John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

She shot a look across the seat. 'Do you want to hear about Dana?' Glitsky didn't trust himself to say anything. 'Because I know you didn't understand. I don't know if I did.'

The words spilled out. 'What was to understand? You went with him, it's all right. If you hadn't I wouldn't have met Flo, so it all worked out. It was long ago, it doesn't matter now.'

'It does, Abe, I think it does.'

Suddenly, he slapped the steering wheel. 'Jesus, what was he then, forty-five? What could he have…? That's what I guess I never understood.'

She nodded her head, understanding the question. It was the crux of it. Her voice, like Abe's had earlier, remained flat. 'He had money , Abe. He had prestige and power and he was there . He wasn't working for it like we were. He wasn't hoping. It was all there, already part of the package. And I could be part of it. He wanted me to be part of it.'

' Everybody wanted you back then, Loretta. Probably still do. Why do you think you get elected? People respond to you, close up or far away. As you said, that's just who you are. I just thought, you and me, back then…'

He trailed off and the time lengthened in the car. 'I loved you, Abe, I really did.'

His hands gripped the steering wheel, something to hold onto. 'You left me, Loretta. You couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye.'

She couldn't deny it – it was true. She herself had avoided it for twenty-five years. 'I… I couldn't decide. I asked you, don't you remember?'

'You asked me what?'

'If you were ready, if you could commit…'

'And I said I needed a little time, I didn't say no. Hell, I wasn't yet twenty years old, not even out of school. It wasn't you, it was the idea. Marriage? A few more months, maybe. I would have been-'

'But I didn't have a few months.' She paused, cornered, her eyes flashing. 'Dana was ready right now . Don't you understand that? He was asking and he was going to leave if I didn't decide.'

'You could have decided not to.'

'No, I couldn't. Not without you. Not if you wouldn't be there. I couldn't give up what Dana had, not if I wasn't going to have you either.'

'We might have-'

' Might have wasn't good enough. Dana was my chance and I had to take it. He had what it would have taken me years to get on my own.'

So that was the answer. But there was one more question, maybe the most important one.

'Did you love him?'

'I came to…'

Glitsky slammed the steering wheel again, harder, biting out the words. 'Did you love him then , damn it? Were you stringing us both at the same time…?'

' Stringing you …?'

'You know what I mean, Loretta. Sleeping with us both at the same time.'

The question seemed to rock her. 'No, Abe. I never did that. I left you before… oh, my God, is that what you've thought all this time? I never would have done that.'

'It wouldn't have mattered. Leaving was what mattered.'

'I know,' she said. 'I don't know if I was wrong. I was young. I just didn't feel like I had a choice .'

'You did and you made one. You can't make a choice if you don't have one.'

'I wasn't smart or wise enough to see that then,' she said. 'I thought everything was easy back then, would be easy. That whatever I did would work out and Dana was a way to guarantee it.'

'And it's worked, see?'

She didn't answer, staring at him. So much bitterness there, so much anger. Where had it all come from? Could she have caused all of it? Avoided all of it?

He looked at her and could almost see the question written across her face.

She nodded. 'Yes, it's worked, but at what cost?' She reached for his hand and took it in hers, squeezed it tightly, then moved over and held it in her lap.

They'd gone from Dana to Elaine. Twenty-five minutes, maybe more. There was no time. His hand was in her lap. The cold was creeping into their bones. Now someone had moved to Kevin Shea, Loretta's plan to calm the city.

Glitsky thought he should bring up some of his reservations, not so much about Shea's guilt as the whole issue of due process and how once you started screwing with that you compromised the whole idea of keeping the law, which was his passion and his job.

But he also wasn't a child and wasn't kidding himself – they were both too tired for heavy philosophy. And like it or not, reasonable or not, the air was also thick with import… something was happening with them. She asked if he wanted to come inside, have a nightcap. He didn't drink more than five times a year, but he used the excuse to himself that he'd talk about Kevin Shea, about his work.

They were in a book-lined room. Glitsky sat in a red-leather armchair, his feet planted flat on the Oriental rug. Loretta was pouring amber liquid into snifters on a sideboard next to a fireplace. 'You ask somebody in for a drink, you ought to pour them a drink at least.'

She had taken off the jacket to her suit. Her blouse was purple silk. Glitsky had removed his own leather jacket and hung it on a peg by the hallway near the front door.

Now he sat mesmerized by the angle, the view, as she leaned over, striking a match and laying it against the gas log in the fireplace, the silhouette through the sheer blouse. Some memory stirred in him. He should get out of here.

She turned off the other lights in the room and brought the snifters over, handing him one, then opening his knees and kneeling between them. They touched the snifters – a clear ringing bell from the crystal – and drank. Resting her forearms along his thighs, she whispered to him. 'Hold my glass.'

He took it, chained.

Her fingers moved to his belt. She looked up at him then, confident. Her eyes came up and stayed on his. Slowly, the belt came undone, the zipper pulled, hands still burning where they rubbed him through the fabric.

She leaned forward, over him, and brought herself down, her hands holding him, around him, almost as if she might be praying.

He surrendered to the moment, the touch, the ecstasy.

Carrie, Jerohm Reese's live-in girlfriend, did not want him going out, not now, not so soon after he had just been released from jail. But Carrie was young. Unlike Jerohm, she didn't have an intuitive understanding of how things worked. Jerohm knew that you did what you did for one of two reasons – either when you were forced to or when it was easy. And tonight was going to be easy.

The times you were forced were when you were most likely to get caught. If you didn't plan, didn't take a little time, that's what happened. As it had with Mike Mullen.

Jerohm had been a mule for running dope for nearly three years and making a nice clean life of it, with a steady income, the occasional woman. He had learned about the dangers of spontaneous action, and tried to avoid it whenever possible, but with what turned out to be Mike Mullen, suddenly he had had to act and act immediately. He had had no time, no real choice in the matter.

It came down like this-

Jerohm's supplier and partner, Carlos, was expecting his supplier, Richard, to be delivering three kilograms of Chinese white heroin that had, supposedly, recently arrived in the city. Carlos, in turn, had arranged to unload his supply to a local bar owner named Mo-Mo House, who would then step on it and get it moving through its normal channels.

Which was how it always had worked in the past. Except on the day this delivery was due – the day before Mike Mullen died – Richard did not appear. There was no product. This made everyone more nervous than they normally would be – Carlos, Jerohm, Mo -Mo – looking over their shoulders, thinking their mothers might be undercover narcotics officers.