Page 27 of 25 Alive

My mind went back to that night. The other passenger shot Jacobi, then got out and kicked him in the head.

The bullet in my shoulder had nicked my carotid artery, and my blood was pumping out onto the alley. Jacobi was lying nearby with a couple of rounds in his hip, bleeding heavily from an injury that never completely left him.

I’d managed to return fire. And Jacobi and I had both lived to be with the loves of our lives. It was before Jacobi had handed me off to Joe in marriage. Before he’d met Muriel and left a legacy as a hero cop whose career and life ended too soon.

Yuki, Cindy, and Claire had stories about Jacobi, too. Though theirs didn’t involve near-death experiences, all were indelible. Cindy spoke of Jacobi vouching for her at a no-press-allowed crime scene, saving her reputation and maybe her job. Claire remembered losing her medical kit and camera at a murder scene and Jacobi rescuing her from this unfortunate circumstance by finding it under a patrol car.

Yuki said, “I don’t think I even told you guys this one. A few years ago, Jacobi and I got stuck in an elevator. For hours. Yeah. And there was no reason that this had to happen. We both could have taken the stairs.”

I cracked a grin. “I remember.”

“He told you?”

“No. You were missing. Your phone was off. Luckily Jacobi got a call through to maintenance.”

“I was late for court. I punished myself for weeks after that. Jacobi and I never mentioned it to each other. It was our secret.”

We four spontaneously clasped hands, making a circle around the tabletop. It felt to me as if we were enclosing Warren Jacobi in our arms. Yuki bowed her head and said, “Chief Jacobi, Warren, if you can see and hear us, know that you are loved. If you see my mom—her name is Keiko Castellano—please tell her that I miss her very much, and that I’m doing fine.”

I said to the spirit of my old friend, “Wish you were here.”

We all said, “Amen.”

CHAPTER43

AFTER SWITCHING FROM beer to coffee and dessert, we settled our dinner tab and prepared to go home and get a good night’s sleep. And maybe have good dreams to wash through our sadness.

As we neared the front room, the steel drum band got louder. Rikki sang, “Shake, shake, shake, Señora. Shake it all the time.”

We heard the claps of encouragement as the limbo contest began. I didn’t recognize the song, but it had a calypso beat, and a thin man was arched backward, knees bent, dancing barefoot under the bamboo pole. The point of the game is to go low enough and to dance as expressively as possible while moving under the pole without knocking it off the supporting brackets. He was directly under it when he breathed a little too deeply and bumped the pole. It fell off the brackets that held it loosely at opposite ends.

The thin man got thunderous approval from the crowd for his efforts … and when I looked again, I saw that Claire had joined the line.

Claire calls herself a big girl. That means size 20 or so, and she’s past her fiftieth birthday. Not to mention she’s got a bum knee.

Well, tonight Claire wason.

She was shaking her shoulders, and with bended knees and a horizontal torso, she was shimmying under the limbo pole. Sure, the pole had been reset for her. But I knewIcouldn’t do it.

Yuki, Cindy, and I joined in with the crowd, chanting, “Claire! Claire! Claire!” as she progressed inch by inch under the pole. “Low-er, low-er, low-er!”

When our medical examiner, my boo, had cleared the pole and it had stayed put, the place erupted in applause. She had done the next to impossible, and the front room was egging her on to do it again.

But Claire was leaving on a high note. She bowed to Rikki and his band, waved at the crowd, and pushed Susie’s front door open with the rest of our Murder Club following, laughing, hugging her, teasing her about her heretofore hidden talent.

“And that’s without practice,” she said.

Cindy said, “Where you from, lady? Tobago? Jamaica?”

“San Francisco, California,” Claire said, laughing.

I said just loudly enough to be heard: “A star is born.”

Part Two

CHAPTER44

TIAGO GARZA SAT behind the wheel of an ancient gardener’s truck. It was black, with scrapes along the truck’s left side, a dented rear fender, and an undercarriage heavy with rust that had crept out and over the wheel wells.

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