To what end? He'd made it clear he was married, not interested in her in that way. And what a relief, really, though she did think he was terrific.
She sometimes thought every other man on the planet was incapable of seeing who she was inside. But not Mark. He simply liked her, who she was. It was a joy.
She was aware, however, that her decision to break off with Joe had come about because she'd been unable to avoid contrasting the younger man to Dooher, with his heady mix of physical good looks, substance, experience, power, and humor. She decided that her growing friendship with him would be the litmus test for the kind of relationship she would eventually… not settle for, as she had with Joe. But settle on. Someone of Dooher's quality, if he could be found at all. It might take a while.
But that was the other thing, the other wonderful result of this friendship with Mark Dooher – if some other man didn't come along to validate who she was, it didn't have to be the end of the world.
She was trying to explain this to Sam. 'I don't know why it took me so long to realize. Sometimes I think about the only man who's ever liked me for me, besides my dad, is Mark.'
Sam, mopping up the perfect Dore sauce with the perfect piece of fresh sourdough bread, was matter-of-fact. 'It's the curse of fabulous beauty.' She raised her eyes. 'I'm serious.'
Christina knew better than to flutter her lids with false modesty. 'Well. But now at least I'm getting a glimpse that maybe I'm worth something by myself.'
'As opposed to?'
'I don't know. The lesser half of some guy I happen to be with?'
'The trophy?'
Christina nodded. 'On some level it's flattering. Or something. So I let it happen -I become the person they want me to be.'
'It's tempting, that's why. It is flattering. It's also what everybody's always taught you. You want to please. You're hard-wired for it. So it gets internalized.' Sam mopped more sauce. 'I cannot make a sauce this good at home. How do they do this?' She took the bite, chewed a moment, sighed. 'It's one of the hard truths.'
'The sauce?'
Sam laughed, shook her head. 'What sauce?' Another laugh. 'I'm all over the place, aren't I? No, the hard truth about who we are. I went through the same thing about ten years ago.'
'I think you've lost me. What same thing?'
'This decision that I wasn't what some man thought I was.'
'And you did it, just like that?'
'No.' Smiling again, she held up a finger. 'But I tried. I acted that way for all the world to see. Got my heart broke four or five times. Got bitter and cynical about men. But I did get better about me. I think. Eventually.'
Christina nodded. 'Well, I'm not going back. Not the same way. Not to another Joe.'
'Good. Hold on to that feeling. You're going to need it when it's been six months. You get a little lonesome. Trust me on this.'
'I think I can handle lonesome. I've done lonesome before. The difference was that lonely was always clearly the time between one guy and the next guy. Now, I think I'll cultivate some friendships.'
'Friendships are good,' Sam said. 'As long as you don't get confused.'
'You mean Mark Dooher?' Christina shook her head. 'No. He's not like that.'
Sam raised an eyebrow. 'He's not a sexual creature?'
'No.' She laughed. 'He exudes… confidence that way, I suppose. But he's married. He's happy. He's got it in balance. He's never come on to me in any way. In fact, more the opposite. Hands off. Be a person first. It's great, actually.'
'I've got to meet this guy. Wes thinks he's God, too.'
'Speaking of…'
'God – or Wes?'
Christina nodded. 'MrFarrell.'
'I'm afraid I let lonesome get the better of me and pursued him a little more, uh, recklessly than I would have liked. Now I like to think we're moving cautiously toward friendship, but we've got a ways to go before we get beyond superficial.'
'Which isn't so bad, is it?'
Sam shrugged. 'I don't really know. That's the funny thing. It makes me a little nervous – what we've been talking about all day here. There's no way I'm investing any of this,' she tapped her heart, 'until I know him better.'
'Until you know it's real.'
Sam's face was a kaleidoscope of emotions. She nodded sheepishly. 'That's always the question, isn't it?'
Glitsky really hated it when he talked himself out of a plausible murder suspect, and that's exactly what his two talks – the one with his wife and the other with Paul Thieu – had accomplished.
Not only did he lack any physical evidence pointing to Mark Dooher as Victor Trang's killer, but – as he had told Flo – there was no reasonable way that a successful corporate lawyer was going to stab another lawyer to death over the terms of a possible settlement. That solution, much as he would love it if it did, just didn't scan.
So he was going to have to get another approach, and to that end he had dropped in on Paul Thieu in Missing Persons and asked him to call Felicia Diep and set up an appointment for some time, if possible, before afternoon tea.
In the meanwhile, Glitsky went upstairs to Homicide.
The room looked as it always did – a large open area with twelve desks, no more than three of them occupied at any one time; the doorless corner cubicle 'office' of the Chief of Homicide, Lieutenant Frank Batiste; two massive dry wall columns papered, stuck and tagged with every poster, fax, ammo sale notice, car repo slip, random prostitute's phone number – and so on – that had crossed some Inspector's desk in the past four years or so and which, at the time, had seemed too important, funny, or unusual to simply discard in a waste basket.
Glitsky's desk was next to one of these columns. He pulled his chair in, crossed his arms behind his head, and put his feet up. His eyes came to rest on the Xeroxed note at his eye level: Don't let your mouth write a check your ass can't cash.
He let his chair back down, trying to will away the nagging sense that he shouldn't stop concentrating on Mark Dooher who was, in some ways, the least likely probable candidate for the murder. But for just that reason…
Instinct counted. That was the problem. Glitsky's instincts were screaming something that he couldn't prove – Trang's murder had to have been personal. Someone had hated him passionately.
And that element just didn't seem to be there with his business adversary, Mark Dooher. So Glitsky should stop wasting energy on him. Except if Trang represented something Dooher hated passionately. Like Vietnamese people.
No. Forget that. He had a lot of other work, six other pressing homicides.
It might, after all, be the girlfriend, Lily. Girlfriends always had a motive or two. And Lily stood to benefit if Trang accepted Dooher's settlement. Maybe she'd gotten mad at him when he hadn't? Yesterday he'd told himself that no, she was too small; she could never have held Trang up. But – sudden thought – what if she had another boyfriend? She'd known Victor was alone in the office. He'd overlooked that. If she sent boyfriend number two over…
'Abe – got a minute?'
Frank Batiste stood in the doorway to his cubicle. The Lieutenant and Glitsky had come up together through the ranks. Both were nominal minorities – Glitsky half-black, Batiste a 'Spanish surname' – and both had elected to disregard any advantages, and they were legion, accruing to that status in San Francisco. It had created a bond of sorts. And although Batiste currently outranked Glitsky, they'd been in the department the same number of years and felt like equals.
So Glitsky got up and by the time he reached the doorway, the Lieutenant was sitting behind his desk.
'What's up, Frank?'
'Come on in. Sit down. Get the door.'
A joke, since there was no door. Glitsky took the folding chair across from the desk. Batiste pulled a pencil from his drawer and began tapping the table. 'So you know how to tell the prostitute in the Miss America contest?'
'I'm afraid I don't, Frank.'
'She's the one with the banner reading I-da-ho?
T
he one saving constant in the office, Glitsky thought. Somebody's always got a dumb joke. And Batiste was on a roll. 'Okay, another chance for you: you know the difference between Mick Jagger and a Scotsman?'
Glitsky broke a small smile. 'I give up.'
'Mick Jagger says "Hey, you, get offa my cloud," and the Scotsman says "Hey, McCloud, get off my ewe.'"
'You gotta get an agent, Frank. The right agent could make you a star.'
'That's true, the downside being that it would leave a vacancy here,' Batiste said. He pulled himself up straighter, getting to business. 'Which is what this is about. I notice you aren't taking this year's Lieutenant's exam. You don't want to make more money?'
'More money would be good.'
'Then what?'
'Maybe I don't want to be a Lieutenant. Maybe I don't want to leave Homicide.' Typically, a promotion to Lieutenant meant a transfer out of the detail to which an officer had been assigned. There were exceptions to this rule. Batiste himself had been a Homicide Inspector before his promotion. That wasn't something to count on, but Batiste was hinting that it could happen again with Abe. But, of course, first he had to take the exam.
Batiste opened the side drawer of his desk and took out a giant handful of peanuts in the shell. He dumped them on the desk between them, then grabbed one and cracked it. The peanuts were a constant in the Homicide detail. No one remembered when or how they'd first arrived, but they were always there. 'That's fine if that's what you want. I just didn't want it to be an oversight. I know you've had a lot on your mind lately.'
Batiste chewed and cracked another peanut, busy with it. This was awkward ground. 'You want my opinion, you want to take the test, keep your options open.'
Glitsky gave it a minute, then nodded. 'Okay, I'll do that. Thanks for mentioning it.'
'Good.'
The sound of peanuts being cracked. Neither of the men moved. 'Hey, Frank.'
'Yeah?'
Another long moment. Batiste took another handful of nuts out of his drawer and Glitsky got up, dropped his shells into the waste basket, looked out through the open entrance of Batiste's office, then sat back down. 'Are you sure there isn't anything else? I could handle it, there was.'
'Like what?'
'Like I've got so much on my mind that I'm not doing my job?' Glitsky's voice remained matter-of-fact, but his eyes became distant. 'That I'd be better off pushing paper as a Lieutenant in the traffic division than as a lowly Inspector with a real job in Homicide.' The eyes rested on his Lieutenant. 'I'd like to know, Frank, I really would. If I'm an embarrassment…'
'Who's saying that?'
His shoulders sagged. 'I am, I guess. I'm asking. I couldn't close on Levon Copes. Then I get assigned this clown who shoots up the Tastee Burger when there is no investigation to conduct but it keeps me off the streets? This kind of stuff, it makes me wonder.'
Batiste had stopped with the peanuts. He shook his head. 'Nobody's saying anything like that, Abe. I don't even think it.'
Glitsky took a breath. A beat. Another one. Three.
Batiste. 'You all right?'
'I'm reading everything wrong, Frank. Sorry. I didn't mean to lay it on you. I'm just getting everything wrong.'
Batiste told Abe he didn't have to worry so much about what he might be doing wrong. So what if he wasted a few minutes? They worked in the city's last bastion where results – not hours – were what counted. If Glitsky felt he wasn't on all cylinders, enough were still firing to get the job done. So he should put aside the doubts about why he thought it was Dooher.
Sometimes professionals had hunches. You asked yourself every question you could think of, even if you didn't exactly know why you needed to ask it. Answering them all probably wouldn't take fifteen minutes.
Then he could go talk to Lily Martin again, or Felicia Diep. Or the Pope.
Which gave Glitsky an idea.
'By the way, I met your girlfriend again the other night. I think she likes you.'
Wes Farrell, leaning against the padded back wall, was sitting on the hardwood floor on the squash court, breathing hard. Dooher wasn't even winded. He was absently whacking the ball into the wall, hitting it back on the short hop. A machine.
'I've got so many, Wes, which one are we talking about?'
'The pretty one.'
Dooher inclined his racket slightly, the ball bounced, shot straight up off his racket, and arced into his waiting palm. 'They're all pretty,' he said, smiling.
They're not all as pretty as she is. The girl from Fior d'ltalia? Christina. Your summer clerk. Ring a bell?'
Dooher corrected him. 'One of my summer clerks, Wes. I think we're bringing on about ten. And I hate to ruin your fantasies, but we've remained platonic.'
'I thought I was talking about your fantasies.'
'I have no fantasies. I live an ordered and disciplined life, which is why I will beat you in this next game. Besides, Sheila and I are enjoying a little renaissance right at the moment.' Dooher gave his practiced shrug, minimizing personal complicity in all the good things, such as his wife's sexual favors, that constantly came his way, and bounced the ball off the floor. 'Double or nothing? I'm ready. Where'd you see her?'
Farrell slowly pulled himself to his feet. 'Actually, I'm having a little renaissance myself.'
'With Lydia?'
'Lydia who? Her name's Sam.' He was all the way on his feet now, half limping, holding his back. 'How did I get so decrepit, anyway? I eat right, I drink right. Am I not at this very moment exercising?'
Dooher was tossing the ball up and down, catching it without looking. 'Whose name is Sam?'
'My girlfriend, you fool. And Christina Carrera is a friend of hers. We were at a dinner party.'
'And my name came up?'
Wes shrugged. 'When we realized half the people there knew you. I said you weren't as bad as you appeared. I'm afraid I told them your Vietnam story.'
Dooher's face clouded for a moment. 'That story. I don't think it's come up once in the past ten years, and just the other day…' Dooher explained about Glitsky. 'So I showed him the picture. What was Christina's reaction to all this talk of me?'
'She didn't need your tragic background to think you were a hero. She's one of your fans. Obviously, someone has deluded her into thinking you are a sweet and gentle soul under that craggy exterior.'
'She's got a keen insight into human nature,' Dooher said. 'Maybe I'll give her a raise.'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It wasn't exactly the Pope, but Glitsky's Polish was pretty ragged anyway. He figured the Archbishop was close enough.
Flaherty's Appointments Secretary was initially inclined to be coldly officious, but after Glitsky had explained that he needed a personal appointment with His Excellency to talk about the murder of one of his flock, the man had first gotten interested, then had thawed. He checked. Flaherty had a two o'clock, but his lunch had broken up early – he was in the office right now. Would Glitsky wait a moment?
Okay, the secretary had told him, if he could get down to the Chancery Office, the Archbishop would give him between when he arrived and his appointment, say twenty minutes if he flew.
He flew.
The windows were open and the sound of children playing down below drifted up to them.
They sat kitty-corner in wingchairs. The spartan office was chilly. Glitsky kept his jacket zipped. The rest of the room reinforced the theme of minimal creature comfort – Berber rug, flat-top desk, computer, the chairs, some photos of Flaherty with unknowns and kids and sports figures, a crucifix, a wall of books. With no pretension or sign of earthly power, it was nothing that Glitsky had expected.
Neither was the man himself. In his black pants, scuffed loafers, white socks, green and white striped dress shirt, the Archbishop might have been a high-school teacher. The gray eyes, though, were singular. Intelligence there, Glitsky thought, lots of it. The ability to calculate. To see through things.
But in spite of that, he didn't seem to b
e following Glitsky's line of questioning. 'Are you saying that Mark Dooher told you we had a meeting here on Monday a week ago?'
'He didn't say that, no.'
'Good. Because that didn't happen.'
'There was no meeting to talk about an increase in the settlement you were willing to give Mr Trang?'
'Yes, we had that meeting. But it was, it must have been three weeks ago. Maybe more. And we decided no. We were sticking with the six hundred thousand.'
Clearly, the settlement issue still rankled. But Flaherty wanted to go back.
'I'm curious. You said you talked to Mark, Mr Dooher, is that right? So if he didn't mention this meeting, who did?'
'Victor Trang's girlfriend. And his mother. Independently.' Glitsky felt he ought to explain a little further. 'I've been talking to people as they've been available, sir. Dooher was first.'
'Where did you even get that connection? Dooher to Trang?'
Flaherty might try to present a low profile, but he was used to command. Glitsky sat back, kept his voice low. 'Dooher called Missing Persons. Him, the girlfriend, the mother. That's where I started. And Dooher didn't volunteer anything about the meeting, but since that time I've heard about it from two sources. I'm trying to find out if it happened.'
'Why didn't you go back to Dooher?'
Now Glitsky leaned forward, made some eye contact. 'Excuse me, sir, but do you mind if I ask a couple of the questions? That's how we usually do this.'
The Archbishop let go with a deep-throated laugh, recovered, told Glitsky he was sorry, to go ahead. He'd shut up.
'So there was no meeting?'
'No. Not that Monday night. Not any night. As I said, we discussed the settlement terms at one of our regular daytime business meetings.'
Glitsky consulted the notes he'd taken with Lily Martin. 'You never discussed the figure of a million six hundred thousand.'
'No chance. Mark wouldn't even have brought me a figure like that. He knows that would have been insane. Hell, what we did offer – the six hundred - that was insane.'
'But Trang turned it down?'
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