawing her toward him. When their lips met, he felt her hunger. It matched his own.

  “I like the way you think, Inspector,” she whispered.

  It was all the encouragement he needed. His arms wrapped around her and he twisted so that, with a laugh, she sprawled across the bed, her back on the mattress and her legs over his. Her laughter disappeared quickly, though, as he slowly unknotted the robe, then drew the sides open, kissing her, his hands roaming over every soft, subtle, feminine inch.

  “Let me turn the TV off,” she said, pushing back his shoulders as she struggled to get up. “I don’t want you to suddenly begin paying more attention to Emerald Yeh than to me.”

  “Not to worry.” He didn’t think there was any need whatsoever for her to turn off anything, not the way she’d managed to turn him on.

  Holding her robe together, she hurried across the room to the TV. A short community service announcement began about the Random Acts of Kindness Mission and the big charity event it was going to sponsor. “Oh, look, Paavo. This is about the mission.”

  “Heaven is not the place for selfish people….”

  “That’s him, Paavo. That’s Reverend Hodge!”

  Paavo sat up to see this wunderkind Angie had talked so much about. The reverend was facing the camera and speaking.

  “Here is one of the least selfish people I know, a man who has completely changed his life for the better and now gives freely of his time and money for our endeavor. My friend, my benefactor, and my number-one volunteer, Alexander Clausen.”

  Angie backed away from it, not able to believe what she was seeing. She glanced quickly at Paavo. He stared at the TV, unflinching and still. Hodge’s benefactor wasn’t a particularly large man, not even particularly dangerous-looking, but he made Angie’s skin crawl.

  He had short blond hair combed forward to frame his face, deeply tanned skin, and a large mole that looked like a big black bug on his cheek. Angie knew him as Axel Klaw.

  “Perform your own random act of kindness,” Clausen said, “by giving generously to the big auction.”

  The camera switched back to Hodge.

  “And I’ll even throw in my book and tape—a thirty-nine-ninety-nine value—for the special price of only nineteen-ninety-nine, if you call now. Our toll-free number is…”

  Angie slammed her hand against the off switch. She bent her head and waited until the trembling left her limbs. Then she turned to Paavo.

  He still hadn’t moved.

  “I had…I had no idea,” she cried.

  “You’ve never seen him there?” The blue eyes that met hers were shards of ice.

  “Of course not! I heard that the reverend had a partner, but no one mentioned his name. I’m not sure I would have recognized it anyway. I thought his name was Axel Klaw.”

  Paavo visibly shuddered. She walked over to him and tried to hold him, but he shrugged her off. She hung back awkwardly, not sure what to do.

  Memories of the last time she had seen Paavo and Klaw together rushed back at her, tying her insides into knots of fear. She and Yosh had blundered into the office of Klaw’s pornography studio in Berkeley and seen Paavo and Klaw facing each other across a desk. Each had his gun drawn; each had been waiting for the other to make the first move.

  He could have died right before her eyes. She shut her eyes now, trying not to remember. But she did remember. She’d seen another side of Paavo that day, the cold, hard side of a man who was willing to kill or be killed. It had stunned and frightened her. It still did.

  “Paavo,” she whispered, scared to death that he might go after Klaw again.

  He glanced at her. “Those are the good people you’re helping, Angie? The good people you’ve surrounded yourself with?”

  Why was he angry with her? “I told you I didn’t know.”

  His jaw tightened. “If Klaw’s involved, it’s no place for you to be. Stay away until I check out this so-called mission.”

  She sat on his side of the bed. “Don’t go there, Paavo. Please. Let me talk to Reverend Hodge.” She took his hand. “I’m sure he doesn’t know about Klaw’s background. I’m sure it’s all perfectly innocent! Why, just today, a man came to see Reverend Hodge. His name was Charlie Tweeler—”

  “Angie!” He pulled his hand from hers and grabbed her arm tightly. Too tightly. “Nothing involving Axel Klaw is innocent. I’m asking you to stay away from the place.”

  She stood up and took a step back, out of his reach. Her eyes smarted as she spoke. “I’m working with the caterers. I can’t simply abandon the reverend and the other volunteers.”

  “Good people can be duped, Angie. Especially by a con artist like Klaw.”

  “No, Paavo. You’re wrong about them.”

  He got up and started to dress.

  “What are you doing?” She reached for his arm, trying to still his movement. He kept on.

  “I’m going out.”

  “I told you I had no idea about that man!” She was close to tears.

  He buttoned his shirt. “I’ll ask you once more to keep away from the mission until I find out what’s going on.”

  “You’re not being reasonable!”

  Cold eyes lifted to hers, and she recoiled from the implacable harshness in them. He had never looked at her this way, and her heart twisted with a sharp pang. This wasn’t the lover who had held her so tenderly in his arms only minutes ago, but a hard-eyed stranger.

  He didn’t say anything as he strapped on his shoulder holster, slid in the gun, then put on his jacket. “I’ll call you,” he said as he unbolted the door.

  “Don’t do this!” She threw her arms around him, but he removed them and walked out the door in silence.

  Somehow he found his way home that night. He didn’t remember much about leaving Angie’s apartment. He recalled that she’d tried to convince him that he should stay, that she had been as surprised by seeing Klaw as he was.

  Paavo knew she wasn’t lying, but that knowledge didn’t make the black rage that filled him any easier to handle.

  He had removed Angie’s arms from around his neck, trying not to catch her eye as he did so. It hurt. She was soft and loving, and he ached for
her, ached for the warmth only she could give. But he needed to be alone. That was something Angie didn’t understand about him, and probably never would.

  His need to be alone.

  She didn’t understand that before he’d met her, except for a few years with Aulis Kokkonen, he’d been alone ever since Jessica’s death.

  So he tore himself away from Angie, away from the confused, stricken look on her face. He drove down from her insulated hilltop, down into the heart of the city and out Geary Street to his cottage in the Richmond.

  As he drove, thoughts of this evening disappeared, and the ugliness of twenty years ago washed over him.

  When he was fourteen, he had watched his nineteen-year-old sister, Jessica, go out with a man whose name, then, was Alex Clausen. He was a splashy dresser, high-living, flashing what seemed to be a lot of money, especially to a couple of teenagers.

  Jessica was working part time and taking classes at City College when Clausen turned his attention to her. Paavo protested that the man was too old and too fast for her—Clausen must have been all of twenty-six or so at the time—but Jessica wouldn’t listen. She was tired of living hand to mouth, she’d said. She’d found someone who had money and who spent it on her, someone who could make her laugh and show her a good time, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on him.

  Paavo never learned everything Clausen was involved in, but he did know that Clausen was a dealer in hard drugs. Jessica swore to Paavo that she had never touched the stuff and never would.

  Then, one night, she was found dead from an overdose of heroin.

  Clausen claimed he wasn’t with her the night she died, and others corroborated his story. Paavo, though, had seen her leave the apartment with him. At fourteen, he didn’t know how to make people believe him, didn’t know how to make them see that Alex Clausen had been involved in his sister’s death. All he knew was that Jessica wouldn’t have tried heroin for the fun of it, that there was more to the story.