A Certain Justice

Tomorrow morning, first thing, he was going to cut his damn hair, then place calls to some of his old colleagues, polish up his résumé, put the word out. He was back in the business.

Glitsky made it down to Monterey by one twenty-five. Nat had persuaded the skipper to hold the afternoon boat until he got there. After all, this was five paying customers they were talking about at twenty bucks a pop. It was all Abe's money – Nat loved to watch it go. That's what money was for, though he hadn't thought so when he was younger. Well, that's what life was – you learned.

The other three potential whale watchers didn't mind so long as the wait wasn't too long, and it hadn't been.

By two o'clock they were four miles outside the breakwater in bright sunlight on calm seas. Isaac was sitting crosslegged on the coil of anchor rope, sca

Glitsky chewed saltwater taffy and walked to the bow, back to the stern. Disoriented, out of place. Out of a job, too, probably.

He hadn't mentioned that to anyone. Not yet. God knew, there'd be time. Plenty of time.

He wasn't fooling himself. He didn't want to be there, with his boys, with his father, with the only people left in his world. What did that tell him? Why had he driven down here anyway – maybe see a fat sea-going mammal for eight or nine seconds? Whoopee. He couldn't wait.

Nobody needed him anyway. He ought to leave the boys with his father and-

'Hey, Dad!'

' Yo.' He jumped. Force of habit. It was Isaac. He checked the other two. Still reading. Still dancing. Everybody okay. He walked back next to his son, who patted the rail in front of him. 'I was just watching you walking back and forth. What are you thinking about?'

The question caught Glitsky like an uppercut to the ribs. 'I don't know, Isaac. I guess I was thinking I ought to see more of you guys,' he lied. 'We ought to do more together.'

Isaac gave him one of those teenage expressions. 'No,' Isaac said, 'that's a dad answer. I mean really.'

Glitsky leaned back against the railing. 'Really?'

'Right. Like what are you really thinking about? Like what is the world really like to you?'

'Where does that question come from?'

'It's the kind of stuff we talk with Nat about, I guess.' He paused. 'Your father…'

'Yeah, Nat's my father…'

'So why don't you talk to us about any of that stuff? About any real stuff? I mean, ever since Mom, it seems like you've just been doing what you had to do. I mean with us, your job, everything. Like nothing got to you.'

Here, stab me someplace else, Abe was thinking. 'Things do get to me,'he said. 'A lot of things. You, for instance.'

'What about me?'

Glitsky let out a breath. 'Like why you don't ever talk to me. Why everything's territory, everything's a fight, everything's something you don't want to do…'

His sixteen-year-old son was nodding, listening. 'That's because the only time you talk to me is when you're telling me to do something. Like you're a cop at home, too.'

'I am a cop, Isaac. What do you want me to talk about?'

The boy swallowed. 'I don't know. How about sometime you talk to me just to say Hi there, how's it goin'? Like that.'

Glitsky looked up. The blue horizon was out there, limitless and empty, and he was here, floating in the vastness of the sea with his oldest son reaching out to pull him aboard. What the hell was he waiting for?

He could feel his face, the start of a real smile. 'Okay, hi,' he said. 'How's it really going?'

Even to a city numbed by tragedy and violence, the accidental death of Senator Loretta Wager at the moment of her greatest triumph was a great calamity. The President of the United States himself was flying out in the middle of the week to attend the state funeral. Mayor Conrad Aiken declared a month of mourning in the city of Saint Francis.

Philip Mohandas was already proposing a new name – the Loretta Wager Memorial Playpark – for the Hunter's Point project for underprivileged youth that he, in all likelihood, would be administering.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee said that Senator Wager's untimely death would send the search for a vice-presidential candidate in the next general election back to the drawing board. After her heroic personal intervention in the events surrounding the arrest of Kevin Shea, she had been a shoo-in for the nomination.

'She was,' he said, 'a very special woman with enormous personal stature, absolute integrity, and a feeling for the common man that set her apart from all of her contemporaries. She was not first or even most importantly a politician, but a person with traditional values and real emotions who somehow managed, at the same time, to be larger than life. I believe that, had she decided to pursue the office, she could have been our first female president of the United States.'

And a Harris Poll conducted late Sunday afternoon – the day after the accident – concluded that, had the coming November's Senate election been held on that day, Loretta Wager would have beaten her nearest opponent by twenty-four points.

Kevin walked slowly, exhausted, flight by flight, all the way up the stairs and turned the key to his door.

The bed had been made, the covers turned down. The windows were open, the blinds up. He didn't remember the place being so light. Outside, the view sparkled in the clear air. A light, warm, flower-scented breeze ruffled the curtains.

The dishes – mostly coffee cups and beer mugs – had been washed and a large bouquet of flowers had been placed on the occasional table next to his chair. He surveyed the room once, walking in a big circle, then came back around to his bed and sat on the edge of it, facing one of the windows. Where was she?

He took a shower – got the jail smell off. Put on a pair of clean blue jeans, went back to the bed, bare to the waist, letting the breeze dry him.

Fifteen minutes, twenty. He didn't stir, wasn't moved to think. He was just there, sitting, waiting, letting some of the nightmare recede.

He knew she was going to come. He knew. From behind him on the landing, steps on the hardwood. He stood and turned and was going for the door when it opened.

She was carrying a brown paper shopping bag with a loaf of bread sticking out of the top.

The impression – the sense of her – all at once in a rush – her hair down and shining. An unadorned light yellow dress, simple lines, the thin material of it shimmering with the beating of her heart. He could see it.

She put the shopping bag on the bed, straightened up, meeting his eyes. Her smile broke – relief, joy, with him again.

'Remember that key I was going to send back to you when we broke up? I didn't.' Then: 'I thought you'd be a little later getting home. I wanted to be here.'

'Wes dropped me right off.'

She stopped, afraid to move forward, the last tentative doubt. A tenuous smile, and in it the question. Did he still want her?

It was all there – he could read it.

Silence. Both of them skittish. Afraid they might blow it right now, the first minutes here in real life. Aware of how much it all meant.

She stood across from him, two arms' lengths, hands straight by her sides, her eyes…

Something he had never seen before, anywhere, had really never believed he would. She saw him and still loved him. It was everything he wanted in the world.