John Lescroart - Damage

“Well, then, she must have talked to somebody in between, because what you heard just now was all grand jury all the time. She even had the strategy of combining the cases so we’d get to specials and beat the bail problem.”

Glitsky walked over to Farrell’s library table, knocked the wood on the top of it a couple of times, thinking, then turned around. “It couldn’t be Chomorro. I wouldn’t pick him as capable of doing that. He couldn’t give us our warrant, but I got the impression he was on our side.”

Farrell, nodding in agreement, said, “But remember who was in his office when we got there, just having a nice little chat?”

“Baretto.”

“That’s the magic word. You win a hundred dollars.”

“You think he called her? Marrenas?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter who called who. There’s a lot of candidates. Someone in the clerk’s office, a bailiff, a court reporter. The point is she’s got it and she’s going to print it, which means Ro and Denardi will know, if they don’t already by now.”

“Well, so they know. So what? It wasn’t the original plan, but it shouldn’t make any real difference.”

“No?”

“Not really. I don’t see how it could, anyway.”

“How about if Ro gets to one of the grand jurors first or to Amanda or even to me?”

Glitsky leaned back against the table. Pensive, frowning, he scanned the room, settled back on Farrell. “You could call Marrenas back and tell her she got it wrong. Whoever told her, they got it wrong. You’ve thought about it since you hung up and she really needs to know you’re not going to the grand jury. Period. The strategy of combining all the cases is flawed. There’s not enough evidence. It just couldn’t work. You’re waiting until Ro’s retrial.”

“And then what?”

“Then you go to the grand jury anyway.”

“You’re saying I lie?”

“No. God forbid. You just changed your mind again after you hang up with her. Oops, sorry. You forgot to tell her that part.”

Farrell settled back into the couch, put a hand to his temple, rubbed at it. “Just to spin it out,” he said. “So I go to the grand jury and get my indictment and arrest Ro, whereupon Marrenas then tells the whole world that I flat-out knowingly lied to her. What’s that do to my credibility with the fourth estate?”

“Who cares by then? You’ve got your indictment. Ro’s in jail. He doesn’t kill anybody else in the meantime. Sounds like a winner to me.”

Farrell shook his head. “I can’t lie, Abe. I’ve got to leave it at ‘no comment.’ It’s a secret proceeding, for Christ’s sake. I can’t talk about what I’m doing with it. That’s the whole point of the damn thing. And why? So grand jury witnesses don’t get threatened or worse by the lowlifes they’re testifying against. So I can put on my cases without fear of reprisal, which let me tell you, I’ve got a shit-load of right now. I mean true, actual fear. If I didn’t know they had a twenty-four-hour tail on Ro, I think I might be completely paralyzed.”

“Well, on that,” Glitsky said. “The first shift already lost him.”

Ro and Eztli were a little high, laughing at how easily they had eluded the more-than-obvious city vehicle that had been parked on the street since early morning. Ro had simply lain down on the floor in the backseat while Eztli pulled out of the driveway, waved to the cops, and drove off in the 4Runner on his mid-afternoon errands. Three blocks out, he had pulled over and Ro had gotten back into the passenger seat. If it wasn’t so funny, they agreed, it would be pathetic.

Now they were in a warehouse in the industrial area just north of San Bruno, another Peninsula suburb. Later that night, the warehouse was going to be the venue for about six rounds of pit bull fighting that would begin around eight and go on until past midnight, but Ro had gotten a call from Tristan Denardi earlier in the day reporting on his private investigator’s lack of progress locating Gloria Gonzalvez, and Ro was quickly losing his patience. This woman had to be found and neutralized, or he was going to go back to prison. And if Denardi wasn’t going to be able to find her, Ro had to make it his own business.

So he’d discussed the problem with Ez, and as usual, the man had a sound, workable idea of how to get some results. Eztli had long ago developed a relationship with Lupe García, who not only ran the dogfights, but was the go-to guy in the Bay Area Guatemalan community if you wanted to borrow money or bet on almost anything or buy a weapon or drugs or get a woman to be your maid or your sex slave or both.

When Ro and Eztli caught up with him, escorted by two of his bodyguards, Lupe was in the inner shell of the warehouse, a huge, prefabricated sheet-metal space very much like the inside of a circus tent, complete with bleachers surrounding the ring, fourteen feet in diameter, where the fighting took place. Lupe was hosing down the carpeting that the dogs needed for traction, cleaning it from the previous night’s fights. He could have farmed out this work-certainly it was far beneath his station-but he liked to get down on the floor with the smells and the damp and the blood.

Ez and Ro and the bodyguards waited while he finished up, turning off the hose, drying his hands on a towel and coming over to them, a warm smile of greeting on his face. Lupe wasn’t a big man. Perhaps five foot eight and wiry, he wore long hair pulled back and blue jeans and cowboy boots and a canvas jacket over a plaid shirt. A heavy-looking silver cross hung off his left earlobe. Tattoos covered the backs of his hands and disappeared into his shirtsleeves. He and Eztli greeted each other with clasped hands and one-armed hugs.

They spoke in Spanish, of course. Lupe reminded Ro of any number of La Eme gang members from prison. They hadn’t been particularly interactive with the Caucasian population, but none of that seemed to be in play here. As Eztli explained both Ro’s presence and the nature of their business, Lupe glanced over from time to time with an expression that indicated acceptance. From his attitude alone, Ro had obviously been in prison, and he was putting up not only the up-front thousand dollars to Lupe for his trouble-beaming as Eztli gave him the envelope-but the other five thousand to the person or persons who gave him the whereabouts of the woman who, ten years before, had been Gloria Gonzalvez, one of the two key witnesses in Ro’s trial.

Back in their car, on the surface streets back toward the freeway, Eztli drew deeply on the joint and said, “I like Lupe, but I’ve got to believe we were smart not to be carrying the other five thousand with us. You saw his reaction to that kind of reward.”

“I get the feeling if we had given it to him,” Ro said, “he would have thought about keeping it.”

“Not just thought about it.” Eztli’s shoulders heaved a bit with his low, rumbling laughter. “He’s probably trying to figure out how to get his hands on it right now. But that’s not our worry. He’ll have an army of guys working the problem by tomorrow.”

“How long did he think it would be?”

“He’d be surprised if it was more than a week, word gets out. That’s a lot of money for these guys.”

“It’s a day or two of Denardi,” Ro said. “Nothing.”

“Well, there you go.” Eztli took another, long hit, and let out the smoke. “Different worlds.”

When he’d been in private practice, Farrell had availed himself of the superb gatekeeping services of his firm’s indomitable Phyllis. For the past half dozen years, he’d never picked up a phone in his office without a very clear understanding of who was on the other end. Since he’d come on as DA, Treya had performed the same function.