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I climbed out of my Explorer and went over to Worth and Morelli. “Any sign?”
Morelli leaned out the driver’s-side window. “Nada, Lieutenant. He’s probably up there watching the Kings game. The scumbag. He knows we’re stuck down here. Why don’t you go home? We’ve got him covered for the night.”
Much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. There was nothing much I could do here.
I started the engine again and flashed a wave to the boys as I passed by. But at the corner, on Eddy, some controlling impulse restrained me from leaving. It was as if something were saying, What you want is here.
He knows he’s being watched…. And?… He wants to show up the SFPD.
I drove down Polk, back toward the William Simon. I passed pawnshops, an all-night liquor store, a storefront Chinese take-out. A parked patrol car sat at the end of the block.
I drove past the rear of the hotel. Several garbage cans outside. Not much else. The street was deserted. I turned off my lights and sat there. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen, but I was driving myself crazy.
I finally climbed out of the Explorer and went inside the back door of the hotel. Rattle the fucker. I was thinking about going back upstairs to talk to Coombs again. Yeah, maybe we could watch the Kings game together.
There was a narrow, dingy bar just off the lobby. I took a peek inside, saw a couple of real skulls, but not Frank Coombs. Goddamn it, a murderer was here in this hotel, a cop murderer, and we couldn’t do a thing about it.
A movement near the back stairs caught my eye. I ducked back inside the shadowy bar. A real oldie was playing on the juke, Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man.” I watched a person coming down the stairs, casting glances around like The Fugitive.
What the hell was this?
I recognized the camouflage jacket, the floppy hat pulled over his face. I stared hard to be sure.
It was Frank Coombs.
Chimera was on the move.
Chapter 86
COOMBS DUCKED into the kitchen of a greasy spoon attached to the hotel. I waited a few seconds, then I followed him.
Now I was the one keeping my head down, casting furtive looks. I saw Coombs, but he’d changed. He’d put on a white kitchen jacket and a greasy chef’s hat. I remembered my cell phone—and then that it was dead. I wasn’t on duty; I hadn’t really needed it.
Coombs walked right out the back door of the hotel. Before I had a chance to signal the patrol car, discreetly, he ducked into an alleyway.
I looked down the alley and saw that it angled toward the street where I was parked. I ran for my car.
Thank God I could still see him. Coombs hurried across the street, not twenty feet in front of my car. I hoped I’d have a chance to signal the patrol car, but I didn’t.
Coombs ducked into an empty lot, heading toward Van Ness. I was angry at our people—they had let him out. They had blown it.
I waited until he disappeared into the lot, then I spun the Explorer around and headed toward the intersection. At the light, I made a right, throwing on the car lights. The busy street was crowded. A Kinko’s, a Circuit City, people passing by.
I watched where I thought the empty lot might come out.
I sat there, scanning up and down the block. Could he have beaten me out here? Could he have slipped into the crowd? Shit!
Suddenly, up ahead, I spotted the camouflage jacket slinking out of an alley between the Kinko’s and a Favor shoe store.
He’d dumped the cook’s jacket and hat.
I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me. He looked around in both directions, then, hands in pockets, started south toward Market. I wanted to run him down with my car.
At the next intersection, I spun the Explorer around and headed back on the other side of the street, about twenty yards behind Coombs.
He was pretty good at this. He moved well. Obviously, he was in shape. Finally, he seemed satisfied he’d made a clean escape. He nearly had.
At Market Street, Coombs jogged into the middle of the street at a BART station. He hopped an electric bus heading south.
