T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"You fell for the nurse," said Gabriel.

"It's over and I'm off the case."

"Ah, son, the things life throws at us."

McMichael drank the stout, watched Tim Keller shuffle in from the street, heard the cook slapping the pub grub plates onto the counter under the heat lamps. He caught Hugh in a sideways glance.

"Take a walk with me, Pop."

"But why?"

"Just to walk."

"I do enough of that."

"I don't. Come on."

They headed up Front Street in the fading light, pigeons lifting up to roost in the eaves, the traffic thick on Ash, an ocean breeze tossing Gabriel's thick white hair. McMichael looked behind them to see Tim Keller ambling along, making no attempt to hide his surveillance of Gabe.

"Where were you the night Pete was killed?" asked McMichael. "Don't tell me Spellacy's because I know you weren't."

"The damned publican, telling stories again."

"It wasn't Hugh. Now come on. Cough it. I'm trying to tie up some loose ends."

"But a man's got a right to his privacy, Tom."

McMichael pulled his father by the arm, not hard, but threw his back up against the bank building. His father's lightness surprised him, and so did his poor balance, and the impact.

"Sorry, Pop. Really."

"I'd have beaten you for that just a few years ago."

"This is now. And I need to know where you were that Wednesday."

Gabriel blinked slowly and turned away, shaking his head. "Tim and I, we bus and hoof to St. Agnes's on Wednesdays."

"What for?"

"That's your business, too? Be careful."

"Why? Why go there?"

"It's not your concern."

"Tell me why."

"There's no reason to-"

"Goddamn it, why go to St. Agnes's? What the hell do you and Tim have to do at St. Agnes's?"

Gabriel started off down the sidewalk again, McMichael keeping pace.

"Why, Pop?"

"For the food, son."

The food. Son.

God, thought McMichael. It hit him hard, brought things he'd never wanted to see right into focus. Gabriel McMichael on the dole at St. Agnes's, shoveling down the free food to make it back to the pub for more drinks.

Gabriel looked back with the same expression that he'd worn for all the years McMichael had known him: shameful pride.

"Come on, Pop," McMichael said quietly. "Slow down. I'm sorry."

They made their way back toward Spellacy's. At the corner of Front and B Gabriel stumbled off the curb and McMichael caught him by his coat sleeve, yanked him away from a car that threw a wave of gutter water that half drenched the old man and McMichael, too, sent them staggering backward while someone yelled stupidfuckers from a yellow convertible.

"You all right, Pop?"

"Sonofabitch, Tom."

"You gotta be careful, Pop."

"I saw him, Tommy. Just couldn't get the old bones moving in time."

"You okay?"

"I'm okay, I'm okay. Let go of me."

McMichael and Hector pulled the midnight stakeout shift on Assistant Chief of Police Jerry Bland. They relieved Barbara and Hatter, trading them Hector's Camaro for Barbara's personal car- a conversion van loaded with family vacation gear. There was a luggage rack on top piled with duffels and coolers, a windsurfing board, beach chairs and an umbrella, a portable barbecue with its top lashed tight with bungee cords. Barbara had even thrown handfuls of beach sand against the tinted windows to leave a convincing layer of dust.

Hector parked it in a new spot: three houses down and around a corner from the Bland residence, which gave them a good straight-ahead view. If Bland flushed, they'd follow the radio homer that Hatter- stooping down in the department parking lot to look for the loose change that had somehow jumped out of his pocket- had affixed beneath the bumper of Bland's take-home Ford earlier in the day.

The kitchen light in the Bland residence was on at midnight and still on at two. McMichael reclined the passenger seat just slightly, poured coffee from his thermos. Hector sat behind the wheel, hunched in his leather coat.

"What do you think it takes," asked Hector, "for a guy like Bland to end up doing this kind of crap?"

McMichael sipped his not-very-good coffee. "Just lots of money."

"Yeah, but look at him- he lives in the same house. Probably has the same car in the garage. He's put his kids through school or whatever. If he gets sick he's got insurance. What is he? A sixty-year-old cop with a good pension, could retire any time he wants. Bunch of goddamned cash in his house. Stupid."

"True. At least Jimmy blew his on the obvious."

"It's all that cartel money, so close. It's like a magnet. Guys up in San Francisco, they don't have to live with it, day in and day out. Even L.A. But we get up in the morning, smell the roses and the coke, too. It's right there."

McMichael listened to a night bird chattering in the magnolia tree behind them. "I think about Johnny and that," he said. "All the grass and powder coming up through TJ."

"It goes everywhere," said Hector. "You can't run away from it."

"Idaho would be nice," said McMichael. "Or Oregon."

"Jackson went up to Wyoming and got himself shot."

"Guns everywhere up there, too."

"You'd never see Johnny."

"That's why I won't leave."

"He's a good kid. 'Nother doughnut?"

"Sure."

McMichael's brain thorn kicked in as he thought of the way the duffels were handled, the way the dope dogs ignored the new Fords, the dispatch with which the anonymous helo picked up the goods.

"If it's not dope, what is it?"

"I've been thinking about that," said Hector. "And I haven't come up with anything. What else do they have down there that we want but aren't supposed to buy? I don't think it's bullshit cigarettes and switchblades."

McMichael dozed from four to five. Hector from five to six. McMichael looked out the window at the light in Bland's kitchen, constant as the northern star. He thought about Johnny and wondered when his son would turn on him, lose respect for him, do all the things that adolescents were supposed to do. He thought briefly of Steffy, tried to figure out the primary thing he'd done wrong. But that train of thought went where it always went- straight down the tracks of their past until vanishing in the long black tunnel of moments and decisions, each one important in ways that neither of them had known. He wondered what Sally Rainwater was doing in the women's jail out in Santee. Dreaming about what an asshole he was? He thought about Patricia out on Corrinna Braga , the way she cried. He wondered why he couldn't get it back for her, get back the way he used to feel. She was prettier than ever. And open to him. With her, he could come full circle. It looked good on paper, but he couldn't make it true. Maybe it was just fear. Maybe he had too good a memory. You have it wrong, Tom- I'm not dumping you because you're a McMichael. I'm dumping you because you're you. Maybe it was just pride. Or revenge. He thought of Gabriel in the St. Agnes's food line. He wondered if his own face was beginning to reveal the same shameful pride as his father's.

A delivery man in a pickup truck chucked a San Diego Times onto Bland's lawn at five fifty-five. The lights in Bland's living room came on at six-ten. Hector yawned. At seven-thirty the assistant chief's Crown Victoria backed from the garage onto the street and turned toward them. They sank out of sight below the windows and McMichael listened to the big sedan ease past.

The homer worked like a dream, allowing Hector and McMichael to follow from a safe distance. Bland drove straight to headquarters and pulled into the department parking lot like he'd done every morning for thirty-five years.

At noon, Homicide Team Three met with Rawlings at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. High above the studied greenery of the park, scattered clouds admitted a winter sunshine that couldn't warm the shadows. The captain stood with his back to the big empty stage, his soldiers gathered around him while a pack of children romped and cavorted among the empty seats of the amphitheater.