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

talent for his own show. In fact, subsequent events bear out that possibility. Another possible explanation is that he was there on his appointed rounds as a police officer. He got a tip about the party and went investigating. Or a combination of the two: he was investigating for you people and working for George, too.”
    “Who’s George?”
    “According to Jeannette, he’s the guy who runs the High-Life service. She doesn’t know his last name and thinks George may be a pseudonym anyway. Shall I go on?”
    “Please do,” said Ziller.
    “Well, there’s also the possibility he showed up at the bordello for some reason having to do with Kandi Phillips, who once worked for the High-Life service, and that he followed her to my apartment and killed her.”
    I gave them a moment to chew on that, and then I continued with the rest of Ziller’s question.
    “Okay now, about that meeting at the restaurant yesterday. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I looked very different then from the way I looked the night before. I don’t think someone I’d met casually for five minutes would have recognized me, unless he’d expected me and known I’d be with Jeannette von Phister. Another thing—Jaycocks didn’t approach me until Jeannette went to the ladies’ room, which makes me think he might have been watching and waiting till he could get me alone.”
    “You mean he went there deliberately to see you.”
    I shrugged. “He said ‘I’ve been looking for someone like you.’ I don’t get it either, considering I’m just an average-attractive workaday woman, but I did notice at Elena’s that each of the prostitutes was a different type; I mean, each one made an attempt to cater to a different kind of fantasy. It could be that whatever meager attributes I have just weren’t represented at the High-Life service.”
    I don’t mind telling you that this speech made me pretty uncomfortable, but I said it because I thought it was true—I still do, though I must admit there’s no accounting for taste in matters of sex.
    Shipe lit a cigarette and blew the smoke rather artfully, so that it didn’t seem it was aimed for my face, but that’s where it went. He let his glance stray contemptuously over my disheveled person, letting me know what a preposterous idea I’d just proposed.
    “Why didn’t he just call you up?” he asked finally.
    “He didn’t know who I was, which is why he tried to kill me.”
    “We’ll get to that. Suppose you tell me now how he knew where to find you, and when and with whom.”
    “Jeannette reconfirmed the date at the bordello the night before. He must have overheard us.”
    “Pretty farfetched.”
    “Look, I saw him standing within earshot. The man is a policeman, presumably trained in eavesdropping techniques and in retaining what he hears. I can’t prove he overheard us, but I
can
tell you that’s the only time I ever saw him, and he showed up the next night where I said I’d be and handed me that card.” I was harping on the card because it was the only tangible bit of proof I had.
    “Okay,” said Shipe, weary, doing his best to show me how he suffered at the hands of liars and screwballs who tried to undermine the honor of his brother officers. “Okay. Let’s get to the part about—uh—trying to kill you. Why would he want to do a thing like that?”
    “About a half hour after he handed me that card, Inspector, I appeared on the eleven o’clock news of every television station in this town, clearly identified as a lawyer rather than a prostitute. This morning my picture appeared on page one of the San Francisco
Examiner
. The accompanying story identified me not only as a lawyer, but also as a lawyer for HYENA—that is, a lawyer who handles the cases of prostitutes, a lawyer he was almost sure to meet on a case sometime, who might actually cross-examine him while defending some prostitute he’d busted. And if that happened, I’d know he was a cop. And I’d realize he was a crooked cop. And I’d tattle on him, and he’d be not only out of the police department, but most probably in jail. Knowing too much will get you dead in every cheap novel ever written—and apparently in real life, too.” The last came out a little bitterly, a little too defensively, as I remembered how close I’d come to drowning in my own living room.
    “I came home and found him pointing a gun at me,” I continued quickly, “and then he slugged me, and then he tried to