Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A Read Online Free PDF Page A

police department, the district attorney's office and the county jail. He had commandeered District Attorney Chris Locke's outer office and sat behind what was usually a secretary's desk.
    The mayor was an imposing figure in spite of considerable physical drawbacks for a politician – he stood only five-foot-seven and was so thin that the joke was when he stood sideways, unless he stuck out his tongue you couldn't see him. He was also nearly bald, with a half-dollar-sized port-wine stain that ran under his left eye and halfway across the bridge of an aquiline nose with a bump in the middle of it.
    Most people put him a decade younger than his stated age of sixty-two. He had that spring in his step, contained energy and piercing gray-blue eyes. He had all his teeth, and they were pearly white, though he wasn't flashing any of them now.
    With him in the office were Locke, Assistant DA Elaine Wager, Police Chief Dan Rigby, Assistant Chief Frank Batiste, County Sheriff Dale Boles (pronounced Bolus), who was in charge of the jail and its prisoners, Aiken's administrative assistant, a young man named Donald, and Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky, a forty-four-year-old Jewish mulatto who headed San Francisco's homicide detail.
    Aiken had started off by wanting to get a report on the status of the riots from Chief Rigby – the affected areas, what measures were being taken, how many men were on the street and so on. Rigby was in the middle of running it down for him.
    '... mostly containment at this stage. We don't have a hope of any real control until we get more people on the streets, and of course we've got the usual looting—'
    'We're not gonna have that,' the mayor said. 'I want you to put out the word. We're not tolerating looting. This isn't Los Angeles.' He looked around the room for effect, his port-wine stain glowing. 'This isn't Los Angeles,' he repeated.
    'No, sir,' the chief replied, 'but how are we planning to stop it, the looting?'
    'I'm in favor of shooting to kill.'
    Rigby looked shocked. Pleased but shocked. 'Well, we can't do that.'
    'Why not? Don't they do it in the midwest after tornadoes. We'll do it here. Why not? I'm not going to allow looting in San Francisco.'
    Chris Locke took a step forward. He was a big man, half again the mayor's weight, the only person present in a business suit. 'Sir, the only people you'll shoot will be black. It's racist.'
    Aiken didn't like that. 'I'm no racist, Chris. The only people I'd have shot would be looters. Black, white or magenta, I don't give a damn.'
    Elaine Wager spoke up. 'But the only people rioting so far are African-Americans, sir, the same as you had in Los Angeles—'
    'There's a lot of rage,' Locke added.
    'I don't want to hear that shit. I don't want to hear about rage. Rage isn't any issue here, and it sure as hell isn't any excuse. Keeping the law is what this is all about.'
    Rigby said, 'It's moot. Black officers won't shoot black looters.'
    Lieutenant Glitsky almost spoke up for the first time to say that he would – half-black and half-white himself, he had little patience with the posturing and excuses from either side. But he kept his mouth shut, for now.
    'What the hell?' Aiken said. 'Don't black officers arrest black lawbreakers every day?'
    Rigby shook his head. 'It's not the same thing.'
    The mayor wasn't buying. 'Look. I'm talking about preserving the city, protecting all its citizens. Let's not turn this thing into a race war.'
    Elaine Wager spoke up again. 'But that's what it is. That's the issue. A black man's been lynched . . . sir.'
    'Goddamnit, I know
that
. But what we're talking about now, this minute, is not a racial question. It's about
people who're breaking the law
. Riot control.'
    Rigby repeated that he couldn't shoot looters.
    Aiken held up a hand. 'Look, I don't want to talk about shooting looters. I don't even know if we've got looters at this stage, but I don't want them tolerated. I think we've got to make a stand somewhere. We're not