The First Law

2

It was a Thursday evening in early November. Daylight Saving Time had ended on the previous weekend, and consequently it was full night by six o'clock. It was darker even than it might have been because the streetlights on O'Farrell Street between Stockton and Powell had not come on-perhaps they hadn't been set back for the time change.

A fifteen-knot wind was biting and blowing up from off the Bay, pushing before it the occasional large drop of what was to be the first real rainstorm of the season. Although Sam Silverman's pawnshop was located only one block south of the always-congested Union Square neighborhood, tonight-with the awful weather and deep blackness-the street out front was all but deserted.

Silverman had already locked the front door and pulled both sides of the antitheft bars on their tracks. Now all he had to do when he was ready to leave was to unlock the door again for a moment, step outside, and pull the bars so that he could padlock them together. He stood at the door inside an extra second and frowned-that hour of lost daylight always depressed him for the first week or so.

Sighing, he turned and walked back through the center aisle of his shop, reaching out and touching the treasures of other people's lives against which he'd loaned them money-guitars and saxophones and drum kits, silverware, cutlery, fine porcelain china sets, doll collections, televisions, radios, microwave ovens. Much of it bought new in a spirit of hope for the future, now most of it abandoned forever, secondhand junk without a trace of dream left in it.

At the back counter, he stopped again, struck by the display. Jewelry was by far his biggest stock item, and the watches and rings, the necklaces and earrings, though lovely, tonight seemed to hold even more pathos than the other goods. These were mostly gifts-at one time they'd been the carefully chosen expressions of love, of vows taken and lives shared. Now they were locked under the glass in a pawnshop, to be sold for a fraction of their cost, with all the human value in them lost to time and need.

He shook his head to rid himself of these somber thoughts. The start of winter always did this to him, and he'd be damned if he'd give in to it. Maybe he was getting that sickness where you got sad all the time when the weather sucked. But no. He'd lived in San Francisco his whole life, and God knew there had been enough opportunity that he would have caught it before now.

It was just the early darkness.

He glanced back at the front door and saw himself reflected in the glass-a small, somewhat stooped, decently dressed old Jewish man. It was black out there. Time passed during which he didn't move a muscle. When he heard the wind gust, then fade, and drops of rain just beginning to sound slowly onto the skylight overhead, he started, coming suddenly back to where he was. He looked up at the source of the noise-the skylight, covered with bars, was just a dark hole in the ceiling.

The thought crossed his mind that he wished he'd kept up his contract with Wade Panos. It would be nice on a miserable night like tonight to have one of his big and armed assistant patrol specials walk with him the two blocks around the corner to the night deposit box at Bank of America. But he and Sadie had gone over it and decided they couldn't justify the prices anymore, especially since Wade was raising them again.

While it was somewhat comforting to have the private patrol watching out for you-especially on your walks to the bank-it wasn't as though this part of the city was a magnet for violent crime anymore. Nothing like it used to be. The shop hadn't even had a window broken in over twenty years. No, the Patrol Special was a luxury he really didn't need and couldn't afford anymore. And it wasn't as though the city police didn't patrol here, too. Maybe just not as often.

Still, though, he considered calling the station and requesting an officer to walk over to the bank with him. But even if they could spare anyone, he'd have to wait here another hour or so. Maybe he just shouldn't do the errand tonight. But Thursday, after the poker game, was always his deposit night. And last night he'd made one of his biggest hauls.

He flicked on the small night-light in the jewelry cabinet. Enough with maudlin. He'd better get finished here or he'd get soaked on the way to the bank. He considered that maybe this should be the year he and Sadie pack up and buy a condo like the ones they'd looked at last summer in Palm Springs. Maybe even Scottsdale.

Although when they'd gone there in the summer a few years back, it had been way too hot. And leaving his friends here, and his synagogue-did they really want to do that? What did he think he was going to do in Palm Springs without the company of Nat Glitsky, a brother to him all these years? And Nat, with a new baby grandchild, wasn't going anywhere. Sam loved Sadie, but she was a reader-a very solitary and passionate reader-not a games person. Nat, on the other hand, loved all kinds of games-backgammon, dominoes, Scrabble, anything to do with cards. They had tournaments, for God's sake, with trophies. No, Sam didn't really want to move. He just wanted the days to be longer again.

"Fart-knocker," he said aloud to himself, shaking his head. In the back room, he went to a knee, worked the combination, swung open the door to the safe. Lifting out the old maroon leather pouch, he was struck again by the thickness of it. He unzipped the top and ran his thumb over the top edges of the bills, nearly twenty-two thousand dollars in all, more than two months' worth of the shop's earnings, even if he included what he made on his poker fees. It would be the largest deposit he'd made in years.

He zipped it back up and placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket. A last check of the shop, then he grabbed his fedora off the hat rack, pushing it down hard over his crown against the wind he'd encounter when he got outside. He turned out the lights and retraced his steps down the center aisle. Stopping a last time, he looked both ways up the street and saw nothing suspicious.

He reached for the door and pulled it open.

The plan was a simple one. Speed and efficiency. They wore heavy coats, latex gloves, and ski masks to thwart identification. None of them was to say one word before they knocked Silverman out.

The old man was holding his hat down securely on his head with one hand, pulling the door to behind him when the three men came out of hiding in the doorways on either side of his shop windows and, pulling their masks down over their faces, fell upon him. The biggest guy got the door while the other two grabbed him by the arms, covered his mouth, and manhandled him inside and back up the aisle.

In the back room, they turned the light on. But the old man had gotten his mouth free and was starting to make noise now, yelling at them, maybe getting up the nerve to give them some kind of fight, as though he had any kind of chance. But delay would mean a hassle.

And since hassle wasn't part of the plan, the big man pulled a revolver from his pocket. The old geezer was actually making a decent show of resistance, struggling, manipulating his shoulders from side to side, grunting and swearing with the exertion. Because of all the lateral movement, the first swing with the gun glanced off the side of the man's head, but it was enough to stop him, stunned by the blow. The instant was long enough.

The next swing connected with Silverman's skull and dropped him cold. He slumped into dead weight and they lowered him to the ground, where he lay unmoving.

The big man knew just what he was looking for and where it would be. In two seconds, he'd unplugged the surveillance video mounted over the office door. Five seconds later, he had the maroon leather pouch in his hands and was back on his feet. He pulled his ski mask off and threw it to the floor. His accomplices removed theirs and put them in their coat pockets. "Okay," the big man said. "Vamonos."

Leading the way, he doused the shop lights again. He was at the front door, halfway out. Somebody called out, "Guys, wait up."

The gunman stopped and turned. Waiting up wasn't in the plan. The idea was to get the money and then get out, closing the dark shop behind them. When Silverman came to, if he ever did, they'd be long gone.

"The fuck are you doing?"

Their third partner remained in the back of the shop, over the jewelry case, still glowing under its soft night-light. "He's got great stuff here. We can't just leave it."

"Yeah we can. Let's go."

The big man had the door open and was checking the street. He turned back and whispered urgently. "We don't need it. We gotta move move move."

The man in the back moved all right, but in the wrong direction. Now he was behind the counter, pulling at the glass, trying to lift it up. "He's gotta have a key somewhere. Maybe it's on him."

At the door. "Fuck it! Come on, come on."

His partner pulled again at the countertop.

A noise in the street. "Shit. People."

The two men up front ducked to the side below the windows as two couples walked past the shop. Directly in front of the door, they stopped. Their voices filled the shop. Would they never move on? Sweat broke on the big man's forehead and he wiped it with the back of his hand.

He pulled the revolver from his pocket.

Other people joined up with the first group and they all started walking again, laughing.

The big man looked out. The street seemed clear. But at the back counter, his partner was holding something up now-a key?-and fitting it to a lock.

"Jesus Christ! There's no time for-"

When suddenly he was proven right. Whatever it might have been, there wasn't going to be time for it.

Silverman must have come to and had a button he could push in the back room. The whole world lit up with light and the awful, continuous screaming ring of the shop's alarm.

Wide-eyed in the sudden daylike brightness, the big man threw the door all the way open, yelling, "Go, go, go!" This time-the jewelry forgotten in the mad rush out-both his partners went. He was turning himself, breaking for the street, when he caught a movement off to his left. One hand to his head, blood running down his face, Silverman was on his feet, holding the side of the doorway for support.

The big man saw the shock of unmistakable recognition in the pawnbroker's face. "I, I can't believe…" Silverman stammered, then ran out of words.

Shaking his head in frustration and disgust-their good plan was all in tatters now-he stood up slowly and took three steps toward the old man, as though he planned to have a conversation with him. He did speak, but only to say, "Ah, shit, Sam."

Then he raised the gun and shot him twice in the chest.

The streetlights on O'Farrell came on as assistant patrol special Matt Creed, working Thirty-two, came around the corner a long block down on Market. Though Creed had been on the beat less than a year, when he heard the squeal of the burglar alarm and saw the two men breaking out of a storefront ahead of him on a dead run, he knew what he was seeing.

"Hey! Hold on!" he yelled into a gust, over the alarm and the wind. To his surprise, the men actually stopped long enough to look back at him. Creed yelled again and, moving forward now, reached down to clear his jacket and unholster his weapon. But he hadn't gone five steps when-

Crack!

Unmistakably, a gunshot. Brickwork shattered by his head, rained down over him. Creed ducked against the front of the nearest building. Another man broke from the door of Silverman's shop. Less than a half block separated them now, and Creed stood, stepped away from the building into the lamplight, and called again. "Hold it! Stay where you are!"

The figure stopped, whirled toward him and without any hesitation extended his arm. Creed caught a quick glint of shining steel and heard the massive report and another simultaneous ricochet. It was the first time he'd been fired at and for that moment, during which his assailant broke into a run, he half ducked again and froze.

By the time he'd recovered, raised his own weapon, and tried to level it with both shaking hands, the third man had disappeared with the other two, and there was no real opportunity to shoot. Creed broke into a full run and reached the corner in time to get a last glimpse of what seemed to be a lone fleeing shadow turning right at the next corner. Vaguely aware of pedestrians hugging the buildings on both sides of the street, he sprinted the length of the block along the cable car tracks, past the trees that incongruously sprang from the pavement near the end of the Powell Street line.

By the time he got down to the cable car turnaround at Market, it was over. There was no sign of any of them. They'd probably split up and gone in separate directions. But even if they had stayed together, which Creed would have no way of knowing, they could go in any one of six or seven directions from this intersection-streets and alleys within a half block in every direction, each a potential avenue of escape. The turnaround also marked the entrance to the subterranean BART station.

And since Creed hadn't gotten close enough to get a good look at any of them, as soon as his three men stopped running, they would look like anyone else. He had a sense that the man who'd fired at him was bigger than the other two, but that was about it.

A fresh gust of wind brought on its front edge a wall of water as the drizzle became a downpour. Creed heard the insistent keening, still, of Silverman's alarm. He took a last look down Market, but saw nothing worth pursuing. He looked down at his gun, still clenched tight in his right hand. Unexpectedly, all at once, his legs went rubbery under him.

He got to the nearest building and leaned against it. He got his gun back into its holster, buttoned the slicker over his jacket against the rain, began to jog back to Silverman's. It didn't take him a minute.

Still, the alarm pealed; the door yawned open. The shop's interior lights illuminated the street out front. Creed drew his gun again and stood to the side of the door. Raising his voice over the alarm, he called into the shop. "Is anybody in there?" He waited. Then, even louder, "Mr. Silverman?"

Remembering at last, he pulled his radio off his belt and told the dispatcher to get the regular police out here. With his gun drawn, he stepped into the light and noise of the shop. But he saw or heard nothing after catching sight of the body.

The victim might have been napping on the floor, except that the arms were splayed unnaturally out on either side of him. And a stream of brownish-red liquid flowed from under his back and pooled in a depression in the hardwood floor.

The skin on Sergeant Inspector Dan Cuneo's face had an unusual puffiness-almost as though he'd once been very fat-and it gave his features a kind of bloated, empty quality, not exactly enhanced by an undefined, wispy brown mustache that hovered under a blunt thumbprint of a nose. But his jaw was strong, his chin deeply cleft, and he had a marquee smile with perfect teeth. Tonight he wore a black ribbed turtleneck and black dress slacks. He was a professional and experienced investigator with an unfortunate arsenal of nervous habits that were not harmful either to his own or to anyone else's health. They weren't criminal or even, in most cases, socially inappropriate. Yet his partner, Lincoln Russell-a tall, lean African-American professional himself-was finding it increasingly difficult to tolerate them.

Russell worried about it. It reminded him of how he'd gotten to feel about his first wife Monica before he decided he was going to have to divorce her if he wasn't going to be forced to kill her first. She wasn't a bad person or an unsatisfactory mate, but she had this highly pitched laugh that, finally, he simply couldn't endure any longer. She'd end every sentence, every phrase almost, with a little "hee-hee," sometimes "hee-hee-hee," regardless of the topic, as though she was embarrassed at every word, every thought, every goddamned impulse to say anything that passed through her brain.

By the last few weeks of their cohabitation, Russell would often find himself in a high rage before he even got to their front door, merely in anticipation of "Hi, honey, hee-hee," and the chaste little kiss. His fists would clench.

He knew it wasn't fair of him, wasn't right. It wasn't Monica's fault. He'd even told her about how much it bothered him, asked her politely more than several times if she could maybe try to become aware of when she did it, which was all the time. And perhaps try to stop.

"I'll try, Lincoln; I really will. Hee-hee. Oh, I'm sorry. Hee.. ."

One of the things he loved most about Dierdre, his wife now of eleven years, was that she never laughed at anything.

And now his partner of six years, a damn good cop, a nice guy and the other most intimate relationship in his life, was starting to bother him the way Monica had. He thought it possible that this time it could truly drive him to violence if he couldn't get Dan to stop.

Here, on this miserable night, for example, they had been called to a homicide scene just outside the Tenderloin, some poor old bastard beaten up and shot dead. And for what? A few hundred bucks? No sign of forced entry to his shop. Nobody even tampered with the safe. Botched robbery, was Russell's initial take on it. Probably doped-up junkers too loaded to take the stuff they came for. But a tragic scene. It's looking like the guy's married forever- an old lady's picture on the desk. Kids and grandkids on the wall. Awful. Stupid, pointless and awful.

And here's his partner humming "Volare" to beat the band: humming while the young beat guy, Creed, all traumatized, is giving his statement to them; humming as he follows the crime scene photographer around snapping pictures of everything in the store; humming while the coroner's assistant is going over body damage, occasionally breaking into words in both Italian and English. "Volare, whoa-oh, cantare, oh, oh, oh, oh…"

Now it's ten-thirty. They've been here three hours. Somebody is knocking at the door and Cuneo's going over to open it, suddenly breaking into song: "Just like birds of a feather, a rainbow together we'll find."

Suddenly Russell decides he's had enough. "Dan."

"What?" Completely oblivious.

Russell holds out a flat palm, shakes his head. "Background music. Ixnay."

Cuneo looks a question, checks the figure at the door, then gets the message, nods, mercifully shuts up. The sudden silence hits Russell like a vacuum. The rain tattoos the skylight overhead.

"I'm Wade Panos, Patrol Special for this beat."

And no pussycat. Heavyset, an anvil where most people have a forehead, eyebrows like the business side of a barbecue brush. Pure black pupils in his eyes, almost like he's wearing contacts for the effect. "Mind if I come in?"

Under his trenchcoat, Panos was in uniform. In theory, Patrol Specials were supposed to personally walk their beats in uniform every day. Then again, in theory, bumblebees can't fly. But obviously Panos at least went so far as to don the garb. He looked every inch the working cop, and Cuneo opened the door all the way. "Sure."

Panos grunted some kind of thanks. He brushed directly past Cuneo and back to where Silverman's body lay zipped up in a body bag. The coroner's van was out front and in a few more moments they'd be taking the body away, but Panos went and stood by the bag, went down to a knee. "You mind if I…?"

The coroner's assistant looked the question over to Cuneo, who'd followed Panos back to the doorway. The inspector nodded okay, and the assistant zipped the thing open. Panos reached over, pulled the material for a clearer view of Silverman's face. A deep sigh escaped, and he hung his head, shaking it heavily from side to side.

"Did you know him?" Cuneo asked.

Panos didn't answer right away. He sighed again, then pulled himself up. When he turned around, the Patrol Special met Cuneo's gaze with a pained one of his own. "Long time."

To a great degree, Cuneo's nervous habits were a function of his concentration, which was intense. His mind, preoccupied with the immediate details of a crime scene or interview situation, would shift into some other trancelike state and the rest of his behavior would become literally unconscious. And the humming, or whistling, or finger-tapping, would begin.

Now Panos took up space next to Russell in the front of the shop, neither man saying much of anything, although they were standing next to one another. The body had been taken away and the crime scene people were all but finished up, packing away whatever they'd brought. Cuneo was back in the office, doing snippets of Pachelbel's Canon in D while he took another careful look around-he'd already discovered the unplugged video camera, located one of the bullet holes in the wall and extracted the slug, lifted some of his own fingerprints.

Matt Creed had finished his regular beat shift after the preliminary interview he'd had with the inspectors at Silverman's, and now he appeared again in the doorway, this time carrying a cardboard tray of paper coffee cups he'd picked up at an all-night place on Market. He paused at the sight of his boss. "Mr. Panos," he said. "Is everything all right?"

"I'd say not."

"No. I know. That's not how I meant it."

"That's all right, Creed. That coffee up for grabs?"

Creed looked down at his hands. "Yes, sir."

A couple of minutes later, the last of the crime scene people were just gone and Panos, Creed and Russell had gathered at the door to the office, in which Cuneo was now rummaging through the drawers in Silverman's desk, bagging in Ziploc as possible evidence whatever struck his fancy. He had stopped humming, though now at regular intervals he slurped his hot coffee through the hole in the top of the plastic lid, loud and annoying as a kid's last sip of milkshake through a straw.

Suddenly he looked up, the sight of other humans a mild shock. But he recovered, slurped, spoke to Panos. "You said he wasn't your client anymore?"

"No. But he'd been for a long time." Panos boosted himself onto Silverman's desk and blew at his own brew. "I had to raise my rates last summer and he couldn't hack them anymore. But ask Mr. Creed here, we still kept a lookout."

Creed nodded. "Every pass."

Cuneo moved and his folding chair creaked. "Every pass what?"

"Every pass I'd shine a light in."

"No charge," Panos put in. "Just watching out."

"But he-Silverman-wasn't paying you anymore?"

"Right."

"So then"-Cuneo came forward, his elbows on his knees-"why are you here again?"

The question perplexed and perhaps annoyed Panos. He threw his black eyes over and up to Lincoln Russell, who stood with his arms crossed against the doorsill. But Russell just shrugged.

"The incident occurred on Mr. Creed's shift, so he was obviously involved, and he was one of my men. Plus, as I say, I knew Sam, the deceased."

"But this place isn't technically in your beat? Thirty-two, isn't it?" Cuneo sucked again at his coffee.

Panos straightened up his torso and crossed his arms. "Yeah, it's Thirty-two. So what?"

Cuneo sat back in his chair. "So since the deceased is your friend and ex-client, you might know something more about this shop than your average joe off the street, isn't that right? And if you do, what do you think might have happened here?"

Panos grunted. "Let me ask you one. Did either of you or any of the crime scene people find a red leather pouch here? Maybe on Sam?"

"What leather pouch?"

Panos held his hands about eight inches apart. "About this big. Real old, maroon maybe more than red."

Cuneo glanced up and over at Russell, who shook his head. Cuneo spoke. "No pouch. What about it?"

"No pouch makes it open and shut. What this was about, I mean."

Russell spoke from the doorsill. "And what is that?"

"We're listening," Cuneo said.

Panos shifted his weight on the desk. "All right," he said. "First you should know that Thursdays was when Sam took his deposit to the bank."

"Every Thursday?" Russell asked.

Panos nodded. "Clockwork. Everybody who knew him knew that. I used to walk with him myself over to the B of A. He put the cash in this pouch. It's not here now."

"So," Cuneo butted in, "he was going to the bank tonight, and somebody who knew him decided to take the pouch?"

"Three guys," Creed corrected. "One of 'em pretty big."

"Okay, three." Cuneo hummed a long, unwavering note. "Must have been a lot of money, they were going to split it three ways."

"Might have been," Panos said. "I wouldn't know."

Cuneo indicated the surroundings. "This little place did that well?"

Panos shrugged. "Wednesday nights they played poker here."

The two inspectors shared a glance. "Who did?" Russell asked.

"Bunch of guys. It was a regular game for a lot of years. Sam took out ten bucks a hand for himself, except when he played blackjack, when he was the house."

Russell whistled softly. "Every hand?"

Panos nodded. "That was the ante. Per guy. Per hand. Ten bucks."

A silence settled while they did the math. Cuneo hummed another long note. "Big game," he said, pointing. "That's the table then."

"Right."

"We're going to need the players," Russell said. "Did he keep a list?"

"I doubt it," Panos replied. "Knowing Sam, he kept them in his head. But I might be able to find out, and you can take it from there."

"We'd appreciate that." Cuneo was making some notes on his pocket pad. "So they came in masked…"

"They weren't masked," Creed said. "Not when they came out."

"They were when they came in," Cuneo said. "Because Silverman knew them. They knew him and the setup here." He pointed to the hidden video up above. "They knew about that, for example."

Panos stopped him. "How do you know about the masks?"

Cuneo reached into his pocket and pulled out a gallon Ziploc bag into which he'd placed the one ski mask that had fallen to the floor.

"Sons of bitches," Panos said.

"Who? "Cuneo asked.

Panos's jaw was tight, his heavy brow drawn in. "It'd be a better guess once we know who was at the game."

"All right," Cuneo said, "but this is a homicide investigation. What you'll do is give us a list of players at the game and we'll work from that."

Panos nodded. "All right, but I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me in the loop. Whoever killed Sam, any way I can help you, count me in."