The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  “They’re looking. The inspectors came by and interviewed me on Friday night.”

  “And what did you tell them? What did you know?”

  “Pretty much what I told you. Three guys. At least one of them with a gun. Mr. Panos thought they probably got away with Mr. Silverman’s bank deposit. This old leather pouch he was supposed to be carrying.”

  “That’s what it was,” Sadie said. “Thursday was his deposit night.”

  “Who’s Mr. Panos?” Nat asked.

  “My boss,” Creed said.

  Sadie had recovered enough to stand up again. “He owns the security patrol we used to pay. But he raised his rates last summer and we had to drop it.”

  But Nat wore a confused expression. “Wait a minute. If this guy Panos didn’t do security here anymore, why was he here on Thursday?”

  “Because I was,” Creed said. “The cops asked him the same question. Also, he and Sam knew each other.” He turned to Sadie. “He was really upset about this, ma’am. He told the inspectors he’d give them any help he could, and I know he was working with them as of Friday”—he included Nat—“when they interviewed me.”

  “How do you know that?” Nat asked.

  “His brother, Roy—that’s Mr. Panos’s brother—was with them, interviewing suspects.”

  “So they have suspects, after all?” Sadie asked.

  Creed made a pained face. “They were looking at a few guys who’d been at a poker game. Apparently one of them lost a lot of money the night before, and the thought was he might have come back to get it. Mr. Panos had given the inspectors a list of who’d been there, and that’s where they started.”

  A sharp rapping on the front door made them all turn. A dark, menacing hatchet face scowled through the glass, and Creed reached for his gun. Nat, though, put a hand on his arm, stopping him. “It’s my son,” he said.

  “What are you doing here, Dad?” The intimidating black man took up a lot of room in the cramped aisle. He turned impatiently to Creed and held up a badge. “I’m Glitsky, SFPD. Who are you?”

  “I’m assistant patrol special Matt Creed, sir.”

  But Glitsky had already whirled. “Nat, you shouldn’t be here.”

  The old man was unbowed. “Sadie wanted . . .” He stopped. “We thought it would be a good idea to do an inventory. Nobody’s gotten back to her, and she has the key, so we thought we’d let ourselves in, find out what they took. Find out something at least, Abraham, since nobody seems to want to tell us anything.”

  “I got that much from your message.” Shaking his head disgustedly, Glitsky looked around. He walked to the entrance to the back room, glanced down at the brownish stain on the floor, then threw a cursory glance over the jewelry case. Then he was back at his father. “I told you I’d talk to Gerson as soon as I could, Dad, find out what I could. He wasn’t in today.”

  He took a deep breath, focused on Sadie. “Mrs. Silverman,” he said, “I know it’s very hard to wait to learn anything when at the same time you’re trying to deal with your grief. My heart goes out to you, but it would be better if my father wasn’t here right now. Nat will tell you, I did this homicide stuff for sixteen years—not just did it, I ran the detail—so believe me, I know. When the police know something, they will tell you. And I really can’t have my father involved in this case in any way.”

  When Creed realized that he had been in the room with Lieutenant Glitsky, formerly head of homicide, he decided that even if it delayed him for a few stops in his rounds, he was going to talk to him after his father and Mrs. Silverman had been sent on their way. Even a low-level connection with someone of Glitsky’s rank and experience might translate to a letter of recommendation, or something, later on. He might also get some advice on how to approach Cuneo and Russell about his perhaps-squirrelly identification of Clint Terry.

  So as Glitsky left with his father and Silverman’s wife, Creed trailed along behind, invisible, while the trio walked down the street and across it into the underground level of the Macy’s parking lot.

  Hanging back by an overhang until Mrs. Silverman’s car had driven away, Creed tried to time his moment. In his best mood, Glitsky didn’t exactly invite an easy familiarity, and now—standing with his hands on his hips, looking after the taillights of the Lexus—he positively simmered over a low flame of anger, frustration, maybe fatigue. After a minute, he brought a hand to his forehead and squeezed at his temples.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  The return to professional mode was immediate and impressive. “I’m fine, Mr. Creed. I didn’t realize you were still with us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Glitsky was walking and Creed fell into step next to him. “I’m sorry I snapped at you back there at the shop. I was upset with my father. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Thanks.” It seemed to be a chance at an opening. They’d come to the mouth of the garage, up on the street level again. “Crime scene stayed till about four in the morning.”

  Glitsky stopped and faced him. Between the garage and streetlights, they stood in a pool of visibility. “How do you know that? You stay around, too?”

  “I came back after my shift.” Creed shrugged. “I’m taking crim courses in school. I’d been the first person on the scene and nobody seemed to mind if I stayed. I wanted to see how it worked in real life.”

  “And how was that?”

  “I thought they were pretty thorough, from what I know, which isn’t much.”

  Glitsky put his hands into his jacket pockets. Several seconds passed. “So what happened that you got there first? Did you get a call?”

  “No. Really it was just mostly a coincidence. I was on the block, right over there”—he pointed to a spot across the street—“when the alarm went off at Silverman’s. I saw some guys running out the door. So I yelled after them to stop, and one of them shot at me. Twice.”

  Glitsky’s mouth moved, an impulse to smile. “And missed, I see.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re lucky.” His eyes went to the shop. “Though maybe not so much from that distance. But either way, you don’t want to get shot.”

  “It’s never been in my plan.”

  “Yeah. Well, it was never in mine either. It just goes to show you.”

  Creed couldn’t stop himself. “You got shot?”

  It was the wrong question. The lieutenant’s face closed up. “Nothing to brag about,” he said, clipping the words.

  Glitsky was wrestling with himself. He’d only come downtown—fifteen minutes after he’d arrived home—to keep his father from getting him into more trouble. He hadn’t even had dinner yet, and knew that Treya would be waiting for him. Rachel was still feverish, and in some low-level but constant way he was worried about that, too. Certainly, he didn’t want to stay in any kind of private conversation with this young rent-a-cop, even if he did seem bright, interested and idealistic. These were not traits Glitsky normally associated with Panos’s crew, especially since he’d been reviewing the police reports on behalf of Hardy and his pending lawsuit. He’d had innumerable dealings with WGP on his own as well, and few of them had been pleasant.

  On the other hand, this boy had been the first person on the scene, had actually been a witness to the crime in progress. Undoubtedly, he had been interviewed by the case inspectors, and Glitsky had no reason to believe that they were less than adequate. He didn’t know Cuneo and Russell at all. They’d been brought up in Gerson’s watch and might, for all he knew, be the most competent and committed policemen in San Francisco, although most of his recent experience in the department argued against that.

  “Nothing to brag about,” he said, and realized that he sounded too harsh. “But . . . so you actually saw these guys?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I saw three figures running away from me in the dark. I couldn’t identify any of them to save my life.”

  “That happens. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” The open
face of the young man took on a troubled look, and Glitsky said “What?”

  Creed blew out heavily, a deep sigh. He seemed suddenly ashamed of himself. “Except maybe I was trying too hard to be helpful.”

  “Helpful’s generally good, son. What’s the problem?”

  A shrug. “I might have given your guys some bad information.”

  Glitsky had seen enough confessions to know when somebody wanted to talk. He leaned against a parking meter, crossed his arms, met Creed’s eyes, waited.

  “I had told them—your inspectors—that the person who’d shot at me seemed like he was kind of big. So then they came back the next day and said they were looking at this other guy who works in the neighborhood, a bartender over at the Ark, do I know him? Do I think it could have been him? And I’m thinking, I don’t know what I’m thinking, to tell you the truth, probably just wanting to be important, you know? So I give them the impression that, yeah, maybe it was this guy. I mean, I say it could have been, and then I told the inspectors he’s got these two friends he hangs with . . .” The recitation ground down to a stop.

  “And now you don’t think it was?”

  Creed shook his head miserably. “I really don’t know. I went by there tonight—the Ark—and he was behind the bar. I mean, it could have been him, I suppose, maybe, but I was a lot stronger than that when I talked with the inspectors. It was like I gave them the impression that I could positively ID him.”

  “So call them up and tell them,” Glitsky said.

  “Just like that?”

  “Yep. They’re probably working half a dozen leads right now. They’ll be glad to know sooner rather than later. Believe me, they’ll thank you for it.”

  “And think I’m an idiot.”

  Glitsky actually broke a smile. “Possibly, but if you’re not an idiot next time nobody will remember. But I’m curious. How’d they get on to this guy, the big guy, in the first place? There must have been something.”

  “Yeah. There was. It was the Ark. The connection there.”

  “Which is what?”

  “This guy John Holiday owns the place. Evidently he was at Silverman’s poker game—you know about the poker game? Wednesday nights? Anyway, Holiday was there the night before and lost a lot of money. Mr. Panos knew about it and told the inspectors and they went by the Ark to talk to him—Holiday. But since he wasn’t there, they got Clint. The big guy. The bartender. And after that, of course, they came to me.”

  “Talk to the inspectors,” Glitsky said. “Maybe they’ve got something else on these guys, too.”

  “I just wouldn’t want them to waste their time because of what I told them. And also, I’ve got to tell you . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “These guys. Holiday, Clint and Randy Wills. I think they’re pretty harmless. I’d hate to get them in trouble if they had nothing to do with this.”

  Glitsky chewed on the inside of his cheek, his brain fully engaged. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said. “If they did it, some evidence of it will likely turn up, and that’s what they’ll get them on. They’re not going down on your ID, I promise you that. Meanwhile, I’m keeping you and my wife thinks I’m on my way home.” He pointed a finger at Creed. “Call the inspectors, though, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Creed was working the beat south of Market and saw Roy Panos taking a break in a booth at Carr’s coffee shop. Like Creed, he was on duty tonight, and in uniform. Roy was engaged in an animated conversation and after Creed was inside, he realized that one of the two men facing away from him was Nick Sephia. Not a big fan of Nick’s, whom he’d worked with a few times before he went to the Diamond Center, he considered turning around and walking out, but by then Roy had seen him and motioned him over, sliding over to the wall to make room.

  “Hey, Mattie.” Creed hated the diminutive, and had committed the cardinal error of mentioning it once to Roy, thereby assuring that he’d forever be Mattie, or Little Matt, or Mataroni. In any event, it was hard to stay mad at Roy, who was always hale fellow well met and tonight so much so that Creed wondered if he’d been drinking. Or maybe he was nervous. “I was just telling the guys here—you know Nick and Julio . . . no? Julio Rez, Matt Creed.”

  Creed reached across the table and shook hands with a very well-dressed, overshaved, alert and unsmiling Hispanic with a little less than half of his left ear. “Nice,” he said as though adding “to meet you” would have been excessive.

  Creed had a quick impression of danger, of suppressed energy, maybe of cocaine. He wondered if Nick, who’d moved into the stratosphere of security positions transporting diamonds, now had his own bodyguard. When Rez had leaned across to take Creed’s hand, his coat had fallen open, revealing a shoulder holster and the butt of an automatic.

  But this was the observation of a split second. Roy was back carrying the conversation. “I was just telling these guys about you. I mean, here I’ve been doing this work, what, fifteen years, and it’s shine the flashlight, see nothing, go to the next window and do it again. Mattie here, he’s on less than a year, he comes round the corner—blam! blam!—couple of rounds right at him, guys running, him chasing, the fucking Wild West. Awesome action.”

  “Anytime you want, I’ll trade you,” Creed said. “I took the job for the flashlight work.”

  “You don’t like gettin’ shot at?” Sephia asked. “I love it, you know that, swear to God. Makes me horny as hell.”

  “Anything doesn’t make you horny, Nick?” Roy asked.

  Sephia considered briefly. “Nothing comes to mind,” he said.

  But Rez turned to Creed. “Roy said you fingered those assholes at the Ark,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question. It sounded more like a challenge, but then Rez had made the single word “nice” sound the same way.

  “Fingered might be a little strong,” he said.

  “He’s being modest,” Roy said. “He set ’em all up to go down. Holiday, Terry, his little girlfriend, what’s his name?”

  “Randy Wills.” Rez didn’t have to think. He had it all in his head. He might have been an accountant.

  “Wills, Terry, Holiday, all of ’em,” Roy repeated. “Not only does the kid get himself shot at a few times, he solves a murder before his first anniversary.”

  “Not exactly that.”

  But Roy pushed it. “Hey, it’s true, Matoosh. After your ID the other night, those guys are going down for a long time.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “You don’t seem so happy about it,” Rez said. He leaned in across the table, a tight smile fixed under a glassy cat’s-eye stare.

  Creed felt a line of sweat forming at the back of his neck. “The thing is, it might not have been them.”

  Roy snorted, half laughing. “What are you talking about? Of course it was them. You’re the one who saw them, didn’t you? How could it not be them?”

  But now, having gotten it out, Creed continued in a rush. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you know a Lieutenant Glitsky?”

  Roy nodded. “Sure. He used to run homicide. What about him?”

  “Well, his father was a friend of Silverman’s and they were by there tonight.”

  “Who was by where?” Rez asked.

  “Glitsky and his father. And Silverman’s wife. At the shop.”

  “Doing what?” Sephia’s color was suddenly up.

  Creed shook his head. “Nothing, really. They never got to it. They were going to do an inventory, but barely got started before Glitsky got there and cleared them out.”

  “There you go,” Roy said, as though he were satisfied with the answer. “So Glitsky’s working the case now? What’s that about?”

  “No. I think he was just there because of his father. But outside, after, I asked him what if I wasn’t as sure as I sounded about the three guys with the other inspectors.”

  “And what’d he say?”

  A shrug. “He said just to
tell them. Not a big issue. They’d be glad about it.”

  “Wait wait wait, not if . . .” Sephia said.

  But Roy raised a hand—firmly. Made eye contact across the table. “Exactly right!” he said. Then, in a milder tone. “Exactly right.” He smiled a shut-up warning at Sephia and Rez. “No way they want to spend all that time chasing the wrong guys.” Back to Creed. “But you’re sure this time? You seemed pretty certain the other way the other night.”

  Creed shook his head miserably. “I don’t even know that. It still could have been them, I suppose. I just didn’t want them—the inspectors—thinking I was positive, basing their case on what I said . . .” He scratched at the tabletop.

  Roy nodded in full agreement. “Hey, bottom line is Glitsky’s right. You got to tell them. In fact, I’m meeting up with them later tonight down at the Hall.” Roy tapped his own pocket. “Wade’s little PR moment for our good friends among the police. Forty-niner tickets, fifty yard line. You want, I’ll pass the message on for you when I see them.”

  Creed felt a wash of grateful relief and it showed. Roy Panos was far better with people, especially with city policemen, than he was. Roy could phrase Creed’s ambivalence about the ID in such a way as to minimize the idiocy factor, maybe even give it a rosy gloss. Certainly, Creed himself could avoid the embarrassment of having to face the inspectors and admit that in his zeal to be a help, he’d screwed up. “You sure?” he asked Roy. “You’d do that?”

  Roy smiled and took a pinch of Creed’s cheek. “Hey, anything for my little Matooshka. Huh?”

  Creed took this as his cue to leave. He slid out of the booth and said good-bye all around. But he wasn’t completely out the door to the coffee shop when Nick leaned across the table. “He can’t take back that ID, Roy.” He was whispering, but with great intensity. “That’s the thing that’s keeping the inspectors busy.”

  Roy picked up his coffee cup, sipped at it. “He’s not taking back the ID,” he said.