John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

With a heavy sigh the bartender lifted his three-hundred-pound bulk off the industrial-strength stool he half sat, half stood on behind the bar. 'Comin'.' It was a good thing he announced it – otherwise it might not have been obvious that he was moving. Glitsky, one elbow on the bar, waited patiently. Here was a man built for comfort, not speed. The wooden slats on the floor creaked beneath him and the fifteen-foot walk seemed to just about tap him out.

'I'm looking for Mo-Mo House.' Glitsky had his wallet out on the bar and opened it, flashing his buzzer.

The man looked down, as slowly as he did everything else. 'You found him.' He wore gold-framed round lenses. The shining black forehead was high, the dreadlocks brushed with gray even in the dim light. The voice had wasted itself with whiskey – a talking blues voice – or maybe he gargled with tacks, razor blades. The fat man waited. If you don't ask, you don't ask the wrong question.

'I thought I might run into a Ridley Banks down here.'

Mo-Mo shrugged, rotated his head a few degrees. 'I don't see 'im. Get you a drink?'

Maybe it was because his friend Hardy had been around. Maybe Flo was hovering somewhere nearby – sometimes before bed she used to pour herself a shot of frozen vodka – but Glitsky surprised himself. 'What's in the Stoly bottle?'

Mo-Mo threw a look over his glasses, backed up a couple of steps, and with some effort leaned and opened a cabinet under the bar. Reaching in, he rummaged a minute, grunting, then came up with an unopened bottle of Stolichnaya, the seal still intact over the cap. He placed it on the bar, grabbed a glass, fished some ice into it. 'Help yourself. On me.'

Glitsky pointed to the other bottle of Stolichnaya on the shelf behind him. 'I don't need a new bottle.'

Mo-Mo almost smiled. 'You with the ABC?'

The Alcoholic Beverage Control would take a dim view of Mo-Mo refilling his premium vodka bottles with piss, but it didn't matter to Glitsky. These were the trades you made if you wanted results on the street.

Glitsky cracked the new bottle and poured a half inch over his ice. 'So how's business?'

Mo-Mo held up his hands. 'Hey, the blues, you know.' He glanced out over his domain. The music had changed, now either Albert or B.B., still loud. No one was paying any attention to Mo-Mo or Glitsky. 'This about Jerohm?'

'Should it be?'

Mo-Mo shrugged. 'Jerohm,' he said, 'he some bad nigger. But he old news. He in jail again?'

'I hear.'

'Me, too.' Mo-Mo settled his bulk against the counter behind him. 'So it ain't him.'

'No. I don't think so.'

Another silence. 'Some bad shit going down out there, huh?'

Glitsky nodded. 'Not good.' He took a small sip and the straight spirits, as always, constricted his throat. How did people drink this stuff every day? He swallowed again, wished he'd ordered tea, dug out a cube of ice and chewed at it.

'So, what?' Mo-Mo asked.

There wasn't really any subtle way to get what he thought he wanted, so Glitsky figured he might as well just out with it. 'You know Loretta Wager, Mo-Mo?'

No movement. Not a tic of the eye or a twist of the head. It was as though Glitsky hadn't spoken a word. Finally, the body heaved slowly and Mo-Mo reached for the well in front of him. He poured what looked in the dimness to be some yellow custard out of a bottle into a large glass into which he dumped a handful of ice, then drank off half of it.

'Can't say I really know her,' he said at last. 'Ain't seen her now in a long time. Girl goin' pretty for husself, ain't she?'

'Looks like. When you were seeing her, how was that?'

He sucked some more of the pudding out of his glass. 'We had some of the same friends, best way to put it.'

'The same friends?'

Mo-Mo nodded. 'Other day, your man axed me again 'bout this.'

'Ridley Banks?'

'That's him. Man who take down Jerohm. He and me, we go back.' His voice went down further. Glitsky had to lean halfway across the bar to hear him over the music. 'We do some tradin' now and again.'

Glitsky knew what this meant. Banks had evidently discovered something about Mo-Mo or his operation here at the Kit Kat that wasn't exactly kosher. But it didn't concern any of Ridley's active homicides. The most obvious thing would be that drugs got sold out of here. And armed with that information, Banks would make a deal – he wouldn't drop the dime on the fat man, and Mo-Mo would become an informer. This, Glitsky reasoned, was how Jerohm Reese came to be found here at the Kit Kat in such a timely manner after he had shot – oops, allegedly shot – Michael Mullen.

In his career, Glitsky had himself maintained relations with any number of criminals – prostitutes, drug couriers, con artists, burglars, car thieves. He was a homicide cop, and if these people didn't kill anybody, it wasn't his mission to bust them. They were sources of information you couldn't get at, say, the Lions' Club. So you left them alone if they stayed out of your own personal face.

'Ridley asked you about Loretta Wager?'

Mo-Mo shook his head. 'Not direct, no. Not her. But you now axin' me 'bout her, I put it together.'

'Put what…?'

'The Pacific Moon, must be.'

Glitsky felt a chill run up his back.

'But hey, them statues of limitations, they all gone run out now. Been like fifteen, sixteen years

'What has? Since what, Mo-Mo?'

'Since them days.' He obviously wasn't going to elaborate. 'You look aroun' here now. This place is what I do. Straight and legal, got no time for that crazy blow. Got a bidness here.'

'I can see that, Mo-Mo. You got a business now. But what happened all these years ago?'

Mo-Mo put down the last of his custard, belched discreetly and placed the glass on the bar. Holding out his hands defensively, an innocent man.

'Ain't none of this no secret now.'

'No. All right.'

'I mean Ridley he know all about this.'

'Okay, Mo-Mo, I read you. But what?'

'Well, one deal. Last one I done.' Glitsky swirled his ice, waiting, and Mo-Mo went on. 'Got, like, a load of bread all at once, was like a bean, bean and a half, like that, I don't remember exactly.' Mo-Mo was talking about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That was a load of bread all right.

'But it was gettin' ugly, people gettin' theyselves killed over that kind of green just layin' around. I figure I stay in the bidness I don't get old. I am not the fastest-movin' man they is, you might have noticed. But the blues, man, I love the blues. I say, "Mo, get out of this. Put that money down on some dive, make it you own." But the money needs cleanin' up. You follow me?'

Glitsky nodded. 'So you invested it in the Pacific Moon.'

"Zackly. They take a lot out, mind you, but I get like eighty ninety clean. I put it in this place. Hey, look around. Fifteen years, I still goin' strong.'

There was a hole in the blues as another song ended. One of the patrons came up and ordered a couple of longnecks while Glitsky sat there playing with his glass; Mo-Mo got the beers from the cooler, then lumbered down to the end of the bar, got his stool and carried it back with him. He sat with a sigh.

'And Loretta Wager was in this with you? Her husband?'

'Not with me. Nobody in it with me.' He lifted his heavy shoulders. 'People mind they own business. Her name come up, that's all.'

'Laundering money?'

An expansive gesture. 'I don't know that. Don't know what she doin'. Her husband either.'

'So it's possible she might have had a legitimate investment with the restaurant?'

Mo-Mo balanced himself a little more securely on his stool. 'Anything possible,' he said.

Glitsky was inundated with more stacks of paper – reports, phone messages, the day's mail – strewn across his desk, three of his inspectors hovering outside in the all-too-visible doorway. He had already made two phone calls, both to Wes Farrell. On the first one, Shea's lawyer told him that he had a lot of nerve and hung up on him. On the next, he got more personal.