It was a small liquor store. He’d been watching the traffic for about two hours, a small steady trickle of people in and out. There had been bars up across the windows before it opened, but now they were tucked back accordion-style on both sides of the front door.
Louis walked in out of the afternoon sunshine. He was pretty sure when he’d been outside, but once he was inside he was positive. The location was right. A white guy running a liquor store in this neighborhood ought to have a gun under the counter, but you couldn’t always bet on it. But when you saw the National Rifle Association calendar over the cold cabinets you could start putting your money down.
He came in the door, saw the counter ran along the wall to his right about fifteen feet. The man was in his mid-fifties. He sat on a stool behind the register, and Louis nodded at him, friendly as you please, as he came in. He’d made sure the place was empty, but he hadn’t gotten five feet inside the door when a police car pulled up out front and a guy in blue got out.
Shit.
Louis walked casually to the back left corner of the store. What he wanted was something long and relatively heavy. The cop went to the back, opened one of the cold shelves and stood looking at soft drinks.
You didn’t want to start with the cop, especially with his partner out in the car. A lone guy, you could maybe get him from behind, put him down, but if he did that here the proprietor would probably shoot him, and if he didn’t the partner would.
Louis kept scanning the shelves as though he were looking for something, thinking c’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Finally, the cop found his 7-Up or whatever cops drank and was at the counter.
He had to stall a minute or two, but he couldn’t take very much longer without getting somebody suspicious. He reached into his pocket and made a pretense of counting his money. Showing he already had money, that was a good idea. Counting to see if he had enough to buy that special bottle of something.
He heard the register ring. Okay, it was time. He reached up to the top shelf and took down a bottle of Galliano. It was made for this kind of work.
But the cops were still there, parked right at the curb. Louis looked right at them. “Bright out there,” he said.
The man turned his head and squinted a little. The cop in the passenger seat was lifting the can to his mouth. Louis saw a display of sunglasses at the other end of the counter. Come on, he kept thinking. Drive.
The man behind the counter had taken the bottle and was ringing it up. Louis put on a pair of shades, looking at himself in the mirror above the display. The cop was saying something to his partner, laughing. Goddamn, move.
“That all?” the proprietor said.
Louis left the pair of glasses on, reaching into his pocket for his money. The car outside made a clunk noise, dropping into gear, and Louis smiled. “I think the shades, too.”
The man had put the bottle into a paper bag and Louis threw some bills on the counter, picking up the bottle.
The man leaned forward to pick up the money. “I don’t think this is…” was as far as he got before Louis swung, hitting him over the left ear.
Before the man hit the ground Louis had vaulted over the counter. A snub-nose revolver hung by its trigger guard from a nail under the counter. There was a box of cartridges next to it on the shelf. Louis put the gun and the cartridges into his pants pocket, jabbed at the register until it opened and took out all the bills. He lifted the tray and found two hundreds and five fifties. He put a foot against the man’s head on the floor and gave it a nudge. He was out cold and would not be waking up in the next thirty seconds, which was all Louis needed.
He jumped back over the counter and stood at the door, looking both ways. There was no one within fifty yards so he walked outside, hands in his pockets, and turned right. At the corner he turned again, heading back up toward Fillmore and Mama’s car.
If they were going to nail him for a couple of murders, a little candy-ass liquor-store boost wasn’t going to have much effect on his sentencing either way. And it evened out the odds, which was what you needed to survive-a little edge. That and knowing who to take out next.
“Are you kidding me?” Abe Glitsky was saying. “Are you kidding me?”
The tech, a young Filipino, maybe twenty-six, seemed to shrivel back into himself. “These were my orders, sir.”
Abe put his hand to his head and pulled at his hairline. He took a step backward, spun around in a full circle, trying to get a grip, and came back to the counter.
“Look, son, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you, but I have a murder investigation I’m running my ass all over town trying to complete and I need your reports.”
“Yes, but we’re told to… we have an inventory of nearly eighty objects from the chief’s office that we are to give first priority.”
“Over a murder scene? The chief wants the chicken-shitters apprehended over a murderer? I don’t believe it.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
“Does Rigby think whoever did this was dumb enough to leave prints around? You think cops might think of that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Abe put both hands on the counter and pressed down. On the wall behind the boy was a poster of a laughing man saying, “You want it when??!!” Another one, next to the first, said, “What part of NO don’t you understand?” Ha ha.
Suddenly he let up his pressure on his hands, untensed his shoulders and, without another word, turned and walked through the door, slapping the wall on his way out.
It was clear what he had to do. He had to stop fighting the system here. It was what it was, and you were either a part of it or you weren’t. For a long time he’d been a part of it. Now he’d just spent a Saturday trying to do things right. Because he cared about doing his job. He could accept not getting paid for his time, could accept Lanier’s easy-out attitude with Louis Baker. Might have even accepted a lab refusing to work overtime and having him wait until Monday.
But what he couldn’t handle was that the chief of police was using the crime lab on a priority basis to catch a couple of pranksters who’d put some chickens in his office.
Downstairs at his desk Glitsky opened his top drawer and took out the application he’d filled out for the LAPD. He sat down, read it over, signed it and addressed an envelope. On his way out he dropped it in the mailbox by the back door of the Hall.
Hanging in the water, motionless, the tide pushing him where it would, Hardy thought he’d give it a couple of tankfuls worth of air-maybe forty-five minutes-and see where he was when he came up.
Still reluctant to go back to his house and not wanting to overstay his welcome at Frannie’s-was that really it?-he had borrowed one of Pico’s wetsuits, rented the tanks, bought a mask and dropped into the water off Ingraham’s barge at a little after six o’clock when the tide was already running out. It was a feeble current at this point, but it was moving him and Hardy thought it would be strong enough.
If Rusty had been in bed when he was shot it was reasonable to think he hadn’t been wearing much that would weigh him down, so he would simply float out, just under the surface, as Hardy was doing now.
He started immediately moving out toward the bay, which was good for his theory about what had happened to Rusty. He had thought there was some chance, hard by the barge, that the tide would create an eddy and he would go around in circles. But he had swum to the point he thought Rusty had gone over and then let himself hang in the water, and after a couple of false starts when he was nudged back into the barge, he found himself out in the channel.
Even with the face mask, visibility was very poor, perhaps two feet. Under the water there was only the sound of his breathing. He wore gloves and foot pockets without fins, the same material as his wetsuit. The China Basin canal was a rarely used waterway, but he kept half an ear out for the sound of an engine-he didn’t favor the idea of being rammed by a boat coming in to tie up.