Wicker House was out of business, but One and his crew were very damned close to early retirement.
Job well done.
CHAPTER 41
THE BLEEPING PHONE rang way too early.
Joe said to me in his sleep, “I’ll get her.”
“Stand down, pardner,” I muttered. “I got this.”
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and noticed that the time was 5:51 and that my caller was Brady. As far as I knew, I was off duty. I took the phone into the bathroom. “What’s wrong, Brady? Personal or business?”
“Business.”
Thank God. I didn’t want to hear that he or Yuki was in a jam. Once that was out of the way, I had to know, why the hell was Brady calling me at oh-dawn-hundred?
“What’s up?” I said.
Martha came into the bathroom and made circles around my legs until she successfully herded me into the kitchen. Her bowl was empty.
“I’m in your neighborhood,” he said.
“You’re saying you want to stop by? It’s not even six.”
“I’ve just come from the scene of a massacre,” he said.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” I told him.
By the time I’d showered and dressed in whatever was on the bedroom chair, Brady was at the door. He looked blanched, and this wasn’t the fault of the lighting.
“Sit,” I said, indicating a stool at the kitchen island. I double-checked that both bedroom doors were closed. Then I poured coffee and set out milk and sugar. I leaned against the stove, arms crossed, and waited for him to speak.
He said, “Why did you turn down the lieutenant’s job? I mean, you had it before you stepped down. Then, when Jacobi moved up, you could’ve had the job. But you turned it down again.”
“I couldn’t stand the paperwork, the meetings, the middle-management crapola,” I told him. “I wanted to work cases. One at a time.”
He said, “No kidding. I feel like a shit sandwich about ninety percent of the time.”
He sipped coffee. The suspense was killing me.
“What happened, Jackson?”
“Narcotics had been watching this house in lower Bernal Heights for a couple of months. It’s a factory disguised as a furniture showroom. They had eyes on the place, but they didn’t know what was going down until it was over.
“The scene inside that house.” He shook his head. “Like a freaking war zone.”
“Fatalities?” I asked him.
“You bet. I think seven.”
“What was it? A robbery?” I asked.
“That’s what it looks like. The dead men look like employees. We think the shooters got away,” Brady said. “Narco caught a nanosecond of video showing three guys in a white panel van leaving the Wicker House parking lot. At least one of them was wearing an SFPD Windbreaker.”
“Come onnnn.”
Brady said, “If those were our guys, they’re escalating from ripping off drug slingers and mercados to major scores like this. We may have caught some kind of break.”
Brady sank into thought.
“What, Brady? What kind of break?”
He snapped out of it. “We’ve got visuals of two punks leaving the house earlier in the morning, before the raid went down. They don’t look like our shooters, but they gotta know something. And we’ve ID’d them. Punks. Like I said.
“You call Conklin. I’ll call Swanson and Vasquez. Clapper is at the scene right now,” he said, referring to my friend the forensics lab director.
Brady stared into his coffee mug and said, “Look, Lindsay. I know I’ve been a dick lately. I’m worried about all this renegade-cop shit going down. I don’t mean to take it out on you. And I’m sorry.”
His voice caught in his throat. That was Brady apologizing.
“It’s OK. I totally understand.”
“I’m on your side. Always.”
I smiled at him. He smiled back. Sometimes I dislike Brady, and sometimes I love him. Right now, I loved him. Before someone started to tear up, he gave me the crime scene coordinates and told me to check it out and to call him every hour.
When he had gone, I texted Conklin.
He texted back.
We arrived at Wicker House within ten minutes of each other. After touring the bloodbath, my partner said, “I have a hard time believing cops did this.”
Four of the seven dead men were unarmed, and spent brass littered the floors and stairwell.
Swanson, Vasquez, Conklin, and I were looking over the CSIs’ shoulders when Clapper came over to me and said, “We’ve got more prints than a frame shop. As for the casings, we’ve got all kinds. From the position of the bodies, it looks to me like the shooters had the advantage of surprise. And they used suppressors.”
Then Clapper nicely told us we were in the way.
“As soon as I know anything, I’ll call you,” he said.
CHAPTER 42
IT WAS JUST after 5 a.m. and Donnie Wolfe was parked on a free-parking residential street in the Inner Sunset neighborhood.
He was leaning against the hood of his red 2003 Camaro. There were attached houses on both sides of Twelfth Avenue, short flights of steps up to the front doors, slopes down to the garages, almost an apple-pie-and-baseball feel to it.
He’d been out all night and was talking to his girl on the phone, saying, “I was working late, Tamra. You just pack everything you need for a couple of days and don’t talk to your friends. Do not talk to your mother, or that stupido downstairs. I got a couple of meetings and then I’m coming home to sleep. And then we’re outta here.”
Tamra was pregnant. Twenty weeks. Donnie didn’t tell her his business, and she was cool. But obviously, she didn’t like breezing out of town on the sneak, not knowing where they were going and not telling her mother, neither.
“It’s going to be beautiful, Tam,” he said. “Trust me. Don’t talk. Pack. Chill.”
The gray Ford was coming up on him, slowing and parking right behind his ass. Donnie pulled on his shirttails, making sure they covered the piece he’d stuck in his waistband. Then he got out of his car and walked toward the man he knew as One.
“How you make out? Everything good?” Donnie asked the stocky man wearing big shades and a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes.
“That’s close enough,” One said to his inside man at Wicker House. Donnie stopped walking and showed his empty hands.
One asked, “Where’s your buddy?”
“Rascal’s cool,” Donnie said. “He’s staying out of sight.”
One nodded. He said, “Here’s your go bag.” He reached over to the passenger seat, then tossed a black nylon duffel bag though the open window to Donnie.
Donnie caught the bag, stooped to the sidewalk, and unzipped it. There was a pair of Colorado plates at the side of the bag, which was filled with stacks of banded used bills.
The kid riffled through the money. It looked good and like it added up to the agreed-upon hundred thousand, his cut and Rascal’s.
He said to One, “So I guess this is bye-bye.”
“As long as you keep quiet. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
“The big boss—”
“The last I saw of the big boss, he had a mouthful of carpeting.”
“Not Mr. Royce,” said Donnie. “I’m talking about his boss, man. The King. He has an idea who you are. So don’t blame me for that.”
“I know who he is, too,” said One. “And I know where he lives.”
“Not my boss and not my problem,” said Donnie. “I’m good. I’m checking out. I got plans.”
“Your first plan should be to ditch that flashy car,” said One. “Be careful, Donnie.”
Donnie said, “Back at you, Mr. One. Adios. Take care.”
Donnie got into his car and watched through his rearview mirror until One drove off. Then he took the duffel bag and walked up the block and across the street to the car repair shop on Judah Street, which didn’t open for another three hours.
He went behind the garage and picked out a blue Honda Civic, not new, not old, just right. The car wasn’t locked. There were no keys, but he’d been boosting cars since he could walk. This was cake.