Louis Baker gave it a while, finishing his coffee. The street outside was empty, the Man gone. He stretched in the doorway, then walked up the sidewalk to where the cut started.
The side of the place, whitened over yesterday by the time he had gone in, was sprayed over in swirls and designs of dark blue.
He walked up the cut, shirtless, his nostrils flaring. Dido’s name was written in six places along his wall.
Further up the cut he saw the brother talking to two white boys near the sidewalk. Passing something back and forth. The younger bloods, Lace and the other, were not in sight, though he knew they must be around.
Probably saw him coming and moved aside.
Glitsky had told him to find a reason to believe Rusty was dead, but Hardy had no ideas at the moment so he thought he would take care of business first.
He had left his car at the Union Square Garage, and after talking to Hector Medina had thought he would walk around to clear his head. He stopped for another cup of coffee, this one an espresso, in Maiden Lane and ate two cheese croissants. He was due at the Shamrock to start his shift in about an hour, and had to call Moses with the news that he wasn’t going to work at the Shamrock until his problem with Louis Baker was settled.
“What do you mean?”
“If I bartended another day there, the integrity of our bar would be badly compromised.” Hardy told him about his continuing creative drinkmaking the previous night.
“So pay more attention.”
“Not that easy, Moses. Somebody’s trying to kill me.” Hardy realized it sounded unreal, melodramatic. “Look,” he said, “I’m out of my house. Wouldn’t make much sense to go to my regular job. The guy finds out where I work, walks in and good-bye, Diz.”
“You know who it is?”
“Yeah.”
“You know where he is?”
“Generally.”
“Well?”
Hardy paused, again working that idea out. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “But the police have a good opportunity to get him first, and that would make it easier.”
“I don’t know if I’d give ’em too much time. The cops, I mean.”
Hardy didn’t feel like getting into whether or not he was going to shoot down Louis Baker on sight. “We’ll see,” he said. “In any case I hate to stick you, but I’m not coming in.”
“So how do I reach you?”
Something stopped Hardy from just saying, Oh, I’m at Frannie’s. He didn’t want her brother thinking she was being put in danger. He didn’t want Moses to let it slip at the bar-Oh, Hardy’s staying at my sister’s place.
He was also, in some way, reluctant to acknowledge to Moses his closeness to Frannie, to get into why he had decided to go to her place. Moses was her older brother. He had raised her. It would take too much needless explaining.
So Hardy just said, “You don’t reach me. I’ll be in touch.” And hung up.
Since he was right around the corner anyway, he then walked into I. Magnin’s, where Jane worked, and left a brief message for her to receive in Hong Kong. He wasn’t home. He’d explain later.
And all the while the idea had been brewing that if he could prove the genuineness of Rusty’s fear to Glitsky, then Abe would get on it with Louis Baker.
The afternoon yawned open before him. He couldn’t go home, wouldn’t go to work, and didn’t want to sit in hiding. He figured that the reason Abe was having trouble believing him was the way he’d come upon him-handcuffed-on the barge. It was coloring Abe’s view of his explanation of things-the undeniable involvement of Louis Baker. So Hardy needed some corroborating evidence that his story about Rusty was true, and the best bet for starters seemed to be to find out if Rusty had gone out to buy a gun, right from the Shamrock, as he had said he was going to. Since there was a mandatory three-day wait between sale and delivery on handguns, Ingraham’s weapon and the papers for it should be sitting in a store someplace on the bus line between the Shamrock and the China Basin canal.
Officer William Ling was off duty, but he was in for the long haul in police work, so regular hours were not something he concerned himself with. He knew and accepted the life of a beat cop, and for now it was all right that it was mostly tedium. Walking and walking some more, moving the bums along, orienting the tourists, directing traffic when called for-if he lived and worked in a small town he’d probably rescue a lot of kittens stuck up in trees. His area in the First Precinct-Market Street south to the China Basin canal, the bay west to 7th Street-did not have a lot of trees.
He wasn’t even in a squad car yet. The street beat was the initial weed-out. Every rookie cop had done it for a time -how long usually a function, like everything else, of who you knew, and Ling didn’t know anybody.
Well, that wasn’t true. Now he knew Inspector Sergeant Glitsky of Homicide. Whether Glitsky knew or remembered him was another question.
He figured he had already put in somewhere between ten and fourteen miles today, and it had been a hot one. Now, going on five o’clock, it was still warm with no wind or fog. There was even a rare trace of smog.
He came abreast of the Atlantis and nodded at the Wangs, who were sitting having tea on their aft deck. The Wangs had turned in the call on the armed man-the friend of Glitsky-who had been on Ingraham’s barge.
He stopped walking, taking in the sight before him. Previously his reasons for coming back to the scene of his first murder had been nebulous-a mixture of professional interest and private curiosity. Suddenly now, the area itself seemed full of opportunity-the yellow tape still surrounding Ingraham’s barge, the city dredge in the middle of the canal slowly crabbing its way out toward the bay. At least a half dozen persons were active in and around the barge -people to help, get to know, connections to make.
Ling let himself under the tape and presented himself to a man in shirtsleeves who looked to be in charge. Of course, he towered over Ling. Everyone was taller than Ling, but this man was well over six feet.
He shook Ling’s hand, checking something on the clipboard he held in his hand. “They call you Bill?” he asked.
“Just don’t call me late for dinner,” Ling said.
Ling was used to it. A double take, then the realization that, damn; this little Chink is a person under there. He smiled. The tall man stuck out his hand again. “Jamie Bourke. I’m running this drag line. You want to just watch or do something?”
“Doing something would be fine.”
“Not authorized, you understand, no overtime.”
Ling nodded. “I understand.”
“You wouldn’t believe the guys come around, offer to help, and suddenly you’re tagged for like ten hours o.t. and no budget for it.”
“It’s my first murder scene,” Ling said. “I’m interested in the process. I’d pay you to see it.”
“Yeah, well, that won’t be necessary either.” Bourke checked his clipboard again. “Problem is we’re just about done.”
“You find anything?”
“No body, which is the main thing we were looking for. Hard to believe this current would take it out to the bay. We did find a gun, though. Small caliber. Probably the murder weapon.”
Ling wanted to do something. Hell, he was here, wasn’t he? You don’t get remembered for standing around. “What about inside?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“Don’t they run all kinds of tests? Fingerprints, like that?”
Bourke smiled. “I don’t know the figures exactly, but fingerprints catch about as many people a year as footprints do.” Then, noticing Ling’s disappointment, he said, “Sure, go on down. The place has been dusted, but you see anything that looks interesting, bag it and bring it on up.” He gave Ling a zip-loc evidence bag from his jacket pocket.
The living room of the barge looked about as it had the previous morning, but the slanting rays of the sun coming through the door behind him gave the place the look of an old daguerreotype. Plus, it was hot. There was a sweet smell coming from somewhere that caught Ling unawares and almost made him gag, but after a couple of breaths he realized it was not really so strong-it might be the bilge, something in the canal or blood that had seeped into the floorboards.