Night Is the Hunter by Steven Gore Page A

return to the wide open streets with a narrowed sense of relevance. For them, there are cops and there are cons and nothing in between.
    Donnally slowed, letting the driver catch up so he could get a glimpse through the windshield. Maybe the face would draw out a memory. But the more the gap narrowed, the more the descending sun’s refection masked the glass. The driver seemed to catch on to what Donnally was doing and backed off again.
    Veterans Drive into Fort Miley came up on his right, the broad entrance onto the grounds now seeming like an opening into a trap. There was no reason to let the guy—if it was a guy, for revenge knows no gender—start guessing at the connection between him and the hospital if he didn’t know it already. Instead of turning into the property, Donnally cut left into a street of bungalows.
    Donnally pulled to the curb midway down the block. He hoped the man following him would either park along the street behind him so he could catch a look at his face, no longer masked by the sun, or at least get the plate and call it into Ramon Navarro.
    But the driver did neither. He pulled into the shadow extending across the pavement from the row houses lining the west side.
    That the man had failed to disguise his surveillance, his incompetence at the craft, puzzled and annoyed Donnally rather than making him worried or fearful. He thought about walking up on him, but dismissed the idea for he’d likely spin a U-turn and flee before Donnally could close in.
    Better to try to lead him into a trap.
    Donnally scanned the street ahead to make sure he hadn’t fallen into one himself, then popped his hood. He put a perplexed expression on his face as he climbed out of his truck, suggestinghe’d noticed a troubling noise. A double, maybe even a triple, pretense. Donnally was pretending he wasn’t under surveillance and the surveiller was pretending he wasn’t surveilling, and neither’s act was convincing the other.
    As Donnally probed the engine compartment, jiggling wires and tugging at hoses, he called Janie, asking her to catch a cab home. He then drove to an auto supply shop and killed enough time inside for the sun to finish setting and for the distant clouds over the Pacific to smother the remaining daylight.
    Donnally headed back toward Fort Miley through the gray evening, then wound his way between the wooded Lincoln and Sutro Heights parks to the coast. He pulled into a parallel parking space along the curving road north of the Cliff House, a two-story, modern museum-like restaurant overlooking the ocean.
    The Chevy slowed, but there were no more spaces on Donnally’s side and the hill across the road descended to the edge of the traffic lane. The car passed him. Donnally got enough of a glimpse of the turned-away head to confirm it was a man, but nothing more. He pulled into a spot in front of a low wall thirty yards south of the restaurant, facing the water. Its lights died, but the driver didn’t get out.
    Donnally walked into the street-level bar overlooking the downstairs dining room. He positioned himself by a window facing the street to make sure he could be observed, then ordered a beer. He drank half of it in the next five minutes, then made a show of getting the waitress’s attention, pointing at the glass, and at the hallway toward the restroom to indicate that he’d be back and not to clear the table.
    The route he chose kept him in view of the front of the buildinguntil just before he reached the turn toward the men’s room. He broke off and cut down the steps to the dining room, then through swinging doors and past the kitchen to a back exit.
    Rather than trying to sneak his way along the lighted parking area, Donnally lowered himself over the concrete retaining wall and climbed along the breakwater rocks. He reached a spot just below where the man had parked and peeked over the wall. He spotted a thirty-year-old Hispanic. Tall,