The 6th Target - James Patterson [13]
“We interviewed a guy at the Smoke Shop on Polk at Vallejo,” said Chi, getting right into it. “Old geezer who owns the place says, ‘Yeah, I sell Turkish Specials. About two packs a month to a regular customer.’ He takes the carton off the shelf to show us — it’s down two packs.”
Conklin came in, took a seat, and ordered a Dos Equis and an Angus burger, rare.
Looked like he had something on his mind.
“My partner gets excited,” said Cappy, “by a carton of cigarettes.”
“So who’s the fool?” Chi asked McNeil.
“Get to it, okay?” Jacobi grumbled.
The beer came, and Jacobi, Conklin, and I lifted our glasses to Don MacBain, the bar’s owner, a maverick former SFPD captain whose portrait hung in a frame over the bar.
Chi continued, “So the geezer says this customer is a Greek guy, about eighty years old — but ‘hold on a minute,’ he says. ‘Let me see that picture again.’ ”
Cappy picked up where Chi left off. “So I push the photo of the shooter up to his snoot, and he says, ‘This guy? I used to see this guy every morning when he bought his paper. He’s the guy who did the shootings?’ ”
Jacobi called the waitress over again, said, “Syd, I’ll have a burger, too, medium rare with fries.”
Chi talked over him.
“So the Smoke Shop geezer says he doesn’t know our suspect’s name but thinks he used to live across the street, 1513 Vallejo.”
“So we go over there —” Cappy said.
“Please put me out of my misery,” Jacobi said. His elbows were on the table, and he was pressing his palms into his eye sockets, waiting for this story to pay out or be over.
“And we got a name,” Cappy finished. “The apartment manager at 1513 Vallejo positively IDed the photo. Told us that the suspect was evicted about two months ago, right after he lost his job.”
“Drumroll please,” said Chi. “The shooter’s name is Alfred Brinkley.”
It was sad to see the disappointment on the faces of McNeil and Chi, but I had to break it to them.
“Thanks, Paul. We know his name. Did you find out where he used to work?”
“Right, Lieu. That bookstore, uh, Sam’s Book Emporium on Mason Street.”
I turned to Conklin. “Richie, you look like the Cheshire cat. Whatcha got?”
Conklin had been leaning back in his chair, balancing it on its rear legs, clearly enjoying the banter. Now the front legs of his chair came down, and he leaned over the table. “Brinkley doesn’t have a sheet. But . . . he served at the Presidio for two years. Medical discharge in ’94.”
“He got into the army after being in a nuthouse?” Jacobi asked.
“He was a kid when he was at Napa State,” said Conklin. “His medical records are sealed. Anyway, the army recruiters wouldn’t have been too picky.”
The fuzzy image of the shooter was starting to come clear. Scary as it was, I knew the answer to what had been messing with my mind since the shooting.
Brinkley was a sure-shot marksman because he’d been trained by the army.
Chapter 17
AT NINE THE NEXT MORNING, Jacobi, Conklin, and I parked our unmarked cars on Mason near North Point. We were two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf, a tourist area crammed with huge hotels, restaurants, bike rentals, and souvenir shops, where sidewalk vendors were setting up their curbside tag sales.
I was feeling keyed up when we entered the cool expanse of the huge bookstore. Jacobi badged the closest desk clerk, asking if she knew Alfred Brinkley.
The clerk paged the floor manager, who walked us to the elevator and down to the basement, where he introduced us to the stockroom manager, a dark-skinned man in his thirties, name of Edison Jones, wearing a threadbare Duran Duran T-shirt and a nose stud.
We arrayed ourselves around the stockroom — concrete walls lined with adjustable shelves, corrugated metal doors opening to the loading dock, guys rolling carts of books all around us.
“Fred and I were buddies,” Jones said. “Not like we hung out after work or anything, but he was a bright bulb and I liked him. Then he started getting weird.” Jones dialed down the volume on a TV resting atop a metal table crowded with invoices and office supplies.
“ ‘Weird