Glitsky motioned him to move it forward, Holiday broke into a trot, and in a moment they were together, back in the shadows of the barn, but able to look out.
"Where's Hardy?" Glitsky asked.
"I don't know. I thought he might be with you."
"No." Then, "You came down here by yourself? What for?"
"I've asked myself the same question." He shrugged. "You told Gerson you were going to turn me in. I thought it would play better if you actually had me here. Maybe give you fellows something to talk about for the first minute or so."
"He might not come at all," Glitsky said.
"And if he doesn't, you'll have to take me in. I know. We've already done that once today." Holiday pulled at his mustache, maybe to keep from breaking a smile. "Well, Lieutenant, whatever way it works out, if it comes to a fight, I figure it's mine as much as anybody's. I belong in it. These boys don't play fair."
Glitsky looked him up and down, the heavy sheepskin jacket to mid-thigh. "Are you still packing, John?"
This time Holiday did break a smile. "I don't know why you want to go and ruin a perfectly fine afternoon asking a question like that. No I am not. My lawyer advised me that it was against the law and my appearance here today points to my good faith. I'd be offended if you asked to search me."
Glitsky allowed an amused grunt. "Sounds like you've been talking to Diz, all right. Did you see anybody when you were coming in here? If not, I thought we'd wait behind these partitions and let people get by us, if anybody comes. How does that sound?"
"That's your call. I'm just here to help with the fuckin'."
Glitsky frowned at the profanity, gazed out again at the no-man's-land. "If it's Gerson alone, I want to let him walk past, come out behind him alone. You wait back in here, and listen up. If we both come back to pick you up and take you downtown, I'll pat you down and it would be smart if you didn't get yourself armed between now and then." A cold smile. "Do you understand me? If you try to escape, say out the back opening there, you've got an excellent chance of getting shot. Is that clear enough?"
"It's clearer than why Hardy thinks you're a sweet guy."
Glitsky nodded. "He's notorious for being a bad judge of character." Suddenly, he narrowed his eyes, twisted his head slightly. "Did you hear that?"
Gerson eyed the length of the pier.
He squinted out along the asphalt roadway through the midday overcast. The last structures, way out there, were blurry and indistinct; the actual end of the pier seemed to fade into the gray-green water of the bay.
He hadn't slept at all last night. The business with pushing Thieu off the roof, so suddenly conceived and hurriedly executed, might have been a mistake. Not so much that he would ever be suspected of the actual murder; that had been clean enough. But the real problem was that now and forever, any thought of getting out from under Panos was completely impossible. Because naturally Wade knew about Thieu. Wade always knew. He'd called as soon as he'd heard, said he'd figured it out and appreciated the consideration, would not forget who his friends were. The death of the woman in jail had locked him in with Wade, too, of course, but that hadn't been Gerson, personally. It had been someone in the sheriff's department and all Gerson had to do was ignore it.
But Thieu was different. Not that Gerson had ever liked the self-righteous, brilliant little shit, but when he saw the nooses tightening around Nick's and Julio's necks, he should have tried some other tack first-offered Thieu money, maybe a raise or a job at the Diamond Center. Big money for mostly doing nothing. Gradually get Thieu involved in the racket.
At least Gerson might have talked to Wade and gotten a sense of things. But instead, he'd panicked.
And now here he was at Pier 70.
"Lieutenant!" Gerson turned around. He'd only come up the pier about seventy feet and somehow Glitsky was already here, had already gotten in behind him.
"Lieutenant," Gerson echoed. He stepped toward him. "I thought I asked you not to come out here. That I was bringing Holiday in."
The smile faded. "I don't see him, though, do I?" "And you might not now, if he sees you first." "He's going to see me anyway, downtown." Half turning to look around behind him, Glitsky intended the movement as cover while he reached in to get at the weapon in his shoulder holster. He was going to place this son of a bitch under arrest and let the chips fall. But a movement out in the no-man's-land completely got his attention first. Two men were double-timing toward the foot of the pier while a third was already down on one knee, arm extended. A glint of metal. Someone was aiming a gun at him.
Glitsky jerked his gun from the holster and dove hard to his left just before he heard the noise of the two shots. Formal firearms training stresses the advisability of two-shot volleys, and Glitsky was still rolling as another two shots, much closer-Gerson!-exploded behind him. Still exposed on all sides, he lay flat on his stomach, his gun extended in a two-handed grip.
Gerson, still perhaps thirty feet away-the outer limit of accuracy for a pistol shot-had turned sideways and was now advancing, presenting very little target, but Glitsky took aim at his torso and squeezed off two quick rounds, then rolled again as the return fire pinged around him. He found himself wedged into a corner where a building jutted a foot farther out than its neighbor. This sheltered him slightly from Gerson, but left him wide open from the foot of the pier, where he now clearly saw Sephia, Rez and Roy Panos drawing down on him. They'd come onto the pier itself.
He couldn't forget Gerson, approaching now under the same cover Glitsky was using from his right, but he had to get off a shot at the trio on his left or he was surely dead. He got on his feet just as other shots-a volley really- exploded and a bullet smacked the stucco six inches from his head.
Reaching around the corner of the building, he took another wild shot at Gerson then whirled in time to see that part of the volley he'd heard must have come from John Holiday in the barn. The thugs had been coming at Glitsky three abreast, almost casually now that they had him cornered, but now suddenly Roy Panos was down on the ground, rolling back and forth, screaming that he'd been hit. Sephia and Rez had scattered, pressed up against the covering building facades, at the unexpected fire.
They'd just got their vests on when they heard the first shots from back on the street and now McGuire's pickup flew in a spray of gravel across the no-man's-land and skidded to a stop at the mouth of Pier 70.
Hardy was out before they'd stopped moving, the situation clear to him at a glance. This was already a heated firelight, the smell of cordite acrid in the breeze. One man was already down, with Glitsky pinned out in the goddamned middle of nowhere. Sephia and Rez were in a couple of adjacent recessed doorways, and somebody else- Hardy didn't recognize him by sight-was beyond Glitsky, along the wall of a warehouse.
Sephia and Rez looked his way and without hesitation opened fire.
A shot ricocheted off the hood of the pickup.
McGuire, exposed on the driver's side, got down and slid across the seat, coming out with his shotgun beside Hardy, squatting behind the front tire, peering out. On the pier, another shot rang and he saw Sephia and Rez pull back.
"Who's that?" McGuire asked.
"I don't know," Hardy said. "But if he's shooting at those guys, I've got to believe he's with us."
"Yeah, but he's still shooting in our direction. What kind of shit is that?"
"That's what happens when you're all in a line."
And this, clearly, was the problem. From this angle, McGuire couldn't use his shotgun to fire at anyone this side of Glitsky, since the buckshot pattern risked hitting Glitsky beyond. By the same token, any shot of Glitsky's-or Holiday's, for that matter (though Hardy and Moses didn't know it was him)-was essentially in their direction. Somehow they needed an angle, and there was no way to get to one that wasn't immediately life-threatening.