The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(7)

Conklin picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “Cin. I’m working tonight. I know. I know. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

Cappy McNeil stopped by our desks. Cappy was a friend, a fellow cop who’d been working homicide longer than me, which made him an old-timer.

“I overheard the name Chris Dietz,” he said. “I know of him. A CI of mine just mentioned that Dietz could be planning some kind of job. Big one.”

“No kidding.”

I thanked Cappy for the tip, which gave some validity to Julian Lambert’s story and turned my thoughts about the interview with him upside down. And then I saw how this was going to go.

Conklin and I would brief Brady. He would call the SF branch of the FBI and our mostsenior SWAT commander, Reg Covington. Then we were all going to pay a call on Mr. Dietz, a bad guy with a gun said to be living in the Anthony Hotel.

I tried to imagine Dietz coming peacefully with us to the Hall.

I couldn’t see it.





CHAPTER 9





THE ANTHONY HOTEL was in the middle of a grubby block in SoMa, flanked by two buildings—on the left, a low-rent office building with a tax-preparation business on the ground floor; on the right, a liquor store with a sputtering neon sign and a massage parlor on the top two stories.

I’d been to this nightmarish six-story “hotel” before, once to investigate a suspicious death by hanging and once to disarm a drug-addled father who had threatened to take out his family of six. It was amazing that we’d gotten all of those kids out alive.

I knew the Anthony’s nearly bare lobby by heart, the scabby front desk, two broken-down armchairs, a bank of vending machines, and the pervasive smell of urine. Above the ground floor were five stories of rent-by-the-month rooms where drug addicts could indulge their habits in private and with all the amenities, like sinks and toilets and beds.

The hallways were pocked with bullet holes and in some places had been bloodied by heads being bashed against the walls. Inside the rooms, sinks had been pulled out and pipes in the ceiling had exploded, and I didn’t want to think about what passed for bathrooms.

To call the Anthony Hotel a dump was to flatter it. But Christopher Dietz, the professional hit man Julian Lambert had named, had taken a room here among the psychos, drug addicts, and many poor families with small children.

At eight that night Conklin and I, wearing Kevlar over our SFPD Windbreakers and armed with semiautos and two warrants, entered the lobby. With us were two FBI agents, Reginald Covington, the head of our SWAT team, and three of his men, all in full tactical gear. Four other SWAT commandos were outside, watching the front and rear entrances and standing by for whatever might come.

Was this overkill for one bail-jumping presumed hit man?

Only if he put up his hands and let us bring him in.

Covington asked the frightened desk troll which room Dietz occupied.

“He’s in 6R. Top floor, rear of the building.”

Covington said to the clerk, “Be cool and get out.” He didn’t have to be told twice.

The elevator wasn’t working, so the eight of us thundered up the stairs. A woman on three dropped her laundry basket and locked herself behind her door. Good idea. Little kids playing in the stairwell yelled for their mothers—and then they just stood there and stared.

We swept them out of our way, ordered them to go home and close the door. One child left his pile of small wheeled toys in our path, and a girl of about eighteen months just sat on the landing and bawled until her father grabbed her up and carried her away.

My pulse was pounding from both exertion and dread. Kids could get hurt. We all could.

When we reached the top floor, we paused to scope out the hallway. It was dim, silent, and empty. Room 6R was at the far end of the execrable corridor, which was lined with five doors on each side.

Covington and his men stood on either side of Dietz’s doorway.

As I was lead investigator on this case, my job was to knock, announce, then step away. When the door opened, SWAT would toss in a flashbang grenade and pull the door closed. A moment later they would open the door again and immobilize Dietz, who would be sprawled out on the floor, temporarily deaf and blind and wishing he were dead.

I knocked, called out, “Mr. Dietz? SFPD,” and stepped to the side of the door. I listened for the sound of footsteps.

Instead I heard metallic clicks coming from behind us, down the hall and at the front of the building. It sounded like locks being thrown open.

Was a neighbor coming out to see what was happening?

Or was a child coming out to play?

I turned toward the sound and a heavy weight fell on me, covering me and dropping me to the floor. I heard shocking reports of gunfire and the reverberation of hundreds of rounds hitting the walls. The sixth floor of the Anthony Hotel had become a war zone.





CHAPTER 10





A MOMENT LATER, the deafening fusillade of gunfire at close range just stopped cold.

There was an echoing silence, then I heard the clattering of boots on tile and men cursing: “Shit.” “Jake. Speak to me.” “God damn it to hell.”

I said to Conklin, “Rich. Let me up. Please.”

He scrambled off me, got to his feet, and peered down into my face. “You okay, Boxer?”

“I think so. Yes. How about you?”