The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  "But my point," Abe said, "is whether they still had a key to the shop."

  20

  The 49ers had a good day and beat Green Bay 21–3.

  The tickets Roy Panos had given Dan Cuneo were at the forty-five yard line, fifteen rows off the field.

  Perfect seats. The sun was out and there was no wind, though it was chilly enough here at Candlestick Point that now, walking back to his car, Liz snugged up close up against him, her arm around his waist.

  She felt the vibration, too. "What's that?"

  "Pager," he said. He pulled the little unit off his belt.

  "My partner, from home."

  As he held it, it vibrated again, and he sighed, smiling at her. "And here's another one."

  "Mister Popularity," she said.

  "That's me." But when he saw the number, his smile faded. "My boss, from his home."

  He had a cell phone in his car, and he called Gerson first. The lieutenant told him that the Silverman widow had called earlier in the day, saying she had discovered some new and important information about her husband's murder. Gerson wanted Cuneo to go and talk to her. He gave him the address.

  "I'm on it," Cuneo said. He hung up, turned to Liz.

  "Work."

  Liz wore a half-mocking pout. "You don't really seem too sad about it."

  "It's a big case," he said. "This Silverman thing again."

  "I thought you had a suspect for that."

  "We do. Maybe somebody's found where he is. That could be what this is."

  "And then what?"

  "And then maybe I get to make the arrest."

  "All by yourself?"

  Modest, he shrugged. "If I have to."

  She smiled at him now. "You love what you do, don't you?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I sure do."

  "But how do I know for sure those two calls really weren't other girlfriends?"

  He turned to her in the car seat. "First, because I'm a policeman, and cops don't lie. Second, I don't have other girlfriends. I'm not even sure I have one girlfriend, to tell you the truth, although I was kind of hoping to find out about that before too long."

  Smiling, she took the cue and leaned across the seat, brought her lips up to his. The kiss went on for close to a minute, and there was nothing platonic about it. When they separated, she said, "On that girlfriend question, you can say you have one if you decide you want to."

  For the first time in quite a while, Cuneo was tempted to let something else come before his work. He struggled to get a breath, leaned over and kissed her again. His hand found her breast. One of her hands went to his leg. His pager went off again. The kiss ended and he groaned, pulled the pager from his belt. "Lincoln again," he said.

  "Would you like to call this time, make sure it's really him and not a girl?"

  "That's all right," she said. "I think I believe you. Will whatever it is you're doing this afternoon take a long time?"

  "It's hard to say. I don't even know what it's all about yet. But if I'm done early, I could stop by again and maybe we could ..."

  Her finger traced his lower lip, shutting him up. "No maybe about it," she said.

  On its way back to San Francisco from the Truckee Airport, the Kamov Ka-32 helicopter thwacked its boisterous way down the Little Grand Canyon, the little-sung but majestically beautiful passage cut into the Sierra Nevada by the American River. Its two passengers, Nick Sephia and Julio Rez, were sitting strapped in behind Mikhail, their pilot. Perhaps they should have been relaxed from two nights of gambling and four women between them, but this morning Sephia's Uncle Roy had called, waking them at ten o'clock, not even five hours after Nick had paid off Trixie and finally fallen into a comalike sleep. Roy told Nick he needed them both back in the city—he was sending the Kamov back up for them. It seems they had made some mistakes and still had work to do.

  Even with the windows closed, they could barely hear inside the chopper. But that didn't stop the sleep-deprived Sephia from bitching about things. "It's not like we didn't do enough these last couple of weeks. Roy's crazy to want us back in town. We ought to be lying low."

  Rez shrugged.

  "He told us to make it look good, didn't he? Didn't we both figure the ring would lock it up? So now he's all, 'What if somebody noticed?' Who the fuck's gonna notice?

  And what are we going to do about it now anyway? It's done."

  Rez put a fish eye on his partner. "You shouldn't have shot Sam."

  "I had to shoot him. He had us made. Me, anyway. And fuckin' Roy, stopping to admire the jewelry. He's the only reason ... it's his fault as much as mine."

  "Yeah, but he's getting us out of it. So we just let him work it."

  "Hey, Julio. Here's a tip—he's not working it. We're working it. Maybe you didn't notice who was there with Creed, who didn't even show up for the faggots."

  "Whatever. It's working. It's his plan. We just stay cool; it'll be over."

  "I am cool."

  Rez looked over at him, snorted. "Oh yeah, you're cool."

  "Hey, who missed Holiday? And Hardy? Both of 'em.

  Six shots. Didn't touch either one."

  Rez threw it back at him. "Who drove like shit?"

  They lapsed into a sullen and angry silence. Sephia closed his eyes and crossed his arms, trying to get some more sleep. After two or three minutes of looking down into the wilderness, Rez leaned forward and put on his pair of headphones. "Hey, Mikhail!"

  The pilot tilted his head. "Yah!"

  "How much time we got?"

  The pilot shrugged. "All we need. Shipment till tomorrow."

  "You mean not till tomorrow, you dumb Polack. Why don't you swing us around?"

  Mikhail didn't completely understand the complicated and unexpected request, so he turned in his seat. Rez pantomimed that he should turn the craft around and fly lower.

  "Got to piss?" Mikhail asked.

  Rez laughed and shook his head no. He repeated the order.

  Sephia felt the lurch, the change in altitude and direction, and sat up, eyes open. "What's happening?" he yelled across to Rez, who didn't appear to hear. Sephia hit him on the arm and asked again.

  "You'll see. A little fun." He pointed at his earphones.

  "Put them on. You're going to need 'em." Then, into his microphone, "Mikhail! Good! Down! Down! Okay, now.

  Slow."

  The pilot put the helicopter into a steep dive, leveling off over the river, at perhaps sixty feet. The sides of the canyon rose up on both sides, towering over them. Then, suddenly, on the right, one of the canyon walls disappeared to reveal a grassy plain upon which grazed a herd of deer.

  Rez unstrapped his seat belt and suddenly pulled open the door. Rez tapped Mikhail on the shoulder and pointed down. "There!" he said. "There!"

  He pulled a .45 automatic from his shoulder holster and turned to smile over at Sephia. The herd of perhaps twenty head didn't seem to know what to make of the noise from above them. As a body, it made a false start, then stopped again, and huddled together. Mikhail, getting the idea, hovered over them, circling.

  The .45 fired three times in quick succession, deafening even over the noise of the prop. Rez whooped with a mad laughter as the chopper dipped and turned and he squeezed off two more rounds.

  The remainder of the herd was moving now, out under the helicopter. Rez slammed his own door, crossed to Sephia's and yanked it open, slapping the gun with a yelp into his partner's hand, pointing down. The deer were right under him, forty feet below, milling in confusion.

  Sephia nodded, took the gun and aimed with both hands, then fired three times in three seconds. He pulled the trigger again, then noticed the slide all the way back, the chamber exposed. No more ammo.

  But Rez pulled a fresh clip from his jacket pocket and handed it over. Sephia ejected the old one, dropped it onto the floor, and jammed the new one up in place. The slide slapped forward, the first round in the chamber. He took aim again. The standing deer had at last begun to run and Mikhail
was chasing them toward a grove of trees.

  Sephia took his shot. Squeezed again, but this second time, there was another empty click. Misfire. The first cartridge had jammed, bent now, halfway outside the chamber.

  Sephia swore again, but the sullen look had left his face.

  The two partners were ecstatic with the noise and the mayhem.

  The rest of the deer reached the grove and Mikhail pulled up steeply, then whirled back around. Rez leaned out the open door and looked down, smiling.

  In the pasture, six deer lay still in the brown grass.

  Cuneo rang Mrs. Silverman's doorbell.

  Out here in the western half of the city, the wind had come up. Intermittent high clouds scudded overhead, permitting only a milky sunshine through them. Suddenly, Cuneo realized, from a sunny morning of great promise at his home in Alameda, it had become a depressing late-autumn afternoon.

  Mrs. Silverman looked worn out, as though she hadn't slept well. Still in mourning, she wore a black skirt and matching sweater, a demure string of pearls. After he'd gotten seated at the dining room table and declined her offer of something to drink, he placed his tape recorder between them, delivered the standard test and preamble with his name and badge number, the date, and the identification of the witness. Then he asked Mrs. Silverman to tell him why she had contacted the police. She got to the crux of it immediately, with no prompting by Cuneo.

  When she'd finished, for a long moment he couldn't think of a question. He sat back in the dining room chair and crossed one leg over the other. Finally, "But the ring was at Holiday's place, ma'am. I found it myself."

  "I'm not denying it was there. I'm saying it wasn't taken the same night my husband was shot. It couldn't have been."

  "And what does that mean to you?"

  She settled back in her chair, a blackened figure in a dim room. "I don't know exactly. I was thinking it meant that Mr. Holiday couldn't have taken it, after all."

  "Why not?"

  "Well ..."

  "Maybe he saw the rings while he was there the first time and went back another day."

  "But I locked the place up after I left, the night I started to do the inventory. I don't know how he could have gotten in."

  "Maybe he had a key. Wasn't he a regular at these poker games?"

  "Yes, but Sam didn't give those men keys to our shop.

  Sam wasn't stupid, Inspector."

  "No, ma'am. No one's implying anything like that. But maybe he found an extra key somewhere in the shop when he was there the first time. Or even in the red pouch itself?"

  Cuneo's suggestions seemed to upset her. "I didn't think of that. But I'm not sure Sam had many extras. Certainly he wouldn't have left any of them lying around."

  "It would only have taken one." Cuneo came forward, put his arms on the table. "Mrs. Silverman, we appreciate your coming forward with this. This is a very difficult time, I'm sure, and you want to do all you can to help. If nothing else, you've given us something else to look for at Holiday's place. If there's a key to your shop we've missed there, we'll go back and find it, I promise."

  The little speech didn't seem to help much, but Cuneo got the feeling that nothing would. Mrs. Silverman sighed deeply. "I just wanted to make sure that the wrong man didn't suffer for what Sam's killer had done."

  "I wouldn't worry about that. We've got the right man.

  The money proves that without any question, wouldn't you say?"

  "I suppose."

  Unambiguous as it was to Cuneo, somehow Mrs. Silverman seemed doubtful. "You don't seem too convinced."

  "No, I ... it's just that I had a thought that it might have been—what's the word?—planted there."

  "Planted? By who?"

  "Someone who could have gotten into the shop."

  "Which brings us back to the key, doesn't it?" he asked gently.

  "Yes, I suppose it does. But then I think Wade Panos and his people might still have one, really are more likely to have one than this man Holiday, don't you think? From when they patrolled for us?"

  Cuneo, suddenly, was all attention and focus. On the drive out, he had tried to dredge up from his memory all he could recall of Mrs. Silverman. Her name had stuck with him, and not just because she was a victim's spouse. He finally had remembered the name from Gerson's story about Abe Glitsky. Now when he heard the name Panos again, the connection came back to him. Glitsky's earlier use of Mrs. Silverman as a wedge to get back into homicide.

  Glitsky helping out some lawyers in their lawsuit against Panos. Beyond that, John Holiday out beating the streets for witnesses and plaintiffs in that same lawsuit.

  Holiday and Glitsky. And by extension the lawyer, too.

  Hardy, the guy Blanca had told them about yesterday. All of them, co-conspirators.

  And now Glitsky hitting a new low, using this grieving old woman to float the idea that the ring had been "planted," a word she hardly knew. Cuneo smiled and kept his tone as pleasant as he could. "Mrs. Silverman," he said, "I wouldn't torture myself with all these dark imaginings, if I were you. Are you still talking to Lieutenant Glitsky about this case?"

  "Just last night," she said. "His father, Nat, was Sam's best friend. I called him when I remembered about the ring. He told me to get in touch with you."

  I'll bet he did, Cuneo thought. After he'd coached you about your testimony. But to her, he simply nodded. "Well, that was smart of him. But if you ask him, he'll tell you the same thing. We're so used to TV and movies nowadays, we sometimes feel there's always got to be some unlikely twist, like somebody planting evidence. In the real world, most things are just what they look like." He came forward in his chair, lowered his voice to a near whisper. "If it eases your mind at all, whenever and however he got the ring, John Holiday probably wasn't the one who shot your husband. But he was there, doing the robbery, getting his poker money back, when Clint Terry lost his head and panicked and shot Sam. All the evidence supports that, ma'am.

  That's what we've got."

  Pumped up with adrenaline, Cuneo walked up the dark driveway to the refurbished garage that Liz rented just off Silver Avenue. Around at the side door, he saw candlelight flickering on the walls through the window. He knocked once, lightly, and a bulb came on over the door. "Who is it?"

  "Liz. It's Dan Cuneo."

  "Dan who?"

  But then another light came on in the window and the door opened. She stood there smiling at him. Barefoot, she wore a green terry cloth bathrobe. Her hair wasn't yet completely dry and framed her pretty face in a black halo of curls. She had a glass of wine in her hand. He became aware of the thump of a jazzy bass line, caught a heady whiff of a musky perfume and, unmistakably, marijuana.

  "Did you get to arrest him?" she asked.

  An hour later, Cuneo was as relaxed as he could ever remember feeling.

  The bed was a mattress on the floor and he lay naked flat on his back upon it, one arm thrown back over his head, the other around the shoulders of his new lover. The music she'd had on when he got there had ended and now the apartment was silent. More incredibly to him, his own head was silent. Liz had pulled up the blanket and now lay pressed up against him, her left hand resting flat against his belly, her leg thrown over both of his. The candle cast the room in an amber glow.

  "So somebody ought to tell Wade and Roy to watch out," he said. "These guys are serious. I mean, Glitsky's up there in the department. He's also tight with Clarence Jackman, the District Attorney. His wife, get this, is even Jackman's personal secretary."

  "And they're all in this together?"

  "My boss didn't know how high up it went. He didn't want to think it went to Jackman, but it might. But there's no doubt a conspiracy here."

  "Trying to frame Wade?"

  "That's what it looks like. Glitsky had this poor old lady prepped like you couldn't believe. Didn't Wade still have a key to Sam's place? I doubt she even knew what she was saying, but Glitsky sure as hell knew what he was feeding her."

&nb
sp; Liz came up on an elbow and the blanket slipped down to reveal the arc of her breast. "I haven't heard Glitsky's name before around this. Although I know Dismas Hardy, of course, and David Freeman. They've been out to get us for most of the past year now. I don't know why. Wade's the nicest man. Secretary's Day last year he took me to Masa's. It must have cost him three hundred dollars. And flowers every day that week."

  "You don't have to sell me. He basically did my job for me on this one."

  "You're being modest."

  "I don't know about that. But I do know Wade had better be careful. This Glitsky is a very serious man. Wade's got to be clear on that."

  "I'll sit him down and make him listen. Except what can he do, really? That's the problem with being a good guy.

  You can't stop anybody until they do something to you first."

  "So maybe somebody will do something."

  "To Wade? I don't want that, either."

  "No. I mean stop Glitsky. The DA or somebody might step in."

  "I can't believe he's with the police and he's so bad."

  "I know," Cuneo said. "It's a problem."

  21

  Motor running and heat on, Paul Thieu's car was parked across the street from Glitsky's duplex on Monday morning. When he and Treya came down their steps at a little after 7:30, Thieu turned off the engine, opened the door, and got out. Glitsky stopped, said something to his wife, and left her on the sidewalk while he crossed over.

  "You could have come up and knocked, Paul," he said.

  "We would have let you in."

  Thieu said, "I thought it would be better if we didn't talk at the Hall."

  Thieu wasn't yet thirty-five years old, and Glitsky suddenly realized that except for Marcel Lanier, he was now the oldest inspector in homicide. He recalled when he'd pulled Thieu out of Missing Persons six years ago to translate as he'd interviewed the Vietnamese mother of another murder victim. Then, as now, the face had been grave—if the man had a flaw, he was too serious. This morning, he exuded gravity.

  "I was going to be driving in with Treya," Glitsky said.