One O’Clock Hustle: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery

Chapter 2-1

2

The light of dawn filled the eastern sky before Rebecca reached the alleyway where her tiny apartment was located. When she first arrived in the city, in search of excitement, romance, money—all the things small-town singles think of when they decide to leave home and go off on their own—she gravitated towards the streets and alleyways on the hillside just above the seedy Tenderloin, the area she had read about in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

She found a small in-law apartment in a narrow, dead-end street off of Taylor called Mulford Alley. In San Francisco, Rebecca learned that “in-law” meant illegal, built against zoning restrictions, and most likely built without permits. At first, the idea of living in an illegal apartment bothered her, until she learned they existed all over the city and she would not be the only cop who lived in one.

Her three-story building consisted of two flats over a ground-level garage and storage room. Her apartment had once been that storage space. Rebecca especially liked its privacy. To reach it, you had to go through a door that seemed as if it would open into the garage. Instead, it led to a breezeway to the backyard. The front door to her two-room dwelling faced that yard.

The landlord kept flowers and herbs in planter boxes and pots in the yard year round. Sometimes, if she focused hard on a group of flowers, a cluster of pink and white hydrangeas, for example, she could almost forget some of the horrors she saw on the job.

She had a love-hate relationship with the city and her work. Sometimes, she wanted to throw up her hands and quit in frustration at the bureaucratic minutia that got in her way. And other times, such as when she returned to her snug little apartment after successfully investigating a murder, she was amazed and grateful that her job—her life—could be both interesting and rewarding.

Another perk to her apartment's location was free, on-street parking. To find any parking space in San Francisco took perseverance and more luck than most people had. In Mulford Alley, the city had painted the sidewalk curb on one side of the narrow street red so cars wouldn't park there. Others who lived in the alley told Rebecca that if she parked up on the sidewalk, atop the red, she wouldn't be ticketed. Meter maids never bothered to enter it. That bit of “law-breaking” also took her a while to get used to—another “everyone does it in San Francisco” sort of crime.

Earlier that night, after leaving Richie with Bill Sutter, she had gone into the ballroom to deal with the customers. There, she met the club manager, Harrison Sidwell, a tall, thin man with dyed black hair, a mustache, black-framed glasses, and pin-prick brown eyes.

She talked to the policemen who had taken everyone's name and contact information along with statements that not one of them had seen anything, and shethen let the patrons leave. They hurried from the building, heads high, complaints loud, a few even daring to swear under their breaths at the uniformed officers.

Rebecca watched them go, then, dead tired, she took a statement from Sidwell covering all he had seen and heard, plus obtained from him the bookkeeper's full name, address and phone number. Perhaps the bookkeeper knew why the dead woman was in his office; no one else knew, and if Richie Amalfi knew, he wasn't saying.

After that, she returned to Homicide to run a few quick checks on the name Meaghan Blakely. She could find no record of any kind under that name, not even using alternative spellings.

Finally, she headed home.

The case troubled her for a number of reasons, not the least being Richie's involvement. But before spending any more time investigating, she needed some sleep.

If she had been tired before she went to Big Caesar's last night, it was nothing compared to the bone-aching weariness that consumed her now. Her eyes felt as if the entire Sahara had settled in them, and her headache caused shooting pains that rattled her teeth.

After parking in her usual red zone, she stumbled towards the brown and tan stucco building she called home. She paused, not because of any sound, but the feeling that someone watched her. That someone was near. As she spun around, she unzipped her Galco holster handbag in case she needed to use her Glock. Normally, she carried her weapon in a middle-of-the-back holster, but it jabbed her when she drove. Tonight, she was too tired to put up with the discomfort and removed it. Besides, she was only going home.

She scanned the street, glowing golden and hazy with early morning mist. Nothing moved. No cars, no people, no pigeons or seagulls, not even a piece of trash buffeted about by the ever-present bay breeze.

Nothing but nerves and exhaustion, she told herself. She re-zipped the gun compartment of her handbag and took out her keys. Perhaps she had seen too much death this weekend.

With eyes that scarcely had the strength to stay open, she found the lock in the door beside the garage, slipped in the key and pushed the door open. A hand clamped over her mouth, another around her waist and she felt herself dragged into the breezeway. The attacker didn't lift her—at five foot ten, it would take Shaquille O'Neal to lift her off her feet—and judging from the feel of the body against hers, he was about her height.

She struggled to break his hold, and as she did, she caught a glimpse of a black onyx and gold cuff link. She recognized it. Fury replaced fear, and she stomped down hard on the man's foot.

“God damn, Rebecca!” Her would-be captor let her go as he hopped on one foot. “I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't scream and wake the neighbors!”

“Richie!” She couldn't believe it. When she last saw him, Bill Sutter was leading him out to the patrol car for the ride to city jail. “I never scream.”

“I don't want you to shoot me either.” He grabbed her shoulder bag. “I know this is where you've got your gun.”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded as they played tug-of-war with her purse. He curled himself around it like a running back bracing to be tackled. “How did your lawyer get you released already?”

“I've got to talk to you about that.” He looked from side to side, even at the roof, as if expecting a SWAT team to rappel into her garden. “I don't want you to go arresting me before I've had a chance to speak my piece.”

“Let go of my handbag first!”

He did. She placed it back on her shoulder and then folded her arms, still glaring. “You've already been arrested.”

“Is there someplace warm we can go talk?” he asked, rubbing his arms. “I've been freezing my ass off out here waiting for you to come home. Where the hell have you been all this time?”

“You've been here all night?” His words made no sense to her. Even a quick release after booking took time, and his case involved murder.

“I asked the cop who was walking me to the squad car to loosen the handcuffs and then ... I don't know what happened. Something came over me, I guess. Or maybe the cop and Sutter tripped, because they were suddenly on the ground, and so I ran. Luckily, I'd left my car down by Sakura Gardens. I got out of the area easily except for one problem.” He held up his left wrist. One end of the handcuffs was still attached to it, and dangling down, the other end of the cuffs was wide open. Then his head c****d slightly as he studied her. “You mean Sutter didn't tell you?”

Sutter! She could imagine that he didn't want to tell his partner that he'd managed to lose their main suspect. Suspect, hell! He had two eyewitnesses, and from all she'd heard and seen, enough evidence to incriminate a saint. And Richie Amalfi was no saint.

But something—call it “cop sense” or whatever—told her he was innocent. And now, for some weird reason, he came here to her. She wanted to know why. Also, the more she thought about it, the more pissed off she became at Sutter. Why didn't he tell her immediately what had happened? Everything was so crazy, and she was so tired—and cold—she decided to take Amalfi up on his request. “We'll go to my apartment,” she said through gritted teeth. “My house keys must still be in the breezeway door lock.”

He held out her keys, dangling them by the National Rifle Association medallion on her key chain. He glanced at it. “You are one bad-ass broad.”

She grabbed the keys, shut and locked the door to the breezeway, and then marched to her apartment door and unlocked it. “Get inside and don't try anything funny.”

“Yes, Inspector,” he said with a grin.

For a moment, he thought she had unlocked the wrong door. The apartment was nothing like the gun-toting, NRA-joining, leather-wearing, karate-chopping, baton-wielding super cop he knew she was. He even heard she could watch autopsies and not flinch.

Guys on the force called her the Iron Maiden, and from their comments, they weren't only talking about her prowess as a cop.

Yet the homey, old-fashioned apartment reminded him of a country cabin. Quilts and throws in varying combinations of red, blue, and green ginghams, checks, and plaids covered mismatched furniture, probably from second-hand stores. Ruffle-edged pillows looked comfortable and inviting. From the front door, he could see the whole apartment, a living room with a small kitchen area in one corner, and a bedroom with a queen-sized bed (hmm, what was the lady not telling?) piled high with a fluffy down comforter and more pillows.

He took a couple of steps into the room and then froze at the sound of a low, deep growl.

On a red satin pillow stood the silliest looking dog he had ever seen. Smaller than most cats, it was furless except for a tuft of hair pulled up into a blue ribbon on the very top of its head. Its eyes could have been big brown jawbreakers.

“What in the hell is that?” he asked.

The mutt barked at him then ran to Rebecca and stood on its back legs, its front paws against her knee, wagging its tail and begging to be lifted.

She scooped it up. “You're right to bark, Spike,” she said, cuddling the beast as she carried him to the kitchen area. “He's a bad man.”

Spike?

“This is just a temporary reprieve,” Rebecca said to Richie as she dished barely more than a tablespoon of Alpo into a bowl. “I have to take you back, you know.”

“I didn't do it, Rebecca—”

“Inspector Mayfield!” she reminded him. The dog began eating as she turned on the heater.

“Inspector,” he repeated. “I don't know if what happened to me was just dumb luck or if I've been set up, but I didn't do it. And you know I'm telling you the truth.”

“Hah!”

He couldn't stop himself from shivering from the cold and more—as if the tense, rigid way he had held himself while waiting for her, wondering what else to do, where else to go, could no longer be maintained.

She must have seen him shiver because she grabbed one of the afghan throws on the sofa and put it over his shoulders. “Sit on the rocking chair by the vent.” She pointed to a maple rocker with a green plaid seat and back pads, held in place by large matching bows. “You'll warm up faster so we can get you to City Jail. Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, please. Look, I know you believe me. You're a good cop. If you thought there was any chance at all I was guilty, no way you'd let me into your apartment. You'd whisk me off to stir so fast it'd make my head spin. But you didn't.”

“Don't push your luck, Richie. It might just be that you looked like a whipped puppy outside.”

He shook his head and moved to the spot she suggested. Immediately, he felt warm air on his feet and ankles. He hadn't even realized how frozen his feet had become. He could have stayed warm if he remained in his car, but then he would have missed her. He had parked far from Mulford Alley, on a street she most likely wouldn't pass as she went home. She knew his car, a black Porsche, and even though this city had a fair number of similar cars, if she noticed a car like his nearby, she might become suspicious.

So, he parked six blocks away, walked to her building, hid in a nearby doorway, and waited for her to show up. He had become so cold and miserable, he wondered if it had been a mistake not to stay in jail and take his chances with the law.