A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [25]
‘Bad news,’ Jonathan said.
‘You got that right, and I was best man at the wedding. She moved into his apartment in San Francisco and the three of us hung out a lot together. Then sometime in the spring she fell in love with me, only I didn’t really know it. I mean, I knew she was attracted, but hey, all women are attracted to me.’
Jonathan and Steve chuckled.
‘The night John got killed we’d gone back to their apartment, and I don’t know how well you guys know San Francisco—’
‘I read about it,’ Jonathan said. ‘We both googled you before we started riding with you.’
‘Right, you didn’t want to fuck up your careers, but now that I’m back there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to come up with some stuff that makes you some money. So you talked it over with your wives. Yeah, I’ve got you guys figured out.’
This time they giggled like little girls. Stoltz smiled.
‘Want me to shut up?’
‘No, keep going,’ Jonathan said.
‘OK, well, everything you read was wrong, or almost all of it, and I had a real hard time dealing with that. It took me a long time to get my head on straight.’
‘But you took a plea bargain,’ Steve said.
‘I did, but the way they set it up you don’t really have much choice. The DA’s office isn’t there for justice. They’re just about putting points on the board. Anyway, back to that night. I’d just broken off a long relationship and wasn’t seeing anybody, and that was probably part of the problem with Erin the night John got killed. She thought I was available.’
‘But she was married,’ Steve said, and got a little prim look on his face.
‘Young man, it happens even when they’re married.’
Jonathan laughed hard at that and Steve looked away. But Stoltz needed both of them.
‘She was awesome,’ Stoltz said, ‘but she was married to my best friend so I avoided ever being alone with her. That night we went back to their apartment after dinner. Erin had some great tequila she’d bought in Mexico and some good dope.’
As soon as he said dope, he knew he’d made a slight miscalculation. He saw a little twitch under Jonathan’s right eye and remembered Jonathan had a problem with marijuana.
‘She and John liked to get high, but I don’t do any drugs, so I went down to my car to get something after they lit up. I had a BMW in those days, an M5—’
‘What color?’
With the car he had Jonathan back, nodding at him, ready to cut in with his own car story.
‘Dark blue.’
‘I bet you thought you were some hot shit.’
‘I did, and I wasn’t.’
‘I had one of those too.’
‘Did you?’
‘Same car.’
‘No wonder we’re riding together. Anyway, I was a geek with new money.’
They both smiled. They saw a lot of guys get self-important when they hit it big.
‘If I hadn’t gone to my car, none of it would have happened.’ He stopped there and took a drink of beer. ‘That night we were talking about going up the coast in two cars. John had a Porsche and the weather for the weekend coming up was supposed to be good, so we thought we’d race each other up to Mendocino. I went down to get a map.’
‘Hold on,’ Jonathan said, ‘I’m getting lost here.’
‘The night it happened I was at their apartment. We’d gone to dinner and then come back to their apartment. I went down to the parking lot to get a map out of my car.’
‘How far down?’
‘One flight. The cars were in this tiny lot in back, and I don’t know what it’s like there now, but then it was pretty quiet except that you had this kind of slopover from the Haight-Ashbury area. Some drug dealing went on close by and that night I’d done something stupid. I’d left my car unlocked after getting the map and had a gun in my car because John and I had been going out to a range and learning how to target shoot. There’d been a couple of carjackings in recent months in the area where I was living, so I’d bought a gun and was learning how to use it.’
He caught a second reproving nod from Jonathan