Cindy said, “I found this next to my clock this morning.”
She pulled a black velvet box from her handbag and put it on the table. There was a collective gasp. We’d seen this movie before. The first time, Richie had gotten down on one knee in the nave of Grace Cathedral. He had proposed and had given Cindy his mother’s ring. In her telling at the time, the angels sang and doves flew through the church and she knew she was blessed.
Then, after the pre-honeymoon period, when the conversation turned to children, she and Richie had hit a thick brick wall.
What had changed?
Cindy opened the box and pulled out a fine gold chain with a sizable diamond pendant.
“This was the ring,” she said. “Richie had it made into something different. Just for me.”
Cindy fastened the chain around her neck, then held the stone in its simple setting and slid it back and forth on the chain. That stone was a gasper then, and it was a gasper now.
“So you’re not engaged?” Yuki asked Cindy, the only one of our group who was still single.
“There was a note with the necklace,” said Cindy. “Richie wrote, ‘When we’re ready to get married, we’ll pick out a ring together.’”
“Beautiful,” said Claire. “The diamond and the note.”
“That calls for a drink,” said Yuki.
The waiter appeared and recommended several house special cocktails named for people, places, and headline events in the newspaper business.
We toasted everything: Cindy and Richie’s renewed commitment, Yuki’s settlement for the Kordells, Claire’s baby girl’s admission to first grade—and as for me, we toasted the fact that nine months after Julie was born, I could pull off a skinny red dress—“fabulously.”
It was customary for the four of us to discuss our cases, but I just wasn’t up for sharing Numero Uno and the Windbreaker Crew. Not tonight. I held up my phone.
“I’m just calling my husband to say I’m on my way.”
I punched in Joe’s number, and when he answered, I said, “Hey. I’ll be home by nine.”
CHAPTER 101
RICH CONKLIN WAS waiting in a patrol car, parked in front of a row of three-story wood-frame buildings on Stockton Street in Chinatown. All the buildings were occupied by ground-floor retail businesses, while the top floors were mostly residential.
From where Conklin was parked, he had a full view of the downstairs deli-type greengrocer and the door next to it, which was the entrance to the lobby of the Sylvestrie Hotel, a rent-by-the-hour flophouse.
Conklin knew this place pretty well, having busted drug dealers and prostitutes there when he was a beat cop, before Lindsay got him moved up to Homicide.
What he remembered most about the Sylvestrie was that the rooms were pitifully furnished, with dirty sheets in the windows instead of curtains, and that the place vibrated nonstop from the air conditioning in the market downstairs.
This evening, Conklin had been on his way home when he’d gotten a tip from one K. J. Herkus, a CI and a small-time dope dealer. Herk lived and worked the streets in Chinatown, and he had recognized the narc with a short beard and John Lennon–type glasses who’d checked into the Sylvestrie.
Herk was hoping Conklin could hook him up with the narc with the glasses, that maybe he could make himself useful from time to time.
Conklin said, “Don’t approach him unless I say so, OK, Herk? He’s undercover. I’ll look for some work for you.”
Conklin had been watching the hotel for about two hours before Inspector Stan Whitney came out. Whitney went to the market, came out ten minutes later with a plastic bag of something, then reentered the hotel.
Conklin thought there was a good chance that Whitney had gotten take-out for dinner and wouldn’t be going out again. He thought about going into the hotel, getting Whitney’s room number, and knocking on the door.
But he quickly quashed the idea.
Whitney was likely desperate enough to introduce a loaded gun into the conversation. Conklin knew the best thing for him to do was continue to keep an eye on the door and be ready to tail the cop.
Conklin called Brady. He described Whitney’s denim shirt, jeans, and blue cap partially hiding his face, and asked for backup in an unmarked.
Brady took down the details and said, “Don’t lose him.”
Conklin resumed watching the door, and damn if Whitney didn’t walk out and take a right, then a tight left toward Vallejo.
Conklin let a car get in front of him, then pulled into traffic, in time for the light to turn red. When it changed to green, he could see Whitney, still proceeding south on Stockton through Chinatown, passing shops and bakeries, hands in his pockets, as if he had just gone out for a stroll.
Conklin tailed Whitney without incident, watched him take a left on Clay and another left on Kearny. He followed Whitney for another two blocks and was just behind him when the man in denim disappeared into Portsmouth Square Garage across from the Hilton.
Conklin parked in a no-parking zone with a view of the garage. A silver Chevy crawled past Conklin. The man in the driver’s seat was Officer Allen Benjamin, a cop Conklin knew. Conklin made radio contact with Brady, who said he was keeping a channel open and restricted to the three of them: Benjamin, Brady, and Conklin.
Benjamin drove ahead, parked his unmarked in front of a hydrant up the block, and waited there. At 8:15 p.m., ten minutes after entering the garage, a blue pickup with Texas plates rolled up out of the garage and took a right.
It was Whitney.
Conklin pulled ahead of Benjamin, and they took turns staying on the pickup’s tail. Whitney took a left on Washington, then another left on Stockton, the main drag through Chinatown, which was still congested with trucks making deliveries, as well as pedestrians and tourists in cabs taking in the evening lights.
Without warning, the truck Whitney was driving stopped at the intersection of Stockton and Bush just long enough for a thickly muscled guy to leave the sidewalk and get into the truck’s passenger seat.
Conklin recognized this passenger. It was Bill Brand, Whitney’s partner.
Neither Whitney nor Brand was in violation of the law, and stopping them would only tip them off. With two police cars shadowing it, the blue truck turned right on Sutter, went half a mile to Polk, and parked in an empty spot outside a nail salon.
When they got out of the truck, Whitney and Brand were wearing blue SFPD Windbreakers. They crossed the street to a gray stucco building with awnings and neon signs in the windows reading PAYDAY LOANS, CHECKS CHECKED, WESTERN UNION.
The check-cashing store was lit up inside and open for business. As Whitney and Brand reached the door, they removed masks from their pockets and pulled them on over their faces. The entry bell over the door jingled as the cops went inside.
CHAPTER 102
I CAME INTO our apartment and heard music coming from the bedroom. Joe was sitting up in bed in a T-shirt and boxers, his fingers on his laptop and an urban blues channel on the TV.
He looked up and saw me in my slinky red dress. He whistled and I grinned and did a little pirouette. I said, “After all these years in chinos and a blazer, I’ve still got it. No?”
He said, “Yes, you certainly do, Blondie.”
I said, “Be right back,” and turned to go in to see Julie.
Joe said, “She’s across the hall with Mrs. Rose. Martha’s there, too.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I told Mrs. Rose I needed a few hours off to get some work done and she said, ‘It would be lovely to have some company,’” Joe said, doing a pretty good version of Mrs. Rose’s English accent.
I laughed. He did Mrs. Rose so well.
He patted the bed next to him and I sat down.
He asked, “How was your dinner?”
“No kidding, it was the best time we’ve all had together in months,” I said. “We were all there, all in great moods. Richie gave Cindy his mother’s diamond in a new form.” I described the pendant.