Russian Hill (Abby Kane FBI Thriller - Chasing Chinatown Trilogy Book 1) by Ty Hutchinson Page A

piled high on it. There had to be at least five empty coffee cups bunched together—one being used as an ashtray.
    A few seconds later, Warner returned and sat in the cracked leather seat behind the desk. “All righty,” he said as he flipped through a large, plastic binder. “Saturday… Saturday… Okay, here we go.” He ran is stubby finger down the page. “Ah ha. Got it. Pick up at Sausalito pier in front of the Naturally Sweet store.” He looked up at me. “That sound about right?”
    I nodded. “You got a name?”
    “Yeah. Vitaly Scherbo. Russian guy. Been with us for about six months. Looks like he hasn’t been around since.”
    “Is that normal?”
    “Some of these guys work a few days out of the week and that’s it.” Warner ripped some paper off an old McDonald’s bag and wrote a phone number and address down. He offered it to me, but I motioned for Kang to grab it.
    We thanked Warner for his time, and I called Vitaly as soon as we exited the building. An old woman answered.
    “Phone’s no good. Let’s hope the address is real,” I said as I pulled the car door open.

 
     
    Chapter 24
     
    It was a forty-minute drive across town, again. Vitaly’s address was in the Inner Richmond neighborhood. His place of residence was on 18th Street between Geary and Anza—smack dab in the middle of San Francisco’s Russian community.
    Old row homes lined the street. The address led us to a light blue one that had a unit on top and one on the bottom—Vitaly’s. Kang knocked on the door and took a step back. We waited a bit before he knocked once more, this time louder. I moved over to a curtained window to see if I could see inside, but the material was too thick and pushed tightly against the glass.
    “Looks like he’s not home,” Kang said.
    “Either that, or he doesn’t want to talk to us.”
    I tried the latch on the wooden gate that separated Vitaly’s building from the next. It was open.
    “We don’t have a warrant,” Kang reminded me.
    “We just want to talk.” I pushed it open and entered the narrow space between the two homes. Behind the house was a small fenced yard with a few stubbles of grass making a go at life. A narrow slab of cement masqueraded as a patio and hosted a couple of beach chairs, and a bunch of empty Vodka bottles surrounded an overturned milk crate that played table to an overflowing ashtray.
    “Looks like somebody had a party,” Kang said from behind me.
    Vitaly had the curtains drawn at every window, so I couldn’t see inside from the yard, either. “This guy allergic to the sun?”
    I stood off to the side of the glass door and knocked on it. A beat later, we heard the front door slam. We both spun on our heels and raced back to the front in time to see a man running away.
    Kang and I gave chase and gained on him fairly quickly. I picked up the scent of stale alcohol being left in his wake. He was probably still drunk.
    He cut across the street to the other side and was nearing busy Geary Avenue.
    “Vitaly,” I called out, “we only want to talk to you.”
    He didn’t respond and continued running, now pushing people out of the way. He rounded the corner onto Geary. We followed and were both almost in reach when I heard Kang call out, “It’s okay. I got him.”
    Before I knew it, I had blurted back, “You mean like last time?” With that, I lowered my head and put everything I had into a leap forward. I hit Vitaly in the back. Both he and I tumbled to the ground. Thankfully, he cushioned my fall.
    I rolled onto my feet and turned in time to see Kang fall onto our guy. His knee went right into Vitaly’s back, pinning him to the ground.
    Within seconds, Kang had slapped a pair of handcuffs on him. He looked up at me when he finished, still breathing hard. “You had to be the one to catch him, huh?”
    “It’s more like I was the first one out of the starting blocks, so naturally, I was closer to him.”
    Kang shook his head and yanked Vitaly to his