the possibility that someone-not necessarily Panos but necessarily Silverman's killers-had planted the ring at Holiday's. It made him wonder. Somehow homicide and Panos kept seeing facts-even ambiguous or incriminating facts-in the same light.
When he'd been in homicide, he'd never had that experience with the Patrol Special.
It still wasn't his job, but with the attack on Hardy, it was at least his business. Treya, even, had come to agree with that.
She kissed him good-bye and said she'd be around if he wanted to have lunch. He watched her walking away for a few steps, then put his hands in his flight jacket pockets and crossed the street.
'I've been wrestling with guilt,' Thieu began after they were rolling.
'Who's winning?'
'I guess the guilt. I'm here.' He threw a quick look across the seat at his old boss. 'You know anything about this double in the 'Loin?' Wills and Terry.
Glitsky chuckled. 'Treya just called it.'
'What?'
'Silverman.'
Thieu took that in, nodding as though it confirmed something he'd been thinking. 'I didn't draw Silverman. It wasn't ever my case. You know Cuneo and Russell?'
'Not personally.'
Thieu shrugged. 'Well, they got Silverman. Few nights later, I pull this kid Creed, who was the main witness for Silverman.'
'I heard,' Glitsky said.
'You know about this?'
'Some.' He looked over, qualified it. 'What I read in the papers.'
Stopped at a red light, Thieu tried to find a clue in Glitsky's expression. Apparently, there wasn't one. 'All right, I'll cut to the chase. Creed and these two poor schmucks in the 'Loin, suddenly they're connected because Creed had ID'd them for Silverman. Then a gun's at their place, ballistics confirms it killed both Silverman and Creed, everybody's happy, right?'
'I know I am,' Glitsky said.
'Except there's a third guy Creed named.'
'John Holiday.'
The trace of a smile lifted Thieu's mouth. 'But you're not following the case.'
Glitsky shook his head, straight-faced. 'Hardly at all.'
'Then maybe you wouldn't know they pulled a warrant for him.'
'I did hear something about that.'
'Okay, here's where the guilt comes in. None of these are my cases. Gerson yanked two of them out from under me after I'd already worked the scenes.'
'Let me guess,' Glitsky said. 'You're conflicted about telling them they screwed up.'
Another red light had stopped them. Thieu turned to his mentor. 'Worse. I want them to screw up.'
Glitsky sat with it a minute. 'What'd they miss?' he asked.
It wasn't a long laundry list, but it was compelling enough. Thieu told Glitsky that when it had become obvious that Holiday, by default, was going to become the prime suspect in all the murders, Thieu had gone by the place he worked and, to his own satisfaction, verified that he had a reasonably good and, more importantly, verifiable alibi for the time of his bartender's-Terry's-death. Thieu had questioned dozens of killers and witnesses in his six years in homicide, and was all but positive that if the arrest warrant hadn't been hustled through so quickly, Holiday would have supplied the names of his customers who would have eliminated him as a suspect at least in the deaths of Wills and Terry.
Beyond that, Thieu said, it flew in the face of reason that this grotesque and sexually tinged double murder had been a result of thieves falling out among themselves. There was also too much of Silverman's money lying around-if it was about the robbery, Holiday would have known it was there somewhere and at least searched for it. Then taken it.
In Thieu's opinion, and he'd given it a lot of thought, only two scenarios worked here. One was Faro's: this was a pickup gone bad. The other was his own: that whoever killed these guys was some kind of psycho who enjoyed it all right, but whose true motive was to implicate the only suspect left alive, Holiday. Who, unfortunately for the actual bad guys, had an alibi. The whole thing screamed overkill. It was far too neat a package. The dope, the money, the gun, the shoes.
'Oh, and while we're on the shoes.' Thieu had been talking for five minutes and now suddenly paused for a breath. 'You read about the gunk? All well and good. Nice Italian shoes, size thirteen. But guess what? Terry wore a thirteen, all right, but the Italian thirteen is at least a half size smaller than our thirteen. No way he wears those shoes. They weren't his. Especially when every other pair in the closet was crappy. Six pairs of sneakers, some Birkenstocks, flip-flops, one lace-up wingtip. Anybody who looked would see which pair didn't belong there.'
'But they didn't look. And you didn't tell them.'
'Another source of my guilt. I figured if they're going to be on the case, they can work it. So the closet's got all these junk shoes, and then this Italian braided beauty with the gunk on it, and half a size too small.' Thieu shook his head. 'It doesn't make any sense. You want my opinion, somebody knew what we'd be looking for and planted this stuff.'
Glitsky kept his face impassive. 'Funny you should use that word,' he said, and gave Thieu the gist of Sadie Silverman's testimony, Cuneo's interpretation.
After Thieu heard it out, he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. 'I've got to tell the lieutenant about these clowns, Abe. I've got to. Except then…' He didn't have to say it. Cops didn't fink on other cops. Gerson might appreciate the news, but Thieu would forever be tainted in some way, out of the club more than he already was by virtue of his race, brains, physical size. 'It'd be sweeter if Gerson found it out by himself.'
It wouldn't only be sweeter, Glitsky knew, but it would save the good Inspector Thieu from the sure-to-be- thorny explanation of why he hadn't told Cuneo and Russell everything that he'd discovered and theorized instead of leaving them to find out for themselves. Thieu felt guilty about it, and Glitsky empathized with where he was coming from. But the fact was that he should have felt guilty. He hadn't done the right thing.
They pulled up to the curb a couple of blocks before they reached the Hall. Glitsky had his hand on the door handle, but paused a last second. 'Look, Paul. I happen to know Holiday's lawyer. He'd be motivated to verify some of those alibi names. Maybe he could talk one of them into volunteering to come in. Tell his story.'
'You know,' Thieu said, 'it's not that I care about this John Holiday. I sure as hell don't want to help his defense if it needs it. But I don't believe he did Wills and Terry.' He wiped his eyes as though banishing the image. 'I screwed up, too, didn't I?'
'It's a big club, Paul. Welcome to it. At least you feel bad about it.'
'Maybe not bad enough to tell Gerson.'
'Well, the plain fact is that he done you wrong, too.' He opened the door, got out, and leaned back in. 'Give it a day or two. I'll call Holiday's lawyer. Make something happen.'
Holiday's lawyer felt a hundred years old. The bruise on his back had blossomed into a dinnerplate-size black-and-blue mark that woke him up whenever he shifted in bed over the entire weekend. The whole left hand continued to throb.
Glitsky called. On and on about Sadie, Cuneo, Holiday, the planted or not-planted ring. And of course, the client never got in touch.
Sunday night he'd taken a Vicodin left over from somewhere, then drunk two scotches with his brother-in-law before dinner. Two bottles of red wine with Moses after. Up too late, near midnight, Moses at his most passionate and most drunk, pressing for retaliation against Panos and his people now Before they could strike at Hardy again. Hardy halfway-more than halfway-into it. Really, really pissed off. Embarrassingly so, he supposed. Foolishly. Frannie supervising the kids' homework far in the back of the house where maybe it wouldn't sound so awful. Susan finally packing Moses up and driving him home.
Both women angry with their men. Frustrated, exhausted, afraid.
Out of bed, badly hung over-dying-at 5:30, and no chance of going back to sleep, not with the back, the head,
