Stephen Knight - White Tiger

Ryker looked at Spider directly, his eyes narrowed.

“So what’s the upshot? What went down after I left?”

“They don’t get access to Zhu or any other witnesses or suspects we nab,” Spider told him. “Everything else, they get. We do keep identities private, however. Even the supervisors agreed to that one, because if it ever got out that S.F.P.D. let some names out and those folks got either whacked or mysteriously disappeared, it could put us all over the barrel.” He paused for a moment. “And Lin’s man said that Victor Chin and his lawsuits would go away.”

“Generous,” Ryker commented.

Spider shrugged.

“So how about it, Hal? You going to play ball, or what?”

“Like I get a choice?” Ryker asked.

“Sure, you get a choice. You have a choice between working homicide or Company K,” Spider told him, using the alias for Metro’s Traffic Company.

Ryker shook his head. “Lovely.”

“It does suck,” Spider acknowledged, watching a group of cops walk toward them down the hall. He nodded to them but kept silent until they had moved out of earshot, then continued. “It sucks big time, but San Francisco’s just like any other city-politics make the prime time, the rest of the action, like real police work, gets tossed into the backseat. Both Hallis and Jerko”-Ryker smiled when he heard Spider use Jericho’s nickname, something he’d never known the lieutenant use before-“want a long and storied life after they leave the department, and Lin’s obviously offering it to them. Same for the supervisors, too.”

Ryker nodded and looked at Kaplan.

“And what’s the district attorney’s interest in all of this?” he asked.

Kaplan reached up with both hands and threw her blonde hair back over her shoulders.

“Ostensibly, to make sure that things don’t get too far out of hand. If you guys agree to something that’s going to break the rules, we’re here to walk you back to sanity.” She paused. “But at the same time, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Sheffield wasn’t looking for some handouts either. He’s an elected official too, you know.” Sheffield was San Francisco’s district attorney, and Kaplan’s boss. He’d been known as a handout king for years.

“Well, looks like we’re getting it all around,” Ryker said.

“And it’s not likely to get any better,” Spider agreed. “Your guys have to work double-time on this one, Hal. Seriously.” He looked at Kaplan. “You’re attached to this one now, I take it?”

Kaplan nodded. “I’ll be representing the D.A.’s interests in this, from this point forward.”

“What do you make of the girl? Xiaohui Zhu?” Spider asked, mangling the name.

Kaplan shrugged and looked at Ryker. “If she did it, I’ll prosecute. Did she?”

“I doubt it,” Ryker admitted. “Danny Lin was a first-rate asshole, but this girl has her eye on her bank accounts, and killing Lin was no way to keep ‘em full. Speaking of which, I’d like to run a financial on her, if you don’t mind, Lou.”

Spider nodded. “Get me the form, and I’ll authorize it.”

“Will do.”

Spider checked his watch. “All right, let’s get to it. Keep Miss Kaplan in the loop as far as persons of interest go, and give the rest of your troops their details.”

“You got it,” Ryker agreed, not liking it one bit. But it was better than being sent down to the Traffic Company, he had to give it that.

But only just.

The flight from Narita to San Francisco took nine hours and seven minutes, arriving on the same day as when Manning left. As the Japan Air Lines 747–400 descended through the marine layer which shrouded the airport, Manning prepared himself, straightening up in his business class seat and slipping on his shoes. Outside the window, misty gray cloud swirled past, featureless even though the airplane was flying at more than 200 miles an hour. It touched down at half past eleven that morning, and with the wail of thrust reversers, braked to a relative crawl in less than six thousand feet.

The jet lumbered its way to the taxiway and finally came to a halt at Gate A4. Manning joined the rest of his fellow passengers in unbuckling their seatbelts and setting about to disembark. As they filed off the aircraft, Manning nodded to the flight attendants and walked down the skyway, heading to the International Arrivals Hall, where he went through the usual customs proceedings. As an American citizen with nothing to declare-and who ever declared anything, anyway? — he breezed right through. He stepped through the glass doors leading to the bright and wide arrival hall, his bag in his right hand, a light leather jacket in his left.

There was a plastic basket of mail waiting for him in the lobby of his Lombard Street apartment, as he had restarted the mail service over the internet before leaving Japan. Manning picked through it for a moment, marveling at all the credit card offers he’d received, as well as some unwanted but regrettably unavoidable correspondence from the Internal Revenue Service. Also some mail regarding the disposition of his military benefits, which he had not yet started drawing. He decided he would go through it another day; after all, it had been there for almost four months.

The apartment itself was much as he had left it: sparsely furnished, comfortable but still mostly utilitarian, devoid of any real decoration save a few pictures of the family he had once had. He ignored the photos for the moment; there would be time for that later. He dragged his suitcase into the bedroom and unpacked it quickly. The digital alarm clock on the cheap nightstand next to his king-sized bed was flashing; apparently, the apartment had lost power at some point while he was away. Manning sat on the edge of the bed and went through the process of resetting it, checking it against his watch to make sure the time was correct. He then picked up the cordless telephone and dialed his voicemail; most of the messages there were from solicitors of one variety or another. Nothing important, and nothing he decided to save.

He treated himself to a shower to clear some of the post-travel fuzziness in his mind, then pulled a pair of worn jeans from the closet and tugged them on. After that came a T-shirt, over which went a denim shirt which he tucked into his jeans. He then headed down the stairs to the single-stall garage allocated to his unit.

The 1970 Pontiac GTO was in perfect shape. It had been in almost mint condition when Manning had purchased it almost two years ago. When he had first relocated to the city, he had been driving a GMC 2500 crew cab pickup; while the rig had perhaps reflected the more austere aspects of his personality, it was hardly the easiest vehicle to navigate through the streets of San Francisco. Not that the starlight black GTO was much easier-it was almost as long as the truck had been-but at least it fit in the garage. Manning ran his fingertips along the car’s flank as he walked toward the driver’s side door; the car was a little dusty, but the wax still made the paint feel as smooth as silk. Manning smiled to himself wryly as he unlocked the door and pulled it open. Driving the Goat would be one of the pleasures of coming home.

He started the car and the garage was almost overwhelmed by the basso rumble. Manning tapped the button on the remote clipped to the passenger side sun visor, and the garage door rolled up on its tracks. As the GTO’s big 455 cubic-inch engine warmed up, Manning opened the cabinets at the rear of the bay. He pulled out his drip pan, a funnel, a new oil filter, and several quarts of oil. Once the engine had warmed up enough to loosen whatever sediment might be in the engine’s crankcase, he switched the engine off and went to work.