John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'Mrs Wade?' She introduced herself, striving to sound like a person and not a senator. 'I just want to tell you how terribly sorry I am. I know that it can't be any help. Not now. But if you find you do need anything or if there is anything I can do…'

It did seem to matter. A little. In a surprisingly strong voice, Karin Wade thanked her, introduced her to the twins – Brenda and Ashley – and then to Arthur's mother and father, both of whom shook her hand in dignified silence.

A glance back at her daughter, sitting rigidly next to Alan Reston, who must have just come in. In front of them, braving the censure of the crowd, was Mayor Conrad Aiken and his wife. He had to be here, and to his credit, she thought, he was.

In the same row on the opposite side – Arthur Wade's side – sat Philip Mohandas with his two bodyguards.

Loretta was in a quandary over Philip's latest calls for action, his march tomorrow, his verbal attacks on Art Drysdale, his demand for the release of Jerohm Reese. But as soon as she got her executive order on Hunter's Point signed she would have secured her political base for the next election and then, even if Mohandas went off the deep end and proved himself unworthy of the public trust of administering the project, it wouldn't be her fault. She had tried. She had reached out to his people. She had other friends who wouldn't have Philip's problem with the twelve million dollars. Who would appreciate it more.

In fact, in a way, she had been relieved to hear about Philip's latest move. With his own small but vocal constituency he could prove to be very difficult to control. He had decided he could make an end run around her and still get his hands on Hunter's Point. Well… she already had Alan Reston positioned. That had been that trade. Philip Mohandas would soon enough find out how power worked.

For now let him have his little march. Let him foment things even further. So long as Kevin Shea remained the focal point for a little longer – and Philip's latest strategy seemed guaranteed to accomplish that – she was going to get what she asked for in the name of racial harmony.

Of course, if it turned out that Shea was not the pure symbol of hatred she had helped set him up to be, and if that fact came out too soon, it could all backfire. She had been so certain that Shea was guilty, had set up her whole structure on that foundation, but some of the things she had been hearing from Alan Reston, from Elaine, even from Abe…

Well, those things just couldn't come out, not until Hunter's Point was settled at the very least; maybe not ever. If Kevin Shea in fact was not guilty…

She inclined her head politely at Mohandas, took Karin Wade's hand in hers one last time and made her way back to Elaine's pew just as the assorted ecumenical ministers came out to begin the service.

Too angry to feel safe about returning to his office in homicide – he thought that at the very least he would deface some property, throw a chair through a window, something – Glitsky took the internal stairway down to the lobby of the Hall.

Walking through the same outdoor corridor where he had been rebuked last night by John Strout about paying too little attention to the Chris Locke investigation, he decided to stroll through his city.

Really pushing his luck, he turned up 6th Street, where in the first block up from the Hall of Justice you could be stabbed to death for bus change. Hands in his pockets, he stalked up the block with his edge on, making eye contact with everybody, silently daring one of the lowlifes to try something. He was just in the mood.

The walk took him all the way down to the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street, where he was calmed down enough to get another cup of tea, drinking it out of a paper cup, sitting on one of the pilings as the flat water lapped under him.

It occurred to him that now would be a good time to call Supervisor Wrightson. It was the only thing he could think to do that would, he hoped, not involve Kevin Shea in some way and would keep him out of the office.

Yes, Wrightson would still like to see him and if this morning had opened up unexpectedly for Lieutenant Glitsky, that would be fine. The supervisor would make the time for an appointment at ten o'clock sharp.

Glitsky's experience with the Board of Supervisors was limited to scurrilous rumors and to the Chronicle's political cartoon that had been on the bulletin column outside his office for five years, showing the door to the supervisors' chambers, the motto over the lintel reading: WE WILL NOT BE CONFUSED BY REALITY.

But the Supes did pay Glitsky's salary. To be more precise, they approved the city budget and the salaries of city employees, so they were not a group to antagonize gratuitously, and Greg Wrightson was the eminence grise of the Supes. At sixty-two, he had been around City Hall for nearly twenty years. Glitsky knew that the supervisors made twenty-four thousand dollars a year. As recently as fifteen years ago their salary had been only six hundred dollars a month. And yet Wrightson, a man from a middle-class background who had been drawing down this piddling wage for most of his adult life, was a very wealthy man. Abe had been making more than Wrightson for longer, and he was still a wage slave punching a clock.

Having pondered these imponderables on his walk back across town, Glitsky's mood had not improved by ten sharp when he walked into the reception area to Wrightson's office.

Wrightson's administrative assistant wore a tailored suit. The inscribed nameplate on the front of the desk read 'Nicholas Binder.' (Glitsky was a department head and he didn't have an inscribed nameplate anywhere.) If Nicholas had gotten this job randomly by taking a civil-service test, they had upgraded the pool of applicants considerably from the last time Glitsky had looked. Somebody's cousin had pulled a string.

'Mr Wrightson will be right with you, Lieutenant.'

Glitsky waited. Nicholas went back to his computer, occasionally stopping to pick up the telephone, make a note. Were there riots going on outside? Was the city falling apart? No sign of it here. Clearing his throat, Abe checked his watch. It was nine minutes past ten.

'Are you sure I can't get you something, Lieutenant?'

Glitsky's patience had disappeared. 'You can get me inside that door there by ten-fifteen. How about that?'

Nicholas tried one of those 'what can you do?' shrugs, but it was the wrong day for it. 'I've got this fifteen-minute rule I'm pretty strict about and I'm either in there talking with Mr Wright-son in six minutes or we'll have to do it another time.'

'Sir?'

'My appointment was for ten o'clock?'

'That's right.'

'Okay, then, ten-fifteen.'

Nicholas seemed to decide the lieutenant wasn't kidding because he got up, crossed the office, knocked on and then disappeared through Wrightson's thick, solid, darkly stained wooden floor.

'Lieutenant Glitsky, sorry to keep you waiting.' Wrightson was striding forward, hand outstretched. 'I'm afraid I got involved in one of those conference calls and lost track of the time. Come on in, come on in. Can Nicholas get you anything?'

'I'm fine.'

Glitsky was standing, shaking his hand, taking his measure. The thumbnail sketch put him at five-ten, one seventy-five, nearly bald, piercing gray-blue eyes.

They went, Glitsky following, into an enormous, elegantly furnished office that resembled Abe's in no conceivable fashion. The view looked out through some clean windows (how did that happen?) over the six square blocks of the Civic Center Park – now a tent city. But usually, out this window, would be expanses of lawn, sculpted shrubbery, the pool and fountain, cherry and flowering pear trees. This was the face San Francisco put out for the world, and it was a beautiful one, laid out at the feet of Greg Wrightson.