She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. It just seems so strange. Disguised cops, disguised crooks, and civilians mingling all together in the bars and restaurants. Like a story�”
“Luis won’t think it’s a story,” Joe said darkly. They heard, in the distance, a Count Basie number echoing out from the Molena Point little theater where there was a Basie concert, his music copied by a new generation of jazzmen. It was perhaps six-thirty when, quietly among the crowds, the crooks began to move.
Slayter lay uncomfortably on a stretcher, staring up at Garza as the detective read him his rights. Captain Harper and Chichi Barbi stood near the door. From across the hall, Dulcie watched, drawing back behind the ice machine only as Garza finished and the two paramedics carried the stretcher out, accompanied by two armed officers. Harper and Chichi stepped out behind them and stood in the hall, talking. Behind them in the room, Garza was collecting evidence. Dulcie still hadn’t figured it all out, except that Chichi didn’t seem to be under suspicion for anything. That, while she was passing her snoop lists to Luis, Chichi had given copies to Harper.
Dulcie had watched Garza drop Slayter’s cell phone into an evidence bag, and then Slayter’s gun. She had watched the two officers search the hole in the corner, removing the plywood, shining their flashlights down into it and feeling back underneath the wiring, then dusting the plywood and wiring for prints. As happened so many times, she could only pray there were no paw prints or cat hairs.
Dallas had already printed the room before Chichi entered, and had bagged Slayter’s clothing and personal items. He had photographed the scratch wounds on Slayter’s face and back, and that was stressful for Dulcie. What did he think? What did he wonder? Now, in the hall, he asked Chichi, “You said you know nothing about how he fell? And about how he got those scratches?”
Chichi shook her head. “I didn’t see it, I was in the village with Luis. He was talking with Slayter, on his cell. Slayter was describing one of your men. He� then he screamed, then a bang as if he’d dropped the phone, and Luis couldn’t rouse him. The line was dead, Luis dialed him back and got the message recording. That’s when he sent me to see what happened. Howdidhe fall?”
“You heard him.” Harper shook his head. “Says he was pushed from behind, that he didn’t see anything. That someone hit him hard between the shoulders and when he fell, they hit him again-some kind of weapon with sharp prongs.” The captain frowned. “Crazy. Said it felt like he was raked with metal spikes, like an old-style golf shoe-he glimpsed something dark, the size of a golf shoe.”
“Attacked with a golf shoe?” Chichi giggled.
Harper gave her a lopsided grin. “Weird kind of weapon. Why would someone� Well, maybe it was handy� You hit a guy with one of those old, metal-spiked golf shoes you could do that kind of damage.”
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said, smiling up at him. “Or nearly so. If that turns out to be the gun that killed Frank, I’ll be forever indebted to you, Captain.”
“Thank you for your help, Chichi. We should know about the gun tomorrow, if the DA has Frank Cozzino’s records in order.”
“I hope he does. It’s been a hard time.” She started to turn away. “I’ll call you in the morning then?”
Harper took her hand. “Call me, or Garza or Davis. We’ll see what we get.”
As Chichi headed down the hall and Harper returned to Slayter’s room, behind the ice machine Dulcie sat putting the pieces together.
If Frank Cozzino ran with Luis’s gang, but somewhere along the line he began feeding information to LAPD, then Luis might well want him dead. Slayter was part of the gang-Luis could have assigned Slayter to do the deed. Slayter had told Ryan he’d come up here to find out who killed Cozzino; but maybe Slayter had done it.
So who, Dulcie thought, killed Dufio? And why? She watched Dallas seal the door to 307 with evidence tape, watched the detective and captain head for the elevator. Then she fled up the stairs and through the heavy door, leaving it ajar, and away across the rooftops to find Joe. She longed to see Luis and his men arrested, see every last one of them jailed.
She spotted Joe and Kit on the roof of Molena Point Inn-you might know Kit would have slipped out and found him. The two cats, crouched at the edge of the shingles, peered over into the inn’s secluded patio; when Dulcie pushed in between them, she saw that the crowds hadn’t yet discovered the small hidden garden. Only one tourist couple was there, strolling hand in hand, smiling as if glad to have found some privacy: a plainly dressed, thirtyish man and woman with simple, neat haircuts, out-of-style starched shirts that branded them as being from a small midwestern town, and loving expressions.
The patio was enclosed on one side by the hotel, on the other three by rows of exclusive shops. There were no alleys between the shops. The couple seemed to have no interest in the fine china and silver and designer gowns, seemed aware only of each other. They sat down close together on a bench facing Emerson’s Jewelry, their backs to the small pepper tree and lush flowers. The woman, fishing around in her large handbag, handed her partner a small, high-powered gas torch.
Moving quickly into a narrow walkway between the hotel and the jewelry store, he lit the torch and turned to face the wall where a locked, foot-square metal door closed off the electric meter. Burning quickly through the padlock, he opened the little door and turned off the power for that building.
With nothing to activate the security alarm, he stepped around into the patio again and used the torch to destroy the deadbolt lock on the jewelry store’s glass door. Silently swinging the door open, he and his lady friend entered. Within two minutes they had breached seven jewelry cases, dropping the contents-diamonds, emeralds, heavy gold and pearl chokers-into her handbag and into his pockets. Leaving the shop, they closed the door quietly behind them.
Strolling away, they joined a crowd gathered around the Blue Gull Cafe, where they stood listening to a jazz trio that owed its style and funky beat to the legacy of Louis Armstrong. The trumpet player didn’t sound as good as Satchmo. No one could. But he had a nice rift and a sure beat, and the crowd was rocking. The couple moved with the beat, then strolled on up the sidewalk, keeping time to Back ‘O Town Blues.
Half a block behind them a pair of young men followed: muscular, skinny guys with sun-bleached hair, dressed in faded jeans and worn sweatshirts.
“Nice,” Dulcie said. “They look like surfers.”
“Let’s make sure,” Joe said, moving on quickly until he could look back and get a glimpse of the officers’ faces; turning back, he grinned at Dulcie and narrowed his eyes with satisfaction. He’d seen the two men earlier, entering the station with Dallas Garza. Confident that in a few minutes, and when their quarry had moved away from the crowds, the officers would quietly make their arrests, the cats trotted on across the roofs where they could see the Oak Tree Cafe. Crouched between the two older cats, Kit was unusually quiet. Dulcie glanced at her several times. Was she mad because they hadn’t told her the sting would be tonight? Or was she missing her feral friends? Was she wondering if she should have stayed with them, wild and free with no one to keep secrets from her and to boss her?
The Oak Tree, crowded with jazz buffs, vibrated with a throaty sax and bass and piano where a small stage had been set up inside. Next to the cafe was a small independent bookstore, then a shop featuring handmade children’s clothes, then Karen Jenkins’ Jewelry. All three were closed. From the rooftop the cats watched an elderly, gray-haired couple pause to look in the jewelry store window. They watched the portly man quickly diffuse the store’s burglar alarm with a small electronic device the size of a pack of cigarettes.