A Certain Justice

'Where do we put 'em?'

This was Dale Boles. His jail upstairs was already filled to capacity. If Aiken wanted the police to start arresting looters he was going to have to take responsibility for housing them.

Aiken glared at him, chose not to respond and turned to Glitsky. 'What have you found out about the lynching itself? Was it random or what? Maybe we can get some handle on how to stop this thing faster if we know what started it.'

Glitsky, in corduroys and a leather flight jacket, was sitting on a low filing cabinet at the back of the room. He had a hawkish nose and an old gash of a scar ru

The mayor cocked his head. 'Who's Jerohm Reese?'

'What's Reese got to do with this, Abe?' Locke said.

'I said "who's Reese?",' Aiken repeated.

Glitsky stood up and quickly told the story. The carjacking. Mike Mullen. The release. Glitsky looked at his watch, glanced at Locke – disdainful. 'Reese was released less than thirteen hours ago. We have a couple of witnesses, not to the lynching itself but they seem to think the mob came from the Cavern, a pub on 2nd and Geary.'

'Okay,'Aiken said, 'And?'

'And I was down there. I went into the Cavern myself. Place was empty except for a bartender named Jamie O'Toole who told me it had been dead all night. Slowest night they'd ever had. He'd heard the mob outside, of course, but got scared and didn't want to go out and check-'

Locke interrupted. 'Jerohm Reese, Abe.'

The scar between Glitsky's lips went almost white – perhaps he was smiling. 'On the back wall of the Cavern was a huge blown-up picture of a guy. I asked O'Toole who it was and he said it was Mike Mullen. He'd been the accountant for the place. Seeing as I was a homicide cop and all, maybe I'd heard of him.'

Silence in the room, finally broken by Elaine Wager. 'You mean because Jerohm Reese was released…?'

Chris Locke answered everybody. 'I released Jerohm Reese because there wasn't going to be a conviction on him.'

Glitsky looked at him. 'Well, some of these people seemed to take it wrong, sir.'

Aiken rubbed a hand over his face. 'You're telling me that this mob happened because of the release of this Jerohm Reese?'

'That's how I read it, yes, sir. Just the way some people took it wrong when they let off the cops who beat up Rodney King.' He paused and added, 'Again, in Los Angeles.'

Locke wanted to get back to the nuts and bolts. 'Have we identified any of the mob?'

'No, sir, not yet. We're working on it, but it's a stonewall out at the Cavern.'

'We've got one.' Elaine Wager felt free to talk whenever she wanted. Glitsky thought it must be great having a U.S. senator for a mother. 'Have any of you seen the news tonight?'

Glitsky nodded at her. 'Yep,' he said, 'we're working on him, too. Real hard.'

9

Rolling over on his arm woke Shea up. It was still dark out, about the time the somnolent effects of the alcohol usually wore off. His mouth was dry. Unlike most mornings when the throbbing was an insistent dull pounding inside his head, today he lay in his bed immobilized by the pain.

The pulse of the jackhammer in his skull made him fear to lift his head from the pillow – his ribs, his arms, his hips. He wondered for a moment if he was seriously hurt. This, he told himself, was not a hangover. Hangovers didn't feel like this. (Many mornings he would tell himself that he wasn't hung over, he was sure he hadn't drunk enough to make him hung over, he just hadn't had enough sleep.)

He rolled to his side and bile came up on him. Staggering in the dark, he bumped five steps to the bathroom and barely made it, crumpling to the floor and hugging the commode.

Finally he stood and urinated. The jackhammer was not going to let up. He had to try to get back to bed, to sleep some of this off. He should call a doctor.

The bathroom light was an explosion that nearly knocked him down again but he had to wash his face, brush his teeth. There were two of him in the mirror, he couldn't focus down to one.

Cold water on his face. Washing off crust from the beating. Still two faces, both swollen, cut.

Back on his bed, the room spun some more.

The jangle of the telephone ringing next to his ear almost tossed him out of the bed. He jolted up, arms and ribs feeling ripped from their sockets, joints, whatever it was that attached them.

He got it halfway through the second ring.

'Kevin?'

A girl. Melanie. No, it couldn't be. They'd broken up – face it, he'd dropped her – three weeks before. He flopped back on the bed, the phone pressed to his ear. 'Timezit?' he moaned.

A pause while she processed the slur in his voice. He was sure that was it. Now, if tradition held, would come two minutes of rebuke.

Okay, he was drunk. Did she want to fight about it? Again? Well, not tonight, honey, I've got a headache. He almost hung up, then heard her say, 'It's five-fifteen.' The time didn't surprise him. During the school year, when they'd still been going out, she'd always set her alarm for five so she could get up and study and get a jump on the day. It was another reason they'd broken up.

'Melanie…'

'God, Kevin, how could you do it?'

'Do what?'

She told him.

10

The streetlights glared off the wet-looking street. The whole short block – it was a cul-de-sac that backed up to the Presidio – was empty, dark, forbidding. The windows facing the street caught a glint here and there, ghosts flitting across the fronts of the buildings.

Abe Glitsky, noticing all this, told himself he didn't used to think this way. It was only since Flo had died. Only. Sure, only. Only nine months of her struggle against the ovarian cancer that killed her in its own quick time, in spite of the chemotherapy and other atrocities they had colluded to commit to ward off the inevitable. Nine months with Glitsky at her side every step of the way, both of them struggling against the urge to despair and – perhaps more difficult – the random appearances of their irrational yearning to hope. And then, after she was gone, trying to maintain the facade these last fifteen months – not to show the pain, not even (and it tortured him on the days he managed it) to feel it as fresh as it had been.

Fifteen months. Only fifteen months. God.

It was – unusually – still shirtsleeve weather in this the darkest hour before the dawn. Since his duplex didn't come with a garage, he'd wound up parking in the nearest spot – four blocks away – and by the time he hit his block he was almost shaking from fatigue. But still, in no hurry to get home. He never was anymore.

There was a sliver of moon through the trees in the Presidio – the morning was dead still and his footfalls echoed. He realized he hadn't heard a siren since he'd started walking. That knowledge didn't fill him with any hope. He knew what it was – he knew what false hope was and he wasn't going to indulge anymore. Today would be hotter than yesterday, and today it would all break loose.

Behind him as he turned up the sidewalk a bus rumbled by on Lake Street. Turning, he saw that it was empty except for the driver and a passenger sitting alone way in the back.

His wife Flo had always wanted a real house. Their plan was to have Flo stay with the kids until the youngest, Orel, got into junior high, which would have been, would be, the next September. At that time Flo would have gone back to teaching and they would have saved for a couple of years, maybe moved out of the city, got their house.