Damage (18 page)

Glitsky was thinking that Treya was right about her boss. Without her organizational presence and staff sergeant demeanor, he’d be lost as an administrator. So much so, apparently, that in her absence this afternoon he’d simply closed up shop and disappeared. The lights in the outer office—Treya’s domain—were dark when Glitsky showed up, no visitors waited for their appointments with the DA himself, and the door to Farrell’s office was closed. Crossing the room and putting an ear to the door, he heard no sound. Not expecting to get an answer, nevertheless, he rapped sharply on the door three times.

Nothing.

And then, just as he was turning to go, the sound of footsteps came from within. Glitsky stopped and was all but at attention, facing the door when Farrell opened it. The district attorney was in his shirtsleeves and the lights in his own office were turned off, the blinds pulled against the bright sunshine outside. Glitsky thought he might have just interrupted a nap. “If this isn’t a good time . . . ,” he began.

“No. It’s fine. I was just meditating for a minute. You ever do that, Abe?”

“Not so much. I don’t get much free time.”

“Twenty minutes a day, that’s all it takes. Everybody ought to be able to find twenty minutes.”

“I keep looking for them,” Glitsky said. “I think the kids must steal ’em.”

“Oh, that’s right. Your kids are still at home, aren’t they?”

“Only for another eighteen or twenty years. But who’s counting?”

“You’re right. I don’t think I would, either, under those conditions. Probably wouldn’t meditate, either.” Suddenly Farrell seemed to remember not just where he was, but who he was. His face went slack for a moment, then reanimated itself. “But here you are. What can I do for you? You want to come in and sit down for a minute? Is everything all right with Treya? How’s she feeling?”

“Better,” Glitsky said.

“She’ll be back in on Monday, I hope.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Good. Good. Well, come on in.” Farrell hesitated, then moved back a step. When Glitsky had gotten past the door, Farrell closed it behind them. He turned on the room’s overhead lights, then walked over to one of his couches and sat on it, motioning for Glitsky to do the same. But Glitsky remained standing.

“What do you got?” Farrell asked.

“Ro’s done it again.”

Farrell dropped his head, then slowly brought it back up. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“No, sir. Janice Durbin. Wife of the foreman of his jury. Set her on fire either before or after he killed her, burned the house down around her. Naked, with shoes on her feet. Might as well have left a business card.”

“Sounds like he did.” Farrell brought a hand up and rubbed the side of his face. “Jesus Christ, Abe, what are we going to do?”

“I thought you might go back to Baretto.”

Farrell’s shoulders heaved, a spasm of bitter laughter. “He wouldn’t touch this thing, not after Donahoe. Now two judges have ruled Ro’s no danger to the community. No way does Baretto pull him back in.”

“So at what point do the shoes and the MO count as evidence?”

“Honestly, probably no point.”

“Maybe I should go talk to him, make the case.”

Farrell shook his head. “Your credibility around Ro is in the shitter, Abe. This is all coming across as a personal vendetta.” He hesitated. “Maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but I had Vi Lapeer stop by here this morning. Unexpectedly.”

“What’d she know?”

“It’s not what she knew. It’s what she wanted. She wanted advice.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that Leland told her he wants you out. Not just out of this investigation, but completely out. The political heat’s just too much for him. According to him, half the city thinks you guys are the Gestapo. And you’re the poster child.”

“That’s Marrenas. The woman’s toxic.” Glitsky finally took a seat across from Farrell. Coming forward, he let out a breath. “So what was your advice?”

“I told her she should stick by her guns and support you. The mayor wouldn’t dare fire her so soon after bringing her on. Of course, I may be wrong. I haven’t been right in so long I forget what it looks like. But I told her he’d look like a complete fool for making her his choice for chief in the first place.”

“He threatened to fire her?”

“I think it was more understood than stated. But the message was clear enough.”

“So I should quit?”

“I won’t lie to you, Abe. That’s an option, though not a good one. Better would be to get something real on Ro.”

“I thought I did that last time.”

“Yeah. Well, we saw how that played.”

Glitsky took that in silence for a beat. Then, “Well, in any event, I’ve got my case file and notes from the original investigation, which I’m reviewing for the retrial. With Nuñez gone, we’ve still got her testimony from the first trial, but reading it to a jury is not going to be anywhere near as strong as hearing her would have been. Which leaves the one other witness, Gloria Gonzalvez.”

“But she’s disappeared, too, hasn’t she?”

“I haven’t really started looking. She may turn up. Plus, I want to go see the other rape victims again, the ones who got bought off, if they’ll talk to me.”

“Why would they do that now, after all this time?”

Glitsky shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they won’t. But maybe it’s bothering one of them they didn’t do the right thing.” He held up a hand. “I know. Long shot. But worth a try.”

“It’s your time.”

“Speaking of which, we’re still looking at August for the retrial?”

“Minimum. Unless you get something sooner on Nuñez, or this latest woman.”

“If I do,” Glitsky said as he stood up, “you’ll be the first to know.”

From the early years of their social and business prominence, the Curtlees had staffed their homes and some of their businesses with Guatemalan or El Salvadoran help. Rather than gamble with undocumented aliens, they could hire on site down in Central America and provide work visas, medical insurance, and an almost unbelievable standard of living for those lucky enough to be chosen. In return, they found their employees from these countries to be honest, hardworking, loyal, grateful, and—perhaps most important—fearful of being returned back to their homelands.

Just at about the end of Ro’s trial, one of their talent scouts in El Salvador had been approached by Eztli. In Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica (meh-SHEE-ka), the people who white men call Aztec,
eztli
means “blood.” As is also the common custom among his people, Eztli had only one name. It fit him well.

Thirty-five at the time, he already spoke excellent, unaccented, and idiomatic English, courtesy of an American father who’d disappeared when the boy had been twelve. He had been in the regular El Salvadoran army for a decade beginning when he was sixteen. Connections he’d made in the service paved the way for civilian work as a majordomo for Enrique Mololo, one of the country’s drug lords. Mololo, unfortunately for himself, had decided that he did not want to share his profits or contacts with Mara Salvatrucha, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world. This decision had proved fatal for Mololo. If Eztli had not been on an errand to pick up one of Mololo’s new cars when the military-style raid on his boss’s compound took place, he almost undoubtedly would have died that day, too.

But as it was, he had missed that party. Instead of going back home to Mololo’s place, he had called on the Curtlees’ procurer, for whom he’d supplied the names of several young women over the years.

He needed to get out of the country. He had skills. He was willing to work.

And the Curtlees were only too glad to have him.

Now, on an overcast Sunday afternoon, Ro sat in the passenger seat of the 4Runner while Eztli drove south along the ocean on Highway 1. Ro’s left arm was still in its cast, but other than that, he bore little resemblance to the man he’d seemed in Judge Donahoe’s courtroom only six days before. He was clean-shaven, well-dressed in khakis and a black silk Tommy Bahama shirt. He wore expensive Italian loafers with no socks. He’d lost the bandage he’d been sporting over the bridge of his nose. The swelling around his mouth had gone down, and only a slight yellowing remained where the black eye had been.

Ro’s idea when he woke up that morning was that he’d go down to the O’Farrell Theatre, get his ashes hauled by one of the girls in the booths—couldn’t get too much of that after being inside nine years. After that, he didn’t know. The afternoons tended to drag as a general rule. Maybe he’d go back to bed.

But then, coming back home from the O’Farrell, he found Eztli waiting for him. The butler reiterated how he’d been feeling terrible about not being there when the cops had come to get Ro. Okay, he had an excuse—he’d been out with the parents, doing bodyguard work. But protecting the family—all of the family—that was his job. He should have been part of it when Glitsky and the other cops came by. Now Eztli wanted to make it up to Ro somehow, show him a good time at least.

Sunday was his day off and some gamecocks were fighting at a place he knew down near Pescadero. Maybe Ro would like to go? It was a hell of a show. Girls watching it, getting into it, it made them hot.

Given his prejudices and predilections, Ro normally wouldn’t have gone out of his way to accommodate or hang out with one of the household help, whom he generally viewed as stratospherically beneath him.

But Eztli was different.

First, of course, he was a guy—strong and experienced. He could handle himself, and this was always a plus.

Second, and much more important, was the fact that while Ro had been in prison, Eztli had suggested to Cliff and Theresa—worried sick about their son’s safety behind bars—that he network amidst the greater Hispanic community and put out the word among the prison population, particularly the violent Mexican gang EME, that Ro wasn’t to be molested; that, in fact, protection for him would be rewarded.

The two men—butler and convict—had met in the prison’s visitors room several times before Ro’s release to negotiate rewards and payouts and in the course of these meetings had developed an easy bond if not yet a true friendship. But in any event, Ro was inclined to relax his usual standards—for a day at least—and see what kind of fun the butler could provide for him.

So here they were, sharing a doob, just passing Half Moon Bay, the golf courses, the Ritz-Carlton there on the right.

“No,” Ro was saying, “I’m not going back in. They’ll have to kill me first.”

Eztli took a hit and passed the joint across. “Your mom and dad believe it won’t come to that.”

“That’s what they keep saying, anyway. But I don’t know. They told me starting out they had that prick Farrell on board with them. That didn’t work out so well.”

“Yeah, but look what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re out.”

“No thanks to Farrell.”

“No?” Eztli shrugged. “Okay.”

Ro held some smoke in his lungs while he looked over at his driver. Suddenly now he got the strongest sense that he’d intuited several times in the prison’s visiting room that there was more going on inside the man’s brain than might immediately be apparent behind the stony, expressionless exterior. His parents had kept Eztli on for the better part of ten years, and they were very smart and shrewd people who did not much let sentimental attachments get in their ways. If Eztli were just muscle, he would have made some mistake and been long gone by now. But not only was he very much still a presence, he actually lived in the big house with the family. Clearly he had an agile brain and contributed on other levels as well.

To say nothing of the fact that he’d probably saved Ro’s literal ass in prison, and maybe his life as well.

The young man blew out the smoke he’d been holding. “You don’t agree with me?” he asked. “About Farrell?”

Eztli kept his eyes on the road, took a minute before he answered. “I believe what your mother and father believe.”

“What’s that?”

“That if Farrell wants you in jail, you’re in jail.”

“But he ...”

Eztli was shaking his head. “He’s playing a game.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a politician. He’s playing both sides. That’s what they do.” Eztli held out his right hand and Ro handed him the joint, which he sucked down to its last half inch. Letting the hit out, he went on, “Look. Don’t kid yourself. Farrell makes the call. He goes to a judge—any judge—and says you don’t get bail, period, then you don’t get bail. But he didn’t do that. Not either time it’s come up. Meanwhile, he gives your lawyer half a year to get up to speed. Which won’t happen in any six months, either. That’ll go a year, maybe two, maybe forever. And this makes Farrell the best friend you got. He’s giving you time, and time’s the main thing.”

“For what?”

“Hey, come on, for everything.” Eztli flashed him a look. “For doing what you have to do.”