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.
On the way there, Lock and Ty had driven past the bombed-out Federal Courthouse, a reminder of not only
