John Lescroart - Damage

Glitsky swallowed against his revulsion. “And nobody saw an assailant?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Nobody saw a thing. I’ve got a crew working the neighborhood, but we’ve already talked to everybody in the building and the guy was lucky or careful, or both, and seems to have just disappeared. It’s a pisser.”

“Tell me about it.” He turned to Shaklee. “Are my crime scene people here?”

The incident commander nodded. “I sent ’em up. Faro and his gang. But from what Arnie here has been telling me, they’re going to have their work cut out for them.”

“What else is new?” Glitsky looked up at the black holes where the upper story windows had been. Flashlight beams crisscrossed one another in the darkness. He drew a heavy breath. “You mind if I go up now?”

The incident commander has absolute control over access to a fire scene, which was why Glitsky asked. Now Shaklee nodded and turned to his partner. “If Arnie’s got no objection.”

“No,” Becker said. “In fact, I’ll go with you.”

Abe and Treya Glitsky had planned on going out to an early movie that night, but he hadn’t gotten home from the arson murder scene until nearly nine, so that got ruled out. Still, they had Rita, their housekeeper, staying late to babysit anyway, so they decided they’d just go out and drive around until fate led them to a destination, which in this case happened to be David’s on Geary. Not really so random, if one knew Glitsky’s love of Jewish delicatessens like Treya did.

Now Glitsky’s eyes were focused out across the counter, far away from the liverwurst and onion on pumpernickel the waitress had just set down in front of him. “I know I know that name,” he said.

Treya was just picking up her hot pastrami and Swiss on rye, and the half she held was far bigger than she could get into her mouth in one bite. So she stopped midway. “Maybe one of your old paramours?”

“None of my paramours were old. In fact, now that I think of it, you are my oldest paramour ever. And even you’re not that old.”

“Well, thank you, I think. Did I mean ‘former’ instead of ‘old’ and by chance misspoke? Imagine my chagrin.”

“Imagine it,” Glitsky said, “but she wasn’t a former paramour. She’s just in my brain-her name, anyway-rattling around. Felicia Nuñez.”

“She’ll show up.”

“Her and Christmas.” Glitsky bit into his sandwich, chewed with a distracted air. “Sorry,” he said after he’d swallowed. “I know the rule is no work on dates.”

“So you’re sure she’s work related? The one you used to know, as opposed to the homicide victim you saw tonight?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Well, I’ve bent the no-talking-about-work rule on occasion,” she said. “I can give you one.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t know if I want to talk about work in general. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Starting with the fact that I’ve got no inspectors free to handle this latest case, so I’ve got to go down and do it myself on a Friday night when we’ve got a date planned. That’s the kind of thing, I start talking about it, I could get myself worked up. And I’m betting this won’t be the last homicide we see before too many of the others get cleared, so this is just an ongoing problem that’s only going to get worse because of the incredibly misguided priorities of the idiots who get elected in this city. And why don’t they seem to learn?”

“Good,” Treya said. “You really don’t want to talk about that. I can tell.”

“I don’t.”

“I know. So we’ll leave that part out. So, now, how about Felicia Nuñez?”

“The current one or the one I think I remember?”

“Maybe she’s both. Maybe you arrested her before?”

“No. I don’t think so. I remember people I’ve arrested.”

“Okay, then, maybe she was a victim?”

Glitsky, his sandwich forgotten, was shaking his head. “Arnie Becker says it’s a common name, but I don’t think that’s it.”

“Maybe another cop, maybe somebody you interviewed for a job? Or, how about this? On a case, maybe a witness?”

Suddenly Glitsky’s head went still. He brought his hand up to his mouth and covered it, his startling blue eyes scanning the corners of the ceiling.

Treya knew to leave him alone. He’d picked up the scent. “Oh dear Lord,” he half whispered through his fingers. Glitsky rarely used profanity, and only then under the greatest duress, and his calling upon the Lord in this context underscored the degree of his concern.

“What is it? Abe?”

He lowered his hand with an exaggerated calm. “Ro Curtlee.”

“No.” This was a name she didn’t want to hear, since it was so thoroughly continuing to roil the waters at the DA’s office. “What’s she got to do with him?”

“She was a witness against him at his first trial and was going to be one of the central witnesses at the next one. But now obviously she isn’t going to play much of a role, being dead and all.”

Treya finally said, “This is just going to cream Wes.”

“I’ve got to call him.”

“Maybe Ro didn’t have anything to do with this Felicia Nuñez,” Treya said.

Glitsky, already punching numbers into his cell phone, rolled his eyes.

In the middle of a speech he was giving at the Immigrant Resource Fair on Valencia in the Mission District, Wes Farrell felt his cell phone buzz at his belt and silently cursed himself for bringing the damn thing with him at all. He didn’t need distractions from the work at hand, and he didn’t think of himself as one of the great natural orators of history, in any event. Nevertheless, this speech, he thought, was a pretty good one about something he truly cared about-protecting crime victims in San Francisco’s immigrant community.

“What we’ve got to avoid,” he was saying, “is the appearance and, even more important, the reality, that immigrant crime victims do not fall under the protection of law enforcement. If you’re the victim of a crime in San Francisco, the status of your immigration is not, repeat, not going to be a factor. A visit by this city’s police enforcement arm is not a visit from the U.S. government’s immigration agencies.”

In the meeting hall of the Centro del Pueblo, the crowd broke into applause. Farrell, pumped up by the response, hazarded a glance over at his girlfriend, heartened to see that she was taking part in the ovation. He and Sam hadn’t yet figured out how his new job was going to fly within their relationship, and he’d take any sign he could that it could still work out. The past few weeks-from the day of Ro Curtlee’s bail hearing forward-had been chilly between them, and maybe this applause marked the beginning of a thaw.

Glancing down at his notes, he picked up where he’d left off. “We take very seriously our status as a City of Sanctuary for immigrants, and nowhere should that commitment to immigrant rights be more forcefully implemented than when immigrants are victims of crimes. And it is the policy of my administration that the immigration status of crime victims will never-never ever-be questioned in the course of a criminal investigation. That is simply not going to be on the table. If you’re the victim of a crime, you must feel free to call the police and report the crime, and rest secure knowing that nothing bad is going to happen to you because of your immigration status.”

Another wave of applause broke over the room. But Farrell really had no time to enjoy the brief flutter of popularity because he took the moment to sneak a look at his phone. Glitsky’s name there creased his face with a sudden concern. If Glitsky was calling his private number after nine o’clock, something was up. And if it could have waited until morning, then Glitsky would have waited.