Len Faro stood outside the lit perimeter of the./crime scene for a moment before wading in, thinking that this had been about the deadliest two weeks since he'd come on with the force. By the time he arrived at Pier 70, dusk was well advanced and the place was a madhouse of activity with three TV and a couple of local radio crews, six or seven black-and-whites, several unmarked cars, two ambulances, the coroner's van, and a limousine that he guessed would belong to one of the higher brass.
Which, now that he thought of it, made little sense if this was a gang shooting. And that's what he would normally have expected in this location. So, wondering now, making his way through the phalanx of vehicles, he showed his badge to the officer at the tape and stepped over it. The scene was lit by the television lights as well as headlights from the cars, but even without the illumination, Faro could see at a glance that there'd been significant carnage.
He passed the first body only a few feet onto the pier itself and paused by the knot of daytime CSI people attending it. "Gangbangers?" he asked Gretchen, tonight's photographer. After all, four bodies were lying in plain sight-there might be more inside any of these buildings- and Faro had up until now only seen this kind of slaughter in a drive-by or other organized retaliation environment.
But Gretchen looked shell-shocked herself, and in a woman to whom violence was literally a daily event, this was surprising. "Gerson," she said. And at first he thought she was asking him if the lieutenant had been notified to come to the scene.
"I assume," he began, then stopped. "What about him?"
She motioned with a toss of her head back down the pier another forty feet or so, where another group of men were standing around another body, propped under a thick streak of brown on a stucco wall. Was that Frank Batiste down there? The deputy chief did not come to homicide scenes unless something was radically unusual. Faro broke into a trot, was with them all in five seconds-Cuneo and Russell from homicide, John Strout the chief medical examiner, two daytime CSI people. Everybody with hands in their pockets against the biting wind. To get to them, Faro had to pass a third corpse on the pier on his way down, and a fourth buried in a hail of broken glass in one of the doorways. Other homicide inspectors, half the lot of them- Barrel Bracco, Sarah Evans, Marcel Lanier-appeared as recognizable suddenly in the glut of faces.
Still, getting up to this victim, Faro slowed before he'd quite reached it, took a last step or two, stopped dead in his tracks. Jesus Christ, he thought.
Barry Gerson's eyes were open. He hadn't yet been moved, and so sat with his legs almost straight out, tipped a little to his right side, at the bottom of the brown line, which disappeared into his back. Faro leaned down closer, made out two small holes in the front of his jacket. He straightened up and turned to the knot of men. "How did this happen?"
"We're in the process of trying to piece that together right now, Sergeant." Batiste had come up through homicide-he'd been lieutenant before Glitsky-and so he knew the drill. "I'm hearing from these inspectors"-he indicated Cuneo and Russell-"that there's been some history among these men."
Faro, out of the loop, glanced at his dead lieutenant, came back to Batiste. But Cuneo, pointing up the pier, was the one to speak. "The first stiff back there is John Holiday, Len. Beyond him is Roy Panos. That speak to you at all?"
"John Holiday, I know," Faro said. A nod. "The name only." He paused, knowing that his next words would be a bomb, decided he had to say them. "I was at his house a couple of nights ago. With Paul Thieu."
All heads snapped toward him. Russell and Cuneo exchanged a meaningful look. "What was he doing there?" Cuneo asked. "What were you doing there? "
"Holiday was our suspect." Russell, bitching about turf.
But Batiste cut them both off. "I don't give a damn about any of that. Sergeant, you're telling me Paul Thieu was in this, too?"
"It seems like he would have had to be somehow, sir. Doesn't it?"
"And killed himself over it?"
"That might not have been over this," Cuneo said. "It might have been something else."
"Or maybe he didn't even kill himself at all," Faro said. "Maybe somebody killed him."
"What for?" Russell snapped.
"I don't know. Shut him up?"
"About what?" Cuneo.
Faro shrugged. He didn't know. He motioned back toward the other bodies. "So who are the other two?"
Batiste provided the identifications. When he heard the names, Faro nodded. "Just yesterday, sir, Inspector Thieu had me check fingerprints we found at Holiday's house against these guys. They'd been there."
"Which means what?"
"I don't know, sir." He looked around. "Holiday and these men must have been into something together, though."
The deputy chief didn't like this turn of events at all, and it showed all over him. His eyes strafed the men knotted around him, went back to Gerson, over to Holiday's body, took in the whole scene. "What the hell's going on? Anybody got any idea?"
"Y'all hold the fort here," John Strout said. "I'm going to take a walk, see some other clients. Jimmy." The medical examiner moved back up the pier with one of the other crime scene inspectors.
After he'd gone, Cuneo and Russell shared another look, and Batiste caught it. "Let's hear it, boys. You even think you got anything at all, now'd be a good time to share."
Cuneo cleared his throat, took the lead. "Lincoln and I, we've been working a little with Roy Panos." He jerked a thumb. "The first body up there."
"What do you mean, working with him?" Batiste asked.
"He was an assistant patrol special…"
"Related to Wade?"
"Yes, sir. His brother. He became a source."
"For what?"
"First the Silverman murder. Then Matt Creed, the other Patrol Special…" The admission was costing Cuneo. He cleared his throat again. "… and the Tenderloin multiple."
Batiste crossed his arms. "You're telling me this man Panos was a source for what, four homicide investigations?"
Russell jumped to his partner's defense. "They were all related, sir."
"I would hope to smile. Okay, so where does Paul Thieu come in?"
Again, the glance between the homicide guys, but there was no hiding it, and Cuneo took it again. "He originally drew both Creed and the Tenderloin guys."
Batiste, trying to get it clear. "But you wound up with both of them."
"That's right." Cuneo nodded. "The lieutenant handed them off to us. There was a connection with both of them to Silverman, which was ours already. He thought it would be more efficient."
"But Thieu stuck with it anyway? Why would he do that?" Blank stares all around, and Batiste turned back to Faro. "Sergeant, I'd be interested in anything you'd like to contribute."
Faro tugged at his bug, the tuft of hair under his lower lip. "He had some questions, I guess."
"What kind of questions?"
"With the evidence at the Tenderloin scene."
"He told you that?"
"In vague terms only."
"But nothing specific?"
"Not really, sir, or if there was, he didn't share that information with me."
"So what did he tell you when you were going out to Holiday's? What was that about?"
"I told you. To lift prints." Faro turned to the inspectors. "He told me it was a favor for you guys."
"That's bullshit," Cuneo said. "We never sent anybody out there." He was angry and was making very little effort to hide it. If Batiste hadn't been there, he might have swung at Faro. "We would have made any request like that directly to CSI, Len, like we always do, and you know it. This really pisses me off," he added to no one in particular.
Batiste ignored him. "All right." He pointed at Cuneo and Russell. "Put that on your list, way up there, maybe first." Again, he surveyed the area all around. "So what the hell happened here? What got Barry out here? It had to be something with these Patrol Specials, wouldn't you think? How many of them are dead now? "
"Two," Russell said. "Roy Panos and Matt Creed."
But Cuneo couldn't let that go. "You might as well include Nick Sephia. He used to work for Panos, too. He's his nephew." He indicated the spot. "That's him in the doorway up there."
"Shit." Batiste blew out heavily. "Anybody call Wade yet? Where's Lanier?" He turned and called out. "Marcel!"
Lanier came trotting up from where Sephia had fallen. "Yes, sir?"
"You'd better get ahold of Wade Panos and get him over here ASAP. That's his brother Roy, and his nephew Nick. This has got to have something to do with him. We've got to find out what he knows."
"What are you thinking?" Lanier asked.
"I'm thinking somebody with Panos tried to broker some kind of a deal."
"Not with Holiday," Cuneo put in. "Panos and him don't get along."
"That's interesting," Batiste said. "I wonder where he was when this was going on. Well, we'll get to that. Meanwhile, Marcel, did I read somewhere you finally passed for lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, then congratulations, you're the point man on this." He gestured around. "All of it. The detail reports to you, you come to me. I know you'll thank me some day. Guys"-the deputy chief turned to Cuneo and Russell- "everything through Marcel, clear?" Batiste then turned around and looked down at the body of Barry Gerson. He went to a knee, shook his head with great sadness. "What the hell were you thinking, coming down here with no backup?"
Marcel Lanier had been a homicide inspector for twenty years, and during that time had formed some of the same conclusions about Wade Panos that Glitsky had reached. The last time Lanier had done anything even tangentially connected to the Patrol Special, he'd been trying to do a favor for both his new and old lieutenant, bridging the gap between them. That had backfired awkwardly.
Now he was coming to his interrogation of Wade Panos with a different, and mostly negative, set of preconceptions. Before he'd sent Cuneo and Russell off to the lab to check on Thieu's fingerprint question, Lanier had pressed the two inspectors for a brief recap of the events, and their interpretations of them, since Sam Silverman's death. The roles of both Roy and Wade Panos struck him as unusual, to say the least.
Lanier had been at Pier 70 for over three hours and hadn't been in a good mood when he'd arrived. By now, he was frozen to the bone, overwhelmed with his new and sudden responsibilities, sickened by all he'd seen. The media had, if anything, multiplied. They had set up camps at the pier, fighting for exclusive quotes and breaking bulletins. In the pools of artificial light from the department's portable lamps, all five bodies had been tagged, bagged and transported, but several teams of crime scene specialists were still doing their painstaking work up and down the pier.
Panos had arrived with his lawyer-his lawyer?-in time to see his brother and nephew packed into the coroner's van, and Lanier had asked them both, as a courtesy, if they could wait for a few minutes and have Wade answer a few questions, try to clear up some of the mystery here. He had managed to keep himself looking busy with the various teams-it wasn't terribly difficult-so that the few minutes could grow to a half hour.
Now Lanier knocked at the window to Panos's car, opened the back door and slid in. Reaching a hand over the seat, he shook hands all around, offered condolences, everybody's pal. He then took out his pocket recorder, and, getting their permission, placed it on the seatback between them. He got right to it. "So, do you have any idea what this is about?"
"Damn straight I do, and a pretty good one."
"Tell me."
"He didn't really say that, that he thought I was actually there ?"Glitsky shook his head in disbelief. "That man's a piece of work. Was there any physical indication that I was?"
"You didn't carve your initials into anything, did you, Abe?" Treya, calm and relaxed, making a joke. "It's an old habit he's trying to break, Marcel. Everywhere he goes, if there's a tree… He's worse than a dog."
Lanier smiled. "No trees there. No initials, either."
"How can I put this, Marcel? That's because I wasn't there."
Glitsky had crossed a leg and leaned back on the couch, his arm around his wife. It was close to eight o'clock, and the family, including grandfather, had finished dinner about twenty minutes before. Because Inspector Lanier had come by, Nat offered to baby-sit Rachel in her playpen while he did the dishes, and they could all hear him singing songs from Fiddler on the Roof to keep her entertained. Now Lanier sat across from them in the living room with a Diet Coke.
Lanier made an apologetic face. "I've got to ask, Abe. Panos didn't actually say you were, he said he thought you might have been. Then when I found you hadn't been at work…"
"Sure, of course, no offense. I'd ask the same thing." Glitsky came forward. "Look, I'm not making any secret of it, Marcel. Panos isn't a friend of mine. I told you about him when? A week ago? So you could warn Barry. Not that it did him any good."
"But you weren't at work."
"That's right. And I wasn't sick either. So where was I?"
"Right. That's the question."
"What time, more or less?"
"Two-ish."
Glitsky remembered right away. "I was at David Freeman's apartment with Gina Roake. You know Freeman?"
"Sure."
"Well, you may not have heard, but he died today, too. Around noon. Roake wanted to get some of Freeman's clothes picked out for the funeral and I thought she could use the company. She was a mess, Marcel. Anyway, Freeman had this one suit, but it had gotten ruined and she'd forgotten… anyway, long afternoon. Sorry, but she'll vouch for it. Unless Panos thinks she was there, too. Out at the pier, I mean."
"Maybe she brought a howitzer," Treya added with scorn. "Was there any sign of a howitzer shell out there, Marcel?"
"Easy," Glitsky said to his wife. "It's just the job."
"I hate it," Treya said, and stood up abruptly. "Sorry, Marcel. I'm a little impatient lately." She went into the kitchen.
"Roake will back me up, Marcel. I was there. If she's not at her office," Glitsky said, "R-O-A-K-E, try Freeman's. They'll know where to find her. Dismas Hardy probably will have her number, too."
Lanier scribbled on his pad, let some air out. "Okay, one more, Abe, if you don't mind. If you were working with Hardy, how'd you get connected with Roake?"
Glitsky sat back again, relaxed. "She came by to check with Freeman's office, which is where Hardy works. He and I were just about finished, and Roake needed some help at Freeman's. So I went with her. Good Samaritan."
"And what were you doing at Hardy's in the first place?"
"It's why I took the two days off. We were both trying to get somebody interested in investigating these same guys who got killed today."
"Why?"
"Because somebody had threatened us, and Hardy thought he knew who it was." The plan they'd all agreed upon-Hardy, Glitsky, McGuire, Roake-was to keep as close to the truth as possible during all the interrogations that were likely to follow. "So did I."
"So who'd you try to get interested? Management and Control?" This was the department, formerly called Internal Affairs, that investigated police misconduct.
"No. Let's just say Hardy went to some judges and I went to another law enforcement agency."
"Outside the department? You're saying you went to the FBI?"
"I went to another agency," Glitsky repeated. "It's moot anyway, Marcel. The point was I was doing some work at Hardy's office because it could have been embarrassing at the Hall." Glitsky held up his hands, palms out, all innocence. "Look, you know about Gerson calling me off Silverman right after I talked to you?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I didn't stay all the way out." He leaned back again, matter of fact. "Sam Silverman's widow is a friend of mine. She had a question and asked me. I forwarded it on to Cuneo and Russell. Then Paul Thieu had a bit of a moral dilemma about some evidence and he came to me about it."
"And you talked to him?"
"Briefly."
"You think any of this had to do with his death?"
"I think it's possible. I don't think he killed himself."
"Then who killed him?"
"I don't know, Marcel. I wish I did know."
Lanier grimaced. "An objective observer might say you were involved at this point, Abe."
"I never said I wasn't. After my family got threatened, I got proactive. You would have, too."
"All right. That's what Panos said today. You were trying to take these boys down. The same ones who got shot."
"And I wanted to take out Barry Gerson, too?" Glitsky allowed a trace of asperity. "And I wanted to do all of this with the help of John Holiday, who was wanted for murder? Are you saying you believe I could have been part of that, Marcel?" He leaned back, softened his tone. "I was trying to find a way to do this kosher." He sighed. "All right. I might as well tell you. You know Bill Schuyler, FBI? Talk to him."
"So what was Hardy doing?"
"Hardy thought these guys were trying to frame Holiday. He was calling judges. You can ask around on that, too. Look, Marcel, I don't know what got Barry down there to the pier, or Holiday for that matter, but these guys are bad people. I'm not surprised they got themselves killed. But if you think I was there or had anything to do with it…" He let the words hang in the room.
Marcel put down his empty glass and sighed heavily. "If you weren't there, you weren't there, Abe. I've just got to touch all the bases. Tell your wife I'm sorry I upset her, would you? And you, too."
When Lanier got to the door, Glitsky held it for him, stopped him for a second. "So, Panos aside, Marcel, how many people are they saying were down there?"
Lanier's eyes were drawn with fatigue. "CSFs saying at least six, maybe as many as ten. Lots of hardware, different calibers, but people might have been doubled up. At least one shotgun. Could have been seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array." He shrugged wearily. "You ask me, Abe, nobody's got a clue."
"That was Norma," Hardy said, "from the office."
Frannie was at the dining room table, studying. She looked up. "How is she?"
"Okay, considering."
She put the book down. "What?"
"She just got a call from Lieutenant Lanier, homicide. One of the associates was working late and gave him her home number. He wanted to know where I'd been all afternoon. She'd never had anyone from the police call and ask her that before. She hoped it was okay with me that she just went ahead and told them without checking with me first. I told her sure, why not? She gave him Phyllis's number, too. Wanted to know what it was all about."
"What did you tell her?"
"That I had no idea."
Frannie pushed her chair back, brushed a rogue hair from her forehead. She rested her hand over her heart. "And what did she tell him? Lanier."
"That I'd been in my office."
"The whole afternoon?"
"Until a little after three. Working."
Hardy had changed out of the Kevlar in the truck and asked McGuire, on his way to Ghirardelli Square and the Municipal Pier where he was going to ditch the guns and, if he could, the vests, to drop him back at Sutter Street. He had come in through the garage, up the inside elevator all the way to the third floor. In his office, he changed into the business suit he kept hanging in his closet. Then-it had been just three o'clock-he'd walked back by the staircase into the lobby, carrying his old clothes, hiking boots and all, in a laundry bag that he'd dropped at St. Vincent de Paul on the way home. In the lobby, he'd said hello to Phyllis and shared a moment of commiseration. After that, he looked in on Norma and said he wasn't able to concentrate at all after the news about David. He been trying for a couple of hours to do some simple admin stuff but he really couldn't work at all and was going home. Maybe she should do the same. Tomorrow they could start picking up the pieces if they could. She'd gotten up and hugged him again. He'd nearly passed out from the pain where the bullet had smashed into the vest, but she probably thought the tears were for Freeman. And in some sense, maybe they were.
"She was positive. I was there all day. She hoped that was the right thing to say."
"What did you tell her?"
"That it was the truth. How could it be wrong?"
Overtime was being had by all.
At 10:30, Lanier was out at his desk in the detail. He might have just been named the provisional and nominal head of the unit, but he wasn't going into Gerson's office for a good long while, even if it got announced officially. Cuneo and Russell both wore hangdog looks as they sat there, and Lanier couldn't say he blamed them. Something about their investigations must have gotten seriously out of whack early on, and now in the wake of today's slaughter they both seemed lost and confused.
Cuneo had it all going tonight, playing the whole invisible drum kit-snare and kick drum, riding the high hat, the occasional crash of cymbal. Lanier wondered what track he was using in his brain, because part of him obviously had no idea that any of this percussion was going on. "What I can't figure out is why Thieu would have even thought to look at Holiday's. I mean, what did he know that we didn't know?"
"The question is, Dan, what do we know now?"
"About what?"
"About the fingerprints at Holiday's house, for example. What do they mean? Were these guys friends, or what?"
"They played poker together at Silverman's," Cuneo said. "But otherwise, did they hang out together? No, I'd say not."
"But they'd both been to Holiday's place."
"I doubt it." Cuneo was upping the tempo. "No. I can't see that."
"Wait a minute, Dan, wait a minute," Lanier said. "I wasn't asking if they'd been to Holiday's. We know they went there. The prints were there. The question is why."
"Maybe they played poker there, too, once or twice."
"But why, if they weren't friends?" Lanier focused on each of them in turn. "I don't know anything more than you do, okay? In fact, I know way less on these cases. I'm asking you both to think why these fingerprints might have been enough to get Paul killed, if somebody killed him. What they might mean."
Blanks, until Cuneo suddenly stopped all his frenetic movement. It was like a vacuum in the room. When he first spoke, it was almost inaudible.
"What's that, Dan?" Lanier asked.
Cuneo looked up, let out a long sigh. "It means they did plant the evidence," he said. "It's like Mrs. Silverman thought… if they did plant…" He stopped again, stared across Lanier's desk.
"If they did plant what, Dan?" Marcel said.
"The evidence at Holiday's," Cuneo said. He gripped his temples and squeezed so that his ringers went white. "Man oh man oh man."
Michelle sat in the big chair by her picture window that afforded no view of the black night outside. The reading light glared next to her and reflected the room back at her, her own pitiful image in the glass of the window. She'd cocooned herself into a comforter that offered little comfort, huddled into as small a position as she could get herself. Next to her on the light table there was an untouched glass of white wine and an envelope. In her hand, she held what had been the contents of the envelope, two pages of her own personal stationery-no letterhead, no border, just five-by-seven heavy rag, not quite white, bits of pulp throughout.
She'd been sitting, empty now, unmoving, for the twenty minutes since she'd finished reading the letter for the second time, and now her eyes had cleared enough to read it yet again.
Dear Michelle: (she read)
As you know better than anyone, it's been my tendency to want to come across as the world's most easygoing guy. It keeps the expectations low, both mine for myself, and my friends' for me. I don't ever promise anything other than perhaps a good time in the here and now, and since I don't pretend to have any depth or seriousness, no one can be disappointed in me when I don't deliver, when I flake out, when I get drunk or loaded and do any one of the many stupid and embarrassing things that have cost me friends and self-esteem.
When I think back on the time that I was married to Emma, especially the few months after we had Jolie, I sometimes wonder what happened to the person I was then. Where suddenly for that short time it was okay to feel like things mattered.
Like everything mattered, in fact.
It was strange, but I found I actually wanted Em and Jolie to have expectations for me, to want the best out of me. When before I'd always run from that, telling myself that I was just a clown, deep as a dinner plate. Maybe also, though, because I was afraid that if I tried to be more, I'd fail. It's a true fact that if you don't try, you can never fail. Foolproof.
But a funny thing happened. I found out with my girls that the more I acknowledged how much I cared about them, the better my life became. I started trying all the time in a hundred different ways and stunned myself by succeeding. I was faithful, for example, and wanted to be. Suddenly I didn't need women on the side as a backup position if Em dumped me because I didn't deserve her. Or if she cheated on me. I just knew that wouldn't happen, ever. I believed in all of us, pathetic though that may sound. Some of my core bedrock had shifted and settled and now I could take down my guard and breathe. And enjoy.
I don't know what it was about my hardwiring that had made me fear commitment so much before that, but gradually the life I was living with them became the only thing I really wanted. Me and Em and Jolie. The whole world.
Which of course ended.
And then what a massively gullible fool I'd been, huh? To believe in all that? To think it could last? Talk about pathetic. Talk about stupid.
Well, none of that was ever going to happen to me again, ever. The goal was get a nice buzz, keep it going, risk your money and your job and everything else because then you really could fail completely. You could get to zero hope, rock bottom, which was pure freedom. And none of it mattered anyway, right? Take every single opportunity for physical pleasure and make sure it was purely physical, nothing more. Happiness was a moment and that was all it was. Any thought that a life could take on a shape and be fulfilling was out of the question.
So why am I writing this now?
Because something has shifted inside me again. Knowing you has changed me. Once and for all, I really feel as though I've laid those awful ghosts to rest. I don't know where you and I are going exactly, but I wanted you to know that suddenly I want you to have expectations of me; I want to find my best self, and be that person. I want to try and try and keep trying even if sometimes I do fail. It's all in the trying.
Does this make any sense?
Now, this afternoon, there's something else I've got to do. Another commitment, a matter of honor if that's not too overblown a word. It seems all of a piece, somehow. Expectations and responsibilities. And suddenly I'm okay with them. I even welcome them.
If you're reading this, I didn't come back. This time, it's because I can't, not because I didn't try. But whatever happens to me, I want you to know that life is good and that I left this apartment today as happy and filled with hope for the future as I have ever been in my life.
I love you with all my heart.