Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

shapely tush across the Bay Bridge fifteen minutes ago.”
    “Shall I bring a vat of acid to dispose of the body?”
    “Mickey, I’m serious.”
    “Christ. One of your clients?”
    “Yes.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough.
    “Do Mom and Dad know?”
    Tony’s buzzer went off. “Mickey, the cops just got here. Will you get on the stick? And leave Kruzick where he is.” She hung up without saying good-bye.
    The cops were not homicide inspectors but uniformed officers from a radio car, come to make a “preliminary investigation.” It seems the police never take your word for anything. They looked at Kandi without touching her—so maybe I really didn’t do wrong by failing to take her pulse—and called an ambulance. One of them stayed with the body, and the other one took me back to Tony’s.
    “Look,” I asked him, “how long is this going to take?” I was worried about imposing on Tony and Marilyn.
    “Can’t say. An hour or two, probably. Maybe more.”
    “Can I go back to my apartment, then?”
    “Afraid not.”
    Tony and Marilyn looked at each other. “We could go to your house,” Tony said to her, but his heart wasn’t in it.
    Marilyn shook her head. “Let’s stay with Rebecca, at least till Mickey gets here.” It was nice of them to stay with me, but I think there was an element besides altruism in their decision: They didn’t want to miss anything, and I can’t say I blamed them. It’s pretty awful to find a corpse in your apartment, but you can’t help being curious if it’s safely next door. Pretty soon the ambulance came, and I went back home to see what the medic did. He listened for a heart and pulse beat and told the officers to call the coroner and homicide department. Kandi was now officially dead.
    At the time, I didn’t understand why they just didn’t send homicide inspectors in the beginning, but I’ve since learned it was because they were “on call” at home asleep. So the officers called “communications,” which phoned the inspectors on call, and presumably the photo lab and crime lab as well, because their myrmidons arrived about the same time as Inspectors Phil Martinez and Leo Curry, who were wearing brown suits and looking like you would if somebody woke you up in the middle of the night and said come to work.
    They all went into my apartment, leaving one of the cops from the radio car with me and sending the other out to question the neighbors. He started with Tony and Marilyn, who hadn’t seen or heard anything.
    My sister Mickey arrived just after the coroner’s wagon. In fact, my apartment door was open for the fellows from that office when Mickey walked by on her way to Tony’s, and I was sorry she had to see what it looked like in there. Especially when she collapsed in my arms.
    Mickey is twenty-four and a graduate student in psychology. Her name is actually Michaela, but “Mickey” fits her better for now. In a few years, she’ll grow into three syllables.
    She is the “pretty one” in the family—more slender and darker than I am, with long, wavy brown hair. Her taste in men runs to unemployed actors, but otherwise she’s a good kid.
    Tony and Marilyn gave her some brandy, but I couldn’t have any, on orders of the San Francisco Police Department. Cops feel more secure with sober witnesses.
    Right after Mickey got there, the cops sent for me. There was fingerprint powder everywhere. “Which of this property is yours?” asked Martinez.
    “Everything except that purse and its contents,” I told him, pointing to Kandi’s things. He let me go back. By now it was well after three o’clock, and Tony and Marilyn had had enough. They went to Marilyn’s, leaving me Tony’s extra key to lock up with.
    Then came the catechism.
    Martinez left Curry hovering about the body and made himself comfortable with Mickey and me. I was faced with a dilemma. I didn’t want to tell him Elena ran a bordello, or that Kandi worked there, but I’d have to say where I’d been. If I told them Elena’s address, they might go there to question her—and one look at the place, along with Elena’s rap sheet, would give her game away. This was not my problem, of course, and as an officer of the court, I was supposed to be against law-breaking, which Elena was engaged in, but she was a friend. Even if she had sent me out in the rain with Senator Cuckoo and caused me to spend two hours in the bucket.
    I decided to give the street, but say