The First Law dh-8

by John Lescroart

"Outstanding."

  "You guys talking about Jacob?" Treya asked. "I don't think he's on this track."

  Father and son exchanged a look. "You don't hear him?" Nat asked. He paused, listening, pointed. "There!"

  "Ah." Treya smiled at her father-in-law, turned back to her groceries. "Oh, there."

  "She doesn't hear him," Abe said.

  "I do," she insisted. "Right in the middle of those other voices. He really stands out." She pushed it for her husband's benefit. "It's like he's in the next room." But then something struck her and she turned, suddenly all business. "But wait a minute. It's Saturday, Nat. What are you doing here? Is everything all right?"

  Nat was an observant Jew and spent a great deal of time inside his synagogue. He took the Sabbath seriously, and normally he would not move from his apartment except to walk to temple, where he'd remain until sundown. But at Treya's question, his expression went blank for a beat. Then he remembered. "Ach, this Silverman thing again."

  Abe stopped pulling groceries from his bag. "What about it?"

  He shrugged. "I'm talking to Sadie today outside temple."

  "How's she holding up?" Treya asked.

  "You know. A good few minutes, a bad day or two. It's still so soon. We only just laid him down, when…?" Nat lost his thread to sadness for a second. "Anyway, she asks would I please thank you for telling her about this man they arrested, this friend of your friend Hardy."

  "They haven't arrested him yet, Dad. He's still at large."

  Nat took on a querulous tone. "I swore you said they arrested him."

  "No. Not yet."

  After a moment, Nat shrugged again. "Well, maybe that's just as well."

  "Just as well? Why do you say that?"

  "Because this morning she's watching the television and the news has the story of all the evidence they found at this man's house-the money and the rings and so on. Especially this one sapphire ring."

  "What about it?"

  "What about it is that Sam only had one ring like they described-this one-and it definitely wasn't missing when Sadie and I went to take the inventory there. Remember? When you came that night? We never got too far, but we looked in the jewel case. The ring was in there that night. She was sure of it."

  "Maybe the one they found was another ring like it, Dad. This one had Sam's tag on it."

  He shook his head. "That's what I'm saying, Abraham. Listen to me. It was Sam's, all right, but it was still in his case when we went there. So whoever killed him didn't take it during the robbery. Something's got to be wrong with this, don't you think?"

  Treya, too, had stopped unpacking groceries. She stood with her arms crossed, leaning back against the counter. "Does Sadie think she's sure about this, Nat?"

  He looked at the two of them. "Not just Sadie. I saw it, too. We even talked about it, how it was good Sam never had to sell that one, his favorite piece in the shop. He thought it was lucky, for the cards, you know. So no. No question. It was there."

  "Anybody shoot at you recently?"

  "No."

  "You call Kroll yet?"

  "I'm still deciding."

  "How about Holiday?"

  "How about him? Why, what's up?"

  "You know how I wasn't going to get involved?"

  "It filled me with admiration."

  "Me, too. But alas, short-lived. There's been a development."

  "Talk to me."

  The way Glitsky decided he had to play it was to have Sadie call the police and appear to take care of the matter herself. His own involvement under any guise wasn't going to be appreciated, no matter what spin he put on it. He felt pretty much out of spin in any case.

  Sadie lived in a stand-alone bungalow on Palm Avenue, not far from the synagogue. Inside, the place was a pin-neat kitsch warehouse. Every conceivable surface-the top of the television set, the breadbasket in the kitchen-every inch of flat space was covered with a doily and then a knickknack or doll, a porcelain piece or souvenir. Coney Island! Disneyland! Niagara Falls! The Grand Canyon! Tiny dogs and cute little cats. Pincushions.

  Sadie cleared a spot big enough to hold a teapot and cups on the small table in front of the sofa in the living room. It had grown dark outside by now. With two small sconced wall lights by the door providing the only illumination, Glitsky thought it probably wasn't light enough to read, but neither his father, who sat next to her on the couch, nor Sadie herself seemed to mind, or even notice.

  She poured his tea and sat expectantly while he tried to explain. "I know that because I'm with the police, it seems like I would be the natural choice to take your information, especially since I know you. You know Nat. We're all a little like family. But that's not really how it works."

  "I know how offices work," she said, laying a frail hand on his. "Somebody's afraid you're going to get the credit."

  "Maybe there's some of that. But basically there are two inspectors in the homicide detail who are handling the case-in this instance probably all of these cases-and whatever information comes to the police ought to be funneled through them."

  Sadie was smiling at him as though he were somehow feeble. She had left her hand, cool and crepe-skinned, over his, and now she exerted some slight pressure for emphasis. "I'll do whatever you tell me and talk to anybody you want. All I know is what I saw."

  "I saw it, too," Nat repeated, and Sadie rewarded him with a grateful look.

  "And that's the ring, this sapphire ring?"

  "Well, yes, that one stands out. But really, there wasn't any jewelry taken at all, although that would of course be harder to prove."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because they may have taken something I'd never seen. Maybe Sam had taken in some stones or something that day. I wouldn't have known they were there, then, would I?"

  "No. Of course you're right." Glitsky decided he'd fallen into the error of assuming that Sadie wasn't as sharp as a younger person might have been. Enough of that. "So you could swear that the sapphire ring was in the case when you went there with Nat?"

  "Yes. No doubt of it. We-Nat and I-we even wrote it on the inventory before you stopped us. I've got it saved."

  Given the condition of the house, this didn't surprise Glitsky, but he was still glad of it. "That's good. You might want to bring that with you when you talk to the inspectors."

  "Well, shall we call them now?" she asked. "I'd like to get this out of the way. It just doesn't seem right that this other man…"

  "John Holiday?"

  "Yes, that was it. That this Mr. Holiday-well, I don't see that he killed Sam, let's put it that way. I think somebody must have been trying to be too clever by half. Maybe they didn't know-they must not have known-that Nat and I had been in the shop that other night. If it had only been the money, that would have been stronger."

  Glitsky felt a small shiver at the back of his neck. "Let me ask you something else, if I may. Didn't I hear that Sam had stopped using the Patrol Specials last summer?"

  She nodded. "It just didn't seem to be worth it. Mr. Panos was asking more and more. We hadn't had any kind of trouble for years and years. We talked about it, but just finally thought…"

  Nat reached over and patted her hand. "It's all right," he said. "They were there that night and it didn't save him anyway, did it?"

  "No," she said with great sadness. "You're right. You're right. It wasn't that."

  "But my point," Abe said, "is whether they still had a key to the shop."

  20

  The 49ers had a good day and beat Green Bay 21-3. The tickets Roy Panos had given Dan Cuneo were at the forty-five yard line, fifteen rows off the field. Perfect seats. The sun was out and there was no wind, though it was chilly enough here at Candlestick Point that now, walking back to his car, Liz snugged up close up against him, her arm around his waist.

  She felt the vibration, too. "What's that?"

  "Pager," he said. He pulled the little unit off his belt. "My partner, from home."

  As he held it,
it vibrated again, and he sighed, smiling at her. "And here's another one."

  "Mister Popularity," she said.

  "That's me." But when he saw the number, his smile faded. "My boss, from his home."

  He had a cell phone in his car, and he called Gerson first. The lieutenant told him that the Silverman widow had called earlier in the day, saying she had discovered some new and important information about her husband's murder. Gerson wanted Cuneo to go and talk to her. He gave him the address.

  "I'm on it," Cuneo said. He hung up, turned to Liz. "Work."

  Liz wore a half-mocking pout. "You don't really seem too sad about it."

  "It's a big case," he said. "This Silverman thing again."

  "I thought you had a suspect for that."

  "We do. Maybe somebody's found where he is. That could be what this is."

  "And then what?"

  "And then maybe I get to make the arrest."

  "All by yourself?"

  Modest, he shrugged. "If I have to."

  She smiled at him now. "You love what you do, don't you?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I sure do."

  "But how do I know for sure those two calls really weren't other girlfriends?"

  He turned to her in the car seat. "First, because I'm a policeman, and cops don't lie. Second, I don't have other girlfriends. I'm not even sure I have one girlfriend, to tell you the truth, although I was kind of hoping to find out about that before too long."

  Smiling, she took the cue and leaned across the seat, brought her lips up to his. The kiss went on for close to a minute, and there was nothing platonic about it. When they separated, she said, "On that girlfriend question, you can say you have one if you decide you want to."

  For the first time in quite a while, Cuneo was tempted to let something else come before his work. He struggled to get a breath, leaned over and kissed her again. His hand found her breast. One of her hands went to his leg. His pager went off again. The kiss ended and he groaned, pulled the pager from his belt. "Lincoln again," he said. "Would you like to call this time, make sure it's really him and not a girl?"

  "That's all right," she said. "I think I believe you. Will whatever it is you're doing this afternoon take a long time?"

  "It's hard to say. I don't even know what it's all about yet. But if I'm done early, I could stop by again and maybe we could…"

  Her finger traced his lower lip, shutting him up. "No maybe about it," she said.

  On its way back to San Francisco from the Truckee Airport, the Kamov Ka-32 helicopter thwacked its boisterous way down the Little Grand Canyon, the little-sung but majestically beautiful passage cut into the Sierra Nevada by the American River. Its two passengers, Nick Sephia and Julio Rez, were sitting strapped in behind Mikhail, their pilot. Perhaps they should have been relaxed from two nights of gambling and four women between them, but this morning Sephia's Uncle Roy had called, waking them at ten o'clock, not even five hours after Nick had paid off Trixie and finally fallen into a comalike sleep. Roy told Nick he needed them both back in the city-he was sending the Kamov back up for them. It seems they had made some mistakes and still had work to do.

  Even with the windows closed, they could barely hear inside the chopper. But that didn't stop the sleep-deprived Sephia from bitching about things. "It's not like we didn't do enough these last couple of weeks. Roy's crazy to want us back in town. We ought to be lying low."

  Rez shrugged.

  "He told us to make it look good, didn't he? Didn't we both figure the ring would lock it up? So now he's all, 'What if somebody noticed?' Who the fuck's gonna notice? And what are we going to do about it now anyway? It's done."

  Rez put a fish eye on his partner. "You shouldn't have shot Sam."

  "I had to shoot him. He had us made. Me, anyway. And fuckin' Roy, stopping to admire the jewelry. He's the only reason… it's his fault as much as mine."

  "Yeah, but he's getting us out of it. So we just let him work it."

  "Hey, Julio. Here's a tip-he's not working it. We're working it. Maybe you didn't notice who was there with Creed, who didn't even show up for the faggots."

  "Whatever. It's working. It's his plan. We just stay cool; it'll be over."

  "I am cool."

  Rez looked over at him, snorted. "Oh yeah, you're cool."

  "Hey, who missed Holiday? And Hardy? Both of 'em. Six shots. Didn't touch either one."

  Rez threw it back at him. "Who drove like shit?"

  They lapsed into a sullen and angry silence. Sephia closed his eyes and crossed his arms, trying to get some more sleep. After two or three minutes of looking down into the wilderness, Rez leaned forward and put on his pair of headphones. "Hey, Mikhail!"

  The pilot tilted his head. "Yah!"

  "How much time we got?"

  The pilot shrugged. "All we need. Shipment till tomorrow."

  "You mean not till tomorrow, you dumb Polack. Why don't you swing us around?"

  Mikhail didn't completely understand the complicated and unexpected request, so he turned in his seat. Rez pantomimed that he should turn the craft around and fly lower.

  "Got to piss?" Mikhail asked.

  Rez laughed and shook his head no. He repeated the order.

  Sephia felt the lurch, the change in altitude and direction, and sat up, eyes open. "What's happening?" he yelled across to Rez, who didn't appear to hear. Sephia hit him on the arm and asked again.

  "You'll see. A little fun." He pointed at his earphones. "Put them on. You're going to need 'em." Then, into his microphone, "Mikhail! Good! Down! Down! Okay, now. Slow."

  The pilot put the helicopter into a steep dive, leveling off over the river, at perhaps sixty feet. The sides of the canyon rose up on both sides, towering over them. Then, suddenly, on the right, one of the canyon walls disappeared to reveal a grassy plain upon which grazed a herd of deer. Rez unstrapped his seat belt and suddenly pulled open the door. Rez tapped Mikhail on the shoulder and pointed down. "There!" he said. "There!"

  He pulled a. 45 automatic from his shoulder holster and turned to smile over at Sephia. The herd of perhaps twenty head didn't seem to know what to make of the noise from above them. As a body, it made a false start, then stopped again, and huddled together. Mikhail, getting the idea, hovered over them, circling.

  The. 45 fired three times in quick succession, deafening even over the noise of the prop. Rez whooped with a mad laughter as the chopper dipped and turned and he squeezed off two more rounds.

  The remainder of the herd was moving now, out under the helicopter. Rez slammed his own door, crossed to Sephia's and yanked it open, slapping the gun with a yelp into his partner's hand, pointing down. The deer were right under him, forty feet below, milling in confusion.

  Sephia nodded, took the gun and aimed with both hands, then fired three times in three seconds. He pulled the trigger again, then noticed the slide all the way back, the chamber exposed. No more ammo.

  But Rez pulled a fresh clip from his jacket pocket and handed it over. Sephia ejected the old one, dropped it onto the floor, and jammed the new one up in place. The slide slapped forward, the first round in the chamber. He took aim again. The standing deer had at last begun to run and Mikhail was chasing them toward a grove of trees.

  Sephia took his shot. Squeezed again, but this second time, there was another empty click. Misfire. The first cartridge had jammed, bent now, halfway outside the chamber. Sephia swore again, but the sullen look had left his face. The two partners were ecstatic with the noise and the mayhem.

  The rest of the deer reached the grove and Mikhail pulled up steeply, then whirled back around. Rez leaned out the open door and looked down, smiling.

  In the pasture, six deer lay still in the brown grass.

  Cuneo rang Mrs. Silverman's doorbell.

  Out here in the western half of the city, the wind had come up. Intermittent high clouds scudded overhead, permitting only a milky sunshine through them. Suddenly, Cuneo realized, from a sunny morning of great promise
at his home in Alameda, it had become a depressing late-autumn afternoon.

  Mrs. Silverman looked worn out, as though she hadn't slept well. Still in mourning, she wore a black skirt and matching sweater, a demure string of pearls. After he'd gotten seated at the dining room table and declined her offer of something to drink, he placed his tape recorder between them, delivered the standard test and preamble with his name and badge number, the date, and the identification of the witness. Then he asked Mrs. Silverman to tell him why she had contacted the police. She got to the crux of it immediately, with no prompting by Cuneo.

  When she'd finished, for a long moment he couldn't think of a question. He sat back in the dining room chair and crossed one leg over the other. Finally, "But the ring was at Holiday's place, ma'am. I found it myself."

  "I'm not denying it was there. I'm saying it wasn't taken the same night my husband was shot. It couldn't have been."

  "And what does that mean to you?"

  She settled back in her chair, a blackened figure in a dim room. "I don't know exactly. I was thinking it meant that Mr. Holiday couldn't have taken it, after all."

  "Why not?"

  "Well…"

  "Maybe he saw the rings while he was there the first time and went back another day."

  "But I locked the place up after I left, the night I started to do the inventory. I don't know how he could have gotten in."

  "Maybe he had a key. Wasn't he a regular at these poker games?"

  "Yes, but Sam didn't give those men keys to our shop. Sam wasn't stupid, Inspector."

  "No, ma'am. No one's implying anything like that. But maybe he found an extra key somewhere in the shop when he was there the first time. Or even in the red pouch itself?"

  Cuneo's suggestions seemed to upset her. "I didn't think of that. But I'm not sure Sam had many extras. Certainly he wouldn't have left any of them lying around."

  "It would only have taken one." Cuneo came forward, put his arms on the table. "Mrs. Silverman, we appreciate your coming forward with this. This is a very difficult time, I'm sure, and you want to do all you can to help. If nothing else, you've given us something else to look for at Holiday's place. If there's a key to your shop we've missed there, we'll go back and find it, I promise."