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

as if you’re someplace terribly glamorous.
    Funny, I thought, here was a place populated almost solely by tourists—a perfect target—and yet they remained here. On the other hand, where else were they going to go? Out on the streets, where not even the natives ventured? To another hotel, where they’d still be sitting ducks? I began to realize for the first time that the Trapper’s threat to close the place down was an idle one by no means. Little Italy was certainly already suffering and so were the bars in the Castro. The impact on the hotels probably hadn’t yet been felt because the Trapper was relatively new—maybe word of him wasn’t big national news yet; people probably hadn’t had time to cancel their trips to San Francisco. But it would start soon if the murders continued. If the next one were in a hotel… and suddenly I was sure the next one would be. Perhaps it would be arson; perhaps the Trapper would find a way to set a hotel on fire and kill hundreds of people at once. Perhaps it would be the Fairmont, and perhaps while we were on our way up in the elevator made famous by
Ironside
. Jeff was pressing the button now. Perhaps we had only minutes to live. But wait, I told myself—all we had to do was walk out without boarding the damned elevator. I could say I suddenly felt ill…
    The elevator came and Jeff whisked me inside. I could have spoken up, but the arrival of the elevator, into which nine other people pressed confidently, brought me to my senses. What was I, Chicken Little? Or Rebecca Schwartz, Jewish feminist lawyer? A Jewish feminist lawyer afraid to get on an ordinary elevator in a well-known hotel on a random Wednesday would suck eggs. I relaxed a little.
    Instead of looking at the - view, I watched Jeff watching it. And then people started screaming; people right in the elevator not six inches away. And yet we were still going up. If the elevator wasn’t falling, what was happening? Jeff’s face, changing from near rapture to horror, told me it was something outside. I turned and saw every San Franciscan’s worst nightmare—a runaway cable car on Nob Hill.
    It was hurtling down Powell like a roller coaster, nearly at the intersection, almost there, and the light was green on California. People must be screaming, I thought—the people on the cable car—surely they must hear it on California Street. And they must be able to see the car traveling at what looked to me like the speed of light. But would they be able to get out of the way? A taxi, probably paying no attention, just trying to make good time, was right in its path, and there was a car very close in front of it. If the taxi even had time to get out of the cable car’s way, it was going to hit the other car. However, that seemed the better choice to me. Suddenly, the taxi did speed up, the driver apparently just seeing the runaway. But it wasn’t fast enough. The cable car hit the taxi in the rear, probably just about in the back seat area, where the passengers would be. But the cable car was going so fast it merely knocked the taxi aside, where it hit another car, and continued hurtling down the hill.

10
     
    I read all about it in the
Chronicle
the next morning. The cable car continued to Pine Street, where it hit another car quite a bit harder than it had apparently hit the taxi, and finally came to a stop. Four people were killed, thirteen hospitalized, six of them in critical condition. Reading it, I would have burst into tears, except that I was already cried out. Someone had had hysterics in the glass elevator, and I figured I was next if I didn’t get home soon. So Jeff took me—immediately. He wanted to stick around and be comforting, but I simply wasn’t up to it. If I couldn’t be with a San Franciscan, I didn’t want to be with anyone.
    All I wanted to do was cry my eyes out and I’d be much happier doing that alone, anyway. It was too much. First, the Trapper, and then Rob and now this. It wasn’t lost on me, of course, that the cable car collision might be the Trapper’s work. But whether it was or it wasn’t, he was bound to claim credit for it and fear would continue to stalk and San Francisco would remain slightly less habitable than Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
    Having read the distinctly uncheering news in the
San Francisco Chronicle
and having forborne to break into tears yet again, I was contemplating a dispiriting morning of catching up on detail work, tying up loose ends, returning phone