The Hearing

32

Glitsky chewed on an ice cube, moving his glass of iced tea through the ring of condensation on the table. He was in a booth in the far back at Lou the Greek's, facing away from the entrance, waiting for his appointment. He couldn't shake the thought that it had been unwise to decide to meet here. It was too close to the Hall, to the homicide detail. People he knew would see him. Word would get out.

The window at his ear was half below the level of the street outside. He could look up and see a line of blue sky between the buildings. With the nice weather, Lou had opened the windows a crack to let the place air out, get some fresh oxygen into the mix. All Glitsky could smell was dumpster, though. He lifted his glass, sucked in another cube, chewed some more.

Treya had gone back to Hardy's building. The big box from Elaine's condominium was there in the Solarium and she wanted to catalogue everything in it on the chance that something might jump out. The slim chance.

At this point, Glitsky felt they were all grasping at straws. Hardy and Freeman doing their legal hocus-pocus, Treya making lists, Jeff Elliot wanting to take down the District Attorney. The kids remained enthusiastic, fascinated by the whole procedure. But they were, after all, lawyers. Hardy had them writing more motions about unconsciousness, temporary insanity, police misconduct. They were more interested in the courtroom strategies that might save Cole Burgess than they were in discovering who might have killed Elaine. For Glitsky, this remained the focus. Someone had killed his daughter. He owed it to her – and to himself – to discover who it was.

What had begun as simple remorse over his own excesses had ripened into a genuine concern that a combination of malice and stupidity might possibly have ensnared the wrong man. And if it had, it was up to him – he was the only trained investigator on Hardy's dream team – to run down the right one.

Try as he might, he couldn't develop any warmth for the idea that it had been Jonas Walsh. The doctor had no alibi, true. He'd fibbed about the state of his relationship with Elaine. He was abrupt, distracted, uncooperative. In short, Glitsky had come to believe, he was in a state of grief, something with which he himself had a visceral connection. He recognized it intuitively, and while he would change his mind in an instant if any evidence came to light linking Jonas Walsh with Sunday night in San Francisco, he really didn't expect that to happen.

Likewise with Muhammed Adek. Glitsky had fifteen years' experience interviewing killers, and he came away from his Monday interview with the law student convinced that he wasn't involved. If he'd been less angry, if the sense of betrayal he obviously felt about Elaine had been less acute, maybe he would have felt differently. But even after he identified himself as a cop – administrative leave or not, that's what he was – Muhammed hadn't attempted to downplay any of his feelings as killers tended to do. The boy had been in love with her and she'd chosen another man, and while this could be a motive for murder, it didn't comport well with what Abe thought he knew about the last night of Elaine's life.

Plus – and this was key – from everything Treya had told him, Elaine would have been far more specific with her on Sunday afternoon if she had been going out to meet with Muhammed. 'But she would never have met with him in the first place, Abe. And if she'd somehow gotten talked into it, she wouldn't have just said she was going to a meeting, believe me. She would have mentioned him by name, and not flatteringly. There was no way.'

Glitsky agreed with her. His theory was simple. Elaine's killer was at least a cordial business acquaintance, maybe a good deal more than that. They'd had dinner, or perhaps done something more intimate. But Abe believed in his guts that the crime wasn't one of passion. It wasn't about jilted love or domestic upheaval. It was a cold-blooded contingency that had become a necessity, then been acted on decisively.

He crunched another cube, drummed his fingers on the table, checked his watch. 'Come on, Paul,' he said aloud.

'I'm here.' Inspector Paul Thieu, with another man in tow, slid into the booth across from him. 'Sorry I'm late. Lieutenant, this is Jan Falk. Narcotics.'

'Abe,' Glitsky said. He reached across the table, shook hands. 'Nice to meet you. I assume Paul told you I'm on leave at the moment, maybe forever.'

Falk badly needed a shave and the dumpster smell seemed suddenly stronger. He wore a roguish grin. 'Sometimes I wish I was. No, always I wish I was. Except now, maybe. So what's goin' down?'

Glitsky turned to check the room another time. It had filled up nicely for lunch. There was camouflage in the numbers and the noise. Still, he leaned in across the table so he wouldn't have to speak too loudly. 'Paul says you know something about Ridley Banks.'

Falk shrugged. 'I don't know what I know, tell you the truth. Monday I heard he'd gone missing and I remembered him from last week, some OD case in the Mish. Long story how we got together, but he was on to something and I thought you guys – homicide – might be interested, but maybe not. I couldn't even get a callback.'

Thieu piped in. 'The place is a disaster, Lieutenant. You wouldn't believe it.'

'I bet I would.'

Thieu felt he had to give Glitsky some feel for it. 'They haven't put anybody in your chair, even temporarily. Nobody's fielding calls, everybody's out all the time. The car's driving full speed and nobody's at the wheel.'

'You're breaking my heart,' Abe said. Then, back to Falk. 'So what happened?'

But he couldn't get right to it. Lou came by for their orders, recommending the special, which today was a dish called Yeanling Clay Bowl. Thieu looked up at him. 'Yeanling? What's a yeanling?'

'I don't know,' Lou admitted. 'It's got rice noodles with lamb and some kind of sauce. Really good, though. I'll put you down for three of them, OK?'

Glitsky saw they had consensus. 'OK, three bowls,' he said.

'It doesn't come in a bowl,' Lou explained. 'That's just the name of it. Yeanling Clay Bowl. From back where they originally made it someplace. My wife could tell you all about it, but she's busy right now.'

'I got an idea, Lou,' Glitsky said.

'What?'

A tight smile. 'Go make her busier, OK.'

Lou got the message and disappeared. Abe looked at Falk. 'You were trying to talk to somebody in homicide.'

'Right. So after a day, nobody's called me back and I ask around and Banks is still missing. So I decide I'll go down the Hall in person and see what's the problem.'

'The problem,' Thieu interjected, 'is that nobody's in charge. Sorry, go ahead.'

'So I go in and there's Paul and I start to talk to him a little about this-'

'And I take it upstairs, the Chief's office himself, and what do they tell me?' Thieu's voice had thickened in outrage. 'That Banks is a missing person. He's not a homicide. Go back downstairs and do my job. If it turns out he's dead, then I can worry about it. Can you believe these guys? So anyway, Abe, this is about when I remember you'd called me about Rid, wanting to reach him at home. I figured maybe you'd know something.'

Falk picked up. 'Then they're talking about Ridley on the news. What he's working on, about him being the main witness in this Elaine Wager case, and this OD is part of that, too.'

'That's true,' Glitsky said. 'So what was he on to, you think?'

Falk finally had a clear field to run on, and he took off. The operation that narcotics had been running out of Jupiter, Cullen Alsop's appearance at the bar, Falk and Banks bopping Damien together, Gene Visser the ex-cop possibly being a source of heroin. 'That's what Banks really sparked to. If Visser had been there in the flophouse with the kid.'

'Then what?' Glitsky asked.

'I don't know,' Falk replied. 'But if this kid was a snitch… the thing about being dead is, it's a lot harder to change your story.'

'A lot harder,' Thieu agreed.

'But you can't testify either, so what good's the snitch to begin with?' Glitsky was chomping more ice now, thinking. When he swallowed it, he spoke. 'I got a question, Jan. You hear on TV that this is part of the Wager thing. You know the hearing's going on right now. How come you don't go to the DA?'

Falk almost spat his tea across the table. 'You know how many times me and my guys are putting something together for like a year, wrapped up nice and tight? Righteous busts, dealers in the slammer, good shit. Then two weeks later it's all over. The case has mysteriously fallen apart. Or it's not charged. Or some fucking thing. My dealers are sprung and I'm made on the street and gotta start over someplace else. Arid half the time my snitches have been exposed and I'm on the line for that.' He drank iced tea, calmed down slightly. 'It's got so… you know what I do now? I go direct to the AG' – the State Attorney General. 'If they don't want it, I've even been known to turn cases over to our generous brothers at the FB-One, even though they'll find some way I get no credit for the goddamn bust. But no way do I go to the DA. No way!'

'That's who got the lieutenant busted,' Thieu offered.

Falk broke a conspiratorial smile. 'I think I heard something about that. I think I even heard you might be working on the other side.'

'That's a vicious and ugly rumor,' Glitsky said. 'But if it's true, I got a friend you might want to talk to. Get on the same bus.'

'And run over Pratt and Torrey? Where do I sign up?'

Glitsky nodded. 'I think you just did.'

'Here you are, gentlemen. Three Yeanling Clay Bowls.'

Falk took Thieu's plate and passed it across. Then grabbed his own. 'I hope it's rare,' he said to Lou. 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's well-done yeanling.'

This, Glitsky thought, was police work. Finally. This was how it was going to get done.

Astoundingly, no one had issued him a subpoena for the hearing – Torrey because he would be at best a hostile witness and had nothing to add that might help the prosecution case, Hardy because he simply figured Glitsky would be there anyway. He could call him as a witness at his pleasure.

When Glitsky left Falk and Thieu and got back into Department 20, the hearing had already resumed for the afternoon. From the little he heard, he gathered that the lawyers were yakking about how much of the videotape they were going to have to watch. As usual, it didn't appear they were going to get to an agreement anytime soon.

He tapped Treya on the shoulder and motioned that she should accompany him. She took his hand in the hallway, and they walked through the lobby and all the way outside to the steps of the Hall – the day was still warm, without any breeze.

'God.' She inhaled with pleasure, her face up to the sun. 'You know what this reminds me of? I had a teacher – Mrs Barile – in junior high in lovely Daly City, where we'd get a day like this about every seventeen years, and I remember one time we did. For just one period, English, this time of day, right after lunch, Mrs Barile she took us all outside and we sat on the grass and she read out loud to us. The shirt scene from Gatsby. You know that one? Where Daisy cries? Anyway…' Treya suddenly looked embarrassed. 'Sorry. I just had that same feeling again. That's not what you wanted.'

'Actually, it's pretty close to exactly what I wanted.' Glitsky felt he could have listened to her all day. They could stand here on the steps of the Hall of Justice and she could tell him all the good feelings she'd ever felt in her life. For the first time in half a decade, he was feeling them himself – a wash of something other than duty, persistence, cold honor. He still didn't trust them entirely, couldn't talk about them. But they were there. Warmth, hope, the future.

He wanted it too badly and this, he believed, would guarantee that it would never last. So he returned to what he could live with, his comfort zone. 'But it's not why I called you out from in there.' He told her he was going to go try and have a talk with somebody, so he wouldn't be around if Hardy decided he was going to call him as a witness.

'This is from your meeting at lunch?'

He nodded, almost smiling. 'I'm happy to report that the unit seems to be falling apart in my absence. Nobody's covering any bases except Paul Thieu and he's on my side. He's getting me copies of the lab stuff and crime scene report on Cullen Alsop. Meanwhile, there's this ex-cop that Ridley thinks might be involved somehow.'

'You saw Ridley Banks? He's OK?'

This erased any sort of animation from Abe's face. 'No. He told this to a guy in narcotics, and Thieu put us together.'

'So who is this person? Did Ridley go see him?'

'No one knows, Trey.'

'But he might have been the appointment he told Diz about.'

'That's what I'm hoping.'

Treya took a half step backwards, crossed her arms over her chest. She spoke with a slow precision. 'That would have been the last time anybody heard from him.'

'That's right.' He knew what she was thinking. It was one of the fundamental moments. You got involved with a policeman, you accepted an elevated level of risk. Some people couldn't do it. Some people found out too late. But sooner or later, it always had to be dealt with.

'What's his name?' she asked.

'Gene Visser.'

Another pause. 'Maybe your friend Paul Thieu could go with you.'

'Then nobody's watching the shop at all. Besides, I haven't even located him yet.' He touched her arm lightly. 'Trey, this is what I do. It's OK. How'd it go with your lunch?'

A shine had risen in her eyes. She spoke again with exaggerated care. 'Please don't change the subject, Abe. What if this man killed Ridley?'

'Then he'd be a complete fool to try anything with me, wouldn't he? The first thing I'll do is tell him everybody knows where I went. I even logged it in.'

'And that will protect you?'

'Well,' he said, 'you know, protection, the whole concept. There's really no such…' He stopped, his eyes suddenly filled with a kind of panic.

'What?'

'Nothing. I think maybe my yeanling didn't agree with me.' He took a heavy breath.

'Abe? Are you all right?'

'Yeah,' he said automatically. 'Just a little…' Another breath. His hand went to his chest. 'I think I'd better sit down.'

In the courtroom, Judge Hill was about to rule on the admissibility of the confession. Hardy had been arguing that they should watch all six hours of interrogation on videotape. He wanted to get to the coercion issue now, before trial.

Torrey objected. 'Your honor, the movies are full of wonderful performances by people who are apparently drunk or high on drugs. We can watch Mr Burgess on tape all day long and still never get to anything approaching proof that he was in fact under the influence of anything. He was never tested for drunkenness. Perhaps, as you say, he was in the early stages of heroin withdrawal-'

Hardy chimed in. 'And as such, your honor, would have said anything, he would have done anything-'

Hill used his gavel. 'Don't interrupt the bench again, counselor. I've read your arguments in motion form. Just because defendant perhaps had motivation to lie does not demonstrate that he did in fact lie. If you have nothing new to add, I'm standing on my ruling. You can take it up again if this hearing results in a trial.'

The bad blood between Hardy and Hill was so thick that Freeman felt compelled to intervene. 'Your honor, if I may approach.'

Hill sighed in frustration. This argument had already been going on for more than a half-hour. He'd made his ruling. And suddenly now the old lion was coming out of his cave. 'All right, Mr Freeman.'

David stood up slowly. As protocol demanded, all four attorneys made thek way to the front. 'Your honor,' Freeman began, 'as you know, we have prepared a brief outlining internal inconsistencies within the alleged confession itself.'

'As you say, counselor, I know that. I have read it.'

'Then, your honor, with all respect, we'd like to object further to the confession on foundational grounds. Who can say if this is a complete, unaltered copy of the tape unless Inspector Banks will testify?'

'Your honor!' Pratt and Torrey, in unison.

Hill held up a peremptory hand and glared at them. 'Mr Freeman, the defense has just been arguing for the better part of an hour that the court should sit through six hours of the defendant's videotaped testimony on the coercion issue. Now you're saying we shouldn't see any of it? Am I getting this right?'

Freeman's calm was unnerving. 'Even if it weren't so fatally flawed,' he said, 'the officer who took the confession isn't available to swear to the tape's authenticity and completeness.'

The prosecution fumed and sputtered. Other officers, including several homicide inspectors, had been around and even in and out of the interrogation room. They could say the tape was accurate. The tape looked full and complete. It was self-authenticating. A technician could say the tape was unedited. Behind them bubbled a cauldron of static. For a second, it seemed that everyone in the courtroom was speaking at once. Then Hill's gavel – bam, bam -cracked through it all like a gunshot and created an equally deafening silence. Hill had had enough. He glowered at all the attorneys, out over them to the crowd beyond the rail. He spoke brusquely. 'The court will take a half-hour recess to consider these and other matters.'

Without another word, he stood and left the room.

'Diz!' Jeff Elliot was wheeling himself furiously up the hallway.

Hardy had his hand on the door to the restroom and stopped. 'What?'

'Did you hear that siren before that last argument?'

'I didn't hear anything.'

'I did. I went out and checked. It was Abe.'

'What was Abe?' Though of course he knew. Uttering an oath of despair, he broke for the lobby at a run.