'You? Melanie Sinclair? That's my girl.'
'I could use a big drink. What's a big drink?'
He thought a minute. ' Mai Tais. '
'Okay.'
Holding hands, they went to the kitchen. She was telling him her adventures while he rummaged in the closets, through the refrigerator.
'So, after all that, we're not sure it's even going to get seen?'
'I know. I mean I don't know. I feel like such a failure-'
'Don't,' Kevin said. 'Wes says nobody would believe it anyway. He says I shouldn't have run in the first place. I should have-'
'But you couldn't…'
'I could, I guess, but I didn't. But now that we've gotten to here, he says it's going to come down to a trial.' He tried to drop it casually, even following it with a little riff on drinkmaking. 'Apparently Ann doesn't have any orgeat syrup. You can't make a Mai Tais without orgeat syrup.' But it didn't get by Melanie.
'Exactly what would they try you for?'
'What? Oh, murder, something like that. Wes thinks they might even prove it with the picture, public opinion, me being white and Arthur Wade black, all that. I told him I don't think…' He looked up, noticed she had started to cry, crossed to her. 'Hey, hey.' Gathered her to him. 'It's not that big a deal, she doesn't have 151 rum either, so we couldn't have Mai Tais anyway. You really need a float of Myers's 151 if it's going to be any good. Actually, she doesn't have any rum, so the whole Mai Tai idea turns out to be kind of lame.'
She didn't laugh, didn't even smile. Her body continued to tremble against his. He didn't know what to say.
Melanie was in one of the overstuffed chairs, hands folded stiffly on her lap, staring straight ahead. She had continued to cry for a while – she still held a handkerchief tightly.
Kevin came into the living room carrying two glasses in one hand and in the other a large pitcher of liquid with a head on it.
'This,' he said, 'is going to elevate the good time quotient on what I must admit has been a somewhat disheartening evening.'
'What is this?'
' "What is it?" she asks. But, I notice, without a really convincing show of interest. When at her very elbow is the very first rendition of a drink that may be to the nineties what the Margarita was to the eighties.'
'I'm tired, Kevin. I'm scared. This isn't going to work.'
He pointed to the pitcher. 'Whatever else may transpire on the roads of our lives,' he told her, 'this will work.' He poured into one of the glasses and handed it to Melanie.
She took a sip. 'I don't really need a drink anymore. I want to know what we're going to do.'
'When?'
She slapped the arm of the chair, the new drink overflowing. 'Damn it, Kevin! Now! What are we going to do now?'
Back on his heels, Kevin pondered. 'You're right,' he said seriously. 'We're going to have to think about this for a while. I propose we don't say a word for fifteen minutes.'
He drank from his glass, refilled the top inch of hers. She wasn't really thinking about it at all – she was too scared, angry, upset. She took a drink.
'This isn't bad, what is it?'
The pitcher was half-gone, three glasses each.
Pouring again for himself, Kevin was on the floor, legs crossed. 'You've put your finger on the one problem we face – a name. Every great drink needs a name.'
She took another sip. 'Fred,' she said.
'Fred, the drink?'
'Yep. Fred.' She took a bigger sip. 'It's pretty good,' she said, 'what's in a Fred?'
'Fred, hmm. It can't be a guy's name.'
'Why not?'
'I don't know. You just don't name drinks after guys. I mean, look at all the drinks with girls' names – Margarita, Tia Maria, Bloody Mary…'
Melanie was holding her glass out. 'Kahlua, Manhattan, Rusty Nail… in fact, Rusty Nail…'
Kevin pointed a finger. 'Watch it…'
'Besides, it's a guy's kind of drink, it ought to have a guy's name. A Fred. What's in it?'
'Well, aside from the obvious beer, orange juice, vodka, cranberry juice, Coke – '
'Coke?'
'Diet Coke, actually.'
'Okay.'
'And port. And some brandy.'
She took another sip. 'Fred. It could be colder.'
'See,' he said. 'Now we're into the marketing campaign. No, listen, this could be really big. Fred, it could be colder. Fred, it could be sweeter. Fred, it couldn't be bolder. I like it. I love it.'
'Kevin,' she said, 'he couldn't be a bigger horse's ass.'
'Where was this Melanie Sinclair when we were dating?'
'You weren't smart enough to handle the real me back then.'
It set him back a beat. 'You know, I think you're absolutely right – '
She softened it, coming forward, kissing him.
They were both on the floor, blankets under and over them, pillows piled about, Melanie's head on his chest. The pitcher was empty. The television on low.
The news had aired. Again and again, every channel until they got too sick to watch anymore. The increased reward on Kevin, the appointment of Alan Reston, the night's new fires and disturbances, the continuing problems in Detroit, DC, Los Angeles, the Mohandas call for the solidarity march on Saturday, and now, just an hour before, the riot at the Hall of Justice. All of it, and no hint of Kevin Shea's videotape.
Nothing but what he had started and now he would have to pay.
He stared blankly at the screen. Melanie breathed evenly on his chest, her arms thrown over him. Pulling the blankets up around her – the room had become cold – he had come around to believing his best chance, finally, was to run. He could never take the chance of a trial in which even Wes thought that the best result might be some degree of murder.
He would have to run.
But to where? And how? And could he take Melanie with him?
Friday, July 1
53
Ever since he had been a child Glitsky had taken a perverse pleasure in keeping an eye on water as it heated, giving the lie to the old adage that a watched pot never boils. He stood over the stove now and waited, eyes trained on the simmering liquid – any second now it was going to begin to roll and he intended to be there to see it.
The house felt strange with no one else in it. He had given Rita the weekend off after Nat had absconded with the boys. She had a sister – Glitsky suspected perhaps even a child, although she hadn't mentioned one when she'd come to work for him – somewhere else in town and she would always disappear when Glitsky made the offer. She had moved the screen in the living room aside, and when he had first walked out in the morning he had almost felt he was in the wrong house. It wasn't that there was so much room, but that there was so much more of it.
Gotcha! The water was boiling and he'd seen it.
He made his tea – Earl Grey Morning Blend – in a pot with an old-fashioned silver-plated tea bulb. He poured the water in, covered the pot and took it two steps across to his kitchen table – there was no 'dining room.' He often felt lucky they could fit five chairs around the table in what space they did have.
There were two hard-boiled eggs on a small plate in front of him and he absently cracked the first one while he opened the folder he had brought home the previous night – Chris Locke.
The first problem was going to be to determine exactly what street corner they had been at when the attack had occurred. If he didn't know that, he was going to have a hard time locating trace-evidence there. Loretta knew the city well enough, but he wanted to keep her out of it as much as he could – the experience had been traumatic enough without bringing her back to the scene.
When she had told him the story she'd said that she and Locke had been driving out near Dolores Park, the site of the dual, segregated tent cities. But what route had they taken from downtown to get there?
Reading through Lanier's questions and Loretta's responses he was beginning to doubt that he could get any real answers without Loretta. He
flipped some more pages of text, scanning. The officers in the squad car she had pulled over near Mission and 19th Street – already some blocks from the murder scene… If the uniforms who had filed their report had been doing their jobs, one of the first things they should have done was drive back with Loretta to pinpoint where the shooting had occurred, but they had evidently been unnerved, shaken out of their routine – as everyone else had been – by the state of siege the city was in, the sight of the fatally wounded District Attorney, and the presence of a U.S. senator.
So the ambulance had been called out to Mission Street, forensics had come there and begun their process of going over the car. Marcel Lanier's primary concern had been protecting Loretta, getting her out of harm's way as quickly as he could. In this Lanier had been successful but he hadn't done squat-all about moving the investigation forward. Nor, Glitsky reflected ruefully, had he.
Checking the clock on his kitchen wall – it was six-forty – he decided it was still too early to call Wes Farrell, which he had intended to do as his first order of business this morning. Get that out of the way, or at least moved to the front burner. Enough was enough. He had given Farrell plenty of time to make the first move, to beep him wherever he might have been all of last night, but once in a while you had to make your own timetable. He'd get some action on this; he had the leverage – something to offer Kevin Shea as an inducement to come in – so long as Elaine had been able to convince Reston, which he was sure she had.
Still, he remembered, he'd better call her first. Make sure.
He poured his tea out into the surprisingly dainty porcelain cup – one of the service that Flo had given him for their twelfth anniversary. He finished the last bite of the first egg, started cracking the second and continued his waltz through the rest of the paperwork – Locke's admission to the emergency room at SF General (where he was pronounced DOA), Strout's late lab microscopies corroborating his earlier assessment of the cleanliness of the entry wound – the car's safety-glass window had spiderwebbed, preventing any tiny glass shards from spraying inward. Other preliminary and follow-up reports: the trajectory of the bullet that had barely missed Loretta – across and slightly downward, just what you'd expect from a man standing outside firing in. The bullet itself -.25 caliber – the same size Lanier had predicted; also a match with the one taken from Locke's brain. Glitsky had entertained a small hope that there might have been fingerprints on the shattered window, perhaps even a shoe print on one of the fenders. Some hairs or fabrics. Something. But there were no surprises at all.
Which meant, unfortunately, nothing new to start with, no handle to wedge something open. They'd have to go back to the beginning, which meant bothering Loretta, locating the scene of the shooting, assigning someone to go cover the area, talk to neighbors, do forensics all over again.
He almost laughed. Assign some staff who would get to it exactly when?
Closing the folder, he noticed the clock again – not yet seven. Time was creeping, which he supposed was a clue that he wasn't having much of a good time.
He called Elaine on the stroke of the hour. She told him that Reston wasn't offering Kevin Shea as much as the time of day and that was the end of that. Shea could turn himself in, but then he was going to be treated like any other murder suspect. Maybe worse.
'I thought the priority was getting this guy behind bars, Elaine. So we could at least say he'd been apprehended.'
'This isn't me, Abe. This is Alan Reston.' She hesitated. 'I got the feeling he didn't necessarily want him behind bars.'
'As opposed to what? On the street?'
Elaine stammered, getting it out. 'I… I thought about this last night, what Alan might be doing.'
'I'm listening.'
'I explained to him everything you showed me yesterday, showed him how the second picture might be… anyway, all that. And he hinted that maybe it would be better if Shea didn't get to tell his story, if something happened that would keep everything, as he put it, clean and uncluttered.'
'Something like what?'
'Well, I mean, Alan never said any of this outright. It was just, he wasn't going to give Shea any real chance to come in, any reason to. Make it a no-win situation for him. Then, if it came to some kind of showdown, if he just got shot or something by a mob or by resisting while he was getting arrested
'Shot or something…' This was not possible, Glitsky thought. Then again, neither was anything else that had happened during the last few days. But Elaine must have misinterpreted something – there was no possible explanation for this as a remotely reasonable prosecutorial strategy. 'Listen, are you on the way downtown? Would you mind if I stop by your place and pick you up on the way in?'
'Well, I'm not going in. Not right yet.' She paused. 'The funerals.'
Glitsky had forgotten about the funerals. The information had crossed his brainpan sometime during the day yesterday, but he'd filed it someplace and hadn't retrieved it until now. The mayor had prevailed in his personal appeal to the families of Arthur Wade and Chris Locke to have their funerals at the same time and location (and thereby reduce the possibility of two separate riots) – at Saint Mary's Cathedral.
True, that had meant that Locke would not lie in state at the Rotunda of City Hall, but his wife had agreed. She didn't care about that. Not anymore. If it would ease the mayor's burdens, she would do what he asked.
'I'd like to stop by, anyway.' Glitsky had to get some answers, get a take on Reston, on what was happening. He had to push. She hesitated, then said, 'All right,' and gave him her address.
Wearing a two-piece dark charcoal suit with a light maroon shirt of raw silk, Elaine Wager opened the door to her apartment. Glitsky followed her into the living room with its view of the western half of the city. The furniture was green leather; there was a glistening ficus, a teak entertainment center with books in the bookcase. The tasteful young Spartan look. A framed picture of Loretta smiled at them from the bar counter that divided the room. He glanced at it.
'You look a lot like your mother,' he said. 'I guess I never really noticed it before.'
She smiled. 'Taller,' she said. 'Not as pretty, really.'
Glitsky let that go. She wasn't fishing for compliments. Then she surprised him. 'My mother told me about you two.' He tried to think of something to say. 'In college. Just so you know I know.'
'It wasn't a secret,' he said. 'It just hasn't come up much recently. Does it bother you?'
'No.'
'Good.'
'But she's coming by to get me in' – she checked her wrist – 'about forty-five minutes. I just didn't want it to be uncomfortable.'
Glitsky suppressed a smile. 'I'll probably be gone by then anyway. But I could see her and handle it. It was a long time ago.' He sat down on the front six inches of one of her chairs.
She took the couch, settled back a bit, closed her eyes and he recognized a pallor. 'How are you holding up?'
She let out a little mirthless sound. 'Fine. Great. Except I'm obviously in the wrong field.'
'Why do you say that?'
She gestured, dismissing it. 'What I said about Alan, it was mostly only a feeling, but I couldn't think of any other reason he wouldn't offer some kind of deal. Can you?'
Glitsky shrugged. 'He just came on the job. Doesn't want to get a rep as soft. The situation's pretty explosive…'
'That might be it.'
'But the point is, you don't think he's going to change his mind?'
She shook her head. 'No. I think what bothers me is that he says it would be betraying my mother.'
'How's that? She's the one pushing for Shea's arrest since the beginning.'
'I know. But Alan's her protegé. He's got a vested interest in protecting her interpretation of the lynching, Kevin Shea, everything she's been pushing for. And if the charges don't stick… anyway, it's the same theory I told you before. If Shea doesn't get to refute it, nobody made a mistake.'
Glitsky sat back in his chair. 'He can't
be saying he doesn't want Shea to have a trial?'
'No. In fact he specifically keeps saying he does. But what's he going to say? I'm just not sure that I believe him. He's not acting like it.'
'Maybe I ought to talk to your mother. Maybe you should.' He slapped his knees and started to get up. 'And maybe we should get going, get this thing moving along. Even without a deal the odds are decent I can get Shea downtown. His lawyer talks the language. I'll call him as soon as I get downtown. You mind if I use your bathroom?'
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?'
A Certain Justice Page 28
