It was another one of the assistant district attorneys, Ty Robbins, asking him where the hell he was – he was supposed to be testifying in Judge Oscar Thomasino's courtroom today in People v. Sully, a trial for Murder Two in Department 34. Had he forgotten?
Come on, lieutenant, life was going on. The judge had given a ten-minute recess but he'd better get his ass down there in a New York minute if he didn't want to get slapped with contempt.
Nat Glitsky tapped his son's cheek, said it was nice chatting with him. He'd call.
The ten-minute recess found itself transformed into a day-long continuance – Mr Sully's defense attorney had developed a migraine and pronounced herself unable to continue, and neither Judge Thomasino nor Mr Robbins had had any objection.
This did not sit well with Glitsky, who had thrown on the tie he kept in his desk drawer for just such an occasion and run down to Department 34, wishing he had thought to borrow his father's all-purpose classic men's blue blazer. All he had was his flight jacket – the judge might ream him for a poor sartorial showing just to vent his displeasure at the delay.
Except that now the original delay meant nothing. The entire exercise had been futile and the day was too full for this idiocy. Abe was starting to decide that he was going to mention as much to Ty Robbins when Ridley Banks crabwalked into the pew next to him and sat down, beginning without preamble in a low, insistent voice.
'Couple of things. One, on the Mullen thing, I think we might have a bite. I drove out to McKay's after our little soiree yesterday at the Greek's. Poor guy – McKay – can't seem to find work, just sitting around the house. Wanted to talk to me on the stoop. Actually, didn't want to talk to me at all. I'm a trained investigator, I could tell.'
'It's a useful skill, Ridley.'
'So I mentioned the word warrant…'
'You got a warrant? What for?'
'I didn't. I just mentioned the word and said he didn't have to let me in, but if he didn't I'd probably come back and it wouldn't be so friendly.'
'The broken sliding door,' Glitsky said.
Ridley Banks looked up to Glitsky, the only other dark-skinned inspector in homicide. In some ways he viewed the lieutenant as his mentor. He nodded. 'The broken sliding door or lack thereof.'
If there wasn't a broken window in a sliding door at McKay's house, there went his story that he and his cousin Brandon Mullen had cut their arms when they fell through it during their fight.
'Did you mention this to him?'
'I believe I neglected to.'
'Okay, good,' Glitsky said. 'Let's get both those guys down here today. Start in again.' Then, thinking of his father's information, he added that they might even want to hold Mullen and McKay for a lineup – there was a chance they had a witness who wasn't involved in the mob and who would talk about who she had seen there.
Banks took that in, scanned the courtroom, holding Glitsky in the pew while the assistant district attorney who'd called Abe down, Ty Robbins – the last man beside themselves in the courtroom – closed his briefcase with a snap and started up the center aisle.
Robbins raised a hand feebly. 'Sorry, Abe. Maybe tomorrow, huh?' He kept walking, not waiting for any reply. The huge double doors shushed closed behind him, and Glitsky and Banks were alone.
'Something else?' Glitsky asked.
Banks appeared to be having some trouble making up his mind. He made sure again that the room was empty, then took in a breath and, letting it out, said, 'I want to tell you a story. Maybe a little personal.'
Impatient in any event with today's interruptions, Glitsky almost stopped him – it wasn't a good time, could they get to it later? But something about the young inspector's tone…
'Out on Balboa there's this restaurant called the Pacific Moon – small place, been there twenty-five, thirty years.'
'Sure, I know it. I've eaten there.'
'Everybody has.'
'Food's not very good, if I remember.'
Banks grinned. 'That's the place, which is why, I don't know if you noticed, but you almost never see the place crowded. You go there on a Saturday night, eight o'clock, there's only like twenty tables and you get seated right away.'
Glitsky sat back on the hard bench, not knowing where this was going. 'Okay?' he said.
'So before Homicide I did eight years in White Collar, and when I first got in there there was an on-going investigation about money laundering at the Pacific Moon.'
'Money laundering through a restaurant?'
'Sure. In the old days before electronic transfers, it was pretty common. You have yourself a ton of dirty cash and you deal in a perishable like food, it's custom made. You write up receipts for meals that never got served and presto, there's the cash in your till, clean as a whistle, just like magic.'
'Okay. So the Pacific Moon laundered some money.'
'A lot of money, Lieutenant.'
'Okay, a lot of money. You get any indictments?'
In his own years on the force, Glitsky had heard a lot about 'on-going investigations' – he had conducted a few himself on people he didn't like, didn't believe, wanted to nail. Few of them panned out because evidence got cold faster than scrambled eggs. If you didn't get it the first time you looked it was unlikely to turn up later. If white collar couldn't bring any indictments against the Pacific Moon, the principals either had done nothing wrong or were very good at covering their tracks, most probably the latter. Either way, in the police department, manpower was always at a premium, and if there wasn't some vein in the ore, the on-going investigation would have to stop – most often sooner than later.
'Nope. Place came up clean.'
'Well…?'
'Well, I was young and a red hot. I started eating dinner there every couple of weeks, staying for drinks, hanging out, counting people.'
'Counting people?'
'There wasn't ever more than twenty people in the place. Ever. You know what the Pacific Moon grossed that year, this was eight years ago?'
Glitsky shook his head. 'A million dollars?'
'Two point nine million.'
A minute of pure silence. Glitsky said, 'Twenty tables?'
Bank's voice took on an edge. 'If they filled every table every night five nights a week and turned them over three times each, and if every dinner averaged fifteen dollars, you know how much they would have grossed? I worked it out, Lieutenant, I'll tell you – three hundred thousand tops. Three hundred thousand. And they admit a gross of almost three million.'
"They must have sold a lot of drinks.' Glitsky scratched his cheek. 'You couldn't get an indictment on that?'
'Can you believe…? Nobody wanted to reopen the case. Evidently we'd blown a wad on it, the place had receipts like it was Chez Panisse, the books looked clean, White Collar lost its papers on it and the DA didn't seem to save anything, but I'm telling you, nobody goes there to eat.'
'Not twice anyway.'
'That's what I'm saying.'
Another dead minute. Then, Glitsky: 'Well, it's a good story…' Meaning, but-so-what?
One last look around the courtroom. 'So what is that – this was a few years before I got into it, but still – the word was that Dana Wager was a heavy investor in the place.'
'Dana…?'
'Right, the senator's husband. He filed for bankruptcy in 1977, all his real-estate investments had gone belly-up. He was done. Then he caught the rebound on the economy, reinvested, got lucky. All the sudden he's back on the high seas, and the Pacific Moon is his flagship.'
'People get lucky, Rid.'
'People also get money in ways that aren't legal. And then launder it.'
'You think that happened with Wager?'
Banks wasn't coming right out with anything. He wasn't sure where his lieutenant stood on it, didn't want to dig himself too deep a hole. 'There was some talk.'
'There's always talk.'
Another pause. How far to take it? 'This talk was about his wife, now our senator. How the rumor was th
at Dana's money came from Loretta, that she'd brought like a million dollars home with her from South America.'
Of course, Glitsky had heard about the incident: he had followed it closely at the time. It had been all over the place, reported in the media. He couldn't very well have missed it, even if he'd been disposed to, which he wasn't.
In 1978 Loretta had been an administrative aide to California congressman Theo Heckstrom, and the two of them, among others, had gone down to Colombia on a fact-finding mission before the 'war on drugs' had been openly declared. On a flight from Bogota to Quito, Ecuador, their small plane had gone down deep in the Colombian jungle. Among the six people in the aircraft, including Heckstrom, Loretta had been the sole survivor.
Badly hurt herself, with a compound-fractured leg, she had remained in the plane's wreckage with the dead for four days, living on candy bars and plantains, before she was finally rescued and airlifted out and back to the United States. Most believed that the publicity associated with the tragedy had made her a household name in San Francisco, and had helped fuel her first successful run for Congress.
After she had won, Glitsky had also begun to hear the rumors about the million dollars – although the amount always varied – about the suitcase full of cash that Loretta had supposedly found on the plane and somehow spirited back into the country.
Now Glitsky was shaking his head. 'The small problem with this phantom money, Rid, is customs.'
Banks was ahead of him on that. 'There weren't any customs. Everybody seems to forget this. They sent a special plane down there to pick her up, get her out in a hurry. Diplomatic airlift direct to Mayo.' He repeated it. 'No customs.'
The room was getting stuffy, the air unmoving. Glitsky pushed his back against the bench, stifled a stretch. 'You think Oswald killed Kennedy by himself, Rid?'
Banks shrugged. 'Conspiracy theories, right?'
'Do you honestly think that if there was anything to all of this – and I'll admit it's a neat story – but do you think there is any way it wouldn't have come out? The woman's run – what? – four campaigns for office, two of them statewide, against people who I'd bet have some knack for finding dirt. Anything was there, it would have come up.' Banks didn't answer.
'You think I'm in denial here, Rid?' But there was a tone in it – half-joking.
'I'm telling you what a lot of guys working the street believe down to their toes, that's all. You know a lot of 'em. They're not generally into conspiracies.' The younger man slapped his hands on his thighs, took a short, sharp breath. 'Anyway, for what it's worth…'
The lieutenant pushed himself up and next to him Banks stood, too. 'It's worth knowing,' Glitsky said. 'Although this particular time, I think the senator might be doing some real good.'
'Okay.' His duty done, Banks nodded. 'I'll go put a call out to McKay, follow up on these guys, get 'em down here. You hear anything about Kevin Shea?'
'Nada. Guy's got any brains, he's in Scandinavia.'
They were at the double doors and Glitsky grabbed one of the handles, then stopped. 'Hey, Rid, I appreciate it, but you don't have to worry.'
'Okay, Lieutenant, I won't.'
Glitsky had wanted to protest to Ridley Banks that all he had done was drive the senator home. Except that wasn't all he'd done and he didn't want to start with small untruths. They tended to grow large and unruly.
As earlier with Lanier, he was hamstrung by the possibility that he would come across as saying too much. Banks was a good cop, and no group hung together like cops. Functioning as early warning, protective of his lieutenant, Banks was putting it out that people might be watching pretty closely. Were already hanging on the nuances. That maybe, on some level he couldn't define, Loretta Wager could be trouble for him.
And this – if he was honest with himself, and he tried to be – constituted a message Glitsky wasn't ready to hear.
He had given her his home telephone number and she had called him before he'd had his morning tea. Isaac had picked up the call and, handing it over, the expression he'd given Abe could have frozen a flame. Some instinct had told Ike that this wasn't a business call – it was a woman and his dad cared about her. And it was too… damn… soon.
When Glitsky heard her voice all that went away. She wanted to see him again, needed to, could they arrange something for today?
Which wasn't reasonable, probably not doable, but they were going to try.
She had gotten a hold inside of him, where he'd told himself he wasn't letting anybody in ever again. He didn't know what worried him more – that it was happening at all or that it might end.
36
'Well, here I am, a grown-up at last, wanted by the police and all, and I guess if I want to call my mom and dad, no one's going to stop me.'
Kevin shrugged at Wes. 'She's just got this way in the last day or two, I can't really figure it out.' But he knew he liked it.
Melanie gave them both a smile. 'Adversity,' she said, moving toward the kitchen's wall-phone.
Wes slumped on the couch in the living salon. His long hair was down and he wore a pair of khaki shorts similar to the ones he had sported the day before, and he had his bare feet up on the footlocker that served as a coffee table. In his right hand was a can of Coors Light, stuck into a styrofoam holder that read: 'Beer – it's not just for breakfast anymore.' Bart had his face resting in Wes's lap.
Kevin was trying to find a way to get comfortable.
Wes's furniture leaned to the austere – there was a large shaggy lime-green bathmat doubling as a throw rug, two canvas-and-wood director's chairs, two straightbacks. The 'couch' was a futon on a plywood frame set a foot off the ground. What with the other amenities in the salon – a television on the floor, a small extra refrigerator for beer, a brick-and-board bookcase, the bean-bag chair Bart slept on, various grocery items whose expiration dates had expired – Wes's apartment might manage to look homey only to someone who had grown up in, say, the Senegalese bush.
'You haven't heard then?'
'Haven't heard what?'
Wes had been living with the television all morning and filled Kevin in on the mayor's initiative this morning, the city stupid-visors' show of solidarity with the rage of the black community. In one of the director's chairs, Kevin shifted. He was afraid he was going to have to see a doctor, but this was more immediate. 'Two hundred thousand dollars?'
The mayor had not been able to get his half-million.
'Round it off to three hundred if you include the original hundred thou – that's a good hunk of change on your poor ass. I'm thinking of turning you in myself, retire to Costa Rica.'
'You're already retired.'
'But I'm not in Costa Rica.' Wes smiled, took a slug of his beer.
In the kitchen Melanie raised her voice. She had been on the phone for fifteen minutes. 'He is not lying. He just did not do it, Daddy.'
Wes made a face. 'Somebody believes you at least.'
Which brought a frown. Any hint of defensive banter was gone. 'You don't?'
Wes tipped up his beer can, found it empty, made a small show of getting himself another from the reefer, offering one to Kevin, who shook his head. And then, his inflection rising with each word, said 'Hey? You hear me? You don't believe I didn't do this?'
Melanie again, from the kitchen. 'NO I AM NOT.' She slammed the receiver against the wall box and it popped out again, smacking on the floor.
Wes settled himself back on the futon, no reaction. The kid had better learn the cold facts of the world.
'Goddamnit, Wes…'
Bart didn't like threatening noises made to his master and, although he knew Kevin, his back hairs went up and a low growl began. Wes patted his rear as Melanie appeared back in the kitchen doorway.
Kevin was laboring out of the chair. 'Let's go, Mel.'
Wes's voice was flat. 'What do you think you're doing? Sit down.'
Melanie, from the doorway: 'What?'
Kevin threw her a look. 'He doesn't believe
me, either.'
'Yes, he does. Of course, he does. Wes?'
'It doesn't matter what I believe, that's not the issue-'
'That is the only issue, Wes. That's the reason I'm here.'
Wes didn't reply, sipped at his beer. Which heated Kevin up another notch.
'Well, what do you think? What the hell you think I'm here for?'
'Hey, listen, you want to yell, you'll strain yourself. I got an old bullhorn in the bedroom, maybe we shoot some flares out the window, let everybody know there's a party up here.'
Holding his ribs, Kevin was collapsing back into his chair. Melanie went over to him.
Wes leaned forward, his eyes dark. 'For the record, Kev, the real reason you're here? You got me. You called me, remember? You think I'm somehow putting my foot in this mess. I am done with that. I am not turning you in, and that right there is three hundred thousand dollars worth of good faith. And, though it's none of your goddamn business, I've got absolutely every reason in the world not to get myself involved in this, in you, in any of it.'
Melanie was on her knees by Kevin, glaring at Wes. 'What a great man you are.'
Wes drank some beer. 'I am who I am.'
'Come on, Mel, let's go.' Kevin was trying to get up from the chair again, his breath coming in short gasps.
'Where are you going?'
Melanie turned on him. 'What's it to you? What do you care?'
The tears in her eyes were anger more than anything, and for an instant Wes was reminded of his daughter Michelle. Something twisted in his gut and as a cover he forced another slug of beer, which was suddenly warm, stale. 'You're right,' he said, 'what's it to me?'
'I'm going downtown,' Kevin said. 'End all this.'
'Kevin! You can't do that!'
He shrugged her off. 'That's what I'm doing. Screw this. I'll do it on my own.'
'Kevin, somebody will kill you.'
Wes was standing. 'Why don't you just get out of here, out of the city?'
Melanie clearly didn't want to side with Wes, but she had to say it. 'That's what I've been telling him.'
A Certain Justice Page 16
