“Well, we’re out of it,” Nietfeldt says.
They approach the raw brown hills just below the city, on one of which letters spell out the announcement:
SOUTH
SAN FRANCISCO
THE INDUSTRIAL CITY
Nietfeldt remembers when the letters were whitewashed onto the hill, surrounded by colorful wildflowers. The idea was to give the sign the look of a sampler that had been embroidered by some old industrial granny, patient in her industrial rocker. He remembers it aloud, as usual. Langmo looks out the passenger side window and surreptitiously rolls his eyes. Now the letters are of poured concrete, concludes Nietfeldt. As usual. Five feet high.
They round a curve and suddenly the manufacturing and warehouse topography on their right drops away and the bay is brilliant there. Up ahead is Candlestick, not so brilliant. Hereabouts the radio burbles, and Langmo grabs it. Turns out they’re back in it. Code Three call. Exit 101 at Army and wait at Army and South Van Ness.
They ease to the curb at a bus stop before a low-rise housing project. An old armchair with one broken leg sits propped up on the sidewalk, and a man in faded fatigues sleeps in it, a near-empty bottle of Cisco (“Takes You by Surprise”) cradled in his arms. Langmo radios in their position.
Soon they see the Ford rolling down the hill toward them, stopping for the light at Mission, signaling a right turn. Nietfeldt pulls into traffic, turns left onto Mission, and eases up to the curb outside Cesar’s Palace, a nightclub. Langmo begins to drum softly, a Latin-type beat, on the dashboard.
“Ever been here?” he asks. Nietfeldt just looks at him.
The Ford draws abreast of them and comes to a stop. Nietfeldt feels the hair prickle up on the back of his neck. The last thing he wants is to be shot sitting in his car outside a Mexican dance hall. He hazards a quick look out his window. Susan Rorvik is talking and sipping from a straw stuck in a big paper cup. The cup says “COLD Drink,” and icicles have formed on the letters of the word COLD. Brrrr. Abruptly the car turns left onto a narrow side street. Precita.
“Jesus,” says Langmo, “that’s a one-way street.”
“Once a cop,” says Nietfeldt. Langmo was an Oakland patrolman for three years before joining the Bureau.
“After them!” says Langmo, affecting a theatrical baritone.
They radio in the Ford’s position and proceed cautiously up Precita. Shortly they arrive at a narrow wedge of park that effectively forks the road, but they can see the Ford, still pointed in the wrong direction, parked up ahead and to the left on Precita.
“Dumb-ass,” says Nietfeldt. He takes the right fork, intending to turn around so that he’s traveling with the traffic, but this turns out to be a mistake, and they wind through the hilly streets of Bernal Heights for a few minutes, looking to pick up Precita again, turning left onto it just in time to see the Ford finish executing a broken U-turn and head back the way it had come. The unidentified man still drives, but he’s alone now.
“She lives here,” says Nietfeldt confidently. 200 block. He picks up the radio; let someone else chase the Ford for a while. Lazy S. is here. Herself: right here.
10 p.m.
“Ever figure out your secret name?” asks Nietfeldt. He holds a burrito in both hands, its lower half wrapped in a thin sheet of aluminum foil. A strawberry drink sits before him on the dash.
“What’s that?”
“Take your middle name and the street you lived on last. That’s your secret name.” He takes a bite and chews, nodding. “Or it can be your confirmation name plus the street you grew up on. But I like it the other way. It changes more often.”
“What the hell do you do it for?” Langmo eats like a ravening beast, and his supper is long gone, the aluminum sheet stuffed into the empty paper cup on the floor. Nietfeldt eats slowly, partly from habit, partly to irritate his partner.
“For fun, you dummy.”
“OK. What’s yours?”
“Charles Lisbon. I’m actually cheating. The very last place I lived was out on Twenty-fifth Avenue.”
“That is cheating.” Langmo is irritable.
“Never even heard of it two minutes ago and now he’s telling me the rules.”
“If that’s what it is, that’s what it is.”
“The expert.”
“Anyway, I don’t get what the problem you have with it is. Charles the Twenty-fifth. Sounds positively royal.”
“There were only two Charleses. So what’s yours then?”
Langmo drags furiously on his cigarette and stubs it out in the packed ashtray. “Xavier Moraga,” he says, finally.
Polhaus has a San Francisco map tacked to the wall and he stands before it, a ruler and a pack of felt-tip pens in his hands. Holding the ruler in place against the map, he carefully draws a yellow line around the San Bruno complex. Then he draws a red line along the 200 block of Precita. Finally, he places an orange line along the 600 block of Morse Street. This last is way the hell out there, far from Postcard San Francisco, the Outer Mission or the Ingleside or something. Not a neighborhood he knows. Agents Bockenkamp and Protzman followed the Ford from Precita to this location. Its driver went into the house at number 625, entering through the door leading to the upstairs flat. Lights were already on up there. Tentatively, they made the man as Roger Rorvik. They waited until after the lights had gone out upstairs and then called it in.
The agents wander in, looking red-eyed, vaguely unkempt, but ready for his spiel. It’s muted, but Polhaus senses anticipatory zeal in the room. They’re days away, maybe hours. It isn’t just the Rorviks trundling around. Sooner or later whoever else it is will show themselves. Nobody comes to San Francisco just to stay indoors. If they’re here, it’s because they were dying to get back into circulation. Sooner or later they’ll come out. He’s willing to bet that they’ve been biding time in one shitheel town after another, all downhill from South Canaan. His guess is that the Precita place is the central location. Hence his candy red mark on the map. He is certain. He is so certain that his plans include round-the-clock surveillance at Precita, but no check of the job site in San Bruno and only occasional drive-bys at Morse Street.
“I suggest that we at least put a team on at Morse,” says Nietfeldt.
“Somebody was already there when Roger drove up,” says Bockenkamp.
“Maybe he leaves the lights on when he goes out,” says Polhaus.
“My mom used to do that,” says Langmo. “To scare away burglars.”
“Did it work?” asks Holderness.
Polhaus ignores them. “Precita is where we need to concentrate our attention.”
“What about San Bruno?”
“We already found them. We aren’t going to lose them again.” If his logic strikes Polhaus’s subordinates as flawed, they say nothing. “Anyway, we need all the firepower we can spare. Remember what happened the last time they were cornered in a house.”
“You planning on doing that in Bernal Heights, sir?” Nietfeldt raises his eyebrows. “The whole district’ll go up.”
“Personally I would have to mark my ballot against burning down the city,” says Langmo.
“This isn’t a democracy,” says Polhaus.
“Death to the fascist insect.” Nietfeldt leans in close to Langmo and whispers this.
The surveillance takes shape, establishes its cadence. A panel truck with curtained rear windows takes up a space on Precita right near the park, earning two parking tickets. Two other cars cruise the neighborhood. Men with pushcarts selling paletas, churros. The smell of fried dough in the air. The whole scene is very agreeable to Nietfeldt. An old city boy, used to catch the J-Church not too far from here and ride it to Mission High. His father would take them to Speckmann’s for sauerbraten and stuffed cabbage rolls. Stole his first kiss in a dark doorway on Liberty Street. How ironic, how literary, is that?