"Me, too," he said, then, more seriously. "Sorry I turned out to be the guy."
Glitsky shrugged. "Somebody had to be. Not your fault." He added. "I'm not hearing any complaints, though I can't say I've been in touch."
Gerson cocked his head, as though the comment surprised him. His next smile might have been a bit more genuine. "Not even Lanier?"
This question wasn't a great surprise. Marcel Lanier was a long-time homicide veteran inspector who'd passed the lieutenant's exam well over two years before. It was no secret that he'd craved the appointment to head the detail after Glitsky. He'd even turned down a couple other of the varied administrative experiences he'd been offered, waiting for the homicide plum, only to be disappointed at Gerson's appointment. Like Glitsky, Lanier was homicide through and through. His refusal to take what they offered before he'd even made his bones as a lieutenant had, at least for the time being, doomed him with the brass. But Glitsky hadn't talked to him in six months or more.
"Not a word," he told Gerson. "He making trouble here?"
The lieutenant seemed to consider what he would say for a minute. Then he shook his head. "Naw, he's all right." And suddenly the preliminaries were over. "So how can I help you?"
Three hours after concluding his meeting with Gerson, Glitsky was in another of the payroll rooms, this one internal and hence windowless, and more crowded since it held not only as much paper and other junk, but also two desks to accommodate its two workers. In practice, because the two office residents rarely worked the same days, one desk probably would have sufficed, but nobody ever brought this up, or suggested that the second desk be removed to make more room. That, of course, would mean that neither person working there would have his own desk, and wouldn't that be just an unbearable slight? In any event, pride of desk was typical of a number of similar crucial issues facing the detail.
At this moment, Glitsky was behind the closed door of this office with Deacon Fallon, who it appeared was having continuing problems with Jacqueline, the romance novel fanatic from the office across the hallway. As a sergeant with the police department, Fallon made more money per hour than Jacqueline did. In spite of his part-time status, he had conceived the notion that he somehow outranked her, a mere clerk originally hired from the civil service pool, though by now she'd been working full-time for five years, three more than Fallon.
Fallon was in his early forties. His wife had some honcho job in what he called the private sector. Between the two of them and the police union, they'd brokered a deal with the city whereby Deacon could stay home a lot with the kids. He'd been in the department for twenty years and could have already retired on pension, but the department had a few of these part-time positions, and Deacon could increase his retirement base one year for every two he worked, which he considered a good deal.
Glitsky, propped on the corner of one of the desks, sat back with his arms crossed. His concentration had been wavering in the tedium and now he realized that Fallon- pacing in front of him while he'd been talking-expected some sort of response. "I'm sorry, what?"
Fallon sighed. "Jacqueline. She says she's always taken her lunch between noon and one, though we know that isn't true, and she doesn't have to change now if she doesn't want to. But Cathy and I…"
"Cathy?"
"My wife."
"Okay, right."
"Cathy and I signed up for this incredible six-week course on Website design. I know, I know, but it's the new wave of this net stuff, believe me. It's going to explode. It really is a great business, Abe; you might even want to look into it yourself. The opportunities are just…" Perhaps sensing Glitsky's lack of enthusiasm for the project, he wound down. "Anyway, it's twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, at noon."
"Which happens to be when you're supposed to be here."
"Right. I mean, I get the hour lunch, which is enough time. Each lesson is forty-five minutes." Glitsky knew that what Fallon meant was that by leaving twenty minutes early and getting back half an hour late, then eating lunch at his desk, he could squeeze the class into his "hour" lunch. Nobody would ever say a word about an abuse of free time like this. These were the little perks enjoyed by those ready to lay down their lives for their fellow citizens. "But it's got to be the noon hour, and Jacqueline won't trade."
He looked expectantly at Glitsky, who hadn't moved. His posture was relaxed, his arms still crossed over his chest. He might have appeared to be thinking hard.
"Abe?" No response. "I mean, I don't want to have to go to the union about this." He tried another tack. "Maybe we could both get off at the same time, me and Jacqueline. It's only for six weeks."
Finally, Glitsky took a deep breath. His eyes came into focus. "When I came on here, didn't I read in your file that you decided that you'd like to have lunch from one to two? And didn't Jacqueline agree back then to change to noon so the office would be covered?"
"Yeah." Her earlier scheduling flexibility didn't seem to have made much of an impact on Fallon. "But that was before this class, and I'm the sergeant here after all. Besides, she's not doing anything special, just meeting her regular friends. And hell, it's only six weeks…"
Glitsky later told Treya that the knock at the door probably saved him from at least a charge of aggravated mayhem if not homicide. It was Mercedes, telling him Frank Batiste was on the line and wanted to talk to him immediately. He thanked her, slid off the edge of the desk, and without so much as a glance at Fallon, hurried from the room.
The rain continued unabated, a fine slow drizzle that only seemed heavy to Glitsky because he hadn't supposed he'd be leaving the building and so was in his shirtsleeves. Batiste had been standing, waiting at the head of the hallway that led to his office. When Glitsky got off the elevator, he'd fallen in beside him and without much preamble led the way out the Hall's front entrance to the street.
"Where are we going?" Glitsky asked on the outer steps.
"I thought Lou's. Sound good?" Batiste broke into a jog and Abe had no choice but to follow across Bryant and down to the floor below the bailbondsman's place, where Lou the Greek's had operated continuously as the legal community's primary watering hole for nearly thirty years. The last of the lunch crowd was finishing up and they had no trouble finding a booth under one of the small, elevated windows that, because Lou's was below ground level, opened at about gutter height to the alley outside.
Lou was a hands-on and voluble proprietor who knew everybody who worked at the Hall of Justice by first name. He came by before they'd gotten settled and offered them a once-in-a-lifetime deal on the last couple of servings of one of his wife's inspired culinary inventions, Athenian Special Rice. "Minced pork, scrambled eggs, I think some soy sauce, cucumber and taramosalata. Everybody's raving about it."
"Taramosalata," Glitsky said. "That would be fish roe dip?"
Lou grinned. "I know. I told Chui the same thing, but that's why she's the genius. The taramosalata is like anchovies, just included for flavor. You don't even taste it."
"I bet I would," Glitsky said.
"It sounds terrific, Lou," Batiste said, "but I don't think we're eating. Thanks."
Lou wasn't five steps away, putting in their orders for tea and coffee, when Glitsky spoke. "So this isn't about Jerry Stiles and his department's overtime."
Batiste checked the surrounding area. No one was in earshot, and still he leaned in across the table between them. "I thought it'd be helpful if we had a talk, Abe. Just you and me, man to man, friends like I think we've always been."
Glitsky thought that the friendship they'd always shared would not have allowed one to peremptorily summon the other for a serious discussion of issues during work hours, but he only nodded. "No think about it, Frank."