The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

It was in the Gaslamp Quarter which had been built long after I had left, but I knew how to get there.

“Your key is at the front desk.”

My own room. I wouldn’t have to listen to him snore. He hung up before I could ask how his end of the investigation had gone.

“Mister?”

The small voice behind me went with a small, slender girl with long brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a week.

“Do you want a date?”

I told her I didn’t.

“I’ll suck your cock for twenty bucks.”

She was jonesing from whatever she was addicted to, visibly shaking, looking like a drowned kitten. I asked her how old she was.

“Eighteen,” she said. “I’ll suck your cock for twenty bucks. I need to get something to eat. I know a place we can go.”

She looked sixteen at the most, probably younger. I asked her if I could call a shelter for her, told her she didn’t have to live on the streets. She asked if I was a cop.

“Not anymore.”

“I’ll suck you for fifteen.”

I left her there and walked off the pier and up Newport Avenue to catch the bus back downtown. My heart decided to stay inside me, at least for a while.

The phone buzzed again. Lindsey had actually answered me.

Her text read, “Be careful, Dave.”

12

San Diego had changed extensively since I had lived there, and, unlike Phoenix, mostly f

or the good. It was a major high-tech center now, not merely a tourist-and-Navy town. It had less population than Phoenix but surpassed it in almost any measure of quality. About the only thing that seemed the same was the mediocrity of the newspaper, formerly the San Diego Union-Tribune, now under new ownership with its name contracted to U-T. It sounded like a far campus of the University of Texas, but I’m sure a consultant charged big bucks for a new “brand.”

Downtown, thrown away in the 1960s and 1970s, had made a stunning comeback, including the Gaslamp Quarter with its lovingly restored historic buildings and Horton Plaza urban mall. Nobody would know it used to be skid row. Walking to the Marriott, I was struck for the gazillionth time how Anglo the city seemed, even though it sat right on the Mexican border. The barrios south and east of downtown had been carefully tucked away and so it remained.

I showed my driver’s license at the front desk and got my key card to a room on the eighth floor. Before going up, I went into the business center and booted up the computer. I am a lifelong Mac user and couldn’t understand why anyone would use Windows. So I waited, and waited.

Then I plugged in the flash drive and clicked on the icon.

A window popped up and the screen went blank. Then Grace Hunter was talking to me.

“Hi, babe. I bet you’d like to know what’s on this drive. But if you don’t have the code, too bad.”

A white box appeared and I had nothing to enter. The screen went dark again. But for a few seconds she had been alive. I could see her allure with her wide smile, the elegant movement to push her hair out of her face, the sexy taunt in her voice. I popped out the drive and stuck it in my pocket.

When I stepped out of the elevator, a woman was walking toward me: black, shoulder-length hair, attractive if older, elegantly dressed. As she came closer, I was sure I was wrong. I saw plenty of ghosts in my dreams.

But, no…

“Sharon?”

“David!”

She ran to me and gave me a long hug.