Nunzio Rinaldi put his arms around his wife and said to Conklin, “What the hell is this? Who is that man?”
Conklin said, “Sorry for the commotion, Mr. Rinaldi, but we had to save your life. We had no choice.”
But I had questions, and maybe I’d get some answers, too.
I ripped off the gunman’s hood, grabbed a thin tuft of silver-brown hair, and lifted his head clear off the pavement.
He looked at me, his gray eyes glinting with amusement, a smile on his lips.
“What’s your name?” I said, although I was sure I already knew. The face matched the fuzzy picture of the man sitting in an SUV with a Candace Martin look-alike.
He had to be Gregor Guzman. Had to be.
I’d read up on Guzman and learned that he was born in Cuba in 1950 to a Russian father and Cuban mother. He’d left home in a stolen fishing boat in the late ’60s, and after landing in Miami, he’d made himself useful to organized guys in the drug trade. Later on, he carved out a career for himself as an independent assassin for hire on three continents.
That grainy picture of Guzman, or someone who looked a lot like him, had launched a fresh search for him. His picture was at airport security checkpoints, on BOLO alerts, in FBI agendas, and on my desktop.
Did we have him?
Was this the man who had met with Ellen Lafferty a few weeks before Dennis Martin was killed? Had Caitlin Martin really killed her father? Or had this hired killer had a hand in Dennis Martin’s death?
“You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you mine,” Guzman said.
“Sergeant Boxer,” I said. “SFPD.”
“Nice to meet you, pretty lady,” the killer said.
Sure. He was going to tell me everything, right here on the street. Hardly. I released my grip on his hair and his head dropped to the sidewalk.
I stood by as Lieutenant Hampton arrested Guzman and read him his rights.
Chapter 111
GREGOR GUZMAN had been charged with the attempted murder of Nunzio Rinaldi, but even if convicted, it wasn’t enough to lock him up forever. That’s why law enforcement agents from Bryant Street to Rio de Janeiro were digging up charges to throw at him, hoping they had enough Krazy Glue to make something stick.
By just after two in the morning, Guzman had a lawyer and had been interrogated by Lieutenant Hampton. When he spoke, it was only to say, “You’ve got nothing on me,” even though he’d been caught with his loaded semiauto pointed at Nunzio Rinaldi.
Lieutenant Hampton wasn’t bothered by Guzman at all.
Hampton had a lot to show for his work. He’d used the intel, set the trap, and had physically taken the hit man down. It looked like a guaran-damn-teed indictment. And now that we had him, we had his fingerprints, his DNA, and the possibility of linking him to unsolved crimes going back thirty years.
But I was more concerned about a crime that had happened just over a year ago.
I knocked on the glass window of the interview room.
Hampton came out to the hallway, ran his hand across the stubble on his head, and said, “Okay, Lindsay, I’m done. I’ll stay with you if you like, and back you up.”
It had been a long month and a longer night, and Hampton was ready to go home to his wife, but he held the door, followed me into the interview room, and said, “Sergeant Boxer, you’ve met Mr. Guzman?”
I said, “Yep, it was a pleasure.”
“Pleasure was all mine,” Guzman said in his oily voice.
“This is Mr. Ernesto Santana. Attorney-at-law,” said Hampton.
I said hello to Guzman’s lawyer, pulled out a chair, and dropped a file folder down on the table. I opened the cover to the short stack of 8 x 10 photos I had brought over from the squad room.
“Who do you have to screw around here to get coffee?” Guzman asked. No one answered.