James Patterson - 10th Anniversary

That was the good news and the bad.

Good that she’d scared off that psycho by turning the brights on him with her three-part, above-the-fold story.

Bad because he’d gone underground — and that meant he might never be caught.

Meanwhile, she had a connection in the taxi business. It was just before six. With luck, the dispatcher she’d met, Al Wysocki, would still be on duty. Maybe he’d do her a favor.

Cindy pulled the number up from her phone list and pressed call . The phone rang and a voice she recognized answered, “Quick Express Taxi and Limo.”

“Al Wysocki?”

“This is Al.”

“Al, it’s Cindy Thomas from the Chronicle . I met you a few days ago while I was working on my story.”

“Yep, I remember you. Blonde.”

“That’s me, Al, and I’ve got a problem. Could you send a cab to the Chronicle? I’m soaked to my skin and I’m late for dinner.”

“No problem, Ms. Cindy. I’ll have someone there in five.”

CINDY WAS DELIGHTED with herself. She described her raincoat and umbrella to Wysocki, folded her phone, put it in her pocket, and ducked back into the building, where she could see the traffic through the glass doors.

In five minutes, almost on the nose, a yellow Crown Vic pulled up and the window rolled down. She ran out to the street and immediately recognized the round face of the driver.

“Lady,” he said with a grin. “You called a cab?”

“Al, I didn’t mean you should come yourself, but thanks a ton. You’re too nice.”

Cindy closed her umbrella, reached for the door handle, and opened the back door.

“I was going off duty,” Wysocki said as Cindy settled into the backseat. “Happy to help you out. Hey. I gotta share this with someone who isn’t going to get jealous. Where are we going?”

Cindy gave Al Susie’s address, Jackson and Sansome, and leaned her umbrella against the door so the water would drip onto the mat.

“Share what?” Cindy asked, grabbing tissues from her pocket and blowing her nose.

“This is my lucky day,” Al told her, stopping at the red light on 2nd. “I won the lottery.”

“What?”

“Yeah, five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Come onnnn. You’re kidding me!”

“Seriously, I just kept playing my lucky numbers, and yahoo! — I won. I’m quitting tomorrow morning when I see the boss. This is Al Wysocki’s last fare. I got a bottle of schnapps,” he said. “Share a toast with me to my new life?”

“I don’t know how that’ll mix with Sudafed.”

“Hey, just a sip. It’ll do your cold good.”

“Okay, then. Hit me,” Cindy said. “You must be mind-boggled. Five hundred grand! So what are your plans?”

Wysocki opened the twist-off cap on the flask of high-octane spirits, poured Cindy a few ounces into a small plastic cup, and handed it to her through the partition.

“I’m going to buy a sailboat,” he said. He clinked the bottle against her plastic cup.

“To your new life,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. Cindy. Yeah, I’ve been going to the boat shows for about eleven years. I know just the one I want.”

Cindy smiled and said “What … kind of … boat?”

“I want to get a sailing yacht. Small one, handmade, wooden hull,” Al said, looking at Cindy in the rearview mirror as the light turned green. He said, “You okay, back there?”

“No …,” she said slowly, casting her eyes toward Wysocki’s mirrored reflection. What was wrong with her? She was having trouble focusing. “I … feel …”

Wysocki grinned.

“You should feel great,” he said. “You were looking for me, missy. And now you’ve found me.”

CLAIRE AND I were at Susie’s, all by ourselves, alone. First Yuki had blown us off, and now Cindy was a no-show; no show, no call, no nothing. Getting stood up by both of them had never happened before.

Claire said of Yuki, “Stop worrying yourself. That girl needs to get naked with a man every now and then. You know that, Lindsay. It’s good for her.”

“I don’t have to like her getting naked with Jackson Brady, do I? I mean, come on. Of all the men in all the world, why him?”

Claire laughed. “A lot of girls would be clicking their heels to get naked with Brady.”

“It messes with the chain of command.”

“Anybody sleeps with anyone you know, it messes with the chain of command.”

I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. “Shut up,” I said.

She batted it back. “You are so crazy,” she said, still laughing.

I downed my Corona and said, “Let’s order. Cindy can just catch up.”

Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.

I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sautéed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, “You’re not going to believe this one, Linds. It’s right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road.”

“Hit and run?”

“It sure looked like a car accident,” she said, “but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an X on the back of it. And that’s all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap.”

“Heart attack? Aneurysm?”

“Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he’d been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic,” Claire said.

“So now I’m doing the post, looking over this young dude’s perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay.”

“I’m not believing in invisible bullets, butterfly.”

“It’s like this. The round goes into the corner of the eye,” Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. “Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it.”

“Huh. Interesting. So now you’re saying it’s a homicide.”

“Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help.”

“Did ballistics get a hit on the round?” I asked.

“Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.

“The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an X,” Claire said.

“So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he’s found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing.”

“Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?”

“Called it, ‘I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn’t mean to do it, yo.’”

“Come on,” I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.

“I know, but this is true . Here’s what happened in the missing middle of the story,” Claire said. “There was a near-miss traffic accident.

“Crank is fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn’t call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, ‘You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.’ I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say.”