He ignored them, looked back down for another glimpse of Wu. Still there.

Then suddenly, he saw Jason Brandt's car- no mistaking it, that yup-pie piece of shit- pull up from around the corner, come to a stop in front of her. Cottrell watching as she steps back, talks into the passenger-ride window. The door opens, she gets in.

She doesn't see people with whom she has a professional relationship, does she?

Cunt, he thought.

For the first several blocks, neither of them spoke. Finally, Brandt said, "So where's your car?"

"Back at the office. I drove up this morning with Mr. Hardy, but he had a meeting. I told him I'd get a cab."

"We don't see too many cabs up here."

"I noticed."

They went another block in silence.

Brandt finally broke it. "So what did your boss want?"

"To meet Andrew. He's coming on second chair."

Brandt threw a look across the seat. "You okay with that?"

"We didn't vote on it." She forced a small laugh. "I haven't exactly impressed him at every turn, you must admit."

He didn't comment.

After a minute, she said, "Anyway, I've been distracted."

Again, he looked over. She was looking straight ahead, her big briefcase lying flat on her lap, her hand clasped and resting on it. "You might as well know that my dad died a few months ago. I guess I haven't been myself."

"I'm sorry," he said. "You should have told me when…" The words stopped.

"Yeah. Well, it's not the kind of thing you talk about when you're getting picked up. Especially if you think it's why you're letting yourself get picked up."

He let that thought hang in the air between them for a minute. "You could have told me," he repeated.

"Maybe," she said. "But I didn't want to find out."

"Find out what?"

"If you'd want to deal with baggage."

"Yeah, I try to avoid that at all costs."

"Me, too."

"As you said, we're the same." After a moment, he reached out his hand across the seat. "Friends?" he said. "Tentatively."

She gave it a second, then nodded. "Okay," she said. "I guess so."

They shook on it.

19

During the previous administration, the preferred firing method for the DA's office had been a pink slip on your chair while you were out at lunch, or even making a quick court appearance. Just so long as there was no direct confrontation or discussion. You've had your job for sixteen years and you've got three kids, two just starting college, and you go down to department 22 for fifteen minutes and come back and surprise! You're an "at will" employee and now you're fired. Thanks for the memories. The terminated tended to take this so badly that for a period of time the DA actually had an armed investigator posted outside the office in case somebody wanted to lodge a violent, personal protest.

Boscacci's more straightforward management style in this regard was making it easier for Glitsky and Lanier. He had held exit interviews for every assistant district attorney he laid off under Jackman, and he'd filed the records of those interviews, as well as other personal data, alphabetically in his secretary's credenza. This narrowed the list of truly disgruntled ex-assistant district attorneys down from seventeen to three, and Glitsky had assigned those three to the homicide inspectors Belou and Russell.

The other fourteen would be interviewed and otherwise checked out by the General Work officers, although hopes were not high that these interrogations would lead to a break in the case. The last of the Boscacci layoffs had been nearly a year ago. In a back booth under the windows at Lou the Greek's, Glitsky was telling Marcel Lanier that he didn't consider it likely that at this remove in time, someone would suddenly get mad enough to kill Allan for it. "… but I think we've got to look there anyway. Eliminate the obvious, then move down the list."

Lanier chewed at today's special- pot-stickers cooked up in some kind of yogurt sauce with garlic and paprika over rice. "I'm not sure that these guys are even the most obvious anymore," Lanier said. "Although yesterday they seemed like a good place to start. If nobody heard the shot, it probably was silenced. And if it was silenced, it was a pro."

Glitsky sipped iced tea. "The lab says the Boscacci bullet has scuff marks that could be from a silencer. Not certain, but possible. And if it was a pro, I agree, we lose. But since that's out of our control…"

For years, Lanier had been a homicide inspector under Glitsky's supervision, and now they fell into an old and familiar routine. "It wasn't a robbery," Lanier said. "So it's someone he knew. So it's about motive."

"Right. And we eliminate the family?"

"Yeah."

"I agree. And no caseload to speak of. Just one murder, and that one kind of self-enclosed. He mostly assigned cases. That's the job."

"True. But he might've been riding herd on some actives. He was also pulling guys to trial who'd been waiting around in the system for a while. He was ramrod for that program."

Lanier had a small notebook out and jotted. "That's real," he said.

Glitsky nodded. "Maybe we want to look at who's coming up the pipeline. Somebody with mob connections- Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, regular Mafia. I'm not up on the latest. Do any one of them use suppressors more than the others?"

"Any of them would. Simple business."

"All right. Speaking of business, what about the union stuff?"

Lanier forked some special, nodded. "I don't see someone with the union getting so bent out of shape about the negotiations that he takes Allan out. He's just watching Clarence's back. He probably leaned toward giving the union a lot they wanted anyway."

"Agreed. Not worth pursuing without some kind of tip."

"Okay, who's that leave? With motive, I mean."

"Our professional? He's getting paid. That's motive." Glitsky shook his head. "But we're counting him out as hopeless. Somebody else."

"The rest of the known universe?"

Tempted to smile and ruin his reputation, Glitsky sipped tea. He looked up as Lou himself stopped by the table. "Abe, you don't like the special?"

Glitsky had taken one bite and realized he wasn't that hungry. "It's great, Lou, but I didn't realize it had yogurt in it. I'm allergic."

"Hey. Whyn't you say so? I'll have Chui whip you up something else. She's got a whole tray of pot-stickers still hot back there on the steam table. She could throw some soy over 'em, vinegar, hot flakes. You'd swear you were in Chinatown."

"Thanks, Lou, but me and Marcel are out the door in a minute. We've got a meeting. In fact, we were getting the check just now."

"All right. I'll run and ring it up." He pointed to the untouched dish. "But I don't like this. It happens again, you've got to let me know right away. And I'll tell Chui. She uses yogurt all the time, gives her stuff that Greek taste everybody loves, but she'd cook up something special for you, Abe. I mean it."

He went off to get the bill and Glitsky said, "The awful thing is, I think she would. So where were we? The known universe? How do you feel about checking out everybody he's put away? As a prosecutor, I mean."

"In like what, twenty-five years? When's the last time you've heard anybody did that?"

"Not recently. But it's a few less than the whole universe. And we've got the General Work people to look. They start with anybody's who's gotten out of the joint recently."

"You mean somebody that Boscacci sent away?"

"Right."

Lanier shook his head. "It's not what they usually do, Abe."

"I realize that." Glitsky thought a second. "Okay, we put that on hold for a few days and instead check the gun shows."

"For what?"

"For somebody selling silencers." Glitsky cut off Lanier's reply. "You never know. We might get lucky. At least we're doing something. Maybe I'll go do one of the shows myself."