John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'So what do we have?'

Glitsky was in a booth with three of his inspectors – Carl Griffin, Ridley Banks and Marcel Lanier. They were having an informal meeting convened by the lieutenant at Lou the Greek's, the cop and DA watering hole across the street from the Hall of Justice. You got to Lou's either through an alley and an unmarked side door or down a stained, carpeted stairway dark enough not to show what was making it smell that way.

Lou's was what it was – they poured a good shot cheaply. The food was usually tasty, hearty, possibly nutritious. Lou's wife was Chinese and Lou, of course, was Greek, and you'd often get a lunch special like avgolemo soup with won-tons or Kung-pao chicken moussaka. They'd had a special for years that they called 'Yeanling Clay Bowl' and no one could say for sure what was in it.

But the main thing about Lou's was that the place was close to the Hall of Justice, you could hang there and not be bothered, there weren't many citizens around, and known reporters and other members of the media didn't seem to get the same personalized service from Lou as law-enforcement personnel did – just one of those hard-to-explain flukes of nature.

'They were all there,' Ridley Banks said.

Glitsky and his men were nearly alone in the place, and the lieutenant was still having a hard time keeping his patience. Of course they – the witnesses they'd interrogated – had all been there. They all admitted that much. But not during the lynching. The inspectors' job was to put them on the street during the violence and it didn't look to Glitsky like that would be happening in the near future.

'I say we just arrest them and put the squeeze on.' Carl Griffin was the least sophisticated homicide inspector on the force, but that didn't mean all his ideas were bad.

'We got a problem with arrests,' Glitsky said.

'Which is…?' Lanier, sardonic, leaning back in his flight jacket, was drinking a glass of red wine.

'Which is enough space upstairs,' Glitsky said. He took a sip of his tea. 'Boles says we're full up and getting worse. He's trying to get Rigby to agree to give citations for everything up to and including armed robbery.'

Griffin raised bloodshot eyes. 'Are you serious?' Humor was lost on Griffin, and Glitsky explained that he was exaggerating but not by much – only about the armed-robbery part.

Ridley Banks spoke up. 'But we are talking 187 here.' Section 187 of the California Penal Code is murder. '… if these guys were in the action, it was murder.'

Glitsky sucked his teeth. 'Well, that's the other thing. It's why we're down here at Lou's instead of my plush private suite. I don't want to get overheard and misconstrued.' His subordinates waited. 'You might have noticed we've also got a political situation developing.'

Lanier sipped wine, made little swirls out of some vagrant drops with his index finger on the table. 'The Kevin Shea thing.'

Glitsky nodded. 'The official line is that he's the only one who did it.'

Banks, the young red-hot, sat forward. 'But there… I mean, it was a mob…'

'We got any witnesses saying it was?'

'O'Toole. Didn't he?' Banks looked at Lanier, who shook his head no.

'O'Toole never went outside.' Lanier kept his face straight. 'Stayed in the bar. Poured drinks. And the other clowns, Mullen and McKay, they went home before it started, isn't that right, Abe?'

'The facts as we know them.'

Griffin spoke up. 'The photographer, what's his name?' The lieutenant inclined his head a quarter inch. 'Okay, him. One guy. Westberg. Point is, the mob's too unwieldy or something. God's mouth to the chief's ear, boys, they want Shea and only Shea. Symbolism or something like that. The mayor wants him, Rigby's going along, Locke's leading the charge. We get Shea and the whole problem is solved.'

Lanier continued his doodling. 'Okay, so? We bring 'em Shea.'

'We can't find him. Guy's got any brains, he's long gone anyway,' Glitsky said. 'The thing is, if we do come across some hard evidence that any of these yo-yo's – McKay, O'Toole, any of them – were part of it, I'm not much inclined, personally, that is, to just let it slide, and I wanted to convey that message to all of you.' He looked around at his inspectors. 'When things cool down, after things cool down, I don't much cotton to the idea of getting called on the carpet because we didn't pursue our investigations thoroughly. This is the kind of political' – he paused, seeking the right word – 'machination that has a way of coming back to bite at you, and I just wanted to bring it all, up front, out on the table. Okay?'

Lanier raised his finger. 'You don't think Shea was in it?'

'I'm not saying that. I've got no reason to believe that. I've seen the picture, too. It's just when things get this convenient…' He shrugged. Everybody knew what he was talking about. 'It was probably him and all the others, so yeah, we break him and we get the rest. But I'm a little worried none of our boys back in there seemed to know him.'

Banks put in, 'Mullen said he knew him to nod at.'

Glitsky's scar stretched between his lips. 'I heard that, Rid. I wouldn't build my house on it. After today, the whole city knows him to nod at. Also, either of you guys' – he motioned to Banks and Griffin – 'did either of you get an offer to take a look at the cuts on Mullen and McKay? You might want to talk to their doctors. Maybe pay a call on McKay's house and see about that sliding door.'

Lanier shot the remainder of his wine, swallowed. 'You're saying go after these guys, aren't you, Abe? Whatever anybody else tells us?'

'We got, say, a minimum of ten guys who had to be accessories here. Let's say I'd like to find at least a couple of them.'

'And Shea?' This was from Griffin.

'Sure. Shea, too. See you all upstairs.'

Finally, the wind came back up, the fog was rolling down Bryant Street and it had gotten back to the usual – cold. Glitsky pulled his jacket closer around him to keep it from blowing open. His eyes were bleary from fatigue, his head heavy.

In the lobby of the Hall of Justice, Sheriff Boles had set up a makeshift area for processing arrests – they were in fact giving out citations, just like parking tickets, to some of the scores of people who'd been arrested in the civic disturbances since the day before – for looting, mayhem, trespass, battery, whatever. Boles had persuaded Dan Rigby, the police chief, to let him sweep for outstanding warrants on other charges, after which – if the person being charged had none – they were to be processed on the citations and released.

The place was bedlam and Glitsky pushed his head further down within his jacket and made for the elevators. He had to get upstairs to his office, call Rita again, check on his boys. He also had to get some sleep sometime. He had no idea when that would be. He knew that the strands of his temper were beginning to fray, and soon his judgments would begin to suffer. The fatigue was weighing him down.

But the elevator opened and there, facing him, stood Elaine Wager. 'I was just in your office, Abe. Nobody knew where you were.' Was there a rebuke there? A warning? Was someone really watching? 'You got a minute?' she asked. 'We can ride back up.'

'Sure." There was no point in arguing it. He'd do later what he'd felt he absolutely had to get done now. He couldn't call his sons.

He had to come when bidden. It was the job.

He squeezed in next to her as the usual press of bodies piled into the eight-foot-square box – perhaps twenty people of all races, a microcosm of the city outside. The doors closed and all sounds from the lobby vanished, exaggerating the silence in the elevator. There was a palpable tension in the enclosed space, suspicion and mistrust choking off the usual chatter.