Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

video games, your boomball, and your video games. Mirrors everywhere to make the place look twice as big as it was; that funny land of lighting like they have in casinos that resembles neither day nor night nor dusk nor dawn. And 93,000 kids. A rough estimate, but not entirely off, I think. A true nightmare, to think of the Trapper in here, but as far as we could tell, all was normal.
    The Ship’s Galley, where hundreds chowed down on Bay burgers, bagels, and Kabuki Yakitori, was dark, noisy, and normal. And so it went. The Trapper, so far as we could see, was not lurking at the Art Fair Outside Gallery (featuring framed San Francisco posters and cute animal pictures), nor at Chocolate Heaven, nor at the Music Box Store. Mostly, we were taking a cursory look wherever we went, not knowing whom or what to keep our eyes peeled for, but the Palace of Magic took Rob’s fancy.
    Here you could buy fascinating paraphernalia for the childish mind—bald wigs, fangs, frothing blood capsules, glow-in-the-dark face paint, thumb cuffs, switchblade combs, and smoke that came out of your fingers when you said “Abracadabra!” We got so engrossed the Trapper could have trapped us and held us for ransom. I may as well admit it—we bought one of each of the above. (At Rob’s instigation, of course. I feel quite sure I could have resisted if I’d been alone.)
    Somewhere near the middle of the complex is Center Stage, where a juggler was keeping three chain saws in the air. If anyone had given him the slightest little push, the carnage would have been horrific. But no one did. We walked past the crowd around him, past more stores. But all was serene.
    We still had the second tier of the complex to explore—the one where restaurants with a close-up Bay view are crowded in among the souvenir shops. And by now I was so hungry I was as cross as two sticks (a southernism I learned from my Virginia-born law partner). So we went to the Eagle Cafe, the jewel of the pier and the one authentic Only in San Francisco bit of memorabilia in the whole place. It had green Formica tables with ketchup bottles on them, and the entire restaurant, dating from 1927, had been moved from its previous location to Pier 39 in 1978. We felt almost at home there.
    As I demolished my burger, I mused. “Nothing’s happening,” I said at last. “Why don’t we go home?”
    “I’ll send you in a cab if you like—I feel I ought to stay. It’s sort of like a deathwatch.”
    I shivered.
    “That’s the news biz. Say the President comes to town to make a speech; theoretically that’s the news, but what if he has a sudden heart attack or someone shoots him? Then that’s the real news. So you’ve got to send someone to sit in the bar of his hotel and drink, just in case.”
    “How boring.”
    “Not really. The place is always full of other reporters on deathwatch.”
    “Trading sizzling repartee.”
    “And topping one another’s war stories.”
    “But the Trapper, assuming he’s real, didn’t say he was going to strike tonight. It might be tonight, or tomorrow, or six months from now. You can’t camp here permanently.”
    “Listen! What’s that?”
    I listened. I heard sirens, getting closer. Rob knocked over his chair running out the door.

5
     
    Ambulances were drawing up to the Pier—one after another as if they’d been called to a disaster area. Feeling queasy, I realized I was about to learn firsthand why deathwatches were invented.
    Rob was nowhere in sight, but I figured it was going to be no problem to find him. He’d be where the action was. And there was beginning to be quite a lot of action, as paramedics ran up the stairs and rubbernecks followed. If I didn’t hurry, there was going to be such a traffic jam I’d get shut out—which was the only thing I could imagine worse than being at the center of the carnage. And carnage it had to be—I’d now counted six ambulances.
    Following the crowd, I ended up at a fish restaurant called Full Fathom Five, mentally cursing the management for giving it such a bad-luck name in the first place. Cops had the entrance sealed off and had a path cleared for the paramedics, who were going in with empty stretchers and coming out with full ones. The people on the stretchers were strapped down, and some seemed to be gasping for breath; one young man was screaming. And an elderly man who looked dangerously white was very still.
    After the first half dozen ambulances, another four or five came.