Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

tried, but he didn’t want to talk. Plain wasn’t interested. Asked me where I was from and that was about it. I said, ‘I live around the corner,’ and gave him a wink, you know. That usually gets ’em. Jake thinks they like me because I’m cute, but, really, it’s because I’m geographically desirable. The straight ones especially like that.”
    “The straight ones?”
    “You know. The ones with a wife and kids at home—that come to Castro Street once a month or so. They like to go around the corner for a quickie. I’ll tell you something—that’s my weakness.”
    “Quickies?”
    “Straight ones. I can always spot ’em.”
    “And this guy was straight?”
    “Bet on it. He killed that old guy, didn’t he? That’s the kind that gets weird. They hate themselves because they’re gay, so they want to beat up on gay guys.”
    “They beat up on you?”
    “Sometimes. That’s not the part I like. I like the danger.”
    I spoke for the first time, unable to keep quiet: “But you could have been killed—doesn’t that frighten you?”
    He shrugged. “I can take care of myself. That’s probably what it was, come to think of it—he didn’t think he could take me. I knew there was something funny about him.”
    “One more question,” said Rob. “Did he tell you his name?”
    “Yeah, now that you mention it, he did. Now, what the hell was it?”
    We kept quiet, trying not to interrupt his train of thought. “Lee, maybe,” he said at last.
    “You sure?”
    “No, but something like that.”
    “Last name?”
    “He didn’t say. Listen, you want to take my picture or anything?”

4
     
    And that was how Terry Yannarelli got the fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol assures us we will all achieve. Rob sent a photographer over and Terry made page one. Needless to say, so did I, though not my picture—only an account of my having accompanied intrepid reporter Rob Burns on his latest body-discovering expedition.
    There were no plane crashes that day, no presidential surgery, and no uncovered civic corruption—indeed no other news of interest except an announcement of an early mussel quarantine. So the body on the cross was the lead story. Neither the Reverend Ovid Robinson nor Miranda Warning was mentioned—omissions I found oddly disappointing, but rereading the story, I didn’t see how Rob could have worked them in without digressing. It was a tight, well-told tale, and I wished I weren’t in it.
    I was greeted at the office by my mother’s voice—or at least a first-rate facsimile: “Rebecca. Your father is lying down. The doctor says he may possibly be all right, though no thanks to you.”
    “Alan, I am now going to count to five—”
    “I just don’t see why you can’t find some nice boy like Mickey and stop tripping over bodies.”
    “Very good, Alan—you get an Academy Award. Just shut up!”
    “You’re almost thirty, you know, and your thighs are already getting kind of mushy.”
    “There is nothing wrong with my goddamn thighs!”
    “Nothing three miles a day wouldn’t fix.” He dropped the falsetto and went back to his normal voice. “You can run with Mickey on her prenatal exercise program. You gotta look good at the wedding.”
    “I’ll accept you as a brother-in-law the day Charlie Manson gets out of jail—that is, if Charlie isn’t available.”
    “Some aunt. Don’t you want your nephew to have a name?”
    “Sure. Schwartz would be great. Or Yannarelli, maybe. Just so long as it isn’t Kruzick.”
    I stomped past him into my office. I was definitely going to have to work on my attitude. Whether I liked it or not, I figured there was about a fifty-fifty chance I was really going to have Mr. Wonderful for a brother-in-law. Mickey’d shown poor judgment so for; it was too much to hope she was really smartening up.
    “Why do I always have to read everything in the paper? You find a body nailed to a cross and you don’t even tell your nearest and dearest?” It was Mom’s voice again, but now it was coming out of Chris’s mouth. She was standing in my office doorway.
    “I get the strangest feeling there’s an echo in here.”
    “An echo?”
    “We’ve got to fire Kruzick; you’re already sounding like him. What if you start to look alike?”
    “My nose is getting longer already.” I laughed. Kruzick had a healthy schnoz, but Chris was six feet tall and her nose was in proportion; on her it looked elegant. “Who killed that poor man?”
    “In the