Thieu nodded impatiently.
'Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry. I just…' She noticed the string bag at her feet and leaned over to pick it up. Then she walked past the two policemen, and out the front door.
26
Ever since he'd finally gotten his doctor's permission to go back to work after his year and a half of recovery, Glitsky hadn't missed a day. Over a very early breakfast, though-the baby wasn't even up yet-he was telling Treya that he thought he could spend his time more profitably outside today. 'But do you want to hear something funny?'
'More than anything.'
'I feel guilty about it.'
'About what? Taking the day off?'
'Calling in sick when I'm not. I've never done that before.'
'You're kidding?' Treya put her bagel down. 'Never, not once?'
'I told you it was funny.'
'Hysterical. Except I don't think I have, either. No wonder we're a good couple. We're probably the only two people in America.'
'Which leaves me with a problem. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me the proper etiquette for when I call in, but now it turns out you wouldn't know.'
'I don't think there's really much of an etiquette. You call, leave a message…'
'Yeah, but I'm supposed to be sick. So, for example, do I try to sound miserable?'
'How would they tell the difference?'
Glitsky faked a pout. 'That was cruel.'
'I'm in a cruel mood.' This was and had been true since yesterday, since soon after Glitsky's meeting with Jackman. Glitsky thought she was proving herself to be one of the premier grudge holders. 'I haven't decided if I'm going in, either,' she said. 'And I'm talking about ever. How dare that man treat you that way?'
'It wasn't personal.'
'That's kind of my point, Abe. It should have been personal. You and Dismas are about half the reason he got that job in the first place.'
'Maybe true. But we're not going to be why he gets to keep it.' Glitsky picked up a slice of lox, rolled it up, and popped it into his mouth. 'When I was a kid, I thought the ultimate food was lox, you know that? If you ate lox, you were a mega success like a movie star. If somebody had ever told me that one day I, a mere cop, would commonly eat lox at home, I wouldn't have believed them. And yet look at us. Sometimes I still can't believe it.'
'That was subtle,' she said, 'but I caught it. You're changing the subject away from Clarence and I want to vent some more.'
'You can if you want, but he wasn't all wrong. Diz and I really have nothing, and Clarence's reaction was probably a good portion of why we decided we had to look rather than just accuse. Besides, if he's getting calls from Washington and Rigby'-the mayor and police chief, respectively- 'on the weekends, it's helpful for us to know how high Panos's influence extends. In a way, his coming down on me was a pretty good heads up. He might have even meant it that way.'
'I'm sure.'
He shrugged. 'As you so astutely observed, he's playing the political game. Right now he's got his hands on the power and he's the best DA we've had in years. So he wants to keep it. I can't blame him. It's high stakes.'
'And the ends justify the means?'
'Sometimes. Not always. I think Clarence is trying to figure out that balance himself. If Diz and I actually get something that does break this case, he'll jump on it with both feet.'
'Do you really think that? After what he's already done to you both?'
'Absolutely.'
Treya chewed silently, sipped at her tea. 'All right, I'll go to work. But he can get his own darn coffee.'
At a quarter to eight, Glitsky flashed his badge at the manager of the Diamond Center lot. At 9:45, he and Hardy were still in Hardy's car, in a VIP parking space just to the side of the entrance, and directly across the street from the Georgia AAA Diamond Center. Hardy still hurt. He dozed fitfully behind the wheel until Glitsky backhanded his shoulder. 'Panos,' he said.
It was Roy, on foot and in uniform. Stopping at the huge double doors, he checked his watch, paced to the corner, looked both ways, then came back to the doors and looked at his watch again. He wasn't sixty feet from where they were parked. Both men slumped in their seats, awaiting developments. They weren't long in coming. Two men coming up out of the lot passed within five feet of Glitsky's window. Again, he ticked Hardy's shoulder, and pointed. Sephia in a black leather calf-length coat and Rez in tight black chinos and a tan, torso-hugging sweater that he tucked into his pants.
They crossed to where Roy waited at the doors. He wasted no time but immediately grew animated, gesticulating, all bulldog. 'Next time we bring one of those distance microphones, tape everything they say,' Glitsky said. When Hardy didn't reply, he said, 'That was a joke, Diz.'
But Hardy still didn't answer. He just sat, watching the trio across the street. After a few minutes of back and forth, Roy seemed to have shot his wad in terms of aggression, and then the meeting, abruptly as it had begun, was over. Roy resumed the walk on his beat. Sephia and Rez went to the double doors of the Diamond Center and disappeared inside.
'Well,' Hardy said, 'they're all involved in something together, but we already knew that. I'd love to go inside and have a few words with Nick.'
'What good would that do?'
'I don't know. Maybe none. But it would be fun to bait him a little. Cast aspersions about his mother's heritage or something. See if I could get him to take a poke at me with witnesses around.'
'It's nice to see you thinking about having fun again. I wasn't going to mention it, but your company's been less than scintillating this morning.'
'Yeah, but I had all the ideas last night. Speaking of which, no word from Thieu?'
Glitsky shook his head. 'Too soon.' His eyes had never left the double doors, and now he bobbed his head that way. 'See? You wouldn't have had any time anyway. Keep low.'
But they needn't have worried. Sephia carried a plain paper bag and he and Rez passed them again close enough to touch, but they were deeply into their own conversation now and never slowed.
'Now what?' Hardy said.
'Gentlemen, start your engines.'
So they were ready. Glitsky, looking back over his shoulder, said 'Okay.' Hardy let them pass, said, 'That's the car!' and fell in behind them.
'What car?'
'The gray sedan. The one they were driving when they shot at me and John. The bastards are so smug they didn't even use a rental or a throwaway. Can you believe that?'
Glitsky had his pad out and got the license number. They were heading west on Geary now, back a couple of car-lengths, but no one in between. 'Speaking of fun, if we can ever get somebody to start issuing search warrants, it might be fun to dig around in that thing.'
'There it is,' Hardy said, 'fun again.' But as he said it, he was rolling the muscles of his back. He didn't look like he was having fun.
They followed as the car did the one-way-street boogie until it was heading south now on Van Ness, then
