Damage

by John Lescroart

  But it turned out that the red strobes were enough.

  Glitsky turned and had only taken two steps back toward his car when Ro Curtlee emerged from the house, his drink in his hand, striding purposefully down the walk, looking up the street toward the patrol car with its lights flashing. Today he was wearing a gray hoodie with the top down, new jeans, new tennis shoes. “I don’t believe this shit,” he yelled into the night. Still focused on the patrol car up the street, he never even noticed Glitsky until he and the other two patrolmen were almost upon him.

  “You’d better believe it,” Glitsky said. “Ro Curtlee, I’m placing you under arrest for threatening a police officer’s family. You have the right to remain . . .”

  Shaking his head, seemingly enjoying himself, Ro flipped Glitsky the bird and turned to head back toward his front door.

  Daly, on Glitsky’s left, blocked the line of escape, leaving Ro surrounded by police. But Ro hadn’t spent eight years in prison for nothing. His face actually broke a smile. “Hey, easy,” he said.

  He held his hands up as though he posed no threat, giving up. Taking a step forward, he slashed out his right hand in a vicious karate chop that Daly only partially blocked before it hit him in the throat. Staggered, Daly slumped enough for Ro to block him into a tree by the drive. Still coming forward in the same movement, Ro got ahold of Daly’s belt and brought his knee up into Daly’s groin. When the officer bent over, Ro reached around him and got his hand on the butt of Daly’s gun, holding on to and pulling it out of the holster as he pushed him away, then butted him with enough force to send him back out into Glitsky.

  Ro came around with the gun, but Monroe was ready for the attack and came around with his nightstick, hitting Ro a solid crack on the elbow. Amazingly the blow had no apparent effect. Ro swung at Monroe’s face with Daly’s gun, a blow that Monroe blocked with his own nightstick, then came down with a counterstrike on Ro’s arm, following it with a full-on body slam.

  Ro brought the gun up in Monroe’s general direction and pulled the trigger, but Daly hadn’t chambered a round, and nothing happened but a click.

  This gave Monroe just time to jab Ro in the gut and to take a swing at his gun hand, connecting and sending the semiautomatic skittering over the flagstones. Monroe then backed away just enough to get room for another swing.

  But Glitsky came up and blocked him, grabbing his suspect by his sweatshirt, throwing him to the ground. Ro went sprawling facedown onto the wet flagstones, then used his momentum to flip himself over, get upright, and kick out at Monroe’s legs with a guttural grunt. The second cop let out a cry and went down.

  But by now Glitsky had Daly’s nightstick and he swung it once in a roundhouse backhand that Ro tried to block with his forearm. A crack as hard wood met bone, and Ro let out a yell of agony, and almost simultaneously Daly slammed into him with a football tackle, taking him down, holding on as Ro continued to kick at him. Monroe scrambled over a few feet, brought up his nightstick, and hit Ro in the head, the shoulders, and then in the head again.

  Daly yelling, “I got him! I got him!” he tried to wrestle Ro’s arms behind his back while reaching for his handcuffs. The suspect kept up the struggle under him, but by now Monroe had come over and pinned his upper body while Glitsky got down by his feet and held him there.

  In a few more seconds, it was over.

  The two patrolmen jerked Ro to his feet. He was bleeding from his scalp and his mouth, spewing invective all over Glitsky, who’d by now drawn his gun. “You broke my arm, you cocksucker! You broke my fucking arm!”

  “And your nose, too,” Daly said, hitting him in the face as hard as he could.

  “I’m going to sue your asses,” Ro screamed. “I’ll have your badges.”

  “Tell somebody who gives a shit,” Monroe said, jerking Ro around, Daly now on Ro’s other arm, pulling him off into the street, Ro keeping up his abuse all the way.

  Following them, Glitsky took one last look back at the house’s open door, then sucking for a breath, he fell in behind his two limping officers and his prisoner. The whole thing had taken less than a minute. The other two officers joined them, and they manhandled Ro into the patrol car and slammed the door behind him.

  9

  By eight thirty P.M., the drizzle had turned into a steady cold rain.

  Wes Farrell was not the only new elected official in San Francisco that year. The two-term previous mayor, Kathy West, had moved out and, by some accounts, up to the State Assembly in Sacramento. Her successor as mayor was a forty-five-year-old former public defender and supervisor named Leland M. Crawford. These two electoral changes also coincided with a changing of the guard in the police department—Chief Frank Batiste’s retirement had become official on the day before Farrell and Crawford had been sworn in, and in his place, hired after a nationwide search that ignored many candidates from the city’s own pool of veteran police officers, was Vi Lapeer, a forty-eight-year-old African American woman and the former assistant chief of police of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  After he’d received his call from the Curtlees before Ro had even made it down to San Francisco General Hospital—where they’d treated his injuries and where he was currently under guard—Mayor Crawford had ordered an emergency confab in his ornate city hall office. Now Crawford was going to get his first chance to assert his dominance and capacity for leadership. He stood about six foot four. His thick black hair was going gray at the temples. He might have been handsome but for an overly toothy smile and a continual battle with facial rosacea. Unlike Farrell, Crawford’s general tendency was to use his enormous antique desk to separate himself from his visitors, but tonight that was not his intention. Instead, in shirtsleeves, he sat on the front of that desk in front of a semicircle of folding chairs, on which, left to right, sat Farrell, Lapeer, Glitsky, and Amanda Jenkins.

  Crawford was not a pro-cop politician. Like Farrell—one of their few similarities—he was a lifelong member of the defense bar. He believed that excess and denial of due process was part of police culture, the rule rather than the exception. Now he had a prime example of it occurring only a few weeks into his administration and from the Curtlees’ reaction, it looked as though he was going to be blamed for it, at least to a certainly not-insignificant percentage of the electorate.

  He wasn’t inclined to sit idly by and let that happen, so he’d called this meeting. “You’re telling me, Lieutenant,” he was saying to Glitsky, “that even knowing what we know now, you’d pursue the same course of action?”

  “In a heartbeat,” Glitsky said. “The man threatened my family. I’d do it again tomorrow if it came to it.”

  Crawford spoke up heatedly. “You’d do it again tomorrow? Without a warrant? After the district attorney told you not to, with no notice to your chief or my office. Are you completely insane, Lieutenant, or merely totally out of control?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Vi Lapeer said, “but if Ro Curtlee hadn’t come out drunk and attacked the officers, none of this would have happened. All the lieutenant was trying to do was to neutralize the threat while we went through the usual process.”

  “That’s not what I understand.” Crawford was prepared for this and answered in clipped tones. “From what the Curtlees explained to me, Ro didn’t go over to the Glitskys’ home to threaten anybody.”

  Jenkins barked out a laugh. “Right.”

  Crawford fixed his gaze on her. “It is right, Ms. Jenkins. Maybe you don’t know that Lieutenant Glitsky had gone over to Ro’s house the night before, apparently just to harass the man, and Ro just wanted the lieutenant to know how that felt.”

  Lapeer squirmed in her chair. Even if she did not think that her lieutenant had acted correctly, she would have felt compelled to stand behind him, at least until she got him alone. The fact that she actually agreed with the way he’d proceeded underscored her words with a low-key vehemence. “With all respect, Lieutenant Glitsky went over there last night to question the suspect about his wher
eabouts when one of the witnesses in his upcoming murder trial was killed. That was official police business.”

  Crawford was shaking his head. “That’s not how the Curtlees see it. The lieutenant didn’t record the conversation, barely asked any specific questions. And in fact, we’ve all just heard from Lieutenant Glitsky that the Curtlee boy didn’t make any overt threat at his home, in so many words, at all.”

  Glitsky, fuming, not trusting himself to speak, looked to his left, and Jenkins got his message and spoke up. “Sir,” she said, “a convicted murderer coming to a policeman’s house and commenting on his children is, de facto, an overt threat. What would you have had him do?”

  “Well, that’s a good question, Ms. Jenkins, and here’s a good answer. I’d have had him step back and let more objective people handle the situation. At the very least, I’d have had him notify his superiors and apply for a warrant. I’d have had him follow the goddamn rules!”

  “And how about while he’s following the goddamn rules, his family gets goddamn dead, sir?” Jenkins asked. “Then what?”

  “That’s melodramatic horseshit.” Crawford showed off a lot of his teeth. “And frankly I’m just a little bit annoyed that we’re all having a discussion about this convenient threat when it’s entirely clear to me—and don’t kid yourselves, it will be clear to most of the rest of the city tomorrow—that this is just an end run around the real issue here, which is that you, Ms. Jenkins,” and here he pointed at her, “and you, Lieutenant,” another point at Glitsky, “decided unilaterally between yourselves to subvert the court’s decision to release Ro on bail after he got released on appeal.”

  Jenkins raised her chin. “With all respect, that’s just purely untrue, Your Honor.”

  Crawford drew himself up straight. “It is hardly that, Ms. Jenkins. What it is, in my opinion, is prosecutorial and police excess in its most blatant form. It’s a classic denial of due process and harassment, and I’m not going to stand for it. Not in my city. Do you know how much the Curtlees are threatening to sue the city for? Anybody want to take a guess?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jenkins said. “They won’t get whatever it is.”

  “Would you like to bet your job on that, Ms. Jenkins? Because that’s what I have to do here. That’s the position you’ve put me in. Now I have to bet we can beat a lawsuit for a hundred million dollars! Do any of you have any idea how much money that is?”

  After a moment of silence, Glitsky found his voice. “The man’s a convicted killer, Your Honor, and he threatened my family. He needs to be in jail.”

  “Well, that’s sure as hell where you’ve got him now, Lieutenant. Against the express decision of the court. And given that, how long do you honestly think you’re going to be able to keep him there?” Suddenly the mayor shifted his focus and settled on Farrell. “Wes, you’ve been curiously silent throughout all this. Are you really planning to charge this thing?”

  Farrell, still in his raincoat, seething for his own reasons, was sitting back with his arms and feet crossed. After a small hesitation, he said, “I read Ro’s visit to Abe’s house as a threat. I think the court will agree with us at the arraignment on Monday. Abe did what he had to do. If Ro wasn’t a Curtlee . . .”

  Crawford could no longer restrain himself. “But he is a Curtlee, goddamn it! That’s kind of the point here, don’t you see?” He looked around the semicircle, face by unyielding face, then started back and stopped at his new chief of police. “At the very least, Chief, I’d expect that you’d want to remove Lieutenant Glitsky from an active investigating role in this latest murder, this Nuñez woman. Clearly he’s far from objective on anything that’s got to do with Ro Curtlee.”

  Lapeer drew in a quick breath, then released it. She was thinking she might be the shortest-lived chief of police in San Francisco history, but she really had no choice about what to say. “The lieutenant is head of the homicide detail, sir. I respect his decisions to assign investigators to cases, including himself, as he sees fit.”

  Now, stymied, Crawford turned back to Farrell. “And if they let Ro off on Monday, Wes, then what?”

  “Then the courts will have spoken,” Farrell said.

  “And what about his injuries? Ro’s?” Crawford asked.

  Glitsky jumped in with the answer. “He resisted arrest,” he said. “Strenuously. He also injured two of our patrolmen. We’re charging him on that, too.”

  “Wonderful,” Crawford said. “Just wonderful.”

  Farrell, Glitsky, and Jenkins had all come to the meeting in their separate cars and parked in the underground lot just across from city hall. Finally the meeting and dressing-down had ended, and having jogged across the street through the rain, they got to the parking lot’s elevator, all shivering wet dogs, anxious to get to their cars and back home.

  Glitsky, in the lead, went to push the elevator button.

  But Farrell came up from behind, put his hand out, and blocked him. “Hold on a minute, Abe. Amanda. I’d like a word.”

  “It’s a little late and a lot cold, Wes,” Jenkins said. She was wearing her trademark short skirt and she had her arms crossed into her armpits. “Can it wait?”

  “You know, actually”—Farrell was atypically brusque—“I don’t think it fucking can.” He squared around on them. “I got both of you here now and I want to tell you both how much I don’t appreciate the spot you put me in back up there.”

  Glitsky and Jenkins shared a glance.

  “What? You don’t know what I’m talking about? Don’t give me that. We talked about this very thing just this morning. I’m sure you both remember.”

  Glitsky started in. “That was before Ro came by ...”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your house. I get it. But here’s the thing I don’t get, Abe. What I don’t get is, even assuming that it was a bona fide threat to your family, which I’m not sure I completely buy . . .”

  “It sure as hell was,” Jenkins said.

  “Maybe. But why make the visit a threat? If he wanted to hurt you, why didn’t he just do whatever it was he wanted to do when he was there? Treya answers the door, whammo. Nobody knows he’s there. He hits and he’s gone. But he doesn’t. Why not? Anybody got an answer to that one?” In the small space, Farrell made a half turn in agitation, then came back at them. “And if it was a threat, okay, then why didn’t you go get a warrant? Tell a judge; make it official. I’m willing to bet you could have found one down at the Hall, even here on a Saturday. Instead, you go flying off with a couple of starstruck rookies and basically just go in and kick some ass. Which is exactly what you, personally, Abe, wanted to do.”

  “I did not . . .”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Abe. Don’t even try. And meanwhile, you give the fucking Curtlees everything they could ever need to make their case that you’re harassing their precious little prick of a son? Did I get any of that wrong?”

  “He was . . . ,” Glitsky began again.

  But again Farrell cut him off. “So I don’t give a damn what Ro’s doing! Why can’t you seem to get that? The mayor was absolutely right in there when he was talking about the way it’s going to get reported, and not just in the fucking Courier. I’m going to predict that you’re not going to get flattering coverage in the Chron, either.”

  “Come on, Wes,” Jenkins said, “it’s not about the papers.”

  “Okay, it’s not about the papers, but I’ll tell you what it is about. It’s about both of you putting me in a position where I’ve got to back up what you’ve done, when we had already discussed it and decided you weren’t going to do exactly what you did.”

  “Wait a minute, Wes.” Glitsky was finally getting a little hot. “You told me if I had something, almost anything, I could arrest him and you’d support me.”

  “And I just did that upstairs, in the face of the mayor, don’t forget.” Farrell raised a finger. “But here’s what I don’t understand, and it really, really, really fucking fries my ass, Abe, if you must k
now”—Farrell in a true rage now, his voice ratcheting up—“is why in God’s name you had this great reason to go and righteously arrest Ro, and you didn’t see fit maybe to run the idea by me. And you know how that strikes my cynical mind? It strikes me that you didn’t think your reason was good enough. You thought I’d say no, and you know, I might have.

  “And why?

  “ ’Cause it still wasn’t enough, not given all the political ramifications and all the other bullshit we’re now going to have to be dealing with for the next God knows however many months. And you knew it! You goddamn well knew it, and you just said, ‘Well, fuck Wes.’ That’s what happened, and both of you were in on it, which is why when the first I heard about it is when fucking Cliff Curtlee calls me—oh yeah, he called me before he called Leland, demanding your badge, Abe, how ’bout that?—and I’m stuck defending both of you when I think you did just about everything completely backward and wrong, I’m just a little bit beyond pissed off.”

  Farrell did a full pirouette and came back at them for a last round. “Just for the record, I feel bushwhacked and betrayed by both of you, and I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen on Monday. All I know is that if the court lets Ro out, we’re in deep shit. And if it keeps him in jail, we’re also in deep shit. And either way, I’ve made an enemy out of Leland Crawford, and I’d like to thank both of you for that, too. You’ve both put in a hell of a day’s work.”

  Finally out of steam, Farrell did a kind of double take, reached over and went to push the button for the elevator, then stopped himself. “That’s all right. Fuck it. I’ll walk down to my car.” And turning on his heel, he opened the door to the stairway.

  Glitsky pushed open the door to his home at ten forty-five P.M. He had last called Treya from the hospital when he’d gotten the call three hours earlier from the mayor’s office that he was expected immediately or sooner at City Hall, no excuses. At that time, he thought and told Treya he’d probably be home in about an hour. But then had come Farrell’s outburst in the elevator lobby and another half hour of discussion with Amanda Jenkins after that. And now the original hour had turned to nearly three.