The Rule of Law Page 23

  “Obviously he doesn’t think they’re going to be there. He’s there to take out Gerson.” Cuneo pursed his lips. “The story’s got a few holes, okay. But they’re pluggable. You want to hear the theory?”

  “Sorry. Sure.”

  “Okay, how about if Hardy ostensibly sets up Holiday’s surrender to his pal Glitsky, who in theory is going to pass him off to Gerson to bring him back uptown to jail? These three Patrol Specials are there because Gerson has a whiff that he’s getting set up and has asked them to come along as backup. He thinks Holiday’s the bait, and he’s not all wrong. Glitsky wants his job back in Homicide, and the plan is to hit Gerson to get it. But the ambush backfires when the Patrol Specials are there when Holiday and Glitsky arrive, and the shooting starts.”

  Chet sat back all the way in his chair. “But there’s no evidence Glitsky was there. Or am I missing something?”

  Cuneo somehow kept himself from sounding defensive. “I said there were some holes.”

  After a small pause, Chet asked, “Okay, how about Gina Roake?”

  “How about her?”

  “Well,” Chet pressed on, “I understand that she alibied Glitsky for the time in question. Which means he alibied her as well. Do you think she was there, too? At the pier?”

  Cuneo shook his head. “I don’t know. Again, no evidence. But there was bad blood between her and the Patrol Specials.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because she thinks these Patrol Specials killed her boyfriend the day before.”

  “David Freeman.”

  “Right. Freeman. So Roake decides to join up with Glitsky and settle the score with them, and alibiing Glitsky to boot. Anyway, the point is, suddenly you got a critical mass of armed people and things go to hell in a hurry.”

  Chet considered the whole scenario for the better part of a minute. “And what about Wes Farrell?”

  Cuneo shrugged. “Nothing. Not connected so far as I know.”

  “Moses McGuire?”

  “Nope. Not familiar. What about him?”

  “He’s Hardy’s brother-in-law and a loose cannon. Got himself arrested for murder a couple of years ago. Guess who was his lawyer: Hardy. And his alibi: Roake. Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

  Cuneo lifted his shoulders, let them drop. “If only we had some evidence putting these clowns on the pier. And, goddamn, I know they were there. Unless you want to believe that Holiday took out four armed and experienced cops by himself and got killed in the process. But I don’t think that. And it wasn’t any Russian mafia when we have so many locals who had a much better chance of being there, and plenty more good reasons.”

  “But there’s still no proof that either Hardy or Glitsky or Roake or McGuire were even there?”

  “Not that I’ve ever seen or heard of. It’s a bitch.”

  “Well, let me ask you this, Dan. Supposing we keep working on this and Mr. Jameson decides to call a grand jury. Would you be interested in coming down and giving your two cents?”

  Cuneo considered for a moment, his foot tapping again. “If you think I could help, although I’d like to have something besides all this conjecture to offer you. Those two guys—Hardy and Glitsky—pretty much ruined my career as a cop. And I loved that gig. But they got me accused of sexual harassment, and once somebody accuses you of that, you’re toast, as you may know.”

  “I’ve heard about it.”

  “So?” He stood up behind his desk, and Chet followed his lead. “I hope I’ve been some kind of help.”

  “Quite a bit,” Chet lied. “And at the least it was good to talk to somebody who didn’t cut me off as soon as I mentioned what I was here about. You might be hearing from me again if we get a little closer.”

  “Sounds good,” Cuneo said. “I’ll wait for the call.”

  30

  ABE GLITSKY GOT off the telephone and fell into a kind of trance sitting in the reading chair in his living room. Outside his picture window, the dusk thickened and the streetlights came on.

  He heard the garage door open and then close below him and heard the welcome sounds of familiar voices as his wife and kids ascended the outdoor steps that led up to his front door. On her way home from her work downtown, Treya had picked them up from the study club they both attended after school.

  Glitsky admitted to one and all that it was a little weird that in his mid-sixties he still had two children living with him. Youngish children: Rachel was thirteen and Zachary eleven. He told himself that they kept him young, and it wasn’t all delusion.

  Without any conscious thought, he was up and opening the door as they arrived at the landing. For some reason—whatever it was, he’d take it—they both favored him with quick hugs as they went sailing past and turned back into their respective bedrooms.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, rats!”

  Then they were gone and Treya was standing in front of him, smiling. “Hey, Dad,” she said, “and if you say ‘Hey, rat’ back at me, I’ll smack you.”

  “It would never occur to me,” Abe said, straight-faced.

  She stepped across the threshold and kissed him.

  • • •

  BACK IN HIS chair ten minutes later, Glitsky looked up as Treya appeared in the kitchen doorway with two steaming mugs. “I took the liberty,” she said, coming forward and handing him one of them. “Plain old Earl Grey.”

  “My favorite, as I believe you know.”

  Lowering herself onto the couch across from him, she sipped her own tea and said, “You seem a little pensive.”

  “I’m a thoughtful guy.”

  “I know that. But you’ve been sitting there without moving a muscle for five minutes. Is everything all right?”

  “Peachy.”

  “That good, huh?”

  Glitsky raised his eyes, cast her a glance. After a small hesitation, he started in. “I got a call from Marcel Lanier. It seems he got a visit today from Chet Greene, who wanted to know what Marcel knew about the Dockside Massacre, especially as it related to me and Diz.”

  “Chet Greene’s the guy who threatened Gina, too, isn’t he?”

  A nod. “Not exactly, and I don’t think he got as far as threatening Marcel with anything. Apparently he just wanted to see if Marcel had been convinced that Gina and I had really been picking out funeral clothes for David Freeman. Marcel told him he was completely convinced, so there wasn’t anything more to talk about after that, and Marcel said he kicked him out a little unceremoniously. But he—Marcel, that is—didn’t feel real comfortable with Greene’s tone. It was really like a bona fide interrogation, trying to dig up some dirt on me.”

  Treya took another sip of her tea, gave Abe a sympathetic look. “This thing is kind of heating up, hon, isn’t it? First Gina, then poor Devin getting fired—and what’s he going to do now?—then Marcel. Is this all because of those sanctions Diz filed?”

  Glitsky considered a moment. “That’s probably part of it, but more I think is the ‘CityTalk’ column and everything around that.”

  “Are you really worried?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s been ten years. If they had anything, somebody would have dug it out and done something with it long ago.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But Jameson doesn’t care about the rules. He’s entirely capable—at least from everything I’ve seen, I believe he is—entirely capable of planting evidence, or producing bogus witnesses, or any other kind of cheating he can think of.”

  Treya said, “Up to and including killing his enemies.”

  “Well”—Abe ate up a few seconds drinking his tea—“I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “Do you really? Didn’t you hear what Diz said today at the office? Two homicide inspectors evidently believe just that. That he’s a literal killer.”

  “Okay, but that whole proof thing . . . If Tully and McCaffrey had proof, they would have charged him back when
the case was hot. But they didn’t, so there’s no point in theorizing that maybe he killed somebody else once upon a time. We just don’t know that.”

  “I know you, Abe, and I think you do know it.”

  “Well, okay, good point. I admit, I think I’m pretty sure I know it. But there’s a difference between knowing it and being able to prove it. And if you get that mixed up, you’re on a slippery slope. Maybe the same one Jameson’s on. I mean, look, I’m sure he believed on some level that Celia Montoya killed this Valdez character, but he shouldn’t have made any move at all until he could prove it, or let Tully build her case. That’s the rule, plain and simple. You don’t do that, you don’t belong in this business.”

  “But Jameson’s already in this business. And it sure looks like he’s coming after you and Diz and Gina and whoever else, and he won’t be playing by the rules as he goes along.”

  “Yeah,” Glitsky said in a somber tone. “It does look like that.”

  “So? What do you think you ought to do?”

  Glitsky shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know, Trey. I really don’t know.”

  • • •

  “HE ACTUALLY WENT and visited Lanier in person?” Hardy asked.

  “He did. But remember that he came and visited Gina, too,” Glitsky said.

  “I’d never forget, but with Gina he was just fishing and offering her immunity if she’d help bust us. With Lanier he was actually doing an interrogation, hoping to break your alibi, which sounds more to me like he’s building a case. Different situation entirely. Definitely turning up the heat if he’s driving around town talking to folks.”

  They were sitting in Hardy’s living room. Oak burned and occasionally snapped in the fireplace. Hardy had a large Riedel glass half filled with Handwritten Cabernet Sauvignon on the coffee table in front of him. Glitsky sipped at yet another cup of tea.

  “So what do you suppose we ought to do?” he asked. “Treya asked me and I had nothing to tell her. Are we just supposed to wait around until he does something drastic?”

  “I’m not really inclined to think that way, although I do see a little silver lining around the cloud here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well”—Hardy drank some wine—“so long as he’s spending his time putting together some kind of legal case against us, I think we can rule out that he’s also planning to shoot us down in the street. Isn’t that heartening?”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Actually, no. I’m just trying to lighten things up a little, since I’ll think a little more clearly when with every breath I’m not afraid I’m going to get shot. But I must have forgotten for a minute that I’m talking to the ever-jovial People Not Laughing.”

  “You’ve been known to beat a dead horse, you know that?” Abe asked. “But all kidding aside, Diz, what do you think is going on here?”

  “Well, he can’t get us even if he goes to the grand jury, even if he gives us the greatest motive in the world to have been there, and even if that’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He can’t get us unless he’s got physical evidence. You know this as well as I do, maybe better.”

  “So say he doesn’t get his physical evidence and he can’t get us going by the rules. Then he breaks them, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hardy shook his head. “We’re not there yet. He’s not there yet. We’ve got to let it play out.”

  “I hate that part,” Abe said.

  Hardy nodded. “I’m not too crazy about it myself.”

  • • •

  GASPARE’S AGAIN.

  Beth Tully was thinking she ought to buy shares in the place. At the same time she was thinking it would be bad luck if it turned out that the ten-table pizza joint on Geary was bugged for sound and Ron Jameson was listening in on everything that she said. Or if somebody—maybe Chet Greene—had a tail on her and knew where she was at every moment.

  She was truly getting paranoid.

  But not, she told herself, without some reason.

  After all, when she’d gotten into work just that very morning—could that have been today?—the arraignment of Adam McGowan had been the only pressing item on her agenda. Devin Juhle had still been in charge of the Homicide Detail. She and Ike had a plan for investigating the murders of Peter Ash and Geoff Cooke that she felt had some reasonable chance of success.

  Now, in the past twelve hours, all of that had changed. Even her partner, Ike, wasn’t inclined to push the envelope on what they could possibly get away with. He still had a hard time believing that they’d been able to remove Devin from his post without any due process or even much discussion—without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Chief Lapeer had just come waltzing in and swept him out as if he were a dust bunny cluttering up his office.

  It had gotten Ike’s attention. Even without one false step, he could be gone in a hot second. If the powers that be could dismiss their lieutenant out of hand, they could certainly find some excuse to dismiss him and Beth.

  Sorry, he’d told Beth, but he had three children and a stay-at-home wife. He couldn’t risk it anymore. While they’d had Juhle’s support, he’d felt it was just on the closer edge of worthwhile to try to bring down big prey like Ron Jameson. Now, without that support, he and Beth could too easily become the prey themselves.

  He couldn’t live with that, so she was back on her own.

  Ike hoped that she’d get the message loud and clear and just lie low, as she’d promised Devin she would.

  She had promised, true, but had thought that Ike understood that she was being sarcastic. She had no intention of lying low. Ike had understood that, hadn’t he? He must have.

  But apparently not.

  Beth didn’t want to think about who Devin’s replacement might turn out to be. Or about his earlier comment: “Whoever it is, he or she will have been prepped about you two.”

  This was a far from heartening thought.

  She was sitting in a back corner by the pickup station facing out, so that she could have the entire place within her vision at all times. Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and other people who knew combat, she knew, tended to pick that seat as well, almost as a default. It felt like right where she belonged.

  People had been coming in and picking up to-go orders at a rate of about one every five minutes for the entire half hour she’d been here. The four booths were full and parties of two to four sat at six of the floor tables. The Eagles were singing about living it up at the Hotel California.

  Checking her watch, she wondered what was taking so long.

  If she didn’t come, then what?

  What the hell was she doing here? she wondered. She should just get up and, taking a page from Ike’s handbook, head home to be with her daughter and boyfriend.

  And then the door opened and she forgot all that as Bina Cooke came in out of the biting cold, blinked a couple of times, saw her, and raised a tentative hand in a low-key greeting.

  Crossing over, Bina pulled out the chair opposite Beth’s and sat down. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “That’s fine. You didn’t have to come at all.”

  “Yes I did.” Bina threw back the hood of her very stylish jacket and shrugged out of the rest of it, letting it hang where it fell over the back of her chair. She seemed to be ten years younger and much prettier—exponentially prettier—than Beth remembered, though of course the last time she’d seen her, three years earlier, she’d just lost her husband and could barely contain her grief. Beth’s image of Bina that day was of burning red eyes, sallow skin, and lank, lusterless hair.

  Now, seeing Bina’s well and no doubt expensively coiffed silver-gray hair, light makeup, high cheekbones, and flawless complexion, Beth thought that she could easily work as a model.

  It threw her slightly, altering her perception—this woman was not some beaten-down victim.

  Due to the circumstances and her physical appearance last time, she’d seen Bina as a destroyed shell of a human
being who’d been buffeted by horrific events. Literally pitiable and, seen from any angle, Bina Cooke had exuded pain and disorientation. And because of this, Beth had considered any information from this woman to be suspect at best, hysterical and all but worthless. Bina was someone to feel sorry for, not a reliable witness. Certainly she was not a woman dealing from a base of power, either personally or professionally.

  Sitting across from her today, this Bina Cooke was a different person.

  “I told them I was waiting for a friend before ordering,” Beth began, “so they let me save the table. Would you like anything? The pizza is great here.”

  “Anything you’d like.”

  Beth felt a sudden nervous fluttering in her stomach. This was a Rubicon moment, to be sure, and she shouldn’t miss the significance of it. Excusing herself, she got to her feet and walked over to the counter, where she placed her order.

  Back at the table, Beth slid into her chair. She stopped herself from thanking Bina again for coming down and instead decided to come right out with it. Leaning in a little closer, she lowered her voice and said, “As I told you when we talked, I’m considering reopening the case into your husband’s death.”

  Bina knew this from their earlier discussion, of course, but at the actual verification that this was really going forward with a legitimate homicide inspector, she threw a glance at the ceiling, then closed her eyes and released what Beth took to be a grateful sigh. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to hear those words?”

  “I think I do, yes.”

  “Tell me how I can help you. Whatever you want to know.”

  “Well, I thought we might start with the gun.”

  “The gun would be good.”

  There were actually three areas of possible discrepancy that Beth wanted to revisit concerning the death of Geoff Cooke: the suicide note, the fact that Geoff had been left-handed and shot himself on the right side of his head, and the gun he’d used. Her plan was to address all these issues afresh and prepare a file that she would somehow, surreptitiously, deliver to the attorney general’s office. Of the three, the most provocative—and quite possibly the most provable—had to do to with the gun.