Khristeen’s lips puckered into a self-satisfied smirk. “Yes, I do know.”
“And?”
“And this one is going to cost you, Frost. I think you have something very specific in mind about what Filko was doing, and you need me to confirm it for you.”
“Why do you say that?” Frost asked.
“One, I know how to read people, and I can read you. Two, do you think I somehow missed the story about a guy dying on your front doorstep last Friday? I smell a connection. If Martin Filko, CEO of Zelyx Corporation, has anything to do with a poisoned guy on Russian Hill, then I sure as hell want to know about it. I’m not saying another word until you give me something more.”
“You’re not the only reporter in town, Khristeen,” Frost said. “I can go elsewhere with my questions.”
“But you won’t, because you know I have the information you need.”
Frost frowned. “We’re still off the record.”
“For now.”
“The man who died at my house was named Denny Clark. He ran VIP charter tours on a yacht out of the marina. I want to know if Martin Filko was on his boat on Tuesday night.”
“Because?” Khristeen asked.
“No. That’s all you get for now.”
Khristeen took a large bite of falafel. “Okay. I don’t know anything about the boat, but yes, Martin Filko was in San Francisco on Tuesday.”
“What was he doing?” Frost asked.
“He toured the HQ building site, and then he spent the rest of the day with the mayor and his staff. Economic development, affordable housing, that kind of stuff. The relocation is a big deal, you know.”
“And in the evening?”
Khristeen winked. “Well, that is an excellent question, and I wish I knew the answer to it. But I don’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Filko and the mayor pulled a bait and switch on the press. The schedule said that the two of them were going to have dinner at the Fairmont. However, that turned out not to be true. They never showed. And they did a fake-out with the limo at city hall so no one was able to follow them. I have no idea where they went or who they were with or what they did.”
Frost felt the unmistakable electricity of getting closer to the truth. It shot up his spine with a combination of fear and excitement. “But Martin Filko was definitely with the mayor on Tuesday evening?” he asked.
“Definitely.”
He stood up, dug cash out of his wallet, and slapped it on the table. “This should cover everything. In fact, order something else if you want. Thank you, Khristeen. This was very helpful.”
“You’re welcome. And remember, Frost, I expect you to be very helpful to me in the near future.”
“Count on it,” he said. He picked up his laptop, and as he did, he thought about the archived articles he’d found about Lombard. “Oh, one other thing. Have you ever heard of a reporter named Stephen Post who used to work at the Chronicle? This would have been about three decades ago, so he was long before your time. I was just wondering if you’d heard the name.”
A strange, suspicious expression came over Khristeen’s face. “Stephen Post? Why are you interested in him?”
Frost shrugged. “He wrote some articles a long time ago that I just came across. If he was still in the Bay Area, I thought I might talk to him. You know me. I’m interested in history.”
Khristeen didn’t look convinced by his explanation. “Well, I do know about Stephen Post. All of us at the paper do. He’s a hero to journalists. Actually, there’s a portrait of him in the lobby with a special plaque underneath it.”
Frost stared at her, confused. “Why is that?”
“It’s a memorial,” she told him. “Stephen Post was shot and killed while on assignment. The police never found out who did it, but everyone believes it was because of one of his stories.”
30
Frost arrived home after dark. The only thing he could see inside the Russian Hill house were the lights of the city through the rear windows. A low, intermittent rumbling rose out of the silence, and that was Shack, snoring on the living room sofa. Frost didn’t turn on any lights. Instead, he went to the refrigerator and got himself a bottle of Torpedo ale, and he went out to the cool patio, leaving the glass door open behind him.
He leaned on the railing. This place felt like an oasis on top of the world, with the glowing neighborhoods below him and the black mass of the bay in the distance. Trees clung to the hillside, making a jungle on the steep slope. He drank his beer, listened to the wind, and wasn’t even aware of time passing. Throughout the day, he’d barely thought about the fight two nights earlier, but now that he was alone and his adrenaline had seeped away, the pain caught up with him again. The wound on his leg where the knife had slashed him throbbed. His neck stabbed him when he turned his head. He was tired, and all he wanted to do was tumble onto the sofa and sleep.
A tiny noise like the chiming of a bell rose from the darkness at his feet. He looked down. Shack was awake and had joined him on the patio through the open door. The cat bumped his head against Frost’s leg, but with every step he took, a metallic music followed him.
“You’re jingling, buddy,” Frost said. “What’s up with that?”
Frost bent down and scooped up the small cat with a hand under his stomach. He lifted Shack up until they were nose to nose. The cat licked his face. Shack normally wore a black collar, and although he was microchipped, Frost had also attached a badge to the collar with his cell phone number on it, just in case Shack decided to go exploring.
Except there was something else on his collar now.
A small charm, the kind that would hang from a teenager’s bracelet, jangled against the ID badge. Frost had no idea how it had gotten there. He couldn’t make it out, and he had to open up his phone to shine a light on the collar to see what it was.
When he did, his heart stopped.
His whole body shook with a wave of rage and fear.
The charm hanging on Shack’s collar was a snake. Its coils glinted in red. Its jaws were open, its teeth bared, as if it were hissing and laughing at him all at the same time.
Lombard.
Lombard had been here. In his house.
The naked cruelty of the threat overwhelmed him. He put Shack calmly down on the patio floor and stroked his black-and-white fur from head to tail as the cat purred. Then Frost grabbed the railing tightly with both hands and tried to drag breath out of his chest. He closed his eyes and opened them, and he felt a sting where he’d bitten down hard on his tongue.
He had no idea if he was alone or if anyone was on the wooded hillside to hear him. He shouted anyway.
“Don’t... you... dare! Don’t you try it, you sons of bitches! I will rain down hell on all of you! Do you hear me? Are you listening to me?”
The exhaustion, the ache, the loss, the confusion, the sleeplessness of the days since Friday night cascaded over him. He pounded both fists on the iron railing until he thought his bones had broken. Everything in his life felt brittle, like glass riddled with cracks, about to split open.
“Frost?”
He heard a voice behind him, and his reaction was instantaneous. His gun was in his hand. In a single fluid motion, it was cocked. He spun, ready to fire. His arm stretched out; his finger went to the trigger. Halfway through the turn, his mind caught up with him, and he realized that the shadow in the doorway was Tabby. He froze, but he couldn’t seem to let go of the gun. She saw it, too, and the starlight showed the panic in her face.
“Frost, it’s me!”
He breathed hard and came to his senses. He secured the gun and returned it to his holster and squatted next to Shack on the patio. When he did, he found he couldn’t even stand up again. He ran one hand back through his hair and left it awry. Tabby came and bent down beside him and put an arm around his shoulder.