The First Law (7 page)

Abe couldn’t completely check his own rush of frustration. He bit off the words sharply. “It’s not up to me. It’s not my job anymore.”

“I’m not talking job. I don’t care from
job
! I’m talking what’s right.” He drew a deep breath, again rested his hand on Abe’s arm. “Just so they know. That’s all. This one matters.”

Abe glanced down at his father’s hand. Since he’d started with payroll, he hadn’t even shown his face once in homicide, even for a social visit. He realized now that his reluctance with his dad was probably more about his own demons than whether he could actually have any effect in turning the heat up on any given investigation. It might not hurt after all. He put his own hand down over his dad’s. “All right,” he said. “But no promises.”

“No, of course not. Heaven forfend.”

The Payroll Detail had four entire rooms, each twelve feet square. Glitsky was the sole occupant of his. He had a standard, city-issue green desk, four wooden chairs, a computer and his own printer (which also served the rest of the detail), and natural light through the windows that made up the back wall. These overlooked the ever-scenic Bryant Street and the rest of the industrial neighborhood to the south. All the free space around the other three walls was taken up with mismatched black, gray, or green filing cabinets, except for one metal floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled to overflowing with bound computer payroll reports going back four years.

An hour after he got to work, he was talking to Jerry Stiles in his office. Stiles was the lieutenant in charge of narcotics. Before that, he had been in many people’s opinion the absolute best narc in the city. Certainly his arrest record backed that up, his seizures of illegal substances. Three years ago, before his promotion, he’d been named “Police Officer of the Year.” Stiles was thirty-eight years old.

In spite of his administrative role, he often found an excuse to get back on the street, and today he wore a ratty beard and looked as though he hadn’t combed his greasy brown locks since the World Series. In fact, currently he could have been mistaken pretty much exactly for a typical street drunk, but that came with the territory.

Making Glitsky’s small, airless office a less than optimal spot to talk to him.

That office was one floor up from homicide, on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice. Glitsky’s normal staff in his new role in payroll included five civil service secretaries, two half-time sergeants of police, and one rotating patrolman-grade gopher. This morning, he’d been planning to check in at his desk, then zip on down to homicide while the motivation held, but instead he found a note from Frank Batiste on his chair telling him to expect Stiles within the hour. Glitsky and Batiste had already discussed Stiles’s situation with some heat.

Luckily for Glitsky’s peace of mind, since he had no other duties at the present moment, within the hour turned out to be about ten minutes.

He and Stiles made small talk, catching up for a while. They’d worked together on cases before and gotten along. Beyond that, they’d both caught lead in the line of duty, and that put them in the same club. Stiles made a few profane remarks that made it clear he thought Glitsky’s latest career move was unjust. Abe didn’t comment, though the sentiment did his heart good.

Finally, though, the air got a little ripe and Glitsky decided to get to the point. He went around his desk, tried the windows—both hermetically sealed, no chance—and sat down. “So,” he began, “sorry to pull you in after your shift.”

“Hey.” A shrug. “It’s overtime. I’m here anyway. I’m not complaining. What’s it about?”

“Well, funny you should mention.”

“OT? Is somebody bitchin’ about OT again?” Stiles straightened up in his chair, his eyes getting some life in them. “They can kiss my ass.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He let it hang. Of everything Glitsky hated about this new job, this kind of bureaucratic nonsense was first. “I’m just delivering the message, Jerry, and only because I’ve been requested to. Informally. I’m not keeping any record of this meeting.”

“Fuck that. As if I care. Who requested, if you don’t mind my asking? Just curious.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Right. What do you think’s got into Frank lately?”

“I don’t know. He must be getting mature.” But Glitsky didn’t want to discuss Batiste. He pulled a printout from a file in front of him, glanced at it, then turned it around and slid it across the desk.

Stiles, all belligerence now, came forward and snatched it. He raised his voice in the small room. “So what’s the message? Tell my guys to go out and risk their lives every night, live with these scum, smell like a sewer, and do it all for free?”

Glitsky had his elbows on the desk. He templed his fingers at his mouth for a moment, then pointed at the paper. “Your unit’s OT is about twenty percent over department guidelines.” He raised his eyes, met those of his colleague. “I’ve been asked to bring the matter to your attention.” Glitsky tried to avoid profanity, but this was so much bullshit and nothing else that the temptation was almost too great. Instead, he said, “Now I’ve done that.”

“All right. So what?” Stiles stared at the paper for another couple of seconds. “Narcotics works
nights
, Abe. We catch bad guys and the DA takes them to court during the
day.
Quite often on a day after a night shift. You know why? We get subpoenaed to show up, that’s why. We’re the fucking key witnesses. Without us there’s no case. Get it? So what do they want us to do?” But Stiles didn’t want an answer. He wanted to vent. “The reason we work nights is because that’s when these lowlifes crawl out from under their rocks. It’s when they buy their shit and make their deals and have their fights. It’s when it
works
!” Stiles turned on his chair, stood up, sat back down, glared across the desk.

Glitsky did his Buddha imitation.

Stiles started again, even louder. “They don’t want to pay the guys extra, maybe they can have night court. ’Course then nobody’s out on the street doing the
job.
Or maybe we could just ask these scumbags if maybe they could do all their business between eight and five? Business hours.” He half turned again on his chair, ran a hand over his forehead, finally settled a little, shook his head back and forth. “I don’t believe this shit.”

Glitsky came forward an inch. “You might want to take it up with the chief, Jerry. Either that, or tell your guys they can only work days.”

“We’d never bag a soul.”

“But your detail would be under budget, and that’s the important thing, right? Who cares about crime?” Glitsky gave no sign he was joking.

Stiles sat still a moment. “Abe, we’re the
police department.
What are these clowns thinking?”

When Stiles left, Glitsky didn’t give himself any more time to think about it. He stood up, came around his desk, and looked in at the room next door. There, two of his secretaries—Mercedes and Jacqueline—were engrossed at their respective desks in front of their computers. Jacqueline didn’t look up when he cleared his throat at the door—she must have been at a really juicy part of her romance novel—but Mercedes, in the middle of her daily crossword puzzle, brightened at the sight of Glitsky’s face. “Lieutenant. Nine letters, ‘Jackson A.K.A.’ Ends in ‘L.” ’

It took him less than ten seconds. “Stonewall.”

“That’s it! Stonewall. I was thinking something about Michael, if there was another way to spell it, but normally that’s only seven letters. But Stonewall. Andrew, right? You’re great, Lieutenant.” She looked over to Jacqueline. “Stonewall,” she said.

The other woman nodded. “Umm.”

Glitsky pointed down the hallway. “I’ve got an errand. You women okay holding the fort?”

But Mercedes was leaning over her newspaper, carefully filling in her boxes, and didn’t respond, or notice as he left.

Down a flight on the internal stairs and in a few more steps he was back where he’d lived for all those years. It brought him up short how physically close the homicide detail was to his current office, where nothing important had or ever would happen. It was probably no more than sixty feet, although the spiritual distance was incalculable.

Standing in the middle of the familiar room, he was surprised by how little it had changed in the near year-and-a-half since he’d been here. As usual on a weekday morning, the place was deserted—some inspectors were out working cases, others might be in court or, increasingly, had not come in at all because of vacation, alleged sickness, special training, or any of a dozen other reasons. Somebody had moved the full-size working stoplight off of Bracco’s desk and it now hung from the ceiling. A floor-to-ceiling picture of the World Trade Center at the moment of the second impact was attached to the pillar behind Marcel Lanier’s desk, and the old bulletin board on it—formerly reserved only for the grossest, most explicit crime scene photographs—had been done over with an Osama bin Laden motif, mostly email printouts of the terrorist being sexually abused by a variety of weapons and animals.

Otherwise, the decor was the same. So was the smell, but at least Glitsky knew what that was. As usual, the last one out had left the coffee cooking and it had turned to carbon at the bottom of the pot. He automatically walked over, leaned down to make sure, and turned it off.

“Can I help you?”

He straightened up and turned at the voice. The lieutenant had silently come out of his office. Or maybe Glitsky’s senses were taken up with his impressions. In any event, for a heartbeat he felt somewhat bushwhacked, although there was no indication that that had been the man’s intention.

It was Barry Gerson. Glitsky recognized the face immediately from the newspaper pics, which he’d had occasion to notice when they’d announced the appointment. Ten years Glitsky’s junior, but no kid himself, Gerson had gone a bit to paunch and jowl, though he didn’t come across as soft or flabby in any way.

Here on his turf, he appeared relaxed and in complete control. The smile was perfunctory, but there wasn’t any threat in it. “You’re Abe Glitsky.”

“Guilty.”

“I didn’t realize you were back at work.”

“Four months now.” Glitsky kept it low-key. He pointed at the ceiling, put some humor in his tone. “Payroll, the throbbing pulse of the department.”

Gerson, to his credit in Glitsky’s view, clucked sympathetically. “They give you that ‘varied administrative experience’ crap?”

A nod. “It’s making me a better cop. I can feel it every day.”

“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.”