Sherry Wolokoff and Luther Whitestone had just brought a shivering, near-hysterical Paolo Rona down the stairway of the cleaning plant, past the staring Indio women, and out the front hallway into the brutal white heat of the sun, when they heard a siren yipping down the block. Bolton Canaday, who was standing by the open doors of the van, raised his hand to stop them inside the doorway. Everyone was looking south down the street.
A big blue Crown Victoria was rolling up, a flashing blue light in the window, its siren chirping as the driver thumped the horn. Canaday stared at the face of the man, barely visible behind the tint.
“Oh shit,” he said, finally.
Luke brought the Crown Victoria to a halt a few feet down from the van and opened the door. The first thing the waiting agents saw was Luke’s hand coming out the window, holding a gold Marshals star. Canaday turned to Sherry and waved her out. The two agents stepped quickly out of the doorway, shielding Rona with their bodies, and practically threw him into the van. Sherry slammed the door shut. Luke’s car was blocking their exit.
Luke got out of the car, his suit jacket open, his hands up, and his palms out. He walked up to Bolton Canaday and smiled at him.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Canaday.
Luke nodded toward the van.
“I just want to say hello to an old business associate.”
Canaday hesitated, then gave it up. What was the point now? The stake-out was blown anyway. He nodded toward the agents guarding the car, and Luke started to move.
Canaday stopped him with a hand. “Your piece, there, boyo?”
Luke slipped his Taurus out and handed it to the Treasury agent.
“Okay,” said Canaday.
Sherry Wolokoff unlocked the van door and slid it back. Paolo Rona was huddled in the back seat between two large men with humorless faces. Rona was holding a Kevlar vest up in front of him, and Luke leaned in and pulled it down a few inches. Rona’s face appeared, his skin the color of wet Kleenex.
Luke smiled at him.
“Paolo, you know me?”
“Sí, La Culebra,” he said, after a couple of tries.
“Yes,” said Luke. “You know me.” He looked at the man for a while, then stepped back and away. Sherry slammed the door shut.
Luke stood on the side of the road as the Treasury van maneuvered around his car and pulled out into the traffic. Canaday stared at him for a long time, saying nothing, handed him back his Taurus with a sad half-leer, half-benediction, then he crossed the street and climbed into the passenger side of a rusted-out Ford Fairlane. As they pulled away, the driver smiled broadly at Luke and gave him a crisp military salute.
Luke had no idea why.
Within a few seconds, they were all gone.
Luke grinned and walked back toward his car.
The handset on his waist-belt popped and crackled. Smiling broadly, he picked it off the loop.
“Street Gang. You see that, Doc?”
The voice that came back was not Doc’s voice.
“Hello, hello, you come quick. Hello?”
Luke was running before the last word, his heart beating through his shirtfront, a sudden terrible fear awake in his belly. The radio was emitting a terrified scream of panicky Chinese and pidgin-English chatter.
“Somebody come quick okay who there—
“Somebody come quick hello hello—
“Come here okay okay hello hello—”
Luke was coming.
Luke was coming as quick as Luke could come.
He slammed through the front door of Cheong Sammy’s with his Taurus in his hand and saw a gaggle of people pressed around a doorway at the back of the restaurant. A woman stepped out of the crowd and screamed at him.
“Hurry—up the stairs.”
Luke shoved his way through the crowd. He was at the foot of a flight of stairs leading up a dark passage toward a small square of yellow daylight fifty feet away. He put the Taurus out front and went up the steps as quickly and as quietly as he could. At the top of the stairs, he hesitated, then burst through the open door. He was on a roof, a wide uneven stretch of tarry gravel-covered boards. There was a kind of shelter at the back, jerry-rigged out of plastic pipe and plastic, and set under an overhanging roof that belonged to the next building. Two people were huddled in a shadowed mass under the shelter-roof.
Luke came up fast, the muzzle trained on this mass, his trigger finger inside the blade. A voice came out of the shadows.
“No shoot no shoot!”
It was a young Asian man, holding a radio.
Doc Hollenbeck was splayed out at his feet, his head resting on one of the man’s shoes. Luke’s heart stopped—he got a brief sidelong glance down a shadowed hallway—and then jumped again, thrumming against his rib cage like a free-wheeling engine.
He knelt down beside Doc’s head, patting him, ripping his shirt up out of his pants, running his hands over Doc’s body, looking for a wound. Doc’s eyes opened, and he said something, a whisper.
“Hatchet,” was what he said.
“Hatchet?” said Luke. Doc’s eyes closed, and Luke realized that what was happening here was that Doc wasn’t wounded, that there was no hole in Doc. Doc’s skin was wet and cold, and he was in terrible pain.
Doc was having a heart attack.