The First Law (6 page)

“Did you know him?” Cuneo asked.

Panos didn’t answer right away. He sighed again, then pulled himself up. When he turned around, the Patrol Special met Cuneo’s gaze with a pained one of his own. “Long time.”

To a great degree, Cuneo’s nervous habits were a function of his concentration, which was intense. His mind, preoccupied with the immediate details of a crime scene or interview situation, would shift into some other trancelike state and the rest of his behavior would become literally unconscious. And the humming, or whistling, or finger-tapping, would begin.

Now Panos took up space next to Russell in the front of the shop, neither man saying much of anything, although they were standing next to one another. The body had been taken away and the crime scene people were all but finished up, packing away whatever they’d brought. Cuneo was back in the office, doing snippets of Pachelbel’s Canon in D while he took another careful look around—he’d already discovered the unplugged video camera, located one of the bullet holes in the wall and extracted the slug, lifted some of his own fingerprints.

Matt Creed had finished his regular beat shift after the preliminary interview he’d had with the inspectors at Silverman’s, and now he appeared again in the doorway, this time carrying a cardboard tray of paper coffee cups he’d picked up at an all-night place on Market. He paused at the sight of his boss. “Mr. Panos,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“I’d say not.”

“No. I know. That’s not how I meant it.”

“That’s all right, Creed. That coffee up for grabs?”

Creed looked down at his hands. “Yes, sir.”

A couple of minutes later, the last of the crime scene people were just gone and Panos, Creed and Russell had gathered at the door to the office, in which Cuneo was now rummaging through the drawers in Silverman’s desk, bagging in Ziploc as possible evidence whatever struck his fancy. He had stopped humming, though now at regular intervals he slurped his hot coffee through the hole in the top of the plastic lid, loud and annoying as a kid’s last sip of milkshake through a straw.

Suddenly he looked up, the sight of other humans a mild shock. But he recovered, slurped, spoke to Panos. “You said he wasn’t your client anymore?”

“No. But he’d been for a long time.” Panos boosted himself onto Silverman’s desk and blew at his own brew. “I had to raise my rates last summer and he couldn’t hack them anymore. But ask Mr. Creed here, we still kept a lookout.”

Creed nodded. “Every pass.”

Cuneo moved and his folding chair creaked. “Every pass what?”

“Every pass I’d shine a light in.”

“No charge,” Panos put in. “Just watching out.”

“But he—Silverman—wasn’t paying you anymore?”

“Right.”

“So then”—Cuneo came forward, his elbows on his knees—“why are you here again?”

The question perplexed and perhaps annoyed Panos. He threw his black eyes over and up to Lincoln Russell, who stood with his arms crossed against the doorsill. But Russell just shrugged.

“The incident occurred on Mr. Creed’s shift, so he was obviously involved, and he was one of my men. Plus, as I say, I knew Sam, the deceased.”

“But this place isn’t technically in your beat? Thirty-two, isn’t it?” Cuneo sucked again at his coffee.

Panos straightened up his torso and crossed his arms. “Yeah, it’s Thirty-two. So what?”

Cuneo sat back in his chair. “So since the deceased is your friend and ex-client, you might know something more about this shop than your average joe off the street, isn’t that right? And if you do, what do you think might have happened here?”

Panos grunted. “Let me ask you one. Did either of you or any of the crime scene people find a red leather pouch here? Maybe on Sam?”

“What leather pouch?”

Panos held his hands about eight inches apart. “About this big. Real old, maroon maybe more than red.”

Cuneo glanced up and over at Russell, who shook his head. Cuneo spoke. “No pouch. What about it?”

“No pouch makes it open and shut. What this was about, I mean.”

Russell spoke from the doorsill. “And what is that?”

“We’re listening,” Cuneo said.

Panos shifted his weight on the desk. “All right,” he said. “First you should know that Thursdays was when Sam took his deposit to the bank.”

“Every Thursday?” Russell asked.

Panos nodded. “Clockwork. Everybody who knew him knew that. I used to walk with him myself over to the B of A. He put the cash in this pouch. It’s not here now.”

“So,” Cuneo butted in, “he was going to the bank tonight, and somebody who knew him decided to take the pouch?”

“Three guys,” Creed corrected. “One of ’em pretty big.”

“Okay, three.” Cuneo hummed a long, unwavering note. “Must have been a lot of money, they were going to split it three ways.”

“Might have been,” Panos said. “I wouldn’t know.”

Cuneo indicated the surroundings. “This little place did that well?”

Panos shrugged. “Wednesday nights they played poker here.”

The two inspectors shared a glance. “Who did?” Russell asked.

“Bunch of guys. It was a regular game for a lot of years. Sam took out ten bucks a hand for himself, except when he played blackjack, when he was the house.”

Russell whistled softly. “Every hand?”

Panos nodded. “That was the ante. Per guy. Per hand. Ten bucks.”

A silence settled while they did the math. Cuneo hummed another long note. “Big game,” he said, pointing. “That’s the table then.”

“Right.”

“We’re going to need the players,” Russell said. “Did he keep a list?”

“I doubt it,” Panos replied. “Knowing Sam, he kept them in his head. But I might be able to find out, and you can take it from there.”

“We’d appreciate that.” Cuneo was making some notes on his pocket pad. “So they came in masked . . .”

“They weren’t masked,” Creed said. “Not when they came out.”

“They were when they came in,” Cuneo said. “Because Silverman knew them. They knew him and the setup here.” He pointed to the hidden video up above. “They knew about that, for example.”

Panos stopped him. “How do you know about the masks?”

Cuneo reached into his pocket and pulled out a gallon Ziploc bag into which he’d placed the one ski mask that had fallen to the floor.

“Sons of bitches,” Panos said.

“Who? “Cuneo asked.

Panos’s jaw was tight, his heavy brow drawn in. “It’d be a better guess once we know who was at the game.”

“All right,” Cuneo said, “but this is a homicide investigation. What you’ll do is give us a list of players at the game and we’ll work from that.”

Panos nodded. “All right, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me in the loop. Whoever killed Sam, any way I can help you, count me in.”

3

F
or several years after the death of his first wife Flo, Glitsky had a live-in housekeeper—a woman born in Jalisco, Mexico, with the German name of Rita Schultz. She had slept in the living room of his duplex behind a shoji screen and had come, in her own way, to be almost one of the family. After the marriage, when Treya and her then sixteen-year-old daughter Raney had come to live with Glitsky and his sixteen-year-old son Orel, Rita wasn’t needed anymore and Glitsky, regretfully, had had to let her go.

Now and for the past eight months since Treya had gone back to work at the DA’s office, Rita, no longer living in, was again at the Glitskys’ five days a week, taking care of the baby. Two months ago, the big kids had both gone off to college—Orel to his dad’s alma mater of San Jose State, and Raney all the way across the country to Johns Hopkins, where she’d gotten a full academic scholarship and planned to major in pre-med. The baby Rachel moved out of Abe and Treya’s bedroom and into Raney’s old room behind the kitchen.

Over the summer, he and Treya had actually fixed up the place a bit. They tore out the old, battle-worn gray berber wall-to-wall carpet in the living room and discovered the original blond hardwood underneath. Over one weekend, they stripped the seventies wallpaper and repainted the walls a soft Tuscan yellow. Then with the fresh new look, they got motivated to go out and buy a modern brown leather couch and matching love seat, some colorful throw rugs, Mission-style coffee and end tables. They put plantation shutters over the front windows.

It wasn’t a large place by any means, and Glitsky had lived in it for more than twenty years, but with all the recent changes, he would sometimes come out into the new living room holding Rachel in the dimly lit predawn and wonder where he was. He knew it wasn’t just the room. In reality, everything seemed different. The whole world since the terrorist attacks, the new reality perhaps more psychic than physical, but all the more real for that. All his boys now moved out, his old job gone, a new marriage with a young woman, and for the past fourteen months, their baby girl.

At such times—now was one of them—he would stand by the front windows with Rachel in his arms and together they would look out at the familiar street. He’d done the same thing dozens of times with Isaac, Jacob and Orel when they were babies, but now he did it to try and convince himself that he was the same person with Rachel that he’d been to his sons, and that his home was not foreign soil.

He opened the shutters and looked down the street toward its intersection with Lake. The rain had kept up throughout the night, but the wind had finally abated with the first sign of light. Now outside it was all heavy mist under high clouds that would hang on all day if not longer. Glitsky stared out through it, holding his daughter up against him, patting her back gently.

A pedestrian appeared at the intersection and turned into his street. Though he wore a heavy raincoat that hid the shape of his body and had pulled a brimmed hat down over his face, Glitsky knew who it was as soon as he saw him.

“What’s grandpa doing here?” he asked his daughter. His own brow clouding—this could only be bad news—he watched his father plod slowly up the street, hands in his pockets, head down. When he was out front, Glitsky moved to the front door and opened it. Nat was already coming up the stairs, the dripping hat in one hand, lifting his feet, one heavy step after the other.

“What?” Glitsky asked.

His father stopped before he got to the landing. He raised his eyes, but something went out of his shoulders. “Abraham.” The way he said his son’s name made it sound as if just getting to him had been his destination. He let out a breath. “Sam Silverman,” he said, shaking his head. “Somebody shot him.”

Nat walked the last few steps up and Abe stood aside to let him pass. While Nat hung his coat on the rack by the door, his son went in to wake Treya and give her the baby. When he came back out, his father was sitting forward on the edge of the new love seat, his hands clasped between his knees. He looked feeble, a very old man.

In fact, he was eighty years old, but on a normal day, no one would guess it. Abe went down on a knee in front of him.

“Did you get any sleep, Dad?”

Nat shook his head no. “Sadie called me about midnight. I went over there.”

“How’s she holding up?”

His father lifted his shoulders and let them drop. A complete answer. Treya was holding the baby and came up beside them. “How are
you
holding up, Nat? You want some tea?”

He looked up at her, managed a small smile. “Tea would be good,” he said.

Treya moved around her husband and sat down next to Nat. Rachel reached out a tiny hand to touch his face, said “Gapa,” and got a small smile out of him. Treya put an arm across his shoulders and rested her head against him for a beat, then kissed the side of his head and stood up again. “We’ll be right back.”

The men watched them leave. Nat turned to Abe. “Why would somebody do this? To Sam of all people. Sam who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Glitsky had heard the refrain hundreds of times when he’d been in homicide, and the answer was always the same. There was no answer, no why. So Abe didn’t try to supply one. Instead, as though knowledge could undo any of it, he asked, “Do you know how it happened?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do. I’m not in homicide anymore.”

“What, nobody remembers you over there?”

The two men were at the kitchen table. Rita had arrived and could be heard reading a children’s book in Spanish to Rachel in the living room. Treya was getting dressed for work. Abe had no intention of snapping at his father, but it took some effort. Even after four months on the new job, the topic of his employment with the police department still tended to rile him up. He forced an even tone. “People remember me fine, Dad, but I don’t work there. It’ll look like I’m meddling.”

“So meddle.”

“In what way exactly?”

“Just let people know this one is important. People care who shot Sam.”

Abe turned his mug. “They’re all important, Dad. Most people who get shot have somebody who cares about it.”

With his index finger, Nat tapped the table smartly three times. “Don’t give me with everybody cares, Abraham. I’ve heard your stories. Most are what do you call, no humans involved. I know how it is down there. I’m saying go make a difference. What could it hurt?”

“What could it hurt.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I heard you.” Abe sighed. “You want me to what exactly?”

“Just keep up on it. Keep
them
on it.” Nat put a hand on his son’s arm. “Abraham, listen to me. If they see it’s family . . .”

Abe knew that wouldn’t help, not in any meaningful way. The inspectors on the case—and he didn’t know who they were yet—were either good at their jobs or they weren’t, and that more than anything else would determine whether they succeeded in identifying and arresting Sam Silverman’s killer. “Then what?” he asked. “They look harder?” He shook his head. “They’ll look as hard as they look, Dad. They’ll either find him or not. That’s what will happen, period. Me butting in won’t make any difference. It might, in fact, actually hurt.”

Nat’s eyes flared suddenly, with impatience and anger. “So what, then? You can’t even try? You let the animals who shot Sam walk away?”