Hardy leaned forward. "Then do you have any idea at all who might have?"
"This is going to sound weird, I know," she said, her dark eyes shining now, "but I don't think it could have been anybody who knew either of them." A tear track, black with kohl, coursed her cheek. "They were too great," she said.
24
First thing that Monday morning, Glitsky had put out the word with Marcel Lanier that he would like to see the field notes from the weekend work of his task force investigators on the Boscacci investigation. Because of the Twin Peaks killings on Friday night, Lanier himself, as head of homicide, had been otherwise employed and had not been able to participate, but Pat Belou, Lincoln Russell and the General Work inspectors had covered all of the gun shows in the Bay Area that weekend except the one in Fremont. Maybe because these San Francisco cops didn't have reliable snitches in some of the outlying counties, nobody came back with anything remotely resembling Glitsky's phone book from Mr. Ewing's truck.
Frustrated by the lack of data, Glitsky still believed he was on to the only possible lead, albeit a remote one, to Boscacci's murder. So before he ran out to his 8:00 A.M. chiefs' meeting, he called the ATF liaison for San Francisco, got a recorded message and left one of his own. He gave a Xerox copy of Ewing's phone book to the guys from General Work and told them to get names and addresses for everyone in the book from the phone company's reverse listings. He wanted them by the time the ATF got back to him so that he'd have something to trade- the names and addresses of known suppressor buyers- in exchange for the ATF's cooperation in supplying still other, much larger lists of similar buyers. He had the personnel and the budget, for once, and he was looking for the nexus, if any, of suppressor buyers and people who might have had dealings with Allan Boscacci.
After chiefs', he met with the mayor's representative, Celia Bonham, at City Hall, to discuss some jurisdictional issues between the SFPD and the officers and administrators of Homeland Security. After that, Paganucci drove him halfway home, out to Fillmore, to talk to the new executive director of the African-American Art & Culture Complex about some mutual impact issues, such as the use of the city's finest as private security for the complex at the city's expense. Back at the Hall of Justice, he fielded questions from reporters on all three of the major events currently transpiring in his domain- the handling of the LeShawn Brodie matter, Allan Boscacci's murder (which some reporter had now called an assassination) and the double homicides of the Executioner on Friday night. Since he had nothing good or even mildly productive to say about any of these, it was a dispiriting news conference. Glitsky couldn't seem to get much of a spin going about the fact that between the chiefs, the homicide detail and his own special event number task force, he had nothing to show, and very little to say, about crime in the city within the past six days.
He finally checked into his office. The General Work guys had done a good job while he'd been going to meetings, and they'd compiled a neatly typed name and address list from the Ewing phone numbers, which now lay under a stapler on his desk. For lunch, he washed two rice cakes down with a Diet Coke. When his receptionist buzzed to tell him that two ATF agents were here, he felt reasonably prepared.
But that didn't last long.
The two of them- Aitkin and Drew- struck Glitksy as having come straight not from their offices but from the street, perhaps a bust. Both still wore their black field jackets with the oversized initials "ATF" across the back; both were packing in obvious, bulging shoulder holsters. Drew made the introductions for both of them, and they sat without any fanfare in the chairs in front of Glitsky's desk.
Glitsky had planned to open the discussion by expressing his appreciation that they'd come down on such short notice and so on, but Drew barely gave him the chance before he interrupted. "We just wondered, sir," he began in a terse tone, "if you're familiar with the joint task force we've had working with local officers in each county and through which we're all supposed to coordinate our activities?"
"Sure," Glitsky said. "I called Sergeant Trona last Friday and he told me he could get me hooked up with one of your agents by early next week, which is now. I'm heading up an event number force on this Allan Boscacci homicide. I didn't have that kind of time." He reached for his list. "But I think you'll be pleased with my results."
Aitkin, who so far hadn't said a word, came forward and took the sheet of paper. Drew glanced over at it without much show of interest. "And these are what?" he asked.
"Names and addresses of people who've bought suppressors illegally from a man named James Martin Ewing out of the Cow Palace. Or at least that's where he was working out of last Friday."
"How did you get to him?" Drew asked. "Ewing?"
"I had a snitch. It was easier than I thought it should be."
Finally Aitkin spoke, turning to Drew. "Imagine that."
"I beg your pardon." Glitsky didn't much appreciate the tone. "Do you gentlemen have some kind of a problem?"
"Yes, sir. I'm afraid we do." Drew sat back, linked his hands over his belt.
Aitkin had carried in with him a flat leather briefcase and now he opened it on his lap and withdrew a photograph, which he handed over to his partner. Drew, in turn, handed it to Glitsky. "I'd like to ask you, sir, if this looks familiar to you."
The picture was of him. The photo was taken last Friday, no doubt from the camera Ewing had concealed somewhere inside his van. "Ewing is your snitch," he said.
Drew nodded. "Didn't you wonder why it was so easy getting connected with him? You got a guy looking at twenty years if he gets caught at this stuff and you drop one name to a more or less random dealer at a gun show and you're talking to him in fifteen minutes? Any warning bells go off for you?"
"I thought I was having a lucky day."
The two agents' heads turned, briefly, to each other. Drew came back at Glitsky. "So what are you looking for?"
"Background. I need to know if any of these guys are connected to Boscacci." He pointed to his list. "It's long odds, but we're not working with much."
The problems of any local police department were of no concern to the ATF. "We've busted two-thirds of Ewing's people already," Drew said. "The others we're watching to see who they hang with, how they hook up. You know the drill, which is why we're asking you not to pursue… this any further."
Glitsky passed the photo back to Drew. His stomach was doing a mariachi dance and he put a hand over it. "I'd still be interested in getting some background on anyone who has bought suppressors, see if we can get a match."
Drew and Aitkin exchanged a glance and nodded. "We can provide that," Drew said. "Probably be a couple of days."
"Sooner would be better."
"Always. Of course."
As the two men were standing up, Aitkin spoke for the second time. "It's always our intention to work with local agencies, sir. That's why we set up the joint task forces, for mutual communication and cooperation. So in future, if you plan to freelance out of your jurisdiction, you might check in with local authorities to find out what you might be getting into."
"I get it," Glitsky said.
When they had gone through the door and out of the office, he heard one of them say, "Fucking locals."
"I need to talk to you." Wu hadn't changed since the hospital. She still wore her blue jogging suit, tennis shoes, the Giants warm-up jacket. She stood in the doorway to Brandt's mini-cubicle at the YGC. Her mouth was dry and her palms wet. Even after the ride they'd shared to downtown, which had seemed to break the ice a little, she didn't know how he would receive her. But she felt that coming here to him could be read as an apology of sorts. She was playing straight with him now, keeping her opposite number up on developments in the case. She knew she was here with the best of intentions. "You're not going to like it."