A Certain Justice

He arrived in another unmarked Plymouth, parking in the circular driveway by the front door. Nervous, he had called fifteen minutes before from downtown, and she had been waiting for him, watching his car pull up, then the man himself get out, stretch his back, catch her looking in the window and break a small knowing smile.

'The last thing I want to do is argue with you.'

Somehow, an hour had passed.

Glitsky, dressed again, sat with her at her breakfast nook, drinking a mug of Constant Comment tea with extra lemon. There was an island separating the nook from the kitchen, and, her bare feet swinging slightly, Loretta sat up on it, wearing her dark skirt and blouse.

'Disagreeing isn't arguing.'

'Come visit the Senate sometime. The two are kissin' cousins, sometimes twins.'

'Not now.'

'All right, not now.' She slipped off the island, pulled a chair up next to him. 'But right at this minute I don't even want to disagree, okay?'

She was right there, next to him, and he was surprised that she seemed almost timid, afraid to touch him now that the fires had been banked for a while. To some degree, he found himself relieved about it. He couldn't say why, but a casual touch from her – right at this moment – would have struck him as inappropriate, something she might do with almost anyone to drive home a point. He didn't want her to use that trick. Or any other trick.

But, this close, he had to touch her. He reached a hand out and rested it on her forearm. 'My agenda is different than yours, Loretta, that's all I'm saying. Your job is politics. Mine is homicide. I want to find who killed Arthur Wade.'

She spoke quietly. 'We know who did that, Abe. We've got a picture of it.'

'I'm not denying Kevin Shea-'

"Then you've got to get comfortable with us using him…'

'But we know for a fact that there were others, we don't know if Shea was the leader of anything, what he was doing there at all.'

'I think it's clear he was doing enough.'

Glitsky was silent.

'Abe, listen. Doesn't this make sense if you think about it? Forget police procedures. You've said my job is politics, and this is political. It's trying to get to some consensus, get people thinking some solution – it almost doesn't matter which one – is going to work. To stop this thing before it destroys the whole city, maybe the country.'

Glitsky swallowed some tea. 'And you honestly think arresting Kevin Shea…?'

'I think as a symbol, that could end it, yes.'

Glitsky searched her eyes and discovered something he recognized as crucial – at least Loretta believed it.

'So what about Jerohm?'

Loretta sighed. 'That might be a blessing in disguise if we can get the right spin on it.'

Glitsky, a thin humor. 'I don't know from spin.'

'Jerohm appeases the angry whites, Kevin appeases our angry brothers and sisters.'

'Half-brothers and sisters,' Glitsky corrected her, 'if you want to get technical.'

Loretta took that in. 'One drop of blood,' she said.

'What's that?'

'That's the law of our land, Abe. If you've got one drop of black blood, you're black.'

'If you say so…' But he didn't want to fight, he didn't want to have a discussion. He was moving his hand up and down her arm, and she leaned her head down and kissed it. 'You know,' he said, 'it may be different with the people you deal with, but I don't think about my color all the time, about where we're going as a people… it's more everybody, the world…'

'Going down the tubes together?'

'Fast enough. And choosing up sides over who we're go

'Why, Abe Glitsky, you're still an idealist, aren't you, in that heart of yours?' He had to laugh… he considered himself the greatest skeptic he knew. She moved up, closer to him. 'Maybe it'll get better.'

'Does it seem like it's getting better?' he asked.

'On any given day, maybe not. Today, certainly not. But sometimes… sometimes… I mean, somebody like me, twenty years ago a black woman was not a U.S. senator. I've got to think that in the long view things have changed for the better. It must mean something.'

'It might mean that people believe you, Loretta. It might be just you, who you are, what you give people.'

This brought her up short. She bit her lip, straightening, then put her arm around Glitsky and held herself against him. 'How did I ever let you go?' she whispered.

He got beeped and found that his father had succeeded in cajoling Rabbi Blume's reluctant witness to the riot – Rachel from one of the former Soviet republics – into talking to him. He wasn't fifteen blocks away, he could be there in ten minutes.

At the door he told Loretta that he wasn't going to get in her way over Kevin Shea. That was her bailiwick. It wasn't his habit, and it wasn't in his job description, to go public with his investigations. Actually he had few if any substantive doubts about Shea's involvement. But he did want to get the whole picture, a verifiable sequence of events so that when the time came any charges brought against Shea would stick.

'And you know,' he said finally, 'you might want to talk to your daughter.'

'What about Elaine?'

'From her perspective what counts is to prove Shea guilty. If we arrest him and she can't prove he did it, she's going to take the fall for it. If I were you, that would be a concern right now. That she gets it right.'

Glitsky was starting to walk to his car but Loretta held his arm. 'Abe?'

He stopped.

'Would you help her, too? Not let her get hurt?'

He nodded. 'I'll try,'he said. 'It's my job.'

39

What Glitsky 's father Nat had not told him was that he had picked up the boys – all three of them – and was taking them first out to Tommy's Joynt for sandwiches and then down the coast, maybe to Monterey, where there weren't any riots, see the Aquarium, do something constructive with their summer.

It was ridiculous to keep them cooped up the house all day every day. What did Abe think he was doing, being a good father?

'I'm trying to protect them, Dad. I don't want them hurt.'

Father and son were in Rabbi Blume's office, the boys visible outside the window shooting some hoops in the synagogue's playground, which was otherwise deserted. Blume and Rachel were waiting in the attached residence, and Abe was not in any hurry to see them until this got settled with his father, who was not exactly breaking down in the face of his son's wrath – 'What's going to hurt them, tell me that?'

'How can you even ask that? You look around lately? You see what's happening?'

Nat Glitsky shrugged. 'I drove downtown to see you. I drove back to Rachel's. We walk together here, on the street, from her house. Nobody bothers us. Nobody's out.'

'You might want to ask yourself why that is.'

'I know why that is, Abraham. Sit down, would you? You're overreacting.'

'I don't want to sit down. I'm not overreacting! These are my children and my responsibility and I'm not exposing them to… to this. I'm not going to lose any more of my family.'

In spite of saying he didn't want to, Abe sat heavily. Nat hesitated by the rabbi's desk, then walked across the room and pulled up a chair next to his son.

'You can lose them this way, too. Holding on too tight, Abraham.'

'I'm trying to protect them, I'm trying to do what's best.'

Nat nodded. 'Always. I know this. But I called this morning, trying to get you, and Jake answers the phone. I never hear him talk about you like this… "Dad's losing it, Pops. He doesn't have a clue." This kind of talk. And from Jacob, who you know worships the ground under you. It worries me.'