Dead Irish by John Lescroart Read Free Book Online Page A

himself.”
    “He didn’t.”
    Hardy said nothing.
    “I just want to . . . I don’t know. Protect Frannie’s interests, I guess. Feel like I’m doing something.”
    Hardy figured Moses had been reading his mail. “I don’t know what you can do. Be there for her. What else?”
    “I thought I’d ask you if you’d watch what the police do. Make it your job for a week or two. Take a few weeks off here and just check it out.”
    Hardy couldn’t bring himself to look at his friend, who kept talking. “I mean, you used to be a cop and all. You know the procedures—”
    “Mose, I was a street cop a couple years before law school. That’s a long way from homicide.”
    “Still, you could find out some things. Make sure they’re doing it right.”
    “I don’t think so. I don’t do that anymore.” He looked down. “And I’m out of Guinness.”
    “Fuck the Guinness.”
    “And fuck you.”
    The two stared it down. “Well, I don’t know, Mose. Maybe I’ll ask around a little. That’s all. No promises.”
    “Okay, but I want to pay you. And I’ll pay you for the time off anyway.”
    “Don’t pay me. That makes it like a job.”
    “That’s what makes you tick, Hardy. Call something your job.”
    “How about I do it for Frannie?”
    “And what’ll you live on?”
    “Sponge cake, man, shrimp and Guinness. Same as now.”
    McGuire threw a round. “How about twenty-five percent of this place?”
    “The Shamrock?”
    McGuire looked around. “Yeah, that’s this place.”
    Hardy sat down on that, drummed his fingers on a table. “Why don’t we first wait and see what the cops come up with?”
    “And what if that’s suicide?”
    Hardy threw a dart. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I could look into it.”

5
    CARL GRIFFIN KNEW he had to get over it, but it wasn’t easy. He’d gone up for his performance review on Monday, yesterday, knowing that his performance had been more than adequate, and knowing it might not matter at all. Glitsky and Batiste, a mulatto and a “Latin surname”—Christ, he loved that, Frank being as absolutely white as he was—were also up for promotion, and there was a formal mandate in the entire city and county bureaucracy to move minorities up. He thanked God there wasn’t a gay guy in homicide. He’d be a shoo-in for the next lieutenant. On the other hand, maybe Griffin should announce that he was gay, was coming out of the closet and because of his new status should be acclaimed the next lieutenant.
    So he’d entered the office for his review with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. What he actually said was: “Look, I got any chance for this or not? ’Cause if not, let’s cut the bullshit and I’ll go back to work.”
    And Frazelli had looked over at Rigby, the chief, and they’d both gotten that uncomfortable expression that seemed to come with upper management, passing it along to Carl’s union rep, Jamie Zacharias, who had said: “If Glitsky or Batiste fuck up at all, you’re in.”
    So Carl, before he’d even sat down, found his interview over. What had they been planning to talk about? he wondered. He’d gotten the bottom line out of them in about a second. Waiting for Glitsky or Batiste to fuck up would be like waiting for one of them to die. Eventually they would, but you didn’t want to set your watch by it.
    Maybe he should have asked if Abe or Frank had done anything better than he did, were better cops. But he knew it wasn’t that. They had to pick somebody, and in today’s San Francisco if that somebody was a honky on any level, there had better be a compelling reason. This was a city where people like Ralph Nader and Cesar Chavez were considered near-Fascists by some. Hell, Griffin had interviewed people who believed that Karl Marx himself had been right wing because he hadn’t invented women’s lib, while he was at it, along with communism.
    So he’d stomped out, slamming the door, then sulked in his cubicle the rest of the day,