Night Is the Hunter by Steven Gore Page B

thin, and pacing like a caged panther next to his car, his eyes fixed on the restaurant entrance. His oversized gangster-style sweatshirt hung loose on his body. The hood was lying back, revealing a narrow face and short hair under an Oakland Raiders knit cap.
    Donnally watched him finger-flick his cigarette, shooting it down to the blacktop, the tobacco ember fragmenting and exploding upward, then walk around his car and open the trunk. The inside light glowed against an unfamiliar face. It revealed two prison tattoos, a heart pierced by a sword on one side of his neck and a spider web on the other. He ducked down for a moment, straightened up, looked around, then closed the lid and slipped something into his back pocket.
    As Donnally reached for the semiautomatic in his shoulder holster, he recognized that a 911 call wouldn’t help. The man knew where he lived and next time he’d lie in wait, not follow him. And if the man made a move and Donnally caught him and got him locked up, he could still reach out from jail to his crime partners on the street. Even worse, Donnally couldn’t take a chance that, unable to get to him, the man would go after Janie as his proxy.
    Whatever was going to happen between them had to happen now and be over with.
    Donnally lowered himself and waited for a wave to crash ontothe rocks behind him to cover the sound of ripping Velcro, then pulled back on the retention strap and drew his gun.
    From the shadow cast by a lamppost, Donnally watched him light another cigarette, then walk to the wall and stare out at Seal Rock. Only then did Donnally notice the squawking and yelping seals and sea lions behind him and feel the chill wind against his neck.
    The gangster looked again toward the restaurant entrance, then leaned back against the wall.
    Donnally remained in his crouch until another wave crashed, then stood and pressed the barrel against the man’s back.
    The man’s body stiffened.
    â€œStay cool,” Donnally told him, locking his left hand on top of the man’s shoulder to keep him from turning. “Move a fraction and I’ll pull the trigger. I’ve got nothing to lose. You set it up this way by coming to where I lay my head.”
    The gangster dropped his cigarette and raised his hands head high.
    â€œIt ain’t about that.”
    â€œTurn around, place your hands on the top of the wall, and spread your legs.”
    He complied.
    Donnally spotted letters N O R T E Ñ O tattooed across his fingers on his splayed hands, just below his knuckles.
    Donnally climbed over and patted him down.
    A Mercedes roadster pulled into a space fifteen feet away. Two women got out. They paused by their doors after they spotted Donnally. He pulled out his retirement badge, flashed it toward them, then nodded toward the Norteño and uttered the word, “Fugitive.”
    The women squinted toward the tattooed man, then nodded at Donnally and walked toward the restaurant.
    Donnally continued searching and removed a wallet and a pint bottle of brandy from the gangster’s back pockets.
    No gun. No weapon at all.
    Donnally set them both on the top of the wall.
    â€œIf ‘it ain’t about that,’ whatever ‘that’ is,” Donnally said, “what’s it about?”
    â€œIt’s about why you bothered my grandmother.”
    Donnally reached over and flipped open the wallet. The driver’s license bore the name Edgar Rojo Jr.
    He knew only two things about Junior. At age nine he’d watched his father bleed out on the night he was murdered, and ten years later he beat a victim so badly that the man lost body parts.
    Junior now seemed to him to be less like a panther, and more like a pit bull.
    â€œWhy’d you follow me?”
    Junior shrugged. “I don’t know. I went by your house and saw you driving away. I slid in behind, then didn’t know what to do when I caught up with you.”
    Donnally had interpreted