The 19th Christmas - James Patterson Page 0,20

Who do you think I am, CIA?”

“Who’s your informant? Who told you that Dietz had a job with Loman and that there was going to be a heist?” I asked. “Give me a name, Julian.”

“I can’t say. I can’t say. It wouldn’t do you any good if I did. I got it from a nobody who happened to overhear a phone call.”

“Your story is changing, Julian. You overheard it? Or someone else overheard it? What’s the truth?”

“It’s getting to where your guess is as good as mine. I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating. I can’t even think anymore.”

Either Lambert was digging in or he really was empty.

I stood up from the table, walked to the door, hit it with the flat of my hand, and called, “Guard.”

Jacobi said to Lambert, “Be smart. Speak now, or we’ll hold you as a material witness. We don’t mind keeping you while we file additional charges. Obstruction of justice comes to mind.”

Lambert appeared startled. He said, “Look, I can’t verify this.”

The door opened and two guards came into the room.

“Hang on a minute,” Jacobi said to the guards. Then, to Lambert, “We’re listening.”

“What I heard was they were going to hit the mint.”

“The San Francisco Mint? Who told you that?” I asked.

He shook his head—no, no, no.

“Give me a name.”

“Marcus, okay? That’s all I know about him. Calls himself Marcus, no known address. He’s harmless, so try not to kill him, all right?”

“What else?” I said. “Anything about a hit on a museum? Any targeted political figures?”

“No,” said Lambert. “Marcus said the mint.”

I didn’t think an army could get into the mint. The gray stone structure located on Hermann Street in the Lower Haight was completely closed to the public. Currency was no longer produced there, but the mint did strike commemoratives, special coins, and sets—it was a highly fortified fort full of gold and silver bars.

“Don’t use my name,” Lambert pleaded. “Keep my name out of this.”

Jacobi and I left Lambert with the guards and took the elevator down to the squad room.

I said to Jacobi, “Could this be true? The mint is impenetrable. Guns and ski masks won’t cut it. What’s your bullshit detector tell you?”

Jacobi said, “That it’s time to call the Secret Service.”

Part Three

December 23

Chapter 23

Julian Lambert left the jail in the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street with his backpack over his shoulder and wearing the red down jacket and dirty clothes he’d had on when he was arrested.

He’d felt like a vagrant in court, but the cops had made good on their promise. The ADA had said, “We’re withdrawing the charges, Your Honor.”

He was freed into a blustery morning. He walked northwest into a high, damp wind, trying to shake off the feeling of cuffs and bars, the omnipresent glare of fluorescent lights and psychopathic guards, the echoing shouts of prisoners.

He’d spent only two nights in a cell, but it felt like a year. And now the rest of his life was ahead of him.

With the wind blowing his hair around, Lambert adjusted his backpack and headed toward Victoria Manalo Draves Park, thinking of the job to come. He was sure that it would be a well-oiled process, and just as with a spy cell, he wouldn’t know the others on the team and they wouldn’t know him.

When the job was done, Loman would give him a passport, a new name and address, and a flush bank account in a city with a coastline. That was the deal. He was thinking he just might have some work done. Lose the bags under his eyes, shave down the nose. There was nothing he would miss about San Francisco, USA.

He had just crossed Columbia Square when a car horn honked behind him. He turned and watched as the blue Ford sedan pulled alongside him and slowed to a stop.

The car had one occupant, the driver, who buzzed down the passenger-side window and called out to him. “Lambert, right?”

Lambert walked over to the car and peered in. “And you are?”

“Dick Russell. Loman’s man.”

Lambert said, “I thought Loman was coming.”

“He wants to have lunch with you,” said Russell. “Get in.” Lambert got into the passenger seat and closed the door, and the car took off.

Loman’s man looked nothing like a criminal. He wore old-man clothes, a cap with a button-snap brim, a khaki Windbreaker, and perforated leather driving gloves. His face was unlined and ink-free, and he was carrying a spare tire around his waist. To Lambert’s eyes, Russell looked like an