Rez nodded in agreement, finally looked over at Sephia. 'Creed's a problem,' he said.
'Creed's not a problem! He thinks it might not have been Terry. That's all.'
'But if he can't talk at all, it doesn't even get to that,' Sephia said.
'Don't you guys be stupid,' Roy said. 'This is under control; I'm telling you.'
Rez slowly brought his empty gaze around across the table to Roy. He nodded his head once, a dismissal. 'Oh, okay,' he said.
8
'Is this the same man who prides himself on living According to John Kennedy's old motto of never explain, never complain? I've only heard you say those words about a hundred and fourteen times now.'
'I'm sure I meant them every single time, too.'
'Well?'
'Well, this particular fine day'-and it was, the good weather continuing as they drove together into work-'I'm going to have to do some explaining before I can succeed in doing some real good.'
'The explaining part will neither be appreciated nor understood. And neither will the real good, if in fact that's what it is.'
Glitsky stared at the road ahead of him.
His wife kept it up. 'When are you going to learn, Abe? There's no point in trying to live by a motto, even an excellent one, if you can't dredge it up and act on it when you really need it. Which you do today, believe me. You don't want to even start to do this.'
He kept his voice civil. 'So what do you suggest I do?'
She turned to him. 'You know that one.'
'No. I'm asking.'
She sighed. 'All right, then. I suggest you do absolutely nothing. You go up to your office and close the door and read a good book.'
'And just ignore all this other stuff? '
She glanced over at him. 'How can I put this so you understand? It is not your job. You are not responsible for what happens down there. You should not even care.'
'How can I not care? Tell me that.'
'Easy. You say to yourself, 'Self, I'm at my job because I have a wife and a child and two kids in college and I need the paycheck and benefits. That is why I go to work,' Period.'
'And that's how you feel about your job?'
'Actually, no. I love my job, but it's not the same situation.'
'How is it different then?'
She rolled her eyes. 'I don't believe we're having this discussion. It's different because I care about the job they're paying me to do. You, on the other hand, care about a job nobody's paying you for. It's like if you decided you cared about, I don't know, being an astronaut. I'm sure astronauts have problems all the time, but guess what, Abe? They're not your problems!' She slapped at the console between them. 'And neither are homicide's!'
They rode in silence for a block. Finally Abe said, 'So I shouldn't go to Gerson?'
Again, Trey a sighed. 'You think you know something, call one of your people there. You've still got friends there, right? Marcel, Paul. They make the same argument to Gerson, tell him what you told them-the ID might be funky- then you buy them a hamburger, everybody's happy. What's the problem with that?'
'I don't know,' Glitsky said. 'I really don't know. It just doesn't seem right, somehow. And it still leaves me having to explain why I was by Silverman's if he finds out, which he will.'
'How would he find out? Who's going to tell him? The young rent-a-cop?'
'I don't know, but he's going to find out-that's the way these things go-so given that, it'd be better if he heard it first from me.'
They'd gotten to a parking place in one of the lots under the freeway, a couple of blocks from the Hall of Justice. Glitsky switched off the motor, but made no move to get out. Treya pulled down the visor and carefully, with an exaggerated calm, applied some lipstick. She was breathing heavily through her nose. When she was done, she-again, carefully-closed the lipstick and dropped it back in her purse. At last, she turned to her husband. 'Well?'
'I'm thinking about it,' he said.
Glitsky was in a booth at Lou's with Marcel Lanier, a longtime colleague in homicide. He was bragging modestly about his wife, who'd convinced him that there was no point in having a motto if you were going to jettison it at a real opportunity to have it work for you. It would be like being a Boy Scout and just before a rafting trip in Class V rapids forgetting to put on your life vest. 'So what good would all that earlier 'Be Prepared' stuff have done you?'
Lanier squinted in the dim light. 'I know you don't drink, Abe, especially this early. Otherwise I'd be worried. What the hell are you talking about?'
Glitsky blew on his tea. 'Not explaining to Gerson about why I'm interested in this Silverman thing.'
'And this has to do with the Boy Scouts somehow?'
The tea was too hot and Glitsky put it down. 'Never mind, Marcel. Let's leave it. What I really want to talk about is Wade Panos.'
Lanier made the face of a chronic heartburn sufferer. 'Do we have to?'
At a few minutes after eleven o'clock, about two hours after Glitsky had told Lanier about Creed's perhaps bogus identification, there was one sharp rap at his door. Glitsky took his feet off his desk, snapped shut his latest Patrick O'Brian novel-Desolation Island. He opened his drawer, deposited the book, pulled some paperwork over in front of him. 'It's open,' he said.
Glitsky wasn't altogether stunned to see Barry Gerson. He came to his feet with what he hoped was a warm greeting, invited the lieutenant in, shook his hand, told him to take a chair. 'Returning the courtesy visit?' he finally asked.
Gerson, polite as an undertaker, inclined his head an inch. 'Something like that.'
'But not exactly?'
'No, frankly, Abe. Not.'
'All right.' He squared himself, linked his fingers on the desktop in front of him. 'How can I help you?'
'Actually, I came here to ask you the same thing. I thought I'd made it clear yesterday when you came down to the detail that my door was open to you. You needed anything, all you had to do was ask.'
'That's true. I appreciated that, too, Barry, I really did. I still do.'
'But?'
'But then I had a talk with'-he almost named Batiste, stopped himself-'with some colleagues, who didn't think it would be smart of me to abuse the privilege. It might look like I was trying to insinuate myself back into the detail.'
'Which you're not.'
'No. Of course not.' Glitsky pushed his chair back, crossed his arms behind his head. 'I'm minding my own business up here, keeping an eye out for payroll irregularities.'
But Gerson didn't smile at the witticism. 'So you're denying that you went down to Silverman's last night?'
Glitsky repressed his own rare urge to smile. Of course, as he'd told Treya, Gerson would have to find out. He was almost pleased that he'd predicted it. 'Nobody's asked me. If they did, if you're asking me now, I admit it.'
Gerson nodded. 'You mind if I ask you why?'
