French chewed on a fingernail, an old habit he’d abandoned in his twenties. He studied the street, the station house. Captain Martin would run the press conference, but Martinez would have face time. He’d paint a bad picture. Another escalation. “All right, buddy. Thanks for the information. You might want to make yourself scarce for a while.”

“Are you planning something?”

French said no, but that was a lie, and both men knew it. “You go on and take off, okay? Have a drink at the Dunhill, and tell Mary to put it on my tab.”

“I don’t like this.”

French didn’t, either. His wife watched the six o’clock news. “Make it two drinks. Take a lady friend, if you like.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go on. Get out of here.”

“If that’s how you want it.” Detective Monroe slipped the dark glasses back over his eyes. “I do have a lady friend.”

When he was gone, French went to his dark place, working out the steps and asking hard questions like how far was he willing to go.

Leaving the alley, he worked his car through the neighboring blocks until he found what he needed, a three-story building in mid-renovation, and partially gutted, a half-dozen trucks still on-site. The clock was ticking down, but French had yet to meet a construction crew willing to work more than a minute after the five o’clock bell. This crew was little different. At five, they started packing up. Seven minutes more, and they were gone.

French gave it a fifty count to make sure no one had forgotten a lunch pail or tool belt, then pulled in behind the building, and parked. The lot had been ripped up, too, and that meant red dirt under his tires, a row of trees with dusty leaves. There were other buildings, built close. People could see him if they looked; it wasn’t impossible. He honestly didn’t care. His wife liked to watch the news on WBTV, and he could see her on the sofa, unsuspecting.

Six minutes.

Quitting the car, he took the back steps, and shouldered the door without slowing down. It was a construction door, plywood and flimsy, and the screws tore right out. Inside, it was bare studs and gypsum dust, but the stairwell was intact.

Goddamn right.

Back at the car, he snatched a gun case from the trunk, and strode back to the building as if he owned it, moving faster inside, second floor, the third. A voice said, This is not you, but he told the voice that thirty years of cop meant fuck-all next to his wife and child. On the roof, he checked his lines of fire, then dropped to a knee, unzipping the case.

Three minutes.