Unlucky 13 (28 page)

I trotted a half-block to the corner of 10th, checking out people with such a fierce look that many pulled back as if I were crazy. Meanwhile, a lot
of people were dressed in jeans and hoodies. Christ, it was practically a uniform for kids of a certain age.

I crossed Clement and doubled back toward 11th.

After five minutes of searching for Morales, the heartstrings that connected me to my daughter like a bungee cord yanked me back to Rosalie’s Fanfare.

I ran like a 49er with the ball, goalposts in sight, in the last seconds of the game.

I dodged and I wove and I sped down the street, homing in on the fashion boutique where my little girl was waiting. I stiff-armed the door—and ran right into Cindy.

She was holding Julie in her arms, staring out the window, waiting for me.

“Cindy. How—?”

“I saw you leaving your place. I called out to you, but you didn’t hear me.”

I hugged Cindy and the baby together, tears coming.

“I followed
you,” Cindy said, hanging on to me. “I do that sometimes. Don’t be mad, okay?”

“Mad? She’s out there, damn it. Did you see her? You were right.”

“I didn’t want to be right.”

“Thank you, Cindy.”

We were safe for now—and I had been warned.

ROSALIE’S FANFARE WAS
two blocks from my apartment, and Cindy had parked her Honda just up the street from my front door. No cab and no cruiser would get to us in the five minutes it would take us to trot home.

Cindy stayed with Julie inside the boutique while I looked long and hard at the foot traffic outside. Then, I signaled to my friend and we all started out toward Lake Street
at a very quick clip.

Cindy and I were both paranoid, but Julie was enjoying herself. Maybe it was the swiftness of her little stroller and the two of us hovering over her, or maybe her stars had suddenly aligned.

All I knew for sure was that Party Girl Molinari was laughing.

Our little group of three cut through lunch-hour pedestrians
on 12th and a block later, when we crossed California,
I almost began to breathe normally.

The residential block between California and Lake was humming sweetly. The street was wide and homey, dotted with trees. Ground-level garages had SUVs in the driveways, retirees walked dogs, and a woman in pink sweats was sweeping her walk while talking to her neighbor, who was unloading groceries from her car.

Cindy was saying, “So, what now? You’ll get out
an all points bulletin?”

“Too bad I can’t make a positive ID, but anyway, the FBI is going to want to talk to us.”

I was doing my own APB, checking out everything that moved. Dogs barked from a doorway. A man slid out from under his car and got on his phone. He wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off. He was a man’s man, not a slim-hipped psycho killer.

Cindy was saying, “Until Mackie
Morales is in jail, I’m not going to be able to think about anything else, or even sleep. Or even eat. You think I’m obsessed?”

I laughed.

Cindy said, “So, that’s a yes.”

And then we both stopped talking until we arrived safely at the sunny corner of 12th and Lake. My apartment building was directly to my right, and Cindy had parked her car just a few doors to our left. I checked out the moderate
two-way traffic, the cars parked on both sides, and the trees between the cars and the storefronts.

Then Cindy and I grabbed each other over the stroller and kissed cheeks.

She said, “I’m calling Yuki. I need to see her.”

We blew kisses and waved good-bye, and then I said to Julie, “Ride’s over, baby girl. Daddy is probably home already, and I think he’s going to put you down for a nap.”

I walked toward the front door of our building with my keys in hand, and that’s when something I’d half seen, a peripheral flicker, or an instinct, gave me a chill.

I jerked my head toward the mailbox on the corner.

There was a woman there, wearing a long white skirt, a white drapy sweater jacket, and a straw hat with a band around it.

She had been crossing Lake when her image imprinted itself
in my mind. Now she had her back to me and was closing the letter slot on the mailbox. It made a dull, metallic clang.

I was on high alert, but I was just scaring myself.

Mackie Morales didn’t dress like that.

That couldn’t be her.

THE WOMAN IN
the long skirt and crocheted sweater jacket turned to face me. My mind made a psychic leap, feeling a sense of danger, rather than recognition. Cold sweat broke out over my body, especially the palms of my hands, where I was gripping the handle of Julie’s stroller.

And then I was sure.

This was Mackie Morales, now dressed like some kind of angel, but with a gun in her
hand. I’m so keyed to guns that the sight of one bypasses logical thought and goes straight to my lizard brain: fight or flight.

But I had neither option.

If I ran, she’d shoot me in the back.

If I pulled my gun, Julie could get hit.

I said, “Mackie, I’m putting the baby out of harm’s way. Put the gun down. Then we can talk.”

“You think we give a damn about your baby?” she said.

I shoved
Julie’s stroller hard to my right so that it rolled across the sidewalk and wedged itself between two parked cars. Traffic whizzed by as I turned back to Morales.

She was pointing her gun at me with a kind of nonchalance, as if she were in a dream. I understood the situation with crystal clarity. Morales wanted to die, but she wanted to kill me first. And with me standing ten feet away, she wouldn’t
miss.

I knew that I was going to die.

But in my last mortal moment, my rage was focused. I was determined to put Morales down, right now.

She said, “I’ve got her, lover. No worries.”

She was talking to her dead psycho boyfriend.

I went for my gun, but before I could get it out of the holster, there was a shot. Mackie yelped. Her hat blew off and she grabbed her right shoulder. But she still
held on to her gun.

Who fired that shot?

Then I saw something that made no sense. Cindy was running up 12th Street directly toward us.

She held a gun with one hand straight out in front of her.

Mackie turned, took aim at Cindy, and fired.

I had one chance only, and I took it. My first shot went into Morales’s back. She spun to face me and I fired again, center mass. She jerked, staggered
back, and sat down hard. She lifted her gun hand, and aimed.

I fired again, got her right between the eyes.

Morales flopped back flat on the sidewalk, as if someone
had cut her puppet strings. Her skirts fanned out. Her gun clattered to the sidewalk. Her hat blew into the gutter.

Julie bawled. I had the awful thought, maybe she’s been bawling since I sent her stroller off the sidewalk.

I screamed,
“Cindy, I’m coming.”

I checked to see that Julie wasn’t hurt, then went to my dear, sweet friend. Cindy was sitting on the sidewalk with her back up against a parked car. Blood was soaking through her pale-blue sweater.

She looked up and said to me, “I’m hit, Lindsay.” She sighed. “Damn it. She shot me.”

MY DEAR HUSBAND
had heard the gunshots. He had called 911 and then run downstairs. After I told him that I was okay, he took the baby inside, saying he’d be right back.

I sat next to Cindy on the sidewalk. She was pale, and the blood was still spreading across her sweater from what looked like a shoulder wound. I pressed a diaper against the bloodiest place and held it there, hoping
she wasn’t bleeding out, that she wouldn’t go into shock.

The waiting was awful.

She looked so damned frail. I wanted to hug her, to hold on to her so that she didn’t slip away. I could hardly stop myself from jumping up and running out into the street to look for the ambulance.

Cindy tried to tell me what the hell she thought she was doing with a gun. But I truly didn’t care.

“You don’t have
to explain, Cindy. The bullet you took—that thing was meant for me. If you hadn’t—look. You probably saved my damned life. So, thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Protect my exclusive, okay?”

“Your what?
Oh
. Of course. Interview me all you want, Cin. I’m exclusively yours. Until the end of time.”

She gave me a wan smile. “That’ll be great.”

I squeezed her hand, and two and a half minutes after
Joe’s call, black-and-whites screamed into the street.

Doors slammed. Cops advanced.

I unclipped my badge and held it up. I identified myself to a uniformed cop from where I sat at Cindy’s side.

“Boxer. It’s Nardone. Bob Nardone. You okay?”

Sergeant Nardone asked what had happened, and I kept it simple.

“The shooter was Mackenzie Morales. She’s a fugitive. Wanted by the FBI. I shot her in
self-defense.”

I was spelling out Cindy’s name and Mackie’s when incoming sirens drowned out my voice and the ambulance wailed to a stop. Paramedics swarmed around us and questioned Cindy as they lifted her onto a board.

I struggled to my feet, then stepped over to where Morales lay in her bloodied white drapery. No one was there anymore. No one home at all. Maybe Mackie was already checking
in at the gates to Hell.
“Room key, please. Mr. Randy Fish is expecting me.”

Joe called out to me.

“Julie is with Mrs. Rose,” he said of our neighbor across the hall.

I said, “Great. Joe. I’m going to the hospital with Cindy.”

He said, “Take this.”

He handed me my phone, then put his arms around me. I think I was shaking as I held him tight.

The EMTs were closing the doors to the bus, so
I broke away from my husband and told him, “I’ll call you.”

I never made it into the ambulance because Jacobi was standing between me and the doors.

“Jacobi. You see what happened here? It’s Morales. She’s the one who shot Cindy. I have to go with her,” I said.

“You can’t leave, Boxer. We’ve got a fatality here. You know that.”

I had no fight left and it wouldn’t have helped if I had. I said,
“I need a minute.”

I climbed up into the back of the bus and said to Cindy, “I’ll see you later. You’re my hero. And I love you. And Cindy? You’re going to be fine.”

I stepped back down to the street. I gave my gun to Jacobi and walked with him to his car.

MY ARMS WERE
full of flowers when I burst into Cindy’s room at UCSF Medical Center.

Cindy shouted out, “Thank God the flowers have arrived.”

I looked around. There were flowers everywhere, lining the window sill and on the various dinky tables, with some potted things on the floor.

“Who died?” I asked.

Cindy laughed. “Not me.”

She was in the bed that was cranked up to sitting
position, wearing a little pink robe. Right beside her in the bed, wearing oversize denims and a navy-blue SFDA sweatshirt, was Yuki Castellano Brady.

“Hey—hey,” I said.

And, yep, Claire Washburn, MD, was hovering over the
two of my girls with a plastic cup of neon-green Jell-O and a spoon.

They all looked very merry.

“You think this is lime Jell-O, don’t you?” said Claire. “Well, you’d be
wrong. This is my own brew. Made with Margarita mix.”

I laughed. “That explains everything.”

Since all the vases and vaselike objects were in use, I went to the bathroom, took the lid off the toilet tank and dropped the flowers in, stems down.

When I returned, Yuki said, “There’s a no-crying rule. Okay, Linds?”

I nodded. I was too choked up to speak, really.

Cindy was fine. Yuki was fine.

I went around the room and kissed each of my friends and they kissed me. There were hugs, too, long ones, no one wanting to let go. Speaking for myself, I was thinking how life could end without warning and how freakin’ wonderful it was to have moments like this.

When we were exhausted from the hugging, I pulled over a chair for myself and sat down hard, next to the bed.

I said, “I want what
you’re having.”

There were peals of laughter, one distinctive peal coming from Yuki.

She said, “Was that me laughing? I haven’t done that in a while.”

She was a little drunk, but that was appropriate. She had told me and Joe most of the horrific story, including that she’d shivved the bad guy.

“You told everyone?” I asked her.

“Yep. The Women’s Murder Club kicked ass this week.”

“I’ve got
Ms. Mackie’s three-eyed corpse in my cooler,” said Claire. “So I’ll drink to that.”

Claire raised her cup of Jell-O, and just then there was a knock on the doorjamb.

The unsung hero of the hour, the man who’d taught Cindy to shoot, was standing there. I said, “Well, I’ve gotta go now, Cindy. I hear my baby calling me.”

Claire added, “I’ve got a baby, too, and I’m driving Yuki home. I need to
get a look at Brady.”

There was a little rustle as we gathered our things. More kisses for Cindy and then we each said hi, as we edged past my good-looking, good-doing partner, who was standing in the doorway.

I hoped to God Cindy was well enough to handle
this
.

CINDY SAID, “HEY
, where’s everyone
going?
”

The girls waved good-bye, blew kisses, and let themselves out the door, letting Richie in. Her pulse shot up. She touched her throat as he came into the room, looking great, wearing a jacket, his tie loose at the collar, fresh blue shirt, and khakis. His hair was falling over one eye.

“Richie. Hi.”

He looked around the room at the garden
on the window sill and said, “Cindy, I would have brought flowers but a birdie told me that you have plenty.”

He turned his eyes on her, smiled, and shook a white paper bag with a gold-foil seal holding down the flap.

“I brought this instead.”

“Come
onnn
. Chocolate orange peel? Let me see.”