Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A

by John Lescroart

  The place was bedlam and Glitsky pushed his head further down within his jacket and made for the elevators. He had to get upstairs to his office, call Rita again, check on his boys. He also had to get some sleep sometime. He had no idea when that would be. He knew that the strands of his temper were beginning to fray, and soon his judgments would begin to suffer. The fatigue was weighing him down.

  But the elevator opened and there, facing him, stood Elaine Wager. 'I was just in your office, Abe. Nobody knew where you were.' Was there a rebuke there? A warning? Was someone really watching? 'You got a minute?' she asked. 'We can ride back up.'

  'Sure." There was no point in arguing it. He'd do later what he'd felt he absolutely had to get done now. He couldn't call his sons.

  He had to come when bidden. It was the job.

  He squeezed in next to her as the usual press of bodies piled into the eight-foot-square box – perhaps twenty people of all races, a microcosm of the city outside. The doors closed and all sounds from the lobby vanished, exaggerating the silence in the elevator. There was a palpable tension in the enclosed space, suspicion and mistrust choking off the usual chatter.

  When the door opened on the third floor, Elaine nudged Glitsky. 'My office.' He'd thought they were headed up to homicide on the fourth, but Elaine was making the call and he tagged along behind her.

  Her room was the standard cubicle used by the assistant district attorneys – two desks, as many ancient file cabinets as would fit, a coffee maker, two grimy windows with Charming View of Freeway Overpass #4. Elaine waited at the door for Glitsky to pass her, then closed it behind them.

  Glitsky parked his rear on Elaine's office mate's desk. Whoever normally sat at that desk wasn't there now. Elaine turned, slumping slightly, and, to ease the tension, Abe found himself asking if she'd had as much fun on the elevator coming up as he had.

  Elaine gave him a weak smile. Like him, she was exhausted and the fatigue was showing. 'This is so unreal,' she said. 'San Francisco just doesn't have this kind of problem.'

  'You know how many unions we've got? The PD? I'll tell you. Three. We've got one for white cops, one for women cops, one for black cops. Even as we speak, the gay cops are lobbying for another one.'

  'But you all work together, I mean like we do, you and me. People get along, do their work, right?'

  'Generally. Things spill over.'

  'But not like this.'

  'It's a logical enough extension. People stop being just people first, well...' Glitsky shrugged, standing up, stretching his back. 'But you didn't look me up to talk about this.'

  Elaine sighed. For an instant Glitsky saw her mother in her eyes, something almost more familiar in her expression, in the shape of her face. He rubbed his own eyes while she agreed with him – she hadn't looked him up to talk about the general situation. She paused, considering. 'Can this be off the record?'

  'What's to be on it?'

  Glitsky was vaguely aware of his reputation as a hardass. He supposed it wasn't totally undeserved since he tended to make a point of being straight with people. At least he didn't sugarcoat or dissemble, and with the right look on his hatchet face, he knew he could tell someone that he loved and cherished them and come across as abrupt and cold. It had happened with Flo.

  But Elaine had thicker skin than he'd supposed. She gave him a look, the start of another smile, this one with a few more watts, and he finally nodded. 'Okay, sure. Off the record. What?'

  'My mother .. .'She stopped. 'Well, no, not... not her. I don't want to bring her into this.' She bit her lip, looking beyond Glitsky out through the windows.

  'Isn't she already?'

  'Not exactly. That's not what I want to talk about. What I guess I mean is this whole thing.'

  Glitsky nodded again. 'It's unusual, I'll give you that.'

  'It's my career,' she said.

  'It could be. You're right.'

  'I've got to know if there's no case.'

  'Elaine, you're making the case,' he told her.

  'I know. I'm supposed to be. I'm assembling the facts.'

  Silence.

  'I just want to keep the door open between us.'

  Glitsky took in a breath and walked over to the windows. The fog was thin and he could see some spires of smoke still rising across the Bay in Oakland and, he supposed, Richmond. Suddenly, seeing Elaine's direction here, he felt his anger stir again – it seemed to be on a steady slow simmer, ready to boil at any time.

  He turned to face her. 'You know, Elaine, you're a charming person and I think you're probably also trying to do the right thing here, but I really hate getting bullshitted and especially today I don't have much stomach for it.'

  Her eyes went wide. 'But I'm not—'

  'You're covering your ass, Elaine, and okay, we'll leave it off the record, but my door has always been open. We don't have to make special arrangements to keep doors open.'

  'This isn't a special arrangement.'

  'No? Funny, then, that here we are in a locked room and off the record.'

  'I just didn't want to be interrupted. I didn't want Chris...'

  Glitsky pointed a finger. 'Now we're getting somewhere. You didn't want Chris ...?'

  'But he's my boss. He gives me my assignments.'

  'So do them. But don't come around me playing both sides. Either you're on his agenda – maybe your mother's, too, I don't know about that – or you're being a righteous DA. Whichever one you pick is your call.'

  'I don't want to make a mistake, Abe. I can't.'

  Glitsky's scar stretched white through his lips. 'I wouldn't worry about it. I make them all the time. But I'll tell you one thing that makes life easier.'

  'What's that?'

  'Do things in order. There's a way it's supposed to get done so everybody's time doesn't get wasted.' Glitsky turned the doorknob, then stopped. 'You know, for what it's worth, I got no bleeding heart for Kevin Shea. I'm just more comfortable doing things by the book. You go different, you see too many bad guys walk when the smoke clears.'

  'You do think he's it, then?' This seemed to hearten her.

  Glitsky, risking a charge of assault, sexual harassment and general political incorrectness, reached out a hand and rested it for a moment on Elaine's shoulder. 'I'm not trying to get him off. What I want is what you want – a righteous case on him. And my door's always open. Period.'

  25

  'Is anybody with you?'

  'Kevin, is that you? Can you talk a little louder?'

  'Yes, it's me, and no, I can't. Can you hear me?'

  'Enough, I guess. Where are you? Are you all right?'

  'I asked is anybody with you?'

  'No.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Kevin . . .'

  'Because I need some help, Melanie. I need serious help, and I don't need Cindy Taylor or anybody else – damn.'

  'What?'

  He whispered even lower. 'There's a guy upstairs. He's moving around again. I just heard the door close.'

  'What?'

  'Wait. Just hold on. I can't talk. Just a minute.'

  He heard the steps approach again, saw the faint shadow of feet under the doorway. The good neighbor upstairs was a model citizen, no doubt about it, keeping an eye on the empty apartments when people went on vacation. There was another knock on the door. 'Hey, anybody in there?'

  In the phone, Melanie's voice. 'Kevin?'

  He didn't let out a breath. Melanie would either hang up or not. He'd told her to wait. Maybe she would.

  Finally, after maybe two minutes, the shadows under the door disappeared, and he heard the retreating steps. He waited another ten seconds, made sure, whispered into the phone. 'You still there?'

  'Yes. Kevin, what's happening?'

  'Can you come get me?'

  A pause. 'Sure. Where are you?'

  A problem. He didn't know where he was. There were a couple of magazines on the table in front of the couch and he risked rising and walking a couple of steps. Th
e tiny noises he made – a spring giving in the chair, a squeaky floorboard – might as well have been bombs going off. He read the address off one of the magazines. 'One forty-eight Collins Street, number three. You know where that is?'

  'No.'

  Great.

  'Western Addition. A block or two south of California. You might have to go around. There's some National Guard...'

  'All right, I got it. I'll find you.' It surprised him. She was being all business. No panic in her voice. Who was this Melanie? She repeated the address.

  There was another knocking now, urgent, behind him. Kevin turned, holding the phone. There, seven feet away from him, looking in through the ground-floor window, was, he presumed, the good neighbor from upstairs, still pounding on the window, yelling.

  'Mel!' Thank God, she hadn't yet hung up. 'Forget Plan A. Don't move. Stay home 'til I call you. And don't call anybody.'

  'Kevin, what's ...?'

  'Just stay home and wait, Mel. They found me again.'

  He wondered where the cold had come from. It was the one thing about San Francisco he just hadn't been able to assimilate, how one minute it could be beautiful, sunny, clear, and ten minutes later, or three blocks away, you were freezing. Now, suddenly, it was in the fifties, the wind whipping wisps of fog through the depressing rows of apartment buildings.

  On this street, whichever one it was, three adjacent buildings had burned, and the acrid smoke hit him with every turn of the wind, making him cough, tearing at his poor sore ribs.

  He had no idea how far he 'd run – maybe five blocks, over three fences. The good neighbor wasn't much inclined to give up the chase, but finally Kevin felt like he'd lost him. The chase had had the salubrious side effect of bringing him closer to USF, through the worst of the Addition.

  But so what?

  He doubted Wes Farrell had waited all afternoon for him there – but he would check. Certainly he hadn't been back home. Kevin had called Wes's place when he'd woken up after crashing in the borrowed apartment – it had been going on five o'clock, and there'd been no response, no answering machine.

  Ergo Melanie.

  A truly last resort, but she 'd have come through for him on that last call if he could have stayed in the apartment and waited. He was sure of it. And that was a good sign. It could be the entire world wasn't lined up against him.

  But for now his lungs ached from the run, pinched from the coughing. He wondered if one of his ribs was broken, if a broken rib could puncture a lung, if a punctured lung could suddenly collapse, bring on a coma ...

  He was coming up to a bigger cross-street, with traffic flowing. Geary? Was normal life going on someplace in the city? He found it difficult to believe but there was evidence of it right in front of him.

  Shivering, coughing some more, he crossed with the light at Masonic, found another phone, and called Melanie again, telling her where he was. It was only another couple of blocks up to St Ignatius. Melanie knew where that was. She'd meet him there in fifteen minutes.

  He sat in a pew in the back of the church, pretending to pray. He hadn't prayed much in the past five years, since the Houston diocese had refused to bury his father – a suicide – in the family plot in which his father, Kevin's grandfather, had been buried. Kevin's faith, never particularly strong, wavered after that. In the army, in Kuwait, after Joey's cleaning up on the Road of Death, it disappeared entirely.

  But his hands were folded. He was on his knees. A priest came up the center aisle and nodded at him, blessedly without recognition, then he stopped, paused – about to say something? – thought better of it and moved along. Kevin let out a breath.

  The door opened again. Please, he thought, don't let it be the priest coming back. He was too weary to run any further.

  Melanie Sinclair slid in beside him. It startled him. Underneath her concern, the fear in her eyes, she looked radiant, alive, beautiful. Had he really dropped her? He must have been out of his mind. But she'd been, had seemed, such an uptight pain in the ass. He thought he remembered that – was sure he did – but the plain fact was that right at that moment he had never in his life been so glad to see anyone. Ever.

  'I think you ought to get out of here.'

  She was driving and he was slumped in the passenger seat, his face below the window line.

  'I might do that,' he said.

  'Kevin, you should do it...'

  He glanced over at her, a look she'd seen before. 'Let's give the should a rest, huh, Mel. What do you say?'

  Biting her lip, she almost, instinctively, corrected him again, telling him her name was Melanie. Not Mel. But she found she really didn't care if he called her Sweet Sue. She half-smiled at that, almost said it to him, could just see herself saying, 'Hey, Kevin, why don't you just call me Sweet Sue?'

  'What's funny?' he asked.

  'Nothing.'

  He didn't pursue it, but Melanie wanted to make sure the air was clear. 'I didn't mean should like I knew, Kevin. I meant should like it seems like it might be a better idea to get away until this blows over a little. You're just too visible here. I could drive you right now. Just keep going.'

  'You'd do that?'

  She looked over, biting her lip again. 'Yes, I would.'

  He took that in, satisfied. 'Except then I'm really on the run. If I'm caught...'

  'But you're on the run now.'

  This is true.'

  They stopped at a burned-out streetlight where a policeman was directing cars through. 'Don't keep too low,' she said. There was more National Guard presence here, camouflage trucks lining the street, the traffic coming down to single file.

  Kevin straightened up slightly. 'You're right.' He waved, smiling at a few of the soldiers. 'We're having some fun now.'

  'Don't overdo it, okay. Please.'

  He came back to her. 'You remember Farrell.. .?'

  'Yes.' Wes, another unrepentant partyer, had been a sore point between them. 'Well, I figure my only decent shot is to get the story out on what really happened. Anything else – running, turning myself in, whatever – anything else and when they do get me I'm totally screwed.'

  'What can Wes do?'

  'Wes is a lawyer. He can get through.'

  'He's not anymore.'

  'Sure he is. He knows the ropes. He can do it.'

  'Will he?'

  'Sure. I'm sure he will.'

  'And then?'

  Then at least I figure I've got a chance. I just didn't do this, Mel, you know.'

  She reached across and laid a hand on his, pulled it away. She wasn't pushing anything. She was helping him. He didn't need complications. 'I do know. I'm just saying I think it's a big risk, that's all.'

  He shrugged. 'At this point, everything's a risk. This whole thing's gotten so out of hand. And then, if I run .. . anyway, I don't want to run.'

  'It would look like an admission that you'd done it?'

  'Yeah, that, I guess. But more because it just feels wrong. I mean, I know the truth. I know what happened. I was there, Mel.

  And that's got to come out. What really happened. It's not just me.'

  'And you think Wes Farrell is the man who's going to get you in a position to clear yourself?'

  'I think Wes Farrell's a pretty good human being for a lawyer.'

  She couldn't help herself. 'A lawyer who drinks too much and has a pretty low view of life, including his own.'

  Kevin almost snapped back but held himself. This wasn't the time to get into it with her. She was there for him now. What was more important than that? He took her right hand from the steering wheel and held it on the seat between them. She looked down at it, smiled and took his hand firmly.

  'Not here,' Kevin said.

  They had swung by Wes Farrell's place and the 'pretty good human being for a lawyer' still wasn't there. Melanie was of the opinion, and Kevin couldn't deny it outright, that he was out getting drunk someplace. He had tried joking her out of it – 'doesn't mean Wes isn't a nice person' – but
Melanie wasn't much in the mood for jokes, and, truth be told and though it had been his own protective reaction to stressful situations for as long as he could remember, Kevin wasn't either.

  Small wonder that he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole damn city was after him. The elderly lady in whose doorway he'd huddled had recognized him earlier. The cruising cops had also seemed to. Maybe the guy upstairs from the apartment he'd borrowed.

  Isolated occurrences? Maybe. Maybe not. These things had happened to him. It wasn't as though somebody might know who he was. Somebody – random and disinterested – already had.

  And now Melanie was turning them into the drive-thru lane – into a line of cars – front and back, get out of here – at a hamburger place off 19th Avenue.

  'Not here!' he repeated. 'What are you doing?'

  'We've got to eat,' she said. 'We're not going inside.'

  'Inside isn't the point. We've got to—'

  All at once it was too late to back out. Somebody had pulled in behind them. Now it was either sit in Melanie's car or get out and make a run for it. But a run for what? And what were the odds on going unrecognized out on the street? Were they better than this, where he was a sitting duck? Did he want to bet on it? Bet his life? Hers, too?

  It was not yet dusk. There was no problem with visibility. He honestly didn't think he'd get two blocks.

  Twisting his head from side to side he saw a seemingly endless procession of faces everywhere – in the car in front of him (the backseat folks turning around – Why?), behind them, crossing at the intersection, up and down the sidewalk – and all of them with eyes focused on him.

  Casual glances or studied stares – they were all directed at him. Melanie had picked a popular place on a crowded street close to the dinner hour. It had to be only a matter of time before somebody recognized him.

  He slumped down, far into the seat. Melanie rolled her window down. 'What do you want?' she asked.

  'I want to get out of here, that's what I want.'