John Lescroart - Dead Irish

Hardy thanked him, they shook hands, and again Brody was alone in his office. The clock on the Ferry Building said it was just past noon. The fog had completely burned off, and the flags along the Embarcadero were flying in what looked to be a light breeze. He loosened his tie, sighed, and returned to his desk, punching impatiently at his intercom.

Here was Hardy, thinking Eddie Cochran had been the nicest guy in the world. One of the bona fide good ones. He’d known him pretty well, and had bought his act completely-but it couldn’t have been an act, this is Eddie we’re talking about. Hell, he was married to Frannie, and she was the sister of Hardy’s own best friend. Didn’t he have to be a wonderful person?

And besides, Hardy thought as he picked at his dim sum (waiting for one-thirty, when Polk would talk to Glitsky), they weren’t even suspecting Cruz. Alphonse Page was the suspect.

Okay, say Eddie had known Cruz was gay, and had known all about Polk and his drug deal. Now, how about he puts the squeeze on Cruz, or wants a cut from Polk, or both?

No. That wasn’t Eddie.

Was it?

GLITSKY PRIDED himself not on being smart, but thorough. Though he didn’t even remotely think that Sam Polk had killed his own daughter, he had gone ahead and run a little background on the man-you never knew what might turn up.

Hardy’s tip or hunch or whatever it was about a drug connection looked like a winner-the cocaine on the desk hadn’t been blown there on a passing wind-so he had ordered a guy to check out his recent banking activity. There, aside from an amateurish run to different bank branches, he had found enough to warrant calling up the DEA. He didn’t really care about the drug deal- what he wanted was leverage on Polk during the interview.

He had seemed legitimately strung out yesterday at finding his daughter’s throat cut, and Glitsky didn’t think it would be too difficult to get him to start talking about some possible connection between Linda’s death and Ed Cochran’s especially if he thought he-Polk-would be named some sort of accessory to his own daughter’s murder.

What would be ideal, and what Glitsky fervently hoped for, was that Cochran’s death would turn out a clear homicide and get in his own backyard. Glitsky’s thing was homicides. He was getting a lot closer to certainty that somebody had killed Ed, and with Alphonse looking like a lock for Linda’s murder, he seemed a reasonable suspect for having done Ed… well, at the least a good guy to start with. Of course, a few hairs in a car seat, by themselves, weren’t going to convince any jury, but Alphonse had proved himself well beyond careless with Linda. Glitsky figured that if he’d killed Ed he’d left some indication of it. And if that were true, Glitsky would find it.

It was a nice stroke of luck-hitting on Polk’s account. That money was somewhere out there, and that always shook things up, which was good.

He popped the last bite of his bagel and followed it with a mouthful of cold coffee. Dick Willis, the DEA guy, would be up in another minute, and Hardy any old time. He wiped at the desk with a paper napkin, caught some crumbs in the palm of his hand and dumped them in the wastebasket by his right knee.

This was the part he really liked. The case should break within the hour. It was all but broken now. With the new leverage, Polk should crack in about five minutes. Tell him the DA might cut him a deal on the Cochran thing, then sit back and let the tape recorder get it all.

He allowed a smile.

It was almost too easy, but he’d take it.

Hardy was whittling a Popsicle stick into a totem pole. He’d already done the eagle at the top, then a kind of half-assed bear’s head (which could as easily have been a wolf-he should have done it in profile), and was about to start on a duck as a goof when Glitsky came back to his cubicle.

Hardy looked up. He didn’t have to ask, but he did. “Not there, huh?”

It was two-fifteen. They’d waited until nearly two o’clock, at which time Glitsky had called down to Burlingame to ask if they’d send a squad car to Polk’s house and see if something was wrong.

Willis from the Drug Enforcement Agency had gone, saying he’d be available whenever Polk did show up, but he wasn’t about to waste any more of an afternoon for a lousy one-yard deal.

Glitsky figured Polk might have been detained at the morgue, or making arrangements to get Linda’s body to a funeral home, and he’d gone out to make a few calls, then check to see if he’d just gotten directed to the wrong room or something at the Hall.

Hardy stayed in Abe’s cubicle, whittling. His new doubts about Eddie’s character were still eating at him. It was great that Glitsky had established a link to drug money and to Alphonse, although that didn’t necessarily mean Alphonse had killed Eddie.

“You think he ran? Polk?” Glitsky suddenly asked.

“I’m out of practice,” Hardy said. “That never occurred to me. Why would he run?”

“As in take the money and…”

Hardy shook his head and closed his knife. The totem pole got flicked into the wastebasket without a glance. “I don’t think he took the money. Alphonse took the money.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what I’ve been thinking, but where is the guy?”

“Traffic, Abe. Shopping. In the bathroom.”

Glitsky straightened the line of something on his desk. “Okay. But I hate getting this close and not nailing it. He might have run, anyway.”

Hardy decided to let him spew. He might have done anything. But how could he know the police had discovered the money thing? Improbable. No, he would try to bluff things out when they started asking about money. But he’d show. If he didn’t, he’d be running up a flag.

When Abe had wound down, Hardy said: “The report says the call on Cochran came in at eleven-fourteen P.M. You tape it?”

“Of course. It was a nine-eleven.”

“You mind if I give it a listen?”

“No. Help yourself. You gonna recognize the voice?”

Hardy hadn’t thought of that before, and wouldn’t that be a nice surprise? “The call came from a booth at the corner of Arguello and Geary,” he said.

“If you say so,” Glitsky said, “but what difference does it make? Polk gets here and starts talking, ten minutes later we know everything we need to know.”

“About Linda, maybe.”

“Also, maybe, about Ed.”

“It’s the maybes that get to me. Maybe we get lucky, and Polk finks on Alphonse, who maybe killed Eddie in a wild drug-induced spree of passion and mayhem. Then maybe we got a homicide, where the insurance pays on Eddie.”

“You want to make book,” Glitsky said, “Ed’s a homicide.”

“Make it official, my job’s done and I’ll go home and be out of your hair.”

At Glitsky’s baleful stare, Hardy smiled. “I figure until it’s official,” he said, “I can play with it.”

Hardy walked to what passed for a map of the City and County of San Francisco on the wall of Glitsky’s cubicle. The map had been stabbed to death by pins long ago, but the occasional street name wasn’t completely obliterated. “Arguello and Geary is here,” Hardy said, pointing roughly to the middle of the map.

“Goddamn. When did they move it?” Glitsky said.

Hardy punched his finger into the lower right quadrant of the map. “Here’s Cruz’s building.”

“Yep, just about there.”

“Can’t exactly throw a hat over ’em, can you?”

“So?”

Hardy looked out the window. “Just something else to think about.”

The phone rang and Glitsky snatched it up before the ringing stopped. He said “Yeah” a few times. Hardy turned around and started hoping this wasn’t about Polk, because if it was it was bad news.