A Deadly Kind of Love Page 9

  “Exactly. The Japanese are obsessed with death. The samurai especially were so obsessed. Death and honor.”

  Yoki, the bartender from the patio, was now their server, gliding softly back and forth between kitchen and table. He poured wine from a bottle, carefully wrapped to conceal its label, into a glass for the host. Nakamura sniffed at his, sipped noisily, and nodded, and the waiter poured for the others into glasses that Stanley recognized at a glance as Baccarat.

  “Do you like the wine, Mr. Danzel?” Nakamura asked.

  Tom sipped and nodded. “Tastes okay to me, but Stanley’s the expert. He’s the one to ask.”

  Nakamura smiled at Stanley and raised an eyebrow, as if he were issuing a challenge. Uh-oh, Stanley thought, better get this right. He lifted the glass to the light to better make note of the wine’s color. It was opaque purple, regal, clearly a well-aged wine.

  He sniffed at the rim of the glass and sipped noisily, taking in air with the wine. The flavors seemed to jump out of the glass at him. He swirled the wine around in his mouth before swallowing it, tasted crushed blackberries, cranberries, and a hint of mint. It was a spectacular wine, and an uncommon one.

  But he’d had this same wine before, hadn’t he, or one very much like it? The memory teased him for a moment and, like a fog lifting, was suddenly clear in his mind. He remembered a sunny day in Barcelona, seated at a sidewalk café, the air perfumed by the flowers that cascaded down the wall behind him. In the distance, someone thrummed a guitar and sang of lost love in a deep, mournful voice. Across the table, a dark-eyed Spaniard flirted….

  “Spanish, I’d say,” Stanley smiled back at their host. “Ribeira del Duero, isn’t it? And well aged. I’d guess a 2000.”

  “Very good,” Nakamura smiled openly now, flashing white-crowned teeth. “And quite close. It is a Tinto Pesquera. And yes, a 2000. You do know your wines.”

  “A lucky guess,” Stanley said modestly, while Chris beamed at him. Tom seemed to take it for granted, however. He already knew Stanley was smart.

  Stanley took another sip. “But I should have guessed a Pesquera. From Señor Fernández, yes? It’s definitely his style.”

  “Just so,” Nakamura said. “No one else is quite like him.”

  Yoki the waiter was back shortly with plates of thinly sliced ham, placing them in front of each of the diners. Since Nakamura waited without sampling his, the others did the same, aware that this was as much about ritual as lunch. In a moment Yoki returned with a cruet and carefully drizzled a few drops of pale yellow olive oil on each plate with the ham.

  Stanley was aware that Nakamura was now watching him carefully. Taking their cue from their host, everybody else stared at him as well, awaiting his judgment. He felt like he was back in college, about to tackle a very difficult exam.

  Okay, he thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. While everyone watched, he sliced off a morsel of ham and chewed it thoughtfully. It was beyond good. For whatever reasons, Nakamura had pulled out all the stops to impress his guests.

  “Much easier,” Stanley said. “There’s nothing that tastes anything close to Iberico ham. To be exact, I’d say Jamon Iberico de bellota.”

  “Exact indeed,” Nakamura said, and added, “puro, of course. But how did you know?”

  “It’s almost like cheating. I spent a summer in Spain,” Stanley said, and to the others at the table, “They take ham very seriously there. There’s even a string of museos de jamon, ham museums, if you can believe that. The Iberico is the Rolls Royce of Spanish hams, made from the Iberian pig—puro just means the line is pure on both sides of the sty. And bellota means the pig’s diet toward the end is mostly acorns. Then it’s cured for up to three years. Until 2007 you couldn’t even get it in this country, unless it was somehow smuggled in. And it’s still rare.”

  He didn’t add, “and pricey,” but he certainly could have. He knew the ham sold for up to one hundred dollars a pound. And, he thought, chewing another morsel, worth every penny if you could afford it. Which apparently their host could. But why exactly they were being treated to all this extravagance, he couldn’t guess.

  “And the olive oil?” Nakamura asked.

  That, Stanley didn’t know. Olive oil wasn’t his forte, but the wine and the ham, both rare and expensive, gave him one certain clue, and he remembered Tom’s surprised pleasure earlier when Yoki had handed him the copper-encased beer, meaning that, too, must have been something special. Tom might not know wines, but he knew his beer.

  He took a breath, crossed his fingers mentally, and made a guess. “Manni,” he said. “Per me.”

  Nakamura’s expression, both pleased that a guest appreciated what he was being served, and frustrated at the same time that he hadn’t been able to fool him, told Stanley he had guessed right. There was much Stanley did not know about olive oils, but he did know that the Manni from Tuscany was the world’s most expensive olive oil. Stanley had felt sure Nakamura wouldn’t have had anything less than the best and most expensive oil drizzled on his expensive ham. Not when he was trying to impress them, as he so obviously was.

  “Wow,” Eddie said, eyes wide. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “Stanley’s smart,” Tom said, digging into the macaroni and cheese, unimpressed by the fancy ham on the side. It was just ham to him. Tasted good, but it still came from a pig’s backside. As for that olive oil, he’d have preferred some good old redneck redeye gravy, but he stopped short of asking for it. Probably the great chef had never heard of it anyway.

  AFTER THE little battle of the palates with Stanley, Nakamura proved to be a gracious host, keeping the conversation around the table going smoothly, and occasionally asking questions of Tom, mostly regarding the investigation. All in all, it was a pleasant lunch.

  Only one peculiar moment occurred. Stanley had been conversing softly with Chris and Eddie, while Tom and Nakamura discussed favorite samurai movies. Stanley glanced down the table to find Nakamura was staring at him with an expression impossible to read, while he pretended to listen to something Tom said.

  When Tom paused, Nakamura, still gazing at Stanley, said, “I envy you what you share with your friend.”

  Tom blinked and looked at Stanley too. “We’ve had our challenges.” He smiled, his grin lighting up his face as if from within. It was a smile that was known to make women and gay men melt in their drawers. Stanley smiled back at him. Notwithstanding the others at the table to witness, it was a strangely private moment between the two of them.

  “Still, love, what treasure can equal it? Do you ever wonder about its nature?” Nakamura asked that of the table in general.

  “Who doesn’t?” Chris said. “How do two people share it, and not two others? Everyone wants it, but few find it.”

  “I think,” Stanley said, “it’s like a glass of wine. The lovers may sip it individually, but when they kiss a moment later, they share the taste that lingers in their mouths. It goes from tongue to tongue and back again, and you can’t really separate it, say, this is my lingering taste and this is yours.”

  He would have added, but thought it was too personal, that he and Tom shared something that couldn’t be separated into two parts, his love and my love. In a way, they were still two individuals, Tom and Stanley, but in another way, they had become TomStanley, a togetherness. But even if he’d felt inclined to share this with the others, he doubted anyone would really understand what he meant by it. He wasn’t at all sure he understood it, but he knew it was so.

  He had been looking mostly at Tom when he had spoken, but when he switched his glance back to their host, he found Nakamura staring at him in a rapt way. His gaze was so intimate, so intense, that Stanley looked away from it, embarrassed. It was as if Nakamura had made a pass at him in some subtle way that he’d never encountered before. Maybe, he thought, he had been just a bit too show-offy over the wine and food.

  Nakamura said to Tom, “I say again, I envy you. I have never truly known that. I have resigned my
self to the truth that I never will.”

  “I do not know that is so. You are not so very old, Nakamura-san,” Eddie said. “Not too old to find love, surely.”

  Nakamura looked at him briefly as if he had not seen him before. He looked away and shook his head. “Time, the devouring dragon…. Even the most exquisite feast, once eaten, is gone from the table.”

  “YOU KNOW what puzzles me?” Stanley said when he and Tom were on their way back to the hotel. “All these people knowing who we are and why we’re here. Hammond hinted at something like that, didn’t he? That we might be observed. Someone might be listening.”

  “We’ve been careful about the cell phones.”

  “We have been since Hammond warned us. But Chris called us in the beginning, from the Inn, no less. And the Inn has got to be at the center of all this. Plus Bryce called Palm Springs homicide about us before we even got here. So, if someone had an ear to the ground right from the start—”

  “Or a bugging device on the right phones.”

  “Right. They’d be waiting for us, wouldn’t they? Expecting us?”

  “It’s an interesting thought. If you think about it, Nakamura approached us last night at the bar. It seemed casual at the time, accidental, but….”

  “But maybe he didn’t just happen to stroll by.”

  “Maybe. Same with that cowboy, too, Patterson. Either one of them could have been sniffing around, could have been looking for us. We caught Patterson at Barry Palmer’s house. And Nakamura was certainly interested in how we were doing with our investigation. He asked a lot of questions over lunch.”

  Stanley shook his head. “But he would be interested, wouldn’t he? We’re probably the biggest gossip in town right now.”

  “What puzzles me,” Tom said, glancing at the rearview mirror, “is why that cowboy’s following us today?”

  “Patterson?” Stanley started to turn in his seat, but Tom said, “No, don’t look. Let’s let him think we’re stupid.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “Since shortly after we left Nakamura’s house.” They were on the 111, approaching Palm Springs.

  “Maybe he’s just smitten. He did try to pick you up—in his own crude way, of course.”

  Tom grunted disdainfully. “Tell you what,” he said, “I was going to check with Hammond this afternoon anyway. Let’s stop and pay him a visit instead. It’ll give the cowboy something to think about, and we can talk to Hammond there without worrying about anybody eavesdropping.”

  “Unless,” Stanley said, “the station is bugged.”

  Tom thought about that. “No, not bugged, probably. That wouldn’t be easy to do. But somebody could be listening.”

  SANDY, THE blonde with the acne, was working the front desk again. She actually managed to smile at them when they came through the door, and picked up a phone to inform the detective they were there.

  Hammond looked surprised to see them, but not displeased. He led them once again back to his office. This time the other desk was occupied—which might have explained why the scent of whiskey was less pronounced than it had been the previous visit. A lanky detective, who looked to Tom like he ought to be in high school, glanced up from the neighboring desk at them as they came in, smiled vaguely, and with a show of disinterest, went back to the newspaper he was reading.

  “So,” Hammond said, “have you learned anything I ought to know?”

  “Maybe,” Tom said. “Or maybe it isn’t news to you. The Palmer kid—did you know he had a boyfriend? Might even have been a roomie.”

  Hammond digested that. “Not a roomie. Not officially, anyway. That much I do know. Just the one name on the lease. I looked at it.”

  “These guys, the ones who hang out at the Winter Beach Inn, they like to keep things quiet.” Tom hesitated, not wanting to get off on the wrong foot and not sure if Hammond was aware of the nature of the Inn. “Look, you know about that place, right? The kind of place it is?”

  “The sugar daddies? The boy toys? That stuff?”

  “Yeah. It’s dressed up a lot, but at heart it’s nothing more than an old-fashioned whorehouse.”

  Hammond leaned back in his chair, his expression noncommittal. “I think you’re probably right.”

  “And you’re okay with that? The department is, I mean?”

  “I’m homicide. That’s not my turf.”

  The other detective looked briefly at them, as if he might say something. He changed his mind, though, and went back to his reading. Stanley thought about what Tom had said when they were driving in, about someone listening.

  “Still—it’s pretty blatant,” Tom said.

  Hammond appeared uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. His eyes drifted ever so slightly sideways, to the neighboring desk, but the man there was reading his newspaper with great concentration. He might have been alone in the room.

  “Well, as you already know, there’s a lot of big money in this town,” Hammond said finally. He paused and added, “And some of it hangs out there, at the Winter Beach Inn. Some of those toes I mentioned stepping on. Or not stepping on.”

  “Ah” was all Tom said, nodding. Which meant that someone among the clients at the Inn had pull with the department. Hell, for all he knew, maybe the chief was one of those old queens out by that swimming pool. For sure, someone who knew the chief was. Someone who knew the chief well.

  “So, who’s this boyfriend you mentioned, and what brings him to mind?” Hammond asked.

  “His name is Jeff, no last name. And he’s gone missing.”

  “Is that so?” Now Hammond was interested. “Since when?”

  “Since before the Palmer kid bought it. Leads me to think there might be a tie-in, apart from their being friends. Anyway, the way we hear it, Palmer and the missing Jeff were both regulars at the Inn. Like, pretty much every day. Then the boyfriend vanishes, and about the same time or not long thereafter, someone murders Palmer.”

  “It could be coincidence,” Hammond said.

  “Maybe,” Tom agreed. “Or maybe not. If the boyfriend stays missing, I’d say probably not.”

  “Yeah,” Hammond said. “I don’t much like coincidences either.”

  He got up and went out of the office, then was back in a couple of minutes. “No missing person reports on Jeff anybody,” he said.

  “I don’t know who’d file one,” Tom said. “I doubt that he’s got family here in town. The two kids sounded more like floaters. And if Palmer was his roommate, or even his boyfriend, we know why he didn’t file a report.”

  “Get me a description,” Hammond said. “We’ll do some looking around. One dead kid, bad news. Two of them? Disaster for the city. People are going to want this wrapped up, quick and smooth, like in a Texas two-step.”

  “We’re dancing as fast as we can,” Stanley said.

  “There is one person, though, who isn’t in such a big hurry to see things wrapped up,” Tom said.

  “The murderer? Tough” was Hammond’s reply.

  “What if it turns out to be one of the big wheels?”

  Hammond gave him a faint grin. “I’m hoping it is.”

  Tom glanced at the detective studiously reading his newspaper. “Walk us to our truck?” Tom suggested to Hammond.

  Hammond shoved off from his desk, said to his fellow detective, “Back in a minute.”

  The detective raised his eyes from the paper and watched them go.

  When they were outside, Tom asked, “How sure are you that our conversations here aren’t listened to?”

  “My partner? I trust him—mostly. Course you never really know, do you? What makes you ask?”

  Tom told him about being approached the night before by Johnnie Nakamura and the young cowboy. “Someone could have heard our original call from Chris, and Bryce called you.”

  “And someone could know who you are and why you’re here—but, hell, probably everybody in town knows that by now.”

  “The three
fastest means of communication,” Stanley said. “Telephone, telegraph, and tell a queen.”

  Hammond chuckled. “I know Johnnie Nakamura. Everybody does. He’s big-time, big money. Mikosa Industries is mostly Los Angeles, but they’re a presence here as well. A growing presence.”

  “Are his toes among those we don’t want to step on?” Tom asked.

  “Probably wouldn’t be a good idea. He’s powerful, and from everything I hear, ruthless. Let me put it this way, I’d rather have him as a friend than an enemy. As to your cowboy, what was his name?”

  “He calls himself Randy Patterson.”

  “Doesn’t ring any bells, but I can do some sniffing around. If he’s got any kind of record, I can pull it. If his nose is clean….” He shrugged. “That’s a little harder.”

  There was no sign of the cowboy’s pickup truck when they left the police station. Maybe, Tom thought, he hadn’t wanted to be seen hanging around here.

  THEY WERE coming around the last curve before the Inn when Stanley suddenly said, “Wait, stop here.”

  Tom did so and gave him a quizzical glance. “What?”

  Stanley stared for a moment at the exterior of the Inn. “It’s the same,” he said.

  Tom followed his gaze. “What’s the same?”

  “The exterior. It’s like Nakamura’s house. The outside is downright plain. Everything special is inside. Remember, Eddie told us that was the Japanese way.”

  “So what do you think it means?”

  “I’d be willing to bet Nakamura-san is one of the Inn’s anonymous owners.” Stanley pondered that for a moment. “But I don’t know what that tells us.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THEY STOPPED by the club for a drink. Chris was at the bar, alone, nursing a cocktail.

  “I’ve got to use the euphemism,” Stanley said. “Be right back. Somebody order me a gin and tonic, please.”

  Tom ordered the drink and a beer for himself, and seeing that Chris’s glass was nearly empty, another Bloody Mary for him.