John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

He did not go to his desk, as Glitsky expected he would, but led them both to a sitting area – a couch and two stuffed chairs around a polished coffee table on a South American rug. Glitsky took one of the chairs, sinking deeply, and Wrightson started right off.

'I wanted to thank you for making the time to come and see me. As you know, we're faced with some tough decisions this year on the city's budget, and in the past we've been forced to try to cut back – trim the fat so to speak – on some vital services… such as the police department.'

There was no sign of irony, though there was good reason for it. The supervisors had just voted an extra two hundred thousand dollars for Kevin Shea's reward and Wrightson had picked now to talk about the police budget?

Glitsky wondered if he should mention his missing door to Wrightson but he kept it straight. "There isn't much fat anymore. It's pretty lean down at the Hall,' he said.

Wrightson nodded. He was leaning forward in the chair now, hands clasped in front of him. 'Well, with these riots and the perception that San Francisco is not a safe place anymore I think we've got a window of opportunity here. We'll be able to free up some money for police services.'

Glitsky sat, listening to him go on, stifling the replies he would have given if he were getting this kosher baloney from anyone else, wondering why he was here at all. Finally Wrightson wound down. '… which is why I thought I'd talk with the individual department heads.'

'Okay.'

'I'd like to know what you really need to do your jobs.'

'That'll be easy.' But if Wrightson was asking him for specific examples of how short money had hampered investigations, he'd be talking until Christmas.

Wrightson clapped his hands once. 'Good. We might as well start with the personnel breakdown in homicide. I could look it up but-'

'What do you mean?'

'You know, how many people, ethnicities, genders…?' At Glitsky's look, he hurried on. 'That's what's going to loosen the purse strings, Lieutenant. You know that.'

'I thought it was the lack of funds hampering our ability to perform.'

Wrightson waved that off. 'Oh, sure, there's that, but let's be realistic. Your best shot at beefing up your department is increasing your head count. That increases the overheads all around and presto suddenly you've got money for a new coffee machine.'

'A new coffee machine? How about a lab that's open on weekends? How about overtime instead of comp time? How about guys getting paid when they stay late writing reports?'

Wrightson was shaking his head. 'No, no. I mean, all of that's important, don't get me wrong, but nobody's going to vote money for that stuff. It's just not sexy, you know what I mean?'

'I guess not.'

'Well, I do. You tell me about your department and I'll tell you what it needs.'

Glitsky ran it down – twelve inspectors, all male, of which four were African-American, two he thought probably qualified as Spanish-surname.

'You really ought to know that kind of thing for sure,' Wrightson said. 'It's in your best interest.' Then: 'What about women?'

'No. We don't have any women.'

'Oriental?'

'No.'

'Gay?'

'Doubt it, don't really know. Does this stuff matter?'

'Native American?'

'I didn't realize we had an appreciable percentage of the city and county that was Native American.'

Wrightson gave a conspiratorial grimace. 'You're going to be in good shape. You'll need at least three, maybe five new inspectors.'

Glitsky sat forward. 'Mr Wrightson, we don't need more inspectors. We need more support.'

'Yeah, but you won't get the support, Lieutenant. What you need is to get closer to compliance.'

'But isn't that for the PD as a whole…?'

'Well, yes, originally, but this was the idea I took to Chief Rigby. He liked it.' Wrightson was pumped up about his role in all of this. 'Look, the force needs money and this is the way it's going to get it. The quotas – we don't call them that, of course – we amend the compliance-factors language so that it applies to each individual detail instead of the department as a whole.'

'But homicide is… it's the top of the pyramid. I mean, you don't just plunk people into homicide and make them inspectors to fill some quota – '

Wrightson's eyes were shining now, his color high. 'Where have you been, Lieutenant? This is San Francisco. Of course, that's what you do.'

'But-'

'This should make you especially happy – '

The scar in Glitsky's lips was white with tension. He could feel it. He didn't want to react angrily to Wrightson. Not personally. Not this morning. Not with all the other thin ice he was walking on. Maybe Wrightson was right – he was out of step and should be delighted at lowering the admissions standards for his detail.

But he couldn't stop himself. 'It makes me puke,' he said.

So much for the first two items he had left in the center of his desk the night before – Rigby's urgent call and the two messages from Greg Wrightson. Glitsky flashed his badge at a black-and-white out on Polk in front of City Hall and bummed a ride back to the Hall of Justice.

All these Halls and no shelter to be found.

Rigby had told Glitsky he was off the Kevin Shea matter, but on reflection Glitsky realized that he hadn't been specifically told to stop supervising his troops. Had that been on purpose, he wondered, Rigby covering his own ass in case Glitsky was on the verge of coming up with something? At the very least, that interpretation gave Glitsky an argument in the event he got called in front of the Police Commission.

In ten minutes he was back in his office, Carl Griffin sitting across from him, as angry, if that were possible, as Glitsky was. The inspector had a gooey-looking red stain on the front of his shirt. Either the remains of a jelly donut or he'd been wounded in the line of duty and hadn't noticed.

'So I caught Feeney' – this was another assistant district attorney, Tony Feeney – 'last night before I went home, got a tentative okay on immunity for him being in the mob if Devlin testifies. I got everybody down here, this morning eight sharp. Devlin, his dad, his lawyer, the whole gang, and Feeney comes in and announces no deal.'

'No deal at all?'

Griffin popped a couple of sticks of gum. ' Nada . Alan Reston isn't giving deals. New policy. How's he gonna get any witnesses, I ask, if he don't trade for nothing? So Colin Devlin's lawyer says why you wastin' our times, and they all go out, get a nice breakfast someplace.'

Glitsky was sitting all the way back in his chair, fingers templed in front of his mouth. 'What was this Devlin going to say?'

'Well, you had us looking for guys in the mob-'

'I remember, Carl. And Devlin admits he was there?'

'Not only there, he was part of it. His version – what he told me yesterday – started coming down to being that he got swept up in the mob, couldn't get out of it, and got between Arthur Wade and whoever was trying to get to him.'

'Did he say why somebody might have been trying to get to Wade? Trying to cut him down maybe? Did he see who it was? Kevin Shea, for example?'

Griffin was shaking his head. 'None of that. Sorry. I tried but the guy got his Achilles tendon cut in half, Abe. He went down like a sack. It never got beyond that, at least for him. But how we gonna-?'

'I know, I know. Wait a minute.' He brought his feet down. 'If Devlin was in the mob he'd be an accessory…' Glitsky was thinking that without a deal they could still arrest Devlin on that fact alone.

'Sure, that was the plan, but nope. I ran that one by Feeney, too, before everybody'd even left, while Devlin's lawyer was still there. I told him, "Look, you don't cut him a deal, what are you gonna want me to do, arrest him?" and Feeney looks at me and says what for? So I tell him 'cause he was in the mob and he tells me without Devlin's confessing to it there's no proof of that, so I tell him he did confess, more or less. Admitted he was there, at least. The guy just shrugs. Doesn't necessarily prove intent, he says. Christ! Whose side these guys on downstairs? Who is this Reston asshole anyway? Where'd he come from?'