I shook my head. It wasn’t her prints I was worried about. What were the chances of Gary not leaving his when he’d cleaned out the place? “You only gave me till tonight, so I’m outta here.”
“Stick around. I’ll extend it to till one A.M.” It wasn’t a request. “Don’t touch anything.”
What had I touched before?
Even if I’d had no time limit with Korematsu, as soon as he ran the prints from this place he’d be hauling me in. There are few enemies worse than a confidant betrayed. I needed to get gone quick.
He moved down the hall to the front door, effectively blocking it, then pulled out his phone and called the department.
I took the other way, living room to kitchen to back door. The place was a standard railroad layout. Out back there should’ve been a landing,
rear staircase, and freedom. Luck smiled. A key hanging there allowed me to unlock the back door and step out into the morning fog.
“Hey! I told you to stay put!”
“Just making a call! Like you.” I flipped open my cell phone, then turned as if for privacy to check the back stairs. None! This wasn’t a third-floor landing, it was a deck! The buildings on either side had back stairs. How could this one not? What did tenants do with their garbage?
“Come inside.” He stepped out onto the deck beside me.
“So I don’t freeze out here? Or do you think I’m so good at high falls I can leap down three stories?”
“Suit yourself,” he said, covering, as if he wasn’t as surprised as I about the lack of stairs.
“Okay.”
I sat on the railing and patted the spot next to me.
“Uh-uh. These things collapse in this city every summer. You’re living dangerously enough.” He leaned against the upright, looking less like a cop than a guy who’d stepped out of a party for a bit of air.
I smiled up at him. “Okay, Mr. Play It Safe, here’s a
what-if.
No names, you understand, just a question. A public servant high up in rank has a lady friend in a house on Guerrero Street across from a Laundromat—”
His face went blank. “I’m not—”
“No names. Just speculation. One of his subordinates hangs out in the Laundromat, but he’s not washing clothes. Others drive by the house frequently.”
“There could be—”
“No, wait. It’s common knowledge among his colleagues that the woman’s involved in some sort of smuggling.”
“Common knowledge how?” He didn’t even blink at the word “smuggling.”
“And since Karen caused the crash on Guerrero, it’s got to be just a matter of time—”
He shoved open the kitchen door.
“My
question
is: where are you in all this?”
He turned and put a hand on my shoulder. “I stuck my neck out covering for your idiot brother. He ignored it.”
“He didn’t know!”
“While my neck’s stuck out there, you leave town.”
“You didn’t mention staying put.” I was inches from him, staring at the neck in question.
He grabbed my other shoulder. “You think this is a game. Your family thinks this city’s their backyard. Karen Johnson thought she was safe up on the slab and now she’s a splat on the freeway. This case, it’s serious business.”
Gary’d said the same thing, but coming from Korematsu, again, it was a whole different level of warning. I stepped back, pulling free of his hands. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I can’t.”
“You—”
The front door banged.
“I can’t!”
Feet slapped the wooden floor, voices called back and forth—the lab techs had arrived. Korematsu went in to meet them.
I sat on the porch railing, pulling myself together. He was right about the Lott family. In my mind SFPD was John’s department, the city medical establishment my sister Gracie’s, and if I had a legal problem Gary could fix that. Now, suddenly, I was not the protected but the suspected. And somewhere, maybe even in that magic circle that I used to inhabit, Karen Johnson’s killer was walking around loose.
My mind snapped back to Gary. Why had Karen gone to his office? What had happened between the time she’d escaped from Star Pine and when she’d become someone else? Where had her money come from? Was there anyone anywhere wondering about her right now? How come—
“Give me your fingers, ma’am.”
Ma’am!
The tech motioned me to the table where the ink pad waited. The table was already smeared with black and wiped haphazardly.
I’d been kidding myself thinking it’d take them a whole day to match me. I’d barely be out of here before Korematsu dispatched a squad car.
The tech rolled my thumb.
Why hadn’t Karen Johnson left something—anything—in Gary’s office? Or had she? That Las Vegas newspaper. With time I could have Googled the news there for missing persons and divorces—Nevada divorces? With lots of time. It was a long shot.
“Other hand, please.”
I gave him the left.
He was still holding my fourth finger when the front door batted against the wall again. In the living room Korematsu started. He shot a glance at me as the tech pressed my last finger on the sheet, then turned back toward the hall. There was an unreadable smile on his face as he turned.
I could see Chief of Detectives Broder coming toward him.
“My phone!” I muttered to the tech.
He was waving a towel as I leapt for the back door, grabbed the support beam, jumped over the railing and slid to the ground, leaving a black trail of finger marks.
The yard was fenced. An eight-footer. No problem. I bounced for the top, swung over, found a walkway, and ran till I spotted a cab and flung myself in back.
“Where to?”
“The airport.”
As we headed there I called Cass Cassidy in Vegas. “I know it’s a long shot. She’ll have been missing at least a few days.”
“Can’t you give me anymore than that? Going missing in Vegas is hardly news.”
“Thirty-eight, forty. She lived in Alaska. She was getting a divorce here.”
“People don’t go
from
Nevada
to
California for divorces.”
“She did. She had a flat here, pretty empty.”
“A residency address?”
“Yeah.” Recalling Karen’s surprising football reference on the way up to Coit Tower, I said, “Check football. Start with quarterbacks. She was talking about taking your shot downfield, getting sacked, quarterback stuff. Wait! ‘Matt!’ she said. ‘Matt, my ex.’”
It was a long shot, but being out of town would be its own reward, assuming I didn’t end up mired in Vegas right before my gag.
23
MCCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT in Las Vegas is a casino with planes. As I walked through security, a tall, wiry woman with short-cropped gray hair waved at me from the middle of a row of slots. “Fool’s move,” Cass said as she deposited a quarter, “but as long as your plane was on time I wasn’t going broke. It’s so good to see you, my little student-made-good. What’re you working on now?”
“Next up’s a fire gag. No more Nomex suits. They’re using the new stuff you spread on your skin.”
“How’s it?”
“Good if you get doused within thirty seconds. Otherwise, they scoop on the potatoes and gravy.”
Three dissimilar screens bounced into place on the slot. “Damn!”
“Maybe they’ll put the proceeds toward more air controllers,” Cass said, already half an aisle away. I’d always loved that about her, the sense that the rest of life was in slow mo.
“When I used to walk into your classes it was like life speeded up to normal, like everything was exciting and
now.
So, Cass, what’s with you, in the
now
now?”
“Teaching gymnastics. It’s a great place for it. Every little girl wants to be in Cirque. But listen, I’ve got a lead on your guy.”
“Really? You’re the best. I only called you this morning.”
“Yeah, well, we’re a small town here, or a collection of small towns, and how many football players with missing wives can there be? How’d you even know Matt Widley’s wife was gone? It’s not news. Not like he’s filed a missing person. I don’t even know if he thinks she’s missing. She just hasn’t shown up at the Flying Femmes meetings. Not at a couple other groups, either. Not like her.”
Another thing I remembered about Cass. By the time you got out a question, she was already three thoughts beyond it. “Flying Femmes? Girls’ gymnastics?”
“Gymnastics is part of it. Girls’ athletics. Flying down the field, up to the hoops, off the high board. We get some charitable funding for a lot of after-school programs here. One’s at my studio—where we’re going. I want you to see my ten-year-olds. I’ve got one who’ll be in the Olympics in a few years . . .” We got to her van. “Matt Widley?” she said as I climbed in. “You promised you’d tell me why you’re looking for him.”
“I can’t tell you everything—”
“Need-to-know basis?”
“Yup, you got it. I’m looking for the husband of a woman—”
“But where’s this woman?”
“Hey, need-to-know! Here’s what she said: Good to see grass in San Francisco—”
“Not the first thing you’d notice—”
“At least not in North Beach, where we were. So she must have lived somewhere without grass before.”
“Bingo!”
“That and there was a Vegas paper she must have left.”
She laughed appreciatively. “Okay, okay, I won’t keep bugging you, but you gotta cough up the instant you can, right?”
“Sure.” I wanted to grill her about Karen, but I didn’t dare. The truth was, I’d already dragged her too far in.
Ahead the fairyland of Las Vegas poked out of the horizon. I’d seen it so often on TV, even the real thing looked fake. “Matt Widley,” I mused. “Name sounds so familiar.”
“Shame, is all I can say. Great arm, great legs, great presence on the field. Played for one of those cold weather teams. I’m not into football much. I saw him pull out a game in overtime in a blizzard. Home game. Fans went crazy.”
“And?”
“Then he was gone. Some kind of scandal. Dropped from hero to hopeless in a deadfall.”
“Drugs?”
“Football doesn’t bust you just for beating up your girlfriend.”
“Did he? Beat women?”
“Actually, not that I know of. There were stories, though, about trashing a casino, demolishing his truck and walking—stumbling—away. Who knows the effect of all that crap those guys inject to make them number one?”
“And gymnasts don’t?”
“Not in my gym they don’t. Goddammit, not my girls! I tell them over and over . . . Yeah, I tell them: You don’t know how that stuff’ll twist your brain. You think as long as you get a medal, nothing else matters, but after . . . Oh, don’t get me started on this, okay?”
“Back to Matt Widley. How’d he end up in Vegas?”
“Got a cage in the freak show.” Her smile faded. She cut right and pulled up next to a single-story building. “Flying Femmes” blazed in hot pink over the double doors.
She reached for the door.
I grabbed her arm. “Freak show?”
“High rollers don’t just gamble here. There have to be enticements, extras, amusements to give them something to talk about back home. Like celebrity golf games, celebrity cocktail hours, celebrity et cetera. Matt Widley did golf.”
“
After
. . . ?” But she was out of the car and heading inside. I sat for a moment longer, feeling a great rush of sadness. Without recognizing it, and despite knowing about her divorce plans, I’d been hoping Karen Johnson had had a happy life in Las Vegas, that it had been better than time spent with a guy drummed out of pro football and left to pimp himself nine holes a day. But what did I know about her, anyway, this woman who’d thrown my brothers to the wolves, and, even worse, who’d murdered someone with a chef’s knife. Who the hell was she? Had it been here, in Vegas, she’d made an enemy who wouldn’t give up? Or back in California?”
Cass was tapping on the window. “Come on! Widley’s inside.”
“Huh?”
She pulled open my door. “You wanted him, you got him. It wasn’t that difficult.”
That was Cass. Always ahead of me. But what was I going to say to a guy whose wife—probably his wife—had been killed—probably—just after I’d met her? I was going to throw this at a guy who could control himself—probably?
I followed her into the gym. The first thing that struck me was the glorious cold. The second was Widley.
I’m continually surprised at how tall quarterbacks are. But Matt Widley looked more like a linebacker. The hand he shot toward me could have crushed mine. A tattoo ran down his arm, over bulging mounds of muscle. His gray T-shirt emphasized the pecs and shoulder muscles beneath it. I glanced at his legs. I wasn’t going to outrun him—ever.
“I’m here about your wife.”
Behind him a woman was lifting a tiny girl up to the higher uneven bar. They looked like a different species from him. Farther back, five pre-teens were doing seated Vs on the mat, their arms stretched forward past uplifted legs. Music blared. A man was shouting at a teenager on a balance beam.
Matt Widley glared, watching my eyes for a tip-off of my next move, ready to scramble out of danger.
“Karen—”
“Oh!” He let out a huge breath. “My wife’s not Karen. You’ve got the wrong woman.”
“I’m from San Francisco, Matt. Where a woman called herself Karen Johnson. Blonde, about my height.”
“Reporter?” he snapped.
“No.”
“We don’t market our private lives.”
That had to be her line; no way had he come up with that phrasing. “I’m really not. I met her running up Telegraph Hill. She was wearing pale blue linen slacks and a matching sleeveless top.”
He shook his head slowly.
Of course he wouldn’t know what his wife was wearing!
“She said she’d hauled stuff up a cliff in Alaska.” I shouted over the sudden blare of music for a floor routine.
He looked away, staring at a little girl starting the run to her vault as if it was too fascinating to miss.