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“What’s this?”
He moved a restaurant matchbook cover to me and after I read it, I passed it to Alvarez. There was small handwriting on the two square inches of cardboard written in two different hands. Both were cryptic.
“Marty wrote that,” I said of the first line that read:“Bet I get you.”
I didn’t know the handwriting on the second line, but I got the message.
“All bets are off, Marty.”
Dueling threats—yet Marty kept the matchbook cover with him. Why? Was this the bet he’d lost last night?
CHAPTER 13
ALVAREZ AND I got back in the car. She drove, dodging the drug-addled, mentally challenged, and ordinary working pedestrians meandering across Mission Street. A man with a sign that read “Kick me for a buck” danced to street music. Horns honked.
I said, “That’s it. Right there.”
Alvarez jerked the wheel, parked at the curb beside JR’s Aces High Dry Cleaners. Behind us, Cappy and Conklin peeled off and drove to the gas station across the street. To our left was a row of blocky stucco apartment buildings, interrupted every hundred yards or so by a grungy storefront like JR’s, an illegal gambling shack.
Alvarez, an experienced undercover cop, had dressed in street clothes: leggings, short boots, and a long pullover. She went into JR’s first, her cowl-neck sweater hiding her shoulder mic. When she called me with an all clear, I pushed open the door.
The place reeked of sweat and weed and echoed with electronic dings from the slots and shouts from the craps table at the far end of the room. On a TV over the bar, an announcer narrated the last seconds of a too-close-to-call sixth race at Santa Anita. I pictured my father on a stool, hunched over that bar. I pictured him putting down money for the horse of the moment. I pictured a loss written into his book.
I met Alvarez at the row of slots she was studying. She used her chin to indicate the man behind the Plexiglas cash-register cage across from us and near the entrance.
“That’s Jack Robbie,” she said.
She showed me JR’s photo on her phone and scrolled down to his record; multiple arrests for petty crimes, two years for bookmaking. When his business at 2300 Mission closed down three years ago, he’d reopened here, a few blocks away.
I looked up. The man in the cage was on the phone. His thin hair was slicked back, his jowls were unshaven, and he was in his undershirt, a checkered dishcloth tucked into the neck. A bowl of pasta sat in front of him. He noticed me, made me as a cop, turned his eyes away, and finished his phone call.
As I moved toward the booth, I heard Robbie say into the phone, “Lady. I don’t know your husband. You talk to him. Anyway, my linguini’s getting cold so let’s, no, no, don’t call here. Talk to your husband.”
He clicked off and I stepped forward. I slid my badge through the cash slot and said, “Mr. Robbie, this isn’t a bust.”
“You got the wrong guy. Robbie is outta town.”
“I’m Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, homicide. This is my partner, Inspector Sonia Alvarez.”
“Your name is Boxer?”
“Yes. Martin Boxer’s my father.”
“You must be very proud. He’s almost put me out of business. More than once.”
“He was shot last night,” I said.
“Shotdead?”
“That’s right. We’re not busting you, Mr. Robbie. We have some questions about Marty and I need you to come down to the station with us.”
CHAPTER 14
ROBBIE TWIRLED HIS fork inside the bowl of linguine. Lifted a roll of pasta to his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Dropped the fork back into the bowl. He looked disgusted and resigned.
He said, “I need a lawyer?”
“No. We have some questions about Marty Boxer,” I said again.
