between the gallons of recycled clean water the system could actually process and the gallons guaranteed by the brochure was big enough, Hardy thought, to drive an eighteen-wheeler through. He'd studied the numbers enough to master that fact. He was taking the case to trial in a little over a month.
He could spare his friend some time. 'So what's up? Did you take today off?'
Glitsky sometimes wasn't much of a sitter. First he'd crossed over to one of the windows and peered out, now was pulling darts from Hardy's board. 'Amazingly enough, I finished all my critical work by,' he looked at his watch, 'about six hours ago.'
'You must be underutilized. I hope at least you looked busy.'
Glitsky threw a dart. 'I sat behind my door and gnashed my teeth.'
'For six hours? That must be hell on your molars.'
'I don't care about my molars.'
'You would if you cracked one with all that gnashing. But then, you're the guy who chews ice all the time. I bet you grind your teeth at night, too.'
Glitsky turned to face him. 'How'd you like a dart in the eyeball?'
'You'd probably miss.' He stood and came around his desk, strode over to the dartboard, and waited for Glitsky to throw the third dart. 'So did you ever get to find out anything else about Silverman?'
'Else implies I found out anything at all.' He threw.
'And yet just today you whiled away six perfectly good hours when you could have been detecting.'
'Except I'm not a detective anymore.'
'Nor much of a dart player.' Hardy pulled the darts, walked back to the tape line on the floor. He whirled, paused for an instant setting up, and threw a triple twenty-one of the very difficult shots. 'Right now you're probably asking yourself how I can be so good.'
'The question fills my every waking moment. Nat tried to find out something, though, about Silverman.'
'Without you? How'd he do that?'
Glitsky appeared to be gnashing his teeth again. 'When I got busy with Rachel, he told Sadie-Silverman's wife- she might as well go through the normal channels. So she called homicide.'
'And?' Hardy's focus was suddenly lost, and his next two darts didn't score at all.
Glitsky pulled the darts for his round. 'And nobody called her back all day yesterday or today. Nobody.'
'They were probably busy.'
'Right. So finally, maybe an hour ago, Nat called me. Again with would I check? So I called Lanier.'
'And a fine inspector he is. Are you going to throw or not?'
'Are we playing a game? I'm shooting bull's-eyes, that's all.'
'Not too many.'
Glitsky pegged a dart, missed his target by three inches. Threw, missed again. Threw the last dart, missed.
'Good round,' Hardy said. 'So what did Lanier say?'
'He hasn't seen Gerson all day.'
'All right. Progress.'
Glitsky ignored him, stepped to the side as he came to the line. 'But-and you'll love this-the guys working the case, Russell and Cuneo
…'
'Do I know them?'
'I'd be surprised. Anyway, Lanier checked the sign-in and they hadn't been in over the weekend, or today.'
Hardy threw a bull's-eye. 'They're not out in the field?'
'Lanier didn't think so. They would have checked in. We're big on paperwork nowadays. They don't sign in, they get a nasty letter from payroll. Ask me how I know.'
Hardy threw the last two darts in quick succession, leaving all three clustered in the middle of the board. He eased himself back up onto his desk. 'They'll probably get to it someday.' He paused. 'I probably shouldn't tell you this…'
At the dartboard, pulling the darts again, Glitsky turned around, a question.
'They're snooping around one of my ex-clients who, I need hardly add, had nothing to do with it. You remember John Holiday?'
It didn't take Glitsky two seconds. 'The drug guy.'
'Right. And two of his friends, all of whom have alibis.'
The tumblers fell into place. 'The call you got Friday night.'
Hardy nodded. 'It pains me to admit it, but that was why I was willing to go and peruse the crime scene with you on Saturday, and would do the same today if you were so inclined.'
For a long moment, Glitsky considered it, then shook his head. 'That's what I came by here thinking we might do, to tell you the truth. But what are we going to do there, except get me in trouble? How do we even get in?'
'You're probably right,' Hardy said.
'I'll let Gerson call Sadie first, find out for sure what they've got, if anything. At least get some questions of my own I might want to ask. Why do they like your guy?'
'He doesn't know, and in any case he's not worried about it.'
'Except that he called you.'
Hardy shrugged. 'It was early in the process. He's over it. But his bartender's got a sheet and maybe a squishy alibi. John thinks they were just shaking his tree, see if he knew anything at all.'
'And did he?'
'He was bartending a couple of blocks away.'
Glitsky frowned. 'What's squishy about that?'
'It was evidently a slow night. Few if any customers. He and his partner-the other alleged suspect-they alibi each other, but that's about it.'
'And what about your guy, Holiday?'
'He was having dinner with a girlfriend. Chinatown,' he added.
'So he's out of it.'
A tight smile. 'Yep.'
'Well.' Glitsky pursed his lips, thinking. 'If they're even shaking this guy's tree, at least they're doing something.' He let out a heavy breath. 'It's not my job. I keep telling myself. I guess I'm just not so good with being patient.'
'You're kidding me,' Hardy said. 'When did that start?'
Matt Creed had been off the past two nights, but now he was back in the beat, walking with both hands in his pockets. Vapor appeared in front of him with every breath he took. The night, outside the glow of the streetlights, was full dark, as it had been about the same time that things had gotten hairy outside of Silverman's last week. That sequence of events had been an unending tape loop in his mind over the weekend-the first shot and simultaneous ricochet by his ear so much louder than anything he'd ever heard with his earphones on at the range. Even now it reechoed in his memory.
He turned the corner up from Market and on the other side of the street came abreast of the Ark, noticed this time that a dim light emanated from the doorway. Stopping, he tried to force himself to picture, to remember, anything about the previous Thursday. But it was such a nondescript length of street, such an anonymous location, that it had no discrete existence for him at all. There was the plywood in the hole for one window, the tinted blank of the other, the darkened mouth of the doorway. The door itself stood open tonight, but he couldn't for the life of him recall even glancing in the bar's direction when it mattered the most.
Here he was, all dressed up like a cop and really nothing like one. His apparent duty was so far from the reality that it almost made him sick to his stomach. Creed was twenty-two years old and taking courses in criminology at City College during the day. He had taken the assistant patrol special job with WGP Enterprises because it offered decent pay along with the opportunity to attend the Police Academy on, essentially, a Panos scholarship. Creed's plan was to get his AA from City, get training at the PA and experience with Panos, then apply
