Glitsky felt a small shiver at the back of his neck. "Let me ask you something else, if I may. Didn't I hear that Sam had stopped using the Patrol Specials last summer?"
She nodded. "It just didn't seem to be worth it. Mr. Panos was asking more and more. We hadn't had any kind of trouble for years and years. We talked about it, but just finally thought…"
Nat reached over and patted her hand. "It's all right," he said. "They were there that night and it didn't save him anyway, did it?"
"No," she said with great sadness. "You're right. You're right. It wasn't that."
"But my point," Abe said, "is whether they still had a key to the shop."
20
The 49ers had a good day and beat Green Bay 21-3. The tickets Roy Panos had given Dan Cuneo were at the forty-five yard line, fifteen rows off the field. Perfect seats. The sun was out and there was no wind, though it was chilly enough here at Candlestick Point that now, walking back to his car, Liz snugged up close up against him, her arm around his waist.
She felt the vibration, too. "What's that?"
"Pager," he said. He pulled the little unit off his belt. "My partner, from home."
As he held it, it vibrated again, and he sighed, smiling at her. "And here's another one."
"Mister Popularity," she said.
"That's me." But when he saw the number, his smile faded. "My boss, from his home."
He had a cell phone in his car, and he called Gerson first. The lieutenant told him that the Silverman widow had called earlier in the day, saying she had discovered some new and important information about her husband's murder. Gerson wanted Cuneo to go and talk to her. He gave him the address.
"I'm on it," Cuneo said. He hung up, turned to Liz. "Work."
Liz wore a half-mocking pout. "You don't really seem too sad about it."
"It's a big case," he said. "This Silverman thing again."
"I thought you had a suspect for that."
"We do. Maybe somebody's found where he is. That could be what this is."
"And then what?"
"And then maybe I get to make the arrest."
"All by yourself?"
Modest, he shrugged. "If I have to."
She smiled at him now. "You love what you do, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am, I sure do."
"But how do I know for sure those two calls really weren't other girlfriends?"
He turned to her in the car seat. "First, because I'm a policeman, and cops don't lie. Second, I don't have other girlfriends. I'm not even sure I have one girlfriend, to tell you the truth, although I was kind of hoping to find out about that before too long."
Smiling, she took the cue and leaned across the seat, brought her lips up to his. The kiss went on for close to a minute, and there was nothing platonic about it. When they separated, she said, "On that girlfriend question, you can say you have one if you decide you want to."
For the first time in quite a while, Cuneo was tempted to let something else come before his work. He struggled to get a breath, leaned over and kissed her again. His hand found her breast. One of her hands went to his leg. His pager went off again. The kiss ended and he groaned, pulled the pager from his belt. "Lincoln again," he said. "Would you like to call this time, make sure it's really him and not a girl?"
"That's all right," she said. "I think I believe you. Will whatever it is you're doing this afternoon take a long time?"
"It's hard to say. I don't even know what it's all about yet. But if I'm done early, I could stop by again and maybe we could…"
Her finger traced his lower lip, shutting him up. "No maybe about it," she said.
On its way back to San Francisco from the Truckee Airport, the Kamov Ka-32 helicopter thwacked its boisterous way down the Little Grand Canyon, the little-sung but majestically beautiful passage cut into the Sierra Nevada by the American River. Its two passengers, Nick Sephia and Julio Rez, were sitting strapped in behind Mikhail, their pilot. Perhaps they should have been relaxed from two nights of gambling and four women between them, but this morning Sephia's Uncle Roy had called, waking them at ten o'clock, not even five hours after Nick had paid off Trixie and finally fallen into a comalike sleep. Roy told Nick he needed them both back in the city-he was sending the Kamov back up for them. It seems they had made some mistakes and still had work to do.
Even with the windows closed, they could barely hear inside the chopper. But that didn't stop the sleep-deprived Sephia from bitching about things. "It's not like we didn't do enough these last couple of weeks. Roy's crazy to want us back in town. We ought to be lying low."
Rez shrugged.
"He told us to make it look good, didn't he? Didn't we both figure the ring would lock it up? So now he's all, 'What if somebody noticed?' Who the fuck's gonna notice? And what are we going to do about it now anyway? It's done."
Rez put a fish eye on his partner. "You shouldn't have shot Sam."
"I had to shoot him. He had us made. Me, anyway. And fuckin' Roy, stopping to admire the jewelry. He's the only reason… it's his fault as much as mine."
"Yeah, but he's getting us out of it. So we just let him work it."
"Hey, Julio. Here's a tip-he's not working it. We're working it. Maybe you didn't notice who was there with Creed, who didn't even show up for the faggots."
"Whatever. It's working. It's his plan. We just stay cool; it'll be over."
"I am cool."
Rez looked over at him, snorted. "Oh yeah, you're cool."
"Hey, who missed Holiday? And Hardy? Both of 'em. Six shots. Didn't touch either one."
Rez threw it back at him. "Who drove like shit?"
They lapsed into a sullen and angry silence. Sephia closed his eyes and crossed his arms, trying to get some more sleep. After two or three minutes of looking down into the wilderness, Rez leaned forward and put on his pair of headphones. "Hey, Mikhail!"
The pilot tilted his head. "Yah!"
"How much time we got?"
The pilot shrugged. "All we need. Shipment till tomorrow."
"You mean not till tomorrow, you dumb Polack. Why don't you swing us around?"
Mikhail didn't completely understand the complicated and unexpected request, so he turned in his seat. Rez pantomimed that he should turn the craft around and fly lower.
"Got to piss?" Mikhail asked.
Rez laughed and shook his head no. He repeated the order.
Sephia felt the lurch, the change in altitude and direction, and sat up, eyes open. "What's happening?" he yelled across to Rez, who didn't appear to hear. Sephia hit him on the arm and asked again.
"You'll see. A little fun." He pointed at his earphones. "Put them on. You're going to need 'em." Then, into his microphone, "Mikhail! Good! Down! Down! Okay, now. Slow."
The pilot put the helicopter into a steep dive, leveling off over the river, at perhaps sixty feet. The sides of the canyon rose up on both sides, towering over them. Then, suddenly, on the right, one of the canyon walls disappeared to reveal a grassy plain upon which grazed a herd of deer. Rez unstrapped his seat belt and suddenly pulled open the door. Rez tapped Mikhail on the shoulder and pointed down. "There!" he said. "There!"
He pulled a. 45 automatic from his shoulder holster and turned to smile over at Sephia. The herd of perhaps twenty head didn't seem to know what to make of the noise from above them. As a body, it made a false start, then stopped again, and huddled together. Mikhail, getting the idea, hovered over them, circling.
The. 45 fired three times in quick succession, deafening even over the noise of the prop. Rez whooped with a mad laughter as the chopper dipped and turned and he squeezed off two more rounds.
The remainder of the herd was moving now, out under the helicopter. Rez slammed his own door, crossed to Sephia's and yanked it open, slapping the gun with a yelp into his partner's hand, pointing down. The deer were right under him, forty feet below, milling in confusion.