He turned the key in the ignition, the car started right up, and he pulled out of his space. When he got to Potrero, the traffic was heavy and unbroken going south to his left, but there was an opening turning right if he moved quickly, and so he jammed down on the accelerator.
That was the extent of the thought he gave to turning back uptown. It could have easily gone either way, since he didn’t have a destination in mind.
Such a small, random decision. Such huge consequences.
The windows that overlooked the booth tables at Lou the Greek’s were set high in the west-facing wall, their bases perhaps six feet from the floor. This unusual design feature wasn’t due to some architect’s skewed or artistic vision; from outside the building, all six of the windows sat level to the asphalt that paved a debris- and Dumpster-strewn alley. Lou’s had been built about halfway underground. Patrons entering the building’s front double doors could either go up the stairs to the first floor-Acme Bail Bonds, Florence Ward/Notary Public, and Presto Dispatch (a document delivery service)-or down eight ammonia- or possibly urine-tinged steps, through a red- leather one-sided swinging door, and into the bustling netherworld of Lou’s-“Open Six to Two Seven Days a Week/Full Bar/Daily Special.”
When you walk in, the bar is to your right. If it’s lunchtime, the bar is jammed, with all the stools taken, and behind them a couple of rows of standing room. If it’s your first time here, you notice the high windows, under them the six old-fashioned four-person wooden booths, the low-slung acoustic tile ceiling, the faint odor of cooking oil, soy sauce, maybe spilled beer. The place squeezes twenty four-tops onto the floor, and six two-tops around the walls, and every weekday it serves over two hundred lunches, all the more remarkable because its menu every day, save the occasional bonanza of fortune cookies, is comprised of only one dish: the Special.
Lou the Greek’s wife, Chiu, was Chinese, and for twenty-five or more years, she’d been honoring her and her husband’s union by creating a new dish nearly every single day, always based on their two nationalities. Today’s Special, for example, General Lou’s Pork, was at once typical and unique: pita bread pockets stuffed with bright red Chinese barbecued pork, scallions, garlic, hoisin sauce, yogurt, and hot pepper flakes. A lot of hot pepper flakes.
Juhle and Russo sat sucking their iced teas through straws across from each other in one of the booths.
Russo set her glass down, swallowed, and blew in and out noisily a couple of times. “Holy shit,” she said. “Lou calls this ‘some spicy’? I’d like to see a lot spicy if this is some. This stuff is fire.”
Juhle slid over the little jar of pure hot pepper seeds in oil. “You want to get serious, add some of this. Then it gets spicy.”
“I pass.” Russo sipped again, rubbed at her lips. “I mean it. Holy shit.”
“You already said that.”
“It’s a two ‘holy-shit’ pita pocket.”
Juhle took another bite, chewed contentedly, switched to another subject without preamble. “So how can it hurt? We’re just talking to her.”
“We don’t know it’s her scarf, Devin.”
Juhle shrugged, sipped some tea, shrugged again. “We ask her. We show her that lovely color photograph you took and ask the lovely Ms. Thorpe if she’s ever seen this thing before. She says no, we keep looking, maybe ask some other people if they ever saw her wearing it, or somebody else wearing it. On the other hand, she says yes, we’re getting close.”
“I’m not even so sure of that.”
“No? Why not, pray?”
“Because even if it’s hers, we don’t know if it’s his semen.”
“Granted. But we will know in a couple of days. And?”
“And you just seem to want to be building this case on one flimsy lead after another. You really don’t see this?”
“I see what you’re saying, sure. First we get the tire iron. We know it’s Como’s hair on it, but we don’t know it’s from Como’s limo, although the tire iron from the limo is missing. Right? Right. There are a lot of tire irons in the world. Close, but not proof positive. So then we search the limo and guess what? We find the scarf. And sure, it might not be the Thorpe girl’s scarf, and it might not be Como’s masculine essence on it, either, but-”
“Jesus, Dev, you think you could just say ‘semen’?”
“I doubt it. I don’t even say ‘semen’ when I’m talking to Connie.”
“So what do you… no, never mind. Forget I asked. Go on.”
“So I agree with you, is what I’m saying, in theory. We’ve got all these things we don’t know for sure. Could be but might not be. The tire iron, the limo, the scarf that might not be hers, the semen-see, I can do it-that might not be his. But let’s say-let’s just say-that the elements of the trail I see here all turn out to go in our direction. I mean, it turns out the tire iron came from his limo. It’s her scarf and his semen. Then, in that case, she’s definitely lied to us, which tells us something new, doesn’t it? Now, add to that that she had daily access to the limo, that he fired her that day-”
“We don’t know that. Only maybe that he said he was going to.”
“So we ask her that too. She tells us yes, she’s got a motive. And all this is not even talking about Monday night, where she slept in her car out by the beach a couple of blocks below where Nancy Neshek breathed her last.” Juhle took the last loud slurp from his iced tea, held up a hand until he’d swallowed it. “I’m not saying we’re ready for an arrest here, Sarah. But come on. Put a little press on her, get another statement, see if she answers the same as last time. What have we got to lose?”
When the service was over, Al Carter hung back over in the corner of the downstairs lobby of the War Memorial building while Hunt corralled Turner, the Sanchezes, and Lorraine Hess into a circle off to the side at the bottom of the steps. Carter listened in while Hunt pinned down each of them in turn about their whereabouts the night of Neshek’s death. It seemed to take some of the wind out of Hunt when he learned that they’d all been at a meeting with one another on the Monday night when Neshek had been killed. But then when he learned that Nancy Neshek had been there with them all, too, he picked up again. So, Hunt asked, what time did the Communities of Opportunity meeting break up? Where had every one of them gone afterward?
This last question got Turner hot enough that nobody wound up having to answer. Maybe, Turner had exploded, Hunt didn’t realize that he was talking to the leadership of the philanthropic community in San Francisco. None of Len Turner’s associates were suspects in either one of these murders. In fact, Turner himself had hired Hunt and these people had contributed to the reward. Weren’t those the facts?
Hunt had had to admit that they were.
And then Turner went on the offensive. Carter had heard him do it before. He reminded Hunt that all of these executives had places to go and important things to do, and maybe Hunt could better spend his time following the leads he had already developed through the process they were paying him for rather than harassing them in this ridiculous manner, thank you.
After the executive group broke up, Hunt had waited until they’d all left the building, then he’d sat down on the steps and had a brief talk on his cell phone. By the time he closed the phone and slid it into its holster on his belt, Carter was standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against the wall.
“That Len Turner, he’s a force of nature, isn’t he?”
Hunt stood up, nodded in acknowledgment through a frustrated grin. “Al Carter, isn’t it?”