John Lescroart - Damage

“Runs in the family.”

“Apparently. Anyway, there’s no goddamn instruction booklet on this DA thing I seem to have gotten myself elected to. He’s threatening me and I’m holed up here in the office without any clear plan on how to fight him. Not exactly kicking ass doing the people’s work. I’m starting to think that this is something that try as I might, I just don’t have the chops to do.”

“We’ll get him, Wes. We really will.”

“Well, somebody’s going to get somebody. That’s for sure.” Wes finally crossed the room and half collapsed on the couch. “And don’t think I don’t realize how much of this is me, is my fault.” He looked up at his chief assistant. “I am so, so sorry, Amanda, about Matt, and about you. To say nothing of the other victims. I ought to be impeached.”

“Well, hold on that,” Amanda said, striving to lighten it up. “Not now when you’re just starting to get it.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Farrell said. “I don’t get it at all.” Wes’s cell phone went off at his belt and he pulled it out, looked at the screen, and told Amanda, “This is Sam. I’ve got to take it. It’ll just be a minute.” He pushed the answer button. “Hey… No, I’m just… Easy, easy. What?… She’s what?… Well, call the police, get somebody down there right away. I’m on my way, too.”

Closing the phone, Farrell’s face was a study in confusion and panic.

“What?” Amanda asked. “What now?”

“Somebody fucking killed my dog,” Farrell said, his voice breaking. “They killed my fucking beautiful dog.”

Glitsky drove back from the crematorium service to Polk Street where he parked and got in the line for the Swan Oyster Depot. An hour and a half later, he reemerged from the very far end of the bar, his stomach uncomfortably stuffed, into the sunlight, having broken about every dietary law he knew of either for a sometimes-kosher Jew or a recovering heart attack victim. He’d had two dozen raw oysters, half a dozen clams, a half loaf of sourdough bread with an uncounted number of pats of real butter, half a Dungeness crab with mayonnaise and more melted butter, and his first two beers-in fact, his first sip of any kind of alcohol-in over three years.

Back out in his car, he called Treya down in Los Angeles and they had a short conversation that resolved nothing. She still wasn’t coming home, the kids were fine. He told her about the Marrenas article and she had said, “Well, what would you expect?” And then, after five more minutes, he told her he loved her as he said good-bye, and she’d said, “Okay.”

Actually getting some rubber from his tires as he pulled out of his parking place, he drove in a cold fury out to the Curtlees’ house. There was no sign of any twenty-four-hour watch on the place, but then Glitsky realized that the surveillance team might be out following Ro around. On the chance that Ro might show up, although God knew what he planned to do if that happened, Glitsky sat in the street across from the house for about twenty minutes until his head became too heavy to hold up.

Waking up from the following forty-minute doze, disoriented and cotton mouthed, he started the car back up, hung a U-turn, and headed back downtown, never exceeding the speed limit by less than fifteen miles an hour, the dark side of his nature almost hoping that some patrolman would try to pull him over or write him up or fuck with him in any way.

Bearded and burly, Jeff Elliot was in his wheelchair in his glass-enclosed office downstairs at the Chronicle Building, and of course when he’d heard that Glitsky was at the front desk, he’d had them send him right on down. He might have done this in any case, since the two men had known each other, mostly as tacit allies, for more than twenty years. But today Glitsky was big news, and if he wanted to make time for Jeff, Jeff would find time for him.

And now here he was, looming in the doorway, breathing through his nose, his mouth under tight control, the scar through his lips burning white. Glitsky’s menacing face wore a brand-new, terrifying expression that Elliot couldn’t read. And in fact, so threatening was the visage that Elliot unconsciously backed himself away before he recovered and put on a welcoming smile, perhaps meant to disarm.

“Doctor Glitsky,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Off the record until I say so.”

“Okay, sure.”

“I want to kill somebody, Jeff. I mean literally. And I figured if I didn’t get myself off the street, I actually might do it.”

“Ro Curtlee?”

“He’d be a start.”

“Sheila.”

“Yep. Her, too. I thought maybe you could talk me out of it.”

“Why would I want to?” Finally letting out the breath he’d been all but holding, Jeff indicated the chair just to the left of his door. “You want to sit?”

Now Glitsky eased a breath out, and nodded as though convincing himself. “I could sit,” he said. And he did, ramrod straight.

Jeff regarded him for another brief moment. “Bad day at Black Rock, huh?”

Glitsky shook his head. “If you only knew.”

“You want to tell me your side, I’ll get it into print.”

“Just so you’re perfectly clear on it,” Glitsky said, “I haven’t ruled out anybody yet in the Durbin murder, including her husband, including Ro Curtlee. But to pretend, as Marrenas did, that Ro doesn’t have a bona fide motive, is just insane. He saw Michael Durbin at his arraignment last week and recognized him. It’s a matter of public record that Michael was the jury foreman in his trial and that he persuaded a few of the hanging jurors to come around to convict. So there’s a revenge motive and anybody who doesn’t believe it’s there is deluding themselves.”

Elliot picked up a transcribing tape recorder from his desk and held it up.

“Knowledgeable sources?” Glitsky asked.

“How about high-ranking sources within the police department?”

“Sources with knowledge of the investigation.”

“Sold,” said Elliot, and he turned on the tape recorder.

Back in the 4Runner, Eztli picked Ro back up at around four o’clock at MoMo’s, where he’d had another lunch and sat in the same seat in the bar that he’d anchored yesterday. Tiffany was on duty, working the late shift today, and Ro wasn’t going to wait around until two o’clock or whenever the hell it was that she got off, so he had called Eztli and asked for the pickup. “So what’d I miss?” Ro asked him as they drove down the Embarcadero. “I feel like I’ve been gone a week. That girl is one enthusiastic piece of ass. Once more and I think, I swear to God, she might have broke it.”

Eztli looked across at him with something very like affection. He loved this kid’s attitude. “You’re breaking my heart,” he said. “And there have been a couple of developments, mostly that they’ve pulled off the tail.”

“Must have been going around. I pulled off a little tail myself.” Ro chuckled at his cleverness. “You wouldn’t have a jay on you, would you?”

“Sure.” Eztli pulled a joint from his inside pocket and passed it across. “The tail being the cops who were supposed to be following you,” he said.

“Well, they didn’t do shit anyway.” Ro lighting up, sucking in a lungful of smoke. Then, blowing out, he asked, “But I don’t get why’d they pull ’em off. Not that it matters.”

“Sheila’s been busy. She told Lapeer she was going to write up all about the tail tomorrow, how it was more harassment, and Lapeer just can’t take any more heat.”