When we came up empty, Conklin and I visited both of the Pincus homes, one in Forest Hill and the other on Monterey Boulevard. Good neighborhoods, places where bad kids didn’t happen. We met the two nice wives, Claudia and Reva, both of whom had been asked by their husbands to cooperate.
We acquainted ourselves with the insides of the Pincus family closets, cupboards, hope chests, and tool chests, and the Pincus wives voluntarily let us search their cars.
Their places were as brilliantly clean as white sheets hanging from the line on a sunshiny day.
Executing those warrants had been physically and emotionally draining. I was wrung out and depressed, and we had nothing to show for our work.
Had Neil Pincus’s gun been used to kill Bagman?
I still didn’t know, but if I had to guess where that gun was now, I’d say the shooter had dropped it off the bridge sometime after Rodney Booker’s execution. And at present it was being buried by the shifting sands at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
Chapter 86
CONKLIN AND I got into the squad car we’d parked outside Alan Pincus’s house.
I owed Jacobi a call and an explanation, and knew he’d go bug-nuts when I told him we’d spent our day chasing Bagman’s hit man when a psycho was dropping the mayor’s friends with a poisonous reptile.
I was about to say so to Conklin, but now that we were alone, the elephant in the car could not be ignored.
Conklin turned down the radio, jumbled the car keys in his hand for a moment, and said, “Cindy talked to you about… uh… us.”
“Yep. It was quite a surprise,” I said, holding his gaze until he looked away.
“She said you were upset.”
I shrugged.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Linds —”
“Hey. I’m fine. Fine,” I lied. “Once I thought about it, I realized you two are a natural.”
“It’s only been, like, a week.”
“Whatever. As Jacobi says, ‘I love you guys.’ ”
Conklin laughed, and that laugh told all. He was having a wonderful time with my bodacious, cheeky, bighearted friend, and he didn’t want to stop.
The guy who’d kissed me last week — that guy was gone. Sure, I’d rejected him, and sure, I didn’t own him. But even so, it hurt. I missed the Richie who’d mooned over me.
I wondered if his sleeping with Cindy was a roundabout way of sleeping with me. It was a crummy thought, hardly worthy of me, but — ha! — I thought it anyway.
And I remembered Yuki’s advice: “Let him go. Let yourself go.”
Conklin was watching my face for a sign, perhaps my blessing, so I was glad when knuckles rapped on my window. It was Alan Pincus, home early from work.
He was bigger than his older brother, had more hair. Otherwise, they were clones.
I buzzed down the glass.
“Sergeant Boxer? Are you people done? Because I want to get my family life back to normal.”
“We’re done for now, but we’re not going away.”
“I understand.”
“Anything comes up we should know about, call us.”
“Boy Scout honor.”