“You swear to God,” Abe replied wearily. “But you got a better chance of talking yourself out of Sam Polk. We got you at the scene of Eddie’s murder.” Almost, he added to himself.
“I wasn’t there!” His eyes had widened. Abe found himself forced to look closely at him. There was something about this denial that was different. “Look, I rode in Eddie’s car most days, maybe even that day, I don’t know. But you gotta believe me. I liked Eddie, I didn’t kill him.”
Abe wasn’t about to get suckered by sincerity. He shook his head, made a production out of checking his watch. “You sure as fuck did.” Then he stood up, motioning to the deputy to turn off the recorder. “Take him upstairs,” he said.
He got his hand on the doorknob before Alphonse called out again. “Hey!”
Slowly, acting frustrated and exhausted (though his adrenaline was still pumping away-he wouldn’t need any sleep the rest of the night), Glitsky turned back.
“Look, I’ll talk, okay, but I didn’t kill nobody.”
“You killed Linda.”
He waved that off. “I just thought-I got people saw me that night Eddie got killed. Like all night.”
“Yeah? Who, your mother?”
“No, man. I play basketball, City League. That was a Monday, right?”
Abe nodded.
Alphonse rolled his eyes up again, straining for the memory. “Finals were that night. We played four games. Came in second.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah, good for me. Who came in first?”
Abe glared at him, lips drawn tight.
Alphonse smiled. “Bunch of cops,” he said, “whole team full of cops.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE MORNING sun cast long shadows over the Cruz parking lot. It was barely seven A.M., and Hardy had been there for over an hour, taking the chance that Cruz had told the truth about one thing-working bosses’ hours.
He’d slept at Jane’s, gotten up early and decided to find out about Arturo Cruz once and for all. He wrote Jane a note, then drove across the wakening city to China Basin, where the whole thing had begun.
And it was, he thought, a whole thing, a whole new thing. Jane was right. It could be a pattern emerging. Two weeks before, he was a bartender, he wasn’t in love (either the feeling or the attitude), he hadn’t talked to Abe Glitsky in almost a year, or walked sharks or cared about some stupid idea of Pico’s to get them into the Steinhart.
He wasn’t sure what was going on, exactly. But having an hour alone to think about it, on a morning they were probably shooting postcards all over the Bay, made it all very real and a little scary.
It was just a favor for Moses and Frannie, he had told himself at first, but that wasn’t washing very well anymore. It had gotten inside him, this feeling that he might be doing something worthwhile. It reminded him of why he’d decided to join the police force and then go to law school what seemed about four lifetimes ago.
And it wasn’t that he wasn’t proud of tending bar. It took a certain kind of person to be good, he knew, and there was a simple and profound art to the pouring itself, especially of something like a draft Guinness. Also, there were principles, like you didn’t put a call liquor with a sweet mix-a Jack Daniel’s and Coke, a Tanqueray and tonic. No, you explained to your patron that the finest palate in the world could not tell the difference between a $2.50 call liquor and a ninety-cent well drink when it was mixed with some sugary bubbly stuff. Then you let them see for themselves. You even gave them that drink on the house. And then if they still wanted their Remy Martin VSOP Presbyterian, you directed them to another establishment. Hardy wouldn’t pour that shit, and McGuire supported him. Hell, McGuire had trained him.
But-no doubt of it-something else had been going on since he had started digging into Eddie Cochran’s death. As Jane had pointed out, he thought about the consequences of things, and he had a hard time just now envisioning going back behind the bar rail full-time. Or even part-time. Maybe he was getting a little old to be a bartender. He didn’t think he had wasted his life or anything like that, or wish he’d done things differently for the past few years-doing them had gotten him to here.
What really knocked him out-the surprise of it as much as anything-was that here, right now, felt so good. He wasn’t worried about being hurt, or failing, or anything. He wasn’t worried about his potential. He was having fun, getting to know who he was, not who he’d assumed he had become. It was interesting. In fact, he thought, it was a gas.
The Jaguar turned into Berry Street, and Hardy, parked opposite the Cruz building, not in its parking lot, got out of his car and started walking across the street. The Jag pulled into the empty lot, and by the time Arturo Cruz, alone, had opened the door and stepped out, Hardy was standing in front of him. “Mr. Cruz,” he said, “I’ve got a problem.”
“Mr. Cruz, I’ve got a problem.”
The questions weren’t going to go away. He knew that now.
You couldn’t build a whole fabric of lies, he thought, and have it all hang neatly together. And the weight of all of them was still affecting him and Jeffrey.
Especially after the story on Linda Polk had broken yesterday. Of course, they’d run it in La Hora. Thank God he’d been with Jeffrey the whole day Sunday, that the police had another suspect. Otherwise, Jeffrey might have thought he’d killed Linda too.
And now here was the man again. He might as well come clean right now, he thought, get it off his chest.
He couldn’t see Hardy’s face, though he had recognized him as he was driving up. He was forced, looking into the bright, low, morning sun, to squint, then try to shade his eyes. The man was a fighter plane coming out of the sun.
He turned back to the car. There, that was better. He could see fine. He reached inside for his briefcase, then straightened up. “Come inside,” he said, and started walking toward the building. Hardy fell in beside him. “I was going to call you,” he found himself saying. As he did every morning, he unlocked the huge glass double doors.
“What about?”
Cruz pushed the door and held it open. “Linda Polk was killed Sunday?”
“Right.”
“And Sam died when, yesterday? I heard about it yesterday, anyway.”
“Sunday night, we think.”
They were at the elevator, inside it. The doors closed shut quietly. The man, hands folded behind his back, didn’t say another word. Was he humming? The doors opened on the secretary’s station of the penthouse.
“Being in the news business, I tend to hear about things.”
Why wasn’t Hardy saying anything? Well, try again, at least now in his office, on his own turf. He sat behind his desk. “So what’s your problem? You said you had a problem,” Cruz said.
“Why were you going to call about Sam and Linda?”
“That’s your problem?”
Hardy shook his head patiently. He was sitting, very relaxed, in one of the deep white leather half-banquettes in front of his desk. “No,” he said, “you brought that up. I thought I’d pursue it a little.”
“Well, I mean, since Linda and Sam and, uh, that other fellow, the one who died here…”
“Cochran. Ed Cochran.”
“Yeah, since they all worked for the same company. That’s a pretty large coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, I mean…” What did he mean? He hadn’t been planning to call Hardy. He didn’t know why he’d said that-nerves, maybe. But Hardy-he could tell-wasn’t going to let it go.
“What do you mean?” The persistent bastard.
“I mean there must be some connection, wouldn’t you think? Between them.”