Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) (23 page)

Royal and I helped Red through the door and back to his chair. Leslie fetched some ice in a plastic bag. Red crossed his injured ankle over his knee and plopped the ice bag on it, wincing.

A few minutes later, after the entire scene had been gone over at least twice with grievances, Floyd came back.

“She got away.”

“Shit.” Red spat on the floor.

Floyd shook his head, glowering. “Guess you were right. Guess she was a ringer.”

“Shit. I coulda had her.”

Floyd sighed. “I thought I did. But someone got in the way. You. Like playing the outfield. You got to call the ball.”

Red pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and took a long swallow. “This ain’t baseball, you dumb fuck. This is war.”

Which just happened to be the theme of several more of the songs performed by the Killer B’s that night.

We sat through another hour of the Killer B’s, although Floyd was pretty antsy and Red and the warriors seemed to be doing as much huddling as listening. Gilly was going around and around in my head, and all I really wanted to do was get the hell out of there and talk to Rosie. Finally, it was over.

“Well, that was sure enough excitement for one night,” I told Floyd as we left the club. “Great music, though.”

He grunted.

Out on the sidewalk, Royal and Deeanne said good night to everyone. Only Rosie and I answered. A group of five kids standing near the door— Zack, Skink, Washburn, Leslie, and one of her friends— watched them walk to their car, muttering among themselves, looking dangerous. Leslie had accused Royal of getting “in the way” when they were trying to recapture Gilly, and I guessed she’d gnaw on that bone for a while. The others seemed only too willing to gnaw it with her.

Royal’s current disfavor was like a rock rolling downhill with no one in the Command willing to step in its way. It didn’t seem to matter that he was still acting like one of the boys. It didn’t seem to matter that they’d just unmasked a spy. That even if they couldn’t necessarily suspect Gilly of the Switcher leak, they could suspect her of killing Ebner.

ZOG. JDO. RSVP.

Maybe, once they had time to cool down and think it through, they’d take some of the heat off Royal. But they were acting like they just wanted to punish someone. Gilly had escaped and he was the next best choice.

At least I could console myself that I hadn’t been lusting for a Nazi, after all. That was a relief. Of course, it was also possible I’d been lusting for a killer, but Ebner probably really needed killing, and if she did the job, I wasn’t so sure I should hold it against her.

Floyd, still silent and tense, dropped us off at my car where I’d left it outside Thor’s.

Rosie and I piled in, happy to be on home turf, even rolling home turf. We could hardly get the words out fast enough.

“Do you think she really was JDO, Jake?”

“I hope so. Makes me feel like less of an asshole— do you think Royal got in the way on purpose?”

“Yeah. I do. I’m almost positive he didn’t trip by accident.” I thought so too. Which meant I was not a total fool on two counts— Gilly was not a Nazi and Royal was worth saving.

My car phone gurgled. I picked it up, expecting Royal to be on the other end.

“Hello. This is Harry George.” There was that slow, pleasant voice again.

“George! I’m glad you got back to me.”

“Tell me what you’re doing. What’s going on.” I noticed he didn’t bother to give a reason for his delay in calling back. Was it an FBI motto? Never apologize, never explain…

I filled him in on our infiltration of the group, and brought him up to date— all the way to Gilly’s discovery and escape.

Then, a question he probably wouldn’t answer: “What about this Gilly Johns or Milly Levine? Do you know anything about her?”

“I couldn’t tell you if we did, Mr. Samson.”

“Was she your agent?”

No answer.

“Do you have an agent in the group?”

“Mr. Samson, we cannot infiltrate any political group unless we have proof of criminal activity. It’s frowned upon. It’s not in the budget.”

Uh-huh. It was frowned upon in the Sixties and Seventies too. But not by the FBI.

“Are you saying you didn’t and you don’t? Have anyone in there?”

“Our policy is clear.” Double-talk.

“What about the plot to kill Preston Switcher? Isn’t that criminal?”

“No one has done anything.”

“What about the murder of Pete Ebner?”

“I’m sure the police are involved now, since there’s been a homicide. And I expect you to keep me informed of your activities.”

“My activities?”

“Be careful, Mr. Samson. These people are dangerous.” He rang off.

Thanks a lot, Hairy George, you stuffed monkey.

“He didn’t tell you anything, did he?”

“Nothing. Which makes me think there’s something to tell.”

“I’ll talk to Pauline about Gilly. Johns? Was that the last name she was using?” I nodded. “And Milly Levine. Maybe she can check on those names. Maybe she can find out something about her. If she’s JDO, the cops might know that. It’s a pretty militant group.”

I dropped her off and drove home, feeling jangled and exhausted all at once. Questions plagued my mind, but my mind was just too tired to answer them. I took a couple of aspirins and a warm glass of milk and fell onto the sheets, shedding underwear. I slept hard for a whole hour. Then the bedside phone rang.

“Jake! You’ve got to come!”

The words were slurred and wet with hysteria, but I recognized Deeanne’s voice. “He’s hurt. They really did him.

“Marin General. Emergency.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Before I put my clothes back on, I made a quick call to Rosie, who said she’d meet me at the hospital, and another one to Art.

“Thought you’d want to know— Deeanne’s boyfriend is hurt. He’s in the hospital.”

“Don’t call him her boyfriend. And the way I look at it, you play with fire, you get burned.”

“Artie, she’s with him, and she sounds like she needs a shoulder. Yours is better than mine.”

He was silent for a moment. “What happened?”

“I don’t know that yet. Sounds like someone beat him up.”

“Big surprise. Okay. Where is she?”

I told him and dressed quickly. The hospital was only ten minutes away, and only a little more than half an hour elapsed between Deeanne’s call and my arrival at Emergency.

I asked the nurse at the desk where I would find Royal Subic. She told me to wait in an ugly, uncomfortable, blue plastic chair. I did as I was told. Nurses intimidate me. She went into one of the little side rooms— examining? treatment? The rooms where they take you when you’ve just fainted in a gourmet restaurant or gotten shot on a street corner. While I was waiting, Rosie came in.

“Your T-shirt’s on inside out,” I told her, pointing at the label hanging off the collar. It was a union label.

“Good. Why are we sitting here?” I told her we were waiting.

In a couple of minutes, Deeanne came out. Her eyes were red and her nose was running, but I didn’t see any marks on her, at least. She came to me and huddled in my arms like a six-year-old, crying again. I patted her shoulder and said, “There, there” several times before I sat her down on one of the plastic chairs, said Artie was on his way, and demanded that she pull herself together and tell me what was going on.

Before she had a chance, the nurse returned. “If you’re James, he wants to see you.”

“Jake?”

“Maybe. He’s having a little trouble talking.” She held out an arm to bar Rosie. “Wait a minute. Who are you?”

“I’m his sister.” The nurse dropped her arm.

A doctor was working in the room. He was just putting a suture needle down on a tray. Royal was smeared with blood, mostly around his mouth and down his chest. His lips looked like hamburger. His right cheekbone was purple. Blood spotted the floor and the paper cover on the table where he lay.

Deeanne had followed us in.

“James?” the doctor asked.

“Sure.” James, Jason, Jake— they all started with
J
, anyway.

“He says he wants to talk to you, but I don’t know how he expects to do that.”

Royal opened his mouth and blood trickled out. He mumbled something and a piece of tooth fell off his chin.

“Don’t try to talk,” I told him. “Just nod. Or Deeanne can answer.”

“I’m going to have to keep working on him.” The doctor pointed at a note sitting on the counter top. “He wrote this, by the way. You might try to convince him to tell the truth.”

The note, written on a hospital memo pad, said, in shaky capital letters, “I fell.”

I’d caught something in the young doc’s voice and looked at him closely for the first time. He was pissed off, his jaw rigid. His eyes slid toward the unbandaged swastika on Royal’s arm, then back up to meet mine. I didn’t know what to say. I’d forgotten the thing was there. This doctor probably should have tried to forget about it, but couldn’t seem to. Then he took a breath and he was back to business, asking Royal to open his mouth for another look.

“The kid’s okay,” I said lamely. The doctor didn’t look up. Then to Deeanne I said, “How did you get him here?”

“Drove him. In his car.”

“So you didn’t call 911?”

“He wouldn’t let me.”

“Uh-huh.” The no-cops rule. I turned to Royal. “Who did it, Royal, your buddies or someone who didn’t like your political affiliation? Wink once for buddies, twice for violent liberals.”

The doctor’s head only partly obstructed my view of Royal’s face. He winked once, or maybe he just closed his eyes.

The doctor straightened up and stepped away from the table. “Going to need major dentistry too. I’ll be right back.” He slid a wad of packing into Royal’s mouth and left the room. I took the opportunity to open a couple of cabinet drawers, find gauze and tape, and slap a cover on the tattoo. The last thing Royal needed right now was to have a pack of pissed-off doctors messing around inside his mouth.

The kid looked groggy and unfocused, his eyelids drooping. I didn’t know whether the disorientation was caused by painkillers or concussion, but decided to abandon the answer-me-with-a-wink idea for the time being.

“Deeanne, were you with him when this happened?”

“Yes.” She started crying again. “They were all—”

“They who?”

“Some of the guys from the Command. Zack was there. A couple of others.”

“Just the kids?” Not Red? Not Floyd?

“Yeah. Just the warriors.”

Warriors. Cannon fodder. Pawns. Hit men for cheap.

“What did they say to him while they did it? I mean, were they yelling stuff like, ‘You killed Ebner!’ or were they just calling him a traitor all the way around, or what?” She shrugged and looked at Royal. He grunted and looked frustrated.

“Did they say anything about me? Or Rosie?”

“I don’t think so.” Clearly, Deeanne had not been listening to the warriors, or registering what she heard. She had probably been screaming. But I kept trying.

“Did they say anything about Gilly?”

Deeanne pounded at her temples with both fists. “I’m so sorry, Jake. I just don’t know. I was so scared.” Rosie put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and gave her a hug and a pat. That just made her cry more.

Royal gurgled. I turned back to him. “Lets try something else, Royal. Raise your right hand for yes, left for no.” Maybe grosser movements would work better. “Did they say something about Gilly?”

He raised his right hand.

“Oh, yeah,” Deeanne said. “Now I remember that part. I remember. They were all, ‘That Jew killed Pete Ebner and you helped her get away!’ And they said maybe he helped Gilly do the killing too.”

Royal raised his right hand again. Artie stuck his head in the door and Deeanne wailed and ran to him. I was glad I’d gotten the bandage on Royal’s arm before Artie saw the tattoo.

Rosie continued my yes-and-no interrogation, which Royal seemed able to handle.

“Are you being kicked out of the organization?” He raised both hands.

“Does that mean you don’t know?” Right hand.

Through a series of questions, we learned that they had beaten him up for probably being the snitch, maybe killing Ebner or helping Gilly do it. Maybe working with Gilly the whole time. But they weren’t sure about any of it.

His friends had just wanted to beat him up for something. Anything. If not for killing Ebner, then for helping Gilly do it. If not for aiding and abetting, then maybe for ratting about the group’s plans for Switcher. And if not that, maybe just in case he was thinking of doing something wrong.

A little skirmish among buddies. A disciplinary action.

Rosie asked: “Did they threaten to kill you?”

He raised his right hand. Yes. But here he was, more or less in one piece. So they weren’t ready to kill him. They wanted to hurt him and scare him and maybe scare someone else. Whether he did any of those things or not, he was a good scapegoat, an example for whoever might have done them. At least that seemed like what might be going on, but with these people, who the hell knew? I looked at Royal’s red and purple face and felt cold, disoriented, and depressed, like when you fall asleep in the tub and wake up an hour later. How could we figure any of this out? How could we have any idea of what they were going to do next and who they were going to do it to? They were nuts and they were stupid, and rational, reasonably bright people couldn’t hope to make sense of what they did.

The doctor came back with a friend. “I’m going to ask you all to leave for a while, okay?”

“Is he going to be all right?” Artie wanted to know. The doctor nodded.

“He’ll live, if that’s what you mean.” From his tone of voice, he made it clear he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

We trooped out to the waiting area. I put a hand on Deeanne’s shoulder, and she turned toward me.

“Dee, how did they do so much damage?” He looked like he’d been beaten with crowbars.

“They curb-stomped him, Jake.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a skin thing.”

We waited.

“What they do, see, is they lay a guy down and make him open his mouth and bite the curb.” A fresh burst of tears. We waited. A moment later, she’d recovered enough to say, “Then they kick him in the head.”