A Knife Edge by David Rollins Page B

up.”
    “Cross my heart,” I said.
    “OK…” Metzler fiddled with the pencil some more as if he hadn't convinced himself of the wisdom of letting me in on the latest. “We lost a team of good cops in the Four Winds. Eight men and women. We had a wise guy under observation there, in one of the Four Winds' serviced apartments. A big fish—the biggest. We'd turned him. He was supposed to be meeting a bunch of other wise guys for breakfast half an hour
after
the gas leak exploded.”
    One of the phones on the desk began to ring. Metzler ignored it.
    “You think his breakfast associates found out about it?”
    Metzler nodded. “There's that chance. The timing was impeccable.”
    “You're saying the real target was not the Transamerica?”
    “Yeah. It looks to us like the bomb in front of the Transamerica building was—is—a diversion. The perpetrators wanted us to think it was a terrorist job.”
    I felt hollow inside. So, nearly a thousand men, women, and children killed a couple of days before Christmas to keep a godfather from spilling the beans? “And keeping the wise guy bottled up in the safe house was your operation?” I asked.
    “Uh-huh.”
    That was tough. Along with everything else, Metzler had to be swimming in an ocean of guilt. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the photocopies of various documents, as well as a photo, and spread them on the desk. “This is the guy we're missing.”
    Metzler took a look. “Is that a bowl on his head?” he asked.
    It wasn't a great photo of Professor Sean Boyle, but then I didn't think the guy was particularly photogenic. “No,” I said.
    “Has he got any relatives?”
    “Only Uncle Sam,” I said. “That's why I'm here.”
    By now, both phones on Metzler's desk were ringing. So was his cell. Someone was also knocking on the door. I'd taken up too much of the captain's time.

TEN
    B efore I'd left, Metzler had promised to do what he could, circulating the documents among the emergency services crews without giving a specific reason for the fuss, but he warned that things were still a mess. There were plenty of victims of the bombing suffering severe shock with no clue who they were, and plenty of corpses burned beyond recog nition. It could take weeks to sort through the identity issues. He said it was likely that some people might never be found or accounted for. He also advised me to keep an eye on the Web site where the names of the newly positively identified were being posted every minute. More than that, he warned, he couldn't do.
    I made my way through the confusion of the command center and headed for the exit. Outside, I took shelter under an awning. It was raining heavily, the weather aligning with the city's mood. Low gray clouds scudded across a backdrop of a deeper gray and dumped buckets of the Pacific Ocean on the frantic rescue attempts still going on down in Clay and Montgomery streets. Sirens, seemingly hundreds of them, wailed and screamed through the dark city canyons. Somewhere close by, there were helicopters in the sky, hovering, braving the nil visibility.
    I ran to my vehicle, an old beige Ford Crown Vic, with my jacket bunched up over my head. The car had been left for me topick up at the airport. The thing sagged to the left when I sat in it. Inside, it reeked of sweat, cigarettes, and stale sex.
    The financial district had been evacuated and sealed off by the National Guard. The streets not in use by the emergency crews were eerily deserted. I drove to the checkpoint and stopped beside a huddle of Humvees and a cluster of armed guardsmen wearing black ponchos slick with rain. I hit the switch and the window came down.
    “Sir?” said a kid with a high voice and an M16 who barely filled out his uniform. “Can I help you?”
    “I'm heading to Palo Alto. What's the best route through the city?”
    “It's all gone to crap beyond here, I'm afraid, sir.” He put his head in the window and pointed down the street. I smelled beer and