He grabbed the pencil and pad of paper from their spot stuck to the side of his refrigerator and started taking notes. Ghattas had evidently cajoled someone he knew at ballistics into doing some work, and they had definitely identified Ray Weir’s gun as the murder weapon. Of course, in the barge itself they had found prints from the female victim and from Rusty Ingraham, but on the lamp they had picked up prints from a small-time local enforcer named Johnny LaGuardia. There was a last print that kind of confused Ghattas.
“There was a drinking glass, tagged ‘Galley,’ with as clear a print as you’d want of a guy named Louis Baker.”
Glitsky felt a chill in his back.
“Problem is, we ran Baker and he’s in San Quentin.”
“The computer hasn’t caught up,” Abe said. “Baker got out on Wednesday.”
“Looks like he went right back to work.”
“Yes it does.”
Flo had come back into the kitchen and saw Abe staring at what he had written down. She heard him thank the man on the phone, saying he appreciated someone who still cared about getting his job done.
When he hung up he didn’t move for a minute, and Flo came over behind him and rubbed her hand up and down his back.
“Hardy’s in big trouble,” he said. “Baker was on the barge.”
Hardy felt Frannie’s hand in his back pocket. He felt the gun in its holster in the small of his back.
The fog had descended once again on the city. They were walking in zero visibility, three blocks straight uphill from where they had had dinner on Noe, three blocks to go before they got to Frannie’s place. Hardy had his arm around her-she walked leaning into him.
He looked up the hill. He knew there were streetlights all along, but he could only see the next one perhaps twenty feet ahead of them. Sometime during dinner, after the euphoria of proving that Rusty Ingraham could indeed have floated out into the bay had passed, he had come up against what that might mean in his here and now. But he had already had most of a bottle of wine by that time, and now he was explaining to Frannie that he felt unprepared if Louis Baker took this moment to attack.
“But he doesn’t even know where you are,” Frannie said.
“He found Rusty.”
“Rusty happened to be where he lived. You’re here.”
Hardy kept walking. Baker had had four days to locate him, and it was getting to the time where it was reasonable to think he’d have made some progress. It couldn’t be that hard to find someone you wanted to kill real bad.
They were coming into Frannie’s block now, the buildings tight up against each other, blue light from front-room television sets showing through a few windows. The wind blew straight downhill at them and they leaned into it and each other. Up ahead of them, Hardy heard a car door open and close. He tried to make out a shape in the dark fog, but there was nothing. Then, faintly, he heard footsteps echoing on the asphalt. He tightened his arm around Frannie.
“Hold it a second,” he said. He stopped them both, pulled them back into a building entrance a few doors down from Frannie’s. He took off his jacket and helped put it on Frannie. “You start walking back and wait around the corner,” he said. “If you hear anything sounds like shooting, get into a building somehow. You hear me?”
Taking his gun from the holster behind him, he squinted into the fog up the hill.
“Dismas, what are you-?”
He put a finger to his lips. “Go!” He watched her for a few steps, then he ran across the sidewalk. The curb was lined with cars. Hardy stepped between a couple out into the street, then turned uphill.
Okay, he said to himself, the guy’s big enough to be Baker. The man wore a heavy coat and a cap pulled low on his forehead. Hardy, crouching behind the wall of cars, did not take his eyes off him. It wasn’t just somebody taking a walk. He came down the street slowly, taking his time, looking into doorways, perhaps looking for a street address. He kept his hands in his coat pocket.
Hardy worked his way uphill. Frannie had disappeared around the corner. He was maybe five cars down from Frannie’s doorway when the guy turned into it. Hardy caught a glimpse of a face in the light from Frannie’s foyer -enough to see it was a black man.
Hardy gripped the gun, moving uphill. The man stood in the doorway, waiting for Hardy to open the door so he could blow him away. Hardy leveled his gun at his back, resting his arm on the hood of one of the cars. The man knocked on the door.
Hardy cocked the hammer. He wondered if this would classify as self-defense, or if he should call out and have Baker turn with a weapon in his hand. Hardy had seen some action in Vietnam, but he had never even considered killing anyone since, at least before this Baker madness started.
He should just pull the trigger and the problem would be over. Baker was wanted for murder. He had killed Ingraham and threatened to kill Dismas Hardy. Now he was here and no jury in the world would believe he was here for an Amway meeting. Shoot first, Diz, and live.
He took in a deep breath and began tightening his finger on the trigger as Abe Glitsky turned around in the doorway and peered into the gloom down the street.
“Jesus Christ,” Hardy said to himself. Not again. He uncocked his weapon and put it in the holster, then stood up and came onto the sidewalk.
“Hey, Abe,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The three of them sat drinking hot chocolate at the table in the kitchen nook.
“That’s Jane’s house!” Hardy said.
“Is it?” Glitsky asked.
“It used to be ours together, back when Baker went down.”
Frannie still wore Hardy’s jacket, and she pulled herself down into it. “So he was looking for you.”
Hardy nodded.
Even Glitsky seemed to buy it, finally. “If that used to be Jane’s house…”
Hardy repeated the address, and Glitsky said that was it. Hardy sipped some chocolate. “Calling it coincidence gets a little thin about now, don’t you think, Abe?”
“So is he dead?” Frannie asked. “Louis Baker?”
Glitsky shook his head. “Not yet.” He turned to Hardy.
“He took two slugs. They got him in the County General.”
“How’d they get him?”
“He made some noise, turned some lights on-I guess he was out of practice on burglaries, or just overconfident. Anyway, one of the neighbors knew the house was supposed to be empty and called in. Our guys caught him strolling out. When he got cornered he opened up.”
Hardy leaned back in his chair. “So it’s over,” he said. He told Abe about his experiment with the tide.
“Well, not to be picky,” Abe said, “but that still doesn’t make Rusty dead.”
Hardy sighed. “All right, but like you said, it sure strengthens the argument.”
Glitsky held up a hand. “If you had somebody wants to argue. Me, I’m happy enough now it was Baker. He was on the barge with a motive and a handy weapon-ought to be good enough.”
“So you came around to tell me that?”
Glitsky shook his head. “I got the details on the way over on the squawk box. The reason I started over here was I found Louis had been at Rusty’s and I wanted to advise you to keep an eye out.”
“I’ve been doing that.”
“I know,” Abe said. “I’m not blind.” Glitsky wasn’t comfortable with private citizens walking around armed, even if it was his best friend, even if he had a permit. “So how close did you come to doing me?”
“Miles,” Hardy said.
Frannie refilled Glitsky’s mug. “He’s just been worried, Abe. You would be, too.”
“There, see?” Hardy tried to smile, but still felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He hadn’t made up his mind whether or not he was going to pull the trigger, but he’d come close enough.
It didn’t need it, but Glitsky blew on his chocolate. “Before I found out about Baker tonight, I thought I’d bring you my file, ease your mind some with some light reading.”