The Ophelia Cut (26 page)

“Not to mention how long it took Abe to admit he knew McGuire. And what did he tell McGuire while we’re dicking around with sketch artists and six-packs? Or what did he tell Hardy, for that matter?”

“Yeah.” Brady sighed. “This is fucked up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I just did.” Brady blew out in frustration. “I hate going outside the chain of command. It never works out right.”

“Lapeer came to us, remember. We didn’t start it.”

“It was Glitsky’s office. He was there. He was part of it.”

“Did he say anything about knowing McGuire then? While she was there?”

“You know he didn’t.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“Hoping we wouldn’t get enough to charge him. He almost said as much after Lapeer left.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sher said. “As if the job isn’t hard enough. How long do you think he was going to let it go on? Dicking around with us?”

“Maybe he really was being careful. Keeping us on the right track.”

“Like we need that?” Sher asked, her anger palpable. “Like he’s ever done that before? This purely sucks. The one who’s out of line here isn’t us. You know what I mean?”

“I’m just sayin’, maybe his reasons—”

“Screw his reasons. He’s warning our witnesses that we’re coming, for Christ’s sake. I know what you’re saying. But am I right or not? Abe’s playing for the other team. Are we going to split hairs?”

Brady looked across at his partner, wagged his head back and forth in disgust. “I guess not.”

A
T THE
F
RANCISCA,
the city’s oldest women’s social club, the chief of police had finished her lunchtime speech on bullying and youth violence and her outreach program to combat same in the city’s public elementary schools. She was about to sit down for dessert with the other women when her driver and administrative aide, Sergeant Dermot Moriarty, came up and whispered in her ear. A minute later, she opened the door to a small but well-appointed conference room down the hall, where Homicide inspectors Brady and Sher were standing behind a mahogany table, slightly backlit from the windows that looked out over Sutter Street.

The door closed, and the chief looked from one inspector to the other. “Brady,” she said, pointing at Paul then moving her finger, “and . . . I’m sorry.”

“Sher, ma’am. Lee Sher.”

“I’m sorry,” Lapeer repeated. “I won’t forget again. Dermot said it was important, though the fact that you’ve sought me out down here would have clued me in. What can I do for you?”

“An issue’s come up,” Brady began, “around Moses McGuire, the suspect in the Jessup case.”

“I’m assuming that you’ve brought this up with Lieutenant Glitsky? And he’s sent you down to brief me?”

“Not so much that, Chief,” Sher replied. “The problem, more or less,
is
Glitsky.”

“In what way?”

Sher’s explanation didn’t take long. As she was finishing up, Lapeer’s expression clouded, and she squinted at the corner of the ceiling. Her hands gripped the back of the chair she stood behind. In the gathering silence, she drew in a breath, then let it out. “Your assumption is that the
lieutenant notified McGuire’s lawyer, who then advised his client not to talk to you. Meaning that Glitsky is not only friends with McGuire but the connection is McGuire’s lawyer, who is also a friend of the lieutenant?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Brady said. “His name is Dismas Hardy.”

After a beat, Lapeer’s countenance darkened. “You’re joking,” she said.

“No, ma’am. Do you know him?”

“I know somebody who used to be his law partner. Currently, he’s employed as the district attorney.”

“Farrell?” Sher asked. “You’re saying Hardy and Wes Farrell . . . ?”

“Partners,” she said. “Not long ago, the firm was Freeman Farrell Hardy and Roake. And if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t the lieutenant’s wife—isn’t she Farrell’s secretary?” The weight of these connections seemed to settle on the chief’s shoulders. She pulled out the chair she’d been leaning on and lowered herself into it with another deep sigh. “No wonder,” she said, “the wheels of justice aren’t turning so smoothly in this case. They’re all gummed up with conflicts. Lord, Lord, Lord.” She ran her hands back through her hair. “So where are you now? With the investigation? How solid a suspect is McGuire?”

“We like him,” Brady said. “We thought about bringing him downtown this morning after we got a decent ID.”

“You got an ID?”

“Six-pack,” Brady said. “A hundred percent.”

“Plus a motive?” Lapeer said. “Sounds like you’ve got plenty to me.”

“We’ll need search warrants while we’re at it,” Sher added, “although we might be a little light on evidence. Especially if we know that Farrell’s not inclined to charge—”

Lapeer put a palm up. “Hold on. We’re talking about the murder of a respected city employee, chief of staff to one of our most popular and visible supervisors. How am I supposed to go back to Mr. Goodman, knowing what I know, and explain why we haven’t arrested Mr. McGuire yet? Either of you want to tell me that?”

“We could—” Brady began.

Again Lapeer cut him off. “No. No, no, no. Here’s what’s going to happen, starting right now. Both of you, as of this minute, are reporting to me and me alone on this case. You are not to go to the DA, and you’re
particularly not to go to Lieutenant Glitsky. Does either of you know who’s the duty judge this week?”

The duty judge, who signed off on search and arrest warrants, was a rotating position among the superior court judges, although any judge was empowered to sign any warrant.

“Thomasino, I think,” Sher said.

Lapeer shook her head, dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “No good. Defense bias. How about Braun? Is she at trial now? You could catch her at a recess. She’s kind of famous for her animosity toward Mr. Hardy. Remember that guy who got killed in her courtroom? She blames Hardy for that. She’s going to be our warrants judge on this case. I want McGuire in jail by close of business today.”

“Excuse me, Chief,” Sher said, “but if we do that, we’re going around everybody. Our boss, the DA. If we get a Ramey warrant and Farrell winds up not charging the case, cites lack of evidence, then what?”

Lapeer shook her head. “We’re not going to worry about that. I am telling you, do not go to the district attorney first with this case.”

“But—” Brady began.

Lapeer stopped him. “If Farrell refuses to file on what we’ve got now, we can’t turn around and go to a judge for a warrant. No judge in the world would authorize an arrest knowing there wasn’t going to be a prosecution.”

Sher said, “So we’re making it Farrell’s problem.”

“Right. Better we go with a Ramey.” Typically, inspectors filed a report and sent it to the DA, who decided whether he could convict the suspect on what they’d given him. If he thought so, he filed a complaint and asked for an arrest warrant. In some cases, police could go directly to a judge and get a warrant themselves, which made for a legal arrest, but it deferred the DA’s decision on whether to file charges. “We put probable cause in our affidavit,” she continued. “The judge agrees and signs it. We make our arrest. And we get our search warrants at the same time. Maybe we get lucky, and the case gets better.”

“If it doesn’t?” Brady asked.

“If it doesn’t, after that, if Farrell publicly wants to disagree with us and the judge and say there’s not enough to go forward, then he can let McGuire off right in front of God and everybody. As far as I’m concerned,
we’ve got enough. What happens next is not our issue. Which is why DAs hate Ramey so much. But it gets us—you guys—what you need in cases like this one. I believe I’ve mentioned that I want to see McGuire in handcuffs by tonight. Let’s see if we can make that happen, why don’t we?”

S
ERGEANT
M
ORIARTY WAS
driving the chief out to a meeting with the Outer Sunset Graffiti Abatement program, which was a long way from the Francisca Club, geographically and psychologically, so there was plenty of time to talk, although Moriarty wasn’t sure how to subtly slide into the topic. The chief was reading something in the backseat, and in the rearview mirror, he saw her lower the pages, close her eyes, and sigh.

“Everything all right?”

“Fine.” She hesitated. “I’m wondering if this is serious enough to take to Internal Affairs, or have our guys make the Ramey arrest and let it go.” Moriarty wasn’t going to correct his boss about the name of the unit that investigated police misconduct. Internal Affairs nearly everywhere else, in San Francisco—ever politically correct—it was called the Administrative Investigation Division. She went on, “I don’t know if I see any real collusion here, much less a conspiracy. It’s a small town, after all. People are going to know each other, right? You think Glitsky got McGuire lawyered up?”

“Like one of ’em said, it’s hard to avoid that conclusion, isn’t it? You want to hear a rumor?”

She met his eyes in the rearview. “Always.”

“Maybe you’ve already got wind of it. The Dockside Massacre? Down at Pier Seventy? Five or six years ago?”

Lord, she thought, had she heard of it. After the
Courier
column a few months before, when Sheila Marrenas had aired the department’s dirty laundry from the past twenty years, it had been another issue that made her vulnerable to attack from the mayor. Even though she’d had nothing to do with any of the notorious unsolved murders—indeed, she hadn’t been on the job for any of them—she supposedly could have started investigations on any of the so-called skull cases. Somehow her failure to embark on any of those quixotic journeys, using staff and resources she
did not have, meant that she wasn’t as serious as she could be about solving crimes. If the Dockside Massacre even tangentially intersected with Moses McGuire, she wanted to know all about it right now and move on anyone involved with all due haste.

Even if that person was one of her department heads.

Lapeer cocked her head to one side. Her eyes flitted away from Moriarty’s to the southeast corner of the city falling off behind them as they climbed Market Street up to Twin Peaks. If Dermot Moriarty had any information at all, even if was the rankest rumor, she wanted to hear it. “Remind me about this so-called massacre,” she said.

“I’m probably off on the timing,” Moriarty said. “Barry Gerson was running Homicide.”

“I don’t know him.”

“No. You wouldn’t. Before your time. He got himself killed trying to arrest a murder suspect named John Holiday, who got killed the same day, along with I think either three or four other private security guys. Patrol Specials, actually. Essentially cops, as you know. Although what they were doing there, God only knows.”

“Maybe Gerson needed their help with the arrest.”

“Patrol Specials, not regular cops? Not in this lifetime. But it doesn’t look like anybody will ever know.”

“Wait a minute. You’re saying—what?—five or six cops were shot dead in one day at one place? This was at Pier Seventy?”

“Right. Don’t forget, one suspect shot, too. They didn’t call it a massacre for nothing. Smack in the middle of the afternoon. Also, they found about a hundred shell casings lying around, twenty or thirty bullet holes in the structures out there, not to mention the carnage to the victims. It was a balls-out firefight.”

“Not an execution?”

“No, ma’am. Bodies all over the place where they fell.”

“Who were the killers?”

“That’s the thing. Eventually, the whole episode got laid off on the Russian mafia, something to do with stolen diamonds, blood diamonds, I don’t know. It got too complicated to follow; finally it all went away.”

“Six homicides just went away? How’d that happen?”

Moriarty shrugged, checked the rearview, slowed for a light. “The
shooters went back to Russia, maybe by diplomatic flight.” He paused. “You see why there were rumors. It was all a little squirrelly.”

“I get it.”

“Here’s the kicker. You want to guess who was the lawyer for the murder suspect, John Holiday?”

“Farrell.”

“Close but no cigar, which leaves . . . ?”

“Dismas Hardy.”

“See? This is why you’re the chief.” They started moving again.

“Yeah, well, it took me two guesses,” Lapeer said. “What does it mean, though, that Hardy was his attorney?”

“Nothing, maybe, by itself. But with a few other facts, things get more interesting. Like—you’ll get this on the first try—who got promoted into Gerson’s job?”

In the rearview, Lapeer took her chin in her hand, squeezed her lower lip.

“Glitsky,” Moriarty went on, “had been in Homicide before he got shot, and took a year or so to recover. When he came back to work, they brought him in to supervise Payroll, which—he made no secret—he didn’t find very challenging.”

The chief made a dismissive noise. “Dermot, please. Glitsky didn’t kill Gerson to get his old job back. That I flatly don’t believe.”

“I’m just telling you what people were saying.”

“Okay, but that’s ridiculous. What people?”

“Mostly other cops. Most of whom are gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Retired, reassigned, quit. Gone. But Glitsky taking over Homicide? Maybe that’s why the investigation into all these murders kind of ran out of steam.”

After a beat to consider the possibly relevant point, she asked, “And where does Farrell fit into the scenario?”

“Nowhere. But you know Hardy’s other partners? Farrell’s partners, for that matter? David Freeman and Gina Roake?”

“What about them?”

“Freeman got mugged a couple of days before Pier Seventy. He died
in the hospital on the same day as the shoot-out.” Moriarty paused for effect. “Roake and he were engaged.”

At this, Lapeer allowed herself a small chuckle. “Okay, Dermot, this is really getting into the realm of fantasy.”

“Maybe, but you might as well hear all of it. There’s one other player. Fought alongside Hardy in Vietnam, both of them experts with weapons. And P.S., Hardy saved his life over there and then came back home, bought in to his bar, and married his sister.”

“McGuire.”

Moriarty nodded into the mirror. “McGuire. Oh, and one last thing.”