Gage had been the only one at the San Francisco Police Department who knew why they all called him Spike.
Homicide Lieutenant Humberto Pacheco, too short to play volleyball when he and Gage were growing up together, and now looking more like a mallet than a nail, lumbered through the entrance of the Fiesta Brava Taqueria on Mission Street a little after 1:30 P.M. Tan sports coat, brown pants, pale yellow shirt, and a blue tie painted with tiny footballs. He didn’t pause to survey the interior of the storefront restaurant before heading toward a table in the far corner where Gage already sat. The rest of the tables were empty, the lunch crowd having already moved on.
Spike waved to their usual waiter, then dropped a manila envelope onto the table and sat down to the right of Gage, a plate of chicken in chili-laced cream sauce already cooling before him. A warming Coke stood next to it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Spike said. “I got hung up at a meeting with the chief. The mayor is pissed because some Japanese woman got mugged coming out of the St. Francis Hotel. Cut up pretty bad. He’s worried about losing the Asian tourist business.”
Gage set down his fork. “I’ve got an idea. Maybe he should hire the homeless to paint targets on the Nicaraguans and Sudanese so the crooks would know who he wants mugged.”
Spike grinned. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You did, you just didn’t say it because you know the chief doesn’t appreciate that kind of sarcasm.” Gage pointed at Spike’s plate. “You want it heated up?”
Spike mixed a little of the sauce with the rice, then tasted it. “No, it’s okay.” He tilted his head toward the half-eaten roasted birra in front of Gage. “You’re still the only white guy I know who eats goat.”
Spike dug into his chicken while Gage opened the envelope and thumbed through the thirty pages of police reports about Palmer’s shooting.
“I appreciate you taking over the case yourself instead of leaving it with your underlings,” Gage said. “Anything else besides what’s in here?”
“There’s also a ballistics check on the slug. A. 38. Five lands and grooves, right twist. Could be just about any Saturday night special.”
“What about the shooter?”
“Charlie gave us almost nothing to go on. The guy he described couldn’t have been more average if Charlie had made him up.”
“And that’s what you think he did?”
“The uniforms at the scene pushed him real hard for a description-a dying declaration in case he didn’t survive. All they got was a cardboard John Doe. At first I thought maybe shock scrambled his brain, but it didn’t get any better when I went to see him two days later. It was like he did some kind of statistical survey and came up with the mean…” Spike cocked his head and squinted toward the ceiling, then looked back at Gage. “Is it mean or median?”
“I think it’s called the mode. Mode is what there’s most of.”
Spike smiled. “Mr. Salazar will be thrilled to know ninth grade math stuck.” He took a sip of his Coke. “It’s like Charlie came up with the mode, and then said, ‘That’s the guy.’ ”
“You have a theory?”
“I think he didn’t want us to catch him.”
“And do it himself after he got better?”
“Except he didn’t get better. When I called Socorro last week, the doctor had just told him he’d recovered as much as he ever would. Might not get worse, but wouldn’t get better. He was never gonna work again, that’s for sure. Maybe never even get out of bed.”
“That must be why he called me.”
Spike shook his head. “I don’t think so. He knew you’re not a vigilante. He had to have guessed you’d be doing exactly what you’re doing, not roaming the streets with a six-shooter.”
“Then why didn’t he reach out to you if he changed his mind and wanted to get the guy?”
Spike shrugged. “Maybe it has to do with one of his cases. Attorney-client privilege and all that.” He aimed his fork at the file. “You know what he was working on the day he was shot? He wouldn’t tell me.”
“A tax evasion case. Yachts. He was interviewing marine appraisers.”
“Like those car donation scams?”
“But in the multimillion-dollar range. And knowing Charlie, he was probably trying to get one of them to commit perjury by testifying the appraisals were accurate.”
Gage caught Spike’s eye, then glanced toward the glass entrance doors. Two silver-adorned Jalisco cowboys entered, dressed in the style of their home state in Mexico. Silver belt buckles, silver toe tips on rattlesnake-skin boots, silver bands on their hats, and silver buttons and lapel points on their shirts. The men paused just inside the door and scanned the restaurant, then took a small table near the front window. One slid a black briefcase underneath, while the other pulled out a cell phone, punched in a number, spoke a few words, and disconnected.
“Must be door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen,” Gage said, as a waiter delivered the men a basket of tortilla chips and salsa.
Spike slipped in a Bluetooth earpiece, punched in a number on his cell phone, and turned slightly away and passed on his location and a description of the Jaliscos. He rested his phone on the table, waited until the men were both looking down and reaching for chips, and then snapped a photo of them and sent it.
“It’s just like riding a bike, isn’t it?” Spike said.
“Don’t you ever just want to get off it at least long enough to enjoy a meal?”
“Can’t. It’s like having the television on all the time in the back of your head.”
“I used to think of it as white noise,” Gage said, poking around in his birra. “Charlie used to alert to guys like that from a mile away.”
“But that was more about like attracting like.”
Spike reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a wallet-sized Mexican prayer card encased in plastic.
“My brother bought this for Faith at a shrine in Culiacan. He’s still playing amateur anthropologist. He wanted to give it to her at your father’s funeral, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”
He handed it to Gage.
“She still interested in Catholic animas?” Spike asked.
Gage nodded as he examined the image of folk saint Jesus Malverde, protector of drug dealers, overlaid on a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He dipped his head toward the Jaliscos. “Those guys may need this thing a lot more than Faith.”
“I’m sure they never leave home without one.”
“They also don’t leave home unarmed,” Gage said. “Check out the front pocket of the guy on the right.”
Spike’s cell phone vibrated a couple of minutes later as the Mexicans ate shrimp cocktails from bulbous sundae glasses.
“ Hola, Mama. ” Spike spoke loudly, smiling at Gage. “ Estoy en la Fiesta Brava.” He listened for fifteen seconds, then in a lower voice passed on the warning about weapons and disconnected.
“You know what else Charlie was working on?” Spike asked.
“Off the record?”
“I don’t know. Tell me a little more.”
“He was trying to recover the wallet of somebody who got robbed.”
“Why off the record?”
“It was a government official.”
“There’s no law saying people have to report crimes against themselves,” Spike said. “Off the record is okay.”
“Brandon Meyer was mugged a week or two before Charlie got shot.”
“No shit?”
“He wanted Charlie to get his wallet back.”
“Why didn’t Meyer report it?”
“I think he was afraid it would slop back on his brother.”
“I don’t get it. A mugging is a mugging. Happens all the time.”
“But this one happened at night in the Tenderloin.”
“The Tenderloin?” Even Spike wouldn’t walk through the Tenderloin after sunset, and he carried two handguns and Mace. “What was the brother of a presidential candidate doing in there? That has National Enquirer written all over it.”
“Meyer claimed he cut through on his way to a meeting, but I don’t believe him.”
Spike clucked. “You not believing an exalted federal judge like him. I’m shocked, simply shocked.”
They watched the waiter deliver two Dos XXs to the Jaliscos.
“How’d you find out about the mugging?” Spike asked.
“From Socorro. Then Meyer called me to drop by, but only to make sure I didn’t pursue it.”
“Why didn’t he just cancel the credit cards and forget the whole thing?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. Could be there was something in the wallet.”
Spike grinned. “Like maybe a Viagra tablet and the cell number of a Tenderloin prostitute?”
Gage shook his head. “Unlikely. I’m not sure sex is his thing anymore. He gets off screwing over whoever shows up in his court.”
Spike laughed. “Talk about a helluva photo op. That pale-butted pipsqueak bouncing up and down between the legs of some methed-up hooker in a skid-row hotel.”
Gage cast him a sour expression. “I’m glad I already finished my lunch,” Gage said, pushing away his plate. Spike was still grinning, now red-faced. “You better finish the thought before you explode.”
“And Meyer working his little pene, yelling, ‘Motion denied! Motion denied!’ ”
Spike laughed, stomach bouncing, until tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He wiped them with his napkin. “Man, what an image.”
“Are you done ruining my meal?”
“I hope so.” Spike rubbed his side. “I think I pulled a muscle.”
One of the Jaliscos walked over to the jukebox, dropped in fifty cents, then punched a button. He returned to his table as an accordion blast began “El Corrido Contrabando,” a ballad celebrating Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Lord of the Skies, a Mexican who smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine in 727s, then faked dying during plastic surgery and retired to Colombia.
“Is that song for your benefit?” Gage asked.
“No. They think I’m an insurance salesman. Just a guy selling term life.” Spike grinned again. “When I’m really pushing life terms.”
Gage shook his head. “You still get a kick out of this.”
“That’s why I can’t bring myself to retire. It’s even hard to think about it.”
Spike’s grin faded as his sentence trailed off. He paused, his face turned somber.
“Middle age is weird. You think about things you never thought about before. It hit me the other night that from the moment my father came across the border, he never felt at home again anywhere. Not in Mexico and not in Arizona, even after he became a citizen.” Spike tapped the gold badge clipped to his belt under his jacket. “And I’m not sure I really felt at home until I got this piece of metal. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to follow you up here. Kinda makes it hard to give it up.”
Spike paused again, thinking, then his eyes brightened. “Well, that and Placita. She couldn’t stand me hanging around the house all the time.”
“She tell you that?”
“Straight out, the first time I talked about it. Then she reached for the phone and threatened to make her nephew give me a job driving one of his cabs-until I showed her a news article saying it was more dangerous than being a cop.”
“But she’d made her point.”
“Yeah, big time.”
Spike pulled his case log out of the manila envelope.
“That’s another thing.” Spike skimmed down the chronology. “Charlie wouldn’t tell me how he got over to Geary Street where he got shot, but I think he took a taxi. A Checker cab driver remembered dropping off somebody who resembled Charlie two blocks away about twenty minutes before it happened. Charlie denied it was him. But I think it was.”
“So he didn’t want to use a car that could be traced to him?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Sounds like you spent as much time investigating Charlie as you did whoever shot him.”
“More. He was stonewalling. There had to be a reason, and it wasn’t a no-harm, no-foul case. A few days after he was shot he got pneumonia and it seemed like he wasn’t going to make it. Would’ve made it a homicide right then.”
“What did the neighborhood canvass turn up?”
“We got a possible ID of Charlie at a coffee shop. Eyewitness IDs are bad enough, but this was one where the clerk had no reason to pay attention at the time. So I’m not sure what to make of it.”
Spike tilted his head toward the two men, one of whom was opening his phone. The man held it to his ear, nodded, then snapped it closed. Thirty seconds later, a younger Hispanic man entered and pulled a chair up to the Jaliscos’ table and set down a small black canvas duffel, stretched tight by its contents. He was dressed in Levi’s and oversized sweatshirt and wearing wraparound sunglasses.
“Looks like they’re going to do the deal right here,” Gage said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was heroin in that bag. They wouldn’t need a briefcase of money to buy so few kilos of cocaine.”
Spike punched redial on his phone, reported in to the surveillance officers driving down Mission Street toward the restaurant, then disconnected.
The three men kept casting quick glances around the restaurant, too often for Spike to risk another photo.
“They’re bringing a dog,” Spike said, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket. “He’ll take a little sniff as they walk outside.” He smiled. “Then off to the pokey.” He pushed his plate away. “What’re you working on besides Charlie?”
“The main one is a trade secrets case. Fiber-optic switches. My clients developed a switch-a kind of splitter-that tripled fiber-optic line capacity. FiberLink. The owners mortgaged their houses and borrowed from their retirement accounts to fund their research. Really nice people. The brains were two women who used to work at Intel. They came up with the switch on their own time, then brought in some friends to form the company.”
“What happened?”
“One of their husbands smuggled out the design and sold it to OptiCom, which used it as the backbone for their bid to wire Western Europe, and they won. I chased him around Europe for a couple of weeks, then cornered him in Zurich. I brought him back and delivered him to the FBI.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“Jealousy. He thought his wife was cheating on him.”
“Was she?”
“I don’t think so, but it still wouldn’t justify what he did.”
Spike looked over at an abandoned newspaper on the next table, an unopened business section lying on top. “How much was the European contract worth?”
“Billions and billions and billions. OptiCom’s stock went through the roof. The world’s biggest fiber-optic company doubled in value overnight.”
“I’ll bet their stock is going to tank when this hits the news. I mean really plummet.” Spike smiled, then rubbed his hands together. “Maybe it’s time for a little insider trading. I’ve been doing a little reading. Seems there’s a way to make a lot of money if you know a stock is going to crash.”
Gage smiled back. “Too bad you don’t know of one.”
“Yeah.” Spike sighed. “Way too bad. I guess I’ll have to keep making money the old-fashioned way. Slurping at the public trough.”
Gage pointed at the envelope. “What’s next?”
“Retrace my steps, see if I missed anything. But I’ll lay off for a while if you’re going to do something. You’re probably in a better position anyway, what with the attorney-client privilege issues.”
“That’s fine. I’ll make it quick. I need to make sure whatever Charlie was up to doesn’t snap back at Socorro again.”
Spike and Gage both alerted to the Jaliscos leaning back against the window next to them. The newcomer’s hand was under his sweatshirt.
“Something’s going sour,” Gage said. “Maybe it’s a rip-off.”
The newcomer angled his chair away from the Jaliscos, giving himself a view of the rest of the restaurant. He glanced around, his eyes hesitating when they fell on the cook and the waiter behind the counter to Gage’s left, then on Gage and Spike, as if counting the number of witnesses who’d have to be eliminated.
Gage caught the waiter’s eye, then tilted his head toward the kitchen. The waiter nodded his understanding: If two witnesses escaped there would be no reason kill the remaining ones.
The newcomer caught the motion and pushed himself to his feet. Seconds later all three dealers were waving guns at one another, then at the waiter, the cook, Spike, and Gage.
Spike slipped his right hand under the table and rested it on his gun while Gage rose with his hands up and eased toward the counter. Three barrels tracked his movement. The newcomer yelled, “Freeze, asshole.” But Gage took a final step, coming to a stop in front of the cook and waiter.
The waiter pulled the cook to the floor with him and used Gage and the counter for cover as they crawled into the kitchen and toward the back door.
Gage lowered his hands and pointed at the weapons.
“Why don’t you guys take your business outside?”
The Jaliscos swung their guns toward the newcomer.
Spike repeated Gage’s question as an order. “ Tomen sus negocios afuera.”
He was now aiming his semiautomatic at the Jaliscos, his elbows propped on the table and using a double-handed grip.
“Just walk away,” Spike said. “Nobody’s gonna stop you.”
The newcomer looked back and forth between Spike and Gage, but spoke to the Jaliscos: “ Estamos chidos.” We’re cool.
The three looked at one another, then one of the Jaliscos reached down for the briefcase of cash, while the newcomer picked up his bag. They backed toward the entrance, then slipped their guns into their pockets as they turned and stepped outside into the glare of the afternoon sun-and into the sights of racking police shotguns.
F ollowing six cars behind Gage as he drove up Mission Street toward his office, the Texan spoke into his cell phone.
“He met with a Mexican cop for lunch. Then a little fun and games with some narco-wetbacks.”
“Could you tell what Gage was up to?”
The Texan snapped back: “You think I can read his mind?”
“Why didn’t you get a table next to them?”
“And get caught in a crossfire?”
“What do you mean, crossfire?”
“It’s not important. Anyway, it would’ve been stupid to go inside. Gage is like a bloodhound. His nose snapped toward those beaners the second they walked in the place. He would’ve sniffed me out in a heartbeat.”