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wasn’t in the plan. The idea was to get the money and then get out, closing the dark shop behind them. When Silverman came to, if he ever did, they’d be long gone.
    “The fuck are you doing?”
    Their third partner remained in the back of the shop, over the jewelry case, still glowing under its soft night-light. “He’s got great stuff here. We can’t just leave it.”
    “Yeah we can. Let’s go.”
    The big man had the door open and was checking the street. He turned back and whispered urgently. “We don’t need it. We gotta move move move.”
    The man in the back moved all right, but in the wrong direction. Now he was behind the counter, pulling at the glass, trying to lift it up. “He’s gotta have a key somewhere. Maybe it’s on him.”
    At the door. “Fuck it! Come on, come on.”
    His partner pulled again at the countertop.
    A noise in the street. “Shit. People.”
    The two men up front ducked to the side below the windows as two couples walked past the shop. Directly in front of the door, they stopped. Their voices filled the shop. Would they never move on? Sweat broke on the big man’s forehead and he wiped it with the back of his hand.
    He pulled the revolver from his pocket.
    Other people joined up with the first group and they all started walking again, laughing.
    The big man looked out. The street seemed clear. But at the back counter, his partner was holding something up now—a key?—and fitting it to a lock.
    “Jesus Christ! There’s no time for—”
    When suddenly he was proven right. Whatever it might have been, there wasn’t going to be time for it.
    Silverman must have come to and had a button he could push in the back room. The whole world lit up with light and the awful, continuous screaming ring of the shop’s alarm.
    Wide-eyed in the sudden daylike brightness, the big man threw the door all the way open, yelling, “Go, go, go!” This time—the jewelry forgotten in the mad rush out—both his partners went. He was turning himself, breaking for the street, when he caught a movement off to his left. One hand to his head, blood running down his face, Silverman was on his feet, holding the side of the doorway for support.
    The big man saw the shock of unmistakable recognition in the pawnbroker’s face. “I, I can’t believe . . .” Silverman stammered, then ran out of words.
    Shaking his head in frustration and disgust—their good plan was all in tatters now—he stood up slowly and took three steps toward the old man, as though he planned to have a conversation with him. He did speak, but only to say, “Ah, shit, Sam.”
    Then he raised the gun and shot him twice in the chest.
    The streetlights on O’Farrell came on as assistant patrol special Matt Creed, working Thirty-two, came around the corner a long block down on Market. Though Creed had been on the beat less than a year, when he heard the squeal of the burglar alarm and saw the two men breaking out of a storefront ahead of him on a dead run, he knew what he was seeing.
    “Hey! Hold on!” he yelled into a gust, over the alarm and the wind. To his surprise, the men actually stopped long enough to look back at him. Creed yelled again and, moving forward now, reached down to clear his jacket and unholster his weapon. But he hadn’t gone five steps when—
    Crack!
    Unmistakably, a gunshot. Brickwork shattered by his head, rained down over him. Creed ducked against the front of the nearest building. Another man broke from the door of Silverman’s shop. Less than a half block separated them now, and Creed stood, stepped away from the building into the lamplight, and called again. “Hold it! Stay where you are!”
    The figure stopped, whirled toward him and without any hesitation extended his arm. Creed caught a quick glint of shining steel and heard the massive report and another simultaneous ricochet. It was the first time he’d been fired at and for that moment, during which his assailant broke into a run, he half