Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A

by John Lescroart

  He'd had some vodka and orange juice. Not too much vodka – a little hair of the dog was all. And then Kevin had called him before he'd even read the paper, which he still did out of some perverse sense that something might happen that might make a difference or that made sense. About four months ago he had made the decision that he wouldn't cut his hair again until something made sense – the mane had reached his shoulders, graying but still thick on top. He sported a ponytail from time to time, but mostly let it hang free, as it did tonight.

  When Kevin hadn't shown up after an hour's wait at the church at USF, Wes drove out through Golden Gate Park, had a Foster's Lager, then took a nap in the Shakespeare Garden, getting away from the tent cities they seemed to be erecting in any area bigger than a softball field. He then treated himself to a piroshki dinner at a fast-food place on 9th before finally putting in his appearance at the Shamrock a little before seven. He was riding a slow buzz, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting khaki shorts, which now that the fog had descended was decidedly the wrong attire. He would freeze his nuts getting home, if he wound up staying unlucky and going home after all. The T-shirt said 'Ask Somebody Who Cares.'

  Wes Farrell was fifty-three years old. He sipped at his Sambuca and was gently tapping on the bar to get McGuire's attention when the television interrupted its own news report with a fast-breaking development:

  'We've just received a confirming report that the flare-up in the civic disturbances south of Mission has in fact claimed the life of District Attorney Christopher Locke. Earlier reports that Senator Loretta Wager had also been shot, perhaps killed, appear to have been mistaken.

  'The two had driven to the neighborhood together to analyze the situation at the scene. Both Locke and Wager are African-Americans and the largely white crowd was in full riot before they arrived. Details are unclear at this time but it seems that as their car pulled away, some shots were fired. We'll take you there now, live, with Karen Wallace, who's been working around the clock for two days now. How bad is it down there,"Karen?'

  'It's pretty bad, Tom ...'

  And in fact it looked pretty bad. Karen was backlit by another rash of fires, and, with the wind picking up, the place was an inferno. Most of the people had disappeared, with the occasional shadow rushing behind the newscaster. The cameras caught some of the National Guard, braced for action, moving through the shining streets. Overhead, several contiguous buildings burned.

  'Another one?'

  Wes turned away from the television. DA Locke killed! Well, it wasn't his problem. And neither was Kevin. The guy hadn't shown up after he'd called him. He nodded at the bartender. He'd been coming into the Shamrock pretty regularly for the past year and he and McGuire were almost friends. 'Sure, hit me. Get you something, Mose?' Wes had his pockets emptied out on the bar – bills, change, keys. He pushed the pile toward McGuire.

  McGuire said he wouldn't mind a McCallan and Wes told him to pour himself a big one. Then he pointed at the screen. 'You see that? They killed the District Attorney.'

  McGuire stopped pouring to look up and listen for a moment. He shook his head, setting loose his own thoughts. 'I should have never had a kid. How are you supposed to raise a kid in this?'

  'How old's your kid?'

  'Three months.'

  Wes had nothing to say to that. They might be almost friends but that didn't mean they'd exchanged ten words about their personal lives. Wes figured, given McGuire's age, he might have teenagers. But a three-month infant? The bartender was staring at the screen. 'You think it's going to escalate? All this?'

  Farrell nodded. 'I think it just did.' He tapped his glass. 'You know, my first kid was born in '68. You remember '68, Mose? Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Chicago, middle of Vietnam, Nixon gets elected. Worst year in American history, am I right?'

  'I was over there. Nam. I missed a lot of the stuff at home.'

  'Yeah, well, believe me, it was the shits. I remember me and Lyd, we asked ourselves the same thing. How could we bring a baby into this world? Now, here they are, my kids, mid-twenties and doing the same thing themselves. Everybody does – it's the Baby Blues, is all. They get to be three or four years, you stop asking. Three months, though, that's tough.'

  Wes didn't want to say that the mid-twenties wasn't a cakewalk either, especially when your kids didn't have a lot to say to you anymore, but that was another thing he wasn't thinking about. He was here to party – that was his mission, his goal, his quest. But McGuire was on his own tangent.

  'We got another black guy dead, it's gonna go up for sure. I ought to shut it down here for tonight, get home to my wife and kid.' He sipped at his Scotch. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, but black guys kill white guys every day and nobody has a riot about it.'

  'Yeah, but I don't think they lynch 'em.' Wes kept it laconic. There was too much hate in the city already, everywhere, he wasn't going to add to it.

  'You're right. Hey, listen to me, turning into some kind of a bigot. Next thing, I'll be wanting 'em to find this poor bastard Shea and lynch him, call it even.'

  'I think that's the plan, don't you? That's what I keep hearing.'

  'Well, if he did it, I got no problem with that.'

  'If he did it...'

  'That's what I said, but I don't think there's any doubt about that.'

  Farrell brought his glass to his mouth. 'There's always a doubt.'

  'You seen the picture?'

  Wes nodded. 'I know. But I also know Kevin Shea. He's been in here, you've seen him. He didn't do it.'

  McGuire was trying to place the face now. 'So who did?'

  'I don't know.'

  Two of the dart throwers came over and ordered some more beer, but McGuire told them he was closing up early. Coming back to Wes, he leaned over the bar. 'Call you a cab?'

  'Nah, my car's just around the corner.' Wes reached down, looked down in mild, anaesthetized surprise. His glass had disappeared from the bar in front of him. So had his keys.

  'I'll call you a cab. Even pay for it.' McGuire lifted the Sambuca from below the gutter and put it back on the bar. 'It's my ass you get pulled over. We live in a litigious age. Enjoy your drink. I'll make the call.'

  'McGuire, I can drive.'

  'You know what, Wes? I personally have poured you seven stiff drinks in a little under three hours. You are legally drunk, which normally I wouldn't pay much attention to, but tonight seems like a bad night to be driving around under the influence. Cab'll be here in ten.' He yelled across the small room. 'Okay, guys, suck 'em up, we're closing.'

  But twenty minutes later the cab hadn't arrived. McGuire called again and learned that they wouldn't drive Farrell to his address because the route passed through an area that had been placed under curfew.

  'So just give me the keys and I'll go the long way.'

  McGuire wasn't having that. His mind was made up. 'You can stay at my place, crash on the couch. It's two blocks. Pick up your car in the morning.'

  'McGuire, I'm fine.'

  'Whatever,' McGuire said. 'That's what's happening.'

  28

  They finally gave up on Wes Farrell's return and agreed that Kevin's apartment was too likely to be under surveillance. Lexi – Melanie's roommate – had taken a summer job as a camp counselor, which left the two-bedroom apartment all to Melanie for the summer. It was the next most logical spot to hide out, not too far from Wes Farrell's place.

  Getting there – Cecilia Street, on the way up from San Francisco State, between the Sunset and Parkside districts – they ran into a National Guard blockage and had to go all the way around, out to the beach and back. With the other traffic, it took them nearly an hour. Melanie drove carefully, occasionally looking over at Kevin, his seat back, arms crossed, eyes closed. His face was set – he was hurting, not wanting to betray it but every bump gave him away.

  She was still upset about Cindy.

  Cindy! He'd been with Cindy, and then her supposed best friend had gone on pretending and just plai
n lying to her the whole time – but at least, as Kevin admitted, it had happened before they'd started going out. What was he supposed to do, tell her the details of everybody he'd ever slept with in his life? She couldn't expect that, didn't even want that. Maybe he had been trying to spare her feelings. Maybe whatever he'd done with Cindy didn't matter that much to him, although she couldn't imagine sleeping with someone and not having it matter.

  It was also possible that the other reason he'd given was the true one – that he'd have lost any chance to get together with her if she knew he'd been with Cindy. Well, at the time, he may have been right about that.

  She pulled the car off 19th, which always had traffic, but didn't tonight – most of the other cars had been diverted or had taken the hint. The streets were nearly deserted. Her own block was illuminated by streetlights and, as usual, the parking was impossible.

  Luckily, she noticed somebody who might be pulling out. Whoever it was hadn't turned on his headlights yet, but somebody was sitting in the driver's seat, and she slowed.

  'We there?' Kevin slowly eased himself up in the seat.

  'I just want to ask this guy if he's leaving ...' She'd stopped, leaned over to roll down Kevin's window. 'Excuse me,' she said, 'are you ...?'

  The man's own window was down and suddenly there was a bright light shining in their faces. Kevin put a hand up, shielding his eyes or trying to hide, but she had no time to react before there was a forceful knock right at her ear, on the window on her side. A man standing there, holding a badge.

  'Kevin...!'

  'Jesus ...jam it!'

  'I don't know, I—'

  'Melanie...!'

  And her foot was down and her little GEO Sport actually got some rubber, squealing on the fog-slicked street.

  'What am I doing . . .? I can't do this . . .'

  'You're doing it. Just keep going, drive!' He was turned around, looking behind them. In her rearview she saw headlights come on, then the terrifying red-and-blue flash of the police, which must have reminded Kevin ...

  'Turn off your lights!'

  It was a short block, and as she turned the corner she saw them pull out, thought she heard another screech of tires, the sound of a siren winding up. No more looking back. She had a block on them. She would whip the next corner before they'd even come into view.

  'Damn streetlights ...'

  'Don't hit your brakes.'

  'I know, I know.'

  Their pursuers had to slow at the corner to see where they were. Melanie took the next turn, back onto Santiago, coming up on Hoover Junior High. 'Which way? Which way? Are they back there?'

  'Nobody yet. Oh yeah, here they come.'

  'Shit shit shit.'

  Kevin looked at her, pleased and surprised in the midst of it all. 'Well, will you listen to that?'

  'Shut up, Kevin, where are they?'

  They had turned back onto another of the abbreviated streets. As long as they had short blocks so the pursuers couldn't pick up speed, they had a chance, but they were fast running out of them. Taraval was a fairly main thoroughfare, running up toward Twin Peaks, and if they got stuck on that the other car could catch them in two minutes, less.

  Still, there wasn't any choice. They couldn't continue straight, couldn't go back the way they had come. She turned left, running dark. 'Watch out!' A delivery van nearly smashing her, honking, swerving. A batmobile-turn onto the next immediate left, a street dead-ending in half a block at the entrance to the school, a pedestrian walkway with a three-foot-high metal post in the middle of it, on either side a six foot maximum clearance before you hit fences. She was heading directly for it.

  Kevin, turning back: 'What are you doing?'

  'Stay down!' she yelled, 'I'm jamming it!'

  'Shee-it!'

  'They back there?'

  'Not yet.'

  'All right. Now.' There's no way, she was thinking.

  But it was the only way. Aiming the car at the dead center of one side of the walkway, she slammed her foot to the floor. She didn't realize that the screaming she heard was her own.

  The side mirror snapped off with a pop, and they were in the school's open asphalt playground. She jerked the wheel as hard left as she could, hoping they were out of sight of the street behind them.

  They there?'

  'No.'

  She kept moving, along the fence, seeing her spot, streaking then across the lot to the corridor between the low buildings, finally daring to use the brakes – lights or no lights, she had to stop – pulling up, killing the engine.

  They both sat, breathing heavily, Kevin's attention still glued to the gate they had barely cleared.

  Ten seconds passed.

  Twenty.

  They'd lost them.

  'How did they know where you lived? Cindy?'

  'I think so. Must have been.'

  They waited a couple of minutes in their hiding place between the buildings at the school, then turned on their lights and exited at the main-entrance parking lot, getting back out to 19th and turning south, away from the city.

  Melanie needed to spell it out for herself. 'She must have told the police about us, that you might try to get in touch with me.'

  'She's a sweetheart, that Cindy. What do you say we go by her apartment and kill her.'

  Melanie shook her head. Almost, for a minute, took him seriously. 'I think we should break her kneecaps first,' she said.

  Kevin chuckled, going with her. 'Her kneecaps are already astoundingly ugly.'

  'All of her is ugly.'

  'Hideous. Grotesque. The ugliest woman on the planet. And you did good.'

  'I'm prettier than her, that's why. You're as ugly as her, you can't drive straight.'

  He reached a hand over and touched her hair, spoke softly. 'No part of you is as ugly as the prettiest part of her.'

  She brought her hand up to cover his. 'So what do you think we ought to do now?'

  ' I think,' she said,' we' ve got to get you out of town, for a while, at least.'

  A small hesitation, then Kevin nodded. 'Okay, one night. You call it, Melanie, you're doing better than me.'

  It was a little after eleven. She took the first turnoff into Brisbane, home of the Cow Palace and little else. There was a row of strip motels, and Melanie pulled into the third one down on the right, the Star, because it had an interior courtyard invisible from the street. Kevin waited while she went to the office, his shoulders hunched, his ribs aching, unmoving.

  'You know I've never done that before?'

  'What?'

  'Registered at a motel. I told the man it was just me. I think he was hitting on me a little.' She was whispering, turning on the television for background white noise, turning the channel to avoid news programs until she came to a rerun of 'Land of the Giants' and left it there, turned low.

  Kevin had come in from his scrunched-down position in the car, which Melanie had parked directly in front of the room's door. Now he was making sure the drapes were closed all the way. Turning, he sat on the one double bed and looked across at Melanie sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the room's single, mostly green, upholstered chair.

  Kevin thought that even though she had spent the better part of the day under tremendous pressure in the driver's seat of her car, Melanie was likely the best-looking female the night clerk had seen in a lot of days. No doubt he had tried to hit on her, an unattached young thing staying alone in a place like this.

  In the room's dim light her dark hair still managed to shine. She wore a man's white shirt tucked into a pair of jeans that fit ideally. The shirt still looked ironed, its top three buttons undone and beginning to reveal the shadowy swell of her breasts. A glimpse of white brassiere with a lace border. He had no idea how she managed to retain her freshness under these conditions, and where before it would have bothered him that she was so perfect, tonight he thought it wasn't so bad.

  Her shoulders seemed to settle. She let out a small sigh. 'Are you all right?
' she asked.

  'I don't know,' he said, the effort at speaking almost too much. 'I guess I should try Wes again.' He staggered over to the phone and listened to it ring eight times before he hung up. He didn't ask Melanie where she thought Wes might be – he knew what she'd say and he was afraid she'd be right, that Wes was somewhere getting himself into the bag.

  He eased himself all the way into the chair, closed his eyes, letting his head fall forward, then raising it again, his expression tortured. 'I keep seeing it,' he said. 'I close my eyes and I keep seeing him . . .'

  'Arthur Wade ...'

  'I think if I'd just known. I mean, it was like I didn't believe it was going to go that far, so maybe I didn't—'

  'Kevin, you did everything you could.'

  Shaking his head, Kevin forced it out. 'No. It wasn't enough, Mel. If I'd just—'

  'How could you have?'

  'That's just it. Don't you see? I could have. I should have seen from the beginning. I was too damn slow.'

  'But you did get to him.'

  'I got to him. Then they got to me.'

  'That isn't your fault.'

  Again, he shook his head. 'I kept believing it would stop. After I got to him I must have eased up a minute. I didn't want to kick and punch and yell and stab at everybody around me. I mean, just five minutes before I was drinking with these guys. I thought once I got to holding him up, then everybody would realize like, "hey wait a minute, this has gone far enough, we can't do this." But it didn't happen. I just wasn't prepared for that much hate. I let them beat me, and it killed Wade. Now it might kill me, and you.'

  Melanie came up off the bed onto her knees in front of him. 'You know what this is, Kevin? This is fatigue. This is total exhaustion. You don't have anything to be ashamed of.'

  'I keep seeing him . . .'

  She nodded. 'And you probably will for a long time. You tried to save him, that's what's important.'

  'It didn't work, Mel.'

  'Lots of things don't work, Kevin. That doesn't mean they weren't worth trying.'

  He took in a breath and looked up at the darkened ceiling. 'How about if nothing works? Ever. How about that one?'