The 19th Christmas Read online

  Conklin and I sat him back down. Gently.

  Wallace exhaled, said, “I need a deal.”

  “No promises,” I said, “until we have Loman.”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” said Wallace.

  Chapter 79

  Wallace said, “But first I gotta go.”

  While Conklin escorted him to the men’s room, I sat there in the airless airport interrogation room thinking about our interview a few days ago with Julian Lambert.

  Lambert had told us a credible story and we’d believed him. He’d said that he’d heard Loman’s name on the street, that he was just a bit player, and that he didn’t know Loman at all.

  Now he was dead.

  Like Lambert, Ben Wallace claimed to be a pickup player. Also like Lambert, Wallace seemed entirely disposable. There was every chance that if he’d gotten out to the parking area, he and his crewmates would have been executed at the drop-off.

  In the last hour the airport had been closed. Flights had been canceled. Travelers had been evacuated. News outlets carried the story of a foiled terrorist attack.

  Our job was to find Loman, and right now the only living lead to him was Benjamin Wallace. Briggs and Rafferty had been charged with possession of unregistered firearms and drugs—the coke they’d had stashed in their cookie jar. They had a lawyer now and hadn’t said a word about Loman.

  Wallace was shaky. Was he ready to give it all up?

  The door opened, and Conklin settled Wallace back into the plastic chair across from us. Then Conklin started asking questions about Loman’s recruiter, Russell. Had Wallace ever met him? Wallace said he had, once. Conklin asked him what Russell looked like, what he sounded like, when he’d said he would pay Wallace his fifteen thousand dollars.

  Wallace answered that Russell was above-average height and had dark hair, a pointed nose, and unaccented speech. That he seemed nice. And smart. And that Russell was going to pay everyone off when they got to the van.

  I studied everything about Wallace.

  I listened to his vocal inflections and observed his body language, eye movements, looking for tells, for lies. I was checking him against all the hundreds of interrogations I’d done, trying to discern if he was telling us the truth.

  “This job we were doing,” said Wallace, “was supposed to be a whatchamacallit… a head fake.”

  The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A head fake was a ruse. A diversion. A diversion from what?

  “How so?” Conklin asked.

  “There wasn’t supposed to be any trouble. It was supposed to be cut-and-dried, a robbery at the cargo terminal and then out. Loman was doing a different job. I think so, anyway. And it was all going as planned until Leonard went rogue.”

  What had Wallace said?

  Was Loman’s big heist still in play?

  Wallace took off on a little side road then, talking about how he should have just kept to his lame job, minded his own business, not listened to his dopey brother.

  I picked up my water bottle and pounded it once on the table to get his attention. “You said ‘head fake,’ Ben. That you thought Loman was ‘doing a different job.’ Dig deep. Tell us about that.”

  “I don’t know,” Wallace whined. “I told you five times already, we were just supposed to go to the cargo terminal, open the box, take the bags, and get to the parking lot. Look. Everything that went wrong was Leonard’s fault.”

  “Leonard was the red-haired one,” I said. He was the fake cop whose brains were spattered inside the shuttle train.

  “Johnny Leonard. I’d just met him, but I knew he was nuts,” said Wallace. “He saw cops on routine patrol in the terminal, and he thought he saw someone looking at him wrong, like an undercover, and he snapped.

  “Next thing you know, he’s shooting and cops are shooting back. And our easy-breezy plan just blew up. It was shoot or be shot. Once Leonard started firing, I knew I was a dead man.”

  Conklin said, “If you can’t tell us about Loman, you’ve given us nothing.”

  Said Wallace, “I don’t know anything else.”

  I slapped the table and said, “Okay, then. We’re done. Good-bye and good luck.”

  I meant it.

  Chapter 80

  “Don’t say it like that!” Wallace shouted. “I’m going to be killed. Loman is going to have me killed, understand? Oh God.”

  Conklin said, “If I’m God, I’m pissed off, buddy. Your crew put a lot of innocent people in danger today, and maybe a US Marine, a passenger on his way to Cincinnati, is going to die. You should pray that he lives.”

  Wallace nodded and my partner went on.

  “You want us to help you? Or do you and your pacemaker want to take your chances with the FBI and DHS?”

  Wallace started to sob and shake his head no.

  Conklin put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder, and I could see something shift inside the young man.

  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  He knew that he was done.

  Conklin said, “Hey, Ben. We’re the good guys. San Francisco police. In about three minutes the Feds are going to come through the door. They outrank us. The federal government trumps local PD. We won’t be able to help you, my friend, and that’s the truth.”

  Wallace shook his head some more, choosing between a rock and a hard place. He looked up and said to Conklin, “Loman’s going to hit a computer company. That’s the real job.”

  My adrenaline spiked again.

  Jacobi had been working on a tip about a hit on a computer company. Had that tip now been confirmed?

  I asked, “Where did you get that?”

  “Leonard told me.”

  The dead guy. I said, “What computer company? Give us a name.”

  Wallace was panting now, sweating profusely, lips trembling. I found him believable. Then again, I’d been wrong before. I cautioned myself not to interrupt Wallace as he went on.

  “If I tell you, that’s worth something, right? That’s worth a cell out of state, where I can get protection?”

  Conklin said, “You’re going to have to give us the name of the computer company.”

  “Black Stone,” said Wallace. “No. That’s not right. Black something. BlackStar.”

  Conklin put his card in Wallace’s breast pocket seconds before two DHS agents came in and took our crying, pleading subject out of the room.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Brady.

  Chapter 81

  I relayed Brady’s orders to Conklin as we edged and fought our way through the panicky crowd exiting the terminal en masse.

  “Brady says he’s rolling out a heavy emergency-response team at BlackStar,” I told him. “Jacobi is in command on scene.”

  The lanes around the airport were packed with patrol cars, taxis, buses, and passenger cars. Travelers on the sidewalk yelled at baggage handlers and anyone in uniform, shouted about flights they absolutely had to be on, about missing connections, about lost luggage, and about having no place to stay. Lawsuits were threatened and shoving fights broke out, fights that could become brawls.

  Cops weren’t charged with keeping airline customers happy. They had only one order, and it was freaking urgent: to get everyone out of the airport.

  The sounds of the stalled traffic, the horns honking and sirens blaring, was the very definition of hell on wheels.

  Our unmarked squad car was hemmed in at the curb, and we went Code 3 in place, blasting the sirens and the lights, leaning on the horn, until we were free to move.

  Conklin drove, and we had just cleared the airport lanes when Jacobi’s voice came over the radio. “I just heard from Brady,” he said over our dedicated channel. “You both okay?”

  “Yes. What’s your location?” I asked.

  “I’m in the surveillance van in the Truby Street parking lot. It’s right outside the BlackStar VR campus.”

  “We’re on our way out to you,” I shouted over the mike to my dear old f
riend and former partner. “Be careful.”

  Conklin took us onto the 280 Freeway north and from there past Colma, where the dead outnumbered the living. Colma contains the cemetery where a lot of people I know are buried. My mother is there. When we drove past Woodlawn Memorial Park, I placed my palm against the window. I miss you, Mom. And then we were speeding through the Sunset District and Golden Gate Park.

  I saw other unmarked cars leaving the park from their stakeout of the museum, some heading out to the airport and some, I hoped, to BlackStar’s campus.

  Jacobi had sent a map of the BlackStar compound, and as we drove, I told Conklin what we needed to know. He took Veterans Boulevard into the Presidio, then made a series of turns that brought us past the Main Post. Forty-five minutes after we’d left SFO, I could see the BlackStar VR campus on our left.

  It looked idyllic, a compound made up of half a dozen brick buildings built in the style of the old army barracks and officers’ quarters, located on twenty green acres fronted by a small lake with a waterfall.

  I read out the function of each building.

  “Buildings one and two are labs,” I told my partner. “That’s got to be new product development. Could be a Loman target, I’m guessing.”

  I consulted the map and went on.

  “Buildings three and four are executive offices. Building five is the BlackStar museum, and six is a tourist destination devoted to digital displays, like light shows. It also has a bank, a Starbucks, restrooms, a tourist info center.”

  Conklin pulled the car into the main lot, where we could see the attractive red buildings arranged like two loosely cupped hands, and the roads and footpaths leading to them.

  It looked calm, but I knew what Brady meant when he said he’d be rolling out a heavy emergency-response team.

  Cars in the lot and streets near the campus would be occupied by cops. SWAT would be manning ordinary-looking vans. A couple of ambulances would be in the vicinity, and Brady would have undercover operatives inside and outside the buildings, whatever he could pull together on Christmas.

  I got Jacobi on blue channel. He’d seen our car pull in and was on his way over from his post.

  Minutes later I saw his hulking form limping across the parking lot. I buzzed down my window and Jacobi stooped so he could see in.

  “Brace yourself,” he said.

  “I’m braced,” I said.

  “That mutt you grilled at the airport. Wallace. We picked up his brother, Sam, who gave up a name. Brady sent this.”

  Jacobi fiddled with his phone. His tech skills were not the greatest. He swore a little, then said, “Okay. Here he is.”

  He put his phone up to the window so we could see the photo on the screen. It was a candid shot of a balding, middle-aged man carrying a large briefcase, heading into a jewelry store on Post Street.

  “Meet William Lomachenko,” said Jacobi, “a.k.a. Willy Loman. He has no record. But we now know everything about his public life.”

  Chapter 82

  I stared at the photo on Jacobi’s phone.

  The picture was low-res, as if it had been taken from security-cam footage shot at the end of the day. I could see the light from the storefront reflecting off the man’s scalp. I noted his double chin, his paunch, his unremarkable clothes. William Lomachenko could be invisible in plain sight.

  “This is Loman?”

  “So I’ve been told,” said Jacobi.

  It was a huge breakthrough. We had a name and a photo ID, and with that, we’d learn more.

  I passed the phone to Conklin and asked Jacobi, “What do we know about Mr. Lomachenko?”

  “He lives on Avila Street. Been in the same house for twenty years. He’s self-employed. Buys gold chains from overseas and sells them locally. His wife, Imogene, does the books. We have her in custody as a material witness.”

  Conklin said, “No kidding.”

  Jacobi smiled. “Chi and McNeil are questioning her, making sure she doesn’t give Willy a heads-up. She says that we’ve got the wrong man.”

  Conklin said, “Any chance she mentioned where we could find her husband right now?”

  “Imogene told Chi and Cappy that the mister is out doing last-minute errands. He’s planning a surprise for her birthday.”

  I stared through the windshield, hoping to see an ordinary-looking white man in his late forties or early fifties, approximately five foot eight, 180 pounds, balding, with a potbelly, the kind of man who looked nothing like anyone’s idea of a criminal mastermind.

  Jacobi said, “FBI has people inside the Lomachenko house in case he comes home. If he calls his wife, we’ll trace the call.”

  My old partner looked good for someone who’d been on watch inside a surveillance van for about sixteen hours without sleep. I asked him if there had been any disturbances or if anything on this large campus seemed like a possible target for a heist.

  “It’s busy,” he said. “The CEO told me that BlackStar was officially closed until New Year’s. Maybe he meant closed for business, because it looks like Christmas isn’t a holiday for BlackStar employees.”

  We watched people walking between the buildings, most of them millennials in tight jeans and pullovers or satin BlackStar baseball jackets. I also saw several older, professorial types.

  I noticed ordinary unmarked cars like ours in the lot, as well as dozens of cars with BlackStar parking stickers. I saw an undercover cop I knew standing by the waterfall, two others smoking cigarettes and strolling as they worked their phones.

  “What’s the plan, Chief?” Conklin asked Jacobi.

  “Special response teams have warrants. Risk warrants to seize weapons, and the Feds will have a search warrant for electronics, computers, and like that,” said Jacobi. “Couldn’t be more than a few hundred thousand computers in this place. After they lock all of these buildings down, the three of us and everyone else Brady can get will go in looking for Mr. Lomachenko. Just waiting now for the word ‘Go.’”

  Conklin swept his gaze across the huge campus, the half a dozen buildings and the expansive greens between and surrounding them, some trees scattered around as well. He sighed. “Lot of ground to cover.”

  I agreed. “I’m getting out,” I said, opening the car door. “I need some air. I’ve got to make a quick call to Joe.”

  Jacobi held the door for me, and I’d just gotten my feet on the ground when a shot cracked across the campus.

  Around us, some people stopped to listen, some dropped to the ground, and others dashed toward doorways.

  I saw no gunmen, no sign of the shooter. I got out of my crouch behind the car door and went to help Jacobi to his feet.

  That’s when I saw that his face was gray and that he was clutching his thigh.

  “I’m hit,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  And then his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

  Chapter 83

  An EMT named Murphy hustled me out of the ambulance.

  Doors banged closed, and the bus, with my dear friend Jacobi inside, took off down Lombard Street, turned a corner, and was gone.

  I forced myself to come back to the moment.

  BlackStar employees who had been crossing the green seconds earlier had hit the ground or were hiding behind trees as SWAT poured out of their vans and took up positions around adjacent buildings.

  I stared out over my car-door shield, looking for the shooter—and something stood out to me. Within the scattered BlackStar workers, I saw three men walking away from the executive offices and toward the corner of the grounds leading to O’Reilly Ave.

  They weren’t taking cover. They walked with purpose, as if unfazed by the shots and the panic. They were dressed differently from the techs I’d seen earlier sauntering through the campus.

  They just looked…off.

  The tallest of the three was dark-haired and wearing a leather bomber jacket. The shortest of the men wore a khaki-colored Windbreaker and a billed cap. He kept his eyes down.

&nb
sp; The third man was bracketed by the other two. His hair was silver. The BlackStar logo was on the back of his jacket, and I had the impression that he was being propelled forward by his companions.

  I grabbed my partner’s arm.

  “Rich. The chunky one with the cap. Tell me. Is that our guy?”

  Sunlight slanted through the copse of trees and into our eyes as the three men took the path heading away from us.

  Conklin said, “I can’t say for sure.”

  We crossed the lawns, planning to intersect the path the men were traveling. Then they changed course and walked more quickly toward one of the brick buildings.

  My heart was banging hard and I was panting even though I was walking at a steady pace. My gut was telling me that the guy with the cap was the man in the picture on Jacobi’s phone.

  My gut said that it was Loman. William Lomachenko.

  Chapter 84

  This was just brilliant. Had Russell’s shot hit a cop?

  Loman stood with his hostage and his second in command outside the side entrance to Building 3. He’d seen cops wearing SFPD Windbreakers cluster around a body on the ground, and an ambulance had pulled up to the main parking lot near the lake.

  The three of them were hidden from the SWAT team on the green, but Loman still felt exposed. He reached around Bavar and pulled on the door handle. It didn’t budge. A tiny red light centered on a metal plate in the brick wall beside the door caught his attention. Below the light was a small lens at eye level.

  His screwup associate stated the obvious. “It’s an iris reader.”

  Loman had nothing to say to Russell. His shot, fired in panic when Bavar tried to make a break for it, had hit a cop, launched a law enforcement response, and guttered the smooth execution of their plan.

  But he did speak to Bavar. “Look at the lens.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bavar, laughing. “You shoot me, and this becomes the worst day of your life.”

  Bavar’s contempt despite the loaded guns pointed right at him actually made sense to Loman. Bavar was a cocky bastard but he was not stupid. Without him, there would be no payday.