John Lescroart: Dead Irish

Worse, from Abe’s point of view, was that all the promotions that had been based on the hirings would be rescinded. As usual in the bureaucracy, they were using “last hired first fired,” so the officers with least seniority would get knocked back, robbery inspectors would go back to desk sergeants, desk sergeants to the beat, homicide guys to vice or robbery. And all because the citizens of this clown town thought too many cops would make the city a police state.

Glitsky’s desk was in a cubicle of baffled masonite. He had a window with a view of the Oakland-Bay Bridge and his own coffee machine-seventy square feet of the high life, the perks of his seniority.

He sipped some cold herb tea and thought maybe he should move to L.A. Pick up the wife and kids and go someplace where they believed in law enforcement. He’d heard that down there they were increasing the size of the force by a thousand. A thousand! He ran that number around in his brain. And no one in their right mind would say L.A. was overrun with cops. Everyone already knew that half the town was controlled by gangs; a thousand new cops probably wouldn’t even make a dent. And here in San Francisco, a mere fifth of that made people think about Mussolini.

Abe didn’t get it.

He really ought to go home, he thought. Get away from it. The atmosphere in homicide, outside this cubicle, was not good. Three new guys, all just promoted, knew they were going back down. And this was happening in every department, which made the entire Hall a pure joy to work in.

To make matters more complicated, Glitsky’s lieutenant, Joe FrazeUi, was retiring. (Of course, this assured that only two of the three new guys slated for demotion would actually go back to their old jobs. One would stay in homicide. Wonderful for cooperation among the rookies.)

Abe, along with Frank Batiste and Carl Griffin, was up for Frazelli’s job, which was nine-tenths administrative and which took you off the street, which was not what any of the guys wanted. But there were other considerations, like power and, not unimportantly, money. Also, it was another rung up the ladder to Captain, maybe Chief, and like most cops Glitsky entertained thoughts of moving up.

But it wasn’t easy being half black and half Jewish. Some days, when his paranoia ran high, he was amazed he’d come as far as he had, which was homicide inspector. Other times he’d think the sky was the limit-he was a good cop, he knew his way around, he could lead others.

But if he was honest, he had to admit there were some problems. First, he knew he could direct investigations, but he had a problem working with the other guys. Out of the fourteen homicide cops, only two worked solo, and he was one of them. He told himself that it was just the way it had happened, but in his heart he knew that he’d worked it around this way.

He’d come up four years before when an armed-robbery suspect-J. Robert Ronka, he’d never forget-had dovetailed into a wife killer. Frazelli had admired his handling of that case and put him on another hot one as soon as he’d come on board in homicide. There had been no free partners at the time, so Frazelli had asked him if he minded going solo again until somebody’s vacation ended or somebody else quit or got promoted, leaving another solo spot to be teamed. Then he’d put Glitsky together with that guy.

Except Abe had never pushed it, and it hadn’t happened. And now he sometimes thought that not being particularly close to anybody might hurt his career.

But that wasn’t as serious as the other problem-the race thing. The San Francisco Police Department has two unions- one for white officers and one for nonwhite officers. And Abe would be good and goddamned if he was going to use any affirmative-action bullshit to get himself moved up. When he finally did make Captain or Chief he didn’t want even the tiniest smell of that in his background, and so far he thought he’d avoided it.

The trouble was, some black cops resented him for rejecting the hard-fought-for rights that they’d earned. And a lot of white guys wouldn’t believe that he didn’t get special consideration because he was black, regardless of what he said or did about it. Hell, he was solo, wasn’t he?

(The fact that the other solo guy, McFadden, was white wasn’t a comparable situation because everybody knew McFadden was just a mean sorry son of a bitch who hated everybody and their dog Spot. He wouldn’t work with his own mother, and his mother wouldn’t want to work with him.)

A telephone rang somewhere out in the main room. Glitsky could see three of the maybe five guys who were at their desks doing paperwork. The secretaries had all disappeared. It was close to nine o’clock on a Monday night.

Frazelli had gone home. Abe and Griffin had rank in the shop. Wearily, Abe stood, stretched, and walked to the entrance to his cubicle. Griffin, three cubicles down, poked his head out the same way. They nodded at one another warily.

As Abe feared, it was the desk phone. One of the new guys went and picked it up, listened for a minute, then covered the mouthpiece.

“Anybody want to see a dead guy?” he asked.

Abe wanted to go home. He was working on four current homicides and one he’d been hounding for sixteen months. On the other hand, his plate had been fuller, and he was gunning for looie. He stepped out of his cubicle. “Want to flip for it?” he asked Griffin.

“Where is it?” Griffin asked the new guy.

“Candlestick.”

“Naw. Baseball’s boring,” Griffin said.

“Okay, I’ll take it,” Abe said, not liking it. Griffin should have gone for it too. And there seemed to be a personal edge to what he’d said. Something was going on.

Abe didn’t like it.

The Giants beat the Phillies, 4 to 3.

After the last out Hardy stayed in his seat, drinking beer and waiting for what crowd there was to thin out. They stopped selling beer after the eighth inning and he’d gone back and bought three to hold him over to the end of the game. He still had one, open but untouched, in the deep pocket of his coat.

They left the field lights on. Hardy squinted below to the place the man had fallen. They’d stopped the game back in the seventh right in the middle of what turned out to be the Giants’ game-winning rally, when they had two men on, nobody out and Will Clark coming up.

Most of the spectators had gone. He figured by now it was just the cops, so he got up and meandered through the seats, sipping beer.

The area was cordoned off with yellow tape. Deecks was sitting slumped, his legs hanging over the seat in the row in front of him.

The Cougar-Rafe Cougat, Deeck’s partner-was talking to one of the techs. They were getting ready to move the body.

Hardy felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around. “Abraham, my man,” he said. Then, the thought occurring to him, “This a murder?”

Abe Glitsky grinned, and the scar running through his lips lightened. Fifteen years before, he and Hardy had walked a beat together. They still wrote Christmas cards.

“You see it happen?” Abe asked.

“No. I was watching the game.”

“Still fascinated by crime, huh?”

Against Hardy’s will, the sarcasm rankled slightly. “I read the sports page, sometimes the food section. I get my current events across the bar.”

Glitsky jerked his head. “These low railings,” he said. “I mean, you see kids leaning over ’em all the time going for fouls. They ought to put up nets or something.”

Three men lifted the body bag and were carrying it over the seats. Another group waited on the cement stairs. The gurney waited at the top of the ramp. “I’m kind of surprised you bothered to come over and check this out.”

Hardy lifted his shoulders an inch. “Parades,” he said, “can’t get enough of ’em.” A section of seats separated them from the rest of the group. Hardy asked why Abe was here himself if it wasn’t a murder.