would be bad luck to be late. He wanted to be absolutely sure he was the first man here. He wanted to walk over every inch of the area. He stopped on an unnamed industrial street of low-rise warehouses and garages a few blocks west of a dent in the Bay's shoreline called the Central Basin. An abandoned railroad line ran down the middle of the road. When they'd been shooting the movie out on Pier 70, this street had been the glamorous, albeit slightly funky, production base-trailers for the stars, incredible catered spreads of food for everyone with a pass, lights and gurneys and hundreds of people. Now Glitsky sat behind the wheel for a short while, letting his senses take it in, warn him of anything that resembled trouble.
There was nothing but the empty street. A gust off the bay skipped some heavy dust off the car's hood; some newspapers and candy wrappers fluttered in the recessed doorway of an empty storefront across from him. Another car was parked at the end of the block, but Glitsky had already driven by it once, and it appeared empty.
He got out and walked to the corner, looked out toward the Bay on his right. Pier 70 was the last of a series of six or seven piers jutting north into the water. In front of them was a relatively large open expanse of cement- reminiscent in some ways of Candlestick Point-although in this case there were few if any individual parking spaces. The area had once been used for loading and unloading and container storage, but for the past ten years or so, the piers on this stretch of the bay had been allowed to fall into disrepair.
Hands in his pockets, head down against the dusty wind, Glitsky crossed the shortest distance to the squat, yellowish building that marked the entrance to the first pier. The next three piers were similarly constructed-a large warehouse-style building out of which protruded the actual pier and boat loading area behind it. Everything was deserted.
Pier 70 itself was nearly a quarter of a mile long, a little over sixty feet wide. It was the farthest east of the half-dozen sister piers. Although there were a few open areas leading down to docks at the water level, most of the pier's entire eastern exposure, along the Bay, had been built up into various one-story structures, many of them open to the elements, some of them railroad cars, to service its trade. This left a relatively broad asphalt roadway on Glitsky's left as he walked out along the pier, his shoulder weapon drawn now and held in his hand, mostly concealed in his jacket pocket. He looked into the various doorways and openings. There was no mystery in why the famous director had chosen this spot for his finale-with its ramshackle, low- or open-roofed, wooden buildings facing a wide thoroughfare posing as Main Street, the pier resembled nothing so much as an Old West movie set, false fronts and all.
But Glitsky wasn't in much of an aesthetic frame of mind to appreciate the art of it all. When he reached the end of the pier, water on three sides and no escape, he realized where he had to set himself-back where he'd begun, maybe a few structures in. Let whoever was coming next get in behind him and cut themselves off. With no escape.
Except past him.
He made it back in half the time he'd taken going out, but it still seemed to be one of the longest walks of his entire life. Doorway to doorway, one at a time, his gun in hand, eyes always on the head of the pier, the open expanse in front of it. Nothing and no one.
He was a hunter now, not a cop. Cops didn't draw weapons without suspects or specific situations at hand. They didn't conceal the weapon if drawn. They called for backup if even the remote chance of gunplay loomed.
A gull landed on a post across the way, studied him for a moment, then flew off with a series of derisive squawks. Somehow rattled by this natural display, Glitsky turned quickly, now impatient to find a suitable place to wait.
He found it in a low, barnlike structure maybe sixty feet from the front of the pier. It had no front door and was also open in the back, but half-height partitions within created several eight-by-four-foot spaces that might have served as horse or cattle stalls. He had looked cursorily into the place on his way out and had concluded that, because there was light from the front and back openings, and they were only four feet high, the partitions would be inadequate for hiding. He hadn't even looked behind them when he passed.
Now, for the same reasons, suddenly they looked good to him.
He put his gun back in his holster. At the back opening, he scanned along the waterline, then turned and came back to the front. Another gull, or maybe the same one, had landed on the nearest post, and now was squawking continually. Glitsky looked around in the barn and found a large rusty hinge of some kind, which he chucked at the bird. It missed and splashed into the water below with a noise that sounded to Glitsky's ears loud as a depth charge. The bird didn't so much as shift its feet, and kept on squawking.
He pushed back the sleeve of his jacket and checked his watch. It was ten minutes until two. The wind whistled through the cracks in the structures around him. Not a streak of blue showed in the dun-gray sky overhead. Somewhere in the white noise of the background, he thought he heard a chunk, like a car door closing. He looked at his watch again. It was the same time as before. His hands, he realized, were damp with sweat.
On the cement no-man's-land, a body appeared. A man alone, walking.
Once Glitsky was sure, he came back into view and stood in the barn's doorway where he could be seen. Surprises among armed men could turn unlucky very quickly and he had no intention to be part of one. He found that he was unprepared for the wave of relief he felt at John Holiday's appearance here. He hadn't let himself consciously acknowledge that some part of him had half expected reinforcements of some kind to show up. In any case, he was glad of it.
Glitsky motioned him to move it forward, Holiday broke into a trot, and in a moment they were together, back in the shadows of the barn, but able to look out.
'Where's Hardy?' Glitsky asked.
'I don't know. I thought he might be with you.'
'No.' Then, 'You came down here by yourself? What for?'
'I've asked myself the same question.' He shrugged. 'You told Gerson you were going to turn me in. I thought it would play better if you actually had me here. Maybe give you fellows something to talk about for the first minute or so.'
'He might not come at all,' Glitsky said.
'And if he doesn't, you'll have to take me in. I know. We've already done that once today.' Holiday pulled at his mustache, maybe to keep from breaking a smile. 'Well, Lieutenant, whatever way it works out, if it comes to a fight, I figure it's mine as much as anybody's. I belong in it. These boys don't play fair.'
Glitsky looked him up and down, the heavy sheepskin jacket to mid-thigh. 'Are you still packing, John?'
This time Holiday did break a smile. 'I don't know why you want to go and ruin a perfectly fine afternoon asking a question like that. No I am not. My lawyer advised me that it was against the law and my appearance here today points to my good faith. I'd be offended if you asked to search me.'
Glitsky allowed an amused grunt. 'Sounds like you've been talking to Diz, all right. Did you see anybody when you were coming in here? If not, I thought we'd wait behind these partitions and let people get by us, if anybody comes. How does that sound?'
'That's your call. I'm just here to help with the fuckin'.'
Glitsky frowned at the profanity, gazed out again at the no-man's-land. 'If it's Gerson alone, I want to let him walk past, come out behind him alone. You wait back in here, and listen up. If we both come back to pick you up and take you downtown, I'll pat you down and it would be smart if you didn't get yourself armed between now and then.' A cold smile. 'Do you understand me? If you try to escape, say out the back opening there, you've got an excellent chance of getting shot. Is that clear enough?'
'It's clearer than why Hardy thinks you're a sweet guy.'
Glitsky nodded. 'He's notorious for being a bad judge of character.' Suddenly, he narrowed his eyes, twisted his head slightly. 'Did you hear that?'
Gerson eyed the length of the pier.
He squinted out along the asphalt roadway through the midday overcast. The last structures, way out there, were blurry and indistinct; the actual end of the pier seemed to fade into the gray-green water of the bay.
He hadn't slept at all last night. The business with pushing Thieu off the roof, so suddenly conceived and hurriedly executed, might have been a mistake. Not so much that he would ever be suspected of the actual murder; that had been clean enough. But the real problem was that now and forever, any thought of getting out from under Panos was completely impossible. Because naturally Wade knew about Thieu. Wade always knew. He'd called as soon as he'd heard, said he'd figured it out and appreciated the consideration, would not forget who his friends
