And suddenly, here in his office this cool Wednesday afternoon, all by herself, was Debra Schiff. He’d run into the very attractive homicide inspector a couple of times at the bar at Lou the Greek’s and he’d planned to meet her there some more if he could, but here she was now, telling him about this murder of a coffee-shop manager out in the godforsaken Haight-Ashbury.
To date, Glass had only been aware of rumors and what he’d read about this particular murder in the papers. Astoundingly, he thought, Schiff was telling him with a straight face that she and her partner, Bracco, hadn’t brought up the dope connection to the news media before because it simply didn’t occur to them that it might be of some special importance-since apparently no marijuana had been stolen, it couldn’t have been part of a motive in the case.
She waved off his objection. “No, listen, Jerry, there’s always dope somewhere in a homicide picture. A roach in the drive-by car, some paraphernalia around a DD”-domestic disturbance-“gangbangers loaded up with coke or heroin. So it’s always there someplace. You don’t comment on it any more than you’d talk about the weather. ‘In other news tonight,’ she said in her best anchor voice, ‘Shawahn Johnson was shot seventeen times in an apparent drive-by shooting in Hunters Point when the fog was in.’ Generally, we don’t mention the fog.”
“But this fellow, Vogler, he had an entire marijuana garden in his attic, didn’t he? Thousands of dollars’ worth, right?”
“Right. But again we didn’t have any reason to believe that was part of our case at the outset. We handed the dope part over to the narcs and that might have been the end of it.”
“But for what?” Glass adjusted his spectacles.
For the next few minutes Schiff ran the highlights of their investigation. “The bottom line, though,” she concluded, “is that we think… in fact, we’re morally certain that Maya, Jansey, and Robert Tripp have lied to us, in some cases more than once. We have motives for each of them, both alone or possibly together in the case of Jansey and Tripp, but almost no evidence and certainly nothing we can use to bring any leverage to bear on getting anybody to talk. We’re pretty sure, for example, that Vogler was blackmailing Maya, and that Jansey may have known about that, but if they both say, ‘No he wasn’t,’ we’re stuck.”
“You can’t just lean on them harder?”
“We could, but as I say, it’s kind of pointless without some new leverage, some change in the status quo. There’s no physical evidence that’s very compelling.” She shook her head. “Besides, we’ve already gone back and talked to all of them at least twice, but Jansey and Tripp are at the very least well-rehearsed, and Maya’s got herself a lawyer. Plus, you know, we’ve got to walk a little easy around her anyway.”
“Why’s that?”
“The whole political thing, which I hate, and Darrel hates, but there you go. The plain fact is, Darrel and Harlen Fisk used to be partners, and she’s Harlen’s sister.”
Jerry’s eyes lit up. “Are you talking Supervisor Fisk?”
“Right.”
“Which also makes her the niece of Mayor West?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
Jerry Glass pulled himself up straight in his chair, his attention now riveted. “Is Mr. Fisk interfering with your investigation? Is he talking to your partner?”
“Not that I know of, no. That would be a little awkward, even if…” She stopped.
“What?”
“Well,” she said, “Harlen, among many other names you might recognize, was one of Vogler’s regular customers.”
This stopped Glass dead. He squinted through his glasses, across at her. “Marijuana customers? You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. He’s on the list.”
“The list?”
“I’m sorry. Haven’t I told you yet about the list?” She gave him that news, the incriminating computer records. “Anyway, in short it looks like there’s a ton of connections between all these people, and we’d like an excuse to shake their trees and find out if we can what those connections are. The blackmail, for example. What was that about? Was it serious enough that Maya might have killed to keep it quiet? Or, on the other hand-”
“No”-Glass raised his palm to her-“hold up a minute. Let’s go back to what might really make a difference. You’ve told me that Maya says she didn’t know this weed was sold out of her shop, right? How credible is that to you? Especially if her brother was one of the customers.” He waited, a smile beginning to play at the corners of his mouth. “That’s what I thought. And beyond that, if the mayor-I’m kind of new in town, but Harlen’s her protégé if I’m not mistaken-I mean, she’d know as well, or might know. How much was Maya paying Vogler again?”
“Ninety thousand,” Schiff said.
“Well, that’s enough, or almost enough, to live on, right? Do you think it’s actually possible that he didn’t kick back some percentage of this drug money to Maya, who had, after all, set him up in business?”
Schiff kept nodding. “You’re saying Vogler-”
“I’m saying it sounds to me like he was her partner on the dope side as well. Which would explain his cavalier attitude toward her as much as blackmail, wouldn’t it? He can treat her any way he wants and she can’t fire him, can she? Since he’s her supplier. They’re in it together hip deep.”
Glass was making sense, although neither she nor Bracco had yet considered the possibility that this whole thing might, in fact, be about the weed. Schiff’s hope, and the reason she’d come to visit Jerry Glass today, was that he could start some kind of a U.S. prosecution on the marijuana issues that would make the principal witnesses nervous enough about the possible dope charges against them that in exchange for lenient treatment on that score, they would perhaps be inclined to trade information they might have about the murder.
But now Jerry’s take took it to a different level, contemplating that Maya herself might have been the prime mover, and armed with political connections and possibly even police protection, she would have been all but invulnerable to suspicion, much less prosecution.
And then-instead of this imagined blackmail about what she’d maybe or maybe not done in her past-the murder had simply been the usual dope deal gone bad. Maya had killed her employee because of any number of common reasons-he wanted a bigger cut, he was selling to his own customers and leaving her out, he was either getting sloppy or hard to control.
Now Jerry Glass settled back into his chair, his hands clasped on the desk in front of him, a faraway glint in his eyes over a tight-lipped smile. “I know how we can get these people to talk,” he said.
Back in his office once again, Glitsky sat slumped, his elbows on the armrests of his chair, his hands joined in front of his mouth. He was back in at work because what else was he going to do? Zachary was coming out of the coma, although they were going to operate on him again to close up his skull tomorrow. Rationally, he knew that there was reason for hope, and yet all he could feel was a deep self-loathing. Regardless of what Treya or Hardy or anyone else said, he knew that all of this was his fault.
Through his lack of attention he’d allowed his son to be hit by a car-there was still a reasonable chance that his boy could die. Even if he didn’t die, he might never be completely right in the head again. And they might not know the extent of those injuries, if any, for years.
He’d left the lights off at the door, so again the high windows provided the only illumination, and not much of it at that.
He clearly wasn’t welcoming guests.
Nevertheless, somebody knocked and he straightened up and intoned, “Come in.”
Bracco poked his head in. “Sir? Lights?”
“Sure.”
Glitsky covered his face with one hand against the sudden brightness, then lowered the hand and faced both of his inspectors with a flat eye. “Come on in. Have a seat.”