Pretty City Murder by Robert E Dunn

Author:Robert E Dunn [Dunn, Robert E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780692106549
Publisher: Robert E. Dunn
Published: 2018-05-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Saturday, July 6

“Can you buy some baby formula? Do you need some money?” Larissa Rey asked.

“No, I got money. I’ll be back later.”

Pablo Morales got off the Muni bus and found a good spot at Eighteenth and Castro while locals patronized restaurant patios and bars. The corner was busy on a Saturday.

Ortiz got arrested at the Greenwich, and Larissa knows.

Hiding essential details was a habit, except on Saturdays outside the corner bank. He looked at his reflection in the window. White wife-beater straps rose and fell as corded trapezius muscles rolled, giving him a private thrill and the idea that what was needed was something to go around his neck.

With tips from the Greenwich in his pocket, he swung the baseball cap around down over his forehead and walked into a leather shop next to the bank. Inside a glass display case was a black cord and a German iron cross. He had seen it before. Where the black-enameled horizontal and vertical pieces intersected, the words, “Cowboy Up,” crowed its first wearer’s status in gold leaf. Barbed wire facsimiles around the top and bottom of the cross matched the barbed wire tats wrapped around his upper arms.

Without looking at the clerk, he handed over thirty-five dollars. The mirror on top of the display case showed two enlarged muscles squeezing the new cross.

The bank’s prominence gave maximum exposure. He took off his baseball cap and saw someone staring at his reflection. Pablo pivoted around and said, “What are you looking at?” The short man hurried across the street, and Pablo felt good that so little effort from him could intimidate a grown man.

Pablo was in front of the bank for a reason.

Across the street, two police officers, one male and one butch-looking female, strode toward the corner. Their relative closeness convinced him to turn back to the window. He pulled the baseball cap from his back pocket and placed it on his head and pulled down. It was better there than riding piggy-back on one of his best assets.

Standing so close to the bank window was like roasting marshmallows. He risked a look upward to assess the weather situation. Fog was failing to get over Twin Peaks.

The neon-red, polarized sun goggles stayed in place as he pulled the wife beater over his head and stuffed it an inch down his back pocket. Black, tight-fitting twill pants, black high-top shoes, and a black leather wrist band were earning him a predatory reputation to those men who knew. Grooming was a specialty. He liked the worshipping glances of passersby, male or female, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hoping to catch a man.

“Are you gay or straight?” a woman asked. Without waiting for an answer, she inquired further, “Can I touch?” Her two female companions giggled as the hand of the thirty-something reached his right pec. Pablo felt pinned to the wall like a poster idol and responded with a pec flex. Standing with both feet wide apart,

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