Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

Nods and assorted affirmative mumbles. Tannino added, looking to City Hall for confirmation, "And the Bureau's agents are under the same orders."

"Now"-the mayor reverted to politician-"has anyone fed you boys some turkey?"

"We're fine, thank you, Mr. Mayor," Miller said.

Strauss nodded and exited, as Bear stared at Miller resentfully.

Tannino paused behind him at the door. "Someone eat a slice of the fucking fruitcake before the wife comes in." No one moved, and he sighed a tired marital sigh. "Bear, dispose of the thing, would you?"

The door slammed behind him.

Tim exhaled, relieved, and a few of the guys exchanged solemn high fives.

"Next move?" Freed asked.

"Jim, you've got a hook at Border Patrol, right?" Tim asked. "Get him on the horn. I want to know all the border-crossing data they logged on our boys at San Ysidro-Tijuana. What they were riding, plate numbers, the whole nine yards."

Bear thunked his chair back to an upright position. "What if those shitheads are decoys, like Rich said? I mean, the AT could already be here. It might be hitting the streets as we speak."

For the first time since the shooting, Guerrera spoke decisively. "I know how we can find out."

Bear looked right at home behind the wheel of his Dodge Ram, though Guerrera had to squeeze between him and Tim on the bench seat. The Sinners' clubhouse sat up the street, a sprawling monstrosity behind barbed wire. From inside came women's cackling, speaker bursts of heavy metal, and the occasional tinkle of shattering bottles.

Bear dug in the plastic gas-station bag at his feet and came out with a quart of eggnog and some Styrofoam cups. He poured, and the deputies toasted.

"Merry and happy," Bear said, the same three words he offered each year at Tim and Dray's kitchen table before wordlessly ingesting half their Christmas ham.

Guerrera added, "Y rezos para la salud de su esposa."

They drank.

A Sinner stumbled outside and hopped onto his bike, his deed mounting up behind him. They motored off. Bear raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Guerrera, but Guerrera shook his head.

"He's double-packing."

"So what?"

"If a guy's on club business, he leaves his deed behind to call lawyers and bail bondsmen in case he winds up in the clink."

A moment later a solo Sinner exited the clubhouse and drove off. Bear followed the bike at a good distance, picking up the plate and radioing Freed at the command post to have him ID the biker from the database. He came back as Fritz, a mother-chapter member of no special distinction.

"Wait till we get to that stretch of flat road up ahead." Guerrera's directives were crisp; having recovered from the post-shooting haze, he seemed emboldened. "Not yet…not yet… Now hit the siren."

Bear gave the siren a few bursts, and Fritz gradually pulled over. Tim and Guerrera waited in the Dodge while Bear searched the bike and the disaffected Sinner. Fritz offered Bear a few choice words about police intimidation and sped off. The charade over, Bear returned to the Dodge. Tim and Guerrera climbed out as he neared, each with a flashlight. Bear pulled the truck around, rolling slowly behind them and shining the headlights on the tufts of roadside chaparral to aid their search. Finally Guerrera came up with a packet of white flake. "Still looks like good old-fashioned meth to me."

Bear stuck his head out the window over the V of his elbow. "Crystal?"

"Nah. Shit chalk. We'll have to lab it, but looks like a battery-acid and cough-medicine special."

Tim pulled another few packets from where they'd landed in a tangle of elephant grass. Guerrera held the Ziploc up to the headlight's glare. "Doubt they'd be selling this shit if they had the real deal in-country. They'd get the AT on the streets ASAP."

"They can't sell both?" Bear said.

Guerrera colored, then matched the edge in Bear's tone-something Tim had not known him to do before. "Just thinking out loud."

"All we know is that they're still running meth," Tim said. "Let's get our ears to the ground, see if we can pick up if a hot new shipment's crossed the border. Right now we can't be sure."

Guerrera had already climbed in; the truck sat idling, waiting. Bear cracked a grin. "Why don't we ask the Great Mustaro?"

They pulled up to the pink-stucco apartment building and climbed out. Christmas had thinned the clusters of men around the neighboring stoops, but a few holdouts remained. Backward baseball caps and brown-bagged bottles. One of the guys flipped them off, and Bear nodded and tapped him a salute.

They climbed the stairs, reaching Lash's place at the end of the hall. Take-out menus had accumulated on the doorknob, the fallen surplus covering the mat like leaves. When Tim glanced up, Bear's face was tight. He pointed to the closed casement window. About fifteen black flies crawled along the seams, eager to get in. The breeze shifted, and Guerrera's face wrinkled.

The three deputies stood silently before the chipped door, bathed in a throw of rusty light from the flickering overhead. Eminem's fricatives were barely audible from a street boom box. They took a quiet moment. It wasn't much, but it was the most Lash was going to get.

Bear removed his pick set from his back pocket and jogged the rake and the tension wrench up from the vinyl case like cigarettes from a pack. Tim took them and went to work on the lock. The door clicked, and the three stepped in to greet the body.

They stood back out on the street, breathing the dark air. Tim couldn't recall being more relieved to turn over a crime scene to CSI. The humidity had gotten to him. And the smell. They were indistinguishable, a paste on the skin. Bear and Guerrera flapped the bottom hems of their T-shirts, airing them out. Guerrera still looked a touch queasy, but he managed a stoic facade. The local would-be hoods had come out to watch the body bag load as if the scene were a sporting-event finale. They clutched cans of beer and pointed, and in not one of their faces did Tim note fear or consternation.

Den and Kaner had taken their time with Lash, twenty-five puncture wounds in all. Judging from the seepage on the kitchen linoleum, he'd been alive for most of it; they'd wanted him to talk. Den's knife work was surgeon precise, as touted, dodging arteries and bones until the decisive nick of the femoral artery. Tim tried to take a positive from it-the torture's escalation could be read as a sign of Den and Kaner's frustration after losing Chief, Goat, and Tom-Tom. But still he felt the gnawing of a quiet, determined guilt. He, Bear, and Guerrera had found Lash, and they'd pressed him. He'd been willing-happy, even-to inform, but that almost made it worse.

Freed emerged from the building, his thin face covered with a sheen of sweat. He nodded once. "All right, then. I'll take over here. Miller's holding down the post, Thomas is wrapping up at home."

"Did Jim get us the info from Border Patrol?" Tim asked.

Freed held out his notepad. A list of vehicle descriptions and license-plate numbers. Toe-Tag, Whelp, and Diamond Dog had crossed the border on their Harleys, except on December 7 at 2:13 P.M., when Diamond Dog had gone through solo in a burgundy Toyota Camry, plate number 7CRP497.

Tim tapped the car description.

Freed's eyes widened, an amusingly green response from a veteran. "Diamond Dog's missing bike at the warehouse was a car."

"Might be. We'll take a look. Who's it registered to?"

"It's a dummy reg. Valid but under a false name."

"Our girl Babe Donovan's work at the DMV?"

"I'm guessing."

"Such a giving soul," Bear said.

Freed's pager hummed on his belt, and he tilted it out so he could read the Blue Curacao screen. "Chief's credit-card statements just hit the fax. I'll rescue Thomas from the in-laws, and we'll get on it." He hustled back to his Porsche, a seal gray Carrera GT underwritten by his family's twenty-seven-state furniture chain. "Have Sheriff's take over here, see if you can find the car, and I'll meet you back at the office."