'Diz… this isn't exactly what I was hoping to hear.'
'What can I tell you, John? It's the best I can do.'
Watching his television at home, Nat Glitsky had heard the news of the awful Tenderloin murders and then of the arrest warrant that had been issued in Sam Silverman's death. Now he was in his son's kitchen, sitting at the table having tea with his dessert, Abe's day-old macaroons. For the first time since Rachel's birth, the Hardys hadn't shown up yesterday at the conclusion of their Date Night, so there was a full plate of them.
Nat dipped his cookie into his tea, blew on it, put the softened morsel to his granddaughter's lips. 'Your daughter, she loves these,' he said.
'Everybody loves them.' Treya was standing behind her husband's chair, her hands on Abe's shoulders. 'Dismas Hardy thinks Abe should go into business making them. Abe's Manna Macaroons.'
'Such a name,' Nat said. 'A name is an important thing. That Dismas, he's not so dumb.'
Abe liked that. 'I'll tell him you said so. He's a glutton for praise. 'Not so dumb' ought to make his week.'
Nat teased Rachel's lips with the remainder of his macaroon, then brought it to his own mouth and popped it in. The baby's little hand reached out. Her face fell in shocked surprise. A second later, her smile returned as a fresh cookie appeared in Nat's grasp. He let her grab it and they played tug of war for a second or two before he let it go. She laughed in pure joy, stuffing the spoils of victory into her mouth. 'Such a good girl,' Nat said. 'I see great things. Someday she becomes the owner of Abraham's Manna Macaroons.'
'Abe's,' Treya said. 'Not Abraham's.'
'Shorter,' Glitsky said. 'Punchier. Maybe I will go into baking after all.' Treya had come around behind Rachel and gave him a look.
He gave her the same look back. 'Baking's a noble profession. Bakers have been baking probably longer than cops have been…'
'Copping?' Treya offered a tight smile. 'It won't be too much longer. A couple of months, he said.'
'Two months can be a long time if you're in thumbscrews.'
Nat nearly sprang forward out of his chair leaning over the table. 'He says thumbscrews, plural. I don't even see one.' He sat back down as though he'd proven something. 'And for all the moaning and groaning, who did they call as soon as they knew about Sam?'
'I believe that was Lieutenant Glitsky,' Treya said. 'The pariah of Bryant Street.'
'Courtesy only.'
'Courtesy, he says.' Nat wasn't buying.
'I heard him.' Neither was Treya. She finally sat down at the table. 'And since the only thing of interest and importance in the world, and hence the only thing worth talking about-never mind the precious lives of infants-is a homicide investigation, it just occurred to me that I'll bet this is why Dismas and Frannie didn't come by last night. He's still John Holiday's attorney, isn't he?'
Abe nodded. 'I would think so.'
But Nat exploded. 'Wait a minute. What am I hearing here? This man who killed Sam? He's with Dismas?'
'He was,' Abe said. 'I'd bet he still is.'
'He's trying to get him off?'
'I haven't heard Holiday's even been arrested yet, Dad. But when he is, yeah. That's what Diz does.'
Nat sat unhappily with this intelligence for a second. 'He'd do this, this defense work, for a man who's killed four people. Did you see what this animal did to those men last night?'
He shook his head. 'No. I'd only heard they'd been killed.'
'Only killed would have been mercy,' Nat said.
He went on to tell his son some of the details he'd picked up. When he finished, Treya made a face of disgust, then asked, 'And Holiday is wanted for all of these murders?'
Abe picked up something in her tone. He wasn't going to pursue it aloud right here. But in the past year, he and Treya had met John Holiday a few times at the Hardys'. He had seemed okay to Abe; Treya had positively liked him. And Glitsky very much trusted his wife's instincts. He had seen enough of killings and murderers that he considered almost anyone, under the right conditions, capable of the act. But he'd never seen a sign nor heard from Hardy that Holiday used drugs, the great instigator of horrible, irrational violence. If Holiday had been robbing Silverman's store and got interrupted, if Creed had chased him into a blind alley, maybe…
But the scenario with Terry and Wills, as his father had just explained it?
'What?' Nat asked, seeing the look between them.
Abe hesitated. Then, 'Nothing,' he said.
16
Rebecca sat down to the plate of scrambled eggs her father had cooked for her. This morning, he'd cooked them for Frannie and Vincent as well, but neither of them typically appeared at the breakfast table until ten minutes after the Beck. By this time, whatever hot meal Hardy had prepared would have cooled-to him, cold scrambled eggs were an affront to nature-although his wife and son didn't seem to notice, much less mind.
His daughter took a first bite, said, 'Yum!' then looked around. She didn't miss much and wasn't easy to fool. 'Where's the paper?' she asked her father.
He casually sipped his coffee. 'I don't know.'
She put down her fork. 'What's in it?'
'What do you mean? What's in what?'
'The paper.'
'I just said I didn't know where it was.'
She gave a threatrical sigh. 'As if.'
'As if,' he repeated, striving to match the teenage inflection.
She ignored that. 'As if you didn't go out to the porch and get it like you do every single morning. Is it one of your clients?'
It was his turn to sigh. He and Frannie had discussed it, along with the spin they would put on the smashed car window, and had decided it would be better for the kids if Hardy could get a few facts about the crimes for which John Holiday was likely to be arrested before he tried to explain it to them. Holiday wasn't exactly Uncle John yet, as Uncle Abe was, but he'd been by the house a few times in the past year, almost immediately endearing himself to both children, although for different reasons. He treated Rebecca in a sincere and courtly manner that flattered her vanity; Vincent he treated like a grown man, no kid stuff. He played catch with him, arm wrestled, had taken both Hardy men to 49er and Giants games.
As the kids had gotten older, they had both become, as Hardy was, addicts of the morning Chronicle. Rebecca, particularly, loved the back page of the Scene section-the columnists and the In Crowd. Vincent, emulating his dad, would peruse Jeff Elliot's 'CityTalk' column every day, but his favorite was Thursdays, when McHugh and Stienstra did their respective great stuff on the Outdoors page. Hardy and Frannie had promoted this interest from its first flowering over the comics-it was important to keep up on the news, on what people thought, what was happening in the world. Life wasn't lived in a vacuum.
But there could also be the occasional drawback, as for example when your client and friend happened to be the main suspect in four murders, two of them incredibly grotesque.
'Who is it?' Rebecca asked.
Hardy threw a glance at the ceiling, then looked straight at her. 'John Holiday.'
'No way!'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Not John. There's no way, Dad. What are they saying he did?'
