The Second Chair (28 page)

Another set of footsteps on the stairs. This time the male voice, though heavily accented, spoke English. “Yes.”

“Mr. Salarco?” he said through the door. “My name is Dismas Hardy. I’m the lawyer for Andrew Bartlett. About the murder case?” No response. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to talk to you if I may.”

Salarco didn’t ponder for long. Perhaps, Hardy thought, he considered anyone involved with the case a potential official who could turn him in. If so, Hardy was happy to let him keep believing that.

With bright red skin and an unlined face, he struck Hardy as much younger than his stated age of twenty-eight. A little above medium height, in his T-shirt and jeans, Salarco could have been a weight lifter, with his massive arms and well-developed shoulders, tiny waist. But the face—Hardy came back to it—it was the face of a boy. “
Tardes, señor
 . . . what is it, please, your name again?”

“Hardy. Dismas Hardy.”

“Deezmus. I don’t know that name.”

Hardy kept it genial. “Nobody does. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

They ascended a narrow stairway that ended in another door that opened into Salarco’s living room. It was little more than a cubicle, but nicely furnished in Salvation Army. A beaded bottle of Modelo Negro rested on the coffee table, along with a paperback book—
Cien Años de Soledad.
So the gardener was a reader, perhaps with intellect. It was good, Hardy thought, to find out early.

The television was tuned to a Spanish station. Salarco turned it off, indicating that Hardy sit on the upholstered couch.
“Cerveza?”
he asked, and Hardy nodded. When he came back with the beer, Salarco took the opposite end of the couch. “So what do you want to know?” he asked.

Hardy put his beer down on the table, took a relaxed position. “I’d really just like to walk through the events of the night of the murder, when you called the police. I’ve got a copy of your statements here, and I just wondered if you’d mind telling me again what you did that night, in your own words. Would that be all right with you?”

“
Sí.
Sure.”

“Before we begin, though, I want to ask you if you’ve talked to any lawyers with the DA’s office about your statements, or your identification of Andrew Bartlett.”

He thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “Not any lawyers. I have talked to the police three, maybe four times. But no lawyers.”

This made sense to Hardy. In the normal course of events this case wouldn’t come to trial for the best part of a year. Whoever pulled Andrew Bartlett for the adult trial wouldn’t even have had a chance to review his own discovery yet. With all the dealing and then the hurry to move Andrew up out of juvenile court, Hardy doubted whether Brandt had, either, since he didn’t have to know all the facts about the crime—he wasn’t trying the case.

So Hardy had a clear field. But before he started to run, it was important that Salarco understand his position. He had already gotten it out, and now he handed him his business card, as required by statute. “I want you to know that I represent Andrew Bartlett, the boy you identified as the killer of Mr. Mooney and the girl, Laura Wright. I’m
his
lawyer. I want to hear what you have to say because I’m going to have to try to find out what happened.”

The seriousness of the little speech hit a mark. Salarco drew his arm off the couch and onto his lap. His brow clouded a bit. “I will just tell the truth,” he said, “as I have.”

“That’s all I can ask. Thank you.” He took a hand-held tape recorder from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. “Do you have any objection if I record what you say?”

It wasn’t clear whether Salarco knew he had the option to refuse. He nodded, then waited. “How do you want me to start?”

“Just what happened that night.”

Another nod. “The main thing is Carla, our baby, she was sick. High high fever. She is crying crying, but finally, maybe about nine o’clock, we finally get her to start to sleep.” He uncrossed his legs, reached for his beer and drank. “But then downstairs, you know, just down there, right below, we hear this . . . this
fight.
”

“A physical fight?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see, but I heard loud yelling—a man, two men, and a woman.
Loud! Really loud!
And of course then it wakes up Carla. She started crying again and . . . You have babies?”

“Two,” Hardy said. “Older now.”

“Well, you know, then . . . when they cry. At least me, it makes me . . . I don’t know the word.
Impaciente.
Crazy to have it stop.”

“Impatient,” Hardy said. And thought, To say the least.

“
Sí
. Impatient. So then Carla starts again and I am impatient with the noise from below. So I stomp on the floor like this”—he brought his heel down—“boom, boom, and it’s quiet for another few minutes, then the yelling starts again, and Carla is crying.”

“And what happened then?” Hardy asked.

“Then, when it started again, I went downstairs to ask them to stop.”

“Just a minute, please.” Hardy sat up straight. This was not in anything he’d read. “You’re saying you went downstairs at a little after nine o’clock and talked to the people down there?”

“Sí.”

“And who was there?”

“The girl, Señor Mike, and the boy.”

“Andrew? The boy you identified in the lineup?”

“Sí.”

Hardy took a breath. This wasn’t good. If Salarco had seen Andrew at the house, close up, there was much less chance that he’d been mistaken at the lineup, or would recant at the trial. He sipped some beer to get his concern under control, and the question came out almost casually. “And what then? Did they tell you they’d stop fighting?”

A questioning look crossed Salarco’s face.

“What is it?” Hardy asked.

But it passsed. “Nothing,” Salarco said. “I don’t know. But yes, they said they’d stop.”

“And then it was quiet?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“
No se.
When the baby is crying, time just goes, you know. But again, we just got her to sleep again and Anna and I, we come out here, to this room, and turn on the TV, real quiet, but then there is this . . . this scream, the girl, and then a . . . a bump. You could feel it up here, like something dropped. The house shook. Then right after, a crash, the sound of a crash, glass breaking. And a few seconds later, suddenly
boom
again, the house shakes another time, somebody slamming the front door under us.”

Salarco on his feet now, acting it out. “Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. He stops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to . . . to yell at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying.
Madre de dios!
” Salarco, living it again, turned to Hardy and put both hands to his head. “Is it never going to end?”

“And then?”

“Then I . . . remember, I am . . . I have no sleep and my baby has been crying for ten hours straight. I run downstairs. I go to yell at them all, but when I hit the front door, I hit it with a fist and it . . . it opens.” His hands hung at his side. “And I see them.”

“Mooney and the girl?”

“
Sí.
On the floor, with so much blood. I walk in. The girl is shot, I think, in the chest, and is by the back wall. There is a big stand-up lamp knocked on the floor, broken, all smashed, next to her, but there is still light above and from in the
cocina
. And Señor Mike is on his back with a hole in his face. I will never forget.”

“No,” Hardy said. “I’m sorry.”

Salarco crossed back to the couch, sat now on the edge of it. He seemed to remember his beer and picked it up, drained it, looked across to Hardy.
“Otros?”

Hardy hadn’t put much of a dent in his first beer, and didn’t want another, but he wanted to keep Salarco talking.
“Gracias. Sí.”

When he came back with the two cold ones, he put them on the coffee table and began without any prompting. “So the phone is there, and I go to it and push nine one one, and tell what I see, where I am. And while I am talking, I notice the gun on the little table in front of the couch.” He leaned forward, knocked wood. “Just the same as this one.”

“And then what did you do?”

“Then I see how bad this looks, me in this room with the gun. I think the boy, maybe he’s going to come back. If he sees I am there, he can say it was me.”

“What was you?”

“Who killed these people.”

“Why would you have done that?”

Salarco turned his palms up. “The noise. I already come down one time to stop it. Maybe next time, I bring the gun and make sure. Then the woman on the phone, she tries more to get my name, and the other thing comes to me,
la migra.
I know I have to go. I cannot be there when the authorities come. So I come back up here and watch out the window until the boy comes back, and the authorities.”

“You mean Andrew again?”

“Sí.”

“You saw him under the streetlight there out the window?”

“Sí.”

“The same boy? You’re sure.”

Salarco put down his beer bottle, turned and faced Hardy directly. “I’m sorry,
señor,
but it was him. The same hair, the same clothes . . .”

“And what were they, the clothes?”

“Like all of them wear. I don’t know how you say . . . loose?”

“Baggy?”

Salarco nodded. “
Sí.
The pants, baggy. And then the . . .” He made a gesture of pulling something over his head. “Like Eminem in the movie.”

“You mean he had a hood? A sweatshirt with a hood?”

“
Sí.
That was it.”

“And even with the hood, you saw his face? And it was the same face?”

After the shortest pause, Salarco nodded. “
Sí.
Of course. It was the same boy, I say.”

Hardy believed him. In fact, it had to be Andrew returning from his walk, or from wherever he had gone. Perhaps having run away and then realizing he’d left the gun, which could be traced back to him. Looking up, Hardy caught a glimpse of Salarco’s wife hovering in the doorway back to the kitchen. He might have to talk to her one day as well, but for tonight, he took a last pull from his beer, then stood up. “I want to thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I am sorry about the boy,
señor
. Truly I am.”

“Thank you,” Hardy said. “I am, too.”

16

I
t was well past nine o’clock by the time Glitsky sat down to dinner at the small table in his kitchen.

Treya had gotten good at meals that took fifteen minutes to prepare, and she waited until she heard his tread on the steps up to their duplex before she threw the halibut on to broil in the oven. When she turned it the one time, she would smear it with jalapeño jelly, which would melt, forming a fantastic glaze. The asparagus sat in a shallow covered pan with a quarter inch of boiling water. She’d finish that with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sea salt. A small, still warm, dense loaf of homemade bread-machine bread—roasted-garlic with Asiago cheese—would round out the meal, after which they’d split a plate of frozen grapes for dessert.

Glitsky had fed Rachel in her high chair and for the past few minutes had been doing magic tricks, making a quarter disappear. Now Treya put the adult plates down. “Arranged yet,” he said. She’d garnished with a few sprigs of fresh rosemary. A crystal vase sat between the place mats on the small wooden table, and in it bloomed one perfect daffodil.

Glitsky put a finger on his daughter’s nose, turned to his food and picked up his fork. “Do I thank you enough for doing all this?”

Treya kissed the top of his head. “Every day.” She touched her baby’s cheek. “You gave me her, didn’t you?” She came around the table and took her seat. “Now shush and eat your fish. It’s brain food.”

“I’d better, then. I’m going to need it.” He chewed, swallowed. “This Boscacci thing.”

“At least it’s not LeShawn Brodie. I checked, and you’d dropped right off the news tonight, just like it never happened.”

“Fresh kill,” Glitsky said. “Anyhow, you’ll be glad to hear Amy Wu’s almost certainly out of it.”

“She was never really in, though, was she?”

“No, not really, although she could have timed her last meeting with Allan a little better. The real story, though, is that because of her, I got to give Diz a little grief.”

Treya smiled. “Always a plus.”

“And even more so because I swung by his office to give him his earful of righteous cop, and while I was there, I found a way to repay him for his little caper with my peanut drawer.”

“I thought you weren’t sure who that was.”

“I wasn’t, then I realized it had to be Diz. No one else is that immature.”

“I can think of one other person,” she said.

The corners of Glitsky’s mouth rose a fraction of an inch. “Thank you,” he said. “Plus, anybody at the Hall, it’s too risky if I catch them. They’re flayed, then fired. Diz, I get him red-handed and he says, ‘Ha ha, you got me, so what?’ It was him.”

“Okay. So what’d you do to him?”

“First, you have to promise not to tell under penalty of death.”

“That goes without saying.”

“Diz or Frannie. You’ll be tempted.”

“I’ll resist, I promise. What?”

A spark of mischief flashed in his eyes. “I stole his darts. You want to hear the best part?”

“That wasn’t it? What could be better?”

“Next time I’m there, I’m going to put them back. Then steal them again. My hope is that eventually he’ll go insane.”

“And that would be so that you two could play together as equals?” Treya put her fork down and looked across the table, her own eyes alight. She turned to Rachel. “Do you know how lucky you are that you can’t understand any of this?” she asked.

An hour later, the baby was in bed and the two of them sat in their living room with their after dinner tea. “But that poor man . . .” Treya was talking about Boscacci. “Do you have anything at all?”