The Crooked Street

43

Frost checked the hallway. No one was there.

The carpet hushed their footsteps as they hurried toward the glowing bank of capsule-shaped elevators. He kept his gun in the pocket of his jacket with his fingers curled around the butt. As they walked, he looked over the railing at the nearby floors. He didn’t like what he saw.

Six floors down, a twenty-something man lingered in the corridor on the far side of the hotel with a phone pressed to his ear. The man acted casual, as if he were simply on a late-night conference call, but his eyes moved pointedly, studying each floor. Frost tried to back out of sight, but he was too late. The man spotted him, and his stare fixed on Frost and Fawn long enough to make it clear that they were targets.

“Lombard’s here,” Frost murmured.

“Should we go back to my room?”

“No, it’s too late for that. They know where we are.”

He guided them to where an empty elevator was waiting. He went first and pulled Fawn in behind him, but he kept them far from the floor-to-ceiling window. Instead of going to the street level, he pushed the button for the atrium lobby, which was actually the third floor of the hotel. The elevator descended swiftly, and he watched the huge Eclipse sculpture looming closer.

His gun was in his hand as the lobby doors opened. He tensed, expecting a welcoming committee, but they were alone. He tucked the gun into his pocket again and led Fawn into the vast open space of the atrium. Across from the sculpture, he saw the check-in desk, where two bored hotel employees chatted. The hotel bar was directly ahead. The drunk businessmen who’d been there when he first arrived had left, but someone else was there now, casually reading a paper copy of the Chronicle, with his phone on the cushion of the chair beside him.

Frost recognized him.

It was Romeo Laredo, the muscular IT guy who’d pushed Diego Casal in front of the train. The Lombard operative with the code name Guerrero. Romeo was looking across the lobby at Frost and Fawn, as if he’d been expecting them. His face broke into a friendly grin, but there was a buzz saw hiding behind his smile. Romeo had a raincoat draped across his lap, and as Frost watched, the man’s right hand slipped under the coat. He was armed.

“This way,” Frost whispered to Fawn, pushing her toward an escalator that led down one floor to the conference center. “Quickly.”

They reached the second floor of the hotel, and he took a moment to orient himself. The solid wall in front of them rose from the downstairs ballroom, and a corridor on their left led to a series of smaller meeting rooms. When he glanced back to the top of the escalator, he saw Romeo standing there, watching them. The young man’s huge smile didn’t change. Romeo looked in both directions to make sure he was alone, and then he headed calmly down the escalator steps.

“Run,” Frost said.

He grabbed Fawn’s hand, and they sprinted along the ballroom wall toward the northeast corner of the hotel. Halfway there, the corridor turned sharply as the building narrowed to a point. Ahead of him, he could see glass doors leading outside with nothing but blackness behind them. He drew his gun into his hand, but no one was waiting for them. He shoved through the doors, and they emerged onto the top of stone steps that descended toward a cobblestone plaza on the Embarcadero. The Ferry Building was across the street, and palm trees lined the curb. Cold rain swept like a curtain into their faces.

“My car’s on Market Street,” he told her.

They splashed down the steps. He could see his Suburban at the curb under the streetlights, but his truck had company. A charcoal-gray BMW was parked beside it, and he saw Luis Moreno from the Department of Building Inspection leaning against the BMW’s door. Another of Lombard’s twenty-something army. Moreno, like Romeo, wore a casual grin and had his hands buried in the pockets of a trench coat. When he saw Frost and Fawn, he started toward them through the pouring rain.

Meanwhile, Romeo was coming for them down the plaza steps.

Frost spun around and marched the opposite way with Fawn at his hip. When they were out of sight, they ran through the outdoor shops of Embarcadero Center toward the opposite side of the hotel. It was a long block, and before they reached the other end, he heard voices shouting behind them. He couldn’t see anyone through the downpour, but he knew the two men weren’t far behind.

They emerged onto Drumm Street. The rain drowned out the noise around them. The hotel was on their left, and across the street was a series of chain stores. Subway. Starbucks. 7-Eleven. Walgreens. All closed. He pointed toward the opposite side, and they ran that way, passing under a streetlight and then reaching a darker section of the block near the deserted storefronts. There were cars parked all along the curb, including a large black van with a logo for a local coffee company. He looked back at the Embarcadero Center corridor and didn’t see Romeo or Moreno on the street yet. They only had a few seconds.

“Underneath the van,” he said. “Hurry.”

He pushed on Fawn’s shoulders, and the two of them dropped to their hands and knees and slithered under the chassis of the black van. A torrent of water flooded along the curb, soaking them. Rain dripped like waterfalls around them on every side. He held his breath. He had his gun in one hand, and his other arm was draped around Fawn’s shoulder. She huddled against him. In the darkness, he put a finger over his lips and made sure she stayed silent.

Footsteps closed in on them.

One man was on the street, and the other was on the sidewalk. They kicked through rainwater, searching the block, going back and forth. Frost heard one of them shout to the other in frustration, “Where the hell are they?”

Then silence.

“We’ve lost them!”

More running echoed through the wet street.

Then a minute later: “Call Lombard.”

Frost and Fawn waited as the footsteps receded. Ten minutes passed with no other sound. The men had vanished. He checked his watch and saw that it was after twelve thirty now. The streets around them were empty. He didn’t hear the men coming back.

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

He squeezed toward the street side of the van, then rolled free and quickly stood up. He didn’t see Luis Moreno or Romeo Laredo anywhere around them. He bent down and helped Fawn out from under the van, and then he pointed to the intersection at the corner of the hotel.

“There’s an entrance to the BART station there,” he told her. “There should be one last train to the airport in a few minutes. We’ll go there and find you another hotel until we can figure out what to do next.”

Fawn nodded her agreement. Her black hair was matted, and her face and clothes were smeared with dirt and grease, but she still had an unquenchable elegance about her. She also had a determined distance in her eyes. For now, she was with him, but as soon as their interests diverged, he knew she would be gone.

Heads down, they crossed to the hotel and walked quickly toward the corner. She held his hand, making them look like a couple out for a romantic San Francisco stroll. Where the hotel ended, they were at the arrowhead where California and Market came together, immediately in front of the terminus of the cable car tracks. He saw stairs leading into the BART underground.

“Come on, let’s get off the street before anyone spots us,” he said.

They hurried across the cobblestones and down into Embarcadero Station. The shops around them were closed and gated. The floor was wet. Every footstep they made on the white tile floor sounded loud. He went to a kiosk and bought two tickets to the last stop at the airport. There was a BART attendant behind glass near the ticket gates, and he thought about stopping to ask him to call the police. But that would give Lombard time to find them.

Frost sent Fawn through the ticket gate, and he followed. He put an arm around her waist as they headed for the deep steps that led to the trains. At the bottom, a dozen people were spread out along the southbound side of the platform, waiting for the Oakland train to emerge from its transit under the cold waters of the bay.

The platform was narrow, the ceiling was low, and the underground air was cool. There were stairs and escalators on both ends of the station, and the train tracks ran on either side. In the middle of the platform was the shiny steel housing for an elevator.

Frost took Fawn’s hand. He walked past the people waiting for the train, assessing each one. They looked innocent. He checked the electronic sign and saw that the airport train was due in fourteen minutes. He led them to a circular bench near the elevator, and they sat down next to each other to wait. Neither one of them said a word.

Five tense minutes passed that way.

More people arrived on the platform, bringing the smell of the rain and the city with them.

The train was due in nine minutes.

Eight minutes.

Seven. He began to think they were safe.

Then Frost froze. He heard boots clip-clopping on the platform steps, and they had a different, measured character compared to the noise of an ordinary passenger. He slid his hand into his jacket pocket, where his gun was. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Fawn.

It was Romeo Laredo.

The husky blond man reached the platform and spotted them. Frost and Fawn stood up. Romeo had his raincoat over his hand, but he slipped it away to reveal an automatic pistol already pointed at them across the short stretch of white tile.

The passengers around them noticed the gun. Several screamed. They began a charge toward the other end of the platform, and Frost and Fawn joined them, heading for the stairs as part of the crowd. Romeo made no motion to follow. When they neared the far steps, Frost saw why. Romeo’s partner, Luis Moreno, had already taken up position on the other end of the platform. He had a gun, too.

Moreno waved everyone else past him. They weren’t the ones he wanted. In less than a minute, everyone had fled. The platform was deserted, and it was just the four of them in the channel between the northbound and southbound tracks. The six minutes until the train arrived might as well have been forever. They had nowhere to go.

Frost had his gun in his hand. He stood next to Fawn on the yellow rumble strip at the edge of the southbound tracks, where they could see in both directions into the tunnel. Neither of the two men made any effort to get closer to them. They simply guarded both exits, preventing their escape.

“Half of the people on this platform probably just dialed 911,” Frost called to them. “The police will be here in a couple of minutes. You better leave now.”

Moreno said nothing. Neither did Romeo. Then the second man tapped a receiver in his ear and signaled to his partner. Both men got on the escalators and rode upward until they disappeared. Frost and Fawn were alone.

“What the hell’s going on?” Fawn said.

Frost shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Then he heard the mechanical whir of the elevator descending toward them. Someone was coming. He thought about taking Fawn into the tunnel, but there was no time to get away. The elevator car was already arriving. The doors were about to open in front of them.

Somehow, when they did, Frost knew he would recognize the face emerging from the other side. His enemy was no stranger.

He was right.

The elevator doors slid open, and Fox strolled onto the platform.