The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(82)

“And you, Erik.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Another loose end,” Gallo said. “Thomas Wolf, I mean. But it’s not as if he gave anybody a choice.”

“He wasn’t just another loose end,” Erik Mason said. “More like a loose cannon.”

Gallo drank, staring out at the sky and the water. It had struck him again tonight how well he continued to fool most of the people he encountered, how they still feared him the way they always had. How they still thought he possessed the kind of power that Michael Barr had.

“We’ll do what we need to do,” Gallo said to Erik Mason.

“As always,” Mason said. “When the situation on the ground changes, adjustments have to be made.”

“Do you think the girl will be the last loose end?” Gallo said.

“One of them,” Mason said.

“You’ll handle it,” Gallo said.

“Of course.”

Gallo turned to Erik Mason, extending his glass, saying they should drink to that. But Mason was no longer standing next to him.

Mason was behind John Gallo now, his arms around him, effortlessly lifting him into the air before Gallo realized what was happening, carrying him the few steps to the edge of the bluff before letting him go.





Ninety-Seven



A WOMAN WALKING HER dog found John Gallo’s body trapped by the rocks below his property in the late morning, before the current could carry him away. By the middle of the afternoon, Ben Cantor was in my office at Wolves Stadium, wanting to know what John Gallo and I had talked about when he had been with me here the previous afternoon.

“How’d you know he was here?” I said.

“Knowing stuff is kind of a hobby with me,” Cantor said.

I told him as much of the conversation as I could recall and what I’d said to him before he left.

“And that’s it?” Cantor said.

“Yes, Detective. That’s it.”

It was the first time I’d seen him since I walked out of the restaurant that night, right before Cantor and I had been turned into San Francisco’s fun couple by the media.

“You’re not leaving anything out this time?”

“I’ve learned that only opens me up to heartbreak. Or opens you up to heartbreak. Or both of us.”

“He act like somebody who might go home and jump?” Cantor said.

“Because of a football team?”

“Somebody threw your father into the water over a football team,” Cantor said, “and someone threw your brother out a window. Maybe the same person threw Gallo off a cliff.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

“Is this the way it’s going to be with us from now on?”

“I’m not really sure, Detective. But if you don’t have any further questions for me, I have a team meeting to attend.”

“With the Wolves?”

“The Hunters Point Bears, as a matter of fact.”

Cantor went down the hall to talk to Danny Wolf about the death of John Gallo. I drove over to the high school. Chris Tinelli, my quarterback, was the one who’d emailed me earlier and said he and the other players wanted to meet with me in the gym before practice.

The Bears’ first playoff game was scheduled for Saturday, against Archbishop Riordan. If we won, the championship game would be in two weeks. I’d already arranged that it would be played at Wolves Stadium, whether the Bears were in it or not.

The players were waiting for me when I got there, already suited up for practice. They were seated in bleachers that had been pulled down off the gym walls, as if this were some kind of assembly. When I walked in, it occurred to me how good it was to see them. I’d missed three consecutive practices last week and then been in Seattle when we’d nearly suffered our first loss of the season.

I looked up at them and grinned and said, “Why don’t I make a few opening comments and then throw it open to questions?”

Nobody laughed.

Crickets.

Chris Tinelli had been sitting in the bottom row of the bleachers. He got up now and walked up to me, his face serious, his rubber cleats sounding loud on the gym floor.

“What’s going on, Chris?” I said to him.

He took a deep breath, looked up at his teammates, and then said, “We don’t want you to coach us anymore.”

I looked at him as if I hadn’t heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

“We feel bad about it, Coach. We really do. But we’re kind of firing you.”





Ninety-Eight



“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS, CHRIS,” I said. “You know how important you are to me. How important you all are.”

But everything about him, everything in the air we were all breathing, told me he wasn’t joking at all. And neither were his teammates.

“Well, you sure don’t act like we’re all that important lately. We don’t know when you’re going to be around and when you’re not going to be around. And we nearly lost the other day because you weren’t around.”

Carlos Quintera stood now, halfway up the bleachers.

“You’re always talking about choices. It seems to us like you’ve made yours. And it’s not us.”