Nocturnal

Verde & the Birdman

Rich Verde got out of the car, then brushed some lint off the sleeve of his blue suit. He shut the door and waited for Birdman to get out.

He was always waiting for Birdman. The kid moved in slow motion. This was what the force was coming to? Kid had hair like a dirty mop. He wore sloppy clothes. He had a goddamned gold tooth, for the love of Christ. Bobby Pigeon looked like a pimp on a four-day bender.

“Birdman, come on. Move it.”

Bobby nodded. Even his nod was slow. “I’m comin’, boss.”

They started up Pacific toward the Deprovdechuks’ house. Verde had parked a block away, at the corner of Wayne Place. Sometimes walking up to a perp’s place gave you more options, was less conspicuous. Subtlety, calmness, keeping things as quiet as possible — that was how the job got done.

Souller’s call had come out of the blue. Pookie had developed that source. Rich would have done the same thing, of course, but it still chapped his ass that Pookie’s work had produced a lead. Not that the lead mattered. This was nothing more than a coincidence. The BoyCo kids were assholes, beating up on anyone they could. Rex Deprovdechuk got his ass kicked a few times, so what?

Nowadays everyone wanted to raise kids in a goddamn airlock, protected from anything and everything. Everyone gets a goddamn trophy. When Rich had been a kid, you either learned to fight back or you ate the shit sandwich you were served. So the kid had drawn mean pictures about BoyCo members? So what. It had nothing to do with the killings. He knew it, Zou knew it, but Zou still wanted to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

Whatever Amy Zou wanted, if it was in Rich’s power to give, Amy Zou got.

“Rich-O,” Birdman said. “Riddle me something, brother. Seems to me we’re kind of half-assing this case. Why’d we get it, anyway? Terminator and Pookzilla are Grade-A prime, man.”

“We’re not?”

Birdman shrugged. “I’m game, dog, don’t get me wrong, but this is some high-profile shiz. I’m kind of new for that, you know?”

“You’re fine. I’ll carry you. Just watch and learn, son.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Birdman said. “Why us? And I know I’m just tagging along, so more accurately, why you?”

Rich wasn’t going to share that answer. Zou could when the time was right. Verde hoped Birdman would work out, because they needed some new blood. That was why Zou had partnered them up — Bobby was a good cop, but he clearly didn’t believe in strict interpretations of the letter of the law. When it came to Marie’s Children, to the symbols, what mattered was how a cop would interpret the gray areas. Clauser and Chang were too goddamn goody-goody to play ball, but hopefully Bobby could be more realistic about how the world truly worked.

Rich focused on the task at hand. It was the little things that got a cop killed, like routine traffic stops or just talking to the wrong person at the wrong time. In this line of work, survival meant assuming that everyone who saw you wanted you dead.

He approached the Deprovdechuk place. A few people — mostly Chinese, mostly old — moved along the sidewalks. Verde angled around an old lady that had to be ninety. Her steps were so tiny she looked like a bobble-headed stop-action character.

This was the Chinatown for the locals, not the Chinatown for the tourists. Many windows were open, filled with shirts and pants drying on hangers or dangling from improvised clotheslines. Some store signs were mostly in Mandarin with a little bit of English beneath, while others had no English at all. Massage parlors, beauty shops, art galleries that never seemed to be open, all in storefronts squashed down by the three- and four-story apartment buildings above them. He’d made calls to some of those apartments. The Chinese could pack ten, eleven, even fifteen people into a standard one-bedroom.

Rich stopped when he saw 929 Pacific. “This is it,” he said.

“Huh,” Birdman said. “I bet they’re the only round-eyes in this building, if not the whole neighborhood.”

The Deprovdechuks lived in a tenancy-in-common, or “T.I.C.” The three-story house had two parallel columns of typical bay windows. Automobile soot smeared and darkened once-white walls. Seven concrete steps led to three side-by-side wooden doors. One door would lead up to the third floor, one to the second, and the last entered into the Deprovdechuks’ ground-floor flat.

“Let me do the talking,” Rich said as he pressed the door buzzer.

“Don’t I always?”

Verde heard footsteps coming from inside the house. Little footsteps.

The door opened a couple of inches before a snapping chain-lock stopped it. Halfway down, a tiny face looked out.

Verde’s nose caught a faint, ripe smell, just a trace of it. He knew that smell …

The boy’s face wrinkled with distrust. “Who are you?”

“Inspector Verde, San Francisco Police,” Rich said. “Are you Rex?”

The boy’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened. He slammed the door shut so hard the wood rattled and the glass cracked. The slam made the air swirl, and another whiff of that odor tickled Rich’s nose.

He recognized it: unforgettable, unmistakable.

The smell of a corpse.

Rich drew his Sig Sauer. Before he could say anything, Bobby drew his own. At least the kid was fast when it mattered.

Rich slid to the right side of the door, shoulder on the frame, gun in both hands and pointed up. “Do it!”

Bobby lifted a big Doc Marten and push-kicked. The door slammed open, ripping the metal chain free and sending it spinning down the hallway’s hardwood floor. Bobby went in first. Rich followed, saw Rex sprinting down the long hall. The boy ran through the last door on the left and slammed it shut behind him. Bobby ran after him. Just inside the front door, Rich glanced into the living room on his left — a woman’s body, faceup on the floor, a belt wrapped around her neck. Eyes open and staring. Splotchy facial bruising. Purple discoloration around the skin just above and below the belt. A gray pallor covered the corpse’s other exposed areas.

Rich saw all this in a half-second glance. He looked back down the hall, saw Birdman kick through the bedroom door and point his gun inside.

“Lie down on the floor!” Bobby screamed into the room.

That’s when Rich felt the footsteps behind him.

He turned, but too late. Something smashed into his back, driving his head into the unforgiving wall. As he fell, he had a glimpse of a man racing past — long black beard, white wife-beater, green baseball cap.

The man carried a hatchet.

By the time Rich hit the floor, the bearded man had closed in on Bobby. Bobby saw the man coming and turned to fire. The hatchet slid through the air.

Two shots, so close together they sounded like one.

The hatchet hit Bobby on the right side of his neck and drove down into his sternum. Rich would never forget that sound, that whiff-crunch sound of the blade digging home.

Rich scrambled to his knees. He raised his gun and fired, pop-pop, but watery eyes and wobbly hands threw off his aim. The bearded man gripped Bobby’s shoulders and turned fast, putting Bobby’s back toward Rich.

The tip of the hatchet stuck out between his partner’s shoulder blades.

That cut his heart in half.

The man yanked the hatchet free and stepped backward into the room, grabbing Bobby’s gun as he did.

Rich couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

Bobby’s right arm hung down low, swinging sickly from the gaping wound as if it had no bones at all. He took a single, short, staggering step, then his legs gave out. He fell face-first. Rich saw blood pour out of him, spreading across the wood floor.

That cut Bobby’s heart in half. You can’t help him. Get out. Get out. Get back up.

Rich found his feet under him, found himself backpedaling, right hand pointing his gun, left hand grabbing his radio.

“Eleven ninety-nine! Eleven ninety-nine! Officer down! Officer down at nine-twenty-nine Pacific, get me some fucking help, now!”

He backed out of the door and into the evening air.