by Black, Sean
Patrick, their eight-year-old, came in, bouncing his soccer ball.
‘Hey, tiger,’ Glenn said, breaking away from his wife and tousling his son’s hair. ‘Now what did Mom say about having the ball in the house?’
Patrick sighed. Eight going on eighteen. ‘I’ll take it outside.’
Glenn made his way to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
‘Where’s Becky?’
‘Up in her room.’
Glenn popped open his beer. ‘Now Patrick’s out in the back yard…’
Amy turned round and dried off her hands. ‘What is up with you?’
‘Must be the weather.’
Outside, the car circled the block and parked a few houses down from the Loves’ house.
A cell phone rang.
‘I have a date for you,’ said a voice.
‘When?’ Chance asked.
‘The fifth.’
Today was the evening of the first. The fifth was about as fast as they could have hoped for.
‘What’s the venue?’
‘The one you’d expect.’
This was good news. It also meant that they would have to act fast.
Chance ended the call, then dialed another number.
‘We got three days,’ she said, leaning forward and eyeing the house.
The family inside was blissfully unaware of the storm gathering less than a hundred yards away. Unaware of how life could be changed for ever by one single event. Like Chance had been when Reaper went to prison for his beliefs.
‘Tonight?’ Reaper asked her.
‘Yes. Tonight.’
‘Means we’re gonna have to keep ’em for three days and four nights. That’s a long time.’
Chance kept her eyes on the house as a soccer ball rolled down the drive and a little boy chased after it, followed by Glenn Love, who scooped up his son and then the ball.
‘Maybe we won’t keep ’em,’ she said.
55
A sea of blue uniforms greeted Lock and Ty outside San Francisco International Airport. The last time Lock had seen such a show of strength by law enforcement was in the weeks following 9/11. Cars, limos and taxis lingering for more than a few moments at the kerbside were being swiftly dealt with.
Amid the crush of stressed-out passengers, Lock spotted Carrie piloting the mini-van towards them. He and Ty forced their way through the crowd. They clambered inside and Carrie edged out into the traffic. She leaned over and touched Lock’s hand.
‘You want me to drive?’ he offered.
‘Relax, Ryan,’ Carrie said, picking her way past a cab with its trunk open, the driver loading luggage as a burly cop screamed at him to pick up the pace, ‘I got it. How did you get on?’
‘Nothing we can use to find Reaper. But you know how you wanted me not to keep things from you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Carrie.
‘Well, the Nazi Low Riders have a contract out on me and Ty.’
Carrie hit the brakes and honked her horn as a pick-up truck cut her off. Lock put his hands on the windscreen and braced. Carrie behind the wheel was only marginally less stressful than babysitting Reaper.
‘Then maybe we should go back to New York,’ she said. ‘The network can get someone else to cover the funeral.’
Lock closed his eyes, trying to let go of some of the tension of the last forty-eight hours. ‘It’s gone too far for that now. Reaper’s my responsibility.’
Soon they were out of the worst of the airport tangle of traffic and on the Bayshore Freeway, which would take them into San Francisco. There was a low fog rising from the water but, up above, the sky was clear. Lock sat back, allowing himself to relax a little.
‘So, you want to know what I dug up on Reaper’s daughter?’ Carrie asked as they rolled along. ‘Chance is a street name. Her real name is Freya Vaden.’
Lock opened his eyes. ‘Not Hays?’
‘Mom didn’t want anything to do with Frank Hays after he went to jail. She moved herself and little Freya to the Inland Empire.’
‘Where’s that exactly?’
‘Los Angeles, right where we just were,’ Ty said.
‘So how’d she hook back up with Dad?’ Lock asked.
Carrie shook her head. ‘No idea. But clearly she got curious. It wouldn’t take much digging to find out he was in jail.’
‘So Chance grew up in California?’
‘Until she was about twelve, when Mom died of a drugs overdose. No grandparents around, so she went into foster care. Ended up with a family called the Grisaldis.’
‘You’re shitting me, right?’ Ty said.
‘What?’ asked Lock.
‘You never heard about the Grisaldi case? They fostered dozens of kids. Molested them too. Papa Grisaldi was convicted about four years ago and sent to Corcoran.’
Lock knew that Corcoran was one of California’s heavy-duty prisons. Not as hardcore as Pelican Bay, but still pretty tough. ‘How long did he last there?’ he asked Carrie.
‘Less than a week,’ she said. ‘He was murdered by a two-man Aryan Brotherhood hit squad.’
Ty leaned forward from the back seat. ‘And here’s the kicker, Ryan. Papa Grisaldi was a black man.’
‘And her long-lost father’s a race warrior. Perfect,’ said Lock, pinching at the bridge of his nose. ‘So we got her psychology. But how do we find her?’
‘I’m not so sure that we will. All the regular checks seem to indicate that she dropped off the grid some time last year.’ Her eyes still on the road, Carrie dug in her bag and tossed over a wad of printouts. ‘This is everything I have.’
Lock quickly riffled through the papers. He stopped at one particular page and held it up to Carrie. It was a crumpled colour printout of a young woman in her mid-twenties. ‘This her?’
‘Only picture I could find. Of course it was taken a few years back so she might have changed her appearance since.’
Ty leaned forward and studied the picture of Chance. ‘You can see how Prager got drawn in.’
Carrie laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Ty. Somehow I don’t think you’d be her type.’
‘No shit,’ Ty said.
‘You pass this on to the FBI?’ Lock asked her.
‘Via Coburn,’ Carrie said.
‘He’s speaking to you?’ Lock asked. ‘He seems kind of pissed at me.’
Carrie’s cell phone trilled. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said, plucking it from her bag on the dash. She flipped it open and listened for a moment. ‘OK, where?’ she asked. There was another pause. ‘What else?’ she said, before killing the call and turning to Lock. ‘They’ve had a sighting of Reaper. Traveling north on PCH about fifty south of us. California Highway Patrol stopped a vehicle he was traveling in. At least they think that’s who it was.’
‘North?’ Ty said.
Carrie nodded.
‘So why don’t they have him in custody?’ Lock demanded.
‘He came out shooting, Coburn says. Destroyed the patrol car, and shot the two officers inside.’
Lock slammed the palm of his hand against the dash in frustration. ‘He kill them?’
Carrie nodded. ‘One of them. The other’s pretty badly injured.’
Lock sighed. This sounded more like the Reaper he knew. Whatever he was planning, he clearly had no intention of going back to prison, even if it meant killing anyone who got in his way.
And there was something that worried Lock even more. Any fugitive looking to flee justice should have been heading south. But Reaper was heading north, straight towards them.
56
Carrie had a suite for her and Lock, and a room for Ty, booked at the Argonaut Hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf. Pulling up on the street outside, she handed the keys to the valet, then headed up to the suite. The hotel itself was beautiful, with a hell of a view out across the bay to Alcatraz. These days, reflected Lock, he couldn’t seem to avoid prisons.
As Carrie ordered some coffee and sandwiches to be sent up, Lock lai
d out the pictures Carrie had amassed of the key players on the nautically themed king size bed that dominated the room. There was one of Reaper. One of his daughter, Freya, aka Chance. One of Ken Prager. One of Jalicia Jones. And, finally, one of Junius Holmes. Three of them dead. Two on the run.
Ty put his cup of coffee down on the nightstand next to the bed. ‘You getting anything?’ he asked Lock, rubbing his injured shoulder.
‘Not apart from the obvious.’
‘Which is?’
‘Junius Holmes had a track record of going after these guys. That’s one score settled right there for Reaper. Ken – that’s a slam-dunk too. And, Jalicia – revenge works as a motive for her as well, just like Coburn said.’ Lock picked up the picture of Reaper, tapped the edge of the paper against the desk. ‘So why the hell is he heading north when anyone in their right mind would either be staying put or moving south or east?’ He shuffled the pictures around like he was playing three-card Monte, then looked up to see Carrie filtering back into the room from the bathroom.
She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Ryan, you need to get some rest.’
‘I think we all do,’ Ty said, with a grimace. Lock knew that his injured shoulder was playing him up.
He glanced back at the pictures. The clue to what was going on lay in front of him. But why couldn’t he see it?
‘You can play detective tomorrow,’ said Carrie.
Lock stood up, gathered the faces into a pile and put them on the desk. Carrie was right. He was exhausted. Maybe some rest would clear his mind a little.
Carrie’s cell rang again, Coburn’s name flashing up.
‘He wants to speak to you,’ she said.
Lock took the phone from her. ‘Reaper?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ Coburn said. ‘We got a tip-off a few minutes ago that someone saw an individual matching his description entering a building in the Tenderloin.’
‘Credible witness?’
‘Little old Vietnamese lady.’
‘The Tenderloin would make sense,’ Lock said slowly.
The Tenderloin had originally gained its name because cops patrolling its streets were paid more for the privilege, thus being able to afford a better cut of meat than their colleagues who patrolled more salubrious parts of the city. It was the kind of place where the mice wiped their feet on the way out of the apartment buildings. Now a haven for the destitute, deranged and the desperate, as well as a burgeoning influx of Vietnamese, most San Franciscans gave the relatively small area a wide berth, unless they had people visiting who wanted to pack in some gritty reality as well as the tour of Alcatraz and a snap of the Golden Gate. Given how paranoid the majority of residents were, not to mention the dim view they took of law enforcement, it was a place where a raid had the potential to go badly wrong.
Lock frowned as he worked through the implications. If they went in heavy, especially with racial tensions running high in the city and beyond, it could be the spark that provoked a riot. Even if they didn’t go in heavy, these things had a habit of getting out of hand rapidly. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want anything to do with such an operation unless they were being paid to do it.
‘So, you want to tag along?’ Coburn asked him.
‘I didn’t think you wanted me involved in this any more.’
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Like that’s going to happen. At least this way I know where you are and what you’re doing. Plus, you’re good at sneaking around. That’s the kind of expertise we could use right now.’
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
‘Hey, it’s up to you,’ Coburn said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there,’ Lock said, reaching for his gun.
57
Glenn Love woke to a dog barking next door. He rolled over and threw an arm over his wife, pulling her towards him, enjoying the warmth of her body. She cuddled into him and he closed his eyes.
A few seconds later he heard a noise downstairs like someone tapping against one of the windows. He disentangled himself from his wife.
‘What is it?’ she asked sleepily.
‘Nothing, honey,’ he said, getting out of bed.
She rolled over, grabbed a pillow from his side and snuggled into it as the sound came again, more distinct this time.
Glenn grabbed his pants from the laundry basket and put them on as his wife sat up.
‘Glenn?’
‘It’s probably a bird or something. Go back to sleep, Amy.’
Downstairs there was another sound. Different from the tapping. Like wood splintering.
‘Should I call 911?’ Amy asked.
Glenn sighed. His heart rate was elevated a little, but he was more curious than scared. He was a big guy. And he was in his house. The last thing he needed was the cops turning out because something had worked its way inside the house and was trying to get back out. ‘Let me see what it is first.’
Amy was wide awake now. The phone was next to her on the night stand. Waiting there, should they need it.
Glenn got down on his knees next to the bed. ‘Just in case,’ he said, retrieving the baseball bat from underneath the bed. Glenn had bought it from one of the guys on his crew. It was lead-weighted. The heft of it in his hands felt reassuring. He held it now with his right hand and tapped it on to the palm of his left like some old-school Irish cop with a night stick.
‘Relax,’ he said to Amy, slipping into a bad impersonation of a Boston accent. ‘If it’s a raccoon he’s gonna regret he was ever born.’
Amy’s smile faded as another sound came from somewhere downstairs. The creak of a floorboard? A footstep?
Glenn’s heart rate was picking up pace now. He was hyper-alert.
But when you’re hyper-alert, don’t noises you might otherwise not register take on more sinister connotations?
Amy seemed to have fewer doubts. She reached over for the phone.
‘Listen,’ Glenn said, ‘I holler, then you call 911. OK?’
He walked slowly out of the bedroom, carrying the bat. Out in the hallway he wondered why he was trying to be so quiet.
If there is someone in the house I should be making some noise to let them know that they’ve been rumbled, maybe even spook them.
Then he passed the doors leading into the kids’ bedrooms.
No point me screaming like a madman, swinging a bat around and terrifying the life out of them if it is indeed nothing.
He listened again. Nothing. He thought about reaching over and flipping on the light in the upstairs hallway, then noticed that his son’s bedroom door was ajar. The light might wake him, so he started down the stairs in the dark.
The hand rail was on his right so he switched the bat to his left hand and took the steps one at a time. He didn’t stomp down them but he didn’t tiptoe either. If there was someone in the house, he’d let them have a chance to do the right thing and get the hell out. He’d seen a talk show once where this guy who’d been a serial burglar had said that the last thing these guys wanted, the professionals anyway, was to confront a householder.
Glenn took the last step and turned right into the long narrow hallway. Ahead of him was the front door. Closed. Locked. That was good.
Glenn turned the other way, towards the back of the house and the kitchen, where he’d thought the noise was coming from. With each step he felt himself relax a tiny amount. Even the deafest intruder would have heard him by now. In case they hadn’t, he switched the bat back to his right hand.
He walked into the kitchen. Nothing out of place. Nothing at all. The clicker for Amy’s car was hung up in its place. So was the clicker for his truck. Her handbag was still on the counter where he’d seen it as he turned out the lights and went up to bed.
He crossed to the sink and filled a glass with water. He glugged it down, then checked the back door. Locked, with the chain on.
Then he heard them. Two sets of heavy boots hammering up the stairs. Sheer
panic coursed through him. He raced out of the room.
They were at the top of the stairs now. Two figures. Then the thing that he most dreaded: Amy racing out of the bedroom straight into one of them.
A door opened and Patrick stumbled out in his PJs, rubbing his eyes. ‘Hey, leave my mom alone!’ he shouted.
Glenn froze five steps from the top. The intruder had a knife to Amy’s throat. Not a switchblade. A big hunting knife, like the kind you’d use to gut a deer.
‘OK, take it easy,’ Glenn said. He tore his eyes away from the knife to his son. ‘Patrick, it’s OK.’ His daughter was out of her room now. ‘Honey, it’s fine,’ he told her.
One of the intruders stepped forward. He was a huge guy with a shaved head, big walrus mustache and lots of tattoos. He put his hand out and said, ‘Give me the bat, Glenn.’
How does he know my name? Who are these people? What do they want?
The man appeared to be reading Glenn’s mind. ‘Glenn, we’re here because we need your help.’
The way he said it, it sounded like the most reasonable request in the world. But it wasn’t. For the first time since he’d woken up it occurred to Glenn that maybe he was having a nightmare. No way could someone who looked like this man be so calm, so rational.
There was nothing else he could do – his wife and his children’s lives were at stake here – so he flipped the bat round and reached out with it.
The intruder took it. ‘Thank you, Glenn. Now, Amy, why don’t you try and settle the children somewhere? Don’t put any lights on.’ He nodded to his accomplice to release her.
Amy seemed to Glenn as though she was in complete shock. Only when the knife was moved from her throat and sheathed did she nod that she understood.
The man, who still seemed like a giant, turned his attention back to Glenn. ‘I’ll need all your cell phones. Then I want you to get dressed for work. We have a job for you. A very important job. Do it well and everything will be fine.’
58
In any other area of the city they would have arrived to a sleepy neighbourhood of empty streets. But the Tenderloin existed in an inverse state to the rest of San Francisco, like the negative image of an old photograph. At three in the morning every sidewalk was crowded. It was like walking on to the set of a B-rated horror movie with junkies filling the role of the living dead.
