“I want what you’re having,” I said as I slid into the booth next to Claire. There was a pitcher of margaritas on the table and four glasses, two of them empty. I filled a glass and looked at my friends, feeling that almost magical connection that we’d forged because of all we’d gone through together.
“Looks like you need a transfusion,” Claire joked.
“I swear I do. Bring on the IV.” I took a gulp of the icy brew, snagged the newspaper that was beside Cindy’s elbow, and paged through until I found the story buried on page 17 of the Metro section, below the fold. INFO SOUGHT IN TENDERLOIN DISTRICT MURDERS.
“I guess it’s a bigger story in my mind,” I said.
“Dead street people don’t make page one,” Cindy said sympathetically.
“It’s odd,” I told the girls. “Actually, we have too much information. Seven thousand prints. Hair, fiber, a ton of useless DNA from a carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed since Nixon was a boy.” I stopped ranting long enough to pull the rubber band off my ponytail and shake out my hair. “On the other hand, with all the potential snitches crawling through the Tenderloin District, all we have is one shitty lead.”
“It sucks, Linds,” said Cindy. “Is the chief on your ass?”
“Nope,” I said, tapping the tiny mention of the Tenderloin District murders with my forefinger. “As the killer says, nobody cares.”
“Ease up on yourself, honey,” Claire said. “You’ll get a bite into this thing. You always do.”
“Yeah, enough about all this. Jill would give me hell for whining.”
“She says, ‘No problem,’” Cindy cracked, pointing to Jill’s empty seat. We lifted our glasses and clinked them together.
“To Jill,” we said in unison.
We filled Jill’s glass and passed it around in remembrance of Jill Bernhardt, a spectacular ADA and our great friend, who’d been murdered only months ago. We missed her terribly and said so. In a while, our waitress, Loretta, brought a new pitcher of margaritas to replace the last.
“You’re looking chirpy,” I said to Cindy, who jumped in with her news. She’d met a new guy, a hockey player who played for the Sharks in San Jose, and she was pretty pleased with herself. Claire and I started pumping her for details while the reggae band tuned up, and soon we were all singing a Jimmy Cliff song, plinking our spoons against the glassware.
I was finally getting loose in Margaritaville when my Nextel rang. It was Jacobi.
“Meet me outside, Boxer. I’m a block away. We’ve got a bead on that Mercedes.”
What I should’ve said was “Go without me. I’m off duty.” But it was my case, and I had to go. I tossed some bills down on the table, blew kisses at the girls, and bolted for the door. The killer was wrong about one thing. Somebody cared.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 4
I GOT IN THE passenger-side door of our unmarked gray Crown Vic.
“Where to?” I asked Jacobi.
“The Tenderloin District,” he told me. “A black Mercedes has been seen cruising around down there. Doesn’t seem to fit in with the neighborhood.”
Inspector Warren Jacobi used to be my partner. He’d handled my promotion pretty well, all things considered; he had more than ten years on me, and seven more years in grade. We still partnered up on special cases, and even though he reported to me, I had to turn myself in.
“I had a few at Susie’s.”
“Beers?”
“Margaritas.”
“How many is a few?” He swung his large head toward me.
“One and a half,” I said, not admitting to the third of the one I drank for Jill.
“You all right to come along?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”
“Don’t think you’re driving.”
“Did I ask?”
“There’s a thermos in back.”
“Coffee?”
“No, it’s for you to take a piss in, if you’ve got to, because we don’t have time for a pit stop.”
I laughed and reached for the coffee. Jacobi was always good for a tasteless joke. As we crossed onto Sixth just south of Mission, I saw a car matching the description in a one-hour parking zone.
“Lookit, Warren. That’s our baby.”
“Good catch, Boxer.”
Apart from the spike in my blood pressure, there was a whole lot of nothing happening on Sixth Street. It was a crumbling block of grimy storefronts and vacant SROs with blank plywood eyes. Aimless jaywalkers teetered and street sleepers snored under their piles of trash. The odd bum checked out the shiny black car.
“I hope to hell no one boosts that thing,” I said. “Stands out like a Steinway in a junkyard.”
I called in our location and we took up our position a half block away from the Mercedes. I punched the plate number into our computer, and this time gongs went off and it spit quarters. The car was registered to Dr. Andrew Cabot of Telegraph Hill.
I called the Hall and asked Cappy to check out Dr. Cabot on the NCIC database and call me back. Then Jacobi and I settled in for a long wait. Whoever Andrew Cabot was, he was definitely slumming. Normally, stakeouts are as fascinating as yesterday’s oatmeal, but I was drumming the dash with my fingers. Where the hell was Andrew Cabot? What was he doing down here?
Twenty minutes later, a street-sweeping machine, a bright yellow car-sized hulk like an armadillo with flashing lights and honking back-up alerts, rolled right up onto the sidewalk, as it did every night. Derelicts rose up off the pavement to avoid the brushes. Papers swirled in the low light of the street lamps.
The sweeper blocked our view for a few moments, and when it had passed, Jacobi and I saw it at the same time: Both the driver’s-side and the passenger-side doors of the Mercedes were closing.
The car was on the move.
“Time to rock and roll,” said Jacobi.
We waited tense seconds as a maroon Camry got between us and our subject. I radioed dispatch: “We’re following a black Mercedes, Queen Zebra Whiskey Two Six Charlie, heading north on Sixth toward Mission. Request units in the area—aw, shit!”
It was meant to be a quick pullover, but without warning or apparent cause, the driver of the Mercedes floored it, leaving Jacobi and me in the freshly washed dust.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 5
I WATCHED IN DISBELIEF as the Mercedes’ taillights became small red pinpoints, moving even farther into the distance as the Camry backed carefully into a parking space, hemming us in.
I grabbed the mike and barked over the car’s PA system, “Clear the street! Move over now!”
“Fuck this,” said Jacobi.
He flipped the switches that turned on the grille lights and the headlight strobes, and as our siren screamed into action, we tore past the Camry, clipping its taillight.
“Good one, Warren.”
We blew across the intersection at Howard Street, and I called in a Code 33 to keep the radio band free for the pursuit.
“We’re going northbound on Sixth, south of Market, in pursuit of a black Mercedes, attempting to pull it over. All units in the area, head into this vicinity.”
“Reason for the pursuit, Lieutenant?”
“Ongoing homicide investigation.”
Adrenaline flooded my body. We were going to land this baby, and I prayed we wouldn’t kill any bystanders in the process. Radio units sang out their locations as we crossed Mission against the light, going at least sixty.
I pressed my foot against virtual brakes as Jacobi gunned our car across Market, the largest and busiest street in town, heavy now with buses, Muni trains, and late commuter traffic.
“Hang a right,” I shouted to Jacobi.