John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'What are we supposed to do now, Dad? When are you coming home?'

Glitsky checked his watch. A little after ten. He must have hit the bed and died. He wondered what time Locke… then it struck him again.

Jesus. Chris Locke dead .

Isaac was still glaring, breathing hard with emotion. Glitsky's mind was racing, covering too much territory, losing track of where he was. He tried to focus on his son. 'I'm sorry, Ike, what?'

Isaac's eyes filled with tears, then fury. Swiping at his eyes, he turned, swore and ran from the room.

'Isaac!'

Glitsky was up, following, but before he'd gotten out of the room he heard Isaac's door slam on the other side of the house. Rita, hair tousled, wrinkled smock askew, rudely pulled out of her own sleep, faced him in the doorway to the kitchen. 'I've got to go out again,' he said. 'Please keep them inside, I don't care what they say or how you do it.'

She was shaking her head, a deep frown creasing her face. 'I don't know, Abe. Orel, I can keep him, but the other boys…' She motioned back with her head. 'What do I tell them?'

She was right and that, too, was terrifying. Beyond any consideration of the disorder out in the streets, the realization suddenly that the older boys were old enough – they could just disobey and walk out and Rita would be powerless to stop them.

He nodded. 'I'll tell them.' And they'd either obey him or go out into the streets. Authority – he either had it or he didn't. He was going to find out.

He gave Rita a weak smile and walked past her toward the back bedrooms.

Another Irish bar – the Little Shamrock, oldest one in the city – on a slow Wednesday night. Nobody out at all. Streets dark. Curfew in half the town and the rest content to stay indoors, which was probably smart.

Wes should be in himself. Probably would head back after a couple more, but this was pleasant, sitting here. These Sambucas kind of put him in mind of his days in Italy when he'd been an exchange student, nights under the stars with Lydia, back when she'd loved him.

Sambuca Romana. Pretty much the same stuff as Pernod, or ouzo in Greece, which they drank with ice all over Europe, the clear stuff turning milky with the ice and water. Here, he'd asked Moses McGuire to put the Sambuca on ice and got a full second of hesitation before he'd said okay.

McGuire was around the same age as Wes, a simpatico guy, if a bit of a purist around his drinks. That was all right. Wes considered himself a kind of purist, too, regarding his drinking. If it didn't have alcohol in it, he didn't drink it. So there was a bond there.

He smiled, took another sip, watching the television, which normally wasn't turned on in this bar. But tonight was real slow, and it was just Wes and a couple of hardcore darts players and McGuire, bartending. Besides, since last night every television in the country was going full time. He didn't blame McGuire. The country was coming apart and everybody wanted to see it live on five.

Wes had missed the opening volleys, the lynching, the first riots, the fires, Kevin's problem. He'd slept in (as he did every morning). Last night he'd been out in North Beach, did a little Brasilia Club cha-cha and tango and the parts he remembered had been fun. He woke up at home on the futon in the living room, his brain, by the feel of it, about two sizes too large for his skull.

He'd had some vodka and orange juice. Not too much vodka – a little hair of the dog was all. And then Kevin had called him before he'd even read the paper, which he still did out of some perverse sense that something might happen that might make a difference or that made sense. About four months ago he had made the decision that he wouldn't cut his hair again until something made sense – the mane had reached his shoulders, graying but still thick on top. He sported a ponytail from time to time, but mostly let it hang free, as it did tonight.

When Kevin hadn't shown up after an hour's wait at the church at USF, Wes drove out through Golden Gate Park, had a Foster's Lager, then took a nap in the Shakespeare Garden, getting away from the tent cities they seemed to be erecting in any area bigger than a softball field. He then treated himself to a piroshki dinner at a fast-food place on 9th before finally putting in his appearance at the Shamrock a little before seven. He was riding a slow buzz, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting khaki shorts, which now that the fog had descended was decidedly the wrong attire. He would freeze his nuts getting home, if he wound up staying unlucky and going home after all. The T-shirt said 'Ask Somebody Who Cares.'

Wes Farrell was fifty-three years old. He sipped at his Sambuca and was gently tapping on the bar to get McGuire's attention when the television interrupted its own news report with a fast-breaking development:

'We've just received a confirming report that the flare-up in the civic disturbances south of Mission has in fact claimed the life of District Attorney Christopher Locke. Earlier reports that Senator Loretta Wager had also been shot, perhaps killed, appear to have been mistaken.

'The two had driven to the neighborhood together to analyze the situation at the scene. Both Locke and Wager are African-Americans and the largely white crowd was in full riot before they arrived. Details are unclear at this time but it seems that as their car pulled away, some shots were fired. We'll take you there now, live, with Karen Wallace, who's been working around the clock for two days now. How bad is it down there,"Karen?'

'It's pretty bad, Tom…'

And in fact it looked pretty bad. Karen was backlit by another rash of fires, and, with the wind picking up, the place was an inferno. Most of the people had disappeared, with the occasional shadow rushing behind the newscaster. The cameras caught some of the National Guard, braced for action, moving through the shining streets. Overhead, several contiguous buildings burned.

'Another one?'

Wes turned away from the television. DA Locke killed! Well, it wasn't his problem. And neither was Kevin. The guy hadn't shown up after he'd called him . He nodded at the bartender. He'd been coming into the Shamrock pretty regularly for the past year and he and McGuire were almost friends. 'Sure, hit me. Get you something, Mose?' Wes had his pockets emptied out on the bar – bills, change, keys. He pushed the pile toward McGuire.

McGuire said he wouldn't mind a McCallan and Wes told him to pour himself a big one. Then he pointed at the screen. 'You see that? They killed the District Attorney.'

McGuire stopped pouring to look up and listen for a moment. He shook his head, setting loose his own thoughts. 'I should have never had a kid. How are you supposed to raise a kid in this?'

'How old's your kid?'

'Three months.'

Wes had nothing to say to that. They might be almost friends but that didn't mean they'd exchanged ten words about their personal lives. Wes figured, given McGuire's age, he might have teenagers. But a three-month infant? The bartender was staring at the screen. 'You think it's going to escalate? All this?'

Farrell nodded. 'I think it just did.' He tapped his glass. 'You know, my first kid was born in '68. You remember '68, Mose? Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Chicago, middle of Vietnam, Nixon gets elected. Worst year in American history, am I right?'

'I was over there. Nam. I missed a lot of the stuff at home.'

'Yeah, well, believe me, it was the shits. I remember me and Lyd, we asked ourselves the same thing. How could we bring a baby into this world? Now, here they are, my kids, mid-twenties and doing the same thing themselves. Everybody does – it's the Baby Blues, is all. They get to be three or four years, you stop asking. Three months, though, that's tough.'