Trust no one. Don’t talk to the cops.
“I have a name,” he said, ignoring his own hesitation.
Frost saw Gorham shake his head again and mouth a single word at him: No.
But Frost had come too far to stop.
“Lombard,” he said. “The name Lombard keeps coming up in my investigation.”
Hayden cocked his head in surprise. Then he did something Frost would never have expected. He laughed. The captain reclined in his chair at a dangerous angle and exchanged a grin with Cyril. “Lombard,” he chuckled. “Seriously? That’s what you heard?”
“Yes, sir. The name Lombard is all over the street, but no one will talk about what it means.”
“I bet.”
Frost was puzzled. “I’m sorry, have I missed something?”
“I think you’ve fallen for a myth, Easton.”
“What do you mean?”
Hayden’s shoulders shook as he laughed again. “The story of Lombard has been around as long as I can remember. Hell, one of the captains teased me about it when I was a rookie, and that was a very, very long time ago.”
“The ‘story’ of Lombard?” Frost asked.
“That’s right. Nobody knows who originally came up with it, but any time we had a case that went cold, the gag line among the cops was ‘Lombard did it.’ Like there was some kind of supercriminal out there we could blame. It was an inside joke for years. Unfortunately, a reporter got hold of it and actually wrote a story about this mystery killer named Lombard. How come the police were keeping him secret? How come nobody could catch him? The chief was furious. He had to explain that Lombard didn’t really exist, but the conspiracy had already taken hold around the city. I thought the joke died out years ago, but I guess it’s back.”
Frost didn’t know what to say.
He felt like a fool.
“The snake graffiti isn’t a myth,” he protested, but as soon as he said it, he knew he was making the situation worse. Hayden and Cyril studied the image again and recognized for the first time how the twists of the snake’s body resembled the San Francisco street. The captain laughed again. He thrust his enormous bulk out of his chair and came around the desk and slapped Frost cheerfully on the back.
“Lombard,” Hayden said. “Yeah, I see it. Oh, this is good. Don’t feel bad, Easton. Somebody out there is playing an elaborate joke on us, and you’re just the one who got tagged with it.”
“Coyle’s dead,” Frost replied. “So is Denny Clark. That’s not a joke.”
“You’re right, but I think you better reexamine what’s real and what’s not in this case. It’s easy to get sucked into a conspiracy, particularly with somebody like Coyle. These nuts can be pretty persuasive. Go back over the evidence in the Denny Clark case and stop worrying about snakes, okay? Odds are, you’re going to find that this was a drug murder, just like I said. This Luis Moreno who was following you is probably on the payroll for a local dealer.”
Frost stood up. He felt heat on his face.
“I’ll do that,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you with this, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it, Easton. Believe me, you’re not the first cop to get played.”
The laughter of the three men followed him as he left the captain’s office and made his way back to his own desk. He sat down, his head spinning. Hayden was right about one thing. Frost no longer had any idea what was real and what was not.
This had all started with Denny’s last word as he was dying. Lombard.
That was no myth. Denny believed in Lombard. And yet maybe Denny had been fooled, too. Maybe none of it was real.
A story that had been around for years.
An answer for every cold case.
A joke. Lombard did it.
Frost shook his head and thought about Herb’s street network being turned against him. He thought about the fear on Belinda Drake’s face. He thought about Fox: Don’t mess with Lombard’s business, or you’re next.
What if Captain Hayden was wrong?
What if someone had turned the Lombard myth into reality?
Frost felt a shadow cross his desk. Trent Gorham stood over him. The other detective bent down with one big hand on Frost’s desk and the other on Frost’s shoulder. Gorham’s face was split by a huge smile, and his blond eyebrows danced with amusement. In the doorway of Hayden’s office, Cyril Timko watched the two of them. Cyril grinned, too.
“Don’t worry, Easton,” Gorham told him in a loud voice so that everyone in the department could hear. “For what it’s worth, you almost had me convinced about those damn snakes.”
He straightened up with a laugh and headed for the elevators.
That was when Frost noticed that Gorham had left a scrap of paper on his desk. With a casual glance around the office, Frost turned the paper over and saw that Gorham had scribbled a message for him on the back.
We need to talk.
10 p.m. Pier 45.
23
Frost went through the door of Zingari into a room filled with live jazz and the aromas of mushroom and basil floating by on white plates. He’d been here once before, almost a year earlier, to confront a psychiatrist who specialized in manipulating the traumatic memories of her patients. Back then, Francesca Stein had been a regular here. He looked around curiously but didn’t see her at any of the tables. He wasn’t even sure if she’d stayed in San Francisco after the investigation ended.
He made his way to the bar. There was one stool open at the end, near where the band was playing. The bartender was busy, and while Frost waited for her, he exchanged smiles with a young African American woman who was singing and playing guitar. Being here among the Monday crowd reminded him that life as a loner wasn’t always a good thing. On those rare occasions when he had an evening free, he usually spent it at home with Shack, eating dinner from one of Duane’s care packages and digging into a history book set years before he was born.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked him.
She leaned both elbows on the bar in front of him. She was tall enough that she had to have played basketball at some time in her youth, but now she was at least forty, with shaggy brown hair shot through with blue highlights. She wore a sleeveless black blouse with a high neck, and her skinny bare arms were canvases for multicolored tattoos.
“Anchor Steam,” Frost replied. “And some information. I’m looking for an old friend. His name’s Chester Bagley. Does he still work here?”
“Chester? No, sorry, he quit.”
“When was that?”
The woman shrugged. “Last week, I guess. His loss is my gain. I’m the new Chester.”
“So you never met him?” Frost asked.
The woman popped the top on his amber beer and poured it out. The glass was ice cold. “No, but I think one of the waiters, Virgil, was a buddy of his. You could try talking to him.”
“Is he around?”
“Yeah, I’ll send him your way. You want anything to eat?”
Frost eyed an empty bar table that overlooked the windows near Post Street. He realized he was hungry. “How about some crab cakes?”
“You got it.”
Frost took his beer and snapped up the table before anyone else could get to it. The guitarist in the band had a raspy, cigarette-soaked voice that was perfect for sad songs, and he sipped his beer as he listened to her. She made love to the microphone and flirted with him with her dark eyes. He realized that he hadn’t had sex in months, and this was the kind of evening where a one-night stand matched his mood. But Frost had never done casual well. That was Duane’s specialty.
He was halfway through his beer when a twenty-something waiter with wavy shock-white hair dropped into the chair across from him. The man had a cocky smirk and the build of someone who worked out a lot. He stretched out his long legs and slumped sideways at the table with his chin balanced on one hand.