Guilt

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

So Glitsky was off early.

It wasn't yet three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon and no one expected him upstairs, so he signed out a car from the city lot and drove himself home, found a parking spot directly in front of his duplex, and let himself in.

Rita was sleeping on the couch, which was okay. She got up with them all at 6:30, and she kept the place spotless. She also got up with Abe when any of the boys called out in the night, and if she needed to take a nap to catch up, Glitsky was all for it.

In the kitchen, a pot of thick black sauce -mole, he now knew – simmered on the stove, steaming the windows, filling the room with its heady smell. A couple of disjointed chickens were thawing on the counter.

He opened the kitchen window a crack and heard Isaac down in the trees. He was lucky with his backyard. Though he shared it with his downstairs neighbors, there was plenty of room. And along its border, a bicycle path traced the edge of the Presidio.

Back when there had been money for such amenities, the city had built a small playground – a set of swings, parallel bars, a slide – thirty yards down the path.

Glitsky let himself out the back door and down the steps, across the yard through the lengthening shadows, on to the bike path. He'd pushed pretty hard at the idea of the boys playing together, sticking together – the family – and this was one of those miraculous days when it was working.

They were seeing who could sail farthest out of the swing set – one of the activities Glitsky felt better hearing about than actually witnessing. And today they'd added a new wrinkle, a stick that two of them held while the third one sailed, going for height and distance.

And broken legs, he thought. Chipped teeth. Ruined knees.

But he watched from a small distance. Life is risk, he told himself. They're enjoying the moment. Let it happen.

And then Jacob landed sprawled in the tanbark and, rolling over, saw his father. He let out a whoop – 'Dad!' – and came ru

'What are you doing home?'

'Yeah, it's still light out.' Isaac, sauntering up, put in the barb. Glitsky knew he was working all the time, but didn't see a way to change it. And he was home now, wasn't he?

'I thought we'd go get a Christmas tree.'

O.J. stabbed a fist into the air and screamed, 'Yeah!' and was already ru

Even Abe broke into a trot.

At night, Rita put down the fold-a-bed and slept behind a screen in the living room in the front of the duplex. That fact wasn't in the front of Glitsky's mind when he bought the largest tree he could find, and now the never-spacious living room was all but impassable.

His own overstuffed easy chair and ottoman had been relegated to the kitchen to make space for the tree, which made the kitchen tight as well. Rita had lost more than half of her precious counter space.

The scent of the new Christmas tree permeated the house and Rita had made hot spiced apple juice. They had Lou Rawls doing Christmas out of the speakers, the lights were strung up, the old bulbs, and now the boys were hanging tinsel.

Glitsky sat hunched on his ottoman in the open doorway between the kitchen and living room, drinking his mulled cider, taking it all in as though from a great distance. Rita was on the couch, directing the boys to any open spaces on the tree.

He had come home early. He'd taken the boys out for the tree, and now he was home in the midst of his family, wishing he was anywhere else, wishing he could try harder not to show it.

Flo wasn't here. Everything else was here, and not his wife. So what, exactly, was the point?

When the telephone rang, Glitsky knew it was work – it was always work – and Isaac yelled that he shouldn't answer it, let the machine get it. But he was already up, at the wallphone in the kitchen.

It was Amanda Jenkins. 'I'm working on motive,' she said, 'and tomorrow it's fish or cut bait.'

No, 'Got a minute, Abe?' No, 'Hello,' even. But there was no fighting it. Like it or not, he was in trial time, and simple politeness suffered as a matter of course.

He took a sip of his juice – the tang of ci

'I saw the picture, Amanda. We talked about it, remember? It wasn't exactly X-rated. I wouldn't even give it an "R". It's a good-night kiss.'

'At his house. They're alone, in the dark,' she countered.

'So what?'

'So in spite of all the tabloid speculation, it's really the first actual proof that these two have something going, and if they do, it's a lot stronger than anything else we've got.'

'That picture doesn't prove anything. They're not upstairs in his bedroom, half-dressed, anything like that. This is a kiss like you give your mother. Besides, even if you had major groping, how are you going to prove they had something seven, eight months ago, which is when it would have had to be?'

'I don't have to prove it,' she said. 'We can assert it, show this picture, let the jury draw the inference.'

Glitsky moved some dirty dishes to one side and seated himself on the crowded counter. He, of course, had wrested with this issue himself, so he decided to give Jenkins the argument that had stopped him. 'That assumes she was in on it, too.'

'She might have helped him plan it, Abe. Now she's defending him for it. It's not that far-fetched.'

'Then you'll have to explain why we didn't charge her, too.'

'Because there was no proof of conspiracy. We just couldn't arrest her without…'

Glitsky sipped the juice, giving her time to hear herself, to wind down. This was the last-minute panic to bolster a case that he'd seen dozens of times.

'It sucks, doesn't it?' she asked.

'Insurance,' he said. 'Juries tend to understand money.'

'You think?'

'It's your decision.'

Jenkins sighed. 'Something tells me it's her, Abe.'

'You don't need motive. Amanda. You might just want to let it go, prove the facts.'

A long pause, then, 'Okay,' and then a click and a dial-tone.

No hello, no goodbye. Trial time.

Across town in his apartment, Wes Farrell sat at his Formica kitchen table, which was littered with yellow legal pads, manila folders, three days' worth of newspapers, a manual typewriter, four coffee mugs, and a thick three-ring binder that he'd divided into sections labelled Evidence, Argument, Witnesses, and so on.

Each of these sections was further divided into subsections, and each subsection contained color-coded tabs in a particular order. Farrell had been living with this binder for the past six months and by now felt he could wake up and put his finger on anything he wanted in pitch darkness.

Bart was under the table and the clock radio, which had been keeping him company with old rock 'n roll, suddenly broke into Jingle Bells. Immediately, he reached over and turned the dial and thought he'd found another soft rock station when he realized it was Mary Chapin Carpenter telling her lover that everything they got, they got the hard way.

Somehow, he couldn't find the will to turn it off. He'd been consciously avoiding country music since he and Sam split, but this song, intelligently invoking passion and spark and inspiration, was ripping him up. Sitting back, he ran his hands through his thi