Be Mine (32 page)

She held out the cash.

“That should cover half a gram and some of what I owe, please.”

He stared at her palm as if it held an insult. “Girl, you’re not
doing the math.”

She thrust the money under his nose. “I’m dying.”

He swatted her hand away. His voice was stone cold.

“You owe me five hundred.”

“But I’m dying. I’m sick. Take this. I’ll get more.”

“Either way you slice it you’re diggin your grave, Skin Popper.”

He snatched her money, shoved it in his pants, and stared at the Market Street traffic. Chewing and grinning at the undercovers with their gold chains and
Vandykes, rolling by in their customized Honda. He knew they weren’t interested
in a bottom-feeding minnow like him.

“I need something. I’ll take anything.”

Eyebrows appeared above the dark glasses. “Anything, baby?”

“God, yes.”

He debated with himself, then worked his tongue until it found a
small saliva-slick ball that looked like white candy. Extracting it, he placed
it in her palm. “I’m testing a new product line. You’re my first customer. It’s
fresh. Very potent. Very pure. Cook yourself up a dream.” Her fingers closed on
the balloon ball of heroin, then Gator crushed her wrist until it hurt. “Next
time I see you, you better have my money.”

Sobbing with pain tempered by the knowledge that relief was on its
way, she vanished into a dark alley and crouched behind a Dumpster near a doorway
that had coils of week-old excrement. She emptied the contents of her purse on
the ground. She poked through tampons, condoms, spermicide, chocolate bars, and
the folded note from the weirdo until she found her needle kit. Fingers
shaking, she set to work quickly. She boiled the impurities from the heroin on
a spoon, then injected herself under the skin between her thumb and forefinger.
As relief flowed through her veins, she dropped her head against an obscenity
scrawled on the wall and met her daughter’s eyes staring up at her from the
pavement.

She stayed that way for a while, letting the drug fill her with a
warm sensation of well-being. Then she strolled off toward a corner coffee shop
promising herself for the millionth time that she would get clean.

For Sunny.

As she walked, a sharp ache rocketed through her brain. Something
was not right. Something was wrong. Then she heard a voice.

“Gloria?”

She turned to see a friend. The one she’d met at a party not long
ago. The smart one who’d gone to college. Lois Hirt.

“College Girl Lois, hey, hon.”

“I’ve been looking all over for you, Gloria, asking everybody where
you went.” Lois was nearly out of breath. “I think I can get you into detox,
get you some money. Maybe a job.”

Gloria’s face brightened. “No shit?” Then her brain spasmed again.
She rubbed her temples.

“Remember at the party, you told me some guy gave you money to read
some joke into a phone?”

Gloria remembered. It happened down near Garfield Square. She
shuddered with another jolt of pain. Something was happening to her.

“I got a friend who needs to track this guy down. He needs a little
information. He’s got connections who can help you get better.”

Gloria had heard talk about Lois Hirt’s friends. She licked her
lips. Her stomach was quaking.

“Is this friend of yours a cop, Lois?”

“No. Hey, are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

They found a bench.

“My friend’s a good guy. He’ll protect you.”

Defeat washed over Gloria. She shook her head. Then felt cold.

“What does he want?”

“He needs you to help him find your telephone guy.”

Gloria pressed her temples. It was as if corn were popping in her
brain and her skull were about to split open. She gasped.

“But I don’t know where to find him, I think he was wearing--”

The sidewalk rushed up to hit Gloria. Her last conscious thoughts
were blurry images of the strange phone man and Lois Hirt’s screaming.

Tom Reed had overslept
and was running
late. The shower’s hot water soothed his sore muscles. He’d gone to bed coiled
with tension after discovering Yarrow’s incident with the Miss Texas finalist.
Now he was uncertain it mattered.

It had happened over a decade ago. Sydowski supposedly knew all
about him and was checking him out. Yarrow was recently divorced and not in the
city when the murders took place. Showing up at Hooper’s funeral was a strange
coincidence; all valid points Molly had raised sharply during his call last
night.

All right, maybe he’d overreacted. But Yarrow’s case simply did not
look good, Tom reasoned after dressing and driving to the paper. Yarrow’s
behavior gnawed at him. It didn’t sit right. No, he wasn’t ready to cross him
off without digging a little more. And he’d chase his other leads. He was
stopped at a red light when his cell phone rang.

“Reed.”

“Yeah, this is a friend of Lois’s.”

“Hi. I was trying to reach her today.”

“Something bad has just happened, like, a little while ago.”

“Bad? Like what? Is she hurt?”

“No. She just called me crying, saying to tell you something went
wrong on that thing she was checking for you. She’s going to tell you more
later.”

“What? Jesus. Where is she? Do you know? Hello?”

The line went dead.

Tom immediately detoured from the
Star
for the
Sixteenth-Street BART Station in the Mission District. He spent an hour
searching the streets in vain for Lois Hirt before giving up and going to the
paper.

The call about Lois worried him. What could it be? Any one of a
million scenarios, that’s what. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do but
wait. At least Lois had got word to him. He had to trust her. She’d never let
him down before, he assured himself as he settled in at his desk.

Get busy.

He reached into a file and reread the short article from the
Star-Journal
about Yarrow, then shook his head. There was no follow-up. Nothing. Yarrow’s
name hadn’t made the paper again, or Lil would’ve found it.

Tom got on the Internet for contact information, then called the
Barner County Sheriff’s Department in Texas.

“Sheriff,” a woman’s voice said.

“Tom Reed from the
San Francisco Star
. Do you have a press
person?”

“You’re calling from San Francisco?”

“Yes. Do you have a person who handles press calls?”

“What’s your question?”

“I’m trying to locate a deputy. He was with the department a few
years back.”

“Name?”

“Yarrow. Frank G. Yarrow?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell with me. Hold on a second.”

The line clicked and he heard a Dixie Chicks song. Tom loved their
stuff. Then the woman came back.

“The man you want is Will Zotta. He’s stepped away for a bit. I’ll
have him call you.”

Tom went downstairs to the cafeteria. He was at the register paying
for his bagel and tomato juice when old Hank Kruner grunted in his ear.

“Hear the latest?”

“About what?”

“The profits are down and the board’s rigged some secret deal with
managers,” Kruner said. “Cash bonuses for every salary cut from their
departmental payroll. Watch out, Ace.”

At his desk, Tom finished his bagel and juice then looked around for
Simon Lepp. He’d wondered if Lepp had made any headway on the foggy thing about
old drug accusations against Hooper. Maybe that was a connection to Lois and
the street? He couldn’t recall if Lepp had said he was off today.

Tom was stretching when his line rang and Irene Pepper summoned him
to her office. He sat while she remained standing, leaning against her desk
with her arms folded.

“Did you ask Molly about doing a first-person account on the murders
like I asked you?”

“She knows about your request.”

“And?”

“Irene, I’m uncomfor table with the way you keep pushing me for
this.”

The polished nails of her fingers began drumming. The corners of her
mouth courted a grin.

“Refusing an assignment is tantamount to insubordination, solid
grounds for termination. To be blunt, I can fire you. End your career with this
paper here and now.”

Tom’s jaw muscles tightened. He stared at her wondering, How did it
come to this?

All the late nights pumping cops, hanging out at bars, riding along,
working street sources, knocking on doors, and stepping into the lives of
heartbroken people in pursuit of stories no one else dared chase, stories that
pierced the city’s soul. Stories that swallowed him whole, before chewing him
up and spitting him out.

For that, he’d earned a Pulitzer nomination. He’d also earned a
drinking problem and a marriage that had been patched over more times than he
could remember. So how did it come down to someone like Pepper, standing over
his career like a gravedigger waiting to throw the first spadeful of earth on
it?

It doesn’t.

No way in hell will that happen.

“Tom, if you’ve got something to say, something to get off your
chest to clear the air in my newsroom, then take your shot. Tell me. Journalist
to journalist.”

Journalist to journalist.

“That’s the problem, Irene, you’re not a journalist.”

“I’ve been an editor here for nine years.”

“You’ve been on the desk here for nine years.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve saved you at the
Star
? How
many times I’ve put your name on your page one stories, after I routinely
rewrote the entire things on the desk?”

“That’s not true. You tell yourself these lies to justify your
existence here,” he said. “You have nothing but disdain for reporters because
you’ve never covered a single hard news story on the streets of this city. And
you can’t stand the fact that I, and most of the others at the
Star
, do
it, day after day after day. It magnifies your incompetence. And now, here you
are, by some horrible twist of fate, overlord of those you despise.”

She glared at him for a long silent moment.

“You’re on thin ice,” she said. “I’ve assigned you to convince Molly
to do a first-person account for me. Do it!”

“Or else?”

“Or else you’re gone.”

Anger bubbled in Tom’s gut when he left Pepper’s office, but it
stopped when Acker yelled to him.

“Reed! Call for you! Some guy in Texas!”

“I’ll take it at my desk.”

He jogged to his phone and seized the line.

“Will Zotta with the Barner County Sheriff’s Department in Texas returning your call.”

“Mr. Zotta, thanks.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to locate Frank G. Yarrow, a deputy.”

“And what is this in regards to?”

“I’m doing a story on police officers. A little biography work and
Yarrow’s name came up here and I’d heard he’d been with Barner County.
Has anyone else called you on this?”

“No. But you’re right. He was with us. He left the department years
ago.”

“Oh, I thought he was still with you. Any idea where he went?”

“Why are you interested in Yarrow?”

“It’s kinda complicated. All part of a San Francisco story.”

Silence filled the time that passed. Zotta was not stupid. He
sighed. “Last we heard, Yarrow went to Chicago. Got into some trouble there.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“You’d have to ask the Chicago PD.”

Chicago Police Department?

“That’s all I can say.” Zotta was ending the call.

“Wait. There’s something else. Can you tell me how, or why, Yarrow
left your department?”