T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"Sell a lot of these?"

"A lot."

"Recently?"

"It's been a few days. Last month I'd say ten. Stocking stuffers. They're only thirty-five dollars."

The most beautiful man-made thing I've ever seen.

"Where'd you get the idea?"

"Friend of my dad, old tuna boat skipper. He had one from Panama, only with real jewels. I was just a kid but I never forgot it. He got murdered two weeks ago."

"Been making them long?"

"Off and on, thirty years. The public changes. One year it's birds. Next it's flowers. Then angels. After nine eleven it was all flags but that's tapered off."

"I'll take this one," said McMichael.

"She's a beauty."

Bland came home at six thirty-seven that evening. He parked in his garage then came out to the driveway, holding a small bouquet of flowers. He examined the moths swirling around the streetlamp. He wore the same gray suit and brown shoes that never seemed to change, the same placid, thorough expression that had gotten him through almost four decades of police work. He looked at the surveillance van for a while, tapping the flowers against his leg, and McMichael wondered if he was going to come over to check it out.

"Don't even dream about it," said Hector.

Bland turned and went back into the garage. McMichael saw the garage door lurch downward and the house door swing open to a rectangle of domestic light.

At seven-thirty they ate cooling take-out tacos and drank more coffee. At nine-thirty the lights in the Bland house went off. Almost an hour later McMichael saw the garage door rise and Bland's take-home Crown Victoria back into the street and turn in their direction.

They slumped down below dashboard level and McMichael watched the Crown Vic's headlights move across the headliner front to back, then heard the big Ford swoosh past fast.

The homer led them south. They picked up Bland on Adams and tailed him three cars back to Interstate 15 southbound. Bland made the light and they didn't, and by the time they got the big van moving on the freeway the Crown Victoria was nowhere in sight. But the homer beeped faster and louder when McMichael hit ninety in the fast lane, just in time to follow Bland onto the 805 south.

"He's in a goddamned hurry," said Hector.

"Maybe he wants to see his shipment arrive," said McMichael.

"If he makes our guys, we're dead."

McMichael had long ago noted that when the situation got tight, Hector's voice rose and he seemed to fret more.

"No," said McMichael. "Once that Mack gets in line, there's no turning around. Even if Bland sees one of us, it's going to be too late."

"That's him in lane two, man. Slow down. "

McMichael coasted and Hector called Rawlings. He told the captain the score, said yessir twice, punched off.

"He said the same thing you did. Said they got good disguises. Whatever that means."

They tailed, comfortably back, to the South Bay Parkway. Then onto Interstate 5, headed for the border.

"Yeah," said Hector. "He wants to watch . I still don't like this, Mick. I don't like Bland close enough to recognize our guys, then calling the brothers. Goddamned costumes or not. If they know they're blown, man, anything could happen."

McMichael veered off on San Ysidro Boulevard, took the side streets toward the commercial vehicle gate.

They parked behind a liquor store, grabbed the binoculars and hustled into the shadows. When the traffic got thin they ran across Virginia Avenue and ducked around the corner of a closed carneceria . Looking around the building McMichael could see the commercial gate and the big floodlights up on the scaffolding, the INS and Customs vehicles parked in apparent disarray, the uniformed agents moving in and out of the booths, one line of trucks southbound and another coming back north into the bright lights of America.

McMichael watched as the vehicle exhaust roiled up into the lights then dissipated into the darkness. The walls of the Customs building threw sharp shadows across the tableau. The gunmen on the catwalks looked down with lazy alertness and McMichael had the unwelcome, illogical premonition that they were Axelgaard people, not theirs.

Bland's white Ford emerged from the darkness, glided alongside a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire, stopped forty yards in front of them and thirty yards to the left, directly between the detectives and the border crossing.

"Perfect," whispered Hector, retreating behind the corner.

"Plenty damned close," McMichael whispered back.

They giggled dryly and leaned around the wall again, McMichael standing and Hector kneeling, two half faces peering around the plane of the building like cartoon characters. McMichael saw that Bland had gotten out to lean against the Crown Vic, his elbows propped on the roof and a pair of binoculars snug to his face.

McMichael stepped away from the building just far enough to get his own binoculars up and focused. He could see the breeze moving the hair on Bland's head. Beyond Bland, McMichael barely recognized Rawlings, a black cowboy hat pulled low, a gray corduroy jacket with a yoked back, and scuffed black cowboy boots. He stood with his fists on his hips, watching the drug dogs sniff his pickup truck in the inspection area. The truck had a magnetic sign on the door that said BOB MCGUANE CUTTING HORSES- TEMECULA, CA, and a bed filled with alfalfa bales. McMichael spotted Hatter slouching on a bench, wrapped to his ears in a serape, looking dirty and disconsolate. Bent next to him, similarly dressed against the January chill, her face charcoaled to a black mask of neglect, was Barbara Givens. McMichael noted that her disguise failed to hide her hopeful blue eyes.

Hector pulled him back behind the corner. "You see Barbara and the captain?" he whispered excitedly. "Where the hell is Hatter?"

"Right next to her," said McMichael.

"Oh, too good."

Hector smiled and peered around the corner again. McMichael checked his watch, made sure- for the third time- that his cell phone was on vibrate and not ring, then leaned back out over Hector.

He focused his glasses on the northbound Mexican Customs lane and saw the big red Mack idling three vehicles back. Mason Axelgaard of the Imperial Beach Police was at the helm, and Victor Braga sat next to him, headphones over his ears, gazing out the window and bobbing his head. McMichael lowered the binoculars just slightly, picking up Bland's backside and noting the cell phone now lying on the roof of the Ford, just inches from Bland's right elbow. Too late, he thought. Even if he spots one of them, it's too late now.

But Bland gave no air of recognition or worry. He set his binoculars down on the roof and let his arms drop to his sides, shaking his hands to get the circulation going. He swung around slowly and McMichael stepped behind the wall of the butcher shop, pulling Hector with him.

For the next twenty minutes they took turns at the corner. At eleven-forty the Auto Leather International rig, laden with new Fords, lumbered forward through the hovering exhaust and onto United States asphalt.

McMichael checked Bland: still on point, leaning against his car, field glasses up and aimed. Then the rest of Homicide Team Three- Rawlings looking puzzled as a U.S. Customs agent showed him a clipboard, Hatter and Barbara still on the bench, huddled in their serapes. He could see the gunmen high on the catwalks and the INS patrolmen loitering outside the Customs booth.

A moment later, curly-haired Martin Axelgaard walked from the booth and into the ferocious white light, giving the Mack a hard, accusatory look. He went to the driver's side and said something up to his brother. Mason handed down a slip of paper. Victor leaned over and pulled a headphone away from one ear. Two more Customs men came from the booth, one moving along the trailer and looking up at the new cars. The other came around the front, looked at the license plate and entered something on a handheld device. The dog handlers walked their animals up one side of the trailer and down the other, but didn't bother to get up near the cars.