The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

Lanier forked some special, nodded. “I don’t see someone with the union getting so bent out of shape about the negotiations that he takes Allan out. He’s just watching Clarence’s back. He probably leaned toward giving the union a lot they wanted anyway.”

  “Agreed. Not worth pursuing without some kind of tip.”

  “Okay, who’s that leave? With motive, I mean.”

  “Our professional? He’s getting paid. That’s motive.” Glitsky shook his head. “But we’re counting him out as hopeless. Somebody else.”

  “The rest of the known universe?”

  Tempted to smile and ruin his reputation, Glitsky sipped tea. He looked up as Lou himself stopped by the table. “Abe, you don’t like the special?”

  Glitsky had taken one bite and realized he wasn’t that hungry. “It’s great, Lou, but I didn’t realize it had yogurt in it. I’m allergic.”

  “Hey. Whyn’t you say so? I’ll have Chui whip you up something else. She’s got a whole tray of pot-stickers still hot back there on the steam table. She could throw some soy over ’em, vinegar, hot flakes. You’d swear you were in Chinatown.”

  “Thanks, Lou, but me and Marcel are out the door in a minute. We’ve got a meeting. In fact, we were getting the check just now.”

  “All right. I’ll run and ring it up.” He pointed to the untouched dish. “But I don’t like this. It happens again, you’ve got to let me know right away. And I’ll tell Chui. She uses yogurt all the time, gives her stuff that Greek taste everybody loves, but she’d cook up something special for you, Abe. I mean it.”

  He went off to get the bill and Glitsky said, “The awful thing is, I think she would. So where were we? The known universe? How do you feel about checking out everybody he’s put away? As a prosecutor, I mean.”

  “In like what, twenty-five years? When’s the last time you’ve heard anybody did that?”

  “Not recently. But it’s a few less than the whole universe. And we’ve got the General Work people to look. They start with anybody’s who’s gotten out of the joint recently.”

  “You mean somebody that Boscacci sent away?”

  “Right.”

  Lanier shook his head. “It’s not what they usually do, Abe.”

  “I realize that.” Glitsky thought a second. “Okay, we put that on hold for a few days and instead check the gun shows.”

  “For what?”

  “For somebody selling silencers.” Glitsky cut off Lanier’s reply. “You never know. We might get lucky. At least we’re doing something. Maybe I’ll go do one of the shows myself.”

  “You think somebody’s going to talk to you at one of those places?”

  “Well, it’s either that or we start slogging through twenty-five years of old records and find every case Allan ever won. And they’ll talk to me at the gun shows. I won’t wear my uniform.”

  “Yeah,” Lanier replied, “that’ll fool ’em.”

  Glitsky’s Friday afternoon had originally been scheduled to be taken up with addressing the Pakistan Association of San Francisco at the Bay Area Band Shell Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. When he got back to his office from lunch, he debated with himself for the better part of five minutes before placing a call to Frank Batiste.

  He told the Chief that there had been a possible development in the Boscacci matter and he personally wanted to look into it. Perhaps, he suggested, one of the department’s senior press officers could stand in for him at the Pakistani gig and deliver some poignant remarks, which were certainly to be better received than his own in any event. On his way out the door to his office, Deputy Chief of Administration Bryce Jake Longoria called out and stopped him. Although he ran around as much as any deputy chief, Longoria was again behind his desk, again at his computer.

  “I’m out the door, Bryce. What can I do for you?”

  “Don’t let me slow you down. I was just wondering if you’d had any luck with your jury question.”

  “My jury question?”

  “The last time we talked? Somebody who’d been on a jury somewhere a hundred years ago?”

  Glitsky closed his eyes, trying to bring it back. He shook his head, about to give up when the name came. “Elizabeth Cary,” he said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know if you ever told me.”

  “That was it. Shot at her doorstep last week.”

  “Still nothing, though?”

  “Not with her. Last time we talked, I recall, was about five minutes before LeShawn Brodie broke, and since then Boscacci. Those two washed Mrs. Cary clean out of my brainpan and she hasn’t had much opportunity to come back. But why? You got an idea?”

  “No.” Longoria shook his head, lifted and dropped his shoulders. “It just seemed vaguely like real police work, so it got my attention.”

  A chuckle tickled at Glitsky’s throat. “You, too, huh?”

  Longoria waved a hand at his surroundings. “The desk,” he said. “You know.”

  “I hear you.”

  “So where are you off to?”

  Glitsky took a step into the room. “Between us, Bryce, I’m cutting school. Checking out a gun show.”

  “What for?”

  “See if I can pick up a line on somebody selling suppressors illegally. Nobody heard the shot that killed Boscacci.”

  Longoria held up a finger and turned to his computer, tapped a few keys. “Look at this first,” he said. “I may save you a trip.”

  Glitsky, not particularly wanting to save himself a trip, crossed to the desk and leaned over it. “What am I looking at?”

  “I just ran a search for ‘gun suppressor.’ You know how many hits I got?” He scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “Five thousand eight hundred twenty-eight. And you’re going to a gun show?”

  “Got to be quicker than checking all of those.”

  “Plus, you’re not stuck in the office.”

  “There is that.” Glitsky was stuck on the screen. “When did suppressors get legal?”

  “Oh, they’re not,” Longoria replied with a breezy air. “All these listings, they clearly state that sale of suppressors is only permitted for government agencies and police departments.”

  “Police departments? We don’t use ’em.”

  “Yeah, we do. TAC has a couple. The tactical unit. You don’t know that?”

  “I haven’t done much business with TAC.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re on the roof of a building with hostages downstairs, they want to zap bad guys they meet on the way down without waking up the whole block. That’s legal, at least under federal law. But these websites. Check ’em out.”

  Longoria scrolled through several screens. “Here. These journals on how to make your very own sweet little suppressor from common items in your home shop. ‘For information purposes only,’ of course, or ‘academic study.’ I’m sure no one has ever bought one of these books and actually made a silencer.”

  “No,” Glitsky said. “That would be wrong.” But he’d already decided that he was going to do some old-fashioned footwork, outmoded though it was. He told Longoria good-bye, then at the door turned around. “You think of anything I can do about Elizabeth Cary, I’d love to hear.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  On any given weekend, gun shows are common in Northern California. Glitsky had checked the internet, then made a couple of calls, and discovered that this weekend would feature Gun & Doll shows in several communities—Santa Rosa, San Jose, Fremont, Sacramento and the San Francisco Cow Palace, which was actually in Brisbane, in San Mateo County. The more he thought about the idea—given that they weren’t going to waste time looking for a professional hit person—the more he liked it. The suppressor angle might actually give him a lead. And at least, as he’d told Longoria, he was away from his desk and the endless meetings on one of the first truly lovely days of the year.

  In his hiking boots, Dockers and a camouflage blouse, he was far more comfortable than he would have been in uniform. Beyond that, he didn’t thin
k he much resembled a cop—the camo actually worked to his advantage that way. On his way down to the Cow Palace, he finalized arrangements for his event number detail to hit their snitches and cover all the shows over the weekend, then report back to him on Monday. If everybody struck out, Glitsky might have them begin culling the internet suppliers for their mailing lists and customers. Even if he could get the not-automatic cooperation of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it would be an enormous and tedious job, pretty much comparable to assembling the list of Boscacci’s convictions over the past twenty-odd years. Still, it was early afternoon and he was on the road. An added bonus was that he still had the services of his driver. Paganucci pulled the black Taurus up to the Cow Palace parking lot and Glitsky gave him two hours off.

  The right half of the huge, hangarlike structure boasted well over three hundred booths, with ordnance of nearly every conceivable type, as well as all the ancillary clothing, equipment, ammunition and literature. From the smallest imaginable single-shot pistols to shotguns to assault and sniper rifles, to every type of hand-held six-shooter and semiautomatic gun, the sense Glitsky had of the place was that if it fired bullets, you could buy it here. And, of course, the weapons displays weren’t limited to firearms—dealers were showcasing a spectacularly wide assortment of personal-use and paramilitary gear, including crossbows, slingshots, hunting and/or combat knives, leather accessories.

  The NRA had a booth at each end of every aisle. Business seemed to be brisk. Glitsky couldn’t help but make the observation that in spite of an apparently continuous assault from the antigun lobby, the Second Amendment seemed to be holding its own, even in the liberal mecca that was San Francisco.

  He was glad to see it.

  As a cop, although concerned with the idea of loaded guns getting into the hands of children and/or burglars, he was comfortable enough with the idea of home protection and private weapon ownership; somewhat less thrilled with the assault rifle booths, the really vicious-looking knives, the weapons whose only function was essentially military, their only potential targets human beings.

  But no suppressors.

  Silencers were illegal in California, but then again, so was marijuana. Glitsky didn’t believe that the former were nearly as commonly available as the latter, but the street snitch he’d called on his cellphone, a two-time loser named Walter Phleger, had set him straight. At the Cow Palace, you had to ask for Mort. You had to have a hundred-dollar bill, then about another grand in cash.

  In the first hour, he wandered, stopped, handled many weapons up and down the aisles. He stopped and chatted with salespeople at five booths, smaller manufacturers. Getting comfortable. He hadn’t done any street work in a very long time.

  After the shoot-out last year, Moses McGuire had disposed of all the guns they had used in the firefight, including both of Glitsky’s Colt .357 revolvers. In the interim, he hadn’t really missed them—he wore his Glock .40 automatic with his uniform every day—but now he had a hunch and on impulse he stopped in front of the Colt booth. There were two other customers, but the man behind the counter stepped to Glitsky as soon as he approached.

  “How are you doin’, sir?” Jerry, by his name tag, was in his mid-thirties. He was buffed under his shirt and tie, and wore a clipped red mustache and jarhead haircut. “Are you interested in buying a gun today?”

  Glitsky slowly looked to one side, all the way around to the other. Guns for sale everywhere he looked. He came back to Jerry and nodded. “It appears so, doesn’t it?”

  “Are you familiar with Colts?”

  “Moderately. I used to own a couple. Somebody took them.” Technically, this was not a lie. “I thought I’d see if one of these spoke to me.” He pointed down under the counter. “This Python looks like the brother to the ones I lost. Three fifty seven.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man was lifting it out, placing it on the counter.

  “May I?” Glitsky asked, reaching for it.

  He hefted it in one hand, passed it to the other, flipped open the cylinder, removed it entirely, then held the gun up to his eye and squinted down the barrel.

  “What line of work are you in?”

  Glitsky checked the sight, replaced the cylinder, handed the weapon back to Jerry. “Security.” His smile did not reach his eyes, and lowering his voice, he cut to the chase. “I’ve always loved that gun, but I’m looking for something that can accommodate a suppressor, and I’m afraid that leaves revolvers out of it.”

  “Yes, it does.” Jerry turned, rummaged in a drawer at the desk behind him, and a few seconds later placed a professionally designed, full-color brochure on the counter. “If you’re going to go with a suppressor, Colt recommends its M1911 handgun, which takes your forty-five-caliber ACP cartridge. The M1911, of course, is semiautomatic and takes the S0S-45 suppressor once its been threaded for—”

  Glitsky interrupted. “The guns that got taken from me, they were these three fifty seven revolvers, and I had suppressors to go with them. They also got taken.”

  “Well, yes, sir. But—”

  “It sounded like you were telling me if I didn’t shoot a semi, you couldn’t help me.”

  “No. Not at all. Although we can’t authorize any sales of suppressors out of the show today. We can’t even carry them, as I’m sure you realize. But if you’re interested . . .”

  “Maybe you haven’t been listening to me, Jerry. I’m interested in this gun, right here, right now, and I happen to have the thousand dollars to buy it. I don’t like to use a semiautomatic. They jam, you notice that? Now, are you telling me you can’t help me locate a silencer in this brochure of yours here for this exact weapon that I’m interested in putting down some money for? ’Cause if that’s the case, I think maybe I can find another dealer nearby who might be willing to.”

  He put the revolver down on the top of the glass counter. “On the other hand, you put me in line with a top-quality suppressor for this gun, I give you my credit card, come back later on after the ridiculous ten-day cooling off period has expired, and you’ve got at least one sale, maybe a few more after I talk to some of my friends. Are you hearing me?” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Someone told me if I had any trouble I should ask for Mort.”

  It was, indeed, the magic word. Jerry glanced at his other customers—nobody paying any real attention. “Give me a couple of minutes,” he said.

  It was more like twenty, during which Glitsky wandered some more, checking back at the Colt booth at five-minute intervals. The fourth time, Jerry was talking to a heavy, short, bald man and motioned Glitsky over. “This is, uh . . .”

  “Abe.” Glitsky extended the hand that held the C-note.

  “Mort.” The man’s grip was weak and sweaty, but he palmed the bill like a master, glanced down at it quickly, apparently was satisfied. “Let’s go,” he said.

  They walked out back toward the main entrance, Mort a couple of steps ahead of Glitsky, never looking back. Glitsky got stamped for readmission. Outside, they turned right and walked in the bright sun through the parking lot. Hard up against the chain-link fence, a white van with a dash full of dolls in the window squatted in the meager shade of a lone eucalyptus. Mort knocked once, then twice, on the back door, then turned and, without a word or a nod at Glitsky, headed back across the lot.

  When the door finally opened in a fog of cigarette smoke, Glitsky stepped forward. If he’d thought that Mort was overweight, the man who sat on the swivel seat in the rear of the van put things into perspective. He must have gone close to three hundred, although the untucked Hawaiian shirt may have added twenty pounds or so. He was still smoking, and every breath wheezed out of him like a bellows. He squinted through the smoke and out into the sun and said, “It’s nine hundred dollars. Cash.”

  Glitsky fanned away some of the smoke. There was no ventilation in the van itself. “That’s what I heard. I’m looking at a Colt three five seven revolver.” He took out his wallet and started counting out the bills, laying them out on
the filthy shag rug.

  The huge man wheezed again, put out his cigarette, then swiveled and grabbed one of the thick black leather briefcases that lined a shelf behind the front seats. Pulling it onto his lap, he opened it, studied a moment, then took out one of the long, heavy metallic objects. “This isn’t just a flash suppressor,” he said, handing it over. “This will eliminate noise in excess of seventy-five dB. I can thread it and mount it here whenever you pick up your weapon, a hundred dollars, or you can take it with you and mount it up yourself. I recommend you let me do it here. I’ve got all the equipment as you can see. You fuck it up, it might kill you.”

  The left side of the back of the van was a low metal work counter, with a vise and array of tools neatly mounted against the side wall. He grabbed a metal box off the counter, wiped his brow and, wheezing with the effort, reached down to pick up Glitsky’s bills. After counting them again, he placed them in the metal box. When the box was back on the counter, he pulled a small spiral notebook from his pants pocket. “You got a number? Cell’s best. I change the setup, I like to keep my customers in the loop.”

  Glitsky’s hands had gone damp with nerves. So far, everything that his snitch had told him about this operation had turned out as advertised, but if this fat man had a partner sitting in any one of the hundreds of nearby cars, covering him, this is where it would get ugly. He put the suppressor down on the rug and reached behind as though for his wallet or a belt-worn cellphone. Instead, he pulled his Glock from where he’d tucked in at the small of his back.

  At first, the fat man’s face registered a mild surprise, as though Glitsky had brought along the weapon for which he wanted the silencer. Then, realizing how and where the gun was pointed, he lowered his hands into his lap, then raised them slightly. “You can take your money back,” he said. “And whatever else is in there. I’m absolutely cool with this. You can take the truck, too. I don’t care.”

  “Keep your hands where I can see them and crawl on out here.”

  He backed up as the man slowly got himself off the mounted swivel chair and pathetically, on all fours, made his way across the gross shag. His dark hair hung in greasy shanks down around his face.