John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'I'm just telling you what I heard, Loretta. It's not an issue for me personally. It was just one of my inspectors trying to protect me, that's all.'

But she didn't seem to hear that. 'Now it's three million dollars? Time I'm sixty it ought to have grown to ten.'

"Three million is the profit.'

'I know, I know.' She held up a hand. 'Please. Wait. I want to tell you.'

He nodded, waiting.

'After… after the plane crash… you know about the plane crash, right? Colombia? I thought you did, but… well, Dana and I were having some problems even before then. It was one of the reasons I decided to go to work, get into politics again, have something of my own in case Dana and I split up, which at the time I thought was pretty likely.'

'You mind if I ask why?'

She took a long moment deciding. 'Dana was one of those men who was great to be around when things were going well, when he had money and things seemed to be under his control. He was all tied up in that.'

'Okay.'

'But his investments started to go sour. He took a couple of big hits in the stock market, tried to recoup some of that in real estate here in the city and guessed wrong. Notes were coming due and he couldn't pay them and I guess he started to panic. I mean, he was turning sixty by now. His confidence began to erode. I told him that it didn't matter, that we still had plenty. What was important to me was how he treated Elaine, if he loved me, personal things. But to him, if he wasn't a provider he wasn't anything – it was all tied up in that men's macho thing. And then he got so… well, we gave up on… the physical side, and that of course just continued the cycle.'

She sipped at her drink.

'But after Colombia…?'

'After Colombia, after I got back… I don't know. Maybe it shocked him awake. He wasn't that old. He wasn't going to lose both me and Elaine. He couldn't let that happen. So when I got out of the hospital we came back home and people started talking about me running for Congress, running for Theo Heckstrom's seat, and suddenly we were both looking forward again. His confidence came back, he took a few risks – one of them was the Pacific Moon.'

'And the place made three million dollars?'

She smiled at him. 'Abraham. Please. In the first place, it wasn't three million dollars, not even close. And whatever it was got divided up among the investors. In the second, what it did make was based on another risk Dana took – that's the way he always was. When he had the guts he could do anything. He talked the other investors into rolling the restaurant's profits into the down payment on some throwaway land south of Market here that Dana had heard was going to… well, a good portion of it now is the Moscone Center.'

'My, my, my.' The Moscone Center was San Francisco 's own multi-million-dollar convention showcase.

'Yes. And as it turned out they only had to make three or four payments before the city bought it back from them. It was a nice windfall, one time only, and then Dana got out of the restaurant business, rolled his share of the profit over to continue in development, which was his first love anyway. He just needed the Pacific Moon to use the other investors' money, to get some leverage so he could make a move on the land.'

Glitsky was sitting back, arms folded. He leaned forward. 'This isn't somewhere in the public record? Why would there still be rumors?'

A resigned edge crept into her voice. 'I think, Abe, first, because people don't understand what Dana did. And when people don't understand an answer, they often make one up. Next, I'm a public figure – there would never have been a rumor if I were some housewife, believe me. But now it might be to someone's advantage to find out something bad about me.' She leaned across the table, speaking quietly. 'Abraham, listen to me. Dana went to some pains to keep his books… private. The investors formed a holding company, which bought the property, then turned the profits back to the restaurant, which is why the restaurant showed so much profit that year. No names. But you can find them – people have found them – if they know where to look. Auditors, for instance.'

'But why didn't he use-?'

'Why no names? Why all the hiding?' She sat back. 'Because Dana believed knowledge is power, so don't tell anybody anything they don't need to know. Also, he thought, probably correctly, that there would be resentment by voters if it appeared that I made money off the city on a lucky guess, which was essentially what it was. We didn't do - Dana didn't do – anything wrong, but in this business, my business, politics, appearance is everything.' It clearly troubled her still. She reached a hand across to him. That's the story. Satisfied? Can we still be… whatever we are? You being a policeman and all?'

'I didn't need all that, but it's good to hear.'

Their hands met in the middle of the table. 'I don't need you to be doubting me.'

'I don't. I won't.' He raised her hand to his lips, held it against them.

It was tempting, though Loretta knew she could never do it, to lay it all out for Abe and the world to see. She'd been listening to the moans and accusations of the self-righteous for most of her adult life, and just once she'd like to go on record so the vast unwashed could really understand what you had to do to get somewhere if you'd started where she had.

She had always wanted to do some honest good, to help raise up the people she represented, to make a difference and be an active part of making her country a better place. She wasn't a cynic – she truly wanted these things. And in her career she thought she had gone a long way toward achieving some progress.

It had not been just for ego or self-aggrandizement – at least not for those alone. She never wanted Elaine to suffer the slights she'd had to endure as a child and even more as a young woman. And by God, she hadn't. Power and position did get you protection from the worst of the world. And through Elaine, by extension, her protectiveness embraced others – she'd started out her career by representing the disadvantaged, the downtrodden, back where there was a plurality of votes in that stance.

That had changed now, and she'd had to change along with it if she wanted to stay in power to do any good. She didn't believe she was abandoning her principles, she had just had to adapt to hold onto them. She couldn't help anybody, could she, if she didn't get elected first? Perhaps a politician's age-old rationalization, but it was also true. So maybe the message got watered down some, but it didn't get compromised away, not completely.

What would the righteous have done, she wondered, in her place? It was one thing to take the high moral ground and say, 'Oh I would have turned the found money over to the authorities,' another altogether to sit for four days in the stinking jungle thinking you were going to die and know you had in your possession over half a million dollars in cash that no one could ever trace.

She had never felt any qualms about the fact that she alone survived the crash. No survivor guilt. It was hardly her fault. Yes, the money might originally have come from drugs, who knew? It might have belonged to somebody else, it might have gone untaxed in the United States as income, but certainly the greater good was all it had enabled her to accomplish for her people first as a congresswoman and then a senator. The ends did justify the means – and anybody who didn't think so wasn't living a reality-based existence.

There was another more personal reason why keeping the money had never bothered her. For her it represented random fate evening out the playing field. She had been a victim of poverty – even though her good parents had always proudly if blindly denied it. They had been wrong – where they ended up verified that. She had felt the pain of it every day, in every situation. She deserved some random good luck after the bad that had been the accident of her birth into a powerless family.