John Lescroart - The First Law

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.

Another couple of shots slammed into the pickup, rocking it on its wheels.

"Forty-fives," Hardy said.

"We've got to rush 'em," McGuire said. "It's the only way."

At that moment, John Holiday, perhaps coming to a similar conclusion about needing an angle, broke running from the shelter of his barn. Ten or twelve feet out into the road, he stopped abruptly, whirled, and with an almost agonizing slowness, took careful, two-handed aim at Gerson, who snapped off a shot of his own, then hit the ground himself in a continuous roll back away from Glitsky's position.

Holiday squeezed off a first shot.

"Now! Now! Now!" McGuire yelled.

More shots from the pier, but there was no time to analyze or even look at what was happening farther down there. Now it was all movement with a focus on Sephia and Rez, as McGuire, using Holiday's break as a distraction, cleared the back end of the truck. "Comin' in, Abe!" Hardy yelled and sprinted out of the truck's protection, two steps behind McGuire, both of them running full out, low to the ground.

"Go right right right!" McGuire screamed as he brought the shotgun up.

Moving out onto the pier itself now, still running, Hardy got a glimpse of Sephia hunkered down against a kind of covered doorway on the left. Moses was going to take him.

Rez was his target. He stood six feet closer toward the mouth of the pier, to Hardy's right. He raised his gun with his left hand, tried to draw a quick bead, and fired, but he hadn't reckoned on the broken bone in his hand, the immense kick of his weapon. His grip didn't have the strength it needed. The recoil knocked the gun from his grasp, sent it clattering onto the asphalt.

A deafening explosion to his left as first Sephia opened fire with everything he had, emptying his gun, while McGuire straightened up and fired first one load, then almost immediately the second. Out of the corner of his eye, Hardy saw Sephia thrown backward, glass breaking down over him as he fell slumped to the ground.

But Rez had an automatic in each hand now, both of his arms pointing straight out in front of him. He seemed to be laughing, taking aim at Hardy from no more than fifteen feet. Starting a desperate dive for his gun, Hardy was in the air when something hit him in the chest and he went down at first sideways, then over flat on his back.