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He went for the safe with both hands, but at the last minute, he pressed the silent alarm, a button right under the lip of the cabinet. Then he turned the knurled knob of the safe. He knew the combination as well as he knew his own birthday, but he accidentally went past the second number and had to start over.

The kid standing closest to him put the muzzle of his gun right next to Blau’s temple and said, “You have till the count of three.

“One …”

That was when a lot of things happened at once.

The combination lock clicked into place and Blau swung the safe door open. The guys in the police Windbreakers focused on the envelopes of money inside the safe. And the front door of the shop was kicked open.

Cops swarmed in, yelling “Everyone freeze! Hands in the air!”

Blau crouched behind the counter and covered his head. He jerked with the sound of every cracking gunshot. And there were a lot of them.

“Please, God,” he prayed, “make this all stop.”

CHAPTER 33

BY THE TIME Conklin and I arrived at the Cash ’n’ Go, Market Street looked like Red Hot Sales Day at a used-car lot. I counted a dozen cruisers with every grille and cherry light flashing, two ambulances parked down the block on Sixteenth, the ME’s van pulling in, and the CSU mobile blocking the view of the store.

That must’ve been a disappointment to the many bystanders behind the barrier tape, crowding the sidewalks on both sides of the narrow street. But then a chopper appeared overhead, guaranteeing live pictures on Eyewitness News.

Windbreaker Cops Strike Again .

My partner and I left our car up on the curb between a Jilly’s Gym and the Third Hand Rose Consignment Shoppe and walked toward Swanson and Vasquez, our superstar Robbery squad partners also working this case.

They were standing outside the Cash ’n’ Go. After a couple of days canvassing the area around Mercado de Maya with them, I’d found Swanson both efficient and kind. Vasquez was easygoing, and the pair of them were very professional.

I had to admit that Brady had made a good call putting them and their four men on the Windbreaker cop detail.

Vasquez smiled, relief written all over his face, saying, “I got my witnesses in the car. Taking the Blaus back to the house to take their statements. Then I’m gonna go out with my lady and celebrate.”

After some fancy wheel work, Vasquez peeled off, and Swanson said to us, “Three John Does are down inside the store, all wearing Windbreakers, none of them breathing.”

Conklin and I followed Swanson under the tape and through the door. The interior of the Cash ’n’ Go was lined with pressed-wood paneling; counters ran at elbow height around two sides so people could sign their checks and fill out paperwork. There were a dozen metal folding chairs in the center of the store, all of which had been knocked out of line; white strips on the floor leading to three teller windows; and an open security door at the end of the room.

Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor between the chairs, blood pooling on the lino. I could see the body of a third where he had fallen across the threshold of the security door. Bullets had punched holes in the paneling, and shell casings were all over the floor.

Conklin said to Swanson, “Quite the shooting gallery. What happened exactly?”

Swanson called over one of the men on his team, Tommy Calhoun, a young guy, going bald at the back of his head, a cigarette smoker to judge by the nicotine stains on his fingers.

Calhoun gave us an animated summary of the Windbreaker cops’ attack on the check-cashing store, including the owner tapping the silent alarm.

At about the same time Blau hit the alarm, his wife was seeing the robbery in progress through the plate glass. She called it in, then flagged down a cruiser for good measure.

“The uniforms came in,” Calhoun told us excitedly, making his hands into guns. He said, “Pow-ka-pow-pow-pow.”

“I’m guessing the shooters had wallets on them,” I said.

Swanson grinned. “Wouldn’t that be nice? No wallets, but CSI just got started. We’ll know who these guys are in an hour.”

Was it over?

I was ready to exhale, I really was. I stepped around the blood and the CSIs taking pictures and stooped to get a look at one of the dead men.

He’d taken a couple of shots to the chest and one to his face through his mask—a pig mask. That was new. The Windbreaker cops on the video we’d seen were wearing plain face masks.

Then I noticed that the doer wasn’t wearing gloves. I looked over at the second man, who’d taken out half a block of folding chairs when he was shot. Same kind of pig mask. And he wasn’t wearing gloves, either.

Why had the slick gunmen we’d seen on surveillance footage changed their MO from nighttime robberies to morning, when there would be less money in the safe and more possibility that customers would enter the store?

Why had they gotten sloppy?

Swanson answered his phone, saying, “Yeah.” And “Uh-huh.”

“Amateur hour,” Conklin said to me under his breath.

“Copy that,” I said.

Swanson said into the phone, “Yeah, I think it’s a done deal, Chief. When CSU finishes up, I think you can tell the press we got the bad guys.”

I hadn’t taken Swanson for an optimist, and while I hoped he was right, I knew he was wrong. The dead men on the floor of the Cash ’n’ Go?

They were copycats.

I would bet my badge on it.

CHAPTER 34

YUKI ENTERED THE paneled and richly furnished conference room at Moorehouse and Rogers, Attorneys-at-Law.

Six of the firm’s lawyers sat around the large mahogany table, and so did the first of the two narcotics cops she had come to depose.

Inspector William Brand was stout and muscular and had a two-day-old beard. She knew from watching him on video that he had the initials WB tattooed on the side of his neck, as if they’d been burned there with a branding iron.

He smiled at her when she came into the room. Like What’s up, honey?

This was the problem with being small. And, OK, cute.

The pricey lawyers hired by the City of San Francisco introduced themselves, and hands were shaken all around. Someone offered her coffee while another pulled out a chair.

So far, all of this fit her expectations, right down to the oil paintings of the founding partners on the wall.

What she wasn’t prepared for was the knock on the door, for one of the lawyers to open it, and for Len Parisi to walk in. The floor shook a little when he crossed it, and not just because he weighed almost three hundred pounds.

Len Parisi was like a force of nature.

She’d thought he would present himself in court at the most effective moment, but clearly, her case and his hinged entirely on Whitney and Brand’s interrogation of Aaron-Rey Kordell.

She and Parisi exchanged the briefest of pleasantries, and when that was over, Yuki asked for the video to roll.

Then she said to Inspector Brand, “I’ve seen the footage of your interview of Aaron-Rey Kordell. I just need some background. What did you think his motive was to shoot those three crack dealers?”

“Motive?” said Brand. His eyebrows shot up and he pushed back a bit from the table. “It was a holdup. He wanted the money. Or the drugs. Or both.”

“And what did he have on him when he was arrested?”

“The patrolmen who nabbed him just found the gun,” said Whitney. “He either passed off the loot or it was taken offa him.”

“Kordell confirmed that?” Yuki asked.

“He denied everything,” Brand said. “And as the victims were dead, we didn’t have anything else to go on.”