The Fall Read Online Free PDF

asked.
    “Just putting some moves on this babe here.”
    Wes said to Treya, “If he’s harassing you, I can have him arrested.”
    “He hasn’t crossed the line yet. I’ll let you know.”
    “Can I borrow him for five?”
    “Ten if you want.”
    “Hey!” Glitsky said. “Do I get a vote here?”
    Farrell held open his office door. “I doubt it,” he said. “Inside. Please.”
    •  •  •
    I N THE INNER sanctum, the door closed behind them, Glitsky picked up a handy football and tossed it absently hand to hand. “What up?” he asked.
    Farrell got right to it. “You’ve heard about the young black woman who got killed last night at the Stockton tunnel?”
    “Sure. Thrown off, I understand.”
    “Right.” Wes ran down the details and concluded with a little riff on the quality of Juhle’s staff, particularly Waverly and Yamashiro, and his confidence in them. By the time he finished, Abe had stopped tossing the football and lowered himself onto the arm of one of the love seats. “It sounds to me as if they’ve got everything under control.”
    “I’m sure they do.”
    “Okay?”
    With an embarrassed smile, Farrell said, “I haven’t run this by Juhle yet, but if he’s good with the idea, what if I asked you to assist in this investigation?”
    Abe frowned. “You want to tell me why? I mean, it’s not like I don’t have my own cases. Besides, I used to be the boss of these guys, even Devin. It might be a little awkward. Why would they need a DA investigator? And why, specifically, me?”
    “I’ll bet you can guess.”
    “The obvious strikes me as pretty offensive.”
    “That’s a good call. But sometimes ugly has a place.”
    “And this is one of those times?”
    “As a way to deflate Liam Goodman and his ilk? Yes.”
    Glitsky made a face. “Really? And me because I’m half black?”
    “Not just that.”
    “No? What’s the other part, then?”
    “You’re a good cop. Everybody respects you.”
    “Nice try, Wes, but not true. Vi Lapeer, our very own chief of police, hates me and thinks I’m a menace.”
    “Okay. Not her. But everybody else. If you join the team, this office is actively aiding Juhle and the PD. So they won’t be able to pick us apart as two separate entities.”
    “Which we are.”
    “Yes, but evidently, we—and by ‘we,’ I mean all of law enforcement in the city—don’t care about justice for crimes perpetrated against blackpeople. We don’t put enough priority on finding and convicting the people who committed them. Finding is the cops. Convicting is us. Not really related, except in the public consciousness somehow, and putting you on the team addresses that issue. In fact, takes the teeth right out of it. We’re all in it together, trying to get and convict the bad guys.”
    “The idea that we don’t care about crimes against black people? That’s nonsense.”
    “I know it is. But it doesn’t stop people from believing it.”
    “People believe in Santa Claus, too.”
    “True,” Wes said, “but not as many.”

9
    M AX’S AUNTIE J UNEY was, in his opinion, the world’s best person. She was a couple of years older than her messed-up sister, Sharla—Max and Anlya’s mother. He’d been living with her in her tiny walk-up on Broderick ever since CPS had taken him and his sister from their mother and her boyfriend, who themselves had been embroiled in mind-altering substances and domestic violence as a way of life.
    Max had some vestigial good feelings for his mother, but no recollection at all of his birth father, Daniel, and no good memories of his common-law stepfather, Leon, who was psychologically unbalanced, a crackhead, an alcoholic bully, and not least by a long shot, a child molester who had several times forced himself sexually on Anlya, threatening to kill her if she told, right under Sharla’s nose.
    Just over three years ago, Leon and Sharla had broken up, and shortly after that Leon had been arrested for the murder of one