'Who else?' He grunted. 'My close friend Barry, who is hanging on my every word. I told Diz that wasn't the way to go. You would have been proud of me.'
'Always,' she said, 'but somebody's trying to find who shot at him, aren't they?'
'Absolutely. He reported it, so that's what they've got to do.' He glanced across at her. 'What's the problem?'
'People shooting at our friends. That's a pretty serious problem, don't you think?'
He shook his head. 'They weren't after Diz.'
'No? What would have happened if, say, they'd killed Holiday after all?'
'What do you mean, what would have happened? He'd be dead and.. .'
'And that would be the end of it? What about these other killings he supposedly did? Those cases would be closed, too, wouldn't they?'
Glitsky didn't answer right away.
'You see what I'm asking? Doesn't it make sense?'
He nodded. 'It's more or less what Diz was getting at. But it doesn't have to be Panos, or anybody connected to Panos.'
'But whoever it was had to be at Silverman's, right? I mean, the money, the jewels. And didn't the young man you talked to…'
'Matt Creed.'
'Right. He told you it wasn't Holiday and his friends, didn't he?'
'No. He only said he couldn't say for sure that it was.'
'But did he ever get to tell that to the inspectors in homicide? Did he have time before he got shot?'
'I don't know.'
'Now that might be worth finding out.'
They were going shopping next and pulled into a space at the Safeway. Treya turned off the engine, but Abe didn't move to get out of the seat. Instead, he sat there, rubbing his scar with his index ringer. 'I thought you didn't want me getting involved in any of this. It's not my job. Remember?'
'I know. I do remember.' After a long moment, she said, 'You're right. I just hope somebody really is looking for whoever shot at Diz.'
'I might be able to ask around about that. It's not homicide.'
'That might not be bad.'
They got out of the car and Rachel, who'd fallen asleep in the baby seat, was making some discontented noises as Glitsky leaned in, pulled her out, and brought her in close to him, bouncing her gently. While Treya walked a few steps ahead, he kept up a singsong patter all across the lot. By the time they got her fastened into the seat in the shopping cart, she was gurgling happily again, mimicking her father's words. 'Ay-so, ay-so.'
'What do you have her saying?' Treya asked, smiling.
Glitsky, his smile quotient for the day all used up, fixed his wife with a serious look. 'Key childhood words,' he said. 'One in particular.'
'What's that?'
'Chainsaw,' he said.
Nat had his own key and had let himself in. Abe and Treya heard the stertorous rumbling that marked Nat's sleep from down on the sidewalk.
He was on the living room couch. The rule was not to wake him up on purpose, although occasional, accidental noise in the background was considered kosher and often did the trick. So Abe put on a CD of the opera Turandot, which featured his middle son Jacob in his first commercial recording, albeit among the chorus, where Abe swore he could pick him out. With the music at conversational level, they parked Rachel in the playpen with some toys and began unpacking their groceries in and around the kitchen.
They hadn't quite finished the first bag when Nat was in the doorway, scratching his white hair around his yarmulke, pulling his sweater down over his belt. 'For a minute with that music,' he said, 'I thought I must have died and gone to heaven.'
'He sounds great, doesn't he?'
'Outstanding.'
'You guys talking about Jacob?' Treya asked. 'I don't think he's on this track.'
Father and son exchanged a look. 'You don't hear him?' Nat asked. He paused, listening, pointed. 'There!'
'Ah.' Treya smiled at her father-in-law, turned back to her groceries. 'Oh, there.'
'She doesn't hear him,' Abe said.
'I do,' she insisted. 'Right in the middle of those other voices. He really stands out.' She pushed it for her husband's benefit. 'It's like he's in the next room.' But then something struck her and she turned, suddenly all business. 'But wait a minute. It's Saturday, Nat. What are you doing here? Is everything all right?'
Nat was an observant Jew and spent a great deal of time inside his synagogue. He took the Sabbath seriously, and normally he would not move from his apartment except to walk to temple, where he'd remain until sundown. But at Treya's question, his expression went blank for a beat. Then he remembered. 'Ach, this Silverman thing again.'
Abe stopped pulling groceries from his bag. 'What about it?'
He shrugged. 'I'm talking to Sadie today outside temple.'
'How's she holding up?' Treya asked.
'You know. A good few minutes, a bad day or two. It's still so soon. We only just laid him down, when…?' Nat lost his thread to sadness for a second. 'Anyway, she asks would I please thank you for telling her about this man they arrested, this friend of your friend Hardy.'
'They haven't arrested him yet, Dad. He's still at large.'
Nat took on a querulous tone. 'I swore you said they arrested him.'
'No. Not yet.'
After a moment, Nat shrugged again. 'Well, maybe that's just as well.'
'Just as well? Why do you say that?'
'Because this morning she's watching the television and the news has the story of all the evidence they found at this man's house-the money and the rings and so on. Especially this one sapphire ring.'
'What about it?'
'What about it is that Sam only had one ring like they described-this one-and it definitely wasn't missing when Sadie and I went to take the inventory there. Remember? When you came that night? We never got too far, but we looked in the jewel case. The ring was in there that night. She was sure of it.'
'Maybe the one they found was another ring like it, Dad. This one had Sam's tag on it.'
He shook his head. 'That's what I'm saying, Abraham. Listen to me. It was Sam's, all right, but it was still in his case when we went there. So whoever killed him didn't take it during the robbery. Something's got to be wrong with this, don't you think?'
Treya, too, had stopped unpacking groceries. She stood with her arms crossed, leaning back against the counter. 'Does Sadie think she's sure about this, Nat?'
He looked at the two of them. 'Not just Sadie. I saw it, too. We even talked about it, how it was good Sam never had to sell that one, his favorite piece in the shop. He thought it was lucky, for the cards, you know. So no. No question. It was there.'
'Anybody shoot at you recently?'
'No.'
'You call Kroll yet?'
'I'm still deciding.'
'How about Holiday?'
'How about him? Why, what's up?'
'You know how I wasn't going to get involved?'
'It filled me with admiration.'
