Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (44 page)

Ms Roake nodded. 'Everything's fine, thanks.' The door closed and with an almost visible effort she brought herself back to her client. 'Sometimes, Jerohm, I have to wonder why I want to get you off. I mean what are you doing out there in the middle of the night robbing these stores? This is
your
'hood, these are your people.'

Jerohm rolled his eyes. 'Hey shi... they leave the door open, who's problem is that? 'Sides, they got insurance, likely. Ain't nobody gettin' hurt.'

' 'Cept if somebody show up, try to stop you.'

'Well, nobody did. QED. Hey, look, you get me off 'cause that's what they pay you for. Weren't for guys like me, you got no work. Maybe you out on the street yourself.' Smug and secure, a charmer, he broke a toothy smile.

She sucked in some air. The chain reaction that had begun with the negotiated release of Jerohm a few days before had led Gina to question the very nature of what she was doing. In her mind there had been no question that Jerohm had shot Mike Mullen point-blank in cold blood for the temporary use of his car, though of course Jerohm was smart enough (if that word applied) to deny it to his attorney, but that had not been the issue.

The issue had been, as it always was in defense work, does the prosecution have enough evidence to constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt? And when all the eyewitnesses had gone sideways, she had realized that in this instance there was no case. She had argued that before the late Christopher Locke and she had prevailed.

And look what had happened.

Always before, whenever she'd have these doubts, she'd talked with her fellow public defenders, had a couple of drinks, gotten resold on the idea that her job was to provide the best defense the law allowed. It was the give and take of the law – win some, lose some.

But Jerohm, suddenly and unexpectedly, had made it all more significant, and personal. This was a murderer, a thief, a mugger, a sociopath of the absolutely first rank, and he sits here joking with her as though the whole thing's a lark. She found herself wondering if 'doing her job' fell under the general rubric of 'following orders' that had been the great rationalization for so much evil for so long. Gina Roake was Jewish and she was intimately familiar with the parallels. And they were shaking her.

But, for the moment, she was here. She was supposed to represent Jerohm again. She folded her hands together on the table in front of her. 'Okay, so ... where do we go now, Jerohm? You're getting arraigned on Tuesday ...'

'Tuesday? What's this Tuesday?' With attitude now, a bit of the street push, seeing he was getting to her.

'We got a holiday weekend, Jerohm. The courts are closed on the Fourth of July, which is Monday, so it's Tuesday.'

'Now wait a minute, can't you get me like
habeas corpus
, something like that?'

It was her experience that a great percentage of the jail's population could spout Latin like Jesuits when they had to. She thought it was a powerful example of motivation being the key to learning.

Gina shook her head. 'No
habeas corpus
, Jerohm. And I think we're going to have a problem with a not guilty here. We might have to cop a plea.'

'Hey, no way, man. I ain't going down for no jail time on this.' He studied her a minute, trying to figure what game she was playin' on him. He didn't see it. 'Hey, c'mon, Gina, you know, this wasn't nothin'.'

'Well, actually, it was ... we got stolen goods, Jerohm, we got presumption of looting, resisting arrest, we got breaking the curfew.'

'Yeah, but we also got the fact that everybody else doin' this shit is walking out with—'

'It's not exactly the same shit.'

'Close enough and you know it is, girl.' At her reaction to the second 'girl' he held up a hand and said he was sorry. 'But you know the truth is it don't matter what I
did –
if that was it you know I ain't in no
county
lockup. They have me up to San Quentin. We gotta say I'm bein' prejudiced against. That the shot.'

That
was
the best shot. Gina knew that. She could go down to the new DA's office and argue passionately for that position. She had done similar things many times and sometimes it worked. But this time she wasn't sure she could do it. She felt that at some point you had to draw the line, and she was at hers.

'Jerohm, this time that's not gonna go.'

He leaned back, truly sullen now. Frowning. 'Well, I say it and you gotta do it, ain't that right?'

'Well, you can always ask for a new lawyer.' She allowed the trace of a smile. 'Put me out on the street.'

Getting his bluff called rattled him a little. 'But hey, you and me, we been good together. We done some good shit.'

'That may be the case, Jerohm, but I can't go down and argue prejudice here. I don't think it
was
prejudice. I think we're going to have to cut a deal.'

'C'mon, girl, you think I white this happen?'

This was a trick question and she avoided it. 'The cops that picked you up, Jerohm, they black?'

He nodded. 'One of 'em.'

'And the DA who brought you upstairs here, she was black?'

'Okay.'

'And the new DA himself, Alan Reston, who says he's holding you for trial, he's black, too, am I right?'

'Right.'

'So who was prejudiced exactly?'

Jerohm chewed on his cheek a minute, stumped that even the multiple-choice question had no correct answer. 'Must of been somebody,' he said at last.

Gina took up her briefcase, stood and knocked on the door. When the guard opened it, she turned back to her client. 'You figure out who, Jerohm,' she said, 'you give me a call.'

Not seventy-five feet away as the crow flies, Special Agent Margot Simms sat with District Attorney Alan Reston in his new office. The new DA had recently returned from his predecessor's funeral, where he'd had a private discussion with Senator Wager in the cathedral's sacristy after the service.

Three men were in the process of removing Christopher Locke's personal possessions. Since Reston had known he wouldn't be in for most of the morning he had directed them to start early, and they had taken most of the books down from the shelves. Packing boxes lined the walls.

Reston and Simms were discussing Kevin Shea. She professed to having a difficult time understanding why, since the fugitive was still in the city, he had not been apprehended. Reston laid it off on the police department, then offered up his excuse for them – with the disturbances they had been undermanned, overwhelmed. The point was, now the FBI was taking over and what were Simms's plans?

'We've got a task force of fifteen agents attempting to contact every known acquaintance of either Shea or Sinclair—'

'Sinclair?'

'Melanie Sinclair, the girl with him.' The expression told Reston he had better pick up in context the allusions he didn't immediately grasp. He should have known who Sinclair was. He had to be careful what he asked about. 'We've got Shea's address book from his apartment. Sinclair's got her addresses on the computer in
her
apartment.' At his glance she nodded and quickly explained. 'We don't have a warrant problem here. This is a priority case. So we're interviewing everybody on either list, and, of course, we've got some people in Texas with the mother and sister.'

'What about the tape?' Referring to the videotape Shea had made and that had been played on television.

'We've got a couple of specialists analyzing the background. There's some distinctive molding – maybe you noticed – at the windows and ceiling line behind him. Perhaps we can date the building he's in. Long shot, but you never know. Could be one of a kind.'

'I'm impressed.'

'Yes.' Special Agent Simms was accustomed to impressing. She was intelligent, professional and attractive. Shaded dark blonde hair fashionably cut. Nice legs. 'We also have a team talking to this Cynthia Taylor – she's the woman who originally identified Kevin Shea, you may recall. Melanie Sinclair and Taylor are – were – close, it seems. There's some chance she'll know likely places for the pair to go underground – friends, friends of friends, that sort of thing.'

Reston was thinking that manpower was a wonderful thing.

'I did want to run by you, though, just so we're clear on it, that we still believe our best move is a tap on Shea's lawyer's telephone. Wes Farrell. Lieutenant Glitsky expects that the two of them will get back into contact. In any event, you know some of the legal issues that arise over wiretaps, and I wanted to make sure we were kosher on any local rules.'

Reston knew that California law made wiretaps functionally impossible, but that the fruits of a lawful
federal
wiretap were admissible. He told her to pick herself a federal judge if she needed to get a tap approved. He didn't think there'd be a problem.

'Good. I'll follow through on that.' She clapped her hands together briskly. 'Which leaves the question of apprehension.'

Reston thought this was in fact and the law one of Chief Rigby's areas of responsibility, but he had Simms here now and thought it wouldn't hurt to plant a seed. 'Naturally, our interest is in placing him under arrest.'

She nodded. 'Of course. But I wondered if you had anything that doesn't appear here' – she tapped the folder in front of her – 'regarding his state of mind, anything we might want to watch out for.'

Reston took a moment getting the phrasing right. 'Well. . . we know he's had military training. He knows how to use weapons, although we don't know if he has any with him now. But judging from the high-speed chase as well as the panic evident on the videotape, we know he's fairly desperate by now. And then, he
is
charged with murder. I don't imagine killing someone else if it would help him get away would particularly bother him.'

Agent Simms took that in. 'That's a good insight,' she said, standing up, extending her hand. 'Thanks for your time, sir. If in fact Shea is still in the city we stand a decent chance of locating him within twenty-four hours. This kind of limited manhunt this is what we do.'

'Excellent,' Reston said. 'We'd like to get this behind us.'

'I understand,' she said.

They shook hands again.

Despite its location and outward appearance, Glitsky thought the Kit Kat Klub wasn't that bad a place. True, the walls on the street outside were tagged all the colors of the rainbow and both the picture window and the porthole in the door were blacked out and crisscrossed with bars, but the same was true of most of the establishments in this neighborhood.

Inside it was dim and close, but the place smelled of beer and cigarettes, not urine and dope. This, Glitsky thought, was a big difference. The club featured some pretty hot blues on weekends, local guys working on their chops during the week, but at this time of the day it was just a slow bar, a half-dozen people sitting around with glasses and bottles in front of them.

Glitsky still wasn't one hundred percent sure why he was there. He pulled up a stool and waited for the bartender to make it down to see him. Some vintage Clapton grunged out from the box, loud, and Glitsky reflected that while it was a fact that white men really couldn't jump worth a damn, a few of them – Clapton, Robben Ford, the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, a local guy named Joe Cellura – could blow some pretty mean blues.

With a heavy sigh the bartender lifted his three-hundred-pound bulk off the industrial-strength stool he half sat, half stood on behind the bar. 'Comin'.' It was a good thing he announced it – otherwise it might not have been obvious that he was moving. Glitsky, one elbow on the bar, waited patiently. Here was a man built for comfort, not speed. The wooden slats on the floor creaked beneath him and the fifteen-foot walk seemed to just about tap him out.

'I'm looking for Mo-Mo House.' Glitsky had his wallet out on the bar and opened it, flashing his buzzer.

The man looked down, as slowly as he did everything else. 'You found him.' He wore gold-framed round lenses. The shining black forehead was high, the dreadlocks brushed with gray even in the dim light. The voice had wasted itself with whiskey – a talking blues voice – or maybe he gargled with tacks, razor blades. The fat man waited. If you don't ask, you don't ask the wrong question.

'I thought I might run into a Ridley Banks down here.'

Mo-Mo shrugged, rotated his head a few degrees. 'I don't see 'im. Get you a drink?'

Maybe it was because his friend Hardy had been around. Maybe Flo was hovering somewhere nearby – sometimes before bed she used to pour herself a shot of frozen vodka – but Glitsky surprised himself. 'What's in the Stoly bottle?'

Mo-Mo threw a look over his glasses, backed up a couple of steps, and with some effort leaned and opened a cabinet under the bar. Reaching in, he rummaged a minute, grunting, then came up with an unopened bottle of Stolichnaya, the seal still intact over the cap. He placed it on the bar, grabbed a glass, fished some ice into it. 'Help yourself. On me.'

Glitsky pointed to the other bottle of Stolichnaya on the shelf behind him. 'I don't need a new bottle.'

Mo-Mo almost smiled. 'You with the ABC?'

The Alcoholic Beverage Control would take a dim view of Mo-Mo refilling his premium vodka bottles with piss, but it didn't matter to Glitsky. These were the trades you made if you wanted results on the street.