The Motive (16 page)

“Maybe.”

“The other option is maybe they could get better.”

“Not too often.”

“Well, of course your ever-cheerful self would say that. But it could happen. Sometimes it does.” He twirled his beer bottle on the table. “I wasn’t particularly gung-ho when Frannie and I were deciding whether we were going to try to get pregnant with Vincent. I figured we’d already hit the jackpot with the Beck, we got a healthy little girl, we win. We should count our blessings and just stop there. But then we got Vinnie, and he’s been icing on the cake.”

“Maybe it’s that,” Glitsky said. “The second kid thing. Maybe it won’t be all right. The baby.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Rachel’s fine. Your other kids have been fine. You and Treya have good genes. What’s the problem?”

“Nothing, except that, as you say, my kids have always been fine.”

“So you’re pushing your luck?”

A nod. “There’s that element.”

“And a miserable guy like you doesn’t deserve a happy life?”

“Some of that, too.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Guilt, I suppose.”

“Over what?”

Glitsky paused. “Maybe what we did.”

Hardy took a beat, then whispered. “We had no choice. We never had a choice. They would have killed us.”

“I know.”

“That’s the truth, Abe.”

“I know,” he repeated. “I know.”

“So? What’s to be guilty about?”

“Nothing. You’re right. Maybe it’s just general guilt. Original sin. Maybe we don’t get to be happy. I mean, the human condition isn’t one of happiness.”

“Except when it is.”

“Which is why,” Glitsky said, “right now, tonight, everything could just stay the way it is and it would be fine with me.”

“You realize you’re dangerously close to admitting that you’re happy right now?”

“Marginally, I suppose I am. Comparatively.”

“Whoa, rein it in, Abe,” Hardy said. “All that enthusiasm might give you a hernia.”

“What I can’t believe,” Glitsky was saying to his dinner mates at the table an hour later, “is that Hanover was such a player and so few people knew.”

“Probably what made him good at it,” Hardy said. “I mean, who follows the ins and outs of the city’s contract for its towing business, fascinating though I’m sure it must be?”

Frannie put down her fork. “You don’t really think somebody might have killed him over that, do you?”

“The city’s towing business,” Abe said, “is worth fifty million dollars. Ten mil a year for five years. I might kill Diz here for half that.”

Hardy nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “But then who’s the suspect?” he asked.

The men were at the opposite ends of the table, the women on the sides. They’d finished their halibut steaks and green beans, and nobody seemed inclined to start cleaning up. At the mention of the concept of a possible murder suspect, Glitsky couldn’t help himself—he came forward with a real show of excitement. “That’s where it gets interesting. Tow/Hold’s had the contract now for twenty years. Anybody want to guess how many complaints it’s gotten in the past two years alone? And I’m not
talking complaints like people upset that they got towed. I’m talking criminal complaints. Stealing money and CDs and radios and stuff out of the vehicles, selling parts, losing the car itself. How many?”

“How many cars does it tow?” Hardy asked.

“About eighty thousand a year.”

This made Frannie come alive. “No. That can’t be right. In the city alone?”

Glitsky nodded. “That’s per year. It’s a big number.”

“Wait a minute,” Hardy said. He drummed the table, eyes closed, for a minute. “That’s fifteen hundred or so a week. I guess it’s doable. Two hundred a day.”

“A little more.” Glitsky loved the details. “Okay, so back to how many criminal complaints has the city received?”

“One a day?” Treya said.

“More.”

“A hundred and six?” Frannie asked.

“If you’re going to be silly.” Glitsky spread his palms. “Try three and a half average. Every single day.”

“And these are the people,” Hardy said, “that the city in its wisdom has awarded its towing contract to for how long?”

“A mere twenty years,” Glitsky said. “At, remember, ten mil a year.”

“Not including what they steal, I presume,” Treya said.

“Right. Not including that.”

Treya stiffened her back, turned to her husband. “Does Clarence know those figures?”

Glitsky shook his head. “The DA generally doesn’t get involved. Maybe with some individual complaints, but not the whole picture.”

“Why not?” Frannie asked. “I mean, somebody official must know about this stuff. You found it out in one day, Abe.”

“That’s only because I happened to be looking for anything on Hanover, and he turned up in this article.”

“Which said what?” Hardy asked.

“Well, ironically enough, it wasn’t even about him, not mostly. It was about Tow/Hold. The
Chronicle
did an investigation last year, although the story was kind of buried in the back of the Metro section. The way they wrote it, it
came out like Tow/Hold had hired a few bad eggs, that was all. They were all fired long ago. It wasn’t anything systemic in the way they did business. It certainly wasn’t the leadership of the company.”

“No,” Treya said with heavy irony, “it couldn’t have been that.”

“So what happened?” Frannie asked. “I mean, where is Hanover involved?”

Glitsky paused and sipped some water, relishing the moment. “It seems that Tow/Hold has ties to our recently departed ex-mayor, Mr. Washington.”

“Why did I see this coming?” Hardy asked.

“Because you’re an astute judge of how this city works. It turns out that Washington started to feel some heat around these complaints. So when the last contract expired, he didn’t automatically extend it as he had the last time it had come due.”

“Without putting it up for bid?” Hardy asked.

“Right. It’s sole source. We do lots of them here. Tow/Hold hasn’t bid on the job for fifteen years, through four administrations.”

“Imagine that,” Frannie said. “They must have just been doing a terrific job.”

“Only modestly terrific, as we’ve seen,” Glitsky said. “But not so terrific that Washington didn’t put them on notice.”

“So what did he do?” Treya asked.

“Went month-to-month, which really straightened ’em out, as evidenced by the complaints. Those numbers we were talking about? They were
after
they cleaned up their act.”

Hardy put his wineglass down. “So why didn’t Washington just fire them?”

Glitsky actually smiled. “Ahh. Now we’re getting to it. He didn’t fire them because his campaign manager—we all know Nils Granat, do we not?—well, Mr. Granat’s day job is he’s a lobbyist, and Tow/Hold just happened to be one of his biggest clients.”

“How big?” Treya asked.

“A quarter million a year retainer. Ever since they went month-to-month.”

Hardy whistled. “I need more clients like that.”

“So Granat,” Treya said, “basically made excuses for Tow/Hold to the mayor.”

Glitsky nodded. “That would be the kindest interpretation. The cynical among us think Granat just funneled some of his fees through to Washington somehow. There are rumors of actual briefcases of cash.”

“You’re shocking me,” Hardy said. “Graft out of city hall?”

But Frannie said to Glitsky, “Did I miss where Hanover came in?”

Glitsky reached out and touched her hand gently. “Your patience shall be rewarded, my dear. Here he comes. Hanover’s day job, it turns out, was pretty much like Granat’s, though maybe on a bigger scale nationally. He wasn’t Kathy West’s campaign manager, but between money and contacts, he helped her campaign in a big way.”

“He represents another tow company,” Hardy said.

“Excellent, Diz!” Glitsky sat back and spread his arms out. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Bayshore Autotow, which until last Wednesday was a client of Paul Hanover’s.”

A small silence ensued, which Frannie broke by asking, “And you really think this had something to do with his murder?”

Glitsky shook his head. “I don’t know if I actually
think
it yet, but it’s definitely the kind of connection I’d more or less expected and hoped to find.”

“So now that Hanover’s gone,” Hardy asked, “what happens with Bayshore?”

“That’s the question,” Glitsky said. “Parking and Traffic”—the city’s department that controlled the towing contract—“has already recommended them to replace Tow/Hold, but first it’s got to be approved—the meeting’s in ten days—by something called the Municipal Transportation Agency, which has seven members, four of whom are reportedly in the pocket of guess who?” Glitsky turned to his wife in expectation.

She didn’t let him down. “Kathy West.”

Frannie said, “So Kathy controls the appointment of the contract.”

Glitsky nodded all around. “And it goes to Bayshore. Except of course if the murder of Bayshore’s lobbyist makes her decide to rethink her priorities.”

“It would explain her personal interest,” Hardy said, “and going outside of channels, wouldn’t it?”

“That thought,” Glitsky said, “did occur to me.”

P
aul Hanover’s first wife, Theresa, was a dominating and still very handsome woman of seventy-four years. Good cheekbones and a face-lift kept the lines from her face, and her confident carriage and stylish clothes made her appear more like a sister than the mother of her three adult children in the room. She had taken pride of place in the large and comfortable reading chair with ottoman by the picture window as she looked around her family, gathered in her son’s now-crowded living room.

Will, finally back from his fishing trip, sat noticeably apart from Catherine over by the fireplace, while his wife kept flitting in and out of the kitchen as she did (to avoid mother-in-law interaction, Theresa always felt), supplying drinks, coffee and dessert. Carlos and Mary Rodman sat together holding hands on the couch. Beth and Aaron Jacobs took the folding chairs that Catherine had set up next to one another just to Theresa’s right, and she could hear them discussing their eldest daughter Sophie’s schoolwork, as usual.

Theresa thought they should have called this family meeting at her daughter Mary’s home, which was much larger. At least there they could have all eaten at the same table instead of catch-as-catch-can wherever there was a flat surface—kitchen counter, breakfast nook, dining room table—anywhere big enough to accommodate a chair and a dinner plate. Theresa almost wound up in the living room with a TV tray, and would have if Beth hadn’t noticed and given up her own place in the dining room.

Still, the catered (though self-serve) dinner in the smallish house had been agreeable enough, considering that
Catherine had organized it. It was better than most of her other efforts with the family. Now the older kids had vanished on their Friday night out while the younger ones had been banished upstairs with a video.

Catherine brought out a piece of cherry pie and gave it to Carlos, then sat in the chair she’d pulled around to the kitchen entrance, apart from all of them, as always. Gradually, the hum of conversation died away, and Theresa cleared her throat, a signal that she was going to take the floor. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said. “I never wanted anything like this to happen.”

Next to her, Beth reached out and took her hand. “We know you didn’t, Mom. Nobody thinks anything like that.”

“Still, I think it’s important that I say it. It’s no secret I had some bitter words with your father about…” She exhaled heavily. “About his responsibilities to all of his grandchildren. You all know how he felt.”

Will had come forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “He didn’t think he owed them anything, Mom. Or us, either. He’d made it on his own and we should all do the same. That’s just who he was and how he thought.”

“Okay,” Mary Rodman said. The youngest of Paul and Theresa’s three children, she had been crying off and on since she’d learned of her father’s death. Her eyes were red and swollen. “But giving it all to
her
…”

“We don’t know for sure that he was going to do that,” Will said.

“Yes we do,” Catherine snapped at him. “He told me explicitly when I went there…”