The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  But then last year, his best friend, Abe Glitsky, had a heart attack that turned out to be a very near thing. Glitsky was the elder of the two men by a couple of years, but still, until it happened, Hardy had never considered either himself or Abe anywhere near old enough to have heart trouble. The two men had been best friends since they’d walked a beat together as cops just after Hardy’s return from Vietnam.

  Now Glitsky was the chief of San Francisco’s homicide detail. Half-black and half-Jewish, Glitsky was a former college tight end. No one among his colleagues would ever have thought of describing the lieutenant as anything but a hard-ass. His looks contributed to the rep as well—a thick scar coursed his lips top to bottom under a hatchet nose; he cultivated a fiercely unpleasant gaze. A buzz-cut fringe of gray bounded a wide, intelligent forehead. Glitsky didn’t drink, smoke, or use profanity. He would only break out his smile to terrify staff (or small children for fun). Six months ago, when he’d married Treya Ghent, the administrative assistant to the new district attorney, several of his inspectors had bet that the new lifestyle would mellow him out considerably. They were still paying the installments.

  Hardy was a successful defense attorney. Though he and Glitsky were on opposite sides of the fence professionally, there was also most of a lifetime of history between them. When Glitsky’s first wife, Flo, had died some years before, Hardy and his wife, Frannie, had taken his three boys in to live with them until Abe could work his way through some of the emotional and logistical upheaval. Last fall, Hardy had been the best man at Abe’s wedding.

  They didn’t talk about it—they were guys after all—but each was a fixed point of reference in the other’s life.

  The heart attack got their attention.

  Since a month or so after Abe’s marriage, they’d fallen into some semblance of a regular exercise program, where a couple of days a week one would goad or abuse the other into agreeing to do something physical. After the macho need to demonstrate their awesome strength and breathtaking endurance to each other in the first few weeks had almost made them quit the whole thing because of all the aches and pains, they finally had arrived at a brisk walk a couple of times a week, or perhaps throwing some kind of ball on the weekend.

  This morning they were eating up maybe three miles an hour walking on the path around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. It was a cool and clear morning, the sun visible in the treetops. A mist hung over the water, and out of it at the near shore a swan with her brood of cygnets appeared.

  Glitsky was talking work, as usual, complaining about the politics surrounding the appointment of two inexperienced inspectors to his detail of elite investigators in reaction to the unexplainable renaissance of hit-and-run accidents in the City by the Bay. In the past twelve months, Glitsky was saying, ninety-three persons had been struck by motor vehicles within the city and county. Of these, twenty-seven had died. Of the sixty-six injury accidents that didn’t result in deaths, fourteen were hit and runs.

  “I love it how you rattle off all those numbers,” Hardy said. “Anybody would swear you knew what you were talking about.”

  “Those are the real stats.”

  “I’m sure they are. Which is why I’m glad we’re on this path and not the street where we could be senselessly run down at any moment. But how do these numbers affect your department? I thought hit and runs weren’t homicides.”

  Glitsky glanced sideways at him. “Technically, they are when somebody dies.”

  “Well, there you go. That’s why they come to you. You’re the homicide detail.”

  “But we don’t investigate them. We have never investigated them. You want to know why? First, because there’s a separate detail cleverly named ‘hit and run.’”

  “That’s a good name if they do what I think,” Hardy said.

  “It’s a fine name,” Glitsky agreed. He knew, although the police department would deny it as a matter of course, that no hit-and-run incidents—even the homicides—were more than cursorily investigated by inspectors. What usually happened was that a couple of members of the hitand-run detail would take the paperwork at the Hall of Justice the day after the incident. Maybe they would go to the scene of an accident and see if they could find a witness to provide a description or license number of the vehicle. If that failed, and there were no good eyewitnesses in the report, that was essentially the end of the investigation. If they had a license number, they punched it into their computers to see if they had a street address associated with the vehicle. Sometimes, if the accident got a lot of press and they had a vehicle description, they would call a body shop or two and see if any cars matching the hit-and-run vehicle had surfaced. Usually the answer was no. “It’s a fine department, even. But it doesn’t do what we do, which is investigate murders.”

  “In spite of your detail’s name, which indicates an interest in all homicides.”

  “Hence the confusion,” Glitsky said. “Some of our civic leaders remain unclear on the concept.”

  They walked in silence for another moment. “What’s second?” Hardy asked.

  “What’s second what?”

  “You said you don’t investigate hit-and-run homicides, first, because there’s a separate hit-and-run detail. When you say first, it implies there’s a second.”

  Glitsky’s pace slackened; then both men stopped. “Second is that hit-and-run homicides tend not to be murders. In fact, they’re never murders.”

  “Never say never.”

  “This time you can. You want to know why?”

  “It’s hard to ditch the murder weapon?”

  “That’s one reason. Another is that it’s tough to convince your intended victim to stand in front of your car when there are no witnesses around so you can run him over. Most people just plain won’t do it.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” Glitsky said, “is that with twenty-seven dead people in twelve months, the citizenry is apparently alarmed.”

  “I know I am,” Hardy commented. “Perpetually.”

  “Yeah, well, as you may have read, our illustrious Board of Supes has authorized special funding for witness rewards and to beef up the investigation of all vehicular homicides.”

  “And a good idea it is.”

  “Wrong. It’s a bad idea,” Glitsky said. “There’s no special investigation of vehicular homicides to begin with, not even in hit and run. Ninety percent of ’em, you got a drunk behind the wheel. The other ten percent, somebody’s driving along minding their own business and somebody runs out from between two cars in front of them—blam! Then they freak and split. They probably weren’t even doing anything wrong before they left the scene. These are felony homicides, okay, because the driver is supposed to stick around, but they are not murders.”

  “And this concerns you because…?”

  “Because now and for the past two months I’ve had these two new politically connected clowns—excuse me, inspectors—in my detail that I’ve been telling you about, and they seem to be having trouble finding meaningful work. And let’s say that this hasn’t gone exactly unnoticed among the rest of my crack staff, who by the way refer to them as the ‘car police.’”

  “Maybe they mean it as a compliment,” Hardy said.

  Glitsky shook his head in disgust, then checked his watch. “Let’s walk.”

  Hardy could imagine the plight of the new inspectors, and knew that their treatment at the hands of the veteran homicide cops wouldn’t be pretty. Despite all the scandal and controversy that had ravaged the self-esteem of other details in the police department over the past few years, the twelve men and women inspectors who served in homicide considered themselves the elite. They’d worked their way up to this eminence, and their jobs mattered to them. They took pride in what they did, and the new guys would not fit in. “So abuse is being taken?” Hardy asked.

  “Somebody painted ‘Car Fifty-four’ on their city issue. Then you know the full-size streetlight we’ve had in the d
etail for years? Somehow it’s gotten plugged in and set between the two guys’ desks, so they can’t see each other when they sit down. Oh, and those little metal cars kids play with? Six or eight new ones every day on their desks, in their drawers, everywhere.”

  “I guess we’re moving into the abuse realm.”

  Glitsky nodded. “That would be fair to say.”

  At a little after nine o’clock, Glitsky sat behind his desk in his small office on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. The door was closed. His two new men—Harlen Fisk and Darrel Bracco—had so far been called out on injury hit and runs about ten times in their two months here, and in theory they should have been rolling already on this morning’s accident involving Tim Markham. But this time, they were seeking their lieutenant’s guidance before they moved.

  Glitsky blamed neither Fisk nor Bracco for being upset with the conditions they’d endured to date in the detail, but until this morning, he couldn’t say he’d lost any sleep thinking about it. They were political appointees and they deserved what they got in their brief stops up the promotion ladder, hopscotching over other inspectors who were smarter, more qualified, and worked harder.

  Harlen Fisk was the nephew of City Supervisor Kathy West. He went about six three, two fifty, and was self-effacing almost to the point of meekness. Darrel Bracco was trim, crisp, clean, ex-army, the terrier to Fisk’s Saint Bernard. His political juice was a little more obscure than his partner’s, but just as potent. His father, Angelo Bracco, had worn a uniform for thirty years, and now was Mayor Washington’s personal driver—Bracco would have the mayor’s ear whenever he wanted.

  So these men could just as easily have gone whining to their supporters and Glitsky could right at this moment be getting a formal reprimand from Chief Rigby, who’d heard from the mayor and a supervisor that he was running his detail in an unprofessional manner. But they hadn’t gone over his head. Instead, they were both here in his office, coming to him with their problem. The situation gave him pause and inclined him to listen to what they were saying, if not with sympathy, then at least with some respect for their position.

  Bracco was standing at attention, and Glitsky had been talking for a while now, reprising many of the salient points of his earlier discussion with Dismas Hardy. “That’s why our office here in homicide is on the fourth floor,” he concluded, “with the lovely view of the roof of the medical examiner’s office, whereas hit and run has a back door that opens into the alley where the waste from the jail’s kitchen comes. Murderers are bad people. Hit-and-run drivers have made an unfortunate life choice. There’s a difference.”

  Bracco sighed. “So there’s no real job here, is there?”

  Glitsky came forward in his chair, brought his hands together on the desk before him. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  The young man’s face clouded over. “So then why were we brought onboard?”

  This called for a careful response. “I understand both of you know some people. Maybe they don’t really understand some technical matters.”

  Fisk was frowning. “What about the man who was hit this morning, Markham?”

  “What about him?” Glitsky asked.

  “He wasn’t dead at the scene, but if he does die, then what?”

  “Then, as I understand it, you get the case from H and R.”

  “And do what with it?” Bracco asked.

  “Try to find the driver? I don’t know.” Glitsky—nothing he could do—spread his palms, shrugged. “Look, guys,” he said, “maybe I could talk to the chief and see if he can arrange some kind of move. You both might want to think about transferring to gangs or robbery or someplace. Do some good work on some real cases, work your way back up to here, where you’ll get some real murders, which this is not.”

  Bracco, still in the at-ease position, wanted to know his assignment. “In the meanwhile, we’re here. What do you want us to do, sir? On this morning’s accident?”

  The entire situation was stupid, but in Glitsky’s experience, stupidity was about the most common result of political solutions. Maybe these boys would learn some lesson. “You want my advice? Go out there yourselves. Look a little harder than H and R would. Maybe you’ll find something they missed.”

  They weren’t happy about it, but Bracco and Fisk thoroughly canvassed the immediate neighborhood. Although they found no witnesses to the event itself, they did not come up completely empty-handed.

  At very near to the time of the accident, a forty-fiveyear-old stockbroker named John Bandolino had come out of his house on Seacliff just west around the corner from Twenty-sixth to pick up his newspaper. He was on his way back inside when suddenly he heard a car with a bad muffler accelerate rapidly, then squeal around the corner. Since this was normally a serene neighborhood, Bandolino ran back down to the street to see if he could identify the troublemaker who was making so much noise so early in the morning. But the car was by then too far away to read the license plate. It was green, though, probably American made. Not a new car, certainly.

  The other corroborating witnesses on the car were George and Ruth Callihan Brown, both retired and on their way to their regular Tuesday breakfast with some friends. They had just turned off Seacliff onto Twenty-sixth, George driving, when Ruth saw Markham lying sprawled in the garbage up ahead. After the initial shock, both of them realized that some kind of a medium-size green car had passed them in the other lane as they were coming up. They both turned to see it disappear around the corner, heard the muffler noise, the acceleration. But they didn’t even think to pursue it—Markham was unconscious, and bleeding where he lay. They had their cell phone and he needed an ambulance.

  The crime scene reconstruction expert had trouble pinpointing the exact location on Twenty-sixth where Markham had been struck. The force of the impact had evidently thrown him some distance through the air, and there were no skid marks to indicate that the driver had slammed on the brakes in panic, or, indeed, applied the brakes at all.

  3

  Lunchtime, and Lou the Greek’s was hopping. Without any plan or marketing campaign, and in apparent defiance of common sense or good taste, Lou’s had carved its unlikely niche and had remained an institution for a generation. Maybe it was the location, directly across the street from the Hall of Justice, but there wasn’t any shortage of other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, and none of them did as well or had hung on as long as the Greek’s. People from all walks of life just seemed to feel comfortable there, in spite of some fairly obvious drawbacks if one chose to view the place critically.

  The entrance was through a frankly urine-stained bail bondsman’s corridor, which led to an unlit stairway—six steps to a set of leatherette double doors. The floor of the restaurant was five feet below ground level, so it was dark even on the brightest day and never smelled particularly, or even remotely, appealing. A row of small windows along one wall was set at eye level indoors, though at ground level out. This afforded the only meager natural light. Unfortunately, it also provided a shoe’s-eye view of the alley outside, which was always lined with garbage Dumpsters and other assorted urban debris, and often the cardboard lean-tos and other artifacts of the homeless who slept there. The walls had originally been done in a bordello-style maroon-and-gold velveteen wallpaper, but now were essentially black.

  The bar opened at 6:00 for the alcohol crowd, and did a booming if quiet business for a couple of hours. There’d be a lull when the workday began across the street, but at 11:00 the kitchen opened and the place would fill up fast. Every day Lou’s wife, Chui, would recombine an endless variety of Chinese and Greek ingredients for her daily special, which was the only item on the menu. Lou (or one of the morning drinkers) would give it a name like Kung-Pao Chicken Pita or Yeanling Happy Family, and customers couldn’t seem to get enough. Given the quality of the food (no one would call it cuisine) and the choices available, Lou’s popularity as a lunch spot was a continuing mystery even for those who frequently ate there t
hemselves.

  The party at the large round table by the door to the kitchen fit in this category. For several months now, in an unspoken and informal arrangement, a floating group of professionals had been meeting here on most Tuesdays for lunch. It began just after the mayor appointed Clarence Jackman the district attorney. At the time, Jackman had been in private practice as the managing partner of Rand & Jackman, one of the city’s premier law firms, and the previous DA, Sharron Pratt, had just resigned in disgrace.

  Jackman viewed himself mostly as a businessman, not a politician. The mayor had asked him to step into the normally bitterly contested political office and get the organization back on course, prosecuting crimes, staying on budget, litigating the city’s business problems. Jackman, seeking different perspectives on his new job, asked some colleagues from different disciplines—but mostly law—for a low-profile lunch at Lou’s. This move was startling enough in itself. Even more so was everyone’s discretion. Lunch at Lou’s wasn’t so much a secret as a nonevent. If anyone noticed that the same people were showing up at the same table every week, they weren’t talking. It never made the news.

  Jackman faced the kitchen door. The coat of his tailored pin-striped suit hung over the back of his chair. His white dress shirt, heavily starched, fit tightly over the highly developed muscles in his back. His face was darkly hued, almost blue-black, and his huge head was perched directly on his shoulders, apparently without benefit of a neck.

  Lou the Greek must have gotten a good deal on a containerload or so of fortune cookies, because for the past couple of weeks a bowl of them, incredibly stale, was on every table for every meal. The DA’s lunch today had been consumed with the serious topic of the city’s contract for its health insurance, and when Jackman cracked one of the cookies open and broke into his deep, rolling laughter, it cut some of the tension. “I love this,” he said. “This is perfect, and right on point: ‘Don’t get sick.’” He took in his tablemates. “Who writes these things? Did one of you pay Lou to slip it in here?”