John Lescroart - The Motive

"I'm not going to change your mind, am I? On propane or anything else."

"But you so enjoy trying. And I think you did once on something. Change my mind, I mean. I know it wasn't getting me to try Spam. I would never do that."

"I know I got you to wear better shoes when we walked the beat."

"See? There you go. Even if that was twenty years ago."

"It was thirty years ago."

"Thirty?" Hardy said. "Don't say thirty. It couldn't have been thirty. That would mean I'm old now."

"You are way old." Glitsky walked over to the grill, put his hand flat over the chimney starter. "And this isn't hot yet."

"You're not supposed to monitor it by the second. It gets hot eventually."

"So does pavement on a sunny day, but people generally don't try to cook on it. Here's another one."

"Another what?"

"Time I got you to change your mind. I got you to apply back to the DA's office after God knows how many years of wandering in the desert."

"Only about a decade. And it wasn't the desert. It was the Shamrock." This was the bar that Hardy owned a quarter of. "Jews like yourself wander in the desert. Good Irish stock like me achieve spiritual peace in a wetter environment. Guinness comes to mind, the occasional black and tan, if you recall."

"I probably remember better than you do. But the fact remains. The reason you're back practicing law and getting rich is because I changed your mind lo these many years ago."

Hardy raised his beer bottle. "For which I salute you."

Glitsky pulled a chair around to sit at the patio table. Hardy tinkered with the chimney thing, lifting it up, blowing into the bottom of it, putting it back on its grill. Now he, too, sat down. "Thank God for a warm night," he said.

Glitsky didn't respond right away. When he did, he said, "Do you ever wish you could just stop?" "Stop what?"

"Everything. Change, new and exciting experiences, whatever comes next."

"Then you're dead," Hardy said.

Glitsky shook his head. "I'm not talking forever."

"But if you're stopped, there's no time, so it is forever."

"Let's pretend it isn't, okay? But you know those books I love, Patrick O'Brian? Master and Commander, the movie. Those books."

"What about them?"

"They make a toast all the time in them. 'May nothing new happen.' That's how I'm feeling. That it would be nice to just stop for a while. When things are good."

Hardy threw his friend a sideways glance over the table. This wasn't a typical Glitsky conversation. "They are good," he said. "Knock on wood, may they stay that way." He rapped his knuckles on the table, lowered his voice. "You thinking about Cuneo?"

Glitsky was tracing the grain in the patio table's surface. "A little."

"A little bit, but all the time?"

Glitsky nodded. "Pretty much."

"Me, too."

"Waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"That, too, but maybe it won't." Hardy looked over at his friend. "You all right?"

"Right now, this minute, yeah. But things are going to change because they always do."

"With Cuneo, you mean?"

"Him, yeah, but other stuff, too." He indicated the house. "The pregnancy…"

"I thought everything was good with that."

"It is." Glitsky let out a heavy breath. "I keep telling myself," he said, "that you can acknowledge a happy moment once in a while and it doesn't necessarily curse you for eternity."

"When things are good, the only way they can go from there is bad?"

"Maybe."

"The other option is maybe they could get better." "Not too often."

"Well, of course your ever-cheerful self would say that. But it could happen. Sometimes it does." He twirled his beer bottle on the table. "I wasn't particularly gung-ho when Frannie and I were deciding whether we were going to try to get pregnant with Vincent. I figured we'd already hit the jackpot with the Beck, we got a healthy little girl, we win. We should count our blessings and just stop there. But then we got Vinnie, and he's been icing on the cake."

"Maybe it's that," Glitsky said. "The second kid thing. Maybe it won't be all right. The baby."

"Why wouldn't it be? Rachel's fine. Your other kids have been fine. You and Treya have good genes. What's the problem?"

"Nothing, except that, as you say, my kids have always been fine."

"So you're pushing your luck?"

A nod. "There's that element."

"And a miserable guy like you doesn't deserve a happy life?"

"Some of that, too." "Why not?"

"I don't know. Guilt, I suppose." "Over what?"

Glitsky paused. "Maybe what we did." Hardy took a beat, then whispered. "We had no choice. We never had a choice. They would have killed us."

"I know."

"That's the truth, Abe."

"I know," he repeated. "I know."

"So? What's to be guilty about?"

"Nothing. You're right. Maybe it's just general guilt. Original sin. Maybe we don't get to be happy. I mean, the human condition isn't one of happiness."

"Except when it is."

"Which is why," Glitsky said, "right now, tonight, everything could just stay the way it is and it would be fine with me."

"You realize you're dangerously close to admitting that you're happy right now?"

"Marginally, I suppose I am. Comparatively."

"Whoa, rein it in, Abe," Hardy said. "All that enthusiasm might give you a hernia."

"What I can't believe," Glitsky was saying to his dinner mates at the table an hour later, "is that Hanover was such a player and so few people knew."

"Probably what made him good at it," Hardy said. "I mean, who follows the ins and outs of the city's contract for its towing business, fascinating though I'm sure it must be?"

Frannie put down her fork. "You don't really think somebody might have killed him over that, do you?"

"The city's towing business," Abe said, "is worth fifty million dollars. Ten mil a year for five years. I might kill Diz here for half that."

Hardy nodded, acknowledging the compliment. "But then who's the suspect?" he asked.

The men were at the opposite ends of the table, the women on the sides. They'd finished their halibut steaks and green beans, and nobody seemed inclined to start cleaning up. At the mention of the concept of a possible murder suspect, Glitsky couldn't help himself-he came forward with a real show of excitement. "That's where it gets interesting. Tow/Hold's had the contract now for twenty years. Anybody want to guess how many complaints it's gotten in the past two years alone? And I'm not talking complaints like people upset that they got towed. I'm talking criminal complaints. Stealing money and CDs and radios and stuff out of the vehicles, selling parts, losing the car itself. How many?"

"How many cars does it tow?" Hardy asked.

"About eighty thousand a year."

This made Frannie come alive. "No. That can't be right. In the city alone?"

Glitsky nodded. "That's per year. It's a big number."

"Wait a minute," Hardy said. He drummed the table, eyes closed, for a minute. "That's fifteen hundred or so a week. I guess it's doable. Two hundred a day."

"A little more." Glitsky loved the details. "Okay, so back to how many criminal complaints has the city received?"

"One a day?" Treya said.

"More."

"A hundred and six?" Frannie asked.

"Ifyou're going to be silly." Glitsky spread his palms. "Try three and a half average. Every single day."

"And these are the people," Hardy said, "that the city in its wisdom has awarded its towing contract to for how long?"

"A mere twenty years," Glitsky said. "At, remember, ten mil a year."

"Not including what they steal, I presume," Treya said.

"Right. Not including that."

Treya stiffened her back, turned to her husband. "Does Clarence know those figures?"

Glitsky shook his head. "The DA generally doesn't get involved. Maybe with some individual complaints, but not the whole picture."