Appreciated? He silently berated himself for the understatement. He way more than appreciated her. In four years, she had become the center of his life. Some days he felt she had given him the gift of feeling again, when it had for so long been dormant.
Maybe some chocolate? A box of Baci, or “little kisses”? Too romantic? What was too romantic? What kind of concept was that?
Carefully replacing the roasted red peppers and the little jar of relish so they wouldn’t fall, he went over to the cash register where they kept the boxes of candy and was reaching out to pick one up when the woman behind the counter waved and cheerily called out, “Au revoir, madame.”
An answering chirp of “au revoir” came from the doorway and Glitsky whirled to catch a glimpse of female profile as she walked out the door and turned left up the street. The candy forgotten now, his mind completely blank, he stood for a long instant frozen in his steps.
He wasn’t completely sure. Whoever she was had become blond now, hair cropped so short that it nearly appeared crew cut. He’d only glimpsed her briefly, and the first impression—after the shock of recognition itself— was her youth. This could not be a thirty-nine-year-old former terrorist and killer. This was an anonymous student,possibly in graduate school, wearing very little if any makeup and sporting maybe a piercing through her eyebrow.
He didn’t exactly have to fight his way out of the little shop, but if he didn’t want to push people over and cause a scene, he had to be careful. By the time he’d come out onto the sidewalk, she was already at the corner crossing, walking away from him.
His mind racing, he fell in behind her. He had his pager on his belt, but had left his cell phone in his car back at police headquarters—they were only going down to the bank and then back on a quick errand, and he’d had no reason to think he’d need it. He did have his gun, but the sidewalk was, if not packed solid with humanity, at least well traveled—twenty or more people shuffled and strolled and simply walked in the space that separated them.
Reluctant to close too much of the space between them, he overruled his early inclination to try to make an arrest alone in the midst of these people. He knew nothing about her own preparations or readiness in case of trouble. She herself might well be the embodiment of that old cliché—armed and extremely dangerous. He could not risk provoking anything like a hostage situation. He also had no idea how she would react if he tried to place her under arrest by himself. The sight of a black man with a gun in a strange, curiously white-bread town might cause the citizenry to react unpredictably. Even if he flashed a badge, there might be enough craziness to allow a young screaming woman to get away in the startled crowd.
He had to get a plan. He had to get a plan.
Half a block further on, she stopped to look in a shopwindow and it gave him a chance to close the gap. Already he was within the same block, close enough to study her. He had lived with the photographs of her now for six weeks, that face from any number of angles, that face with a wide range of expressions. A car honked on the street behind him and she turned to look, and any doubt melted away.
He had found her!
She wore oversize tan overalls and sandals with no socks. On top, an overlong sweater in a washed-out green hid any intimation of the form beneath. She was any dowdy, even slovenly student, unconcerned about her appearance. Without the casually overheard French good-bye, Glitsky might have stood next to her in the deli—probably had been standing next to her—and he would have missed her entirely.
She brought a hand to her mouth. Biting into some kind of pastry, perhaps a cannoli, from the deli, she leaned over slightly to keep the crumbs from falling on her. Then she began walking again. Glitsky stepped into the doorway of the magazine store where she had slowed down and watched as she crossed over diagonally in the middle of the block. A few raindrops hit the pavement and she looked skyward, threw her pastry into a corner trash can and picked up her pace.
He was going to lose her if he didn’t move.
But when he crossed behind her and got to the corner, she was still within the block. Stopping under the shelter of a building’s overhang, she seemed to be checking her reflection in the bank’s window, then brushing crumbs or the rain from her clothes. With another glance at the sky, she started up again, walking away from downtown.
They crossed what Glitsky recognized as Fifth Street and after that entered a residential neighborhood with small stand-alone houses on tiny lots. The foot traffic, here only three blocks from downtown, was nonexistent, which obliged him to extend the distance between them. He ran the slight risk of losing her, but he didn’t think he would.
In any case, he had the feeling that this was her general neighborhood. She had come out for a snack or for lunch and now was walking home.
He could, of course, rush her now. With no other pedestrians about, he could put her on the ground if need be and place her under arrest. But he was most of a full block behind her, and there would be very little possibility of surprise. And if she did notice him coming up on her, and was in fact armed, it could become needlessly ugly very fast. Better, and it looked as if the opportunity would soon present itself, would be to remain unseen and unnoticed behind her and let her get home. Then he would have her address, after which he would immediately get to a phone and call for backup.
And the arrest would be done according to Hoyle.
She crossed another larger street—Eighth—then turned right and left and into the driveway of a parking lot in front of a two-story stucco apartment building. Jogging, Glitsky managed to reach the driveway in time to see her disappear into the next to last downstairs unit.
He checked his watch. Wessin would have finished his talk and would be waiting by his car, wondering where Glitsky was, but he could do nothing about that now. All he needed was the unit number, and he didn’t even, strictly speaking, need that. He knew it was the second from the end unit on the ground floor. But he wanted to know for certain when he called it in. It would be bad luck to get it wrong and have a bunch of eager patrolmen, guns drawn, come crashing through the door of some piano teacher.
He stood now in a steady light rain at the outer entrance to the open asphalt parking lot. It was a small enough area, with hash lines marking spaces for each of the eight apartment units, and occupied at the moment by three well-used cars, none of them models from the current millennium.
In number three, where she’d gone, a light came on in the window. He took a few steps into the lot, getting some relief from the rain under a tree.
He still had the option to take her now, by himself. Under any pretense or none at all, he could simply knock at her door and wait until she opened it. Why would she suspect anything? She’d been living here, apparently unmolested, for ten months now, and her life must have settled into some kind of a routine.
But he would be wise not to take her too lightly. She’d had years of experience in the terrorist underground of Algeria, and in that time had learned who could say how many tricks to elude capture or incapacitate authorities when capture was a synonym for death. And truth be told, though it galled him, he was not sufficiently prepared for an arrest. Even if she had no weapon at her disposal, he had no handcuffs, and no way to restrain her except at the point of a gun, which might turn out to be a limited option if he wasn’t prepared to shoot her out of hand.
He had to get to a phone. He thought it unlikely that having just returned home, she would leave again, especially in the rain. He wondered if one of the cars in the lot was hers. Maybe the apartment belonged to a friend and she was visiting, not living there.
He had to move. He could lose her if he waited until every possible contingency had been covered.
But she was right here! He stood under the tree, torn by indecision, mesmerized by the light in her window. Had a shadow just moved in the room? He moved a few steps to his left to get a better view. The rain fell in slow, steady vertical drops. A little harder now in front of him, suddenly audible a
bove him in the leaves of his sheltering tree.
He had to move.
The familiar snick semiautomatic’s round being chambered sounded very close to his ear. The woman’s voice from behind him was quiet and assured, with no trace of panic or even unusual concern. “I have a gun pointed at the back of your head. Don’t turn around. Don’t make any sudden movements. Keep your hands out in front of you where I can see them. The only reason you’re still alive is that I need to know who you’re with.”
“San Francisco police.”
“Walk toward the apartment house, second door from the left.”
“Are you going to shoot me?”
“If you don’t walk, yes.”
Glitsky moved forward, out into the rain. He heard her footsteps now behind him and marveled that she could have come up behind him so quickly without a sound or a warning.
“Stop,” she said when he reached the door. “Turn the knob and kick the door all the way so it swings open.” Following her instructions to the letter, Glitsky stood in the threshold. “Now walk into the middle of the room and link your hands on the top of your head.”
He did as he was told, heard her come in behind him and close the door. “Now turn around.” The orders continued, specific and organized. “Take your right hand only—slowly, very slowly—and unzip your jacket all the way. Thank you. Get it off, easy, slowly, and drop it to the floor behind you. Step away from it. Now!”
She held the gun steadily in one hand. Glitsky noted how comfortable she looked with it and, at the same time, how nearly unrecognizable she’d made herself. The haircut was not so much short as chopped unevenly. With no lipstick or other facial makeup, and with the silver post through her bleached white eyebrows, she had adopted the look of an all but marginal figure, anonymous. By looks alone, she was a kind of lost-looking older and pathetic waif, a spare-change artist from whom people would naturally tend to avert their eyes.
But she never took her eyes from him. “Hold your left arm straight out like I’m doing. Okay, now with your right, thumb and first finger only, lift the gun out of the holster and put it on the floor. Stand.” She raised her own gun to his chest and Glitsky thought she was going to execute him. But she extended her arm instead and said, “Back up. More.”
The backs of Glitsky’s knees hit the couch and he heavily, awkwardly, went down to a sit on the piece of furniture. She got to his gun, picked it up, put it into the pocket of her overalls. “Pull both of your pant legs up to your knees. All right, you can let them back down. Now hands back on your head. Link them.” Neither eyes nor gun ever leaving him, she went to the open kitchen area, six feet away, and pulled a metal chair over onto the rug in the center of the room. She sat on it, facing him. “What’s your name?”
“Abe Glitsky.”
“You’re with the San Francisco police?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You need training in how to follow people. You’re no good at it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind next time,” he said.
But she didn’t follow up on that, a conversation line that he thought might humanize him, which in turn could perhaps give her pause as she was deciding whether or not to kill him. Although to protect her identity and her family, he knew that she would have to.
But she simply said, “It’s about Paul, then. ”
“And Dorris.” Glitsky would keep her talking if he could, even if he had to bait her. “You remember Dorris?”
She moved her shoulders in a kind of shrug. “Dorris had to be. In the world, there are millions of Dorrises who have uses and then become expendable. I wish it hadn’t been necessary.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “I thought I was done with killing. But no one will ever miss her. She didn’t matter.”
“And what about Paul?”
“We won’t talk about Paul. In fact, there is nothing more to say.” Her eyes went to the gun in her hand.
“But there is.” He was staring at the gun’s barrel. If it moved, he would try to jump her, and probably die trying. But maybe they weren’t quite to that point yet. “I don’t understand what happened,” he said. “You had a life together. You were going to get married.”
Shaking her head as though to ward off the thought, she snapped out the words. “I loved him.” Then, matter-of-fact. “I loved him.”
“But you killed him?”
“I killed him. That’s what I do. I betray people and then kill them. Or someone else does.”
Glitsky risked unlinking his hands, lowering them slowly onto his lap. “Why?”
“Because I have no choice. He gave me no choice. I begged him please.”
“Please what?”
“Please not to let them . . . how do you say? It’s not exactly the right word. Investigate him.”
“For what?”
“For the nomination.”
Glitsky’s every nerve pulsed with urgency. He knew that if he was to have a chance at life, he would have a split second to recognize his moment and seize it. But part of him settled to a stillness with this information. “You mean the cabinet post?”
“With the government, yes.”
“And they needed a background check?”
“The FBI, yes. But don’t you see? He didn’t need it, the post. He had position and power and money and love. He didn’t need it. I begged him not to let them even start.”
“Because once they started on him, they’d get to you.”
She nodded. “They would have to. I was his fiancée, soon his wife. They would have to background me, too.”
“You could have left him. Wouldn’t that have been better?”
“Of course, if it would have been possible. You think I would not have done that? But it wouldn’t have done any good. I was too close to Paul. They would still have needed to check me.”
“But the FBI already knew about you. You were in witness protection.”
“Yes? So? The people checking me and Paul were a different department.” She hacked in disgust. “They could do nothing. I asked them. They would not. They said they could contain it.”
“Did you try to tell them it was life and death?”
“Ha! Of course. The CIA in Algeria knew that, but the FBI didn’t believe it, or didn’t care. I didn’t matter. It’s government, don’t you understand? Where—how do you say?—the left doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and doesn’t wash the other even if they could. And the FBI doesn’t answer to the CIA.”
“So they would have found out who you were and gone public with it?”
“That’s what they do. Not on purpose, certainly. Very discreetly, of course. Need to know, high security. Like every junior congressman and tabloid journalist in Washington. And their wives. And their whores. And anyone who would trade the information for something they wanted.”
“And you believe that word would have gotten back to Algeria that you were still alive?”
“Don’t you understand? There is no way that it wouldn’t have. It was too valuable a secret to keep. Who could have a million dollars and not spend any of it?”
Suddenly her expression changed. Glitsky tensed on the couch, focused on the gun, ready to spring. But she didn’t move the gun. Canting her head to one side, she went still, eyed him inquisitively. “How do you know about that?”
“Because I know who you are, Missy. Or Monique.”
She stared at him, hung her head for a heartbeat, but not long enough to give him an opening. When she looked back up, her face had set into a mask of conviction. “Then that is your death warrant,” she said, and started to move the gun.
Glitsky put his hands up in front of his face, but didn’t make another move. “It’s too late,” he said. “I’ve told the police here. It’s already public.”
“You’re lying! If you worked with the police here, they’d be with you now.”
“Call your bank then. Ask them if I was there this morning with your police chief.”
She res
ted the gun on her knee. “You’ve been to the bank?”
“To your box, Missy. Three hundred thousand dollars and Paul’s ring. I told your story to the district attorney in San Francisco and got a warrant. The affidavit’s under seal, but it’s only a matter of time. Everyone will know it by tomorrow. If you kill me, they may know it by tonight.”
Outside, they heard the rain suddenly falling with a vengeance.
Monique, Michelle, Monica, Missy put a hand up to her forehead and pulled nervously at the stud over her left eye. “They will murder my family. Don’t you understand that?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “But it can’t be undone.”
The two of them sat about eight feet apart. The one light by the front window flickered with the freshening wind, the power of the deluge. The gun was on her leg, but she was no longer pointing it at him. “What is your name again?” she asked.
“Abraham.”
“My parents. I cannot let . . .” She choked on the rest.
“Maybe we can contact the CIA . . .”
“And what? What do they do in Algeria? Ask their Muslim brothers for mercy for someone who betrayed them? Don’t you see? There is no mercy so long as I am alive.”
Glitsky had come to the front of the couch and was now sitting slightly forward, in a relaxed posture, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. “Missy,” he said. “I’m going to stand up now.”
She immediately gripped the gun in both of her hands and pointed it at the center of his chest.
His eyes locked on hers. “You’ve had enough of killing to protect your secret. That’s over now. The secret is out.”
“It isn’t. You’re lying.”
His voice was calm and reasonable. “I’m not lying. You know that.”
The Motive Page 44
