Bishop raised the Marlboro and pressed it between his lips. Weiss must've sat in this chair in the evenings, he thought. Drinking his scotch, looking out at the hill. Watching the dusk fall over the city. Alone. Watching the dark.
He drew smoke. He let it trail out of his mouth slowly. What did Weiss think about, sitting here? Did he think about the whore? Alone here, night after night, drinking, watching the dark. Or was it the killer he thought about—the killer out there somewhere, watching him, hunting for her?
Bishop tried to think the way Weiss would. If he was going to catch up to the old man, if he was going to stop the specialist, he had to get into their heads—just like Weiss would. He had to get a sense of what they were planning, what they wanted.
He thought about the killer. He thought about him buying three guns from the Frenchman. It was a lot of hardware, powerful stuff. Just to kill off one middle-aged private eye. What was that about?
Bishop lowered the cigarette. He tipped an ash into the water glass on the table. The ash hissed softly, spread and sank, lay black and cold at the glass's bottom. He considered it. Something came to him. A scenario. A reason for the three guns.
Weiss and the killer were different kinds of people—not just because Weiss was a good guy and the killer was a psycho piece of shit. The ways they approached things were different. Weiss had that magical trick he did, that thing where he guessed what you'd do before you'd do it. He'd pulled that on Bishop any number of times. It was annoying as hell, but it worked, no question.
The killer—nobody knew much about him, but from what they'd seen in the past, he was more the methodical type. He made plans. He laid out elaborate strategies and followed them precisely, step by step. He waited patiently—he had endless patience. Then, when he set his machinery into motion, he was relentless, unstoppable.
But Weiss had stopped him once. The last time Weiss and the killer tangled with each other, Weiss's instinct had been one step ahead of the killer's plans. So this time the killer wanted to make sure it was the other way around. This time the killer was planning for Weiss to outguess him.
Bishop smiled around the filter of his Marlboro. That was it. The three guns. The killer was planning for the moment when Weiss would get the better of him. He was planning for Weiss to get in on him somehow and take his gun away—take his gun and search him like the ex-cop he was and find the second gun too. The killer must've come up with some way to hide the third gun, so Weiss wouldn't find it. That would be the Saracen—small, accurate, powerful. He was planning for Weiss to outguess him and take two of his guns away. Then he would kill him with the Saracen.
Bishop narrowed his eyes, peering through the drifting smoke. It was good, he thought. It was a good plan. Simple, but very smart. It would probably work too.
So that was the killer. Bishop had gotten into the killer's mind, just like Weiss would. Now he had to do the same to Weiss himself.
How was he going to figure out where Weiss was? How was he going to get to him before the killer did? Weiss knew everything about finding people—it stood to reason he knew how not to be found. He'd left his cell phone behind. He probably loaded up on cash before he left. He probably wasn't using credit cards or ATMs. He was staying off e-mail. Staying off the phone...
Then it came to him. Another breath of smoke rolled out of his mouth, this one in a billowing rush. It joined the cloud hanging heavy in the still, close air before his eyes.
The message machine.
Bishop darted the butt of his cigarette into the glass. It spit and died with a trailing wisp. He pushed out of the wing chair. He went back to Weiss's desk.
There was the message machine, the red light burning. No messages. They'd all been erased. But Bishop had called the apartment himself, just as he'd told Sissy. He'd left Weiss a message yesterday and now it was gone. That meant Weiss must've phoned in from somewhere, must've picked up the message and erased it. It was careless of him. It was not the kind of mistake he usually made. But maybe he hoped the hooker would contact him here, or maybe there was some information he was waiting for. Maybe he just didn't think anyone would break into his apartment like this. Whatever it was, he'd given himself away.
Bishop picked up the desk phone. He called a lady cop he knew. He flirted with her for about forty-five seconds, then asked her to get him the record of incoming calls to Weiss's apartment.
Then he went out, leaving the glass with the cigarette stub on the table by the wing chair, leaving the smoke hanging in the musty room.
Moments later he was on his Harley. He motored back across the bay. The wind was on his face. The sun lay broken, dazzling, on the wind-rough water. He could already feel that cool, metallic presence in him—that presence that meant violence was coming.
When he got to Berkeley, he checked his palmtop. There was a message waiting. The lady cop. There had only been a few calls to Weiss's apartment, she said. All of them were local, except for one. That one call came from the Saguaro Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. Room 414. It had come in only a couple of hours ago.
Bishop smiled to himself again. It was that easy. The Saguaro Hotel in Phoenix.
All he needed now was an airplane and a gun.
27.
The gun was a K9. It was compact and built to sit low in the hand, just the slender matte blue barrel peeking out above the fingers. Bishop kept it in a shoe box in his bedroom closet, tucked in there beside a lightweight shoulder holster. It had been a long time since he'd gone armed. But he shrugged the holster on now, anchored it to his belt. Slipped the pistol in. He checked himself in the closet mirror to make sure the leather jacket covered the outfit. Then, by way of insurance, he brought a knife out of the shoe box as well. It was a tactical Strider folding knife with a fat four-inch blade. He had sewn a leather loop in his boot to hold it. He hadn't used the loop in a long time either. He used it now.
He gathered a few other odds and ends: a lock pick, a sap, a change of clothes. He dumped them into a gym bag and was on his way again.
As for the plane, he got hold of a Centurion, a Cessna Turbo 210. One of the FBOs at Oakland Airport had one on hand. They knew Bishop. He called ahead and the plane was gassed up and waiting for him on the tarmac when he arrived half an hour later.
Another fifteen minutes and he was airborne, westbound. As he drew the 210 up off runway 27R, the windshield was filled with the glittering water and the peaks and jagged falls of the city skyline, its buildings golden and rose in the late morning sun. He banked the plane right over the bay, then right and right again until he was slanting southeast along the freeway in a distant parallel to the state border. As he climbed, he caught sight of the Sierras, golden and green. He followed the misty line of them all the way to Bakersfield. There he landed, refueled, and took off again, heading easterly now, the foothills to his left.
He set his course for Arizona.
The plane was fast for a single engine. He had it cranked up to 235 knots as he skirted the Mojave. He climbed to 9,005. Watched as the brown desert before him slowly became a dozen shades of red. Bulges, arches, cylinders of living rock aspired toward him, almost close, then passed beneath his wing. Long plateaus went under leisurely, so level they seemed shorn flat. Sudden mountains stabbed up at him out of the sage. All—every formation and the long empty earth as far as he could see—was crimson, scarlet, cinnabar, a dozen shades, each color growing more and more vivid as the sun westered and the contrasting sky became a richer blue.
He was close now. But above the escarpments of Maricopa, he saw the cumulus clouds building. He glanced at his Stormscope. There were red cells swirling to the north. These were the last of the thunderstorms Weiss had driven through the night before.
Soon ATC came on the radio, warning him southward. He drifted that way, confident he could outrun the front. But the clouds followed him. He eyed them through his window. Great cottony masses, they boiled up out of themselves like white volcanoes in a doper's dream. Their froth spilled highe
r and higher. More of them appeared and more.
Then suddenly—it was incredibly sudden—the storm stomped down on him. Bishop's stomach lifted, then did a nauseating dive. In less than ten seconds, the Centurion was driven five hundred feet toward the earth. The plane rocked side to side, one wing dipping drastically then swinging up as the other dropped down. The windshield was swallowed in a sickly green-black. The green-black was laced with skeleton fingers of white light. The wind swept up from under him and hurled the machine skyward as many feet as it had fallen. The rain washed over the windshield in a blinding rush. The darkness flickered behind the rain.
Now the air trafficker was screaming vectors, but his voice was reduced to static by thunder like an explosion. Bishop pulled the throttle fast, dropping the speed to VA, hoping to keep his wings on. But even as he did, he heard a crash against the fuselage—he felt it like a blow in his own side—and he knew that he'd been struck by hail.
Bishop laughed wildly, his pale eyes bright. He didn't have much of an imagination, but the way the stick was jumping in his hand made him feel as if he were arm wrestling the storm for his life. And now vertigo got him. The taste of vomit was in his mouth, and he couldn't tell if he was right side up or overturned and plummeting. He swept his gaze across the instrument panel again and again, trying to get a sense of his position. The digital altimeter had gone blank. Altitude, airspeed, vertical speed indicators—they were all windblown, dancing, unreadable.
Again, the green blackness was lanced by lightning. Another blast of thunder engulfed him. More hail hammered at the wings. More rain gushed over the windshield. There was nothing on the headset anymore but a dim desperate calling, very far away. Bishop gripped the shivering stick. He felt his stomach come into his throat as the plane was driven down and down and down by another crush of air.
The altimeter blinked on. He was at three thousand feet above the earth, then two. The hard ground was coming up fast. The plane would pancake in another minute, a silver stain in the red dust.
He fell ten more seconds—a hundred feet. Ten more—a hundred more. Then, still in the clouds, the plane steadied. The yoke grew sure and solid in his fingers. He glanced at the Stormscope. He was through the red cell. It was blowing south and west of him. There was a break before the next yellow mass moved in. He looked up. The mist shredded and fell away from the windshield on either side...
And there, smack in front of him, was the red terrain. He was piloting straight for a hill of rock. A strange, cold thrill went through him. An image came into his mind: he saw the Centurion buried in the mountainside, nothing left but rudder and blood.
He gave the plane gas, drew the nose upward. He laughed again, shaking his head, as the plane flew over the hill, nosing into thin clouds. He banked to the right and broke through into brilliant blue sky.
As suddenly as the storm had hit, the view was clear, so clear he could make out the gleam of Sky Harbor Airport twenty miles in the distance.
Still laughing, he prepared for his landing in Phoenix.
28.
Bishop drove away from the airport in a rented Sebring, a silver-blue convertible, the top down. It was afternoon now. A typical October day in the desert city: blindingly bright, ninety degrees. It hadn't occurred to him back in chilly San Francisco it would be so hot here. As he drove, the wash of air swept over him, cooling his face. But the leather jacket was suffocating, and he couldn't take it off with the gun strapped on underneath.
All the same, he was jazzed, wired. The thrill of the thunderstorm was still in him. It had him wound up inside, ready for more action. Sure, Weiss would be pissed off when he showed up out of nowhere. He'd probably be pissed off that he'd tracked him down so easily. But that was too damn bad. Weiss was no match for the specialist and Bishop was. He was going to save the sad-faced old bastard's life whether he liked it or not.
He passed through a low area of sprawling malls, an expanse of concrete with a backdrop of red desert hills. He spotted the Saguaro Hotel half a mile away, a rippling wave of mirrored glass eight stories high. It sat across from a shopping mall on an oasis in the stone: planted grass, jets of water in a marble fountain, a line of towering palm trees standing like sentinels on each side of the reception cul-de-sac. Bishop drove up the winding driveway, under the palms.
He tilted his head back to look up at the hotel through his aviators. He was surprised. It was a fancy, high-end venue. Not really Weiss's style. As the Sebring drew to a stop, a valet—a white-faced kid in a black vest—rushed to open the door for him. Bishop stepped out into the shade of the hotel. Even in the shade, the air was hot and still. He brought his gym bag up from the passenger seat.
"You're gonna want to get rid of that jacket," said the valet brightly.
Bishop smiled a little. He shifted his shoulder as he lifted the bag, and he could feel the shape of the K9 beneath his arm.
Two big glass doors slipped open automatically. Bishop stepped into the hotel, thankful for the cool of the air-conditioning. He went up a few stairs and came into the lobby. It was a vast open space, an eight-story atrium. There were glass walls with sunlight filtering through vines and bamboo trees. The broad floor area was thick with people—tourists with their fat asses stuffed into shorts, their big bellies ballooning under flowered shirts. They gathered in clusters around the long reception desk and in the seating areas. They filled the four elevators. The elevators were glass, too, and Bishop could see the fat people in them gaping out, rising past the galleries on each floor toward the skylight far above.
He passed into the crowd. He moved through the clusters, carrying his bag. He was a glaringly dark figure amid all those flowered shirts.
"A little hot for a leather jacket," some guy piped up outside the elevator doors. Bishop glanced at him. An egg-shaped man in a gathering of egg-shaped men and women. They all wore shorts and untucked Hawaiian shirts pressed out by their fat bellies. "I'm burning up and I'm dressed like this!" said the guy. He did look hot, even in the cool atrium. His face—egg-shaped like his body—was pink and damp with sweat, the skin glistening under sparse hair combed across his dome to hide the bald spot. He was practically panting as he spoke.
Bishop—who managed to look cool and untouchable even in his jeans and leather—didn't answer. He shifted his shoulder to get the feel of the gun again.
The elevator came. Bishop stepped into it in the crush of egg-shaped people. The elevator rose. He held the gym bag in front of him, looked out through the glass wall as the people in the lobby grew smaller below. It was a slow trip. The glass box stopped at every floor. The egg-shaped people got out by twos and threes. When the box reached the fourth floor, Bishop got out. The egg-shaped man who had spoken to him and two egg-shaped women stepped out with him onto the gallery.
"Well—have a good one!" said the egg-shaped man, as he and the two women waddled off to the right.
Bishop went in the opposite direction, still without a word.
The gallery wound around the atrium, catching the wave shape of the building. Then it turned the corner and became a straight hallway. Bishop carried the gym bag to the hallway's end. There was the room he wanted, right next to the fire stairs, Weiss's room, 414.
He stood at the door. He rang the bell, waited for an answer. A maid came up the hall toward him, a heavyset Mexican woman pushing a linen cart, leaning into the effort. No one opened the door. Bishop knocked. The maid and her cart passed behind him. He waited. Still, no one came. He turned his head and watched the maid push her cart to the corner. Then she went around the corner and was out of sight.
Bishop set the gym bag on the floor. He knelt and unzipped it, brought the lock pick out from beneath his clothes. It was a special pick he used for hotels. Modern hotels had electromagnetic locks with card keys. They could be picked with magnets, but this thing was easier. It was a small device like a metal tape measure. It slipped under the door and then bent up to hook the door handle. Because of the laws meant to protect peo
ple with disabilities, the door handles in hotel rooms had to be easy to pull down and had to override the latch. Bishop hooked the handle with his device and yanked it down. The door swung open for him.
He put the pick back in the bag. He stepped into the room, shut the door behind him. The room was broad and shadowy. The far wall was one long curving line of windows, but heavy curtains were drawn across them, keeping out the sun. Peering through the gloom, Bishop surveyed the place. The bed was made. No luggage was in sight. No clothes were in sight; no shoes were on the floor. The air conditioner was going, but aside from that, there was no sign that anyone was staying here.
This was the first moment Bishop suspected he'd been set up for the kill. Even now it was just a glimmering of suspicion, just a hint of it. Before this it never occurred to him that the killer was drawing him in. He'd been so focused on finding Weiss, on trying to get here. And then that thunderstorm—that had blown everything out of his mind. Also, truth be told, beneath the hard-guy stuff, he'd been eager to do this. He'd been eager to make things right with Weiss. He figured if he could help him take out the Shadow-man, it might make up for all the other stuff he'd done, the bad stuff. And no matter what he told himself, he wanted to make up for it. Weiss was the only person on earth who'd ever done shit for him. Weiss was the only friend he'd ever had.
So he'd been eager. He'd been in a hurry. He hadn't thought things through. He hadn't stopped to consider how easy this had been, how Weiss didn't make mistakes like the one with the answering machine, how he wouldn't stay in a fancy place like this. He noticed those things, but he hadn't stopped to consider them. And he still wasn't thinking about that stuff, not really. There was just that hint, that glimmering. A tendril of anger and dread drifting through him. An instinct that something was wrong.
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