It Happened One Christmas. Ann Lethbridge
asked for help. Luke didn’t hesitate. “Sure I can. Let me get a few things finished up here. I have vacation time coming.”
“She’s driving in today. I want you to meet her, kid. Sally and I will watch the boy, and she can use our car. I’ll take care of hers. I mean, she has to disappear. Tell me where she can meet you. She’ll be able to give you the whole story.”
“Meet her, huh. You want me to come out to your house?”
“No, no. I don’t want her here at all. The feebies will talk to our neighbors—the usual drill. Can she come into the city, meet you somewhere, you know, discreet?”
“Sure. Does she know her way around?”
“You forget, kid. She was raised here.”
“Okay. How about Lum Lee’s, in Chinatown, on Grant Avenue. I’ll be there at six. Will that work?”
“Sure. Lum Lee’s.”
“Does she remember what I look like?”
“I’ll update her,” Bob said dryly.
“I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try.”
“Hey, listen, Luke, you’re the best investigator the department ever had. You can do it.”
“I was.”
“You’re still the best, kid.”
“Yeah, sure, my man.”
“Six at Lum Lee’s. And don’t forget, this is my daughter you’re helping here.”
Luke barely had time to consider what he was getting into before the perfunctory morning meeting at Metropole Insurance was convened. He took up his wrinkled sport coat and slipped it on, gritting his teeth. Every morning, 10:00 a.m. sharp, it was meeting time with the “suits.”
This morning, sitting around the giant oval boardroom table, it was the same old litany. Bottom line, bottom line. What the suits meant, was: Who can we screw today to increase the bottom line? Which Luke translated more aptly as, How can we keep Metropole’s shareholders happy and increase our personal golden umbrellas?
Metropole’s offices took up the entire sixteenth floor of the steel-and-glass skyscraper—earthquake proof, of course—on Powell Street across from Union Square. Next door, an older office building had been razed—imploded, actually—and for the last few months Luke had whiled away his time in the meetings watching the new structure take shape. More specifically, he watched, and marveled at, the steel walkers, the guys who worked fearlessly atop the steel beams as they were hoisted toward the blue heavens.
Luke had a thing about heights. A real thing. He didn’t even fly, not if he had anything to say about it. Driving took longer, sure, and the gas and rooms cost, but at least he didn’t have to sit on a plane, desperately holding it up in the air through sheer willpower. Yeah. Driving was fine by him.
“Twenty-three cases of suspected arson since January 1 of this year,” a voice was saying—one of the suits. “Are you aware, Mr. Sarkov, that Metropole has paid out on nine of those cases? Three of which were assigned to you?”
Luke dragged his thoughts from the swinging steel beam being levered into place and cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, I am fully aware of the numbers.” Then he smiled thinly. “The trouble is, sir, those three fires were legit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look, sir—” the sir came out a little too heavy “—things just sometimes burn down. There are accidental fires, and a lot of lives are ruined.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the suit said impatiently, “but we are not fully satisfied that this structure in San Jose at…let’s see, on Marina Boulevard, was accidental.”
Luke grinned ferally. “A nursing home, sir? A profitable, family-owned and-operated nursing home? Come on.”
“I don’t like that tone, Sarkov.”
“Look,” Luke said, no apology offered, “the report from the fire marshal in San Jose, the nursing home’s books—everything came out clean. It was an electrical fire on the new wing. That happens.”
The suit made a blustering noise, then moved on to Luke’s present case, the fire last week at Sammy Rae’s restaurant up near what was known as the Haight. A rough area.
“I’m on it,” Luke said, wanting to suppress a yawn right in this jerk’s face. He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, I’m late for a meeting with the fire chief as it is.”
“Well, all right, get going, then. But no matter what the chief says, we all know this is a case of arson. Prove it. Damn it, prove it and let’s not get into a long and drawn-out court case. Nothing is more costly, Mr. Sarkov. The restaurant owner knows that and is counting on Metropole to pay off. Do whatever it takes, but dig up enough on this Sammy Rae to force him to acquiesce or face criminal charges.”
“Of course,” Luke said, rising, escaping. God-damn, he hated this job.
He didn’t have to meet the fire chief for an hour, so he checked his voice mail—nothing from Judith—then grabbed a sandwich at the corner deli. Breakfast and lunch rolled into one.
He sat on the bench in Union Square and ate half the Reuben, leaning over and dripping sauerkraut juice on the sparse grass. Idly chatting with the bum resting coiled up behind the bench, he tossed crumbs to the pigeons. “Hell,” he said, “insurance companies are no different from carjackers. One is legal. The other is not.”
“Hear, hear,” the bum grumbled.
Grace Bennett. Gracie, Bob used to call her. Yeah. It was coming back now. She must be in her mid-thirties, because when Luke knew her—or had seen her once or twice—she’d been maybe fourteen or fifteen years old.
He shook his head disdainfully. She’d been painfully skinny when she should have been filling out. Yeah. And long stringy blondish hair—no style to it. Glasses. Right. A real academic nerd. He hated to think about Big Bob’s kid that way, but really. And he couldn’t imagine her any different now. Still, the kid—well, woman—was in trouble. On the run. As far as the law was concerned, she’d shortly be a kidnapper.
Go figure, he thought, splitting the last of the crust with the pigeons, then laying a five-spot on the bum before rising and dusting himself off. Time to go to work.
The fire chief handling the Haight-Ashbury district met Luke at Sammy Rae’s—or what was left of the restaurant—exactly on time.
Luke stood on the still-charred sidewalk in front of the burned husk of building and whistled under his breath. “Well, this one sure went out in a blaze. Any of your men injured?”
Fire Chief Rollins shook his head. “Lucky was all. Whole building went in less than an hour.”
“Gotta be arson.”
“Oh, yeah, you better believe it. The lab’s got at least twenty samples of combustibles from hot spots.”
“Good. Where did it start?”
“You mean where was it started? Kitchen, of course. Grease trap.”
Wearing hard hats, they made their way into the scorched, fallen remains of Sammy Rae’s.
“Careful,” Rollins kept saying, nodding and pointing, stepping over debris, his big utility flashlight spearing the dimness.
“Phew,” Luke said once, “stinks to high heaven.”
“Yeah, the whole thing stinks.”
The fire chief showed Luke what was left of the grill and the ventilation hood, then pointed out the grease trap on the side of the fire-twisted grill. He showed Luke the so-called hot spots, which had burned too easily and too quickly, at the same temperature and for the same amount of time as the fire source, indicating that the hot spots and grease trap had