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

you leave by the side door?”
    “I said I did.”
    “Funny, I didn’t hear you say that.”
    “It’s what I meant.”
    I stopped and counted to ten, mentally, very fast. I was beginning not to like this guy at all—he seemed about as interested in telling his own story, keeping his own hide from coming to grief, as I am normally interested in the Super Bowl. In fact, he seemed to have about as much life to him as a dead battery. And I figured he had a lot in common with one. He’d used up all the juice in himself—or someone had used it up for him. The fact that he seemed rude and sullen might not have anything to do with what he was really like—the older brother Art had known as a child—and I was a spoiled brat if I couldn’t remember that and do my job properly. I swallowed.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t understand. It’s important for you to be as clear as possible about your story. Okay, you left by the side door. And went where?”
    “I walked.”
    “You walked. Back to your apartment?” I knew, of course, that he hadn’t, as I’d been there with his brother and Rob that night; but I thought if I gave him some guidance—something to push against—it might help.
    “Thought you were there that night.”
    Wrong approach. “Not all night. I thought maybe you were there before or after.”
    He shook his head. “Nope.”
    “Where did you go, then?”
    He shrugged again. “I just walked.”
    “All night?”
    “Almost.”
    “What did you do after you finished walking?”
    “Slept for a while.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know. Doorway, I think.”
    “I see. And where have you been staying all week?” I was shocked saying it—the disaster at Full Fathom Five had happened on a Friday and this was Thursday. Fear had stalked for nearly a week now. It was getting to be a way of life. “Doorways. Stuff like that. Around.”
    “Have you been in touch with Art at all?”
    Art shook his head, clearly distressed and growing nearly as impatient as I was. Lou said: “No. Not till after I saw that other guy.”
    “What other guy?”
    “Other lawyer.”
    He sounded at the end of his rope. Looking at Art, I saw the pain in his eyes. He knew Lou wouldn’t have called him if he’d had any other options.
    “All right, where are they?” It was a loud threatening voice from Alan’s reception area.
    Lou got up and ran to the window, looking for a way out. Alan buzzed me. “Miss Schwartz, a couple of—uh—chaps are here to see you.”
    Chaps, not gentlemen—as if I didn’t know already who was out there. “Tell Inspectors Martinez and Curry I’ll be right out.”
    But the door slammed open, knocking a hunk out of my nice paint. The chaps had their guns drawn. “You have no right to come in here,” I said, but my words were drowned out by Martinez.
    He was saying, “Lou Zimbardo, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney…”
    When they’d dragged him away, Art let his eyes smolder at me. He said: “Please help me.” Not even, “Rebecca, please help me,” or “Please help my brother.” Just the three simplest words that said what he wanted. I wanted to take him in my lap and rock him.
    I sent him home. Then I phoned Martinez and left a message. After that, I phoned Rob and filled him in. He, of course, had just left a message for Martinez as well, intending to tell him about the Trapper’s latest call, in which he claimed to have caused the cable car accident. The call had come through the switchboard and been transferred to the city desk before coming to Rob—all of Rob’s callers who didn’t use his extension were being treated this way now—just in case. And now the case had arisen. The time of the call had indeed been noted—and by someone other than Rob. That was good. What wasn’t so good was that there was no way to prove that Rob’s caller had been the Trapper.
    * * *
     
    Naturally, I got the bail machinery in motion right away, but the case against Lou looked awful. Which meant the D.A. must be rubbing his hands together in glee. What looked awful to me had to look terrific to him. It was this way: The night of the poisonings at Full Fathom Five, when the cops searched Lou’s flophouse room, they found the gun that had killed Sanchez. And, ominously, a book on bomb making. Martinez had also turned up another neat little circumstantial piece: It seemed that Lou Zimbardo, before taking up residence in San