Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (21 page)

Leslie had managed to catch both of us by surprise, I don’t know why. Too into our acts, I guess.

Rosie let out a roar and rolled to a crouch. I tried to get between the two women, and was just reaching for the boot that was coming at my face— Leslie’s— when Floyd lifted Leslie off her feet and put her down again several feet away.

“I’ll stomp that bitch!” she screamed.

“No, no, you won’t. Nobody’s gonna stomp anybody in Steve’s bar, and nobody’s gonna stomp anybody until we find out where Switcher got his story, and who killed Pete. You got that, little girl?”

She went at Floyd, fists pumping, and managed to plant a good kick on his shin before Steve came around the bar and grabbed her, marched her back to her table and sat her down, hard.

Floyd’s shin was bleeding. There was a dark stain on his jeans leg.

“Thanks, Steve,” I yelled, picking up Rosie’s chair and patting her on the shoulder. She was steaming, gritting her teeth, red-faced, but she sat. I was really glad she wasn’t mad at me.

Steve just glared at me. I laughed and dropped into my own chair. Floyd had managed to set our glasses on the table before he’d stopped the fight. I slid Rosie’s beer in her direction and took a long swallow of my own.

“Hey, Floyd, maybe you can tell me this— does Steve hate everybody or is it just me?”

“Steve don’t hate nobody, Jase, he’s just got a suspicious mind.”

Steve went back behind the bar. Not a word to Leslie. No 86 for her. I figured that was either because of how Steve felt about her or how he felt about us.

I stared at the blood on Floyd’s pants leg. There was a lot of it. Floyd followed my look.

“Leslie’s got steel-tipped boots,” he said.

Thinking about that, and wondering where she’d used them before, I glanced across at the warriors’ table in time to see Zack lean over and say something to Leslie. Then he got up and approached us.

He kept his eyes fastened on me while he made it clear he was speaking only to Floyd. “You know, Floyd, maybe you shouldn’t have stopped the fight.”

Floyd waited for the rest.

“Leslie’s right. And I don’t want no one who supports Pete’s killer in my bar.” So much for Zack’s friendship with Royal. I remembered what Red had said, that these guys would kill for each other. If they weren’t too busy knifing each other in the back.

Floyd shook his head. “Not your bar, Zack. Cool down. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Zack shot me an Elvis sneer. He wasn’t finished yet. He had been Royal’s friend, friend of the snitch. That made him look bad, and now he had something to prove.

“Hey, Floyd, you sure you’re not sitting with a traitor?”

Floyd didn’t answer.

“We think Royal killed Pete Ebner, that’s what we think. The warriors, I mean. And we think he needs to be punished for it. What do you think of that, Jase?” I didn’t like the sound of the way he said my name.

Floyd didn’t say anything. He didn’t even blink. I decided to pretend he had spoken up, had blinked, to keep the fantasy going that he was my pal.

“It’s okay, Floyd. I can understand where the man’s coming from.” Like I thought Zack was a man. “Listen, Zack, if I thought Royal killed anyone in this group, I’d turn him over to you myself.”

The kid sneered at me again. “Bullshit, that’s—”

“That’s enough, now,” Floyd told him. “We’re gonna find out who did Pete, you can be sure of that. Now just take it easy.”

“I’m a warrior, Floyd.” The kid raised his voice. “Warriors don’t take it easy.” With that, he swaggered back to his table of friends. Red was just pulling a chair up to the warriors’ table. He was wearing his buck knife.

Like the conversation had never happened, Floyd leaned back, totally relaxed, and looked at Rosie’s breasts. “What kind of food you two like? Dago? Chink? Jap? Steak? I can eat anything.”

Floyd was talking loudly enough so that everyone at the bar could hear his epithets and catch the meaning of his last statement. Several people laughed every step of the way, which at least served to lower the tension level in the room. Leslie laughed the loudest.

“Steak’s fine,” Rosie said, ignoring his carnivorous fix on her body. She’s not much of a steak-eater. Maybe she didn’t want to inflict Floyd on an ethnic restaurant.

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s fine. I wanted to ask you, Floyd— Royal says Gilly and Pete didn’t get along in some way. Is that true?”

“Huh. Kind of funny, about those two. Always had this edge, you know? Couldn’t tell what it was about. Didn’t ask, either. Personal stuff. Sex, probably.” I could believe that about Gilly, but Ebner? I’d expected him to be saving himself for the second coming of Eva Braun. “It was really Karl who didn’t like Pete, but Karl don’t like me either, and I’m still alive. Have another beer.”

I’d had enough for one night. Enough beer, enough Aryan Command, enough Floyd. Unfortunately, it was time for dinner. Floyd insisted we go in his Camaro.

He took us to a decent place in Berkeley. I wanted the sole, but I didn’t want Floyd doubting my manhood, so I ordered steak. Rosie, not having that problem, got the salmon. Floyd, as expected, opted for their biggest steak, very rare.

“I like ’em so they’re still walking.” Big surprise.

“Floyd, I’m glad we’re getting this chance to talk about what’s going on. It’s real bad for the Command to lose Pete this way. And I’m worried about Royal.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it stinks, all right. Good guy, Ebner. Helluvan Aryan. Hey, how long’s it been since you had a martini?”

About three years. “Don’t remember.”

“You, Rose?”

“A while, Floyd.”

“Maybe it’s time. I hear they make real good ones here. Let’s give it a try.”

“Well, maybe just one.” Rosie sounded doubtful. I was with her on that. We didn’t want to relax that much. Floyd stood up and waved at the waiter, who was there in ten seconds. He ordered three jumbo martinis.

I wasn’t going to let him cut me off about Royal. I put on my best earnest, serious face.

“Floyd, you’re a member in good standing. Royal—”

“Yeah. Listen, there’s not much I can do.”

“Royal’s a good kid. Maybe someone lied, and for sure someone killed Pete, but going after an innocent, loyal warrior— that’s not gonna do anybody any good at all.”

Floyd shrugged. I needed to try to pull him into this.

“Listen, I know he didn’t kill Pete. I know where he was Sunday night.”

“Yeah, where?”

“At my place. See he was worried about some of the guys threatening him, calling him a traitor. So I said, Hey, come over for dinner and sleep on my couch tonight if you’re scared. He did. But he made me swear not to tell, embarrassed about being scared, you know? He probably still won’t admit it.” I threw that in just in case anyone asked him and he was dumb enough to tell the truth. Then, remembering that Floyd had followed Royal the next day: “He left sometime real early in the morning. Don’t know when. Went to a motel, I think.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

He looked thoughtful. “Maybe Pete was killed before dinnertime.”

“Broad daylight?”

“Didn’t you come by Thor’s on Sunday?”

“Early and late. And by the time we got to Thor’s Sunday night you guys were already having your meeting. What time do the cops think he was killed?”

Floyd looked thoughtful again, but he kept that information, if he had it, to himself. The waiter came back with our unwanted martinis, breaking some kind of record. The damned things were bigger than margaritas.

“And Royal’s not a traitor, either. That kid, he’s real serious, real true blue, Floyd.”

“Yeah? And how about you, Jase?”

“Jesus, Floyd, is that why you invited us to have dinner with you tonight? To ask me if I’m a traitor?”

“No, but I sure would like to know. You’re a sharp guy, Jase. You could be useful to the Command. But we got to be careful.”

“Hey, I can understand that. I don’t know how I can make you feel okay about me, though.”

“Or me,” Rosie interjected.

He leered at her. “Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

She ignored the leer and turned the conversation back where we wanted it. “Floyd, I don’t get it, how those kids can blame Royal for all this. Isn’t Zack supposed to be his friend?”

He shrugged. “Who else they going to blame? Switcher found something out from someone. A snitch who knew about some plans. Pete thought it might be Royal. Now Pete’s dead, right?” Floyd was looking at her with a glimmer of a smile. The smile gave me the creeps. “Was it Royal? Or was it you, Rosie?”

Even Cousin Jase wouldn’t miss the implication of what Floyd had just said. I slapped the table, getting his attention back on me. “Wait a minute.” I wrinkled up my forehead, all stupid-looking. “You said a snitch knew about some plans. Does that mean it’s true? That what this guy said about the Command wasn’t a lie?”

He scowled at me. Maybe he hadn’t meant to let the truth slip out that way. “How the hell would I know? I’m just sayin’…” Casually, he took a slug of his martini.

“But if everyone says a snitch told the cops…” Come on, Floyd, admit it.

Floyd just shrugged.

“Maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t get it. Why would the Command want to kill Switcher? I thought you guys liked him.”

“I guess it’s kind of complicated then, huh? Anyway, I don’t know.”

The food came and Floyd acted like he was too hungry to talk, swallowing his salad, shoving four pats of butter into his baked potato, and attacking his steak like he didn’t want it to attack him first. Rosie and I managed to eat most of what we’d ordered and drink about half the Godzilla-sized martini before it was time to leave for the show.

Rosie had been careful to sit in the back seat, as far out of Floyd’s reach as she could get. “Hey, Floyd— what’s the name of this group?” she wanted to know.

“The Killer B’s,” Floyd said.

“Bees? As in little striped bugs?”

“No,
B’
s as in letters of the alphabet.”

“And who are they again?”

“It’s Skink’s group.”

“Isn’t he one of the warriors?”

“Yeah. A good one.”

I’d mentioned Skink to Rosie as the kid who’d earned the motorcycle, and pointed him out: Skink, brave warrior, friend of Zack.

“Why are they called B’s?”

Floyd looked blank. Apparently he hadn’t wondered about that. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re all from Berkeley. Maybe they all work out and it stands for buff. Anyway, they’re supposed to be really good and the Command likes to support its own. So we’re going.”

I nodded with all the enthusiasm I could dredge up. “Can’t give enough support to our warriors!”

“Thought you’d say that.”

Was it my imagination or was there a subtle shift in Floyd’s tone with me? A touch of sarcasm? Was my acting not quite the star-quality stuff I’d been imagining? Truth was, I was a little worried about going to a public place that wasn’t Thor’s. The Bay Area is like a small town. We’d taken a chance when we’d gone to the ball game at the Coliseum, but I’ve never in my life run into anyone I know at a ballpark. I don’t know why. But this was music. An East Bay club. Rosie and I both knew a lot of people in the East Bay, and we were only half an hour from both San Francisco and Marin County too. We could run into someone who recognized us even in white-trash drag with the wrong hair.

But nervous or not, we had to be willing to go out in public. All we could do was hope this would not be the night our own act laid an egg.

I tried again, using a little less cheerleader, a little more Clint Eastwood. “Who else is going to be there?”

“Gilly, Red, Leslie, buncha warriors, don’t know who else. Maybe Karl, but probably not.”

The ride took only ten minutes, and that was about all the conversation, thank God, that we had time for.

“Are they going to maybe dedicate the show to Pete?” I asked as we got out of the car, like I thought it would be a good idea.

“Nobody said.”

The club occupied a warehouse down in west Oakland, between a film company I’d never heard of and a welding business.

Its scabby gray facade was decorated with messy, unreadable, dirty-mouth tagging. Not one piece of decent graffiti on the whole front wall. The interior had been cut into one large room and one small one. The small one, a lobby of sorts, was brightly lighted. It was crammed mostly with young and youngish people milling around a snack bar and a ticket-taker. Leslie and her pals were already there, looking sullen and cool. The large room, which I could see through the doorway, was pretty dim.

Tickets were ten dollars, and a couple of muscular and hairless teenagers with rings in more places than I could count, or wanted to count, stood near the ticket-taker looking menacing. In case anyone didn’t like the music? What would they do if a critic showed up?

Floyd insisted on paying our way. “Want a candy bar or a soda or something? Place doesn’t sell alcohol, ’cause they want to get kids in here.”

“Steve doesn’t seem to worry about legal age, down at Thor’s.”

“Steve doesn’t believe in that law.”

“Can’t it get him closed down?”

“He don’t need to worry about that.”

“Well, let’s hope it stays that way. Payoffs?”

“Nah. Other towns, sure, but not in this neck of the woods. Why do you care?”

“Hey, whatever.” Maybe Steve had other sources of income, and losing a liquor license just meant setting up somewhere else. Maybe, in the case of Thor’s, the alcohol was a deliberate attraction.

I accepted a soda. Rosie got a bottled water.

Gilly showed up while we were buying our tickets. She was alone and walked over to Leslie. So there she was again, this beautiful woman, on her own, at a club. I amused myself for a minute or so imagining she was alone because I belonged to Rosie. Or had Pete Ebner broken her heart?

Red lumbered in, nodded to us, and went to talk to the bouncers, or whatever they were. He wasn’t wearing his knife. Zack came in with the little guy who looked swamped in his tough jacket, the one who’d been admiring the motorcycle with Zack and Skink. Washburn, that was his name.

A lot of the people showing up for the performance looked like ordinary kids, ordinary adults out for the evening. One group of middle-class music-lovers, in particular, looked like they didn’t have a clue what they were in for, trying to be cool and avoid the eyes of the scowling skins. Tourists, maybe out to scare themselves or prove there was nothing to be scared of.