Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

She answered the door with a gun pointed at his face.

“Identification,” she snapped.

Frost shook his head. “Trent tried that with me, too. I’m not part of Lombard. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

Fawn breathed slowly, but she didn’t lower the gun. “Move back,” she told him.

Frost raised his arms and backed up until he stood against the railing. “This is as far as I can go.”

She looked both ways down the corridor to confirm that Frost hadn’t brought anyone with him. Then she opened the door wider, but she kept the gun pointed at his chest. “Okay, come in.”

He did. It was an elegant hotel suite. The television was on, with the sound muted. The bed was perfectly made. He saw the balcony beyond a set of glass doors, and the nighttime view overlooked the Ferry Building and the bay. The room smelled of perfume drifting from her skin, and he’d smelled that aroma twice before. Once in her bedroom in Pacific Heights. Once in Trent Gorham’s house.

“Do you prefer Fawn or Zara?” he asked her.

“For now, let’s stick with Fawn. I can’t exactly go back to my life as Zara now, can I? And I guess soon I may need a third identity.”

“Well, Fawn, why don’t you put the gun down, and let’s talk.”

She hesitated and then pointed the small revolver at the floor. With her defenses down, her emotions welled to the surface. She wasn’t a rock. Her dark eyes filled with tears. “Is it really true about Trent?” she asked.

“Yes, it is. I’m sorry.”

Her foot tapped the carpet in a nervous tic as she dealt with the reality of losing him. “I thought — I hoped — maybe it was another trick. I’m supposed to be dead, too.”

“It isn’t a trick,” Frost said.

Her breath caught in her chest. She couldn’t speak for a while. He waited, giving her time, and he felt the aura of her presence. She looked a lot like her sister, with sweeping black hair, a honey-colored angular face, and hooked, wicked eyebrows. She was a small woman but lithe and athletic. She wore tight-fitting blue jeans, an off-the-shoulders black knit sweater, and high-top red sneakers. Like Prisha, she was attractive, but she also had something undefinable that lifted her into a rarefied world. If she looked right at you, you remembered the experience.

“I loved Trent,” Fawn murmured. “I suppose that must strike you as funny.”

“Not at all.”

“It’s not like we could tell anyone. I never even told Prisha.”

“How long were you two together?” Frost asked.

“Three years. Practically from the day we met. There was an instant chemistry between us. Most men look at me like fine china, like something fragile that you need to keep behind glass. Even the ones that buy me sometimes can’t even talk to me. But Trent was different. He saw me as a person. He didn’t care what I did. Most guys would never be able to handle it. The jealousy would eat them up. Trent never gave me grief, never told me to quit. It was my job, that was all. I was able to be normal with him, and trust me, that’s a rare thing in my life.”

“I’m sure.”

She shook her head. “That bastard Filko.”

“Lombard, too,” Frost said.

“I don’t care about Lombard. That was Trent. For me, it was all about taking down Martin Filko. I meet some sleazy characters in my line of work, but Filko is in a category by himself. The bro culture in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is so disgusting. People have no idea. But I’m going to make Filko pay. Count on it. I’m bringing him down whatever it takes.”

Her anger was like a fire shooting sparks from her small body. She had an intensity about her that was both attractive and a little unstable. Where her sister was cool, Fawn was hot.

“Maybe you should go back to the beginning,” Frost said. “Tell me what happened.”

Fawn sat on the bed. She stared at the silent television and then switched it off. She looked at Frost. “Do you know about Naomi?”

“She was an escort who was killed.”

Fawn nodded. “Naomi and I were close. She was a couple years older than me, and she’d been in the business longer than I had. Her advice saved me more than once when I was starting out. Three years ago, I was at a Zelyx party with Prisha, and I bumped into Naomi there. She was working. And by working, I mean she was with Filko. I knew something was wrong. I could see it in her face. We had a few minutes alone while he was making his remarks to the team, and she told me what was going on. The things he did to her. She’d had enough, and she was going to expose him. That was big. Believe me, if you’re in my business, you don’t come to that decision lightly. For Naomi, it meant she’d never work again, but she was willing to go that far to make sure people knew the kind of man Filko is. Only she never got the chance.”

“The overdose,” Frost said.

Fawn’s lip curled with contempt. “It was murder, pure and simple. Naomi never took drugs. Never. I knew what had happened. Filko found out she was planning to expose him, and he had her killed.”

“So what did you do?” Frost asked, although he knew exactly what she’d done.

“I talked to a vice cop I knew. Alan Detlowe. Alan was a good guy. I mean, no offense, but some cops are pigs and want a quid pro quo for keeping quiet, if you know what I mean. Alan was more concerned with us being safe and whether we were being treated right. He kept an eye on the escort scene to make sure organized crime wasn’t moving in, but otherwise, he didn’t hassle us. I told Alan what was going on and what I suspected about Naomi and Filko. He said he’d look into it, and he obviously did, because the next week, they killed him, too.”

Frost nodded. “That’s how you met Trent?”

“Yes. He found out that I’d been talking to Alan, and he wanted to know what it was about.”

“You told him?”

“Oh yeah. I told him everything.”

“Trent kept it quiet,” Frost said. “Nothing went into his reports.”

“That’s because we already knew there was something between the two of us. We liked each other. We began dating. It wasn’t quite the Montagues and Capulets, but it was close. Cops don’t date hookers, and hookers don’t date cops. We had to be really careful. And we were worried about what might happen to us. Naomi and Alan both got killed. So Trent kept his whole investigation under wraps. He told me what he’d found out about Lombard and the snakes, but I was the only person he trusted with it. He didn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Keeping it quiet meant you couldn’t do anything about Filko.”

“I know. I hated it, but I was falling in love with Trent, and that was more important. I was willing to put Filko on the back burner for him.”

“So what changed?” Frost asked.

“Last summer, I met Filko myself,” Fawn said, and he could hear the contempt in her voice.

“Was that on the cruise with Greg Howell?”

“Yes.” She looked surprised that he knew that. “Belinda Drake set it up for me. I didn’t know who the client was going to be. She just said he was ‘difficult’ and she needed someone who could handle him. I don’t intimidate easily. Then it turned out to be Filko. Being with him, knowing what he’d done, brought it all back for me. Every second I was with him, I kept thinking about Naomi. When I got back, I told Trent that we had to do something. We had to get him, no matter what the risks were. And that was when he came up with the plan.”

“A sting,” Frost said.

Fawn nodded fiercely. “Yes, exactly. Trent said if we found the right opportunity, we could set a trap to get both of them. Filko and Lombard. So I told Belinda Drake that I was willing to see Filko again when he was in town. Believe me, most girls were one-and-out when it came to him. I knew she’d call me in, and she did. It was going to be on Denny Clark’s boat again. Late night. Small party. Trent put the screws on Denny to install cameras so we’d have proof of what the son of a bitch did to me. And he came up with the idea of faking my death. He figured if Filko was face-to-face with a disaster like that, he’d have to call in Lombard to fix it like he did with Alan. And then Trent would be able to expose the whole operation.”