The First Law dh-8

by John Lescroart

  "Nothing to brag about," he said, and realized that he sounded too harsh. "But… so you actually saw these guys?"

  "Well, to tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I saw three figures running away from me in the dark. I couldn't identify any of them to save my life."

  "That happens. I wouldn't worry too much about it." The open face of the young man took on a troubled look, and Glitsky said "What?"

  Creed blew out heavily, a deep sigh. He seemed suddenly ashamed of himself. "Except maybe I was trying too hard to be helpful."

  "Helpful's generally good, son. What's the problem?"

  A shrug. "I might have given your guys some bad information."

  Glitsky had seen enough confessions to know when somebody wanted to talk. He leaned against a parking meter, crossed his arms, met Creed's eyes, waited.

  "I had told them-your inspectors-that the person who'd shot at me seemed like he was kind of big. So then they came back the next day and said they were looking at this other guy who works in the neighborhood, a bartender over at the Ark, do I know him? Do I think it could have been him? And I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm thinking, to tell you the truth, probably just wanting to be important, you know? So I give them the impression that, yeah, maybe it was this guy. I mean, I say it could have been, and then I told the inspectors he's got these two friends he hangs with…" The recitation ground down to a stop.

  "And now you don't think it was?"

  Creed shook his head miserably. "I really don't know. I went by there tonight-the Ark-and he was behind the bar. I mean, it could have been him, I suppose, maybe, but I was a lot stronger than that when I talked with the inspectors. It was like I gave them the impression that I could positively ID him."

  "So call them up and tell them," Glitsky said.

  "Just like that?"

  "Yep. They're probably working half a dozen leads right now. They'll be glad to know sooner rather than later. Believe me, they'll thank you for it."

  "And think I'm an idiot."

  Glitsky actually broke a smile. "Possibly, but if you're not an idiot next time nobody will remember. But I'm curious. How'd they get on to this guy, the big guy, in the first place? There must have been something."

  "Yeah. There was. It was the Ark. The connection there."

  "Which is what?"

  "This guy John Holiday owns the place. Evidently he was at Silverman's poker game-you know about the poker game? Wednesday nights? Anyway, Holiday was there the night before and lost a lot of money. Mr. Panos knew about it and told the inspectors and they went by the Ark to talk to him-Holiday. But since he wasn't there, they got Clint. The big guy. The bartender. And after that, of course, they came to me."

  "Talk to the inspectors," Glitsky said. "Maybe they've got something else on these guys, too."

  "I just wouldn't want them to waste their time because of what I told them. And also, I've got to tell you…"

  "What's that?"

  "These guys. Holiday, Clint and Randy Wills. I think they're pretty harmless. I'd hate to get them in trouble if they had nothing to do with this."

  Glitsky chewed on the inside of his cheek, his brain fully engaged. "I wouldn't worry about that," he said. "If they did it, some evidence of it will likely turn up, and that's what they'll get them on. They're not going down on your ID, I promise you that. Meanwhile, I'm keeping you and my wife thinks I'm on my way home." He pointed a ringer at Creed. "Call the inspectors, though, all right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Forty-five minutes later, Creed was working the beat south of Market and saw Roy Panos taking a break in a booth at Carr's coffee shop. Like Creed, he was on duty tonight, and in uniform. Roy was engaged in an animated conversation and after Creed was inside, he realized that one of the two men facing away from him was Nick Sephia. Not a big fan of Nick's, whom he'd worked with a few times before he went to the Diamond Center, he considered turning around and walking out, but by then Roy had seen him and motioned him over, sliding over to the wall to make room.

  "Hey, Mattie." Creed hated the diminutive, and had committed the cardinal error of mentioning it once to Roy, thereby assuring that he'd forever be Mattie, or Little Matt, or Mataroni. In any event, it was hard to stay mad at Roy, who was always hale fellow well met and tonight so much so that Creed wondered if he'd been drinking. Or maybe he was nervous. "I was just telling the guys here-you know Nick and Julio… no? Julio Rez, Matt Creed."

  Creed reached across the table and shook hands with a very well-dressed, overshaved, alert and unsmiling Hispanic with a little less than half of his left ear. "Nice," he said as though adding "to meet you" would have been excessive.

  Creed had a quick impression of danger, of suppressed energy, maybe of cocaine. He wondered if Nick, who'd moved into the stratosphere of security positions transporting diamonds, now had his own bodyguard. When Rez had leaned across to take Creed's hand, his coat had fallen open, revealing a shoulder holster and the butt of an automatic.

  But this was the observation of a split second. Roy was back carrying the conversation. "I was just telling these guys about you. I mean, here I've been doing this work, what, fifteen years, and it's shine the flashlight, see nothing, go to the next window and do it again. Mattie here, he's on less than a year, he comes round the corner-blam! blam!-couple of rounds right at him, guys running, him chasing, the fucking Wild West. Awesome action."

  "Anytime you want, I'll trade you," Creed said. "I took the job for the flashlight work."

  "You don't like gettin' shot at?" Sephia asked. "I love it, you know that, swear to God. Makes me horny as hell."

  "Anything doesn't make you horny, Nick?" Roy asked.

  Sephia considered briefly. "Nothing comes to mind," he said.

  But Rez turned to Creed. "Roy said you fingered those assholes at the Ark," he said. It wasn't quite a question. It sounded more like a challenge, but then Rez had made the single word "nice" sound the same way.

  "Fingered might be a little strong," he said.

  "He's being modest," Roy said. "He set 'em all up to go down. Holiday, Terry, his little girlfriend, what's his name?"

  "Randy Wills." Rez didn't have to think. He had it all in his head. He might have been an accountant.

  "Wills, Terry, Holiday, all of 'em," Roy repeated. "Not only does the kid get himself shot at a few times, he solves a murder before his first anniversary."

  "Not exactly that."

  But Roy pushed it. "Hey, it's true, Matoosh. After your ID the other night, those guys are going down for a long time."

  "Yeah, well…"

  "You don't seem so happy about it," Rez said. He leaned in across the table, a tight smile fixed under a glassy cat's-eye stare.

  Creed felt a line of sweat forming at the back of his neck. "The thing is, it might not have been them."

  Roy snorted, half laughing. "What are you talking about? Of course it was them. You're the one who saw them, didn't you? How could it not be them?"

  But now, having gotten it out, Creed continued in a rush. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you know a Lieutenant Glitsky?

  "

  Roy nodded. "Sure. He used to run homicide. What about him?"

  "Well, his father was a friend of Silverman's and they were by there tonight."

  "Who was by where?" Rez asked.

  "Glitsky and his father. And Silverman's wife. At the shop."

  "Doing what?" Sephia's color was suddenly up.

  Creed shook his head. "Nothing, really. They never got to it. They were going to do an inventory, but barely got started before Glitsky got there and cleared them out."

  "There you go," Roy said, as though he were satisfied with the answer. "So Glitsky's working the case now? What's that about?"

  "No. I think he was just there because of his father. But outside, after, I asked him what if I wasn't as sure as I sounded about the three guys with the other inspectors."

  "And what'd he say?"

  A shrug. "He said just to
tell them. Not a big issue. They'd be glad about it."

  "Wait wait wait, not if…" Sephia said.

  But Roy raised a hand-firmly. Made eye contact across the table. "Exactly right!" he said. Then, in a milder tone. "Exactly right." He smiled a shut-up warning at Sephia and Rez. "No way they want to spend all that time chasing the wrong guys." Back to Creed. "But you're sure this time? You seemed pretty certain the other way the other night."

  Creed shook his head miserably. "I don't even know that. It still could have been them, I suppose. I just didn't want them-the inspectors-thinking I was positive, basing their case on what I said

  …" He scratched at the tabletop.

  Roy nodded in full agreement. "Hey, bottom line is Glitsky's right. You got to tell them. In fact, I'm meeting up with them later tonight down at the Hall." Roy tapped his own pocket. "Wade's little PR moment for our good friends among the police. Forty-niner tickets, fifty yard line. You want, I'll pass the message on for you when I see them."

  Creed felt a wash of grateful relief and it showed. Roy Panos was far better with people, especially with city policemen, than he was. Roy could phrase Creed's ambivalence about the ID in such a way as to minimize the idiocy factor, maybe even give it a rosy gloss. Certainly, Creed himself could avoid the embarrassment of having to face the inspectors and admit that in his zeal to be a help, he'd screwed up. "You sure?" he asked Roy. "You'd do that?"

  Roy smiled and took a pinch of Creed's cheek. "Hey, anything for my little Matooshka. Huh?"

  Creed took this as his cue to leave. He slid out of the booth and said good-bye all around. But he wasn't completely out the door to the coffee shop when Nick leaned across the table. "He can't take back that ID, Roy." He was whispering, but with great intensity. "That's the thing that's keeping the inspectors busy."

  Roy picked up his coffee cup, sipped at it. "He's not taking back the ID," he said.

  Sephia hit the table for emphasis. "Hello. Roy? He just told us he was."

  Roy finished his sip, slowly put the cup down. "I don't know if you heard me, but I said I'd tell the two inspectors. And I'm going to forget."

  "Not enough," Rez said.

  "It would still screw it all up," Sephia said.

  "He still knows." Rez methodically turned his own mug around and around on the table.

  Roy shook his head. "Look, guys, Creed doesn't know anything. Don't go all paranoid around this. Even if he somehow gets back himself with Cuneo and Russell and says the ID on Terry isn't positive, so what?"

  "Maybe he gets them thinking," Rez said. Still spinning the mug, never looking up.

  "It's not going to happen, especially since I'm not passing it on."

  "I still don't like it," Sephia said.

  Rez nodded in agreement, finally looked over at Sephia. "Creed's a problem," he said.

  "Creed's not a problem! He thinks it might not have been Terry. That's all."

  "But if he can't talk at all, it doesn't even get to that," Sephia said.

  "Don't you guys be stupid," Roy said. "This is under control; I'm telling you."

  Rez slowly brought his empty gaze around across the table to Roy. He nodded his head once, a dismissal. "Oh, okay," he said.

  8

  "Is this the same man who prides himself on living According to John Kennedy's old motto of never explain, never complain? I've only heard you say those words about a hundred and fourteen times now."

  "I'm sure I meant them every single time, too."

  "Well?"

  "Well, this particular fine day"-and it was, the good weather continuing as they drove together into work-"I'm going to have to do some explaining before I can succeed in doing some real good."

  "The explaining part will neither be appreciated nor understood. And neither will the real good, if in fact that's what it is."

  Glitsky stared at the road ahead of him.

  His wife kept it up. "When are you going to learn, Abe? There's no point in trying to live by a motto, even an excellent one, if you can't dredge it up and act on it when you really need it. Which you do today, believe me. You don't want to even start to do this."

  He kept his voice civil. "So what do you suggest I do?"

  She turned to him. "You know that one."

  "No. I'm asking."

  She sighed. "All right, then. I suggest you do absolutely nothing. You go up to your office and close the door and read a good book."

  "And just ignore all this other stuff? "

  She glanced over at him. "How can I put this so you understand? It is not your job. You are not responsible for what happens down there. You should not even care."

  "How can I not care? Tell me that."

  "Easy. You say to yourself, 'Self, I'm at my job because I have a wife and a child and two kids in college and I need the paycheck and benefits. That is why I go to work,' Period."

  "And that's how you feel about your job?"

  "Actually, no. I love my job, but it's not the same situation."

  "How is it different then?"

  She rolled her eyes. "I don't believe we're having this discussion. It's different because I care about the job they're paying me to do. You, on the other hand, care about a job nobody's paying you for. It's like if you decided you cared about, I don't know, being an astronaut. I'm sure astronauts have problems all the time, but guess what, Abe? They're not your problems!" She slapped at the console between them. "And neither are homicide's!"

  They rode in silence for a block. Finally Abe said, "So I shouldn't go to Gerson?"

  Again, Trey a sighed. "You think you know something, call one of your people there. You've still got friends there, right? Marcel, Paul. They make the same argument to Gerson, tell him what you told them-the ID might be funky- then you buy them a hamburger, everybody's happy. What's the problem with that?"

  "I don't know," Glitsky said. "I really don't know. It just doesn't seem right, somehow. And it still leaves me having to explain why I was by Silverman's if he finds out, which he will."

  "How would he find out? Who's going to tell him? The young rent-a-cop?"

  "I don't know, but he's going to find out-that's the way these things go-so given that, it'd be better if he heard it first from me."

  They'd gotten to a parking place in one of the lots under the freeway, a couple of blocks from the Hall of Justice. Glitsky switched off the motor, but made no move to get out. Treya pulled down the visor and carefully, with an exaggerated calm, applied some lipstick. She was breathing heavily through her nose. When she was done, she-again, carefully-closed the lipstick and dropped it back in her purse. At last, she turned to her husband. "Well?"

  "I'm thinking about it," he said.

  *****

  Glitsky was in a booth at Lou's with Marcel Lanier, a longtime colleague in homicide. He was bragging modestly about his wife, who'd convinced him that there was no point in having a motto if you were going to jettison it at a real opportunity to have it work for you. It would be like being a Boy Scout and just before a rafting trip in Class V rapids forgetting to put on your life vest. "So what good would all that earlier 'Be Prepared' stuff have done you?"

  Lanier squinted in the dim light. "I know you don't drink, Abe, especially this early. Otherwise I'd be worried. What the hell are you talking about?"

  Glitsky blew on his tea. "Not explaining to Gerson about why I'm interested in this Silverman thing."

  "And this has to do with the Boy Scouts somehow?"

  The tea was too hot and Glitsky put it down. "Never mind, Marcel. Let's leave it. What I really want to talk about is Wade Panos."

  Lanier made the face of a chronic heartburn sufferer. "Do we have to?"

  At a few minutes after eleven o'clock, about two hours after Glitsky had told Lanier about Creed's perhaps bogus identification, there was one sharp rap at his door. Glitsky took his feet off his desk, snapped shut his latest Patrick O'Brian novel-Desolation Island. He opened his drawer, deposited the book, pulled some paperwork over
in front of him. "It's open," he said.

  Glitsky wasn't altogether stunned to see Barry Gerson. He came to his feet with what he hoped was a warm greeting, invited the lieutenant in, shook his hand, told him to take a chair. "Returning the courtesy visit?" he finally asked.

  Gerson, polite as an undertaker, inclined his head an inch. "Something like that."

  "But not exactly?"

  "No, frankly, Abe. Not."

  "All right." He squared himself, linked his fingers on the desktop in front of him. "How can I help you?"

  "Actually, I came here to ask you the same thing. I thought I'd made it clear yesterday when you came down to the detail that my door was open to you. You needed anything, all you had to do was ask."

  "That's true. I appreciated that, too, Barry, I really did. I still do."

  "But?"

  "But then I had a talk with"-he almost named Batiste, stopped himself-"with some colleagues, who didn't think it would be smart of me to abuse the privilege. It might look like I was trying to insinuate myself back into the detail."

  "Which you're not."

  "No. Of course not." Glitsky pushed his chair back, crossed his arms behind his head. "I'm minding my own business up here, keeping an eye out for payroll irregularities."

  But Gerson didn't smile at the witticism. "So you're denying that you went down to Silverman's last night?"

  Glitsky repressed his own rare urge to smile. Of course, as he'd told Treya, Gerson would have to find out. He was almost pleased that he'd predicted it. "Nobody's asked me. If they did, if you're asking me now, I admit it."

  Gerson nodded. "You mind if I ask you why?"

  "Not at all. My father went down there with Mrs. Silverman and I didn't think it was a good idea. I wasn't there ten minutes."

  "You expect me to believe that?"

  Glitsky let out a weary breath. "As I told you yesterday, my father was Silverman's best friend."