John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

With the third call, Glitsky was luckier – his friend Hardy had gone back home after his lunchtime visit at Abe's and was spending the day, he said, planing some windows.

'I've got a question for you.' Glitsky was holding up a finger, keeping his inspectors at bay. There were rumblings of impatience.

'And I've got an answer,' Hardy said. 'Just a second, let me think – the Greyhound bus station.'

'Amazing. You got it on the first try. The question was, name a common acronym for the initials TGBS?'

Hardy liked it. 'What's the real question?'

'The real question is how well do you know Wes Farrell?'

'Who?'

'Wes Farrell, the lawyer. You said he hung out at the Shamrock sometimes, which is the bar you own, am I right?'

'Oh, that Wes Farrell.'

'I just called that Wes Farrell and he wouldn't say boo to me.'

'You know what, Abe? Sometimes I feel that way, too.'

'Yeah, well yesterday he wanted to talk to me in the worst way and today he's a stone wall. I've got to find out what's going on.'

'Okay. Go find out.'

'He won't talk to me. Are you listening? Are you hearing me at all?'

'You ring his doorbell, say you're the police, I don't think he's got an option.'

'I don't want to do that.' He omitted the information that he had been forbidden to work on Kevin Shea at all. He couldn't assign any of his inspectors. The sudden realization that Hardy could help him had been a bolt of inspiration.

There was a silence on the line. 'You want me to do that?'

'I don't want to alienate him any further. I may need him.'

'You may need him?'

'That's right.'

'What for?'

'To get Kevin Shea to give himself up.'

'Without a deal?'

'If I need to. If I can. At least I've got to know what's going on, and right now I don't have a clue. I'd put off mentioning my name for the first couple of minutes, though. He really doesn't want to talk to me, I can tell.'

'What if he won't talk to me?'

'Why wouldn't he? A fellow defense attorney? You guys are all a big happy family, aren't you?'

'Oh, that's right, I forgot for a minute.'

'Hardy…'

'All right , I'll call him. Get the lay of the land. Do I bill you or the city?'

'I'll buy you a can of chili,' Glitsky said, and hung up.

For the next twenty-five minutes, the lieutenant put in a few licks on his regular job, listening to the complaints, problems, strategies of his men. They were working on the usual – witness interviews, getting warrants, plans to testify in court, report writing, rebookings (an administrative process whereby after a suspect was arrested for a given crime – in all Glitsky's cases, degrees of murder – the district attorney's office then decided on the formal charge). It was never ending, especially lately – he discovered he had two more non-riot-related homicides that he needed to assign, families that had to be informed, witnesses to cajole or hassle, legwork, background checks and alibis. He called in two men at random and gave them the cases, told them – a joke – he wanted both cases closed in under twelve hours and went downstairs to the cafeteria for a cup of tea, maybe settle his stomach.

Griffin was eating again – there were two unopened bags of Twinkies in front of him, one of the tiny cakes in his hand, and cellophane and cardboard from at least two more packages on the table in front of him. A quart of milk.

Glitsky stood across from him with his tea. 'You on a diet, Carl?' He sat down.

'I was on my way up.'

'That's all right. I was on my way down. What'd you get, anything?'

Griffin chewed happily, nodding. 'Just a minute,' he said, hoisting the milk carton and holding it to his mouth for three swallows. 'Okay. Something.' He used his notes, pulling a steno pad from somewhere beside him. He brought that, too, up to the table.

'General consensus seems to be that it went down near Dearborn and 18th Street.' San Francisco had both numbered streets and numbered avenues – it could be bad luck to get them confused. 'There's a dead end halfway down Dearborn.'

'A dead end?'

'Yeah. Bird Street.'

Glitsky frowned, but Griffin didn't see it. He was consulting his notes. 'All this is about a block and a half east of Dolores Park, where they used to have the tents up.'

'What do you mean, used to?'

'I mean they're gone. They relocated after the fire down there. Moved 'em somewhere else.'

'So who'd you talk to?'

'I went door to door. I knew it was on the Guerrero side so I rang doorbells.'

'And…?'

'And the usual. Got one guy…' He flipped some of his pages, searching for names and addresses he could show his lieutenant. 'Says he heard a shot on Dearborn. Another coupla ladies live together' – he flipped the page – 'they say no, it was Bird. Another guy on Bird says it was Bird. I figure two out of three. But there's apartments all up and down the block. You couldn't tell where from hearing – the sound of the shot bounced off the buildings around the corner.'

'But there would have been two shots?'

'Yeah, I know. But I couldn't find anybody who'd heard two. Nobody recognized two, anyway.' He shrugged, chewed some Twinkie. 'Hey, we're lucky we got one. We can talk to 'em again, the people who heard one, maybe they'll remember.'

'Anybody actually see anything?'

'No. It was dark, or just near it. The streetlights don't work on Bird. A few people mentioned it.'

'Maybe some of the rioters?'

Griffin was finishing the Twinkie, shaking his head. "They were all gone, remember. I got no idea where they are now, who was there then.'

Glitsky didn't like it but he had to take it.

'So I go, it must be Bird. Except there's nothing to call forensics about on Bird. No fresh treadmarks. No accumulation of glass. No big rocks might have gotten thrown. No nothing. I walk the whole street and I'm just about through when the old ladies are coming out for lunch, and they say the riot never came around to Bird – it stayed out by 18th, maybe pitched a little into Dearborn. So now I'm thinkin' that it's the reverse of what I thought before – the shots were on Dearborn, they bounced around the corner to Bird.'

'So you checked out Dearborn?'

'What I could. You want to come down again, look with me, I'd do it again. But I didn't see anything in the street.'

Glitsky took a sip of his tea. It had gone lukewarm. He grimaced – it wasn't turning out to be his day. 'But listen to this, Carl. You're telling me there's a riot below these apartment buildings and nobody's looking out their windows, down at it?'

'No. I talked to half a dozen folks saw the riot-'

'But those people didn't see anything, the car…?'

'Somebody might have, Lieutenant, just nobody I talked to. You want, I'll go back tonight. More people home. Somebody will have seen something. Maybe.'

Glitsky sat chewing on it for a minute. 'You'd better. Why don't you pick one of the guys, have him go out with you. And maybe find out where the residents of the tent city have been relocated to.

Somebody in that riot killed Chris Locke, and somebody must have seen him do it.' Glitsky spread his hands. 'Seen something, at least. But it could be a long night.'

Griffin was holding his next Twinkie. 'Won't be the first one,' he said.

'Gin.' Melanie laid her hand face up. 'Read 'em an' weep.'

Kevin folded his cards into the deck.

'Hey, you're supposed to count-'

'You won, Melanie. That's the game. I guarantee I'm over a hundred. I might be over two hundred after that last hand, which was a no-brainer if I've ever seen one.'

'Hey, you are a bad sport.'

'Maybe I'm just tired of gin.'

He got up from the kitchen table, where they had been sitting, and went into the living room. The apartment was feeling a little small. They had slept in, then awakened with both of them feeling a bit shaky after the Fred party. They'd checked the television to see if Kevin's tape was ready for prime time (it wasn't), made love, gone back to sleep. When they'd gotten up the second time Kevin had plugged the phone back in and called Wes Farrell, taken his offer to go see what had happened to the tape, then foraged for food and finally dealt the cards. Two plus hours of gin rummy.