A Certain Justice

'Jerohm, this time that's not go

He leaned back, truly sullen now. Frowning. 'Well, I say it and you gotta do it, ain't that right?'

'Well, you can always ask for a new lawyer.' She allowed the trace of a smile. 'Put me out on the street.'

Getting his bluff called rattled him a little. 'But hey, you and me, we been good together. We done some good shit.'

'That may be the case, Jerohm, but I can't go down and argue prejudice here. I don't think it was prejudice. I think we're going to have to cut a deal.'

'C'mon, girl, you think I white this happen?'

This was a trick question and she avoided it. 'The cops that picked you up, Jerohm, they black?'

He nodded. 'One of 'em.'

'And the DA who brought you upstairs here, she was black?'

'Okay.'

'And the new DA himself, Alan Reston, who says he's holding you for trial, he's black, too, am I right?'

'Right.'

'So who was prejudiced exactly?'

Jerohm chewed on his cheek a minute, stumped that even the multiple-choice question had no correct answer. 'Must of been somebody,' he said at last.

Gina took up her briefcase, stood and knocked on the door. When the guard opened it, she turned back to her client. 'You figure out who, Jerohm,' she said, 'you give me a call.'

Not seventy-five feet away as the crow flies, Special Agent Margot Simms sat with District Attorney Alan Reston in his new office. The new DA had recently returned from his predecessor's funeral, where he'd had a private discussion with Senator Wager in the cathedral's sacristy after the service.

Three men were in the process of removing Christopher Locke's personal possessions. Since Reston had known he wouldn't be in for most of the morning he had directed them to start early, and they had taken most of the books down from the shelves. Packing boxes lined the walls.

Reston and Simms were discussing Kevin Shea. She professed to having a difficult time understanding why, since the fugitive was still in the city, he had not been apprehended. Reston laid it off on the police department, then offered up his excuse for them – with the disturbances they had been underma

'We've got a task force of fifteen agents attempting to contact every known acquaintance of either Shea or Sinclair-'

'Sinclair?'

'Melanie Sinclair, the girl with him.' The expression told Reston he had better pick up in context the allusions he didn't immediately grasp. He should have known who Sinclair was. He had to be careful what he asked about. 'We've got Shea's address book from his apartment. Sinclair's got her addresses on the computer in her apartment.' At his glance she nodded and quickly explained. 'We don't have a warrant problem here. This is a priority case. So we're interviewing everybody on either list, and, of course, we've got some people in Texas with the mother and sister.'

'What about the tape?' Referring to the videotape Shea had made and that had been played on television.

'We've got a couple of specialists analyzing the background. There's some distinctive molding – maybe you noticed – at the windows and ceiling line behind him. Perhaps we can date the building he's in. Long shot, but you never know. Could be one of a kind.'

'I'm impressed.'

'Yes.' Special Agent Simms was accustomed to impressing. She was intelligent, professional and attractive. Shaded dark blonde hair fashionably cut. Nice legs. 'We also have a team talking to this Cynthia Taylor – she's the woman who originally identified Kevin Shea, you may recall. Melanie Sinclair and Taylor are – were – close, it seems. There's some chance she'll know likely places for the pair to go underground – friends, friends of friends, that sort of thing.'

Reston was thinking that manpower was a wonderful thing.

'I did want to run by you, though, just so we're clear on it, that we still believe our best move is a tap on Shea's lawyer's telephone. Wes Farrell. Lieutenant Glitsky expects that the two of them will get back into contact. In any event, you know some of the legal issues that arise over wiretaps, and I wanted to make sure we were kosher on any local rules.'

Reston knew that California law made wiretaps functionally impossible, but that the fruits of a lawful federal wiretap were admissible. He told her to pick herself a federal judge if she needed to get a tap approved. He didn't think there'd be a problem.

'Good. I'll follow through on that.' She clapped her hands together briskly. 'Which leaves the question of apprehension.'

Reston thought this was in fact and the law one of Chief Rigby's areas of responsibility, but he had Simms here now and thought it wouldn't hurt to plant a seed. 'Naturally, our interest is in placing him under arrest.'

She nodded. 'Of course. But I wondered if you had anything that doesn't appear here' – she tapped the folder in front of her – 'regarding his state of mind, anything we might want to watch out for.'

Reston took a moment getting the phrasing right. 'Well… we know he's had military training. He knows how to use weapons, although we don't know if he has any with him now. But judging from the high-speed chase as well as the panic evident on the videotape, we know he's fairly desperate by now. And then, he is charged with murder. I don't imagine killing someone else if it would help him get away would particularly bother him.'

Agent Simms took that in. 'That's a good insight,' she said, standing up, extending her hand. 'Thanks for your time, sir. If in fact Shea is still in the city we stand a decent chance of locating him within twenty-four hours. This kind of limited manhunt this is what we do.'

'Excellent,' Reston said. 'We'd like to get this behind us.'

'I understand,' she said.

They shook hands again.

59

Despite its location and outward appearance, Glitsky thought the Kit Kat Klub wasn't that bad a place. True, the walls on the street outside were tagged all the colors of the rainbow and both the picture window and the porthole in the door were blacked out and crisscrossed with bars, but the same was true of most of the establishments in this neighborhood.

Inside it was dim and close, but the place smelled of beer and cigarettes, not urine and dope. This, Glitsky thought, was a big difference. The club featured some pretty hot blues on weekends, local guys working on their chops during the week, but at this time of the day it was just a slow bar, a half-dozen people sitting around with glasses and bottles in front of them.

Glitsky still wasn't one hundred percent sure why he was there. He pulled up a stool and waited for the bartender to make it down to see him. Some vintage Clapton grunged out from the box, loud, and Glitsky reflected that while it was a fact that white men really couldn't jump worth a damn, a few of them – Clapton, Robben Ford, the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, a local guy named Joe Cellura – could blow some pretty mean blues.

With a heavy sigh the bartender lifted his three-hundred-pound bulk off the industrial-strength stool he half sat, half stood on behind the bar. 'Comin'.' It was a good thing he a

'I'm looking for Mo-Mo House.' Glitsky had his wallet out on the bar and opened it, flashing his buzzer.

The man looked down, as slowly as he did everything else. 'You found him.' He wore gold-framed round lenses. The shining black forehead was high, the dreadlocks brushed with gray even in the dim light. The voice had wasted itself with whiskey – a talking blues voice – or maybe he gargled with tacks, razor blades. The fat man waited. If you don't ask, you don't ask the wrong question.