Pearce waited on the corner of Massachusetts Street and Alaskan Way, opposite the St Martin Shelter. A line of people snaked around the corner of the austere concrete building, desperate folk in dirty, ragged clothes, there for a morning meal. A small group of men and women who’d been lucky enough to have already been served sat smoking beneath a green awning near the entrance. There were no smiles and very little hope in the faces of the young and old. Most showed signs of drug or alcohol addiction; swollen hands – an early sign of oedema – flaking skin, and eyes wild and hollow as though they’d been opened too wide and could never be closed. Pearce was shocked by the number of lost souls in this largely industrial neighbourhood, but this was a story replicated the world over; growing poverty brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rasul had instructed Pearce to be on the corner at nine thirty and had offered no plan or explanation. It might have been simple for Pearce to join the periphery of the Salamov organization, but he clearly still didn’t have the man’s trust. After the meeting at Al Jamaea coffee shop, Pearce had returned to the New La Hacienda motel and discussed the evening’s events with Leila. She’d been watching via Pearce’s surveillance glasses, but seemed disengaged and distracted, and his efforts to get her to open up had failed. She’d spent the night infiltrating the Seattle Police Department’s network, pulling up intelligence reports on the city’s gangs. Delridge was under the control of the East Hill Mob, an unsophisticated but violent street gang that ran the neighbourhood drugs trade and had been implicated in a number of homicides. Pearce suspected these were the people Rasul had spoken of, the ones he believed had stolen his product.
Pearce watched the flow of traffic in all directions. Massachusetts Street went west for a few hundred yards before coming to an end by a port gatehouse near the waterfront. Alaskan Way was an access road that ran alongside the Highway 99 overpass. This was an ugly, functional place used to get from A to B. The only people who lived in such areas were those who were trapped; sidelined and kept away from the productive folk who hustled to and fro along the busy roads. Pearce noticed five gleaming SUVs driving south along Alaskan Way, and when they stopped at the corner, he saw Rasul in the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle.
‘Subtle,’ Leila said into Pearce’s ear. She was watching everything via the surveillance glasses he wore.
‘Yeah,’ Pearce agreed as he walked towards the convoy.
Rasul lowered his window. ‘Get in,’ he said.
Pearce glanced at the trailing convoy and saw four or five men in each car. He nodded and climbed inside Rasul’s car. He recognized the three other faces immediately. The driver and the two on the back seat were the men Pearce had seen coming out of the bookshop after Ziad’s meeting with Deni, Rasul and Abbas. They were muscle – career criminals with long records of violence.
‘This is Osman, Ilman and Surkho,’ Rasul told Pearce. ‘This is Amr,’ he said to the others. ‘Give him a tool.’
Osman, a large man with a downturned mouth and a sour face, leaned forward and produced a pistol and two clips from a holdall in the footwell. He handed them to Pearce.
‘OK?’ Rasul asked, as Pearce checked the weapon.
The action was a little stiff and could have used some oil, but it would do.
‘Fine,’ Pearce replied.