Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (48 page)

'God,' she said again, holding him, 'how can I have missed you this much?'

'I know. It's pretty ridiculous, isn't it?'

'Totally.'

Eventually they came untangled. 'What do you mean, invisible?' she asked.

'I mean normal humans usually only see senators on television surrounded by whatever the technical term is for flunkies ...'

'Pages.'

'Okay, pages. Or at least secret service people.'

'We don't have that.'

'... or reporters of one kind or another.
Somebody
, anyway, at least. And here you sit all alone in your diddly little office ...'

'This is a
nice
office, Abe.'

'Well, yes, compared to some, like mine. But still, you're alone so much. It's just never been my fantasy of the power-broker life.'

'You think I'm a power broker?'

'I don't think you're anybody's page.'

She broke a small smile. 'No, I suppose that's right.' Boosting herself onto the desk, she sat facing him. 'You want to have a lot of other people around, is that it?'

He moved to her again, stood against the desk, between her legs. She was no taller against him than when she'd been standing. 'I just don't know how you do it.'

'I don't think that door locks.' She had her hands around his waist, looking up at him. 'Well, believe it or not, when Elaine called – when was it, Tuesday night – and this whole thing looked like it was going to blow up, I just bought myself a ticket and got on a commercial flight to San Francisco. I had to be out here, see if I could help. Sometimes you've got to be free to move. I thought this would be one of those times. And I'm kind of glad I did.' She squeezed him. 'Are you?'

He went to the door, checked that it did not, in fact, lock, then opened it and looked out in the hallway. 'There's nobody out there,' he said, crossing the office, picking up one of the chairs and placing it under the doorknob. Back to her. 'It's six o'clock. Place is probably empty.' She brought her feet to the floor, slid her hose off and lifted herself back onto the edge of the desk. 'We'd better hurry,' she said, pulling at his belt, bringing him to her.

'Can I borrow your telephone for thirty seconds?' He was already punching in numbers. She had moved the chair away from the doorway and was sitting in it.

'This is Glitsky,' he said after a short wait. 'You beeped me.' He listened for another moment, checked his watch. 'I can be there in an hour.' He pulled a pad around, wrote something on it, tore off the page and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. 'Good. See you then.'

'An hour?' Loretta asked.

Glitsky moved to the other chair and sat facing her. 'That was a friend of mine with news about Wes Farrell,' he said. 'Kevin Shea's attorney.'

He couldn't read her expression, though for a moment it seemed as though some of the warmth had left her face. 'I meant to ask,' she said.

'It's been a busy day, I meant to tell you.'

He told her about it – so much to do with Kevin Shea. The last time they'd discussed it – before they'd gone out to dinner last night – Glitsky said he'd been optimistic that he'd be able to apprehend Shea within hours. Now he told her of his difficulties with Reston, with Farrell, Rigby, the FBI.

When he finished, Loretta said, 'And you're saying you think Alan's not offering a deal on Shea's safety because of me?'

'Essentially that's it. How I see it.'

'Well, that's got to stop,' she said. 'I'm not out to
get
Kevin Shea. Abe, you know that. I've been pushing for his proper arrest since I got here.'

Glitsky nodded. '
I
know that, Loretta, but meanwhile Wes Farrell offers to give him up – just like that – all he needs is some minimal guarantee from Alan Reston, and Reston won't do it. Then, for some reason, Farrell goes sideways about meeting up with me. Then Shea comes out with this videotape explaining his side of things, which never would have happened if Reston ... Did Elaine mention any of this to you?'

At the mention of her daughter's name Loretta clearly tensed. 'She told me a lot about... no, not this. Not specifically.' She paused. 'She told me you know.'

'Her and Locke?'

'And me and you.'

'I kept that vague. In the past tense,' he said.

'I'm afraid I didn't.'

A hollow of silence.

Then Glitsky: 'Well.' He blew out a breath.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But you can see ... we didn't talk too much about Kevin Shea.'

Glitsky stood up, paced the small room. He stopped by the window, looked out into the lengthening shadows. 'That phone call,' he began. 'My friend says he thinks he's got Farrell agreeing to talk to me again. If he does I'm going to need some assurance for Shea, which means Reston.'

'And you would like me to talk to Alan?'

'I think it might break the logjam, Loretta. If we could bring him in ... it would all be over.'

One leg curled under her, she sat back on the chair. 'Elaine did say there was some indication that Shea might not be ... that the case might be difficult to prove.'

'He's got himself a different version of the events, but that's not exactly unique among defendants. You've got to have a story.'

'Do you think – personally, now, Abe – do you think Kevin Shea's story is true?'

At the window, he turned. 'What are you really asking?'

'I'm at least in part asking how this is going to affect my daughter, Abe. I picked Kevin Shea as the symbol of white racism, and I believed it, but she's got to live with him. I mean, she's gone public, as a lot of us have, with condemning him.'

'I know. I tried to counsel her against that.'

'But she's already
done
it. What's she going to do about it now?'

The harsh tone – the note of panic. Glitsky went over to Loretta, down to one knee, his arm around her back. He pulled her to him. 'Hey. This is why we're talking, all right?'

She slumped into him. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's not you. I'm just so worried for my daughter. Are you telling me Shea really might not have done it?'

Glitsky nodded. There's some chance of that, yes.'

'And what will that do to Elaine, to her career?'

After a minute he replied, 'It'll be better than having it come out after he's been shot down by some overzealous FBI SWAT team.'

'I think that's a little extreme, Abe. It's not going to come to that—'

'Have you met Special Agent Simms?'

'No.'

'I wouldn't write it off until you have.'

Loretta shook her head. 'Abe, the FBI agents I know are professionals. They don't want firefights they can't explain or justify.'

'That's my point, Loretta. I think Simms wants exactly that – a firefight she could plausibly deny. She'll just say that her information was that Shea was armed and dangerous. She had no choice. But the bottom line to her superiors is she's not afraid to pull the trigger. And believe me – I'm in law enforcement, I know – this is considered a good thing.'

Loretta still wasn't convinced. 'I just have a hard time believing that the FBI...'

'You ever read Chekhov?' At her blank expression he said 'Old Chekhov says you don't introduce a gun in the first act of a play unless you're going to use it in the third.'

'All right?'

"The FBI is here with marksmen. Sharpshooters. Believe it, they did not bring them for a dress rehearsal.'

'You can't think they're planning to
kill
Kevin Shea?'

'That's exactly what I think. While everybody has the perception he's still guilty as hell. That's why Alan Reston isn't going to offer any protection. He's setting up a scenario that he figures is going to protect you, Loretta. Maybe Elaine, too, but mostly you, I think.'

'Me?' The enormity of it apparently settling on her, she half-collapsed backward, molding to the chair. 'Because I made Shea the center of it?'

'That's right.'

'Oh Lord. I do have to call Alan.'

Unsteadily, she got up and walked to her desk, to the phone, pushed the faceplate. As she was waiting Glitsky reminded her not to mention his name, he'd been ordered off the case.

No one picked it up. 'He's not there. I'll try his home.' She pulled her own yellow pad around, flipped some pages and punched more numbers, leaving a message on the service that as soon as he got in, whatever time it was, Alan should call Loretta Wager. It was urgent. She left three numbers – one here at the office, two at her home.

'He'll call,' she said. 'I'll tell him.'

She came back to Abe and put her arms around him again. 'Thank you for talking to me.' Then, pushing away, 'You go see your friend. As soon as I hear from Alan, I'll call you.'

The way Farrell had left it with Hardy was, 'Yeah, you can tell your friend Glitsky to call me.' Damned if Wes was going to call the lieutenant. He didn't want to say he'd call Glitsky, anyway, because he had no idea for sure when – or even if – Kevin Shea was going to call him again. And he couldn't call Shea even if he had something specific to tell him, which he didn't.

Just cool the heels until something broke.

So he'd gone home, waited, killed time watching the news, waited some more. Story of his life the past few days, waiting. Except this time with two pints of Guinness inside him. He dozed, woke up, looked at his watch.

Was Glitsky going to call him or what?

Finally, he again put a leash on Bart and the two of them almost ran out of his apartment. He didn't want to hear the phone ringing again four steps after he'd locked his deadbolt as he made his escape.

They turned north this time, along Junipero Serra, maybe make it all the way to the shopping district on ocean. There were places there where he'd eaten at outside tables with Bart.

It was a typical July evening in San Francisco, cool and breezy. He had changed from his shorts and Pendleton into a gray sweatsuit, incongruously carrying with him the super-wide 'lawyer's briefcase' (now containing only two pens and a yellow legal pad) that he hadn't pulled from his closet in over a year. Waking from his lethargy, beginning to plan his moves, he whistled tunelessly. Bart, his leash in Farrell's other hand, stopped periodically for territory, enjoying the romp.

Actually, except for the disturbing lack of connection with the police, things didn't appear to be going too badly. If what Dismas Hardy had said was true about Glitsky not being the one to have sent Stoner with his warrant, there still might be a chance that they could negotiate some terms that would protect Kevin and at the same time get him into custody.

In fact, Farrell was already into the next step – the trial. He found he was actually looking forward to it. This was a case he could win! And, unlike the one with his ex-friend Mark Dooher, this time he would be on the side of justice – a concept that until only a day ago he had consigned to the trash heap of ancient history. The thought – that he might play some real role in defending an innocent man – galvanized him. Once he got the case moving into the courts, in fact, he was starting to feel that he could maybe get the charges dismissed before it even came to trial.

Turning onto Ocean, his brain had finally kicked in. The whistling had stopped. Abruptly, he ceased to walk and hooked Bart's leash around the top of one of the wrought-iron fence posts that bounded a manicured landscape of bonsai and sedgegrass beside a gingerbread house. He sat on one of the large square stone steps and opened his briefcase, oblivious to the weather or the scenery.

What was it that had gotten to him? Oh yes ... the knife wounds. He had to remember when he talked to Glitsky (when? when? – maybe he
would
break down and make the call) to ask the lieutenant to do a search for people with knife wounds. (Of course, Farrell had no inkling of Colin Devlin or Mullen or McKay.) This was the kind of detail – since it hadn't been released to the public – that a judge might decide constituted a lack of probative evidence to convict Kevin right at the git-go. Oh shit, except that Kevin had mentioned it on his tape. He scratched out what he had written.

But that was just the first significant detail that had occurred to him – he thought of his other arguments to Glitsky at Lou the Greek's. If he could get this client off with an eleven-eighteen motion – a directed verdict of acquittal – at trial, now wouldn't that be sweet?

He made more notes – the lawyer back in his element. There were a million things he could do for Kevin ... call Glitsky as a witness – a cop as a
defense
witness. He loved it. The theater of it should be persuasive to a jury. He had to get a doctor to look at Kevin, and soon. Make some determination on the cracked ribs, if that's what they were. The lacerations on the face.

Shit again. He'd forgotten to take Polaroids of Kevin, and the scratches were healing. Oh, but the videotape would show them. He hoped. He wasn't sure he remembered. He had to start training himself again. Get sharper. Trials were war and you didn't get into one if you weren't prepared to win or die trying.