Pacific Beat

Chapter 29

The first thing Weir saw as he opened the door to Ken Robbins’s office was the gray, sweating, unhappy face of Brian Dennison. The chiefs eyebrows went up in tired astonishment when he saw Jim, and he stopped talking, mid-sentence. Robbins, behind his desk, with his hands crossed over his stomach, looked exhausted. Raymond, yanked from duty and still in uniform, wore the expression of a beaten dog.

“Have a seat, Jim,” Robbins finally said. “We were just talking about... well... Brian, maybe you should put your cards on the table.”

Weir sat. Dennison scooted back to face him better. Raymond sent a stubborn look his way.

Dennison poked a thick finger into Weir’s chest. “I think Becky Flynn is manufacturing a smear against Dave Cantrell. That press conference of hers was a self-serving circle jerk. She’s making all sorts of wild suggestions to fuck over the anti-proposition people.”

“She’s doing a pretty good job on you, too,” said Weir.

“Well, she’s sure not doing it alone,” said Dennison.

“I’m working for her, like I told you.”

“Who tipped you to the Sweetheart Deal?”

“I did,” said Raymond. “It was my idea. We were looking for Ann’s journal, and it was the one place we hadn’t checked.”

Dennison didn’t miss a beat. “And all these letters from Mr. Night were just sitting there waiting for you?”

Jim wasn’t sure where Dennison was going, but he now understood that the same printer had been used on the letter that was sent to Raymond. “They were stuffed down inside the engine compartment, wrapped in plastic.”

“Becky didn’t suggest you look there, did she?”

“No.” Weir looked again at Robbins, who was following the dialogue without expression. “Becky never said a word about Sweetheart Deal.”

Dennison shook his head in disgust. “You know, Innelman traced the roses to Cheverton long before you did. Cantrell launched an internal investigation that afternoon.”

“What did he come up with?”

Dennison waved through Jim like a salesman overcoming objections. “Twenty-five hundred employees come and go out of the PacifiCo Tower every day. Any one of them could have gotten that number, and you know it. When Cantrell finds out who, Becky Flynn’s going to take a bath. Tell me this, Jim — whose idea was it to call the goddamned Petal Pusher in LA? Becky Flynn think of that, too?”

“I think it was Mom who called.”

“That’s a distinction without a difference.” Dennison sat back, shook his head, then leaned his face into Jim’s. “Now Becky wants to defend Horton Goins... for free. Isn’t that just fucking sweet?”

“Goins doesn’t have any money.”

Dennison exhaled through his nose, a short, bullish snort. His eyes were hard and eager. “Generous,” he said. “I got some little white printouts with lots of numbers on them from Pac Bell, Weir. Becky’s first call to the Goinses came on May twenty-first, the day before she announced she was taking on the... case. That was placed from Becky’s home, not her office. And they got calls from your number on May twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-third. Explain.”

Weir hadn’t called the Goinses. It could only have been Virginia. “I can’t.”

“Explain this, Weir — your mother was sitting in the Goinses’ goddamned living room when Innelman went over with the tie tack. Want to tell me why you and Becky and Virginia are all of a sudden so cozy with the prime suspect in your sister’s murder?”

Weir tried to track the logic, but it wouldn’t come. Becky’s calls were understandable; Virginia’s weren’t. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t either, and Poon’s Locker has been closed all day. Where is Virginia?”

“No idea.”

Dennison stared at Jim but said nothing for a long moment. “We’ve seen the video. Cantrell reported that tack stolen a month ago, with a bunch of other things out of his beach house. I’ve got forms downtown to prove it. He’s on the level, Weir. He’s being set up — and you’re being used to do it.”

Jim nodded along, took the Baggie from his shirt pocket and set it on Ken Robbins’s desk. “If it matches the stamp, I’ve got our killer.”

Dennison swiped it up, squinted at the hair inside, then tossed it back to Jim. “You’re not going to use a county facility or county employees for this campaign of yours. You have absolutely no authority here, nothing you have could ever be admissible, and I flatly repudiate any connection you might have had to the Newport Beach PD. If there was any chain of custody to begin with, you fucked it up by getting involved. I offered you a job, Weir, a way to do all this by the book, and you told me to stuff it. Jim — lay off, get out, and, for chrissakes, save your own ass. It’s over.”

The chief looked at Robbins, who shrugged.

“He’s right, Jim,” he said. “I can’t help you anymore.”

Weir set the bag on Robbins’s desk again, along with the glossy of Horton Goins. Robbins slowly shook his head.

Dennison slammed his fist down as a fresh gust of anger blew into his face. “And I know about the damned garage-door opener you guys checked out of evidence this morning. Now the chain of custody runs through the victim’s husband. I’ll file an obstruction charge for that, if I have to.”

Raymond looked steadfastly at the floor. Robbins sighed.

But Dennison wasn’t done. “Again, where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d find out, if I were you.”

The only way through Dennison, Weir saw, was around him. Percy might listen. If not Percy, then his boss, D’Alba. If not the DA himself, then federal prosecutors. They’d be more than happy to talk to Marge Buzzard, who could lead them to “Smith,” Blodgett, Cantrell, Ann, Mr. Night. No threats now, he thought. No tipping of the hand. He was alone here and he knew it. Raymond sat, neutralized between his suspicion and his career.

The phone rang. Robbins passed it to Dennison, who listened for a moment without speaking.

When he did talk, his voice was tight, low-pitched. Then a fresh rush of blood brought color to his gray face. “Where? You’re positive? Don’t touch anything. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Get Innelman and make sure Paris knows.”

He gave the phone back to Robbins and stood. A taught smile crossed his face, aimed first at Raymond, then at Weir. “Okay, Weir — you want to know everything? You want to solve this case on your own? Get your ass up and follow me if you think you can handle the truth.”

Empire Plating was a smog-choked fifteen-minute drive from the county buildings back to east Newport. Jim pulled up behind Dennison to a big building in the industrial zone, just half a mile from Cheverton Sewer & Septic. Ray brought up the rear.

They followed Dennison through the front door, down a hallway, and into the shop. It was a massive high bay, with huge blowers that sent a breeze across the expanse, and hanging fluorescent tubes that did little to dispel the dismal industrial gloom of the interior. The dip pits ringed the perimeter — silver, chrome, brass — each a roiling storm of steam, vapors, and molten liquid metal. The heat was profound. The workers had been herded along one wall. Weir could see them loitering, drinking coffee, and smoking, eyeing them as they headed for a far corner. He couldn’t keep his thoughts away from Virginia.

Three Newport PD uniforms, arms crossed and strangely reverent, stood back from a dip pit that Weir could see was boiling furiously with what looked like silver. Mike Paris stood apart, gazing in. A few feet away lay a body covered by a yellow plastic tarp.

Paris said something into Dennison’s ear, then nodded briefly to Raymond and Jim, then to the long steel workbench beside the dipping pit. “Must have been in here since morning. No one needed this silver until noon, but when they uncovered the pool, they saw it. Foreman told me it’s twelve hundred degrees, so... well, you’ll see. Note’s on the bench over there, under the shoe.”

Dennison motioned toward the body, and the sergeant nodded at his officers. They pulled back the tarp and stood aside, each looking up and away in a different direction.

Weir had never guessed that something so inhuman could be so definitely human. The silver had stripped the fat and most of the flesh away, leaving in their place an oozing patina of bright metal. The eyes were pools of solid silver. The face was a bright, shrunken mask that followed more closely the contours of a skull than a face: no mouth or ears or nose, just the two high rises of cheekbones, a jut of chin, the prominence of what was once brow and forehead. The body was little more than a twisted relic of silver-black in the shape of a man. Only his athletic shoes had survived the furious metal — they were plated smoothly in shining silver, like something to be worn on a moon walk.

He caught his breath and followed Dennison to the workbench. The note was held down by a red espadrille, which Weir recognized immediately as Ann’s. The note was handwritten, and easy to read over Dennison’s shoulder:

Dennison regarded Raymond, then Jim. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ray. I’m goddamned sorry about everything. Take the day. Go home. Get drunk or something.”

But Raymond had already turned away and was heading out of the high bay. Jim caught up with him out in the parking lot by Raymond’s old station wagon. His chin was trembling and droplets of sweat covered his forehead. “Too goddamned convenient,” he said. “For Dennison, Cantrell, everybody but Horton Goins. Christ, did you see...”

Jim felt the outrage building up inside himself, a sharp, specific anger. Cool down, he thought; you must have a clear head for what is to come. “We’ve got options, Ray. We’ve got evidence against Cantrell, and a DA who isn’t stupid. We’re not out of this yet — not by a long shot.”

“The case is closed.”

“Theirs is. Ours isn’t.”

Raymond wiped his brown with his palm, took a deep breath, and sighed heavily. “Let it be Goins. That’s okay. It can be Goins.”

Weir grabbed Raymond by his shoulders, shook him hard, and pushed him back against the car. “It wasn’t Goins and you know it. We need a way into Cantrell’s beach house. We need a scene out front, so I can get into the garage. Now listen. Get into your car, go down to the PCH bridge, and pick up Mackie. Meet me on the boulevard, a block north of Cantrell’s house in one hour.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got a stop to make in Costa Mesa.”

“Hi, Mr. Weird,” said Edith Goins. She tenderly dabbed an eye with a wadded tissue.

“Hello, Edith. May I come in?”

She left the door open and Jim stepped in. Emmett was sitting in his usual place in his usual black robe, hosted by the shadows. There was a box of Kleenex on his lap.

Jim sat down on the couch and listened to Edith sniffle. “I’m sorry for you,” he said. “You two have been through... an awful lot.”

Jim’s sympathy brought a fresh rush of tears from Edith. “I feel like we failed. Like we raised a man who killed two girls, then himself. I can’t... can’t explain how disappointed I am. I thought he was going to be all right. Mr. Weird — I’m so sorry for what Horton did to your sister.”

“He didn’t kill her, Edith.”

For the next five minutes, Jim used all his powers of persuasion to convince the Goinses that their son had been falsely accused. Slowly, Edith’s tears subsided and she leaned forward to receive every word he spoke. She was nodding in agreement as Jim described the political struggle in Newport, Cantrell and Ann, Horton’s as-yet inexplicable haunting of his sister.

“Well, I might believe all that,” said Edith, “as a balm to my grieving soul — but what can we do about it now? We know better than to tangle with those big boys out here.”

“First, you can tell me what Mom wanted from you, the last time she came out here.”

“Don’t you talk to your own ma?” asked Edith.

“She wasn’t too willing to talk about the visit. She knew I’d be seeing you — helping with Horton’s defense — so maybe she just figured—”

“Thanks, by the way, for not charging us no money. We’re just about broke. That nine hundred a month for Clozaril about breaks us. Ain’t been here long enough for Medi-Cal.”

“You’re welcome. Now, why was she here?”

Edith lit a long brown cigarette, inhaled mightily, blew out the smoke. “She was mostly curious about Horton. Who he was with before us.”

“And?”

“Alls we ever knew was Horton was on a farm up to Dayton area, and his mom didn’t want him no more. Horton wouldn’t have anything to do with the pigs, or something like that. His dad was paralyzed, in a wheelchair, they said, and Horton was too much for them. They had four other adoptions, if I remember right. The mom had ‘inappropriate behavior’ with Horton, whatever that was. I told your mom all this.”

Weir tried to imagine what Virginia was after. “What else did you talk about?”

Edith wiped her eyes again. There was a wonderful femininity to it.

“Lucy,” she said.

“Lucy in Hardin County?”

“That’s right. Lucy Galen, that Horton attacked in the swamp.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just that, and the fact that Lucy was in the Manor View sanitarium last we knew. That was eight years back, though.”

Emmet moved in the shadows. “You know something? I don’t think Horton kilt your sister.”

“How come, Em?”

“He was too happy. He loved it here in California. He didn’t have any of the anger he did when he was little. It was the drugs, maybe, but those are good drugs they gave him. I mean, the police is usually right about this kind of thing, but I don’t believe Horton did it. I just don’t.”

Jim waited a moment. “Mom’s been gone a day now. She didn’t tell me where she was going. Did she give any hint to you where—”

“Not to me, she didn’t,” said Edith. “Your mom don’t say much; she just asks questions and listens hard. She doesn’t exactly converse in the normal sense. She wanted some old pictures of Horton, so we gave her a batch. She said she’d return them.”

Weir couldn’t track Virginia with his logic, and his imagination wasn’t up to it, either. The more he turned it over, the less good it seemed to do.

He sat with Edith and Emmett a few more minutes, checked his watch, then offered his condolences again and left.

He stopped at a pay phone on Harbor, called Peninsula Travel, and asked for Trish. Trish had sent the Weir family on vacations for as long as Jim could remember. At the funeral gathering, she had worn a hat with black silk flowers sewed to the crown, one of which had fallen off in the punch bowl.

Trish confirmed that Virginia had flown from LAX to Dayton, Ohio, last night at 9:00 P.M. Stopover in Chicago, one-way, no-return flight booked.

“I was hoping she had a man to see,” said Trish. “She told me this trip was a secret.”

“It’s safe with me,” said Weir. “Thanks.”

He hung up, fished out the right change, called PacifiCo Towers, and asked for C. David Cantrell. Three different secretaries moved his call along. A few seconds passed, then Cantrell was on the line.

“This is Jim Weir.”

“Yes.”

“Nice work on Goins. His parents are sitting in a rotten little apartment in Costa Mesa, wondering what they did wrong. I know you did it.”

Cantrell was silent for a moment, then he hung up.

Thirty minutes later, Weir was sitting in the back of Raymond’s patrol car, one block away from Cantrell’s beach house. Mackie Ruff was up front with Raymond, his profile visible to Weir through the mesh partition. Mackie repeated his instructions back to Ray for the third time: Come down the sidewalk, go right to the front door of Cantrell’s house, knock, and if I don’t get an answer, start pounding on the thing. When the security goons come running, make a scene. Any kind of scene, just make one for about a minute. Then walk away. At exactly five-eighteen, come back and do it all again. “How’s that?” he asked.

“Perfect,” said Ray. “Go.”

“I get to keep this fancy synchro watch?”

“You’ll get more than the watch, Mackie. Go.”

When Mackie had taken a shot of courage from a vodka bottle in his oversized coat and gotten aimed in the proper direction down the sidewalk, Weir joined Raymond in the front of the car. The garage-door opener was in his hand. Across his lap lay a briefcase containing the basics: Becky’s video recorder, a flashlight, wire cutters, latex gloves, a slim-jim, and a copy of the day’s newspaper. Raymond drove slowly down the alley. Weir slipped down again into the foot space. He felt the car roll to a stop and watched Raymond shift it into park.

“I can see both security cars, Jim. Both the goons are eyeing me. I’m going to stay here for a minute, write up a report. When I see them move, I’ll tell you.”

“I’m ready.”

“I’ll be behind the garage at five-eighteen. Until then, all I can do is cruise, so you’re on your own. If I see security decide to go inside for a look around, I’ll honk twice and meet you here.”

The engine idled. Raymond scribbled something in his Citation Book, looking up every few seconds.

“Contact,” he said. “One goon out, heading for the front. Goon two is on the radio. Like clockwork, Jim — there he goes. Hold on now...”

Weir took hold of the briefcase handle and tried to get his legs up under him as best he could.

“Go,” said Raymond, and Weir went.

Ten feet from the garage door, he hit the control button and the door started up. How long to take out the alarm, he thought, a minute, thirty seconds? Briefcase in hand, heart in his throat, he walked calmly into the open garage and hit the Close button on the overhead switch. When the door was down, he went to work with the slim-jim. The lock was an ancient single-slide that wiggled open in less than twenty seconds. Inside, Jim found the security system and cut the wires. A silent job, he thought, probably plugged straight into PacifiCo security and the Newport cops. His breath was coming short and fast; he could feel a wash of sweat working down his back. He put on the latex gloves and stepped back out to the garage.

Standard in all respects, he thought: no windows, a big old toolbox sitting along the plasterboard wall, garden implements hanging from hooks, a workbench with power tools neatly boxed at the far end, a stain of oil on the concrete floor, a lawn mower and gas can in one corner, two bicycles propped against the house, one trash can beside them. Calm. Calm. Calm. He pulled off the lid and looked inside — some empty deli containers, a few soft-drink cans, and, nicely, an empty bottle of Cristal champagne. He swung the camera into place, set the Times against the door, and took an establishing shot. At the end of it, he lowered the camera over the top of the trash can and got the champagne. How I’d love to print that bottle, he thought. He checked his watch: 4:20. Fifty-eight minutes to exit time.

He shot the kitchen and found nothing. There was no carving block on the counter, and no carving knives in the drawers. Cleared out? How did he trim the barbecue steaks, slice the bread?

He skipped the big living room downstairs and climbed slowly to the second floor. He could hear Mackie Ruff on the porch, arguing in his shrill voice that C. David Cantrell owes something to the homeless. The security men were trying to talk him down, but Mackie was turning up the juice.

He made the landing and checked the first two rooms off the hall: neat, unused, unpromising. The third was the master suite, consisting of a large bedroom that opened onto an enclosed deck outfitted as an office. There was room on the desk for a word processor, but Cantrell didn’t have one. Why not? Jim stood for a moment in the middle of the room, listening to the ocean rumble to shore outside. I made love to your wife, Ann Cruz, in a lovely room overlooking the sea. The bed was to his right. He studied the fluffy comforter, the pillows, the polished mahogany four-poster. Because it was not satisfying in all the ways I require, I struck her twenty-seven times with a Kentucky Homestead kitchen knife (freshly sharpened six-inch blade). The pillowcases were light blue with little sailboats on them. For a moment, he understood why Raymond wanted to kill this man. I understand, Raymond. I understand. But that’s not the way it’s going to go down. He checked the drawers of both nightstands. The usual. He stood up and shot the room and the newspaper. It was 4:30.

Jim moved across the carpet to the office. He sat down in the wooden chair, which rolled with difficulty on the thick Berber. Idea. To the right of the desk, he found what he was looking for: four indentations still clearly left in the weave of the carpet, indentations left by wide rollers bearing weight. A computer stand? He shot the carpet, aware that the marks probably wouldn’t show up on the tape.

He set the camera on the floor, then opened the top drawer of the desk. Neat. Cantrell was orderly, even in his home office: boxed paper clips, a roll of stamps — T. S. Eliot — pencils and an electric sharpener, a small cardboard box containing keys of various purpose, all with labels attached by safety pin — “front door spare,” “Mercedes trunk,” “Christy’s footlocker,” “garage door,” “gate padlock.” A Smith .357 K-frame wrapped in an oiled cloth sat behind a box of shells. Jim opened the box: six shells missing from their holes. He could see the lead tips inside the cylinders of the revolver. Hoisting up the camera, he filmed the drawer, closed it, and moved to the next.

He remembered Robbins’s words: and speaking of trophies, I’ll bet he’s kept something of hers from that night, besides the flowers. He thinks he loved her. According to his definition, maybe he did. Something besides Ann’s red shoe, he thought. Something else. Something more. Something personal.

But the desk offered him nothing. Neither did the closets, the dresser drawers, the guest rooms, the living room, the kitchen, or the garage. He sat for a moment at the dining room table, looking in the fading light at the china cabinet to his left, then the sofa, the curtained window that opened out to a small patio. She was my angel, and finally, my anguish. It was 4:50.

Jim tried to concentrate. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. A skylight above him admitted the kind of light that illuminates dreams. What does a man do, he wondered, who claims he is being framed?

He searches for the planted evidence.

When he’s “found” it?

He destroys it.

No. He hides it. He can’t destroy it because it frames the framer — so he believes. He keeps it for that alleged purpose, for the day he will prove his innocence.

But I know there’s another reason you keep it, David, you keep it because there is no frame, other than the one you hung on a kid named Horton Goins. You keep it because you want to be close to her. So much that you’d risk having her things. Something you can smell, touch, behold. Somewhere safe, but easy to get to.

He combed through the kitchen drawers and cupboards, took out the pots and pans and put them back, checked the cabinet above the refrigerator, behind the cereal, took out the boxes of extra wineglasses, dug his way down into the appliance cupboard around the blender, popcorn maker, espresso machine, juicer. He looked in the freezer, the vegetable bin, under the sink, inside the trash compactor and dishwasher, put his gloved hand into the garbage disposal, stood on a chair and looked inside the light fixture.

Then into the living room, the same frantic attention to detail, sweat dripping down into his eyes: inside the big Chinese vase in one corner, under the sofa cushions, beneath the sphagnum moss in the fern pot, everywhere he could think to look, everywhere he could see, every angle that would accommodate an arm, a hand, a line of sight.

He climbed the stairs again two at a time, checking his watch: 5:00.

It was more of an attack than a search: both dressers, the desk again, the bathroom, the enclosed patio, the closets — up on the top shelves through the boxes and folded sweaters; down on the bottom through the shoes — under the bed and under the pillows, his eyes burning, his shirt clinging with sweat, his hands scalding inside the latex gloves. And everything, to the best of his ability, back the way he had found it.

He stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard, looking again at the bed where Ann had spent her stolen hours, where she had unwittingly conspired to bring her life to its sudden brutal end.

Where?

Here, but not here, he thought. On the property, but not on his property. He checked his watch again: 5:10. A car pulled up in the alley and Jim peeped from behind the blind. Looking down, he could see the light bar, the PacifiCo emblem on the driver’s side door, the shotgun upright against the dash. It stopped. Weir could see the guard gazing casually toward the garage, then lift his face for a look at the second story. Tough old face, he thought: retired cop. Jim watched as the guard got out, shut the door, and walked toward the house.

Idea: Cantrell uses. He used Ann. He used Goins. Always someone else. Who else would he use? Someone close. His wife.

Christy.

Christy’s footlocker.

It was 5:14.

He moved across the room, away from the window, and found the key in the desk drawer. Outside, the security car still idled. Jim went to the window and looked out again. The guard was back in his car. On the radio? Hard to tell. Writing down something? Lighting a smoke?

Weir ran downstairs, through the kitchen and into the garage. He could hear the engine of the security car just twenty feet away, the proficient idle and the hiss of the air conditioner. Raymond would cruise by in another two minutes.

Christy’s big trunk sat on the floor beside a heavy steel tool chest. The lock was rusty and the key went in with a rasp that continued through Jim’s fingers and up his arms. Scrapbooks, stuffed animals, dried flowers, and photo albums were all arranged neatly in the top tray. Jim pried through them, then lifted out the section and set it on the floor beside him. He heard the car door open again, then saw the dark shoe soles of the guard as he walked the length of the garage door. Weir wiped his face against the shoulder of his shirt, and started emptying the chest. The shoes moved back the other direction, stopped, then came again.

Did he call in?

The goons are back in place by now. They won’t make contact with this guy. Where’s Ray?

Be cool. It’s here. It’s here. You will find it...

A bright orange ember hit the asphalt just beyond the door. Jim watched the shoe snuff it, then disappear. The car door opened and shut. He heard another car approach, surely Raymond’s. Voices outside now: the old man and Raymond in a “them and us” chitchat. Get rid of the old bastard — but not for another minute or two.

He didn’t find it until the trunk was completely empty. It was the last thing there, in the last place he looked — as all things are — sitting in the far bottom corner, under fifty pounds of a woman’s memorabilia. He lifted it, retrieved the wallet, and flipped past the credit cards to the driver’s license — the unflattering DMV mug that made her look like someone being booked on a felony rap. Ann’s purse. Ann’s wallet. Ann’s picture. It was a dressy little thing, made out of white satin, with a gold chain. The satin was splattered with blood; the chain was clogged with it. It looked like it had just been born. The twelfth rose was worked through one of the links of the chain.

He filmed it atop the newspaper, date visible, the rubber eyepiece slick against his eye. When he had put it back into the trunk, he loaded in the rest of the things, then set the latch in place and locked it shut.

He sat back against the wall and listened to the idling of the security car. His body ached anew and he closed his eyes for a moment and saw himself hanging from the ceiling of the deserted building, looking up at his boots inside the hangman’s noose. His ears were ringing and he could smell his own sour breath.

Then one of the cars outside clunked into gear and Jim heard the tires moving on the asphalt. Raymond said goodbye, have a nice evening. A shadow crossed the space beneath the door, then was gone.

He ran back into the house, up the stairs, and returned the key to Christy’s footlocker to its place in Cantrell’s desk. It was 5:20.

For a moment, he stood in the living room, trying to imagine anything he’d left undone, anything he’d left out of place.

Mackie Ruffs voice shot through the door, “The homeless shall not be denied!” The goons were talking back.

In the entryway, he spliced the alarm wires back together and shoved them back inside the plastic housing. “You can tell that God loves the poor because he made so many of us!”

Jim locked the door behind him, pressed the garage-door opener, and moved across the alley in the gathering evening, toward Raymond’s waiting car. He tossed the briefcase through the open front window, then dodged off into the alley. Raymond nodded and gave him the thumbs-up.

A few minutes later, Weir was standing on the boulevard, deep in the lengthening shadow of a wisteria hedge. His knees were shaking. The patrol car came toward him slowly and stopped. Jim climbed in beside Raymond and turned back to look at Ruff.

Mackie’s red face was beaming, his eyes large with excitement. “Great way to make a living,” he said. “You guys need a few good men?”