Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (40 page)

She motioned. 'Down that hall, just off the bedroom.'

The bedroom blinds were pulled down. His eyes weren't adjusted and the light switch wasn't where it should have been next to the door, so he stood a moment until he could see, then crossed the room. The bed was made. Next to it, on the end table, was another framed photograph, something familiar about it even in the low light. He leaned over, picked it up. Chris Locke.

Next to her bed?

The pallor, the fatigue, the confusion ... he stood, rooted to the spot.

The light came on overhead. Elaine at the door. 'I keep forgetting, they put this switch .. .'Then, seeing him with the picture: 'Oh ...'

A long silent moment. She crossed to the bed, sat, smiled weakly at him.

'Yeah. Me and Chris.'

'Does anybody else ...?'

She nodded. 'Just my mother. I had to tell her.'

Glitsky finally put down the picture and went into the bathroom. When he came out she was in the same place on the bed, staring at nothing. He came around to her, paused, then turned around and walked to the bedroom door. 'I'd better get downtown,' he said.

She drew a deep breath. 'I don't know – '

'You and me and your mother,' he said. 'It doesn't go anywhere else. It stops right here.'

Glitsky broke through the cordon of functionaries outside the office, opened the inner door to the War Room and strode up to Rigby. 'We've got to talk.'

The days had taken their toll on the usually genial chief of police. He straightened from where he had been hunched over his desk and raised his voice. 'I'm not in the habit of taking orders from my lieutenants. Or in tolerating that insubordinate tone of voice from anyone. AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?'

The room died behind them.

'And you're right,' the chief continued, booming, 'we've got to talk. BUT IT'S MY GODDAMN CALL. AGAIN, LIEUTENANT, IS THAT PERFECTLY CLEAR?'

Glitsky hadn't been formally dressed down since the Academy – it startled him. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Sorry, sir.'

Rigby – Marine brush-cut, bulldog face – looked every inch the police chief. He glared at the minions in the room. 'You people,' his voice boomed, 'the lieutenant and I need five minutes. Exactly.'

The two men waited while the room cleared, Glitsky at attention, Rigby apoplectic while still appearing to hold himself back. 'Where the
hell
have you been?'

'When, sir?'

'Whenever the
hell
I've been trying to reach you, is
when
, Lieutenant. You get a message from me? Urgent?'

'Yes, sir, last night.'

'Well?'

'I called immediately, sir. No one was here.'

'That's impossible. What time was that?'

'I'm not sure exactly ... eleven o'clock, midnight.'

The chief slumped a fraction of an inch, lowered his voice a decibel. 'Goddamn it, Abe, what the hell?'

Glitsky waited.

'You remember the chat we had yesterday with our new district attorney? Where we requested you not meddle in the DA's internal affairs?'

'Yes, sir. Although that wasn't—'

'And then, not an hour later, you're pleading the case for Kevin Shea's
innocence
with Elaine Wager, who then goes to try and sell it to Reston?'

That's not—'

'I don't care, do you understand me? I count on you. You run one of my departments and, until this week, you've done a goddamn fine job.' He came down to a whisper. 'You are a homicide inspector. You don't argue for somebody's
innocence
. Don't you understand
that
! In fact, you don't argue for anything. You're not a lawyer. You don't make deals. You arrest people. Period. The end. Goddamn it.'

Rigby pulled at the collar of his shirt, suddenly sucking in air. Glitsky began to move forward, but the chief stopped him. 'I'm fine, goddamn it, but I am about at the end of my rope here.' The heavy breathing slowed down, the voice modulated again. 'Now, I have promised Mr Reston to take care of this situation, and here's what I'm doing – you are
off
Kevin Shea. You are not investigating the riot or any part of it. The FBI is in on this now and they're taking it under their federal jurisdiction as a civil rights matter.'

'A murder?'

'That's right, a murder that deprived Arthur Wade of his civil rights—'

'But it's also under our jurisdiction, no matter—'

'Are you hearing me, Lieutenant, or do you want to hand me your badge right now?'

Glitsky almost bit through his tongue. 'Yes, sir. I hear you.'

'Then you're dismissed. Thank you.'

Rigby looked down immediately, back to whatever he was studying on his desk. Glitsky turned and walked to the door, opened it and marched through the suddenly silent crowd hovering in the outer office.

There was little that any civic leader could do about the funerals. No one was about to suggest to Arthur Wade's grieving wife Karin that for the sake of civic peace they postpone putting her husband in sacred ground. She did not object to the mayor's idea of a 'martyr's funeral' to include Chris Locke and his family.

Arthur Wade had been a practicing Catholic and the High Mass had already been moved from his parish church, St Catherine's, out in the Avenues to the expansive reaches of Saint Mary's Cathedral on the same Geary Street that – down at the corner of 2nd Avenue – used to be the location of the Cavern Tavern.

The Most Reverend James Flaherty, Archbishop of San Francisco, had originally intended to preside at the Mass but the Archdiocese had soon found itself in rancorous deliberations with, among others, Philip Mohandas, the Board of Supervisors, the mayor's office, The National Organization For Women and the National Council of Churches.

These negotiations had ultimately altered the format for the Mass, which would be celebrated by what was viewed as a more appropriate, more ecumenical triumvirate of clerics of color, two of whom had been flown in – the female from Philadelphia and the native African from Kenya – under one of the city's emergency budget provisions.

It was nine-thirty on a clear and still morning, half an hour before the service was to begin, and already the concrete open area in front of the cathedral – the size of a football field – throbbed with humanity, mostly well-dressed, mostly African-American, clustered in groups of five to fifteen, moving toward the church's doors.

The limousine door opened and Senator Loretta Wager reflexively reached over, protecting her daughter from the curious who had crowded around the tinted windows to see who was pulling up. On the way to Elaine's apartment and then again on the short ride here the limo had passed armored trucks on the back streets they had been able to drive on.

Elaine stepped out first, then her mother. Around the square, policemen patrolled on foot and on horseback. Overhead, two helicopters circled just low enough to be annoying.

Loretta firmly shooed away the swarm of reporters. This was not the time for a comment. She and her daughter were here to pay their respects to two martyrs of civil rights. If might be a better use of everyone's time, Loretta said, if the reporters put their microphones away and went inside and prayed for the future of our great city and country. Astoundingly, Loretta thought, a couple of them nodded, gave their equipment to their assistants and fell in behind them.

Mother and daughter walked arm-in-arm across the concrete, moving with the flow of the crowd. Inside the high modern cathedral a gospel choir filled the air – beautiful and appropriate, Loretta thought. Tears had broken on Elaine's face. The two caskets were up front at the altar, side-by-side, and she and Elaine continued their walk until they came to them, kneeled, lowered their heads in an attitude of prayer.

Elaine slid into the ribboned section reserved for them three rows back, but Loretta took another moment. Walking to the front of the first pew, she held out her hand to Margaret Locke, who was sitting with her four teenaged children, all of them looking stunned, vacant.

'Margaret,' she said. Locke's widow stood and the two women embraced. 'If there is anything I can do ...'

Then, crossing the center aisle, she paused. The front pew on this side held a dozen mourners – she supposed they were Arthur Wade's parents, brothers, sisters, his wife's family. It was obvious which one was Karin, Arthur's wife. Attractive but without expression except an attitude of rigid control, her gaze straight ahead and unseeing, the young woman sat flanked by her toddler twins. Loretta walked over to her.

'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.