"But they didn't look. And you didn't tell them."
"Another source of my guilt. I figured if they're going to be on the case, they can work it. So the closet's got all these junk shoes, and then this Italian braided beauty with the gunk on it, and half a size too small." Thieu shook his head. "It doesn't make any sense. You want my opinion, somebody knew what we'd be looking for and planted this stuff."
Glitsky kept his face impassive. "Funny you should use that word," he said, and gave Thieu the gist of Sadie Silverman's testimony, Cuneo's interpretation.
After Thieu heard it out, he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "I've got to tell the lieutenant about these clowns, Abe. I've got to. Except then…" He didn't have to say it. Cops didn't fink on other cops. Gerson might appreciate the news, but Thieu would forever be tainted in some way, out of the club more than he already was by virtue of his race, brains, physical size. "It'd be sweeter if Gerson found it out by himself."
It wouldn't only be sweeter, Glitsky knew, but it would save the good Inspector Thieu from the sure-to-be-thorny explanation of why he hadn't told Cuneo and Russell everything that he'd discovered and theorized instead of leaving them to find out for themselves. Thieu felt guilty about it, and Glitsky empathized with where he was coming from. But the fact was that he should have felt guilty. He hadn't done the right thing.
They pulled up to the curb a couple of blocks before they reached the Hall. Glitsky had his hand on the door handle, but paused a last second. "Look, Paul. I happen to know Holiday's lawyer. He'd be motivated to verify some of those alibi names. Maybe he could talk one of them into volunteering to come in. Tell his story."
"You know," Thieu said, "it's not that I care about this John Holiday. I sure as hell don't want to help his defense if it needs it. But I don't believe he did Wills and Terry." He wiped his eyes as though banishing the image. "I screwed up, too, didn't I?"
"It's a big club, Paul. Welcome to it. At least you feel bad about it."
"Maybe not bad enough to tell Gerson."
"Well, the plain fact is that he done you wrong, too." He opened the door, got out, and leaned back in. "Give it a day or two. I'll call Holiday's lawyer. Make something happen."
Holiday's lawyer felt a hundred years old. The bruise on his back had blossomed into a dinnerplate-size black-and-blue mark that woke him up whenever he shifted in bed over the entire weekend. The whole left hand continued to throb.
Glitsky called. On and on about Sadie, Cuneo, Holiday, the planted or not-planted ring. And of course, the client never got in touch.
Sunday night he'd taken a Vicodin left over from somewhere, then drunk two scotches with his brother-in-law before dinner. Two bottles of red wine with Moses after. Up too late, near midnight, Moses at his most passionate and most drunk, pressing for retaliation against Panos and his people now\ Before they could strike at Hardy again. Hardy halfway-more than halfway-into it. Really, really pissed off. Embarrassingly so, he supposed. Foolishly. Frannie supervising the kids' homework far in the back of the house where maybe it wouldn't sound so awful. Susan finally packing Moses up and driving him home.
Both women angry with their men. Frustrated, exhausted, afraid.
Out of bed, badly hung over-dying-at 5:30, and no chance of going back to sleep, not with the back, the head, the hand. For the first time in months, he couldn't even be bothered with the newspaper. Out of the house before anyone else was up, he stopped at St. Francis to check on David, who perhaps on his deathbed looked just like Hardy felt. An hour in the office produced a cup of coffee and fourteen minutes of disjointed dictation. He was never going to drink alcohol again.
Getting nothing done, he went back down to his car, which was parked under the building. Paranoid, he knelt and looked under the chassis, not really knowing what he was looking for. Moses's warnings kept replaying in his brain-the brother-in-law had not been mellow at all about Hardy getting shot at. He got into the driver's seat, stopped himself, then pulled the lever to open the hood, got all the way out and around the front again, and lifted it. "Motor," he said aloud. Disgusted with himself.
At the Hall of Justice, Hector Blanca was busy; he'd be a while. Hardy waited in the outer office while time passed. A half hour. Forty-five minutes. He asked at the desk again, was told that it might still be a few minutes.
An hour.
The secretary finally suggested he come back another time. Sergeant Blanca really wasn't going to be able to spare any time this morning. "Well, I wonder if you'll be able to help me, then." He heard himself, the clipped and impatient tone guaranteed in any bureaucracy to produce glassy-eyed, unfeeling incomprehension, if not outright hostility. He reined himself in, fooling no one, however. "Listen. Someone shot at me last Friday-shot at me!-and I was hoping to find out if Sergeant Blanca or anybody else had made any progress finding out who it might have been."
The secretary shook his head. "Did you make out a report? Well then, as soon as we have something, the sergeant will let you know."
He walked back down a long hallway to the main lobby, where the day had now progressed enough to where the familiar vulgar din reigned, maybe even louder than usual. The traffic court line stretched from the ticket window, out past the elevator banks, over to the coffee kiosk, where he waited in another line to place his order. A baby was crying up front while, closer to him, a couple of five-year-olds chased each other, screaming. In the entrance to the courtroom hallway, a man in a frock and collar was lecturing a group of fifteen or twenty people in Spanish. A shaggy young man, barefoot, fell into line behind him and hit him up for some spare change. Reaching into his pockets, he found some coins and dropped them into the man's dirty, outstretched hand.
The coffee line wasn't moving, or maybe he had mistakenly wandered into the traffic line after all. Either way, he walked to the elevators and stepped into an open one, pressing 4, Glitsky's old floor, out of habit. Six people shared the car with him-he didn't hear a word of English. When it stopped at his floor, he got out and stood lost in the suddenly empty, almost eerily quiet, space.
The elevator area on all the floors looked almost identical, so he'd gotten well into the hallway that should have led to Glitsky's new digs when it struck him that something was wrong. Familiar, but wrong.
He stopped again, looked around.
Out of a doorway further along on the right, two men emerged and turned toward him. One-gray-haired, heavy and bespectacled-wore a well-tailored tan business suit. The other was a policeman in uniform. They were coming toward him, talking easily to one another, and at about twenty feet, recognition kicked in. Hardy moved into their path. "Richard," he said to Kroll.
"Diz! How you doin'? I think you know Roy Panos. Roy, Dismas Hardy."
"Sure." Roy's smile evaporated. He nodded cautiously, but neither man offered to shake hands.
Kroll put on the proper face. "So how's David coming along?"
"Not well, I'm afraid."
"No change at all?"
Hardy shook his head. "It doesn't look too good, Dick."
He put a hand on Hardy's arm. "I am so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do? Or anybody can do? Anything at all?"
"I think they're doing all they can." Hardy motioned with his head. "So you been down at homicide?"