Read Online Power Blind by Steven Gore - Free Book Online Page B

to retire. It’s even hard to think about it.”
    Spike’s grin faded as his sentence trailed off. He paused, his face turned somber.
    â€œMiddle age is weird. You think about things you never thought about before. It hit me the other night that from the moment my father came across the border, he never felt at home again anywhere. Not in Mexico and not in Arizona, even after he became a citizen.” Spike tapped the gold badge clipped to his belt under his jacket. “And I’m not sure I really felt at home until I got this piece of metal. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to follow you up here. Kinda makes it hard to give it up.”
    Spike paused again, thinking, then his eyes brightened. “Well, that and Placita. She couldn’t stand me hanging around the house all the time.”
    â€œShe tell you that?”
    â€œStraight out, the first time I talked about it. Then she reached for the phone and threatened to make her nephew give me a job driving one of his cabs—until I showed her a news article saying it was more dangerous than being a cop.”
    â€œBut she’d made her point.”
    â€œYeah, big time.”
    Spike pulled his case log out of the manila envelope.
    â€œThat’s another thing.” Spike skimmed down the chronology. “Charlie wouldn’t tell me how he got over to Geary Street where he got shot, but I think he took a taxi. A Checker cab driver remembered dropping off somebody who resembled Charlie two blocks away about twenty minutes before it happened. Charlie denied it was him. But I think it was.”
    â€œSo he didn’t want to use a car that could be traced to him?”
    â€œThat’s what it looks like.”
    â€œSounds like you spent as much time investigating Charlie as you did whoever shot him.”
    â€œMore. He was stonewalling. There had to be a reason, and it wasn’t a no-harm, no-foul case. A few days after he was shot he got pneumonia and it seemed like he wasn’t going to make it. Would’ve made it a homicide right then.”
    â€œWhat did the neighborhood canvass turn up?”
    â€œWe got a possible ID of Charlie at a coffee shop. Eyewitness IDs are bad enough, but this was one where the clerk had no reason to pay attention at the time. So I’m not sure what to make of it.”
    Spike tilted his head toward the two men, one of whom was opening his phone. The man held it to his ear, nodded, then snapped it closed. Thirty seconds later, a younger Hispanic man entered and pulled a chair up to the Jaliscos’ table and set down a small black canvas duffel, stretched tight by its contents. He was dressed in Levi’s and oversized sweatshirt and wearing wraparound sunglasses.
    â€œLooks like they’re going to do the deal right here,” Gage said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was heroin in that bag. They wouldn’t need a briefcase of money to buy so few kilos of cocaine.”
    Spike punched redial on his phone, reported in to the surveillance officers driving down Mission Street toward the restaurant, then disconnected.
    The three men kept casting quick glances around the restaurant, too often for Spike to risk another photo.
    â€œThey’re bringing a dog,” Spike said, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket. “He’ll take a little sniff as they walk outside.” He smiled. “Then off to the pokey.” He pushed his plate away. “What’re you working on besides Charlie?”
    â€œThe main one is a trade secrets case. Fiber-optic switches. My clients developed a switch—a kind of splitter—that tripled fiber-optic line capacity. FiberLink. The owners mortgaged their houses and borrowed from their retirement accounts to fund their research. Really nice people. The brains were two women who used to work at Intel. They came up with the switch on their own time, then brought in some friends to form the