The 19th Christmas

by James Patterson

  “What does he have to do with this heist?”

  “He’s a hitter. Psycho variety. Loman hired him for this job. I met Dietz here, in the seventh-floor jail, about three years ago. It was memorable.”

  I said, “I’ll pull Dietz’s sheet, but save me some time. What was he in for?”

  “He was charged with holding up an armored car. Witness disappeared and the charges didn’t stick.”

  “Okay, Mr. Lambert. Let’s have his address.”

  After Lambert gave me the name of a cheap hotel located squarely in the pit of hell, I stood up, opened the door, and asked the guards to come in again.

  “Please take Mr. Lambert up to seven.”

  “Hey, I cooperated,” Lambert protested.

  “If your information pans out, I’ll speak to the DA. The DA will speak to Mr. King. Your lawyer will tell you to be remorseful when you’re in front of the judge. Make it real.”

  When Lambert was gone, Conklin and I walked back to our desks in the squad room. Shifts were changing. Day turning to night.

  I did a search for Christopher Dietz. I found him.

  I said to Rich, “There’s an arrest warrant out for Christopher Alan Dietz, whose last known address was Seattle. He was charged with armed robbery. Someone put up two hundred thousand for bail and he skipped. He’s got priors for shootings that didn’t stand up due to lack of evidence. We should get the Feds into this.”

  Conklin picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “Cin. I’m working tonight. I know. I know. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

  Cappy McNeil stopped by our desks. Cappy was a friend, a fellow cop who’d been working homicide longer than me, which made him an old-timer.

  “I overheard the name Chris Dietz,” he said. “I know of him. A CI of mine just mentioned that Dietz could be planning some kind of job. Big one.”

  “No kidding.”

  I thanked Cappy for the tip, which gave some validity to Julian Lambert’s story and turned my thoughts about the interview with him upside down. And then I saw how this was going to go.

  Conklin and I would brief Brady. He would call the SF branch of the FBI and our most senior SWAT commander, Reg Covington. Then we were all going to pay a call on Mr. Dietz, a bad guy with a gun said to be living in the Anthony Hotel.

  I tried to imagine Dietz coming peacefully with us to the Hall.

  I couldn’t see it.

  Chapter 9

  The Anthony Hotel was in the middle of a grubby block in SoMa, flanked by two buildings—on the left, a low-rent office building with a tax-preparation business on the ground floor; on the right, a liquor store with a sputtering neon sign and a massage parlor on the top two stories.

  I’d been to this nightmarish six-story “hotel” before, once to investigate a suspicious death by hanging and once to disarm a drug-addled father who had threatened to take out his family of six. It was amazing that we’d gotten all of those kids out alive.

  I knew the Anthony’s nearly bare lobby by heart, the scabby front desk, two broken-down armchairs, a bank of vending machines, and the pervasive smell of urine. Above the ground floor were five stories of rent-by-the-month rooms where drug addicts could indulge their habits in private and with all the amenities, like sinks and toilets and beds.

  The hallways were pocked with bullet holes and in some places had been bloodied by heads being bashed against the walls. Inside the rooms, sinks had been pulled out and pipes in the ceiling had exploded, and I didn’t want to think about what passed for bathrooms.

  To call the Anthony Hotel a dump was to flatter it. But Christopher Dietz, the professional hit man Julian Lambert had named, had taken a room here among the psychos, drug addicts, and many poor families with small children.

  At eight that night Conklin and I, wearing Kevlar over our SFPD Windbreakers and armed with semiautos and two warrants, entered the lobby. With us were two FBI agents, Reginald Covington, the head of our SWAT team, and three of his men, all in full tactical gear. Four other SWAT commandos were outside, watching the front and rear entrances and standing by for whatever might come.

  Was this overkill for one bail-jumping presumed hit man?

  Only if he put up his hands and let us bring him in.

  Covington asked the frightened desk troll which room Dietz occupied.

  “He’s in 6R. Top floor, rear of the building.”

  Covington said to the clerk, “Be cool and get out.” He didn’t have to be told twice.

  The elevator wasn’t working, so the eight of us thundered up the stairs. A woman on three dropped her laundry basket and locked herself behind her door. Good idea. Little kids playing in the stairwell yelled for their mothers—and then they just stood there and stared.

  We swept them out of our way, ordered them to go home and close the door. One child left his pile of small wheeled toys in our path, and a girl of about eighteen months just sat on the landing and bawled until her father grabbed her up and carried her away.

  My pulse was pounding from both exertion and dread. Kids could get hurt. We all could.

  When we reached the top floor, we paused to scope out the hallway. It was dim, silent, and empty. Room 6R was at the far end of the execrable corridor, which was lined with five doors on each side.

  Covington and his men stood on either side of Dietz’s doorway.

  As I was lead investigator on this case, my job was to knock, announce, then step away. When the door opened, SWAT would toss in a flashbang grenade and pull the door closed. A moment later they would open the door again and immobilize Dietz, who would be sprawled out on the floor, temporarily deaf and blind and wishing he were dead.

  I knocked, called out, “Mr. Dietz? SFPD,” and stepped to the side of the door. I listened for the sound of footsteps.

  Instead I heard metallic clicks coming from behind us, down the hall and at the front of the building. It sounded like locks being thrown open.

  Was a neighbor coming out to see what was happening?

  Or was a child coming out to play?

  I turned toward the sound and a heavy weight fell on me, covering me and dropping me to the floor. I heard shocking reports of gunfire and the reverberation of hundreds of rounds hitting the walls. The sixth floor of the Anthony Hotel had become a war zone.

  Chapter 10

  A moment later, the deafening fusillade of gunfire at close range just stopped cold.

  There was an echoing silence, then I heard the clattering of boots on tile and men cursing: “Shit.” “Jake. Speak to me.” “God damn it to hell.”

  I said to Conklin, “Rich. Let me up. Please.”

  He scrambled off me, got to his feet, and peered down into my face. “You okay, Boxer?”

  “I think so. Yes. How about you?”

  “I’m good,” he said.

  “You’re great. A human shield,” I said to my partner, who might have saved my life.

  “Pure reflex. Let’s get you up.”

  He reached down and I grabbed his hand. He pulled me to my feet.

  My ears were ringing and I was on adrenaline overload as I stared along the narrow hallway. Most of the ceiling lights had been shot out. Five feet away, an FBI agent with what looked like a fatal head wound sat propped against a wall. The other agent had taken a bullet to his shoulder. Blood spurted as he tried to coax his partner back to life.

  I called for backup and an ambulance, stat. I wasn’t sure how the shit had hit the fan, but I gathered what I could from the chaotic scene and tried to piece together what had just happened. I’d been standing to the side of room 6R, waiting for SWAT to kick in the door, when the hallway had exploded in gunfire—the first shots coming from behind us—and Conklin had thrown himself on top of me.

  We’d been told by the desk clerk that Chris Dietz, the professional hitter, was in 6R, rear. But apparently he’d been in 6F, front.

  Had Dietz been so paranoid that he’d kept two rooms? Had he heard us running up the stairs and taken d
efensive action by busting into someone else’s space? Or—the simplest explanation—had the terrified desk clerk given us the wrong room number?

  The door to 6F had nearly been shot off its hinges. The dead man inside, cut down by our return, and more intense, gunfire, blocked the threshold. Even in the dim light I could see his blood pooling on the tiles. Me, Conklin, Commander Covington, and two of his people went to 6F and the body.

  A SWAT officer kicked the dead man’s gun aside, and he and Conklin rolled him. I pulled a wallet from his back pocket. His driver license told me he was Christopher Dietz, Caucasian male, no corrected vision. Height, five ten; eyes, hazel; born in 1985. An address in Boise. If there had been a place for occupation, I suppose it would have said freelance hitter.

  I was glad he was dead but very, very sorry I wouldn’t get a chance to interrogate him.

  Covington shouted through 6F’s open doorway for any people inside to show themselves, put their hands above their heads. When no one answered, he and his team stormed the small room, clearing it to the corners.

  Conklin and I stepped around the dead man and peered into 6F, which was lit by the sporadic flashing of red neon coming from the liquor store next door.

  Covington hit the light switch and the room lit up.

  I saw a coffee table made of two milk crates and a plank, and a bare mattress in the corner. A rag of a shirt hung in the open closet. There were empty beer and liquor bottles everywhere, and the smell of excrement permeated the air.

  We touched nothing, corrupted nothing, just looked for something that would reveal what Chris Dietz had been doing before he decided to commit suicide-by-cop in grand style.

  If a clue was there, I didn’t see it.

  I heard sirens screaming up Sixth Street, ambulances and cruisers. Conklin and I backed out of the doorway and returned to the rear of the building, and I told the wounded FBI agent to hang on, EMTs were on the way.

  Covington rammed in the door to 6R, rushed in, and, a moment later, pronounced it clear.

  Paramedics jogged up the stairs with a stretcher. Uniformed cops followed. Conklin told them to cordon off the rooms at both ends of the hall and start checking for wounded residents behind the other doors.

  I called Brady, briefed him, and gave him the bad news: “Our best and only lead to the Christmas Day heist has expired.”

  Chapter 11

  Yuki and Brady were at home that evening, dressing for a pre-Christmas dinner with DA Len Parisi and a handful of coworkers. They had promised each other that they would pick out a tree together. There was still time.

  Yuki fastened the clasp of her jet necklace, and it curled neatly above the rounded neckline of her little black dress. She brushed her hair and then sat on the edge of the bed, watching Brady get ready.

  He said, “I’m looking forward to getting out, talking to people. Wonderin’ if I still have any charm left after all these years.”

  “You’ve still got it, sweetie. Charm to spare.”

  In Yuki’s opinion, he underplayed his appeal and it was a pleasure to see him dressing for a night out. She liked his pink shirt, a sweet complement to his buffed body and white-blond hair. He held up three ties for her review, and she selected one with a pattern of jumping dolphins.

  “This place is going to be jammed,” said Brady as he knotted his tie in front of the mirror.

  The restaurant they were going to was the new hip successor to LuLu’s, also specializing in local seafood, suckling pig, and gourmet pizza cooked in wood-fired brick ovens. Yuki thought about her first dinner at LuLu’s with Len Parisi.

  Yuki and her new boss had been discussing a case in which a ferry passenger had pulled a gun and unloaded on the other passengers, killing six innocent people. The Brinkley case was Yuki’s first prosecution of a mass murderer, and it was personal: the killer had shot her friend Claire Washburn and her teenage son, both of whom, thank God, had survived.

  She and Len had been deep in conversation over wine and pizza when he suddenly clutched his chest and toppled backward onto the restaurant floor.

  To this day, Len credited her with saving his life. She had only made a phone call, but he insisted that it was because of her clearheaded actions—waving off the fellow diner who had volunteered to drive him to the hospital, calling 911, staying with him, riding with him in the ambulance—that he was alive today.

  In Yuki’s opinion, Len didn’t owe her a thing. It was the other way around. She’d learned so much from him, and she liked him, too.

  It had been at least a year since she and Brady had had a social evening with Len and friends, and she was thinking ahead to what she knew would be a memorable event.

  Brady was lacing up his shoes when his phone vibrated. Yuki had tried instituting a no-phone-after-eight-p.m. rule, but it hadn’t lasted for even a day. She got calls. He got calls. Drowning “those dang things” in the sink was a fun idea but definitely impractical.

  Brady grabbed his phone off the dresser, and Yuki listened to his end of the conversation.

  He said, “Tell me everything, Boxer. But y’all are okay? I need the name of the FBI agent. Okay. Got it. You need to get all of those tenants off the sixth floor and into the lobby. I agree. Wait for the ME. I’ll call the mayor. Absolutely. Twenty minutes, traffic permitting.”

  Yuki knew what was coming next. She sighed.

  He ended the call, speed-dialed the mayor, and left an urgent message.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Yuki. “Our investigation just turned into a shootout with two fatalities. I’ve got people on the scene, more on the way, and a lotta displaced tenants needing a place to bunk.”

  Yuki was disappointed, but she didn’t say so. Dinner was dinner. This was life and death. Brady had been talking with Lindsay, and that meant that her friend had been in danger. Yuki tuned back in to what her husband was saying.

  “I have to go. Yuki, tell Red Dog I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll understand,” she said. “Be safe. I love you.”

  Chapter 12

  After living through the terrifying shootout at the Anthony, I was weak-kneed, shaky, and ready for sleep, a shower, hugs, and dinner, not necessarily in that order.

  I took the elevator to our apartment and had stabbed my key at the front-door lock several times when the door opened. Joe said, “Hey, just wondering what happened…oh, man, look at you, Blondie.”

  “That good, huh?”

  I got my hug. I held on to Joe, thinking once again that my love for my job could cost me everything. Any day. Any time.

  I told Joe that I loved him, my voice cracking in the middle. He said, “Hey, hey, you’re home now. Take a look at what Sugarpuss and I have been up to.”

  Sugarpuss, a.k.a. Julie Anne Molinari, screamed, “Mom-meee,” and ran into the foyer. Joe grabbed her up so I could get out of my jacket and lock my weapon in the antique gun safe high above Julie’s curly-haired head.

  Martha woofed and waddled in and got her paws up on my knees. We all headed into the big living-eating-relaxing room with its tan leather furniture and big TV.

  And there, standing between two tall windows looking out onto Lake Street, was a beautiful Christmas tree, winkin’ and blinkin’, intensely decorated on the branches that Julie could reach. The star for the pinnacle was sitting on the windowsill, and a pile of wrapped presents filled the seat of Joe’s big daddy chair.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “You two did all of this?”

  “I did, Mommy!” said Julie.

  I didn’t know I still had an ear-to-ear grin left in me. I picked Julie up and she gave me a tour of the tree: the snowflakes and icicles, the globes with little scenes inside, and the now-traditional silver star from my sister, Catherine, engraved with First Christmas on one side and Julie on the other.

  After the tour and Joe’s promise to place the star on the top of the tree in the morning, we put our little girl to bed. We doused the light, blew some kisses, and closed the door. As we tiptoed back
to the living room, Joe said, “If I were you…”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “If I were you, I’d have a bowl of mushroom beef barley soup. Then a shower. Then ice cream.”

  “We have that soup?”

  I must have been staring at him with stray-dog eyes, because Joe laughed long and hard. “You think I would offer soup and not have any?”

  “You made it from scratch?” I said.

  “Mrs. Rose did that.”

  Mrs. Rose, Julie’s part-time nanny, was an amazing cook.

  “I’m reheating it,” said Joe. “That counts.”

  “It certainly does.”

  He sat me down and turned a flame up under the soup. When I was tucking into a bowl with a spoon in one hand and half of a buttered baguette in the other, I told my husband about my day.

  I started with Christmas shopping for Cindy, then the chase along Grant Avenue, the capture of Julian Lambert, and our Q and A with him back at the Hall.

  “He asked for a deal,” I told my husband. “A walk-in exchange for info on an upcoming ‘heist of the decade.’ He said the mastermind was called Low-man.”

  “Humph.”

  “Or Loman.”

  “Like Willy Loman? Lead character in Death of a Salesman?”

  “Hmm. Maybe. Julian didn’t know how to spell it. What he did know was that a professional hitter by the name of Chris Dietz was one of the crew. Dietz was renting in the Anthony Hotel.”

  “I get a rash just thinking about that place,” Joe said.

  I nodded and said, “Tell me about it. We cornered Dietz, we thought, but then he pulled a switcheroo. Decided to have SWAT mow him down.”

  Joe asked questions. I told him what I could, and we continued talking as I took a hot shower. When I was dry and dressed in pj’s, sure enough, there was a bowl of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream waiting for me. Joe, Martha, and I went over to the tree, and I watched Joe write out gift labels, most of them from Santa. He shook a small, flat box. “From Aunt Cat,” he said. “Bet it’s Julie’s annual Christmas star.”