Damage

by John Lescroart

  She was not even remotely skilled as a liar. After her eyes went wide, she looked over to her husband for help, who couldn’t manage much more than a what-can-you-do shrug. Finally she shook her head several times, much too quickly. “I just told you.”

  “Yes, you did. You told me he didn’t do anything like that.” Glitsky leaned in toward her. “Was that the truth?”

  Again, she silently begged her husband to step in, but either he couldn’t read the signal or he didn’t know what to do with it. Her eyes went across the room to the two boys sitting on the sofa. She wrapped her arms more protectively about the toddler on her lap. At last, she shook her head again. “I did not see him,” she said. “I don’t know why he was parked here.”

  Glitsky lowered his voice to an all-but-inaudible whisper. “I don’t want to alarm your children, Gloria, but I think he came down here to kill you just like he killed Felicia Nuñez. And then when he saw you had children, he had a better idea.”

  She just stared at him.

  “He needs to be back in prison,” Glitsky said, “so that he won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”

  “He will not hurt my children if I don’t testify,” she said. “There would be no reason.”

  “How do you know that?” Glitsky asked. “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Please. It is no use.” She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “I just know.”

  35

  Driving back up to the city on the Bayshore Freeway, the car’s heater blasting away and his windshield wipers swishing at top speed, Glitsky tried to console himself with the fact that at least now he had a name and address for Gloria Serrano and that other, more persuasive souls in the DA’s office might convince her that she needed to testify again against Ro. That might still happen, he thought, especially once they got him back into jail and he was no longer a direct threat to her children.

  His mind kept returning to the question of how Ro had located Gloria so quickly, and again it returned to the old familiar theme of the city’s stupid police budget. He was sure that Ro’s success was a function of his ability to hire private investigators who could use private and in some case downright illegal methods to locate missing persons, or persons who wanted to be missing. He was working himself up into a fine lather about it as his cell phone chirped on the seat next to him.

  Seeing the name Wes Farrell on the screen, he dispensed with the preliminaries. “Tell me we got the indictment.”

  “Better late than never. We got the indictment. Fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “That’s what I said, too. Sorry I didn’t call you sooner, but I thought Vi needed to know first.”

  “True enough. She got her teams in place?”

  “Not yet. I only just called her. Last she heard from her GPS people, he was already back in town from somewhere down the Peninsula.”

  “Sunnyvale,” Glitsky said. “He found Gloria Gonzalvez.”

  “God, shit, no.” Farrell’s voice went hollow. “You’re not telling me . . .”

  “No. He just threatened her kids because it was so much more fun. Now she’s saying she won’t testify against him. It might be a hard sell getting her back on board.”

  “Well, maybe when she finds out he’s back in jail ...”

  “That’s what I was hoping, too. So did the chief say how long it would be before they could move?”

  “She said she had to gather the troops. Some of ’em evidently have already gone home, though they’re all on call. Then she first wanted to make sure where Ro was going. Next place he stops, which her guess is his house.”

  “Her guess?”

  “He’s in the city on Nineteenth Avenue heading that way. You got a better idea?”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “But?”

  “Nothing.” Glitsky wasn’t going to criticize the chief who’d mostly stood up for him under serious and unrelenting pressure. But inwardly his guts churned that she had not chosen to put someone on Ro’s car’s tail from the minute he’d come into town, and maybe even before. But like Glitsky and maybe more so, Lapeer was probably dealing with budget issues. “I just want to see him off the street.”

  “Probably won’t be more than a couple of hours,” Farrell said.

  “Less would be better.”

  “You want to call Vi and tell her that?”

  “No,” Glitsky said. “I don’t think that would be productive.”

  Jon Durbin had just been getting home late last night when he saw his father pulling out of his uncle and aunt’s driveway. Not really having any idea of where his father could be going late on a Thursday night, he had followed him up through Golden Gate Park, then right on Geary down to Laguna, and finally north to Chestnut, where he parked at the curb.

  Pulling over a half block away, Jon had watched his father get out of the car and walk to the entrance of the large apartment building that anchored the southwest corner. After ringing outside and then opening the lobby door, he had disappeared inside.

  Jon followed a minute later and stood looking at the bank of inhabitants’ names on the mailboxes. When he saw the name Sato, he almost couldn’t believe it, and then he totally believed it, and his hand went to his stomach as it turned over on him.

  His father and Liza.

  How sickening, how gross, how fucking obvious.

  Did his dad really think he could get away with this? Did he think they were all complete gullible morons?

  After that, he hadn’t been able to face going home at all. He stayed with his best friend, Rich, and had gone on to school in yesterday’s clothes with almost no sleep.

  Today he had seethed all day, a blackness growing within him minute by minute, and after school ended he had first gone back to Rich’s, and then decided that he had to deal with this somehow, bring it out in the open. So he had come back to the Novios’ at around quarter to five, about when the rain had unleashed.

  He still wasn’t sure what he was going to do. But something.

  He had made it back to the house without having to explain much to Aunt Kathy, who was still wrecked—as they all were except his goddamn father—by the plain fact of his mother’s murder. He went upstairs to the bedroom he was sharing with Peter, took a shower, and changed into some other clothes, then lay down on the bed, closing his eyes.

  When Peter came in a half hour later, he opened them. “Hey.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Rich’s. Just hanging out. Except earlier last night. You know what I did last night?”

  “Who cares?”

  “You will. I followed Dad.”

  “When?”

  “When he went out. You didn’t know he went out?”

  Peter shook his head. “I crashed early. You followed him? Why? Where to?”

  “Because I wanted to see where he was going. And guess where that was. Liza Sato’s.”

  This information stopped Peter short until he could finally form the question, “Why did he go there?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I think probably because she’s his friend and he needed somebody to talk to.”

  “Yeah, either that or he’s fucking her.”

  “Bullshit! You don’t know that. You don’t know anything.” Then, the fully realized thought of his brother’s meaning dawning on him, Peter stepped up close to where Jon sat up on the bed and said, “Are you saying you think Dad killed Mom? Is that what you’re getting at, ’cause if it is, that is just such bullshit.”

  “You think it’s bullshit that he’s having an affair and nobody’s talking about it? I think that sounds to me like the reason he had to kill Mom.”

  “He didn’t have a reason to kill Mom. He didn’t kill Mom. He loved Mom.” Peter broke into tears. “He loved her, goddamn it. He loved her!” In a sudden fury, he struck out with both hands, slamming his brother’s shoulders, knocking him back on the bed. “Fuck you!”

  Jon’s feet came up
off the floor and he kicked out, hitting his younger brother in the chest, knocking him backward as he came scrambling up off the bed, screaming more obscenities, throwing punches wildly. Peter charged back, head down, catching Jon around the waist, slamming him back against the room’s wall, knocking over one of the bed lamps in the process.

  Jon came back up, swinging and connecting, hitting Peter in the face, at which the younger brother let out an animal scream and, his nose now spewing blood, came at Jon with everything he had. They both went over the bed and fell off the other side and into one of the mahogany end tables, splintering it, knocking down another light, which came crashing down around them.

  Michael Durbin surveyed the wreckage of the boys’ room, at a complete loss at how to deal with this latest disaster. He turned back to Chuck, who stood at his shoulder. “I don’t know what to say except I’m so sorry. Of course I’ll pay for any damages.”

  “Payment’s not the issue.”

  “Well, it’s at least part of it.” He cast his glance back again at the destruction. “Jesus Christ. What got into them?”

  “From talking to Peter,” Chuck said, “I gather it was about you.”

  “Me? How could it have been me?”

  Chuck rested a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you should talk to Peter.”

  “I think I’m a little too mad to talk to Peter.”

  “If I was going to be mad at anybody, Michael, I think I’d go for Jon.”

  “I got plenty of mad for both of them.” Another sweep of the room. “Christ. It looks like a bomb hit this place. Why should I be more mad at Jon?”

  “He evidently told Peter that you had some kind of a hand in Janice’s death.”

  Durbin’s head dropped until his chin nearly touched his chest. “How can he think that, my own son? How can anybody who knows me at all . . . ?”

  “He followed you last night, Mike. Jon did. When you left here. Over to Liza Sato’s.”

  Durbin turned to face his brother-in-law. “Christ,” he said, “not you, too?”

  Chuck shook his head. “Not me at all, Michael. I’m just telling you what your son was saying.” He motioned to the room. “What started all this.”

  “I needed to talk to somebody,” Durbin said. “I’d leaned on you and Kathy enough. I had to get out of here for a while, that’s all.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. As far as I’m concerned, Janice was murdered by Ro Curtlee and that’s all there is to it. Look at the paintings, too.”

  “Jon can’t think I’d have done that.”

  And suddenly a new voice—Peter’s, hoarse and choked—from behind them. “He does, Dad. To make it seem more like it was Curtlee.”

  Durbin turned to see his younger son. He was still wearing his ripped and bloodstained shirt. His face was swollen, his eyes red, his cheeks glistening with tears, his nose flattened and off center, possibly broken. “Peter.” Durbin, shocked by his sweet son’s battering, spoke more gently than he’d intended. “What the hell?”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. Jon just started talking crazy and I went off on him.” He looked past his father at the damage he’d done. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Chuck. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry’s a good start,” Chuck said, “but I’ve got to tell you, Peter, you’ve got a ways yet still to go. Do you know where Jon’s gone to?”

  Peter shook his head no. “He was staying at Rich’s, but I don’t know where he is now. And I don’t care, either. I hope he never comes back.”

  “No, you don’t hope that. He’s just reacting this way because he misses Mom. We all miss Mom. And he’s really, really angry about it and doesn’t know where to put it so he’s taking it out on me. And you. And maybe all of us.” Durbin touched his son’s arm. “But how did he get this into his head, Peter? Just because I went to see Liza Sato?”

  Peter nodded. “He believes you’re having some kind of a thing with her. I told him there was no way. You loved Mom.”

  “I did love your mother, Peter. I loved her so much. I still love her.”

  “That’s what I told him. I said you and Liza were just friends, that’s all. And that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that completely true?”

  “Of course it is,” Durbin said. “Completely, one hundred percent true.”

  Hearing his father’s emphatic denial seemed to bring some real relief to the boy. He blew out heavily through his mouth and closed his eyes while he let the answer sink in. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, then.”

  36

  Eztli and Ro got home at a little after six o’clock.

  Ro had originally wanted to get dropped off again at MoMo’s, where he could get some food and drink at the bar until Tiffany got off, but this was Friday night and Eztli was cutting it close getting to the Curtlees’ home on time when he knew he had to put on his tuxedo and drive them to the Saint Francis Hotel by eight for a fund-raising wine auction of some kind. This had been on Eztli’s schedule for the past month and though he got a true rush out of the time he spent with Ro, he also didn’t have any nagging ambiguity about who was writing the check every month, and if Cliff and Theresa needed him to be someplace, then that’s where he would be.

  Stoned, mellow, and buoyed by the positive turn of the afternoon’s events with Gloria Serrano, Ro hadn’t objected. And so at seven o’clock, Eztli and the three members of the Curtlee family were all gathered in what they called the “little study”—a quiet, book-lined, relatively small room with a fireplace just off the dining room.

  Cliff and Theresa in their black-tie garb were sharing a split of Roederer Cristal champagne, sitting hip to hip on the love seat that directly faced the dancing flames of the fire. Ro, on a wing chair catercorner to them, had showered and changed into a blue silk long-sleeved shirt and a pair of khakis. He had his bare feet up on an ottoman, his hands around a large leaded-crystal brandy snifter with a good strong two fingers of Rémy Martin V.S.O.P. Eztli stood in his own formal wear, across from both the parents and from Ro, closest to the fire, where he could keep an eye on the one entrance to the room. He hadn’t shared any marijuana with Ro on the way up to town, and he wasn’t drinking here tonight with the family, either. Since he would be serving double duty—chauffeur and bodyguard—he was carrying a .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his left armpit, nothing like the weapon that he’d used on Matt Lewis.

  Ro was regaling his parents with his good fortune today in locating Gloria. “It was amazing to see, you guys. The change in her, which is I guess what living with guilt can do to you,” he was saying. “She was like a different person. She told me she had nothing but remorse for testifying against me last time.”

  “I should think so,” Theresa said. “I always thought, before she told those lies on the stand of course, that she was a nice girl.”

  “Very nice,” Cliff concurred. “And I thought one of the prettiest, really.”

  “She still is,” Eztli said.

  “Anyway, bottom line,” Ro continued, “and this is the really great part, no way is she going to be testifying again. She even asked me if there was any way she could talk to Tristan and recant some, maybe even all, of what she said last time.”

  “Ro,” Cliff said, “that is fantastic. Really fantastic!”

  “But I’m curious. How did you find her?” Theresa asked. “I understood from Tristan that that was turning out to be a little problematic.”

  “Well, he was using a private eye. I used Ez.”

  To whom all eyes turned. He shrugged, self-effacing. “I just put the word out in our community. Not much of a deal. There’s a network of like-minded people. And really, she wasn’t hiding.”

  “Yes, well, nevertheless, your efforts were a little bit more effective than the attorneys we’re paying, now, weren’t they?”

  Eztli smiled. “We got lucky. But I’ll take lucky over smart anytime.”

  “Hear, hear,” Theresa said. “And wasn�
��t she, this Gloria, wasn’t she the last one? I mean, the last witness who was set to come to your next trial?”

  Ro sipped contentedly at his cognac. “Well, never set, as it turns out. She didn’t even realize I’d gotten out of prison.”

  Theresa’s nearly immobile face almost managed to look surprised. “How could she be unaware of that?”

  Ro smiled at her. “I don’t think she’s a big reader of newspapers, Mother. Or watching the news.”

  “She has three small children,” Eztli added. “It looked like they keep her busy.”

  “Well, that will explain it,” Theresa said.

  And Cliff added, “So that’s pretty much their case, then, am I right?”

  “Let’s hope,” Ro said. “They’ve got no new witnesses and now pretty much none of the old ones. That’s what Tristan has been hoping for all along, and now it looks like that’s what we’ve got.”

  “So they may not send you back?” Theresa asked.

  Ro sipped more cognac, put on a rueful expression. “I don’t want to jinx us,” he said. “You know they’re going to try. I can’t see them just giving up. But now there is some real hope.”

  “Glitsky won’t give up,” Theresa said. “He’s such a nuisance. We’ve got to find a way to get him transferred into another department or something.”

  But Cliff was shaking his head. “It’s not Glitsky. It’s Farrell. If he’s got no case, they don’t retry. And we can get to him. In fact, I’ve already gotten to him. Again, thanks to Ez here.”

  Eztli gave another slight acknowledgment, a tip of the head. “I would think Farrell’s pretty well neutralized,” he said.

  Cliff looked down at his empty champagne flute. “Well,” he said, “all this calls for a toast. And just as I’ve run out of champagne. Ez, you might even have a sip, just for the celebration of it.”

  “As you wish. I’ll ring, sir.”

  Bracco stood outside in a steady drizzle, a full two blocks down the street from the Curtlees’ home, waiting for the last two guys of the ten-man team that Lapeer had put together to effect the arrest of Ro Curtlee. He would have already moved the men into positions all around the house except that he wanted to be sure they didn’t compromise the element of surprise. And unfortunately the last two guys were coming from downtown, and bringing with them the physical arrest warrant.