Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (47 page)

Hardy took it in. On its face it didn't make sense. Glitsky would not – in fact, Hardy was 'morally certain' he didn't – order anybody to follow Farrell home. Glitsky had known nothing about any of this – if he had, he wouldn't have asked Hardy to step in and find out why Farrell wasn't talking to him. He would have known.

Not only that, Glitsky knew, morality aside, that this kind of backstabbing did not produce results. It just wasn't Glitsky's style. If Abe had given his word, it simply hadn't happened as Farrell saw it.

'You sure it was Glitsky?' he asked, repeating that it just didn't sound like him. 'What would be his motive?'

'Get the collar, the fame of it, maybe even claim the reward. Hell if I know. But he was the only one that knew I was with Shea, and he told me flat out he'd keep it right there.' Farrell put a hand to his heart, then drank some more stout. 'The guy lied, that's all.' Hardy swirled his own glass. 'The warrant was for Shea himself, not documents or papers?'

'It was a search warrant for the premises.' Farrell's face twisted in distaste. 'Sergeant Stoner was very thorough.'

'Sergeant Stoner?'

'Yeah, that was it. I remember I thought the name was a bit... ironic.'

'Stoner's not with the police department,' Hardy said. 'He's a DA investigator. I used him when I was a DA. The District Attorney's office in San Francisco has its own staff of detectives that aren't under the jurisdiction of either the SFPD or the county sheriff.' Typically, the role of the detectives was to locate witnesses, although occasionally they were used for other purposes.

'So?'

'So it would be odd – to say the least – for Glitsky to assign a
DA
's investigator to serve a warrant.'

'So he told the DA—'

'That's not Abe.'

Farrell looked at Hardy. 'He sent you down to talk to me, didn't he? You guys are pals.'

Hardy nodded. 'He didn't know why you wouldn't talk to him. He really didn't know.'

'Well, he must have leaked it somehow.'

'Maybe not. It could have gone down another way. But the point is, he doesn't think Shea did it, either. He thinks he can still help you.'

'It might be too late for that. If the DA—'

'He wants to talk to you. I think he's got an idea.'

'And what's your part in it?'

'My fee is a can of chili.' Hardy put down the remainder of his stout. 'Private joke,' he said, rising from his chair. 'Get you another one?'

Special Agent Simms was back in Alan Reston's office, the door closed behind her, standing at ease in front of his desk. 'The subject was one Dismas Hardy, another lawyer in town, do you know him?'

Reston shook his head.

'He mentioned Kevin Shea and the two of them met at a bar out in the Avenues called the Little Shamrock. We followed Farrell there and both men drank two beers, then went back to their domiciles afterward. No sign of Shea.'

Reston was nodding to himself. 'Probably just the vultures figuring how they're going to split the pie.'

'Yes, sir. That's what we've come to. In any event, it's all we've got to this point, but we're still on-line. I just wanted to keep you informed. We'll get him.'

Reston sat up, eyes clear, back straight. 'I'm sure you will.'

Art Drysdale was back at work in his office, juggling his baseballs in a convincing display
of
sangfroid
. 'I've weathered that whole racist storm before, Abe. It comes and goes. Fact is, I've got no ax to grind here and everybody I work with seems to know it.' He smiled genially. 'You ought to see what some of our female colleagues have to say about me.'

'What for?'

'I took an early public stand against using the word "fore-person". You know, like injuries, the foreman. I thought it would be needlessly confusing, poetically uninspired, and – well, how can I put this? – stupid. Let's face it, I can't be trained. I'm sure I'm a menace on some level. Next it's the women's caucus, I'm sure.'

The preliminaries completed – they were allies again – Glitsky sat back comfortably. Drysdale actually had upholstered chairs in his office. 'I just wanted to stop by to tell you I've got two inspectors assigned to Chris Locke. I'm afraid with everything else I didn't jump on it as quickly as I could've.'

Drysdale stopped juggling, squared himself around in his chair, all attention now. 'You finding anything?'

Glitsky explained the little that Griffin had come up with, and then went over his plans for the evening – more interviews, more legwork. The talk wound down.

'I'm still having a hard time with it.'

Glitsky nodded. 'Yeah, I know.'

'He was ... he had a lot of flaws, Chris did. Everybody knows about the woman-thing ...' Even aside from his bombshell discovery of the morning about Locke's relationship with Elaine Wager, Glitsky was not so subliminally aware of Locke's many sexual conquests. 'But I think his heart was in the right place where the law was concerned. He understood the ones we could win, when he had to drop one. He didn't want to waste everybody's time.'

A eulogy on Chris Locke by Drysdale was going to be wasted on Glitsky, but he could listen politely if it made Drysdale feel better. Art had done the same for him enough times. The first months after Flo ...

'Even the tough calls,' Drysdale went on. 'Hell, Jerohm Reese. You think it didn't kill Chris to let that scumbag go? But what was he going to do? He had no witnesses. He wasn't going to get a conviction, so what was the point? Waste the people's time and money?'

'That
was
a tough call.' Glitsky at his most diplomatic. He really had not liked Locke at all. But the man had been a chameleon – to Drysdale he had remained the loyal friend, the good lawyer, the able administrator. The office had run smoothly, and that was what counted to Drysdale.

'Damn straight, and it wasn't the only one.'

Glitsky knew that, too. Locke hadn't been too bad as District Attorneys went – certainly he would not now be pulling the idiocy Alan Reston was attempting with Kevin Shea.

Drysdale was juggling the baseballs again, calming himself. Glitsky was about to get up and go when something else occurred to him, something he hadn't meant to discuss here, but Drysdale's mention of the light evidence on Jerohm Reese had triggered it. Drysdale had been the chief assistant district attorney for almost twenty-five years, since long before Chris Locke's first term. He would have been around. 'Art, you ever do any work on the Pacific Moon case? White collar? Maybe fifteen years ago?'

Again, the balls stopped. Drysdale's brow wrinkled in concentration. He prided himself on never forgetting a case. 'It go to trial?'

'I don't think so, but I believe it got talked about down here and then dropped. Not enough evidence.'

'The Pacific Moon?'

Glitsky nodded. 'Restaurant out on Balboa. Got hot for a while with white collar, then died.'

'Money laundering.' Drysdale had placed it.

'That's the one.'

'What about it?'

'Nothing. I don't know exactly. It's come up lately.'

Drysdale gave him a look. 'It's come up lately – that's a good answer.'

'The real answer is I just don't know, Art.' He took a beat, then realized who he was talking to. Once he'd brought it up, Drysdale would look over the old files, put out feelers, get it back into the grapevine on some level and Glitsky didn't want that. Better to be up front with him now. 'With Loretta Wager in town now, there's been some—'

'That's it! 'Art snapped his fingers. He had it now. 'Sure, I can't believe it took me this long. It's come up a couple of times with the elections.'

'Probably.'

'No probably – it has. People digging for dirt. You can imagine.'

'So you've reviewed it? I heard some figures kicked around that are ... provocative. Huge.'

'I'm sure you have,' Drysdale said. 'I remember it clearly now. The numbers were always getting wildly exaggerated.' He thought a minute longer. 'Because of the profile – black woman, U.S. senator – Chris took it himself. He was the original prosecutor assigned, I'm talking now back in prehistory. The case didn't have any legs then, doesn't now. That was another one, though,' he added enigmatically.

'Another what?'

'Another one of the tough calls for Locke.'

'What was tough about it?'

'Well, this is between us now, Abe, but Chris did some fancy steppin' getting his hands on that one.'

'He
wanted the
case?'

Drysdale nodded, remembering. 'It was mostly black people, the investors, although I believe Dana Wager, of course, was one of them. Anyway, Chris was new, wanted to prove he didn't have a color barrier. He
badly
wanted this indictment, make his bones against the brothers, prove he could be a DA for all the people. But believe me, I remember him coming to me about this indictment, asking my opinion, my help – but there was nothing to get it on.'

Glitsky let out the breath he'd been holding. 'I heard the figure of three million dollars.'

Drysdale just shook his head. 'My recollection, Abe, is that's not even in the ballpark. I don't think it was even one million back when Chris was looking at it. Somebody got lucky with an investment or something if I recall.. .'

'And it's not ongoing? Not anymore?'

'I haven't even sniffed it, Abe, and I think I would have. And then, of course,' Drysdale continued, getting back to his theme, 'what made it a tough call for Chris is that when he had to drop it, he had to take the flak for dropping it
because
it was mostly a black enterprise. And he couldn't very well come back out swinging, defending himself that he
wanted
to indict these people. Not if they hadn't done anything wrong, and it finally didn't look like they had.' He sighed. 'The world, huh, Abe?'

'The world,' Glitsky agreed.

Loretta was downtown in her City Hall office. It was nearly eight o'clock in Washington DC, Friday night, the end of the week. If deals were going to get cut, now was the time. They always said 'close of business,' meaning five o'clock, but in the Capitol the close of business lasted at least three hours. Nobody went home until everything that could be done was done. Still, she thought, checking her watch again, it should be about time.

She was confident. The reports she had gotten during the day – both from her own office and those of her senate colleagues – indicated that the president's chief of staff had been working and lobbying around the clock to facilitate the transfer of the Hunter's Point Naval Reservation by executive order to the Federal Parks Program, with the stipulation that the land be dedicated to Loretta's idea of a camp for underprivileged youth, and administered by an African-American.

Evidently (as Loretta had both hoped and expected), the president had seen it as she had – this was a monumental political opportunity, a no-lose situation that for maximum effect should be done immediately, as a symbol of the president's ongoing commitment to civil rights and in the interests of continued racial harmony. The telephone buzzed and she forced herself to wait through two full rings, picking up on the third. It was her secretary calling from one of the public phones at the Old Ebbett Grill, a few blocks from the White House.

'... and I think we can say that congratulations are in order. The president's going ahead with the order.'

'For sure?'

'He's scheduled the signature for noon tomorrow, our time. Nine o'clock out there. It ought to be ideal for you.'

'That is perfect,' Loretta said. She had spoken again to Alan Reston. He was confident that with the FBI's help they'd have Kevin Shea by then. That would de-fang Philip Mohandas and his march on City Hall, which Loretta knew stood a good chance of getting out of hand. And she didn't want that to happen – not now, not when a real solution was so close.

With the apprehension of Kevin Shea and the timing of the executive order, she was sure things would calm down. The city would return to normal, or some semblance of it. And she would be at the crest of the wave of peace and harmony – a hero to the community at large, not to any racial segment within it. She had fought for – and won – concessions for her own people, but she had also proved again that she was more than willing to work within the existing white, predominantly male power structure. She was a pragmatist with ideals intact, she told herself.

'You see the president tomorrow, honey, you tell him it's Loretta Wager making him look so good. Nice and subtle, though, hear?'

'I hear you.'

'I know you do, sugar.'

And then there was Abe.

He stood leaning against the jamb, filling the doorway, half-smiling, the simple enjoyment of watching her. She'd been making notes on her projected press conference for the next day, hadn't even sensed his arrival.

'How do you stay so invisible?' he asked her.

'God! Oh, Abe!' Her hand went to her chest. 'You scared me to death.'

'We homicide inspectors are trained to silently stalk our prey. Is it a good time?' Meaning for them to be alone. He stepped into the room, looking a question at her, getting a nod, closing the door behind him. Barefoot as usual, she came around the desk into his arms.