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

does a dinner date work?”
    “Just like the amateur kind, only the guy pays for the pleasure of your company. Mostly guys from out of town. They want to take a good-looking woman to an expensive restaurant like Amelio’s, which is where I sent Stacy, and they want to make damn sure the evening’s going to end up with sex.”
    “At his hotel?”
    “Usually, yes.”
    “And does the woman stay all night?”
    “If the john pays for it. This guy didn’t, so Stacy ought to be home by about one o’clock at the latest.”
    I’d heard enough. I told Rob and Mickey to let me down. Rob was so excited he was practically doing a jig. “What’s going on in there?”
    “That man is going to commit a murder tonight, unless we stop him,” I said. “Rob, you wait for him to leave and then bang on the door until Elena answers. Tell her to call Stacy immediately and tell her I’m on my way to get her at Amelio’s. Tell her to tell Stacy to get rid of the john and come with me, and not to leave under any circumstances until I get there.”
    “What? Are you crazy? I’m supposed to be following the senator. Also, I haven’t a clue who Stacy is or what any of that means.”
    “It’s an emergency, okay? Come on, Mickey.”
    But she balked. “Don’t you think we should call the cops?”
    “I’m damned if I’m going to make a fool of myself again. We’ll just pick up Miss Stacy Clayton and take her to the nearest cop shop, which I believe is Central Station. Why don’t you meet us there, Rob, and I’ll explain everything? No time now.”
    “Fuck!” said Rob Burns of the
Chronicle
.
    I had in mind to leave with a great screeching of tires, but the Volvo stalled. It’s an eccentric car and does this sometimes.
    It took about five minutes to get the damn thing started, and I kept telling myself I wasn’t worried. I trusted Rob to deliver the message and Elena to be forceful enough to convince Stacy of the urgency of the situation and Stacy to be smart enough to wait for me and the senator to be canny enough to go immediately to Stacy’s and start booby-trapping her house or something. It would hardly serve his purpose—which was keeping her quiet—to hie his Mercedes over to Amelio’s and march in and gun her down.
    As I said, that’s what I was telling myself. But the urgency to get there was almost unbearable. What if Stacy left the restaurant before Elena could call? What if Rob decided I was crazy and carried out his assignment of following the senator and didn’t even deliver the message? Oh God, what if the Volvo just plain gave up?
    I heard a car start in the alley behind Elena’s.
    “That must be the senator,” said Mickey in a controlled voice. “Let’s try it again.”
    I shifted and the Volvo started, and we did great for four blocks until we hit a red light at Fillmore.
    “God damn it!” I said. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
    “Easy, girl,” said Mickey, who apparently had appointed herself my caretaker. “The thing I don’t get—”
    The Volvo screeched forward again, faster than it should have with an officer of the court at the wheel, but Mickey kept on talking, either in a frantic effort to get me interested in something besides killing us both or in blind ignorance of the danger she was in; it couldn’t have been faith in my driving. “The thing I don’t get—”
    “Christ on a crutch!” Some idiot was stopped in my lane, talking to someone on the sidewalk. I leaned on my horn. He didn’t budge. I kept going, and Mickey covered her head with her hands.
    At the last second, I had to swing into the left lane to go around him, no matter if there was an oncoming car. There was. His brakes screeched. So did mine.
    We both stopped in time, but it was a good thing Mickey and I had our seatbelts on, or we’d have ejected like a couple of characters in a James Bond movie.
    The other driver—a large and angry-looking black man—got out of his car and came forward, no doubt with the intention of giving me a well-deserved piece of his mind, or possibly a rap in the teeth. I leaned on my horn.
    “What you think you doin’, bitch?” he shouted over the din.
    “My sister’s having a baby,” I shouted back, still honking. Mickey cowered in the shotgun seat.
    “I don’t care if she’s havin’ a epileptic fit. You oughta know better—”
    “Now,
Rebecca!” shouted Mickey.
    The car in the right lane had taken the hint and left rubber all over the street. I swung back into