John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

Nat Glitsky tapped his son's cheek, said it was nice chatting with him. He'd call.

The ten-minute recess found itself transformed into a day-long continuance – Mr Sully's defense attorney had developed a migraine and pronounced herself unable to continue, and neither Judge Thomasino nor Mr Robbins had had any objection.

This did not sit well with Glitsky, who had thrown on the tie he kept in his desk drawer for just such an occasion and run down to Department 34, wishing he had thought to borrow his father's all-purpose classic men's blue blazer. All he had was his flight jacket – the judge might ream him for a poor sartorial showing just to vent his displeasure at the delay.

Except that now the original delay meant nothing. The entire exercise had been futile and the day was too full for this idiocy. Abe was starting to decide that he was going to mention as much to Ty Robbins when Ridley Banks crabwalked into the pew next to him and sat down, beginning without preamble in a low, insistent voice.

'Couple of things. One, on the Mullen thing, I think we might have a bite. I drove out to McKay's after our little soiree yesterday at the Greek's. Poor guy – McKay – can't seem to find work, just sitting around the house. Wanted to talk to me on the stoop. Actually, didn't want to talk to me at all. I'm a trained investigator, I could tell.'

'It's a useful skill, Ridley.'

'So I mentioned the word warrant…'

'You got a warrant? What for?'

'I didn't. I just mentioned the word and said he didn't have to let me in, but if he didn't I'd probably come back and it wouldn't be so friendly.'

'The broken sliding door,' Glitsky said.

Ridley Banks looked up to Glitsky, the only other dark-skinned inspector in homicide. In some ways he viewed the lieutenant as his mentor. He nodded. 'The broken sliding door or lack thereof.'

If there wasn't a broken window in a sliding door at McKay's house, there went his story that he and his cousin Brandon Mullen had cut their arms when they fell through it during their fight.

'Did you mention this to him?'

'I believe I neglected to.'

'Okay, good,' Glitsky said. 'Let's get both those guys down here today. Start in again.' Then, thinking of his father's information, he added that they might even want to hold Mullen and McKay for a lineup – there was a chance they had a witness who wasn't involved in the mob and who would talk about who she had seen there.

Banks took that in, scanned the courtroom, holding Glitsky in the pew while the assistant district attorney who'd called Abe down, Ty Robbins – the last man beside themselves in the courtroom – closed his briefcase with a snap and started up the center aisle.

Robbins raised a hand feebly. 'Sorry, Abe. Maybe tomorrow, huh?' He kept walking, not waiting for any reply. The huge double doors shushed closed behind him, and Glitsky and Banks were alone.

'Something else?' Glitsky asked.

Banks appeared to be having some trouble making up his mind. He made sure again that the room was empty, then took in a breath and, letting it out, said, 'I want to tell you a story. Maybe a little personal.'

Impatient in any event with today's interruptions, Glitsky almost stopped him – it wasn't a good time, could they get to it later? But something about the young inspector's tone…

'Out on Balboa there's this restaurant called the Pacific Moon – small place, been there twenty-five, thirty years.'

'Sure, I know it. I've eaten there.'

'Everybody has.'

'Food's not very good, if I remember.'

Banks grinned. 'That's the place, which is why, I don't know if you noticed, but you almost never see the place crowded. You go there on a Saturday night, eight o'clock, there's only like twenty tables and you get seated right away.'

Glitsky sat back on the hard bench, not knowing where this was going. 'Okay?' he said.

'So before Homicide I did eight years in White Collar, and when I first got in there there was an on-going investigation about money laundering at the Pacific Moon.'

'Money laundering through a restaurant?'

'Sure. In the old days before electronic transfers, it was pretty common. You have yourself a ton of dirty cash and you deal in a perishable like food, it's custom made. You write up receipts for meals that never got served and presto, there's the cash in your till, clean as a whistle, just like magic.'

'Okay. So the Pacific Moon laundered some money.'

'A lot of money, Lieutenant.'

'Okay, a lot of money. You get any indictments?'

In his own years on the force, Glitsky had heard a lot about 'on-going investigations' – he had conducted a few himself on people he didn't like, didn't believe, wanted to nail. Few of them panned out because evidence got cold faster than scrambled eggs. If you didn't get it the first time you looked it was unlikely to turn up later. If white collar couldn't bring any indictments against the Pacific Moon, the principals either had done nothing wrong or were very good at covering their tracks, most probably the latter. Either way, in the police department, manpower was always at a premium, and if there wasn't some vein in the ore, the on-going investigation would have to stop – most often sooner than later.

'Nope. Place came up clean.'

'Well…?'

'Well, I was young and a red hot. I started eating dinner there every couple of weeks, staying for drinks, hanging out, counting people.'

'Counting people?'

'There wasn't ever more than twenty people in the place. Ever. You know what the Pacific Moon grossed that year, this was eight years ago?'

Glitsky shook his head. 'A million dollars?'

'Two point nine million.'

A minute of pure silence. Glitsky said, 'Twenty tables?'

Bank's voice took on an edge. 'If they filled every table every night five nights a week and turned them over three times each, and if every dinner averaged fifteen dollars, you know how much they would have grossed? I worked it out, Lieutenant, I'll tell you – three hundred thousand tops. Three hundred thousand. And they admit a gross of almost three million.'

"They must have sold a lot of drinks.' Glitsky scratched his cheek. 'You couldn't get an indictment on that?'

'Can you believe…? Nobody wanted to reopen the case. Evidently we'd blown a wad on it, the place had receipts like it was Chez Panisse, the books looked clean, White Collar lost its papers on it and the DA didn't seem to save anything, but I'm telling you, nobody goes there to eat.'

'Not twice anyway.'

'That's what I'm saying.'

Another dead minute. Then, Glitsky: 'Well, it's a good story…' Meaning, but-so-what?

One last look around the courtroom. 'So what is that – this was a few years before I got into it, but still – the word was that Dana Wager was a heavy investor in the place.'

'Dana…?'

'Right, the senator's husband. He filed for bankruptcy in 1977, all his real-estate investments had gone belly-up. He was done. Then he caught the rebound on the economy, reinvested, got lucky. All the sudden he's back on the high seas, and the Pacific Moon is his flagship.'

'People get lucky, Rid.'

'People also get money in ways that aren't legal. And then launder it.'

'You think that happened with Wager?'

Banks wasn't coming right out with anything. He wasn't sure where his lieutenant stood on it, didn't want to dig himself too deep a hole. 'There was some talk.'

'There's always talk.'

Another pause. How far to take it? 'This talk was about his wife, now our senator. How the rumor was that Dana's money came from Loretta, that she'd brought like a million dollars home with her from South America.'

Of course, Glitsky had heard about the incident: he had followed it closely at the time. It had been all over the place, reported in the media. He couldn't very well have missed it, even if he'd been disposed to, which he wasn't.