A Certain Justice

'My colleagues and I need to breach your line here.'

Again, the silent consultation. Morgan said, 'I'll have to get permission, ma'am.'

Simms stiffened. 'I'm giving you permission, son. This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation and we are in a hurry.'

'Yes, ma'am.' But neither man moved.

'Well?'

'Well, our orders are to keep vehicular traffic out of the parade route…'

'I'll go check.' Escher ran off. Morgan made a gesture. 'It won't be long,' he said. 'Five minutes.'

Farrell, more familiar with the city than Simms, figured the rally would be a mob scene, so he went the back way over Portola and Twin Peaks, thinking he would wind up on Ashbury and then park. He could walk the rest of the way, which he supposed he'd have to do in any event.

The beeper went off as he was passing by a gas station on 17th. He pulled in, ran to the pay phone and punched numbers.

'You've got the senator with you? Herself?' Farrell couldn't believe it.

Glitsky was curt. 'Give me the address. I don't have any time.'

Farrell did, and Glitsky said, 'That's right in the middle… that's where the march is starting.'

'You got it, and I hear on the radio they've closed off the park. Where are you coming from?'

'Pacific Heights.'

'You're going to have to come around the back way, maybe up Judah.'

Glitsky thanked him. 'Take me ten minutes,' he said.

'Don't bet on it, and by the way, your idea of getting out of it if I'm there before the feds…'

'Yeah?'

'I don't think so. Not today.'

Simms was talking to another man with another nametag – Florio. The stripes on Florio's sleeve indicated he had some rank. She explained her position – the Guard would have to let her through the park, they had an arrest to make. Federal warrant. Most Wanted List. Florio raised his eyebrows. 'Kevin Shea?' he asked. At the mention of Shea's name, both Morgan and Escher snapped up.

She looked right, left, then back to Florio. 'No comment on that,' she said. 'Can we get through here?'

She was back in the car and it started moving again through the pedestrians, Morgan walking on one side, Escher on the other, escorting them.

'He should be here,' Kevin said.

'He got caught in the traffic.'

He couldn't stop looking out the window, pulling up the shade, glancing down. Melanie came over to him, moved the shade back. 'Sit down. Come on, Kevin. Looking out isn't helping anything.'

'Sitting here isn't helping anything.'

'Sitting here is waiting for Wes. He'll be here.'

Kevin started snapping his fingers, his nerves eating him. 'We should have-'

'Hey.' She touched a finger to his lips. 'We're doing it.' She leaned over and kissed him. 'I love you. Just wait, Wes will be here. It'll be all right.'

He was reaching for the shade again, going to look down on the Park. The downstairs doorbell sounded. 'There he is,' Melanie said, crossing to the buzzer that unlocked the lobby door. She was about to push it when Kevin jumped up from his chair. 'Wait!' and went to one of the side windows. Opening the shade a crack, he looked out and down. 'Okay,' he said. 'It's him. I think… I've never seen him in a suit.'

'Kevin, who else would it be? Nobody knows we're here.'

He gave her a look. 'Famous last words,' he said.

As directed by their supervisor, Morgan and Escher remained at their new positions as escorts of the FBI vehicle, which had pulled to the western curb at Page and Stanyan, across the street from the apartment.

Simms sent one man with a field telephone and a suitcase into the park to find a reasonably elevated spot from which he would have a clear shot at the fourth-floor front window of the apartment building across the street from them – a tree or a telephone pole – should it be necessary, should the order be given. (Their backup unit was on the way but, with the traffic problems, she didn't want to have to wait for them. They might not encounter a Florio who would cooperate.)

Simms took her two other men and they made their way through the pulsing crowd onto the street, eventually into the open courtyard that faced the park, and to the front door of the apartment. She rang the entire bank of doorbells for the first floor, and someone buzzed open the outer door.

'Cake,' she said, holding the door for her men.

Out in the street Morgan and Escher were guarding the car, the only one parked on Stanyan. People kept washing by, around it. Someone's amplified voice came ringing over the distance – the rally was getting underway.

'Whose car, man? I been walkin' ten blocks, my dogs be achin'. Thought no cars allowed in here. They was, I woulda brung mine.'

Morgan wasn't supposed to talk to the crowd except to answer informational questions and give directions, but this big guy had one of those immediately friendly faces, a big smile, a wife and kids in tow, here to support the cause. But he wasn't trouble.

Everybody wasn't on the warpath.

'FBI,' Morgan said, then added. 'They got Kevin Shea tree'd in that building. Bringing him in.'

'Hallelujah,' said the man, his smile brightening. 'Don't got to walk so far now, all the way City Hall. Ought to just park my dogs here.' Then, turning to the crowd behind him, spreading the good word. 'Hey, you all hear this? They got Kevin Shea.' Pointing. 'Yeah, right over yonder.'

Upstairs, the deadbolt thrown again, Kevin, Melanie and Wes had decided that, even with the crowd outside, their odds were far better facing it than an armed, trigger-happy and belligerent FBI.

No one except possibly the FBI knew they were anywhere within miles of here. They'd be an all-but-anonymous few white faces in the crowd, and Wes assured them that there were a lot of others, more than he would have thought. Everybody with a placard, a message, or a cause had come to the party.

Kevin could wear his ski cap. They could get away from the heat here and then wait for Glitsky's call on the beeper when they got to a safer spot.

In the apartment's lobby Simms spoke by walkie-talkie to her sharpshooter and decided she would give him the extra few minutes he needed to get into position before she took her two other men upstairs with her to make the arrest. With the crowd, he had found it difficult to blend in, find a spot, get set up. She told him she would give him ten minutes max – call her if it was going to be sooner.

In the interim the three of them would split apart to check the layout of the building, identify any potential hidden exits, back doors, fire escapes. Make it air-tight.

They would meet back here in the lobby, then go up and take him.

'… and we have just received an unconfirmed report that Kevin Shea has been located at a building not five blocks from where we are standing right now at the Kezar Pavilion. Philip Mohandas has left the podium, almost at a dead run, and is leading the marchers – it's a tremendous and very angry crowd and I'm sure you can hear them chanting Shea's name over my voice – he's leading the way out toward the edge of the park.

'We'll be trying to follow Mohandas as he…'

Glitsky had pulled his siren and flasher and put it on the roof. Loretta was sitting next to him, silent and withdrawn as they careened through the narrow streets, now south of the park, almost there.

Glitsky felt he'd been awake for days. He had the AM radio on, had heard the latest reports. Somehow – how did these things happen? – somehow it had gotten out.

Now Philip Mohandas and a crowd estimated at between five hundred and several thousand had converged on the Stanyan Street apartment building. The FBI was, reportedly, inside the building, but so far – according to the news reports – had not moved to make an arrest. In actual fact, no one seemed to know for certain what was transpiring inside, or whether Shea was there at all, or if anyone was with him.