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The phone rang in Glitsky's office, and he sighed again, let it ring once more – Ridley wasn't going to get it – then pushed back and stood. There was a police department notice on the wall next to the open doorway that he ignored as he went inside and picked up the phone.
'Homicide, Griffin.'
'Hey, Carl. Abe. How you doin'?'
'The band's just settin' up and the chicks aren't here yet so it's kind of slow. What's up?'
'I got a favor to ask. What's your day look like?'
'Nothin'. I'm in for the report on last night. After that, before that, whenever, you name it.'
'How'd last night go? You find anything?'
Griffin eased a leg over the corner of Glitsky's desk, put his weight on it. 'The short answer's no. Nobody really even heard the two shots, would take an oath on it.'
Glitsky hung back a second. 'I thought you already had those. Yesterday, those old ladies…'
'Yeah, I know. But they didn't hear two shots. The two of 'em heard one shot each. Lot of folks heard one shot.'
'So what does that mean?'
'Hell if I know. I just write down the answers and let the lawyers figure it out. Probably means nothing – somebody heard the first one, thought it was a backfire, it got their attention, then bang - oh yeah, maybe a shot. People weren't their usual talkative selves, some reason.'
Okay, Griffin was thinking, so we got nothing. He didn't want to spend more time doing the third degree on what they didn't have. 'So what's the favor?'
'Elaine Wager may be coming in with Kevin Shea, could be an hour, maybe a little more.'
'You're shittin' me. Kevin Shea himself?'
'What I want is for one of our guys – I don't want any other DA or the sheriff involved – one of you to escort her and Shea down the Peninsula, to wherever Elaine tells you.'
'You really got Kevin Shea?'
'Almost, I think. I just want to be prepared. And Carl, this is a favor, not an order.'
Same difference, Griffin was thinking.
Just at that moment Banks appeared in the doorway holding the PD notice. 'Is that Abe?' he asked. 'Let me talk to him.'
He handed the paper to Griffin, took the phone.
'Lieutenant, this is Ridley…'
Griffin heard it in the background as he sca
Banks was telling Abe that the lab hadn't been able to find any fingerprints on the yellow rope that had hung Arthur Wade but that he'd been frustrated with an evening gone into the pisser and he'd gone over to Jamie O'Toole's place last night and told him they were pursuing the knife wounds on Mullen and McKay with doctors in the area and were sure they would be bringing them downtown, perhaps under arrest, by the afternoon.
'No, I know it's unlikely,' he was saying, 'but I think Mr O'Toole's about ready to cave, cut a deal, do a little talking about the principals who might be involved here, save his own sweet white ass.' Banks cast a look at Griffin, smiled blandly. 'Figure of speech, Carl,' he said. Then, listening another moment: 'Anything else you want out of the lieutenant?'
Griffin looked down at the paper in his hands. This was why it was a favor, not an order, so it wasn't, in fact, the same difference. Still, Abe was a good cop, a fair guy. Whatever it was probably had to do with the brass and Griffin didn't get involved with that. 'No. Tell him I'll be there.'
Banks did, then hung up, pointed to the paper. 'Can you believe this idiocy? What's this about?'
'Yeah, I know,' Griffin said, putting it on Abe's desk. 'When they first started talking about making him lieutenant, I warned him.'
'You warned him?'
Griffin nodded. 'You get to lieutenant, you stop being a street cop, which is what Glitsky is. Like me. You can't change what you are.'
Banks, in the longest discussion he had ever had with Carl Griffin, flashed on his girlfriend – maybe now ex-girlfriend – Jacqueline coming to the same conclusions as this overweight flatfoot. It amazed him. 'Beware of any job that requires a change of clothes.'
'Yeah, that's what I mean. That's exactly it.'
"Thoreau wrote that.'
'Who?'
'Thoreau.'
"The guy who wrote Presumed I
Banks couldn't help himself. 'Yeah, him.'
Griffin, oblivious, was moving on. 'I liked the movie but I still think the guy – the attorney – did it, not his wife.' Then, without missing a beat: 'Did I hear you talking about knife wounds with the lieutenant? I ever tell you about Colin Devlin?'
Chief Dan Rigby, trying to keep a low profile, was on a field telephone with an irate and frustrated Mayor Conrad Aiken. 'Mohandas is there? He's going ahead with it?'
'Unless I stop him, sir, but I thought I'd call you first.'
'What's he trying to accomplish by this! Goddamn it!'
'Yes, sir.' Rigby waited.
Yesterday, after a series of referrals from cowardly lesser city bureaucrats had moved the request along to his office, the mayor had had a long and heated discussion with Philip Mohandas about the wisdom of his projected march on City Hall. The mayor pointed out the concessions he had already made – the increased reward on Kevin Shea, the appointment of Alan Reston. The city was genuinely trying to respond. The mayor, through his man Donald, had even gotten wind of the Hunter's Point deal and knew that Mohandas was still in the pipeline for administration of that pork barrel. What did the man want? Wasn't it ever enough? And Mohandas had replied that all he wanted was a permit to allow his people peaceably to assemble, as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
Deaf to by arguments about the potential for violence, the inflammatory nature of the demand for Kevin Shea's head, as well as the difficulty in meeting that demand even with the best of intentions, Mohandas had informed the mayor he was going ahead with the march. His people deserved it. With or without the permit, the application for which had led to this meeting in the first place.
'Without a permit, the gathering will be illegal,' Aiken had warned. 'I could order and enforce dispersal, even your own arrest. Extend the curfew, declare martial law, and if you think things are bad now…'
'I understand all that,' Mohandas had said.
In the end Conrad Aiken – feeling a little like Pontius Pilate – had decided he could not issue the permit. The rally, gathering, whatever it was, might go ahead, but it would be without his imprimatur. His threats, he knew, were bluffs. He wasn't going to make a bad situation worse by calling up more reinforcements.
But until Rigby's call, Aiken was hoping against hope that Mohandas would – for once – not push things beyond their limits, that he would see the light and act responsibly. Now, clearly, that was not going to happen. The crowd, according to Rigby, was already at about two thousand and the streets surrounding Kezar were packed.
Well, Aiken was thinking, it could be Mohandas had heard at least a little of what he had been saying. The man wasn't budging on pushing his agenda, but there was one sign of conciliation, even in his intractability. At least Mohandas had not gone public with the mayor's decision not to issue the permit – not yet.
'My advice, sir,' the chief was saying, 'is we watch it closely, but I think to try and stop things at this point would be to invite a disaster. Permit or no permit.'
The mayor swore and the chief agreed with him.
And then the horrible, ugly, unbelievable reality struck Aiken like a club. Suddenly he knew the strategy Mohandas was contemplating… he was saving the news that the mayor had refused to grant permission for this march for greater effect as the rally progressed. And that would let loose the furies.