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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.
