GUILT

John Lescroart

To Al Giannini, Don Matheson and - always - to Lisa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Other valuable technical advice came from Peter S. Dietrich, M.D., M.P.H.; Dr Boyd Stevens - San Francisco's coroner; Dianne Kubancik, R.N.; Bonnie Harmon, R.N.; Dr Mark and Kathryn Detzer; Dr Chris and Michelle Landon; Father Dan Looney. Bill Mitchell, Communications Director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, was kind enough to show me the Chancery Office and expose me to a great deal of interesting arcana about the Catholic Church.

For their personal support, the usual suspects - Karen Kijewski, William P. Wood, Richard and Sheila Herman - have been there with unfailing goodwill, advice, and generosity of spirit. Max Byrd is a terrific writer who's passed on some terrific advice. Also thanks to my brother Emmett for his faith; to Robert Boulware for post-game head straightening; to Jackie Cantor for everything; and to Andy Jalakas, a true believer. Finally, I'd like to thank my agent, Barney Karpfinger, for helping to make the dream a reality.

We do not see things as they are; We see things as we are.

Talmud

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Mark Dooher couldn't take his eyes off the young woman who had just entered the dining room at Fior d' Italia and was being seated, facing them, at a table ten feet away.

His companion for lunch was, like Dooher, an attorney. His name was Wes Farrell and he generally practiced in a different strata - lower - than Dooher did. The two men had been best friends since they were kids. Farrell glanced up from his calamari, his baleful eyes glinting with humor, trying to be subtle as he took in the goddess across the room. 'Too young,' he said.

'My foot, Wes.'

'All parts of you, not just your foot. Besides which,' Farrell went on, 'you're married.'

'I am married.'

Farrell nodded. 'Keep repeating it. It's good for you. I, on the other hand, am getting divorced.'

'I can never get divorced. Sheila would never divorce me.'

'You could divorce her if you wanted to ...'

'Impossible.' Then, amending: 'Not that I'd ever want to, of course, but impossible.'

'Why?'

Dooher went back to his pasta for a moment. 'Because, my son, even in our jaded age, when ninety percent of your income derives from your work as counsel to the Archdiocese of San Francisco, when you are in fact a prominent player in the Roman Catholic community, as I am, a divorce would play some havoc with your business. Across the board. Not just the Church itself, but all the ancillary

Farrell broke off a bite-sized piece of Italian bread and dipped it into the little dish of extra-virgin olive oil that rested between them. 'I doubt it. People get divorced all the time. Your best friend, for example, is getting divorced right now. Have I mentioned that?'

'Lydia's divorcing you, Wes. You're not divorcing her. It's different. God,' he said, 'look at her.'

Farrell glanced up again. 'She looks good.'

'Good?' Dooher feasted for another moment on the vision. 'That woman is so far beyond "good" that the light from "good" is going to take a year to get to her.'

'At which time, you'll be a year older and forever out of her reach. Pass the butter.'

'Butter will kill you, you know.'

Farrell nodded. 'Either that or something else. This calamari milleottocentoottantasei, for example.'

'Or pronouncing it.'

A handsome young man in a business suit - every male customer in the restaurant wore a business suit - was approaching the woman's table. He pulled a chair out across from her, smiling, saying something. She was looking up at him, her expression cool, reserved. Farrell noted it, and something else.

'Don't look now,' he said, 'but isn't the guy sitting down with her - doesn't he work for you?'

Wes Farrell was on his schlumpy way up toward Columbus and the North Beach walk-up out of which he ran his law business. Dooher lingered in the doorway at Fior d'Italia, then turned and went back inside to the bar, where he ordered a Pellegrino.

He sipped the bottled water and considered his reflection in the bar's mirror. He still looked good. He had his hair - the light brown streaked with blond, camouflaging the hint of gray that was only just beginning to appear around the temples. The skin of his face was as unlined as it had been at thirty.

Now, at forty-six, he knew he looked ten years younger, which was enough - any more youth would be bad for business. His body carried 180 pounds on a six-foot frame. Today he wore a tailored Italian double-breasted suit in a refined shade of green that picked up the flecks in his eyes.

From where he sat at the bar, he could watch her in profile. She had loosened up somewhat, but Wes had been right - there was a tension in the way she sat, in her body language. The man with her was Joe Avery - again, Wes had nailed it - a sixth-year associate at McCabe & Roth, the firm Dooher managed. (McCabe and Roth both had been forced to retire during the downsizing of the past two years. Now, in spite of the name, it was Dooher's firm, beginning to show profit again.)

He drank his Italian water, looked at himself in the mirror over the bar. What was he doing here?

He couldn't allow himself to leave. This was something he thought he'd outgrown long ago - such an overwhelming physical attraction.

Oh sure, when he'd been younger... in college a couple of times... even the first few years of his marriage, the occasional dalliance, stepping out, somebody coming on to him, usually, on a business trip or one of the firm retreats.

But that had stopped after the one crisis, Sheila getting wind of what was going on with one of them. She wasn't going to have it. Infidelity wasn't going to be part of their lives. Dooher had better decide whether he wanted to sleep around or keep the kids.

A hundred times since, he wished he'd have let Sheila go, taking the kids with her.

But in truth, back then, fifteen years ago, he was already unable to risk a divorce, already working with some of the charities, the Archdiocese itself. There was big money there, clean work. And Sheila would have scotched it if things had gotten ugly.

He knew she would have. As she would today.

So he'd simply put his hormones out of his mind, put all of his effort into real life - work, the wife, the kids, the house. He would be satisfied with the ten-fifteen-twenty days of vacation, the new car.

Everyone else seemed to survive in that secure between-the-lines adult existence. It wasn't so bad.

Except Mark Dooher hated it. He never got over hating it. He had never had to play by the same rules as everyone else. He was simply better at everything, smarter, more charismatic.

He deserved more. He deserved better.

That couldn't be all there was. Do your job, live the routine, get old, die. That couldn't be it. Not for him.

He couldn't get the woman off his mind.

Well, he would just have to do it, that was all. He'd call up his fabled discipline and simply will her out of his consciousness. There was nothing to be done with her anyway. Dooher didn't trust the dynamic of lust, that hormonal rush and then the long regret. No, he wasn't about to get involved with all that.

It was better just to stop thinking about her. Or at least not get confused, keep it in the realm of fantasy. It wasn't as if he knew anything about her, as if there could be real attraction.

In fact, if that turned out to be the case, it would be far more complicated. Then what? Leave Sheila ...?

No, it was better not to pursue it at all. He was just in one of his funks, believing that the opportunity that would give his life new meaning was passing him by.

He knew better. In reality, everything disappointed. Nothing turned out as you hoped.

He'd just suck it up and put her out of his mind, do nothing about the fantasy. He didn't even want to take one step, because who knew where that could lead? He'd forget all about her. He wasn't going to do anything.

It was stupid to consider.

Joe Avery looked up from the clutter of paper littering his desk, a legal brief which was already anything but brief. 'Sir?'

Dooher, the friendliest boss on the planet, was in the doorway, one hand extended up to the sill, the other on his belt, coat open, sincere smile. 'A Mardi Gras party. Feast before fast. Unless you've got other plans ...'

'Well, I...'

'You'll enjoy it. Sheila and I do it every year. Just casual, no costumes, masks, taking to the streets afterwards, none of that. And pretty good food if you like Cajun. Anyway, eight o'clock, if you're free.'

Avery was young and gung-ho and hadn't spoken to Dooher more than a hundred times in his six years with the firm, had never spent any time with him socially. His mouth hung open in surprise at the invitation, but he was nodding, already planning to be there, wondering what was happening.

Dooher was going on. 'If you've got other plans, don't worry about it, but you've paid your dues around here - you're up for shareholder this year if I'm not mistaken?'

Avery nodded. 'Next, actually.'

Dooher waved that off. 'Well, we'll see. But come on up. Bring your girlfriend, you got one. Or not. Your call. Just let us know.'

Then Dooher was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

A long week later - party day - and it was going to rain.

Dooher had noticed the clouds piling up on themselves out over the ocean as he drove to his home in St Francis Wood.

He considered his neighborhood the best of all worlds. It was both the city and a suburb, but without the blight of either. He had civilized neighbors. An elegant, gracious canopy of old boughs shaded the streets by day, enclosing them with what felt like a protective security by night. Stands of eucalyptus perfumed the air in the fall, magnolias in the summer.

The street was quiet, with large houses, widely spaced. Most cars were in their garages, although - in the few houses with small children - vans squatted in driveways.

The afternoon sun gave a last glorious golden shout through the clouds - and it stopped him for a moment as he turned into the drive in front of his home.

Like the other facades on the block, his old California Spanish hacienda was impressive, with its tiled front courtyard behind a low stucco fence, ancient magnolias on the lawn, wisteria and bougainvillea at the eaves and lintels.

Upstairs in the turret, Sheila's office, a light had been turned on, although it wasn't dark. Imagining her up there, Dooher felt a stab of what he used to call the occasion of sin - the frisson of excitement. One deep breath drove the thought away. After all, he had done nothing wrong.

He pulled up his driveway.

He parked in the garage and closed the automatic door behind him, then walked back down the driveway and into the house through the side entrance, as he usually did.

'Hello!' Cheerfully announcing his arrival.

He knew she was upstairs in the turret, probably talking to one of their offspring, which she did when he wasn't around. He'd seen the light on up there and knew she wouldn't be able to hear him unless he bellowed.

So there was no answer except the silent echoes of his own voice. 'Hello.' More quietly, with an angry edge.

He went over to the refrigerator - stuffed with party supplies - and pulled out a beer. Opening it with the church key, he remembered days when she'd meet him at the door, his drink in her hand, mixed. They'd sit in the living room and she'd join him and they'd have a civilized half hour or so.

In those early years, even after they had the kids, he'd come first for a long time. When had it ended exactly? He couldn't remember, but it was long gone. He took another sip of the beer, staring out the French doors into their backyard.

The wind had freshened in the long shadows. A first large raindrop hit the skylight over his head.

'I thought I heard you come in.'

He turned. 'Oh? I didn't think you had. You didn't answer.'

She used to be very pretty - short, slim-waisted and high-breasted. She used to work at maximizing what she had. She still could look good when she put her mind to it, but at home - just for him - it never happened anymore. It didn't matter to her. Mark knew what she looked like underneath the clothes - slim waists and high breasts were in the past. She was forty-seven years old and in decent shape, but she didn't look the way she did at twenty-five. No one could or should expect her to.

Today she wore green sweats, green espadrilles. Her once-luxuriant black hair was now streaked with gray - she loved the natural look - and cut to a sensible length, held back by a green headband. There had been nothing wrong with her face when he'd met her - widely spaced hazel eyes, an unlined wide forehead, an expressive, beaming smile. There was nothing wrong with her face now, except that he'd seen every expression it could make, and none of them had any power to move him anymore.

She was up next to him and put her cheek against his, kissing the air - friends. 'I was on the phone, Mark. The caterers. They're going to be a half hour late.'

'Again? We ought to quit using them.'

She patted at his arm. 'Oh, stop. They're great people and they make great food. You're just jittery about the party.'

She turned on the tap at the sink and filled a glass. He took a slow sip of his beer, controlling himself. She was having water. 'You're right,' he said. 'It's nerves, I guess. You want to have a drink with me?'

She shook her head. 'You go ahead. I'll sit with you.'

'Are you going to drink tonight at the party?'

Challenging, she looked up at him. 'If I want to, Mark. It's all right if I don't drink, you know.'

'I didn't say it wasn't.'

'Yes, you did.'

He tipped his beer bottle up, emptying it, then placed it carefully on the drain. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You're right. I'm uptight. I'll go take a shower.'

Sheila was sitting at her dressing table in the makeup room behind the bedroom, wearing only her slip, her legs crossed, putting the finishing touches on her face. Outside, night pressed a gloomy and oppressive hand to the window. The lights in the room flickered as wind and driving rain rattled the panes. In the bedroom, Dooher had dropped a cufflink onto his dresser three times. More rattling.

Sheila stopped with her blush brush and glanced over. 'Are you all right, Mark? Do you feel okay?'

He got the cufflink in, turned it so it would hold, looked up. 'I'm fine. It's nothing, maybe the weather.'

Sheila went back to the mirror. 'It'll be all right,' she said. 'Don't worry. Everyone will fit inside. It might even make it more fun.'

Dooher made a face. 'Fun,' he said, as though the concept were foreign to him.

She turned again, more slowly. 'Can you tell me what it is?' An expression of concern. 'Wes not being invited?'

Because of Wes Farrell's pending divorce from his wife, Lydia, Sheila had suggested with the force of edict that they not take sides. So they had invited neither. It was the first party they'd ever thrown that didn't include either of their mutual best friends.

Mark Dooher could not tell his wife that he'd had enough of the man he'd been pretending to be for so long. Something had to change, was going to change. 'I don't think that's it. I've been known to have fun without Wes Farrell

'Not as much, usually.' Teasing him.

'Well, thanks for that,' he said. Then, as she began to apologize, the doorbell rang. Dooher looked at his watch. 'That'll be the band.'

He turned on his heel and left the room. His wife looked after him, her face wistful, saddened. She sighed.

The guests had been arriving through the teeth of the storm, and Dooher and Sheila were greeting the early arrivals in the spacious foyer. They'd hired a staff of five to handle the food and drinks and there was of course the band, cooking away early on the first of what would probably be twenty or thirty takes of When the Saints Come Marching In.

Dooher's palms were sweating. He didn't know for sure if the woman in the restaurant had, in fact, been Avery's girlfriend. She might be anything to him - sister, cousin, financial adviser, architect. But he did know Avery was coming, bringing a guest.

He hadn't planned what he'd do after he met her. It all synthesized down to the simple need to see her again. If she wasn't with Avery tonight, he'd just...

But she was.

Dooher was moving forward, Sheila at his side, putting his hand out, shaking Avery's as the woman shrugged out of her raincoat, passed it to one of the staff, shook the wet from a French braid. She wore a maroon faux-velvet dress with spaghetti straps. There was a tiny mole on the swell of one breast. Her body was already subtly catching the rhythm of the music. Avery was introducing her, first to Sheila, then ...

'... and this is Mr Dooher, er, Mark, our host. Mark, Christina Carrera.'

He took her hand and then - without consciously intending to - briefly raised it to his lips. A scent of almond. Their eyes met and held, long enough to force her to look down.

No one noticed. Other guests were arriving. He realized he was still holding her hand, and let it go, including Avery now in his welcome. 'Thank you - both - so much for braving this New Orleans monsoon.' He lapsed into a drawl. 'Sheila and I had ordered a couple dozen degrees of humidity for... for verisimilitude's sake, but this is takin' it a bit farther than I'd hoped, wouldn't you say?'

He had struck the right tone. They laughed, at home, embraced by the host. Sheila had her arm on his, appreciating the return of his good humor. He nodded again at Avery. 'Go on inside, get yourselves some drinks, warm up. Have fun.'

Now that she was here, he could be gracious. After his earlier apprehension, an almost narcotic calm settled over him. There would be time to meet her, get to know her. If not tonight, then .. .

She was in his house now. He had her name - Christina Carrera. She would not get away.

They had remodeled their kitchen five years before, and now it was a vast open space with an island cooking area. A deep well, inset into the marble, provided ice and a continual supply of champagne bottles. Across the back of the room - away from the sinks - a twelve-foot table was laden with fresh-shucked oysters, smoked salmon, three kinds of caviar, crawfish, crab cakes, shrimps as big as lobster tails.

The band - cornets, trumpets, trombones, banjos and bass - was playing New Orleans jazz, getting into it. People were dancing throughout the downstairs, but here in the kitchen, the swinging doors kept out enough music to allow conversation.

Christina was standing at the well, alone, pouring champagne into two flutes that she'd set on the marble. Dooher had seen her leave Avery with some other young people from the firm, take his glass and go through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

He came up behind her. 'While you're pouring, would you mind?' He put his glass next to the two others on the counter.

She turned and smiled. 'No, of course not.' Her gaze stayed on him a second. 'This is a super party. Thank you.' She tipped his glass, poured in a small amount of champagne, let the bubbles subside, poured again.

'A woman who knows how to pour champagne,' Dooher said. 'I thought it was a lost art.'

She was concentrating on the task. 'Not in my family.'

'Is your family from around here?'

'No. They're from down south. Ojai, actually.' 

'Really? I love Ojai. I've often thought I'd like to settle there when I retire.'

'Well, that'll be a long time from now.'

'Not as long as you think ...' She handed him his glass, and he touched hers. 'When I think of the pink moment.'

She laughed. 'You do know Ojai.'

The town was nestled in a valley behind Ventura, and many times the setting sun would break through the fog that hovered near the ocean and seem to paint the red rock walls of the valley a deep pink. The locals set great store by it.

Dooher nodded. 'I tell you, I love the place.'

'I do, too.'

'And yet, you're here.'

'And yet...' Her eyes glistened, enjoying the moment, sipping champagne. 'School. USF' She hesitated a moment. 'Law school, actually.'

Dooher backed up, his hand to his heart. 'Not that.'

'I'm afraid so.' She made a face. 'They tell me it's an acquired taste, though I'm done in June and I can't say I've been completely won over.' She smiled over her glass. 'Oops. I'm saying too much. Champagne talk. I should never admit that to a managing partner.'

Dooher leaned in closer to her, dropping to a whisper. 'I'll let you in on a secret - there are moments in the profession that are not pure bliss.'

'You shock me!'

'And yet.. .' he said.

'And yet.'

A moment, nearly awkward with the connection. 'Well, Joe's champagne's getting warm just sitting there . .. that, I take it, is Joe's glass?'

'The dutiful woman...' she said, softening it with a half-smile, but there was no mistaking it - some tension with Avery. But she picked up his glass.

'Are you clerking somewhere this summer? Have you applied with us?'

Most law students spent their summers clerking with established firms for a variety of reasons - experience, good pay, the inside track at a job offer.

Christina shook her head. 'Joe would kill me.'

'Joe would kill you? Why?'

She shrugged. 'Well, you know . .. he's on the hiring committee ... he thinks it would smack of nepotism.'

'From the Latin "nepos", meaning nephew. Are you Joe's niece, by any chance? Perhaps he's your nephew. Are you two related to the third degree of consanguinity?' He raised his eyebrows, humorous, but holding her there. 'Love those lawyer words,' he said.

She was enjoying him. 'No. No, nothing like that. He just thinks it wouldn't work.'

'Well, I may have to have a word with Mr Avery ...'

'No! I mean, please, it would just...' 

He stepped closer again. 'Christina ... may I call you Christina?'

She nodded.

'Look, are you going to be a good lawyer?'

'Yes. I mean, I think I am. I'm law review.' Only the best students made law review.

Dooher pounced. 'You're law review and . . .' He put his glass down, started over more slowly. 'Christina, listen, you're not doing yourself a favor, nor would you be doing our firm a favor, by not applying if you think there might be a good fit. A woman who is on law review and ...' He was about to make some comment about her beauty but stopped himself - you couldn't be too careful on the sexual harassment score these days. 'Well, you'll do meaningful work and you'll bring in clients, which is quite a bit more than half the ballgame, although that's a dirty secret I should never divulge to an idealistic young student.'

'Not so young, Mr Dooher

'Mark. You're Christina, I'm Mark, okay?'

She nodded. 'But I'm really not so young. I'm twenty-seven. I didn't start law school until two years after college.'

'. . . so you've already got practical work experience? Look, Christina, after what I'm hearing, if you don't come down and apply at McCabe & Roth, I will come out to USF and try to recruit you myself, clear?' He grinned.

Her champagne was half-gone. 'I should really watch what I say when I'm drinking. Now Joe is really going to be upset.'

'I bet he won't be upset.' He touched her arm. 'Don't you be upset either. This is a party. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push it if it's—'

'No, he will. He also said that there's no sense applying if we're going to get married because there's a policy against attorneys being married.'

'Are you engaged? I don't see a ring.'

'Well, not yet, not exactly, but...'

Dooher pushed it. 'Christina, Joe's a good attorney but this doesn't have to do with him. It has to do with what's best for your career. It's your decision. You come down and apply, and it'll go through channels from there,capisce?'

'All right.'

'Promise?'

She nodded.

He clinked his glass against hers, and they drank.

CHAPTER THREE

He awoke without the alarm in the half-dark, listening to the water still dripping from the gutters. The digital clock on the nightstand read 5:30.

He and Sheila hadn't come up to bed until nearly 2:00, but Dooher had always been able to wake up at any time he wanted, no matter how long he'd slept. It was a matter of control, of discipline.

And he had made plans for early.

Sheila slept on her side of the bed, the covers pulled high over her, and he slipped out and walked over to the window. It was cold in the room but the chill braced him. He stood, shivering, enjoying it.

The storm continued with no sign of letting up. His spacious back lawn looked gray and somber, mottled with soaking clumps of plant matter. The old elm's skeleton hung barren, the bushes in the rose garden reached out their swollen arthritic fingers - the whole place sepulchral within its enclosing hedges.

It was Ash Wednesday.

Abe Glitsky's eyes opened to blackness and he was suddenly all the way awake, sprung from fitful sleep by the jack-in-the-box mechanism that had controlled his metabolism over the past five months, ever since Flo had been diagnosed.

Unlike a jack-in-the-box, though, he didn't move. Pop went the weasel and the lids of his eyes shot open, but that was all that happened on the outside.

He lay there, listening in the dead room. His wife was breathing evenly, regularly. His head rang - an anvil for the staccato hammering of his heart.

Glitsky was a Homicide Inspector with the Police Department. He'd been getting through the days by doing what he had to do in five-minute increments, on the theory that if he could just make it through the next five minutes, he'd be all right.

When the long vigil began, while he felt he still had some analytical powers left, he'd tried to make it through entire days at a time by force of will. He wouldn't think about what was coming, what would be. But his focus on those days would keep splitting up, disintegrating into pointillistic little nothings, the stuff of his life unconnected, separating.

Now he was down to five-minute intervals. He would function for five minutes, keep his focus. There were twelve five-minute intervals in one hour, two hundred and forty in twenty hours. He'd consciously done the math. He was doing twenty-hour days, on average. He was also into sit-ups, two hundred and forty sit-ups every day. A symbol.

He wondered how he could be so tired and not sleep, not be sleepy at all. He was never sleepy - tired beyond imagining, far beyond what he'd ever thought were the limits of his physical endurance, but his brain never slowed.

Sometime in the course of a night or post-midnight morning, the apparatus that was his body would shut down and he would lie unconscious for a few hours, but this never felt like sleep.

Last night - a blessing - the boom had lowered while he lay in bed next to his wife, praying for it.

Now - pop - he was up.

The digital changed - a flicker at the periphery of his vision, the only light in the room -5:15. Still deep dark, yes, but morning really. Far better than when the pop was 3:30, when he knew he was up for the day and it was still night.

He swung his legs off the bed.

At 6:15, Dooher was in the fifth row of St Ignatius on the campus of the University of San Francisco because of a hunch that Christina Carrera would appear, as she'd implied jokingly when she'd said her goodbyes last night.

Dooher realized that the odds might be long against her actually getting up and coming down to church for ashes, but long odds had never fazed him.

After all, what had been the odds, back when he was fifteen, that the baseball team he played for, from San Carlos, California, would go all the way to the Babe Ruth World Series? And then, beyond that, that Dooher would come up in the bottom of the seventh inning, two out, one run down, with his best friend Wes Farrell standing on second base? And that he would hit a home run to win the whole thing?

Long odds.

Or, when he'd managed the Menlo Park McDonald's in 1966 and '67 during his first two years at Stanford and decided to take the stock option they were offering to their management employees even though it lowered his pay by ten percent, to under three dollars an hour. He'd taken a lot of grief from friends about the thousand dollars he was throwing down the drain, but Mark had had a hunch, and when he got out of law school eight years later, that stock was worth over $65,000 and he and Sheila used it as the down payment on the home he still owned, which they'd bought for $97,000 in 1975, and was now worth well over a million.

Long odds.

Kneeling in the pew, his knee jammed painfully into the space between the padding so it would hurt, some of the other riskier chances he'd taken came back at him. The time when ...

But, halting his reverie, Christina appeared in his peripheral vision. He lowered his head in an attitude of prayer. She was wearing jeans, boots, a Gore-Tex overcoat, and did not see him. She kept walking, her own head bowed. A couple of pews in front of him, she genuflected, stepped in and kneeled.

The Glitskys lived in an upper duplex on Lake Street, and Abe was in the kitchen, bringing handfuls of cold water to his face. A steady downpour was tattooing the roof, but a thin ribbon of pink hung in the eastern sky, off to the right, out the window over the sink.

The thing to do was get the chores started, but he couldn't move. The order of things didn't flow anymore.

How could he do this alone?

He wasn't going to ask that question, not in this five minutes. It would paralyze him. He wouldn't think about it.

He depended on Flo - she was one of the world's competent beings. The two of them had split up their domestic duties long ago. Glitsky had always helped with heavy cleaning; he'd fixed things, lifted and moved, washed and dried dishes, organized shelves and rooms and closets. When the boys had been born, he'd changed diapers and heated baby food, but eventually their care - dressing them, feeding them, comforting them - had fallen mostly to Flo.

And now it was falling back on him.

How was he going to do it?

Stop it!

It wasn't that he minded doing more work, or even thought about the work. Flo was not someone who worked for him. She was his partner. In some fundamental way, he felt he was half her, she half him.

And their life together - his job, her competence, the boys - had taken every bit of both of them together. How could that continue with only half of them? It wasn't a matter of shaking the thoughts because they weren't really thoughts.

He was resting his weight on his arms and hands, which were planted on either side of the sink, fighting vertigo. The ground felt as though it was going to give way to an echoing abyss.

He raised his head and the strip of morning hadn't grown appreciably wider.

After Mass, after the ashes, Dooher thought he would let Christina come to him, rather than approach her. Waiting on the steps outside, he watched the rain come down.

'Mr Dooher?'

He turned with a practiced look of surprise mingled with curiosity, then took an extra moment to place who she was, exactly. He knew her, but...

'Christina,' she said, reminding him.

'Oh, of course, Christina. Sorry, I'm not quite awake.' 

'I know. Getting up this morning was a little...'

'Hey, we're here. That's what counts in the eyes of God.'

'The eyes of God,' she repeated.

'Penance,' he said. 'Lent. Some people need Thanksgiving or Christmas. I need the reminder about dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' He shrugged. 'One of the occupational hazards of lawyers is that we tend to think that what we do on a daily basis is important.'

'It is important, wouldn't you say? I mean, people's lives, solving their problems.'

He tapped the dot of ash on his forehead. 'Eventually, it all turns to this.' An apologetic smile, self-deprecating. 'This happy thought brought to you by Mark Dooher. Sorry.'

She kept looking at him. 'You're an interesting man.'

Glitsky had ten pieces of bread spread out on the counter. Five sandwiches. Two each for the older boys, Isaac and Jacob, one for the baby - no, he reminded himself, not the baby anymore, the ten-year-old - O.J.

'What are you looking at?' His youngest son didn't sleep much either - night terrors. Everybody in the duplex handled it differently. O.J. was wearing a Spiderman suit he'd slept in, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Glitsky had no idea how long he'd been there.

'I'm making lunches.'

'Again?' 

'Again.'

'But you made lunch yesterday.'

'I know. It's going to happen a lot. I make lunch, okay. And let's talk quiet. Nobody's up. What do you want?'

'Nothing. I don't eat lunch.'

'O.J., you eat lunch every day. What do you want?'

'Nothing.'

Outside the window, the trees of the Presidio behind their duplex had come into relief. Morning breaking slowly.

He wasn't going to fight his child over lunch. He would just make something and put it in the box, and either O.J. would eat it or he wouldn't. Glitsky was in his mid-forties. He wore green string-pull pajama bottoms and no shirt. Crossing the kitchen, he went down on one knee, pulled his boy onto the other one.

'How'd you sleep?'

'Good.' O.J. had to be coaxed to give anything up.

'No bad dreams?'

'Nope.'

'Good. That's good.'

But the boy's arms came up around his father's neck, the small body contouring to Glitsky's chest. A moment holding him there - not really an embrace. An embrace might drive him off. 'I know you don't want anything for lunch, but if you did want something, what would it be?'

Eye contact. A shrug. 'Peebeejay, I guess.'

It took a minute to process. 'Okay, you get dressed. I'll make it.'

O.J. wasn't ready to do that yet. He stayed on the knee. 'But the way Mom does, okay?'

Glitsky took in a breath. 'Okay. How is that?'

'You don't have to yell at me. It's not that hard.'

'I'm not yelling. I'm whispering, in fact. And I didn't say it was hard. I'm sure it's not hard. I just want to know how you like it so I can make it that way, all right?'

'I said I didn't want one anyway.' The eyes were clouding up, threatening to spill over. 'Just forget it.'

Glitsky didn't let him pull away. 'I don't want to forget it, O.J. I want to get it right.' He had to keep from slipping into his cop voice. This was his son. He loved him. 'Tell me how Mom makes it,' he asked gently. 'Would you please do that for me, buddy?'

'It's easy.'

'I'm sure it is. Just tell me, okay.'

A pause, considering. O.J. stood, off the knee, and Glitsky straightened up. 'Bread, then butter - you never put butter, but Mom always does. You got to put butter first - then peanut butter, over the butter. Then, on the other bread, the jelly.'

'Butter, then peanut butter, then jelly. I got it.'

'On the other piece of bread.'

'I got it. But don't you close the sandwich when you're done, so that the peanut butter and the jelly are stuck together anyway?'

'But that's not how you make it. I could tell yesterday.'

'But yesterday I didn't put on the butter first.'

'Nope.'

'Nope what?'

'Also you put the jelly straight on the peanut butter.'

'I probably did, you're right.'

Glitsky couldn't believe he was having this conversation. His world was coming apart, as was his son's, and here they were discussing a completely undetectable difference in the placement of jelly on a sandwich.

But he had no strength to tell O.J. this was stupid. Maybe it wasn't stupid. Certainly it wasn't anymore stupid than all this talking about it. Perhaps it was O.J.'s cry for order as his universe devolved into chaos - jelly on the bread, not on the peanut butter.

One thing he could control.

He motioned his son closer and brought a hand down around his shoulders, then gave him a pat, sending him back to his room to get dressed. 'On the bread first, I got it.'

But he knew he didn't get it. The peebeejay was one thing, random and irrational, the first word in a whole new language that he had no ear for. 

The other eight pieces of bread lay spread out on the counter. He couldn't think what he was supposed to do with them.

The rain continued steady as a metronome. The wind had let up and the drops were falling straight down out of black clouds. Miz Carter's Mudhouse had been serving high-octane Java on California Street for forty years and Dooher and Christina were in a booth by one of the windows. Miz Carter served her coffee in oversized, mostly cracked mugs, the product of some warehouse clearance sale of twenty years before.

'I really did try to become an ex-Catholic for a lot of years,' Dooher was saying. 'Stopped going to church entirely, even though I was starting to get some work for the Archdiocese. Hell, back then, a lot of the priests I was working with had stopped going to church. But it just wasn't me. I guess I need the ritual.'

'I don't think that's it,' she said. 'You don't have to explain it to me. I think you just believed.'

'That's the problem. I do.'

'That's not a problem.'

'Well...' He sipped at his coffee, moved food around on his plate.

'Why is that a problem?' she persisted.

Deciding to answer her, he let out a small sigh. 'Well, as you know, we lawyers get used to defending our positions. It's a bit awkward taking a position that doesn't really have a logical framework. I mean, it's faith. It's there or it's not. But there's really not any reason to have it.'

'Or not have it.'

'But you can't prove a negative.'

'But,' she pointed a finger at him, 'there's no reason to prove it. It's personal.'

'Well, of course, I know. But... it sets me apart, a bit, from my peers. It's old fashioned, fuddy-duddy

'Come on. It is not. Not on you.'

He pointed back at her. 'Says you.'

'Yes,' she said, 'says me.'

'Okay, I guess that settles it. So what about you?'

'What about me and what?'

'Faith. Belief. Why you've got ashes on your forehead here at. . .' he checked his watch '. . . seven o'clock of a rather inclement Wednesday morning?'

She glanced down at her food, cut into her waffle, wiped it in syrup. She did not bring the fork to her mouth.

'Evasive action,' Dooher said.

Still looking down, she nodded. 'A little, I suppose.'

'I'm sorry. I don't mean to push you.'

She took in a breath, raised her head. Her eyes had a shine in them. 'Penance, too, mostly. Figuring things out.' 

Dooher waited. 'This isn't turning into the most modern of conversations, is it? Faith and penance. Sounds like the Middle Ages, or me and Wes on one of our retreats.'

She seemed grateful for the reprieve. 'Wes?'

'Wes Farrell, my best friend.'

'Best friends, another not-so-modern concept.'

Dooher studied her face - something was troubling her, hurting her. He kept up the patter to give her a chance to let the moment pass if that's what she wanted. 'Well, that's me and Wes, a couple of throwbacks. We go on retreats, we call 'em, replenish the soul, talk about the big picture, get reconnected.'

'You're lucky, a friend like that.' A pause, adding, 'Still believing in connecting.'

He took a beat, making sure. She didn't want to avoid it after all, didn't want to be protected, insulated from whatever it was. Not today, not now. She had decided to get it out, and this was an invitation to him, to ask.

'It's really so trite.'

She liked the way the corners of his mouth lifted slightly. 'Trite happens,' he said.

She leaned forward over the table. 'You know last night when I let you believe I'd been in the workplace after college for a couple of years? That wasn't the truth.'

She watched him for a sign, she wasn't sure of what - displeasure, boredom? Ready to retreat at any provocation. He only nodded, patient and tolerant. Taking a breath, she went on: 'He was a professor at Santa Clara, my adviser. Married, a great guy. You probably know everything I'm going to say, don't you?'

'Do you ever talk about this?'

'No. It's too ...' She shook her head.

'I'm here,' he said. 'I'm interested and it won't go any further. If it would help...'

Through the expanse of window, a volley of rain raked the parking area, beat briefly against their portion of the glass, passed over. 'He was going to leave his wife,' she began. 'I guess that's what I had the most trouble with when it was first starting to happen, that I was going to wreck his happy home. Except that he told me that Margie and he didn't love each other anymore, that he was leaving her anyway, it had nothing to do with me ... and I guess I wanted to believe that.'

'You're not the first person that's happened to.'

She had turned in her seat, one leg extended on the bench, her elbow on the table, leaning over toward him. The waitress came to clear and they both sat silently, watching her remove dishes, wipe the table down.

'More coffee here?'

After it had been poured, Dooher prompted her. 'It must have been painful. And not so trite after all.' 

She was biting her lip again. 'You've only heard the short version - girl falls in love with college professor, who's going to leave his wife for her after she graduates . '

'Christina . . .'

She held up a hand. 'Listen. It gets worse. Girl has best friend from childhood, let's call her Ginny, who's kind of the liaison between the two of them, covers for them with the wife, all that. Girl gets pregnant - professor had been childless with his wife, told girl he was sterile, low sperm count. Now accuses girl of sleeping with someone else - couldn't have been him. Dumps her just as she graduates.'

Christina reached for her cup, took a quick sip, swallowed. She looked over at Dooher, met his eye. 'Girl has abortion,' she said. 'End of story. See? Trite. And PS, professor dumps wife and marries friend Ginny, just to tie it all up.'

Dooher picked up his mug, holding it with both hands. He blew on it, glanced at the rain outside. That's what the penance is for?'

She nodded. 'I still don't know what to do with it. It's been almost five years...' Sighing. 'It's so funny because I know better. I mean, I'm educated, reasonably smart. But, I don't know, it changed me, not just Brian's...' She looked embarrassed at the slip of the name, continued: 'Brian's betrayal, and Ginny's. Mostly the abortion, I guess.'

Silence.

'So what did you do for the two years before law school?'

'I went home - down to Ojai. I moped around, let my mom and dad take care of me. And then one day my dad and I had a talk about how giving in to grief, too much, is really wrong. Well, that struck a chord, and I decided I had to do something, start living again. So I applied to law school, as if that's living.' She gave him a weak smile. 'Anyway,' she touched her forehead, 'that explains the ashes, the penance.'

'The engagement to Joe Avery?'

That got a rise out of her. 'I didn't say that. Why do you say that?'

Dooher shrugged. 'I don't know. The connection just jumped into my head.'

'Well, that doesn't make any sense ... I like Joe very much. Love him, I mean. Don't look at me like that!'

Dooher's voice remained measured. 'I'm not looking at you any way. I just made an observation, that's all. I like Joe, too. Hell, I hired him. I shouldn't have spoken so frankly. I thought we were baring our souls here. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry.'

She softened. 'I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean ...'

'No, it's all right.' He looked at his watch. 'And it's time for me to go to work. Can I drop you back at school?'

Christina sat straight-backed, pressed against her bench. 'Now you're mad at me.'

Dooher leaned across the table. 'Not at all. You're still applying to the firm? Today, tomorrow, the next day?'

'I said I would.'

'But will you? Now?' He broke a smile. 'After our first fight?'

 Gradually, the face softened again. She nodded. 'Yes.'

'Then I'm not mad at you.'

Glitsky closed the door, having just gotten the three boys off to school.

He stood a minute in the tiny foyer, closing his eyes briefly against the constant sting of fatigue. He could hear the voices of his sons.

But he didn't stand still for long. He had about a week's worth of work to do today, which was how he'd arranged it. He would just keep doing things - that was the trick.

Today, Flo was alive, and his boys were healthy and doing fine in school. That's what he would concentrate on. He had five homicides he was investigating, and he was also studying for the Lieutenant's Exam, which he hadn't even decided to take. But it was more busy work.

He looked at his watch. He had to go now into the kitchen, pour himself some tea, get his day moving.

'Abe?' Flo, suddenly awake, called from the bedroom.

'Yo.' Hearty as he could manage. He was already across the living room, stopping in the bedroom's doorway. His wife had propped herself up and she was smiling at him.

'Get 'em off?' She meant the kids.

Glitsky saluted. 'Out of here, on time and looking good.'

She patted the bed and moved over so he could sit. 'What time did you get up?'

'Actually, I had a pretty good night. Got up before the alarm, but not much -I think about six-thirty.'

She searched his face, ran a light finger across the top of his cheek. 'Your eyes have bags.'

'That's just the way they look, Flo. I'm working on them as an investigative tool. Keep me from looking too friendly.'

'Oh yes,' she said, 'that's been a real problem.'

'You'd be surprised,' he said, 'witnesses thinking I'm all warm and fuzzy. I decided I ought to look a little tougher.'

'Good idea. You wouldn't want your sweet nature to show through.'

'People just take advantage. You wouldn't believe.'

Glitsky's mother Emma had been black. His father Nat was Jewish. So Glitsky had a dark-skinned face with a hawk-like nose. In spite of that, people tended to see first the uneven white scar that ran between his upper and lower lips. Even when his eyes didn't have the valises under them as they did now, his smile was a terrifying thing to behold.

He laid a hand on his wife's thigh. 'So how's by you? You want some food? Coffee? Tantric sex?'

She nodded. 'All of the above. I'll get up.'

'You sure?'

'Unless you want the tantric sex first, but I'm better after coffee.'

'Okay, I'll wait.'

'You put on the pot,' she said. 'I'll freshen up.'

He went into the kitchen. There, on the table, were the remains of the boys' breakfasts - empty bowls, cereal boxes, milk, sugar all over the table.

And his police reports - the five dead people and as much of their recent lives as Glitsky had been able to assemble. The latest, a young woman named Tania Willows who had been raped and murdered and whose body had been discovered just yesterday.

The cereal in the cupboard. Sugar on the counter. Milk in the fridge. Got to clean out the fridge - if there's that much mold on the cheese, who knows what the meat drawer is going to look like?

Sponge that sugar off the table. The smell of the sponge. The thing had to be three months old. He should toss it but they didn't have another one. Where did sponges come from anyway? He couldn't remember ever having bought a sponge in his entire life.

And then, oh yeah, the coffee, the water boiling now, and he still hadn't ground up the beans. He really should grind up a bunch all at once so he wouldn't have to do it every morning, but Flo liked the fresh-ground, and he wanted her to have . ..

At least he and Flo, this morning, that was a good wake-up. He'd just keep cheerful another few minutes, maybe a half hour, and so would she, and then that would be another morning, and if they just kept that up ...

CHAPTER FOUR

Christina's seven-year-old Toyota hadn't started and when it finally did, the windshield wipers refused to function. So she walked down the hill from USF, past St Mary's Hospital. She was planning to cut through the panhandle of Golden Gate Park on this rainy Ash Wednesday; the short-cut would get her to work on time.

But she didn't count on San Francisco's seemingly endless capacity to provide local color. This morning's entry was a substantial coven of half-clad Druids conducting some sort of tree-worshiping ceremony, chanting and clapping and having themselves a hell of a good time.

Christina broke right trying to skirt them, but a tiny, thick woman of uncertain though recent vintage latched on to her. A shawl covered the woman's shoulders, she'd woven flowers into her hair, and she wore a long leather skirt, but her breasts were completely exposed. When it became clear that Christina wasn't about to join them, was in fact going to work, she segued smoothly from missionary high priestess to spare-change artist.

In any event, by the time Christina got to Haight Street, where the Rape Crisis Counseling Center maintained its office, she was soaking wet and twenty minutes late for her appointment.

Her boss was a single, attractive, thirty-five-year-old smart-mouthed pistol named Samantha Duncan whose industrial-strength convictions on the ongoing battle of the sexes served her well in her role here - counseling women who had been raped.

Her genuine compassion for these victims was unfortunately matched by her impatience with the healing process for the women, the legal process in identifying and punishing their attackers, and the administrative reality of having to depend on part-time volunteers to keep the Center functioning.

When Christina had first interviewed for the work, Sam had impressed her with her humor and passion. Then she had laid out the ground rules in no uncertain terms. 'I know this job doesn't pay anything,' she'd said, 'but I need my volunteers to believe and to act like it's a job. I need you here when you say you're going to be here. I'm not very good with excuses.'

Up until today, Christina had been punctual and dependable. Sam had a fire, a presence, and Christina admired the hell out of her and wanted to please her. She also wanted to prove that she wasn't a dilettante - this was her own very real commitment as well.

Many of the barriers had been broken already; Sam and Christina had gone out for coffee together two or three times, outside of work, talking issues and politics. Christina thought they were close to real friendship.

But Sam had a hair trigger regarding her volunteers, always ready to see signs of their lack of commitment in the work, and based on that, to bail out of personal involvements with her staff.

And this morning, as Christina shook the water off herself, it was clear that their tentative relationship had suffered a major setback.

Sam didn't exactly greet Christina with a smile. 'Oh, here she is now. Christina, this is Sergeant Glitsky. He's with the police, investigating .. . well,' Sam sighed, 'you know about that. I'll let him tell you. Sergeant, nice to have met you.' Sam didn't favor Christina with so much as a glance before she disappeared back into her office.

But she couldn't worry about Sam, not now, and she turned her attention to the man in front of her.

This guy Glitsky was in some kind of trouble, Christina thought. He appeared, even at a casual first glance, to be under incredible pressure, in the grip of some strong emotion he was struggling to keep under control. She noticed his fingers clenching and unclenching before he reached out and shook her hand. A surprise, it was a gentle handshake, his touch softer than she would have imagined.

The half-smile he gave her didn't soften his looks any, though. 'I'm investigating the murder of Tania Willows, and Sam was telling me you had talked to her?'

Christina nodded.

Tentative, embarrassed and unsure, Tania Willows had been their most recent tragedy. Nineteen years old, just out to San Francisco from Fargo, North Dakota, she had come to the Center three times. She was being raped, she thought. She meant she thought it was technically rape. She didn't have a relationship with the guy, who was older. She was confused because she knew her assailant - he didn't jump out and attack her from behind some bush. So she wasn't sure if it was really rape.

He'd started coming by her apartment, gradually getting more aggressive, and then he'd force himself on her - she was sure of that - but she also seemed almost certain that it wasn't like he was going to hurt her or anything like that.

He never even hit her, though there was this sense of fear, that if she didn't . . . Maybe she had somehow been at fault, leading him on - did Christina know what she meant? How it could be? Sending the wrong signals.

But she definitely felt forced, was forced - she had kept telling him no and he wouldn't stop - but otherwise Tania didn't think the person was like a criminal or anything, and really all she wanted was for him to leave her alone now. She didn't want to get him in trouble, maybe she shouldn't even be here . ..

And then four days ago, Tania's murder had been all over the news. She'd been raped in her apartment, tied and taped to her bed, gagged and strangled. 

The Center had called the police at that time.

Christina found she had to clear her throat. Glitsky was asking her something, which she didn't catch. 'I'm sorry ...?'

He showed no sign that he was bothered by having to repeat the question. 'I was just wondering how much she might have told you about the man.'

Christina was sitting on the front edge of the ragged couch, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands folded in front of her. Her hair, still wet from the rain, hung in front of her face. 'Almost nothing,' she said. 'She knew him. He lived near her, maybe in her apartment building. She definitely felt that if she moved she could get away from him, but she couldn't afford to move.'

Glitsky nodded. 'And she didn't want to press charges.'

'I'd hoped we were getting to there, but no, not by - not in time.'

'And no names, not an initial, a nickname ...?'

She shook her head. 'No, nothing, I don't think. I wish ... I'm sorry.'

'Did you take any notes I might look at? Maybe there was something.

'I know I took some. I'll go check. It wouldn't have been much, but maybe . . .' The Sergeant's face had clouded - he was staring blankly out through the fogged glass, out into the desultory traffic on Haight. 'Can I get you anything?' she asked. 'Cup of coffee or something?'

Glitsky didn't answer.

She touched his arm. 'Sergeant?'

Back with her. 'Sure. Sorry. Just thinking.'

'Are you all right?'

Suddenly the face wasn't terrifying at all. What she saw was sadness. Tm a little distracted,' he said. 'My wife's sick.' Then: 'Some tea would be nice, thanks.'

It still wasn't noon.

Christina was just tired, she told herself. After all, with the party, she'd been awake until nearly two last night, then had her nightly argument with Joe. This morning, then, her ashes and the long, strangely emotional breakfast with Mark Dooher, her car not starting, the neo-hippie woman in the park, Sam's disapproval.

Then Tania Willows and Abe Glitsky with whatever his sorrow was - his sick wife.

Suddenly, the rain launching a new attack behind her back against her grimy window, the lights off as she sat alone in her tiny cubicle, something broke in her. She wiped the back of her hand roughly against her eyes - as a child would - trying to will away the tears, but they kept coming.

She was just tired.

This - the sudden collapse - hadn't happened in almost two years. She wasn't going to let herself think it was anything to do with the baby she'd lost, with her past. Not that again. That was behind her and she wasn't going to let it get to her anymore. It was the events of the morning, that was all. 

She'd just toughen up. That was it, that was what she'd do. Swiping again at her face, sniffling, she got up from her desk, pulling her Gore-Tex up around her face. The rain would hide the tears. No one would see.

CHAPTER FIVE

His Excellency didn't have to explain it all to Dooher, but if it made him feel better, Mark would let him go on - he was the client, and every hour was $350. They were sitting in the Archbishop's office, above the children's playground at Mission Dolores. Their informal meetings always took place here, in the serenity of the laughter of children that floated up into Flaherty's sanctum sanctorum.

Although the Archdiocese employed a full-time attorney of its own, its mandate was far too broad for one man to do it all, and so a lot of the work needed to be farmed out to private firms. And over the years, Dooher's firm had come to specialize in the Church's secular affairs - dozens upon dozens of slip and fall cases, liability, property management, personnel.

Dooher, personally, had gotten close to Flaherty not only for his ability to handle the tougher cases diplomatically and with dispatch, but because there was an unstated but perfectly understood ruthlessness in each of the men.

Both got things done. Sometimes what the Archbishop needed to accomplish was better handled outside of his office. Dooher was unofficial but defacto consigliere.

Also like Dooher, Flaherty was an athletic man who looked a decade younger than he was. Still, at fifty-seven, he was running about fifty percent in his squash games (non-billable) with Dooher. Here, in private, the Archbishop wore tasseled black loafers, black slacks, a white dress shirt. Dooher, deeply molded - nearly imbedded - into the red leather chair, had his coat off, his tie loosened.

'I don't know why these things always take me by surprise,' Flaherty was saying. 'I keep expecting better of my fellow man, and they keep letting me down. You'd think I'd learn.'

Dooher nodded. 'The alternative, of course, is to expect nothing of your fellow man.'

'I can't live like that. I can't help it. I believe that deep down, we're all made in the image of God, so our nature can't be bad. Am I wrong, Mark? I can't be wrong.'

Dooher thought it best not to remind His Excellency that he had predicted exactly what would happen back in the early stages of the decision-making process over the current lawsuit. But he'd been over-ridden.

'You're not all wrong, Jim. You've got to take it case by case.'

Flaherty was standing by the open window, looking down over the schoolyard. He turned to his lawyer. 'As neat a turn away from philosophy and to the business at hand as one would expect.' He pulled a chair up. 'Okay, where are we today?'

Reaching down for his props, though he didn't need them, Dooher pulled his briefcase from the floor, opened it, and extracted a yellow manila folder labeled Felicia Diep.

Mrs Diep had come to the United States in 1976 from Saigon, a young single mother with a substantial nest egg from her deceased husband in Vietnam. She'd settled in the lower Mission District of San Francisco, where she became a regular parishioner at St Michael's Parish and, not incidentally, a long-time paramour of its pastor, Father Peter Slocum.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Mrs Diep gave Father Slocum something in the order of $50,000 for one thing and another, and all might have been well had not the good priest decided to take his promotion to Monsignor and move away from her, down the peninsula to Menlo Park.

He had abandoned her and she wanted her money back, so she decided to go to a young lawyer in her community named Victor Trang.

Trang wasn't in the medical field, but if he was, he would have qualified as an 'ambulance chaser'. Barely making a living in his first three years after graduating from one of the night schools that taught law, he took the case, hoping for no more than his fee of one third of the fifty grand Mrs Diep wanted.

He sued the Archdiocese for fraud - Father Slocum wasn't celibate as promised, and he'd taken Mrs Diep's money under false pretenses, promising her over the years that he would eventually leave the priesthood and marry her.

This was where Dooher got involved, and it hadn't been a big item on his plate. One of his associates took care of the preliminary motions in response to the lawsuit, then passed them up to him. He and Flaherty had determined that they would offer ten grand as a settlement and if Mrs Diep didn't accept it, they would go to court and take their chances.

So in the middle of the previous week, Dooher had called Victor Trang, conveying the settlement offer. It was then he discovered that things had changed, and he'd arranged this meeting with Flaherty.

The Archbishop's face did not exactly go pale, but he was rocked. He lifted his eyes from the folder. 'Three million dollars?'

The lawyer nodded. 'Trang's got nothing else to do, Jim. The Church has deep pockets so he went looking.'

Flaherty was trying to read and listen at the same time. 'Not very far, it seems.'

'No.'

'Slocum was sleeping with the daughter, too?'

'Veronica, now nineteen. That's Trang's story. To say nothing of several other immigrants whose names he didn't provide. He may be bluffing.' 

Flaherty closed the folder abruptly. 'I know Slocum. It's possible Trang's not bluffing. This is nowhere near the first allegation.'

This was not welcome news. Dooher leaned forward. 'If you knew some of this, why'd you make him a Monsignor?'

A crooked smile. 'I didn't know it. They were allegations we'd heard. We thought we'd remove him from the temptation, put him where he didn't have the same freedom of movement, give him more responsibility.'

A shake of the head. 'And thereby change his nature?'

'I know, Mark, I know. My nature's the problem. I believe people. I trust them.'

'Well,' Dooher slapped his palms on his knees, 'that's why you've hired a top gun like myself. I trust no one.' He pointed down at the folder, still on Flaherty's lap. 'You get to the end of that?'

'No. I stopped at the three million.'

Dooher took it. 'Okay, I can give you the short version. It gets worse.' He went on to explain what Trang had told him last week on the phone. The young upstart would be initiating to conduct a series of investigations with other immigrants in San Francisco to determine with what kind of frequency these clerical abuses were occurring. He expected to discover that the Archdiocese systematically condoned this kind of behavior from their priests. 'He's calling it a policy of tolerance, Jim. He's going to amend the complaint to name you personally.'

The Archbishop was back at his window, looking down at the children. 'Can we have Slocum killed?' Quickly, he turned, hand out. 'I'm joking, of course.'

'Of course.'

'But all kidding aside, Mark, what are we going to do?'

Flaherty wasn't having his best year.

Six months earlier, after an extensive two-year study by the Archdiocesan Pastoral Planning Commission had confirmed their predicted results - he'd finally bitten the bullet and announced the closure of the ten least financially viable parishes in the city. He knew that the Archdiocese would not survive into the twenty-first century if it didn't take steps now. The city had taken a hard line after the World Series earthquake and passed an ordinance that assessed the Archdiocese $120 million for retrofitting their unreinforced masonry churches. (Dooher had worked his magic to lower the bill down to $70 million, but it might as well have been $3 zillion for all the Church could afford to pay even that.)

The plain fact - and it broke Flaherty's good heart - was that the Archdiocese couldn't afford to keep the smaller parishes operating with attendance down at Masses throughout the city - Holy Family Church out in North Beach, for example, averaged only seventy-five people, total, for four Masses on Sundays. And there were really no significant private donations to offset the appallingly low Sunday offerings. But after the closures were announced, a firestorm of protest had developed. Flaherty had even heard from Rome.

The problem that Flaherty had not foreseen (and Dooher had) was that perennial San Francisco two-headed serpent, ethnicity and money. Most of the parishes that had been closed were those in the poorest areas - Hunters Point, the lower Mission District, the Western Addition, the outer Sunset, Balboa Park. So Flaherty was widely vilified for abandoning the poor and what had been a purely financial move had been totally misinterpreted.

Flaherty had also believed that the Catholics in the closed parishes would simply move to other buildings for their worship, and would be accepted in those new locales by the other Catholics who already worshiped there.

'That is truly an ecumenical theory, Jim, and in a perfect world, that would surely happen,' Dooher had said. 'But my prediction is that my fellow parishioners' - St Emydius, in St Francis Wood - 'are simply not going to offer the kiss of peace to the Vietnamese community from St Michael's that's going to descend upon them. It's not going to happen.'

Flaherty responded - as he always did - that people were better than Dooher gave them credit for. The Commission had made its recommendations - it had not been Flaherty's decision alone. The people would get used to it; it could actually be a force for growth, for advancement of the whole Catholic community.

'Well, yes, Jim, I guess you're right. It could go that way,' Dooher had finally said, thinking, 'and I'm the King of Ethiopia.'

And now Trang was threatening to name Flaherty in a lawsuit contending that he tolerated fraud and licentiousness among his priests. Before all of these problems had begun, there was a rumor that Flaherty had been on the short list to be named a Cardinal. He had confided to Dooher that he had dreams of being the first American Pope. Now all of that, perhaps even his immediate survival as Archbishop, was at stake.

He was at his desk now, moving items randomly, nerves showing. 'But Trang hasn't yet amended the complaint?'

Pacing, Dooher stopped. 'That's why we're talking here, Jim. I need to head this off. The guy's obviously looking for press, make his name in the community, bring in some clients. I've got to talk sense to him.'

'What are you going to say?'

'I'll just tell him we'd be grateful for his cooperation. He knows - you know there wasn't any policy here. We've got to get him off this, Jim, or at the very least you can forget about your red hat.'

Flaherty pulled himself up in his chair. 'How grateful?'

Dooher clasped his hands in front of him. 'Settle for six hundred thousand, if it goes that high.'

'Lord . . .'

'And a gag order. No press conferences. No "conscience of the community" nonsense. Trang pockets two hundred thousand dollars. Mrs Diep gets a nice return on her fifty grand and her broken heart. Everybody's happy.'

 The Archbishop shook his head. Tm not. We start at six hundred?' Dooher tried to keep his tone light. 'Jim, this is Mark Dooher you're talking to. We start by offering to break Trang's legs. Hopefully we stop a long way before six.'

Flaherty nodded. 'A long way if you can.'

Dooher bowed slightly from the waist. 'I understand,' he said. 'I'll take care of it.'

'You're not actually seeing her.' 

'Wes, I ran into her at church. That's all.'

'At church. That's very good.' Wes Farrell lowered his voice a notch. 'The night after your party, which she happened to attend because her boyfriend got himself invited? Markus, we're running into a critical coincidence factor here.'

Wes Farrell had his feet up on the desk in his small office. Behind him, through wooden slats, rain beat against the window. Dooher was continuing with the fairy-tale version of his story about Christina, and Farrell finally stopped him.

'This is all good stuff, Mark. I mean it. And because I am your longstanding friend, I believe every word of it. However, I will offer one word of advice, lawyer to lawyer.'

'What?'

'Don't try it on anybody else. It sounds suspiciously like a rationalizing crock, although I know in my heart of hearts - because you would never lie to me - that it couldn't possibly be. How did she look?'

Dooher crossed his hands behind his head, considering. 'Who, in your opinion, is the all-around best-looking woman in the world? Face, body ...' an expansive gesture '... the whole schmeer. Everything.'

Farrell thought a moment. 'Demi Moore.'

Dooher nodded. 'Well, Demi Moore is a dog next to Christina Carrera. Even with wet hair and ashes on her forehead.'

'I've never seen Demi like that,' Farrell said. 'Usually, when we go out, after she ditches Bruce, she dresses up, puts on some makeup, stuff like that. Come to think of it, I wonder if she's why Lydia's divorcing me. If she found out about Demi and me?'

'That could be it,' Dooher said. 'Those damn paparazzi.'

Dooher cracked a grin. 'Your fantasy life is much too rich for you to be a good lawyer.'

Farrell pointed across the room. 'Says the man who meets his associate's fiancee at church. What do you plan to do with her, if I might ask?'

A shrug, as though he'd never considered the question. 'I don't know. I'm thinking of hiring her.' At Farrell's expression, he added, 'Just as a clerk. She's law review. Pretty sharp kid, actually.' 

Farrell pointed again, 'I must tell you, this is fire.'

 'It's all innocent, Wes. I swear. Nothing's going on.'

 'So do yourself a favor and get another clerk.'

'We're going to have ten other clerks. Christina's just going to be one of them.'

Farrell scratched his chin. 'Oh boy,' he said. 'Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.'

'I'm so worried about Mark. He's just not been himself.'

Lydia Farrell - Wes's wife - threw an 'Oh, please' expression at Sheila Dooher over the rim of her china cup.

The two women were in the glass-enclosed breakfast nook with the French countryside motif, above which the driving rain of the earlier morning had turned to a romantic Normandy drizzle. At the look, Sheila said, 'Come on, Lyd, they're not all bad. Men, I mean.'

Lydia put her cup down. 'I didn't say they were. You know I don't think Wes has anything bad going against him. He's just got nothing going, period. Either direction. Against, for, sideways. Mark, I don't know.'

'Mark's a good man, Lyd. That counts.'

Once, in the very early days, Mark had subtly but very definitely come on to Lydia, his best friend's wife. When she'd called him on it, he'd backed off, saying in his charming way that she must have misunderstood something, he was sorry. But she knew she hadn't misunderstood a thing.

She'd never mentioned it to Wes or to Sheila. On some level she was flattered, even amused by it - to have something on the great Mark Dooher, who obviously thought she was attractive enough to run that risk. Imagine!

But she had decided opinions about his inherent goodness.

Still, Sheila was her friend. They'd been through moves and children and schools and their husbands' careers together, and she deserved a listen.

'I'm sorry. You're right. Good counts. I'm just a little snippy today. I'm seeing Sarah' - her divorce lawyer - 'tomorrow, and I want to be in shape. I'm always tempted to be so nice, let Wes have something I've got a legal right to. So Sarah told me, "Start thinking hate thoughts the day before. Think of all the shitty things he's done, the times he hasn't shown up when he said he would, the dinners that got cold, the shirts you've ironed, to say nothing about. . . more personal things. You'll never regret it." Sarah's a jewel.'

'I never want to go through that.'

'Well, I didn't either, dear, but divorce is like war. If you're in one, you'd better win. Still, you and Mark aren't going to get divorced.'

'No, I don't think that.'

'But?'

'I didn't say "but".'

Lydia smiled at her friend. 'Yes, you did. So why?'

'Why what?'

'Why do you think your marriage is suffering?' 

Sheila put down her cup, picked up the tiny spoon and stirred. After a long moment she answered, 'Because Mark is.'

'From what?'

Sheila took a moment phrasing it. She wasn't sure herself. 'I think he's clinically depressed. With the kids gone now and all. I think he's lost.' A pause. 'I'm worried he might kill himself.'

'Has he said that?'

'No. You know Mark, but he's made a few comments.'

Lydia picked up her cup, sipped at it, eyes on Sheila. 'Why would he kill himself? He's got everything.'

'Maybe what he has doesn't mean anything. Or enough.' Sheila's eyes were dry and she spoke calmly.

But Lydia had known her since college, and had learned that just because Sheila wasn't given over to histrionics didn't mean she didn't go deep. 'How's he acting?' she asked.

'Silent. And he's not sleeping. His doctor gave him some pills but he won't take them. He was up and out by seven this morning when I got up, and we didn't get to bed until very late. Two-ish.'

'Up and out?'

'Gone.'

'To work?'

'No. I called. He didn't get in till after ten:'

'I don't want to say—'

Sheila held up her hand. 'No, it's not an affair. He doesn't have time. You don't go meet your lover at six in the morning someplace. Actually, he went to Church - Ash Wednesday - for ashes. I asked and he told me.'

'The good Catholic. Still.'

'That's him. But the point is he's getting no sleep. This has been going on almost a year now. It's like he's afraid he's going to miss something - some excitement, I don't know. And then he's constantly disappointed when nothing happens.'

'Are you two doing okay? I mean, personally?'

Sheila wore a rueful look. 'You mean our sex-life, speaking of nothing happening ...' Then, as though she'd said more than she intended, added, 'It's great when we get around to it, which is about every four times the moon gets full, if that.'

Lydia looked out at the drizzle, at her manicured lawn. She sighed. 'That happened to Wes. The whole thing you describe. I tried as long as I could, but I just couldn't stand it. He wasn't depressed, I don't think. He'd just stopped loving me. I don't mean that's you and Mark, but that was me and Wes.'

Sheila thought a moment. 'I just don't believe that,' she said. 'I think it's deeper and if I could just figure out what it was, everything would get better.'

Lydia took her hand over the table, patted it. 'You know him better than me, Sheila. I'm sure you're right. I hope so.'

Sheila really blamed herself.

That was her training as well as her inclination. She always blamed herself, for everything that went wrong - their kids, Mark's dissatisfaction. It had to be her.

She knew it couldn't be Mark, who didn't make mistakes - not the way other people did. Factual errors, even in casual conversation? Forget it. The man knew everything and forgot nothing. Sheila made lists to remember all of the many jobs she had to do every day or week. Mark just did them - all, and perfectly. He never needed a reminder. He never lost his temper. (Well, once in a very great while, and invariably when she had provoked him beyond the limits of a saint.) Mark Dooher performed his duties flawlessly.

So if something was wrong, and something was, it had to be Sheila's fault.

She thought it was probably the double-whammy of the onset of menopause and Jason - their baby - finally going off to school. Way off, to Boulder, where he could snowboard all winter long. And Mark Jr working now on that rig in Alaska, trying to make enough to pay the bills for a summer of his sculpting since his father wouldn't help him if he was so set on doing that kind of stupid art, and Susan in New York.

Well, at least Susan called every week or so, tried to keep them up on her life, though Sheila and especially Mark would never understand why she had no interest in men.

Sheila's hormones, too, had caught up with her, swirled her into depression. She couldn't deny it and she couldn't blame Mark. She'd become miserable to live with, a hard truth to accept for Sheila Graham Dooher, who until she turned forty-five was one of the city's legendary partyers.

But as the gloom had begun to settle and she couldn't shake herself out of it, she felt less and less motivated to try. For over a year, everything Mark did she'd pick pick pick, losing her temper, poking viciously even at his perfection, his charming smile, his trim body, his own patience with her. She couldn't blame him for retreating into himself, his work, for not approaching her on sex. Whenever he did, she turned him down.

Then came the end of their nights out, or even the laugh-filled gourmet dinners at home with Wes and Lydia. In their places thrummed the somber pervasiveness of the big, empty house.

No wonder it had gotten to him, finally worn him down.

Which is what had finally woken her up. She hadn't intended to hurt Mark. She'd just been in her own funk, thinking somehow it would end. It was her problem and - a good Dooher all the way - she would suffer it in silence.

What she hadn't counted on was the long-term effect that her depression had on Mark. He had withdrawn, and she didn't know if she could get him back.

She'd decided she had to get over it, had finally gone to her doctor, and he'd prescribed the anti-depressant Nardil, and it had worked.

The only drawback was that she couldn't drink while taking the drug, which meant no more cocktails with Mark when he came home after a hard day, no more sharing his passion - hers, too - for wine with dinner. No more getting a little silly and loose and rubbing up against him.

She might have told him about the prescription, but she was afraid of his reaction, that his opinion of her would sink even lower. Doohers didn't need to take anti-depressants, they willed their weaknesses away.

So she told him, instead, that she'd reached the decision that her depression was a result of her drinking too much and she was going to stop, cold turkey. That was the kind of decision a Dooher would make - an act of will to better yourself. Mark had to respect that, even if he didn't like it. It was far better, she reasoned, to give up drinking and treat her husband civilly than it was to have him consider her weak, 'hooked', perhaps forever, on an anti-depressant.

But it wasn't working. Mark was gone, and she wasn't sure he was going to come back. And it was all her fault.

CHAPTER SIX

Joe Avery wasn't malicious or abusive. Christina didn't want to be over-critical. He had a lot of fine qualities.

But he was driving her nuts.

Joe would go into little routines with mind-numbing regularity to illustrate how, in spite of being a lawyer, he was actually a nice guy, not really a type-A kind of uptight dweeb. Fly fishing, for example - how he was catch-and-release all the way, used only barbless hooks - that way those little fishies didn't feel a thing, probably enjoyed the exercise there on the end of his two-pound test. Keep their HDLs up.

Or the volunteer work with the Sierra Club. See? Even though he made money - and he wasn't ashamed of that, nosiree - he was sensitive to the environment.

Christina did volunteer work herself, so she could back him up here. It was important to have a broad spectrum of interests and involvements. You didn't want to lose sight of the big picture, which was a quality life.

Another of his big phrases - quality life.

Also, he had the habit of saying, 'Look at the facts,' followed by, 'That's very interesting.' Both of which set Christina's teeth on edge.

When she'd first started seeing Joe, she'd been attracted by the sense of sweetness he projected. It had been nearly three years since her professor. And Joe had just happened.

He'd been the TA in her Contracts course. After a few classes, some of the students started hanging around together afterward, going out for pizza, talking the ever-fascinating law talk. And then one night everyone else went home early.

She and Joe had closed the place, in the course of the night leaving Contracts behind them, discovering a mutual interest in backpacking, skiing, the Great Outdoors. Christina also liked Joe's looks, his full head of black hair over a chiseled face. A cleft chin like her father's.

Joe and some friends were going out in the Tahoe Wilderness for five days over Thanksgiving. Would Christina like to come?

No push, no come on. She'd liked that.

After a while, she came to recognize that she liked his manner and his personality in a lukewarm way that occasionally got up to a fair impersonation of heat. That was all right. Maybe it would change - she would wait. She didn't trust too much passion. She also desperately wanted to believe that the 'like' could over time transmogrify into 'love.' It was why she had after all this time picked a nice person, someone whose company was, if not thrilling, then pleasant, livable with.

Joe was now at his desk at four in the afternoon, twirling a pen between his fingers, glaring at Christina, struggling to control his anger.

'I don't know why you're so mad,' she was saying.

'I'm not mad. I just thought we'd already talked about this. I mean, you didn't even mention it last night, and now here you are, dressed to impress.'

She spread her hands in front of her. 'Joe, this is a simple business suit.'

'Yes, but every other applicant for summer clerk or anything else sends in a letter and a resume. Then we review it and decide whether—'

'I know all that. Mark Dooher asked me to come down, so I thought it would be appropriate to dress nicely.'

'Which on you doesn't—' He stopped himself, not wanting to say it, to admit that whether she liked it or not, her beauty was an issue, over and over again. 'I'm ... maybe I'm a little disappointed, is all.' The pencil snapped between his hands, and he looked down at it in surprise.

'I don't know why you'd be disappointed, I really don't. Mark said ...'

'Mark? You mean Mr Dooher?'

Her lips tightened in frustration. 'He said to call him Mark. He's a nice guy, Joe.'

'He's a nice guy.' Avery reeled himself in. 'I lied,' he said calmly. 'I am really mad.' He looked over Christina's shoulder, making triple sure his door was closed all the way. 'Mr Dooher is not a nice guy. Let's get that straight. Look at the facts. He is a hatchet man. He cut both McCabe and Roth out of here like so much driftwood after thirty years and—'

She was shaking her head. 'Okay. He's tough in business. He's the boss, right? That comes with the territory. But he asked me to come down. What was I supposed to do?'

'I asked you not to come down. How about that? How about how comfortable I am with you going around feeling out the job situation here behind my back?'

'I didn't do that.' The volume went up. 'I told you, I ran into him at church. Jesus, give me a break, Joe. Don't be so - so ...'

'So what?' Jumping on her, notching it up.

'So goddamn controlling, is what.'

Avery sat back, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. Trn controlling? If I am, I'm not very good at it, am I?'

'You shouldn't be. That's my point. This is my life and my career and if the managing partner invites me down for an interview, what do you expect me to do? Say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a modern woman and all, but my boyfriend would be so upset."'

'I'm not upset.' 

'And you're not mad either, I suppose.' Though she knew he was furious. 'Damn it, Joe, you don't have any right to be mad at me.' She grabbed up her briefcase.

'Where are you going?'

'I'm going to talk to Mr Dooher.' She hesitated. 'To Mark.'

This got him up, hand outstretched, nearly knocking his chair over behind him. 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, Christina. Wait a minute!'

She paused, her hand on the doorknob. 'All right, one minute. What for?'

He crossed around his desk, stopping an arm's length from her. 'Look...' A long breath, getting his own control back. 'Look, I'm sorry. Don't go to Mr Dooher, not like this.'

'Like what? Like all mad at you? Like I'll get you in trouble? I promise, I won't mention you at all.'

'Christina...'

'I don't understand why you don't want me to work here, Joe. I thought you'd be happy. We could be together, see each other during the day, go out to lunch ... I thought it would be fun.'

He moved toward her, held her arms gently. 'I know,' he said. 'I know. It would.'

'So what's the problem?'

'It just surprised me, that's all. I thought we'd decided something else, and then just having this sprung on me . ..'

'This wasn't sprung, Joe. I didn't feel like I needed to ask your permission. I came down and here I am now, telling you. I'm not hiding anything.'

'All right,' he said. 'All right, I'm sorry. I don't want to fight about this.'

'I don't either.'

'Okay, then.' He stepped back. 'Did you bring your resume with you? A cover letter?'

She nodded, crossed to his desk, put her briefcase on it and snapped it open. Handing him the envelope, she asked him where it went now.

There was a look in his eyes that she didn't like very much. Then a half-smile to back it up. He motioned with his head - follow me. On the floor next to one of the bookcases across the room was a cardboard box that had originally held a case of wine.

As the associate in charge of the summer clerk program, Avery received all the hopefuls' resumes, which a four-person committee reviewed once every two weeks. In the meanwhile, Avery 'filed' the resumes in the cardboard box, which currently was two or three inches deep in them.

He dropped Christina's in on top.

'Okay,' he said, 'you're in the hopper. Next it goes to the committee.' He reached out a hand and touched her sleeve. 'After this it gets pretty objective, Chris. We'll just have to see what happens.'

All that to drop her envelope in a box! She had been finessed.

Christina was so angry that she didn't even feel her reaction until she'd kissed Joe goodbye by the elevator banks and ridden the twenty-one floors back down to the lobby that opened on to Market Street. There, she stopped still, her heart suddenly pounding.

Though it was short notice, Victor Trang had been only too happy to come down for an afternoon meeting with Mr Dooher, who was representing the Archdiocese.

As usual, Trang wasn't exactly loaded down with litigation and he was heartened by the almost immediate response represented by Dooher's call. Also, late in the day, he welcomed the excuse to leave his one-room office in the darkened back corner of a turn-of-the-century building near the Geneva Avenue off-ramp of the Junipero Serra Freeway - as bleak a setting as San Francisco offered.

As soon as possible, would he like to come downtown to the no-doubt elegantly appointed twenty-first floor of the One California Building and discuss this matter? Why, yes. He allowed as to how he could find the time.

He'd only brought the matter up with Dooher on the previous Thursday, and thought that this quick a reply boded well for an equally quick settlement, which was why he was in the game.

Mark Dooher wasn't drinking anything, but his secretary came in and served excellent French roast coffee in an almost-translucent white china cup with a thin band of gold at the rim. Trang was sitting before a mahogany coffee table on an Empire-style couch, looking across Dooher's spacious office and out through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The office, hanging here exposed above the city, was intimidating. The message it conveyed was clear - Dooher hadn't gotten here by losing very often. The weather had been dismal all day, and now wisps of dark clouds blew by in the strong wind, alternately obscuring then revealing the view - the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island, freighters and tugs on the water. The hills across the Bay, in the distance, were hulking shapes of gunmetal gray.

Trang took a sip of his coffee, nodded, and smiled at his host. He was thirty-three years old. He'd been a U.S. citizen for fifteen years, and was used to Caucasian faces, but this one was unreadable - open, honest, apparently friendly, civilized and well groomed. It was the kind of face that scared him the most, and the man who owned it sat kitty-corner to him, hands crossed, elbows on his knees, leaning slightly forward, getting right to the point.

'First, the Archbishop wanted me to convey to you that there is no intentional policy of toleration toward this kind of behavior in the Archdiocese. If Father Slocum had this relationship with Mrs Diep...

'He did, and with her daughter, too.'

'If, as I say, if this went on with Father Slocum, it was wrong and we deplore his actions. But,' Dooher continued, 'the larger issue - the whole question of officially looking the other way - that's a very sensitive area.'

Trang nodded. 'That's true,' he said, 'but it's equally true that many people have been substantially damaged.'

Dooher winced at the legal phrase. Without 'damages', there is no recovery. Trang was putting him on notice that he was here to talk turkey. 'Some people may have actually suffered damages, Mr Trang. For the moment, I thought we might stick with Mrs Diep. She's your primary client, isn't she?'

Trang put his coffee cup down and smiled. For the first time, he had a sense that this was going to work. And if it did, he would be on his way. 'Only until I file the amended complaint.' Another smile. 'Which I believe you've seen.'

'Yes, of course. That's what I wanted to see you about. Needless to say, we'd prefer you don't make that filing.'

Trang barely concealed his excitement. The Archdiocese was going to offer a settlement! He lifted his shoulders an inch. 'Naturally, if we could reach some understanding here...

Dooher smiled, nodded, and stood. 'Good,' he said, 'I think we can.' He walked over to his desk, where he picked up a leather folder and opened it. 'I have here a check in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars as a settlement for Mrs Diep's claims.'

Trang's stomach went hollow. Ten seconds before, he'd been thinking in the millions, and now ...

'Fifteen thousand?'

'It's a generous offer, considering,' Dooher was saying. 'I know Mrs Diep feels that she's been wronged, but let's not pretend that she wasn't a willing participant in this whole unfortunate scenario. This is as far as we're going to go. I know the Archbishop. If I were you, I'd take it. That's honest advice.'

Trang forced himself to remain seated, to keep his voice calm. 'We were asking—'

'I know, I know, but look, Victor - do you mind if I call you Victor? - let's not pussy-foot around. You and I know what you've been doing. You've been out beating the bushes trying to find witnesses or victims or whatever you want to call them, to accuse priests of things that didn't happen, or are very difficult to prove. It's going to get ugly and it's going to take forever and PS you're going to lose. You're going to waste five years of your young life.' Dooher was standing by the windows. 'Come here a minute. Come here.'

Obediently, Trang rose and crossed the room. The height was dizzying. The floor upon which they stood seemed to end, unsupported, in space. Dooher stepped to the window, his shoes nearly touching the glass. He motioned Trang up next to him, stood too close to him, threateningly close.

Dooher picked up the thread of the discussion. 'You know, not a day goes by that I don't stand here looking down over the city reflecting on the frivolity of our fellow men. All these buildings, all this scrambling activity ...' He leaned right into the window.'... All that humanity down on the street, tiny and busy as ants, doing so much that is frivolous. You know what I'm saying?' 

'You are warning me about the dangers of bringing a frivolous lawsuit.'

A beam lit Dooher's face. 'That's exactly right, Victor. That's what I'm doing. Because I must tell you - this may be old news to you - that the courts are overworked as it is and extremely sensitive to frivolous lawsuits. Extremely sensitive. They smell frivolous and you got fines and even suspensions like you wouldn't believe. Bad stuff, very bad. Especially for sole practitioners such as yourself. Courts have been known to put 'em right out of business.'

Trang straightened himself, moved away from the windows. 'This lawsuit isn't frivolous.'

'Mrs Diep's may have some merit. We agree. Hence the fifteen thousand. Look.' Dooher laid a hand on his shoulder, seeming to push him out over the city. 'I was going to play hardball with you, Victor, and not make any offer. But when I told Jim Flaherty - the Archbishop - that you would be fined and have to pay our fees, and possibly be suspended from the Bar and so on ... well, he insisted I convey to you this warning and offer the really generous settlement. Myself, I hate to give away strategy, but His Excellency doesn't want you to suffer, and if you go ahead with this lawsuit, you're going to.'

'That's a bald enough threat, Mr Dooher.'

'Not at all. It's friendly advice. Here, let's sit back down.' Dooher was shepherding him back toward the couch. 'Over the years we've had hundreds of cases with litigants who viewed the Church as deep pockets. Some kid's skateboarding on the steps of one of our buildings and breaks his leg. Dad hits us for liability - okay, we settle, sometimes. But some greedy people have attorneys who don't stop there - they want negligence due to faulty maintenance, punitive damages, that kind of thing. These cases always lose.'

Dooher picked up the check from the coffee table and dropped it in Trang's lap. 'You know why they lose, and you know why your amended complaint will lose? Because if you ask for three million dollars, you enter the realm of bullshit, and bullshit walks in this town, Victor. I've seen it happen a hundred times. Whereas there, on your lap, is fifteen thousand real dollars - you take a third, right? - five grand for your trouble, ten for Mrs Diep, and you get to spend your next five years a lot more profitably.'

Trang felt as though he would be sick. What Dooher was saying just couldn 't be true,, this case had to be a winner. It was the best idea Trang had ever had. If this one couldn't make him some money, he wasn't going to survive in the law. His mouth was sandpaper. Looking down, he saw his coffee cup and grabbed for it. Cold. He swallowed, nearly gagging, trying to think of some response. 'I can't take the check without consulting with my client.'

The buzz at the telephone gave him a moment's reprieve.

Dooher picked it up, nodded, said, 'Okay, let her come on in.' He shrugged an apology to Trang as the door opened and one of those impossible women appeared in the doorway - at least Trang's height, her skin flawless, her teeth even. 

One step in, she stopped. 'Oh, I'm sorry. Janey said—. I didn't mean to interrupt.'

Dooher was coming forward. 'It's all right, Christina. Mr Trang and I were just about finished.'

He introduced them. Trang shook her cool and firm hand with his own hot and damp one.

There was, from Trang's perspective, a long and awkward moment, eye contact between the woman and Dooher. She seemed overly self-conscious that she was interrupting, that there was another person in the room. It was clear she had expected a personal moment, and was somehow disappointed.

At the same time, Dooher's bravado faltered. She was obviously one of his young associates, and yet it was clear that he was tongue-tied with her.

No, Trang thought, it was mutual, both of them somehow at risk. 'I could step outside,' he said.

Christina recovered. 'No, really. It's just a short message.' She was back at Dooher. 'I just wanted to tell you that I left my resume with Joe, as promised.'

'Good.'

She shrugged. 'Joe says from here on it's out of his hands.' She deepened the pitch of her voice, put on a stern face. 'After this, Christina, it all gets pretty objective.' A flash of that connection again between them.

'Objective works in your favor, Christina. I'm glad you let me know. We'll talk later?'

Trang thought he caught a note of panic in the question. It was nowhere near as casual as it sounded. Dooher desperately wanted to see her again, needed to see her again. He could put on any act he wanted in their negotiations, but here in this moment Trang was certain he glimpsed an underlying vulnerability.

But she kept it light, said sure, and apologized to Trang again before turning and leaving them.

When she'd gone, Dooher was lost another instant, staring after her. Then, as though surprised to find Trang still with him, he put on his smile again. The animation. 'So, Mr Trang - Victor - you want to use my phone, call Mrs Diep now? Feel free.'

But the woman's entrance had ruined Dooher's rhythm. He wasn't the same power broker he'd been. Suddenly the pushing to settle right now seemed overdone. It gave Trang some hope. Dooher wasn't as tough as the game he was playing. He could be beaten, and certainly Trang would never know if he didn't play it out at least a little further. 'I think Mrs Diep and I should confer in person.'

Dooher shrugged. No show of disappointment. He was back in his persona. 'Well, that's your decision. The check will be here until noon tomorrow. After that, the offer is rescinded. You understand that?'

Trang was standing. 'Yes, I do. And thank you for the warning. I'll consider it very strongly.' 

A dim shadow fell across Sergeant Glitsky's desk and he lifted his eyes from the report he was pretending to read. A woman stood, back-lit from the fluorescents overhead. Wearily, he pushed his chair back, glanced up at the clock on the wall. Five to five, and here's a random witness come to the Hall. His lucky day. 'Help you?' he asked.

'I might have remembered something.'

Glitsky had no idea who she was. He stood up. 'I'm sorry, you are ...?'

She put her hand out. 'Christina Cairera. Tania Willows? We met this morning at the Rape Crisis Center.'

Glitsky narrowed his eyes. It was possible, he supposed. He really wasn't noticing women these days. The woman this morning wore jeans and a wet jacket and had soaking hair hanging down in front of her face. But he still didn't think he could have picked this woman out of a line-up as the person he'd interviewed in the morning.

He ran a hand across his forehead, assayed a broken smile. 'Keen eye for detail. It's what makes a good cop.' He sat back down, motioned she do the same, on the wooden chair by his desk. 'So what did you remember?'

'I'm not sure it's anything. I was downtown applying for a job. I thought it would be okay if I stopped in without an appointment.'

'It's fine,' Glitsky said, then repeated, 'what did you remember?'

'He has a tattoo.'

In the distant future, Glitsky thought, these days would be remembered as the Age of Bodily Mutilation. Everybody had a tattoo. Or a nipple ring, or at least something metal pushed through some erectile tissue somewhere.

But unless Tania Willows's rapist/killer had a tattoo of his full name with middle initial, it probably wasn't going to be distinctive enough to help Glitsky identify him. But the woman, Christina, was going on.

'I don't know why I didn't think of it this morning, when we were talking.' She touched her head. 'It just wasn't here. There were a lot of other things going on. And then I was thinking about Tania, what had happened - waiting for the bus, and I saw this guy in an ad with a tattoo . . .'

'Okay.'

She paused a minute, swallowed. 'It was on his penis.'

Glitsky pulled himself back up to the desk, sat up straighten Okay, this might be something.

'On his penis?'

She nodded. 'He asked her if she wanted to see his tattoo, and she said sure, thinking it was ... I mean, you know. Not there. She never thought that.'

Glitsky broke a rare smile. 'The old "come up and see my etchings" trick, updated for the romantic nineties. Did Tania happen to notice what it said?'

Christina shook her head no. 'I'm sure she didn't. She would have ...' She trailed off, but the pretty head kept shaking, looking down - embarrassed, Glitsky surmised, by the topic. Her eyes came up to his, and he saw that in fact she was trying to control herself, her laughter.

He knew exactly what she was thinking.

'Not Wendy then?'

'It's not funny,' she said. 'I don't mean to laugh. No, it wasn't Wendy, I don't think.'

The Wendy joke: when the man got an erection, the tattoo read: Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day.

Suddenly, Glitsky, whose professional life was a litany of violent deaths, who hadn't slept more than four hours any night in the past month, who had little money, three young children, and whose thirty-nine-year-old wife was dying of cancer - suddenly something broke in him, as it had done in Christina that morning, and he couldn't stop himself from laughing. Out loud.

The Chief of Homicide, Lieutenant Frank Batiste, had come out of his cubicle to see if anything was wrong. Glitsky hadn't laughed here in the Homicide Detail in his memory. Maybe nowhere else either.

'You okay, Abe?'

Glitsky had it back under control. He raised a hand to Batiste, looked over at Christina. 'That never happens to me. I'm very sorry.' His eyes glistened with tears. The fit had gone on for nearly half a minute.

'It's okay.' Christina had lost it for a second or two herself. 'It's supposed to be good for you.'

Glitsky wiped his eyes, took in a breath, sighed. 'Whew.' Batiste went back inside his office. 'Sorry anyway,' he repeated. Then, unexpected: 'I don't know what I'm doing here.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't recognize you four hours after our interview. I crack up over some rapist's tattoo. I ought to take a leave, come back when I'm worth something.'

She didn't know how to respond to such a personal exposure, but felt she should say something. 'You said your wife was sick. Maybe your brain is concentrating on her?'

Truly sobered now, Glitsky reached for the Willows file. 'That could be it,' he said.

'Maybe you should call her? See if she's feeling better?'

He waited, deciding whether he should say it. Denial didn't seem to help, so maybe admission once in a while wouldn't hurt. 'She's not going to get better,' he said. 'She has cancer.'

Christina sat back. 'Oh, I'm so sorry.'

He waved it off, opened the file, stared at it for a few seconds. 'Was there anything else you remembered?'

CHAPTER SEVEN

Outside Dooher's windows, the city lights glowed up through the clouds. He sat in his darkened office, elbows on the arms of his chair, his fingers templed at his lips. In the hallways, he could hear the occasional voice - all of the associates at McCabe & Roth worked late.

Dooher ran a tight ship. His crew - the young men and women who hoped, after seven years, to make partner and thus in theory secure their financial future - were expected to bill forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year. This left them no time during the 'regular' 9-to-5 workday to do administrative work, answer their mail, talk to husbands, wives, significant others, eat, take breaks (or vacations, for that matter), go to the bathroom, small details like that.

To bill eight hours, the associates had to work at least ten, and more likely twelve hours every day. If they wanted their two-week vacation on top of that, they could count on working at least ten weekends a year. So at this time every day, the firm hummed along. Mark Dooher, who had overseen the downsizing and belt-tightening that had made the place profitable again, felt a profound satisfaction in what he'd wrought. People weren't necessarily happy, but they put out some serious work.

For which, he reminded himself, they were handsomely rewarded. And nobody had ever said a law firm was in business to make its members happy.

He rose and walked around his desk, stopping at the edge of the windows again to look out. Now, with the clouds, there was no view, merely a sensation of floating.

She'd left her resume!

Telling him it was his move.

Joe Avery was at his desk, plugging away. Dooher knocked quietly at his office door and Avery looked up in surprise. Two visits from the managing partner in two weeks! Unheard of.

'Still at it?' Dooher asked. 'I thought after last night you'd call it early.'

Avery struggled for the proper tone. 'That was a good party, sir. I meant to come up and thank you earlier, but this Baker matter...'

Dooher waved him down. Shut the kid up. 'I'm sure it's in good hands, Joe. I came down to pick up the summer apps file.'

A worried look crossed Avery's face. 'It's not...? I mean, is there some problem?'

'Not at all, not at all.' Stepping into the office, he closed the door behind him. 'We're handing off your summer clerk duties to another associate, Joe. I think you're going to find yourself with more meaningful work.'

'Sir?'

Dooher cut off the expected barrage of questions, raising his hand again. 'I've said more than I should, Joe. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned anything, but you might as well know. The summer clerks are going to have to get by without your involvement. There are bigger items on your agenda, and more than that I really can't say.'

In another minute, he had the wine box full of resumes under his arm.

On his cellphone in the car, driving home, he left a message. 'Christina. This is Mark Dooher. Just wanted to thank you for keeping me in the loop on your application. I'm proud of you. You made the right decision. If you need to talk to me, anytime, the number here in my car is ...'

He left his home number as well.

Christina didn't hear Dooher's message. She'd talked to her parents in Ojai when she'd finally gotten home from her meeting with Glitsky, and then decided that her day - which had begun with ashes at 6:30 - was over. She was plain done in.

If the phone rang at this time of night, it would just be Joe anyway, and she really didn't feel like talking to him. So, with the sound turned down on her machine, she was snuggled under her comforter, in bed and beginning to doze.

The doorbell rang, and she heard Joe's voice. 'Christina?' Then a soft knock. 'Christina, you there?'

She knew she could just lie there and pretend she was asleep, but she wasn't able to do it. Exhausted and angry, she grabbed her bathrobe, wrapping it around her. 'One second.'

Unhooking the chain, she opened the door.

'You're in bed already?'

'No. Actually I'm standing here in the doorway. You got a problem with that?'

'No. I just thought we might... what's the matter?'

'Oh, nothing. Not a thing.' She whirled around, crossed the front room, snapped on the floorlamp and plopped herself down on the sofa. 'You coming in or not?'

He closed the door after him. 'Why are you so mad?'

She pulled her robe close around her, glaring up at him. 'See if maybe you can guess?'

He spread his arms, all innocence. 'Chris. We had a misunderstanding, that's all. Your resume's on file now.'

'File . .. that's good. It really is.'

'That's a fact. It's on Mark Dooher's desk at this instant, as we speak, in fact.' 

'In fact,' she repeated.

He went on, oblivious: 'He picked them all up tonight. They're giving the summer hires to somebody else.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm moving up.' He ventured a step closer. 'Come on, Chris, don't be mad at me, not tonight. Tonight we should celebrate.'

'I don't want to celebrate. I don't even know what we'd be celebrating. I don't even know if there should be a "we" anymore, I really don't.'

'Chris . . .' He sat on the far end of the couch.

'I mean it, Joe. Okay, you're moving up, maybe, and I'm glad for you, but where are we going? Are we getting engaged? Are we getting married? I mean, what is all this? I don't get to apply to your firm because we might be an item someday?'

'We are . . .'

'No, we're not.' She held out her left hand. 'You see a ring there? I don't. We're still trying to decide, Joe, aren't we? We're still looking at the facts.'

He went silent. 'How am I supposed to respond to that, Chris? You know it's—'

'No! You're just getting to where you think that after all the time you've put in on our relationship, it would be nice if it worked out, after all.' She swiped at the angry tears that had broken. 'But the truth is that you don't like how I act, how I am. You certainly don't want me working around you, that's obvious.'

'But I do!'

'Which is why you didn't want me to apply?'

'That's not true. You know there's a rule about—'

'Stop lying to me! That's not it and you know it! We are, in fact, not actually engaged, you realize that? So there's no reason—'

'But we were going to be!'

She laughed. 'Here's how that happens, Joe. Listen up careful now. One person asks and the other says, "Yes." Not too difficult. So how about it -do you want to marry me?'

'Chris, you know—'

'Goddamn it, Joe! It's a yes or no question.'

'But it isn't! You keep saying you don't want kids, ever, and I don't think—'

Suddenly, she bolted upright on the sofa, kicking out at him. 'Get out of here! I mean it, get the hell out of here!'

The lifebuoy in Santa Barbara Bay had a deep-toned bell and it didn't seem to be far off, although the fog was so heavy she couldn't see it. She was trying to save her baby from drowning. And she couldn't see it, either. Didn't even remember if it was a boy or girl, though of course she knew. It just wasn't in her consciousness at that exact moment.

The tolling of the lifebuoy wouldn't stop, though. It was pulling her forward, toward it, through the water, which seemed to be thickening as she moved.

There was the baby, so close, just out of her reach, disappearing into the brine. 'Wait! Wait! Don't...' Sitting up, now, in a sweat. Her eyes opened on the clock next to her bed: 2:15.

The tolling continued - her doorbell. She tossed off the covers and pulled her robe around herself again.

'Who is it?'

'It's me, Joe.'

Still groggy, too tired for any more anger, she sighed, flicked on the overhead, and opened the door, leaving the chain in place. Hangdog, he stood there, his hair damp as the coat of the suit he wore, hands at his sides. He'd been out walking around for a while, perhaps since he'd left earlier. 'I'm a total jerk,' he said.

'That's a good start.'

'I'm sorry.'

She stood looking at him through the crack in the door. Finally, she closed it, undid the chain, and pulled it open. He came forward into her, wet and smelling of wool. She leaned into him, gradually bringing her arms up to encircle him. They remained that way a long moment before Joe let go of her, backed up a step, and theatrically went down on one knee.

'Joe . . .'

'No. This isn't a joke. I want to know if you want to marry me.'

'Hypothetically, or what?' She didn't mean it to come out so harshly, but this hadn't exactly been the way she'd dreamed it (if in fact she ever had dreamed it about Joe Avery).

He wasn't going to be side-tracked by semantics. 'No, not hypothetically. If I asked it wrong I'm sorry. I'm talking real life here. Will you marry me, Christina?' His hand grasped at the fall of her robe as his desperate eyes came up to her. 'Will you please say you'll marry me? I don't think I could live without you.'

It surprised her that it was not at all pathetic, as it might have been. He'd finally woken up, realizing he was going to lose her. She saw it in his face. He thought, at this moment, that he loved her. Maybe she could work on that, make it last. It struck her that this was the best she was going to do, and it wasn't that bad, not really.

At last, she nodded. 'Yes,' she whispered. 'Okay.'

She reached down and pulled his head close up against her. His arms came around her, clutched her to him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

On the morning of St Patrick's Day, Mark Dooher stood at the door to Wes's apartment and shook his head in disbelief.

'How do you live like this?'

Farrell surveyed his living room, which he persisted in calling his salon. It looked about how it always had since he'd moved in half a year ago, with the books and old newspapers piled on the floor, the television astride the folding chair, the forlorn futon in its unfinished oak frame.

Well, all right, this morning there were a few additions to which the fastidious - such as Dooher here - might object. His boxer Bart had spent a few delirious moments savoring the aromas of one of the used bath towels and had strewn its remains across the rug. And last night, Wes had ordered Chinese food and hadn't quite gotten around to putting away all the little cartons. And, come to think of it, there was the pizza delivery container from two - three? - nights ago on the brick and board bookcase. The paper plate on which Wes had served himself the reheated spaghetti he'd had for breakfast decorated the floor next to the futon, near his coffee mug.

And, of course, there was Bart himself- sixty-five pounds of salivating dog, lending a certain aroma to the digs, sprawling over half of the futon, chewing a nylon bone.

'Hey, do I make fun of your house when I come over?'

'I'm not making fun. I am truly appalled.'

Farrell gave the place another once-over. 'I think it's homey. It's got that lived-in feel. Realtors actually pay people to fix their houses up like this...'

Dooher was crossing the darkened yellow rug, negotiating some ambiguous stains. 'I'm getting some coffee.'

'So, Mr Dooher, tell me again how you found all this out about divorce, one of which you are not getting.'

They were in the kitchen, drinking their coffee by the window that looked out over the early-morning traffic on Junipero Serra Boulevard. The old metal-legged table was pocked with cigarette burns at the edges of the Formica. Bart had come in to join them, settled on the floor under Wes's feet.

'Gabe Stockman.'

'Who is?'

'Who is the official attorney for the Archdiocese.' 

'And this just came up in conversation?'

'More or less. Actually, we were on the golf course last week and he started talking about annulment. In the Church.'

'Maybe I could get an annulment,' Wes said. 'Is there alimony with annulment? But why do you care about annulment? When last we spoke, you and Sheila were in a state of bliss.'

'We are.'

'That's not what Lydia says.'

Dooher had his mug nearly to his mouth when his hand stopped with it, turning it around slowly. 'Lydia?'

'We still do speak, you know. Mostly she's digging to find out the secret location where I've squirreled away my last two coins so that she can take them to rub together, but occasionally she does mention something human. And she told me that Sheila thinks the two of you are in trouble, that you in fact might be nearly suicidal which, if that were the case, would make me sad.'

Farrell put aside the wise-guy pose, rested his own mug on the table, his hands encircling it. This was his best friend and Lydia's information had worried him. It was why he'd asked Dooher over this morning to pick him up so they could drive downtown together for a game of squash and get a chance to talk. He wanted to find out if Lydia's information were true, and if so, if there was anything he could do to help. 'Are you all right?'

'I can't say I'm in a state of bliss, but I'm fine.'

'Which is why you're getting all the facts on annulment?'

'I don't want an annulment. I don't want a divorce. And I'm not suicidal.' He pointed a finger. 'Annulment came up and I thought since you and Lydia ... I thought you'd be fascinated. I thought maybe it could help you somehow.'

'How?'

'Well, the short answer is it can't.'

'Great. That is fascinating.'

Dooher was smiling. 'Nevertheless, I thought there might be something in it for you, so since Stockman brought it up, I asked. But the bad news is that there's no annulment without a civil divorce. Which of course puts you back where you are.'

'That's okay. Bart and I are happy here, starving and all.' But Farrell the lawyer couldn't let it go, even if it didn't affect him directly. 'I thought the only way you could get an annulment was if you never consummated the marriage, and somehow the existence of my children would cost me credibility there.'

'The other way to get an annulment is if one of the spouses isn't psychologically capable of making a real commitment.'

Farrell sat back in his chair, his hands outstretched. 'Well, there you are! You have just described my soon-to-be-ex-wife. Psychologically, possibly pathologically, incapable of commitment, that's her all over.'

'Wes, you were married for twenty-seven years.' 

'Twenty-nine, actually, but—'

'However many, that's going to count as a commitment.'

'A mere twenty-nine years? Where I come from, that's barely going steady. My parents were together fifty-six years. Now that's a commitment.'

'It's beautiful,' Dooher said, 'but twenty-nine years is going to count.'

 'Damn.'

They had their three games of squash. Dooher won two, letting Wes take the second, 11-9, before creaming him 11-3 in the third. When they'd been younger, both had been roughly equal as athletes; they had, in fact, remained a double-play threat through high school. But in the past few years, and especially in the six months since Farrell had been living alone, Wes had put on about ten pounds and, no surprise, it slowed him down.

They walked together down to the Hall of Justice, where Wes was having a meeting with Art Drysdale, the Chief Assistant District Attorney, about a client of his, Levon Copes, who'd been charged in a rape/murder.

Farrell had originally thought the case had a chance to go to trial and, since the defendant was a middle-aged white guy who owned an apartment building, he had money to pay his lawyer. The initial retainer had been $45,000, the check had cleared, and Wes had hoped, if he played it right, that the trial could carry him financially for a couple of years, even with Lydia chipping away at whatever she could.

Since his client's arrest, though, he'd read the discovery - the prosecution's evidence - and concluded that there must have been some mistake. There wasn't nearly enough, in his opinion, to go to trial at all, much less get a conviction. So Wes was going to try to talk Drysdale into dropping the charges altogether. It would be extremely unusual in a case like this, but, he thought, possible.

His success would be the best possible news for his client, if not financially for Wes. But he had no choice. He was a lawyer; if he could get his client off, he had to do it.

Dooher had listened sympathetically to all of this, then left Farrell at the Hall of Justice.

Now he was walking alone uptown the ten or so blocks to his office. The weather continued damnably Irish. The banshee was howling off the Bay only a few blocks to the east, the cloud cover occasionally dipped low enough to become fog, and the soft drizzle ate into his bones.

Dooher was wearing a light business suit and no overcoat, but he didn't feel the cold. For the first time since she'd left her resume, he was seeing Christina again. In fifteen minutes.

The engagement ring infuriated him.

The fucking chintzy little fifteen-hundred-dollar, quarter-carat trinket - he wanted to rip it off her finger, stomp it under his foot, slap her silly for accepting the stupid thing. 

But he wasn't going to do that. He was going to smile and say, 'It's really nice, Christina. I'm happy for both of you. Congratulations.'

They were in a cafeteria down Market Street from McCabe & Roth. She'd left a message asking to meet him, and for her own reasons didn't want it to be in the office. She thought it might be awkward. She seemed embarrassed at the explanation, her head tilted to one side, not meeting his gaze. 'I just thought that after our talk, after . . . everything you did for me . . .'

'I didn't do anything.'

'Well, I certainly wouldn't have applied without you, and now with me and Joe ...' She twisted at the ring, gave Dooher a hopeful look. 'Anyway, now that we are engaged, there wouldn't be much point in going on with the application process, and I thought it would only be fair to come and tell you in person.'

Dooher fiddled with his own coffee cup. 'You know, Christina, not to get too technical, but the rule regarding personal relationships isn't exactly written in stone. It's devised more to discourage the associates. We've had two or three couples in the past.'

He'd fired them, but he left that unsaid.

Forcing his easy smile, though his stomach churned, he risked reaching over and touching her hand lightly. 'But again, I'm giving away the house secrets.'

Her remarkable green eyes sparkled briefly. 'They're safe with me. I'll take them to my grave.'

'It's the only reason I tell you.'

'And I appreciate it.'

Their eyes met and held for an instant. Then Christina shrugged and the smile faded.

'The point is,' he persisted, 'that if it's not a problem for you and Joe personally, I don't think it would stand in the way of you coming aboard, if that's still what you'd like to do.' Not only didn't he think it, he was the managing partner and it was a certainty. He'd see to it. But he was tiptoeing here, afraid to push too hard and scare her away.

'I don't know,' she said.

'What don't you know?'

'Just . . .' Twisting the ring, round and round. 'Just if I'd want to start with the rules being bent. I'd want to be like everybody else.'

Dooher's chuckle was real. 'Believe me, once the work starts getting given out, you'll feel just like one of the gang. Do you have any other offers yet?'

'No.'

'Well, I'm just saying I wouldn't withdraw yet, on the theory that it's always a good idea to keep your options open until they get closed for you.'

'I know that, in general, but . . .' A silence, then her eyes lit again, a feeble flame. 'Damn you, Mark.' The face lighting now. 'This was supposed to be easy.' 

He sat back in his chair. 'I'm trying to make it easy.'

Shaking her head. 'No, I mean just letting this whole thing go, but then here you are, Mr Reasonable...'

'I'm not trying to stop you from letting it go, if that's what you want. I just want you to be dealing from the facts.'

She seemed to jump in her chair. 'Ahh! Don't say that word!'

'What word?'

'Facts. God, spare me from the facts.'

A little came out about Joe, and Dooher told her, lightly, she'd better get used to it if she was going to marry him. 'When's the happy day, by the way?'

She shook her head, not exactly the picture of hopeful expectation. 'It's not final yet. We thought we ought to wait about a year.'

Dooher let out the breath he realized he'd been suppressing since he'd first seen the ring. A year? Plenty of time.

The world could change in a year.

On the third floor of the Hall of Justice, a gray-blue block of concrete and glass at 7th and Bryant, Chief Assistant District Attorney Art Drysdale was having a discussion with an assistant district attorney named Amanda Jenkins and Sergeant Abe Glitsky regarding a murder case: People v. Levon Copes.

Copes had a tattoo which did not, as it turned out, read Wendy, but, more prosaically, Levon.

Unfortunately for the cause of justice, Levon's arrest had come about after Glitsky had interviewed several residents of the building he owned and lived in (and where Tania Willows, his victim, had resided as well). He learned that Levon's tattoo was no secret - Copes talked about it all the time.

So Glitsky had a pretty good idea of the identity of Tania's killer from the beginning of his investigation. Finding other damning evidence hadn't been too hard. Fibers in Tania's bed that matched with clothes in Copes's closet; the same type of rope that had strangled Tania was in the building's basement, to which Copes had the only key; his hairs were in her bed.

So Glitsky had gone to the DA's office with his evidence. Normally Art Drysdale would have reviewed this and assigned a prosecutor. But Drysdale had been on vacation.

Which left Les McCann to handle administrative matters. McCann, a retired-on-duty drunk with seniority, had assigned the case to Amanda Jenkins, who was on record as saying that sex criminals were worse than murderers. In the Hall, it was common currency that she was perhaps not the soul of objectivity when it came to analyzing evidence in cases like Copes.

She had reviewed the file. She'd had a talk with Abe Glitsky. He told her about the tattoo, which had clinched the fact of Copes's guilt for her. Armed with that knowledge, she had gotten Les McCann's approval to go to the Grand Jury and seek an indictment, and Copes had been arrested. 

This morning, though, Art Drysdale - home from vacation - got a call from Wes Farrell, who inquired if Drysdale had taken vast quantities of mind-altering drugs while he'd been away. Because based on the discovery Farrell had seen, there wasn't enough in the way of evidence to support a murder charge on Levon Copes.

What, Farrell wondered, was going on?

This was the question Drysdale now put to Jenkins. Her short dark-green skirt rode high over legs that, while heavy, possessed some indefinable quality that tended to stop male conversation when she sat and crossed them. They were uncrossed now, her feet flat on the floor, hands clasped tightly on her lap as she was explaining to her boss all about the tattoo and her witnesses and so on.

'Okay, but so what?' Drysdale asked. Feet up on his desk, effortlessly juggling three baseballs as he often did, he appeared calm, though Glitsky knew him better and wasn't fooled. 'I can't believe the Grand Jury indicted on this nonsense and I'm doubly disappointed in you, Amanda' - he stopped juggling long enough to point a finger - 'for getting conned into this.'

Glitsky, in a flight jacket and dark blue pants, leaned forward in his chair. His eyes flicked to Jenkins, came back to Drysdale. 'I didn't con anybody, sir.'

Drysdale palmed the balls in one hand and leaned over his desk. He knew all about Glitsky's home situation, was inclined to be sensitive on a personal level - but this was business, and Glitsky was, usually, one of the cops that the DA's office could count on. So he had a gentle tone. 'Figure of speech, Abe.'

'How 'bout this, Art? I didn't get conned, either.' Jenkins' demeanor was severe as a sandstorm. 'Abe didn't get around to the duct tape.'

Silver duct tape had been used to bind Tania Willows's hands to the bed's brass railings, and on the inside, sticky part of one of the strips of tape, Glitsky had found a fingerprint that belonged to Levon Copes.

Drysdale sat back. 'I know about the duct tape, but again, so what?'

'So that proves Levon Copes did it.'

'And how exactly does it do that?'

Jenkins held her lips in a tight line. Furious at this inquisition, she held her voice in a monotone. 'Copes pulls the tape' - she was pantomiming his actions - 'and his fingerprint stays on the inside. This means not only was he in the woman's room, but he was in it when the tape got unwound, which was when she was tied up.'

Drysdale nodded. 'I was afraid that was the answer.'

Glitsky spoke again, again wearily. 'It's a good answer, Art. In fact, it's the right answer.'

But Drysdale wasn't hearing it. 'No. Sorry, guys, but how about if our landlord Copes came in to fix some pipes, started undoing this magical tape and left his fingerprint on it. Then he simply forgot to take the tape with him when he left. The next day, our perp comes in to do what he did, and there is the convenient tape. Why couldn't it have happened that way?'

God, it got tiring, Glitsky was thinking. There was always some other way it could have happened. He knew Drysdale was playing the devil's advocate. None of them doubted that Copes had left an incriminating fingerprint on the inside of the duct tape, but - the point - that wasn't good enough. Drysdale sat back, pondering his options. 'The tattoo is what screwed this all up.'

Glitsky, from a deep well: 'The tattoo means he did it, too.'

'Which is where you guys went wrong. You don't start out knowing that.' He held up a hand. 'Hey, I believe with all my heart that Levon Copes is our man. I don't see how in the hell we're going to prove it, though.'

Suddenly, Glitsky let out a heavy sigh and stood up. 'I thought the duct tape was pretty good. You titans let me know how it all comes out. You need me at the trial, if it gets to trial, I'm there.'

The door closed silently behind him as he left the office. His co-workers sat, stunned, in the ensuing vacuum. Finally, Drysdale blew a little gust of air through puffed cheeks. 'Abe's having a hard time.'

'The duct tape is pretty good, you know,' Jenkins responded.

Drysdale started juggling again. 'You're dreaming,' he said.

Glitsky had to get out of the Hall, out on to the street. He checked in at Homicide - no messages - then walked the wind-blown back stairway out to the city lot behind the building. He always had half a dozen witnesses on other cases he could interview. It was the constant in the job.

So he was driving west through the fog, toward his home - vaguely - and the Bush Street projects where ...

He didn't know what bothered him the most, that he'd almost lost his temper in the office, or that Drysdale had been right. You really didn't want to start with a certainty about who'd committed what crime. If you did, as Abe had done in this case, there was a temptation to lose sight of the evidentiary chain - that sense of link-by-link accretion which eventually became the working blueprint that a prosecutor would use to build a case that would convince a jury.

It was, by necessity, a slow and tedious process, where you questioned yourself- your own motives, your preconceptions, your work habits, every little thing you did - every step of the way. And it was best if the things you discovered led you to the only possible correct answer.

He slammed his hand, hard, against the steering wheel.

Glitsky couldn't say exactly why he stopped by the Rape Crisis Center.

There really was no official reason. Maybe it was a human one - maybe he needed to talk to somebody. He told himself he was fostering good community
relations, something the men in blue were always encouraged to pursue.

'Ms Carerra said she would like to be kept up on the progress of things.'

'She's not here right now,' Sam Duncan replied. 'But if it's not a secret, I wouldn't mind hearing about it. The progress, I mean. Would you like to sit down?'

He took the folding chair in front of her desk, turned it around, and straddled it backward. 'It doesn't look very good.'

Sam's shoulders sagged an inch. 'Why doesn't this come as a shock? What's the problem this time?'

'You've been through this before?'

It was not quite a laugh. 'I've been around rape and the law for about ten years. Does that answer your question?' She sighed. 'So another creep's gonna walk?'

Glitsky temporized. 'Maybe not. They might still go ahead. The prosecutor wants to put Mr Copes away, the Grand Jury did indict. I'm going to keep looking.' He paused. 'I think the problem was that I did my job backwards.'

She cocked an eye at him. 'That's funny. I thought I just heard a cop admit he might have made a mistake. What do you mean, you went backwards?'

He explained it all to her - Christina and the tattoo, the evidence that really wasn't admissible. Finally he wound down.

'So this Copes? There's no doubt he did it?'

'Not to me, but that's never the point, as you probably know. The tattoo can't be mentioned. It's hearsay.'

'This sucks. And of course he's got a million-dollar lawyer who's going to make a million more?'

'He's got Wes Farrell. He's good enough, but—'

She interrupted him. 'I don't understand these defense lawyers. I'm serious. I don't understand how any human being can take a case like this. I mean, this man Farrell, he's got to know his client did it, raped and killed this poor woman. Doesn't he? He knows about the tattoo, all of that...'

'Sure.'

'And he still—'

'Best defense the law allows. It's what makes our country great.' Glitsky shrugged. 'Maybe he needs the money. Maybe it's just a job. Murder cases pay.'

'But if he knows ... I mean, if you really, truly know for sure, how can you . . .?'

'It's amazing, isn't it?'

'It blows my mind, Sergeant, it truly does.'

Whistling, Wes Farrell took off his white shirt and tie in the cramped unisex bathroom down the hall from his law office. Farrell often thought he was too easily amused by stupid things, such as the T-shirt he had been wearing under his suit all day - green with gold lettering that read: Take me drunk, I'm home.

Okay. So he was getting divorced, his kids didn't see him much, his career generally sucked, but his life wasn't all bad. He had his health, and that was number one, right? Give or take a few pounds, he still had his body. Lots of acquaintances. And at least one true and great friend, Mark Dooher. How many people could say that much?

Plus attitude. He had attitude in spades, and that's what pulled him through in the here-and-now - that positive attitude, the vision that day-to-day life itself was okay, even fun.

And now, thank God, he had Levon Copes. He loved Levon Copes. Levon was a lank-haired, slack-jawed, sallow-fleshed, hollow-chested, low-life, weak-willed, in-bred and brain-dead sociopath, for sure, but..

'All together now,' he said aloud into the mirror. 'DOESN'T MEAN HE ISN'T A NICE PERSON!!'

Except that Levon really wasn't a nice person.

But Wes Farrell was going to forgive him for that. He wasn't going to forget about the heinous crime he'd undoubtedly committed. But he had to admire one thing about Mr Copes - the man had a serious bank account.

Art Drysdale had not given up on the case, at least not yet. He'd told Farrell this morning that the District Attorney's office was planning a vigorous prosecution, as it did with all indictments, unless of course Farrell wanted to cop a plea.

No, Farrell had responded, he would go to trial on this one, thanks. Because this one was a winner. Farrell knew juries and he knew San Francisco, and you needed a lot more than they had on Levon Copes to convict anybody of murder here.

So he might be going to trial, to a trial that he could win, and a drawn-out murder trial meant that he was going to wind up billing his client a minimum of $ 150,000 before it was all over. And his client would pay it, gladly; it was the price of freedom.

God, he loved Levon!

So now - tonight - Wes was going to celebrate, maybe even get himself some horizontal female companionship for the first time since his separation. There was no denying it: he felt some spark tonight, some sense of life. He wasn't sure where it had come from, but he wasn't going to jinx it by worrying it to death. The ride's here, boys! Get on it or get out of the way!

He was going to start at Ghirardelli Square, for the view, to remind himself of where he lived, of why San Francisco was the greatest city in the Western World. Heading downtown, he'd hit Lefty O'Doul's, put himself on the outside of some corned beef. Then perhaps a stop by Lou the Greek's, the eclectic subterranean bar/restaurant that served the Hall of Justice community, the watering hole for the criminal legal community, of which he was - thanks to Levon Copes - a member in good standing.

What a city on this night! The possibilities were endless. Flush as he was - out of Levon's $45,000 retainer, he had kept $2,000 in cash out of his checking account, before Lydia could even see it to grab - he was going to cab it everywhere he went, bar-hopping - the Abbey Tavern, the little Shamrock . . . 

By 10:15, he'd had himself half a yard of ale, some outstanding mega-cholesterol food, three extended discussions with interesting people about subjects which had been totally engrossing even if now somewhat vague in his memory. His cabbie, Ahmal, was turning into his best friend - Ahmal had already cleared $140. He had parked the cab just around the corner from the Little Shamrock and would wait all night for Farrell's return.

Getting inside the door through the crush of people was a bit of a trial, but Wes persevered. He knew the place well. It was on his way home. Small, well kept, without discernible ferns of any kind, it was the oldest bar in the city - established in 1893! There was often a crowd up front or at the bar, but he knew that in the back there was a mellower area, furnished with rugs and couches and easy chairs - just like a living room, though not just like/us living room.

So he moved steadily, in no hurry, toward the back. They had waitresses working, which was unusual on a weekday - normally you ordered at the bar - and he had a pint of Bass in his hand before he'd gone twenty steps. The jukebox didn't drown out the people here, and especially tonight it didn't. The place was bedlam. Only now could he make out What A Fool Believes over the crowd noise. He thought it was fitting.

And there she was.

Through the jockeying mass of humanity, he saw her sitting on the arm of one of the couches, leaning forward on her arms, sensual curves everywhere, and one leg curled under her. She was a grown-up, which was about as close as he could guess for her age - beyond that it didn't matter.

Something about her was knocking him out.

He looked away, took another sip of beer, checked for signs of how drunk he was and decided not very, then looked back at her. Yep, she still looked good - medium-length dark hair with red highlights, great skin. Her face was alive, that was what it was. Her smile lit up all around her.

He got himself a little closer. She was in conversation with a couple on the couch next to her, and suddenly the woman who was half of the couple got up - it was magic - and went into the adjacent bathroom. Wes moseyed on over.

She slid off the arm of the couch, into the empty place next to the other half of the couple, a good-looking man. Put an arm around him. Uh oh, maybe not... then she looked right at Wes.

'I love your shirt,' she said. Then, 'This is my oldest brother, Larry. He was fun when he was younger.' She patted the arm of the couch and Wes moved up a step and sat where she'd been. 'Wes,' he said, sticking out his hand, which she took and shook. Over her head, he asked, 'How you doin', Larry?'

'Larry's loaded. Sally's taking him home. Sally's his wife. She just went

to the bathroom. I'm Sam. I'm staying.'

As it turned out, she didn't stay all that long. Sam had apparently been waiting at the Shamrock for someone who looked just like Wes to walk through the door and save her from a night of aimless drinking. So another beer later for each of them, they were arm-in-arm outside, and there was Ahmal, parked on 9th where Wes had left him. This made an impression on Sam.

He paid Ahmal fifty more at her place, a downstairs flat on Upper Ashbury, and while Sam was getting out, told his good buddy the cab driver to wait an hour more and if Wes didn't come back out, he could take off, and thanks for the memories.

The door closed behind them on a cosy space - a large open room with a low ceiling, old-fashioned brick walls, built-in and seemingly organized bookshelves, a wood-burning stove.

'You have a dog,' he said.

A cocker spaniel was waking up, stretching in a padded basket next to the stove. 'You're not allergic or anything, are you?'

'As a matter of fact, I myself own a dog.'

'I knew there was something about you ...'

'His name's Bart. He's a boxer.'

She leaned over to pet her little darling. 'This is Quayle,' Sam said, 'with a "y", just like Dan. You know, the brains of a cocker spaniel, so I thought, why not? Do you want another drink?'

'Not really. Would you like to come over here?' He held out his arms, and she gave Quayle one last pet, hesitated a moment, smiled, then walked to him.

She came naked through the door of the bedroom, a glass of Irish whiskey in each hand. The funny thing,' she said, 'is I don't normally do this.'

There was a blue liquid lava lamp from the 1960s or 1970s next to the bed. The windows were horizontal, high in the brick wall, at ground-level outdoors.

Wes was under a thick down comforter, hands behind his head. He reached out for one of the glasses. 'I don't, either.'

She handed him his glass and sat on his side of the bed. He thought she was as comfortable with her nakedness as it was possible to be, and also thought that was as it should be. Her body was toned and lush, nice breasts with tiny pink nipples. He rested his hand on her thigh. 'You can tell me the truth,' she said. 'It won't hurt my feelings. I can take it.'

'That is the truth. I was married for almost thirty years. Now this.'

You mean, this is the first time since you were married?'

'That was it. Am I blowing my cover here as man of the world?'

'No, I'm just surprised.'

'Why? It seemed natural enough to me. Pretty great, actually.'

She gave him her smile again.'That, too. Me, too, I mean. It's supposed to be such a hassle to get it right, especially the first time.' 

'Maybe not.'

She put her whiskey glass on the side table and slid in next to him, snuggling into his chest. After a minute, he could feel her begin to laugh.

'What's funny?'

'Well, the name thing . ..'

He thought a moment. 'Your name isn't Sam?'

This made her laugh. 'No, my name's Sam. I'm talking last names. You are at least Wes, aren't you?'

'Full disclosure coming up.' He patted her back reassuringly. 'Wes Farrell, Attorney at Law, at your service.'

She groaned. 'Oh, you're not a lawyer, not really?'

'Realler than a heart attack. We're everywhere.'

'Wes Farrell...' she said quietly. 'I feel like I...' She stiffened and sat up abruptly.

'What?' he asked.

'Wes Farrell!?'

'Au personne, which means something in French, I think.'

But the good humor seemed to have left her. 'You're Wes Farrell? Oh my God, I can't believe this.'

'This what? What are you—?'

'What am I ? What are you?'

'What am I what? Come on, Sam, don't—'

'Don't you don't me.' She was up now, grabbing a robe from a hook behind her on the wall. Pulling it around her - covering up - she turned and faced him. 'You're the Wes Farrell who's defending that scumbag Levon Copes, aren't you?'

'How do you know?'

'Don't worry, I know him.' She was fully engaged now, slamming her fists against her thighs, the bed, whatever was handy. 'I knew it, I just fucking knew it. God, my luck. I should have known.'

'Sam . . .'

'Don't Sam me either!' Walking around in little circles now. 'I'm sorry, but this just isn't going to work. I want you to go now. Would you please just leave?'

'Just leave?' But he was already sitting up, grabbing his pants from the floor.

''Yes. Just leave. Please.'

'Okay, okay. But I don't know why ...'

'Because I can't believe you'd do what you're doing with Levon Copes, that's why - trying to get him off. I can't believe this is you. Oh shit!'

'It's my job,' he said. 'I'm a lawyer, it's what I do.'

That reply stopped her dead. Suddenly, the energy left her. She let out a frustrated sigh and whirled around one last time. 'Just go, all right?'

He had his shoes in his hands, his shirt untucked. 'Don't worry, I'm gone.'

It had been more than an hour, and Ahmal had gone, too.
 

Mark and Sheila Dooher had said no more than a hundred words to each other all night. She had made the traditional New England boiled dinner which he normally loved, but he'd only picked at the food. At dinner, he'd been polite and distracted and then he'd excused himself, saying he felt like hitting a few balls at the driving range - he'd been playing more golf lately, an excuse to stay away from home longer, go out more often. He'd even asked her if she wanted to accompany him, but he really didn't want her to - she could tell - so she said no.

Now, near midnight, he was still up, reading in the downstairs library, a circular room in the turret, under her own office. When he got home from the driving range, he'd come in to say good night, kissed her like a sister, saying he had work to do. Would she mind if he went to the library and got some reading in, some research?

She couldn't take it anymore.

She stood in the doorway in her bathrobe. He'd lit a fire and it crackled faintly. He wasn't reading. He was sitting in his green leather chair, staring at the flames.

'Mark?'

'Yo.' He looked over at her. 'You all right? What's up?'

'You're still up.'

'The old brain just doesn't seem to want to slow down tonight. So I thought I'd just let it purr awhile.'

She took a tentative step or two into the room.

'What's it thinking about?'

'Oh, just things.'

Another step, two more, then she sat sideways on the ottoman near his feet. 'You can tell me, you know. Whatever it is.'

He took a moment. 'I played squash with Wes this morning. Went over and picked him up at the hovel he calls home. You know what he told me? That you'd told Lydia you thought I was suicidal. That our marriage was on the rocks.' He leveled his gaze at her. 'Imagine my surprise to get it from Wes.'

He was being a good listener, leaning forward now, holding both her hands. He couldn't help but notice the hands. They really did age quicker than everything else - you couldn't fake hands. The hands gave her away.

He really wished she wouldn't cry, but she was. Not sobbing, but quiet tears. '... no looking ahead, no laughs.'

'I know,' he said. 'It's my fault, too. I suppose I let your depression get to me. I shouldn't have done that. I should have said something.'

'But you tried, and I pushed you away.'

'I still should have.'

'It wasn't you, Mark, it was—'

'Wait, wait. Let's stop who it was. It doesn't matter who it was. We're talking about it now. We'll fix it starting now, starting today.' He leaned over and kissed her. 'We've just gotten into some bad habits. You feel like a nightcap?'

She hesitated, then decided. 'Sure, I'd like one. One light drink isn't going to hurt me.'

'You're right.'

She held on to him. 'I love you, Mark. Let's make this work, okay?'

He kissed her again. 'It will. I promise.'

CHAPTER NINE

Wes Farrell exited the crowded elevator into the familiar hallway madness -cops, DAs, reporters, witnesses, prospective jurors, hangers on.

It was just after 8:00 a.m. and the various courtrooms wouldn't be called to order for at least another half-hour. Farrell knew that a lot of legal business got done here in these last thirty minutes - pleas were agreed to, witnesses prepped, lawyers hired and fired.

This was also the moment when negotiations about plea bargaining got down to tacks. If you were a defense attorney, as Wes was, and you had a losing case, you didn't really want to go to trial. But your client generally didn't like the prosecution's offer of jail-time -only ten years didn't tend to sound like a deal except when you compared it to the twenty-five you'd do if you got convicted. Maybe somebody's mind would change and your client would get off with a fine. Maybe world peace was just around the corner.

So you played the game and hung tough for your client, bluffing that you really would put the prosecutor's office through the time and expense of a jury trial. But at some point - such as now when you were in the hallway waiting for trial - this was when you folded your cards and took the plea.

But that wasn't Farrell's intention this morning. He wasn't here to run a bluff. He was here with the outrageous intention of talking the DA into dropping murder charges against Levon Copes right now or, failing that, deliver the message that Levon was prepared to go to trial. Of course, Levon had already pled not guilty at pre-trial, but that had been more or less pro forma.

This was different.

Wearing a black silk blouse and one of her trademark miniskirts, dark green today, Amanda Jenkins was leaning against the wall enjoying this morning's special entertainment. Decked out in fezzes and robes, a dozen or so representatives of the Moslem mosque were protesting the arrest of one of their members for bank robbery, and were performing a hucca - a ritual dance derived from the old whirling dervishes. They were jumping up and down and chanting, 'Just-us, just-us.' Several uniformed cops were available to maintain a semblance of order, but it probably wasn't going to get out of hand. These things happened every week in the Hall. To Farrell, it was almost more amazing that no one seemed to think it was that odd.

He came up to Jenkins. 'With a couple of instruments, they could take it on the road. It'd really go better with music, don't you think?' 

She considered it seriously. 'Accordion and tuba. Alternating bass notes. Oom-pa, oom-pa. It's a good idea.'

They discussed variations on the theme until they located an empty bench far enough away to hear themselves talk, and Farrell went into his pitch.

'You can't be serious?' she said when he wrapped it up. 'You're saying you expect us to simply drop this?'

'Like the hot potato it is. I don't really expect it, but you don't have a case, and your boss seems to know it.'

'I'm sorry he gave you that impression and I'm sure he would be, too. I just talked to Art this morning before coming down here and he is totally committed to this prosecution.'

This was a lie, but Amanda delivered it straight.

'Murder One?'

She nodded. 'With Specials.' Meaning special circumstances - in this case murder in the course of a rape. The state was going to ask for LWOP - life in prison without the possibility of parole.

'So why are we having this discussion?'

Amanda straightened her skirt, pulling it down to within four inches of her knees, a move she was unaware of. It didn't escape Farrell's notice, however. Neither did the clearing of her throat. The woman was a nervous wreck. 'You called Art.'

'True. But then he called me back, said maybe we had something to talk about after all. If your best offer is life, I think all in all I owe it to my client to try to get a better deal.' He paused. 'Especially since you can't convict him, not on the discovery I've seen. He's gonna walk, Amanda, and you know it. Drysdale knows it. You guys fucked up.'

'We drop the Specials. You plead Murder One straight up, twenty-five to life.'

Farrell cast his gaze down the hallway, up to the ceiling. 'How can I phrase this? No chance.'

Amanda was trying to get some satisfaction out of this. Drysdale had told her she was going to have to drop the charges, an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime decision in a rape/murder case. This just didn't happen, ever. Except now, it was happening, and Amanda was in the middle of it.

The only chip the DA wanted to play was to use its slight remaining leverage, if any, to avoid embarrassment in the press. Jenkins, who took this stuff personally, was hoping to salvage a little more.

'Wes, your client killed this woman.'

'My client is innocent until you prove he's guilty.'

'Oh please, spare me. What do you think? Really?'

'I just said what I think.'

Jenkins took in a breath and held it for a long moment. 'Murder Two,' she said at last. 'Fifteen to life. He'll be out in twelve.'

Farrell crossed his arms, gave her a worldly look. 'Amanda, please.'

'What?' 

'When's'the last time you went to a parole board hearing? Out walk five people who've read the police report, hate your client, and figure he's done it before. At least one is there from some victims' rights group. Your client comes in, says he's sorry - hell, he's really sorry - and they say thanks for your time, see you in another five years.'

Amanda repeated it. 'Still, he'll be out in twelve on Murder Two.'

'He'll be out in twelve weeks if we go to trial.'

'I guess we'll let the jury decide then. We're not going to simply drop these charges, Wes, and if we go to trial, it's One with Specials. That's putting your client at tremendous risk.'

Farrell nodded, stood up, grabbed his briefcase. 'I'll discuss it with him. See you in ten seconds.' He held out his hand. 'I'll be in touch.'

He'd gone about ten steps when the prosecutor called after him. 'Wes?'

He stopped and turned. He was almost tempted to go back and put an arm around her shoulder, tell her everything was going to be all right. This was just a job, a negotiation, nothing to take so seriously.

A vision of Sam from St Patrick's Day - when it had been personal to her, too. What was with all these women?

Amanda Jenkins's eyes showed her concern, even panic. The woman was deeply conflicted, but she forced a weak smile. 'Nothing,' she said, 'forget it.'

'I had to try, Art.'

'No, you didn't, Amanda.'

'Farrell's going to talk to Levon right now, this morning. Levon knows he did it. He's looking at LWOP if he doesn't plead. We've got some leverage here.'

'We don't have the evidence. Farrell appears to have a pretty good understanding of that.'

'He's got to convey our offer to Levon. If he takes it, we win. It was worth a try.'

Drysdale picked up the telephone on his desk. 'All right, you had your try. You got Farrell's number?'

She argued for another five minutes, but it did no good, so she made the call and told Farrell the People were moving to dismiss the charges on Levon Copes to permit the time for further investigation.

Victor Trang made Dooher drive half an hour out to Balboa Street to meet in some dive named Minh's, decorated mostly in yellowing strips of flypaper which hung from the ceiling.

Dooher hated the smell of the place. His Vietnam hitch had been the low point of his life, and since he'd returned he hadn't put much effort into developing any taste for the culture.

He didn't see Trang right away - Dooher had to walk along a counter and endure the suspicious eyes of the proprietor and of the four other customers who sat hunched over their bowls.

Trang sat in a booth at the back, papers scattered around him, his calculator on the table so he'd look busy. There was a cup of tea in front of him, and some dirty dishes still on the table, pushed to the side. He wore the same suit, the same skinny tie, as the last time they'd met.

Dooher slid in across from him and Trang, punching the damn little machine, held up a finger. He'd be with Mark in just a minute. Finally - a whirr of number-crunching - he looked up. There was a smile, but it lacked sincerity.

He began briskly enough. 'I'll be filing the amended complaint next Monday, which gives us a week to reach a settlement agreement, if you're still interested. If not, I'll go ahead sooner.'

Dooher tried to run his bluff. 'I did tell you that our offer expired the day after we met. When I didn't hear from you ...'

'And yet you're here.'

'The Archbishop thought it was worth another try.'

Trang stared at the ceiling behind Dooher. At last, he put down his pencil, brought himself back to the table. 'Here's the situation, Mr Dooher. First, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop insulting me with this talk about the Archbishop's concern for my well-being. I've got a lawsuit that's going to do his diocese a lot of harm and incidentally might smear him with the runoff. He knows it, I know it, you know it.'

'All right.' Dooher wore his poker face. 'I didn't know you. I mean no insult. Some people hear the bluff and cave early.'

Trang seemed to accept that. He shuffled some of his papers around, appearing to look for something specific. Finding it, he pulled the page toward him and read a moment. 'I've got, let's see, twelve names here.'

'Twelve people? You're telling me Slocum was involved with twelve people?'

Trang's self-satisfied smile remained in place. It was getting to Dooher.  'I've got twelve people, so far, who are willing to allege a relationship with a priest in the Archdiocese. Three different parishes. It's a widespread problem, as my amended complaint contends. Clearly, there's a policy of toleration beginning at the very top ...'

Dooher took the paper and glanced at the list. 'All of these names seem to be Asian.'

'That's correct. Most are Vietnamese.'

'An interesting coincidence.'

Trang shrugged. 'These refugees came to this country as displaced people. They turned to their spiritual advisers to help them through the many adjustments they had to make, and many of these advisers - these priests - betrayed them, took advantage of their weakness and vulnerability.' He shook his head at the tragic reality.

Dooher had a different interpretation. 'We'd depose every one of these women. You understand that?' - telling Trang what he suspected, that the charges were bogus. Trang had recruited a dozen liars to trade their accusations for a fee - some tiny fraction of the settlement he hoped to get.

But Trang had another card. 'They're not all women.' Another meaningless smile. 'This is San Francisco, after all.' So now Trang had priests seducing young men as well, with Flaherty consistently looking the other way. 'And of course there'd be depositions. My clients would want to reveal the whole truth, if only to warn others who might be in their positions.' He made a little clucking noise. 'This is the kind of story that will be all over the newspapers, though of course we'd try to contain that.'

This, Dooher knew, was the real issue. Trang was running a scam, pure and simple. He was threatening to foment a scandal, and what made it viable was that it wasn't all made up. Undoubtedly, Mrs Diep and perhaps her daughter had been wronged by Father Slocum. Perhaps there was another victim, maybe two.
But twelve! Magically appearing out of the woodwork within the last few weeks...?

Dooher didn't think so, but what he thought didn't matter much anymore. He had to contain this lunatic. It's what Flaherty expected him to do. It's what he got paid for. 'Let's talk about Mrs Diep for a moment, the suit that's already been filed. She's asking for—'

But Trang was shaking his head, interrupting. 'No, no, Mr Dooher. That is in the past. I've uncovered a widespread problem that would, frankly, benefit from a public forum. Your Archbishop may have meant well, but many people have been damaged. And I think as we proceed that many other victims will come forward. Don't you think that's likely? It's the way these things often go.'

Again, the smile.

Dooher knew he was right. Trang's plan was wonderful - he'd prime the pump with bogus victims, then, once the issue made the daily news, everyone who had ever been kissed by a priest was going to stand up and ask to join the party.

'Which is why we would prefer you not to proceed.'

A nod that perhaps Trang believed was dignified, magnanimous. He was going to be a good winner.

Dooher wasn't prepared to be a loser, however. Not to this little upstart gook. That wasn't going to happen. Not now. Not ever. 'The Archdiocese wants to redress the wrongs it may have inadvertently condoned, Mr Trang. That's why we're talking. These people,' he indicated the list on the table, 'now they may feel betrayed, but I don't think there's much of a case that they've been substantially damaged. Mrs Diep, yes. Her daughter, okay. We're prepared to give Mrs Diep her fifty thousand, with another fifty to be distributed among,' he paused, a look of distaste, 'among your other clients.'

Trang sucked on his front teeth. 'If you deduct my fees, that really satisfies no one completely. Thirty thousand among twelve people is an insult for what they've endured. You must know that. And Mrs Diep will still be out nearly twenty thousand in cash, plus the interest.'

Dooher held up a hand. 'We'll pay your fees on top.' This upped his offer to $135,000 or so. This situation was making his stomach churn with rage and impotence. Nearly three times what Trang had been asking only last week and—

And he was still shaking his head no. 'I don't think that figure addresses the seriousness of these charges, Mr Dooher, the sense my clients feel that there should be some punishment so that the Archbishop will think twice before allowing these betrayals to occur on his watch. A hundred thousand is a mere slap on the wrist. He'd never feel it.'

Swallowing his bile, Dooher folded his hands in front of him. 'What do you want, Trang?'

It was a simple question. Palms up, Trang came clean. 'The amended complaint asks for three million.'

Dooher kept his face impassive. This had become personal, Trang playing him like some fish. But he wasn't going to flop for him. He waited.

'Perhaps I could convince my clients that half of that figure would be a reasonable compensation for their suffering.'

A million five! Dooher knew that this wasn't close to what he'd been authorized to offer. And yet if he didn't get to some agreement they'd all have to go to court and the whole thing would become public. Even if most of Trang's clients were invented, the fallout would poison Flaherty. And Dooher would have failed in every respect. He could not let that happen.

'That's too much,' he snapped. He grabbed the paper again, ran his eyes down the list. 'I'll tell you what we will do, Mr Trang. Final offer, and subject to a confidentiality agreement, no press conferences . . .' He was showing his temper, and paused a fraction of a second for control. This was his last card and he knew he'd better play it. 'Six hundred thousand dollars.'

Trang showed nothing. It was as though Dooher hadn't said a word. He was in the middle of lifting his cup to his lips, and there wasn't even a pause. He drank, put the cup down. 'That is really excellent tea,' he said. Then, as though it were an afterthought, 'Six hundred thousand dollars.'

Dooher let him live a minute with the number. Then he said, 'A lot of money.' He didn't say, 'And two hundred grand for you, you slant-eyed little prick.' Which was what he was thinking.

'It is a lot of money,' Trang agreed, 'but it is also a long way from three million, or even one five. If I may, I'd like to take the offer under advisement. Speak to my clients.'

'Of course,' Dooher said, except he knew that Trang had nobody to discuss anything with. He decided he had to raise the stakes. 'But this offer expires at close of business today. Five o'clock.'

Trang digested that, then began gathering his papers, packing them into his briefcase. 'In that case, I'd better be on my way. It's going to be a busy day.'

The sun had come out for what seemed the first time this year, and that springtime sense of hope in the air prompted Christina to walk into Sam's office.

Her boss was sitting in the hard chair, tilted back, her eyes closed, her arms crossed over her chest, and her ankles crossed on her desk. Sensing a presence in the doorway, she opened her eyes.

'I hate all men,' she said. 'Well, I don't hate my brothers or my father, but all the other ones.'

Christina leaned against the door, smiling. 'How do you feel about volunteer rape counsellors?'

'I don't think they should be men.' Sam shook her head. 'I'm sorry about the other day. Sergeant Glitsky came by here and told me you 'd come down to his office, outside of office hours, doing your job.' She paused. 'I'm a jerk as a person and a lousy boss, aren't I?'

'Which one?'

A nod. 'I deserve that.'

But Sam was trying to apologize and Christina didn't think it was a moment for sarcasm. 'Neither, really,' she said. 'Neither a jerk nor a lousy boss. You care a lot, Sam, that's all. That's a positive thing.'

'Too much.'

Christina shrugged. 'Beats the opposite, doesn't it? I'm going out to get some coffee. You think the office will survive fifteen minutes without us here? Or should I bring you back something?'

Sam considered a moment, then brought her feet down off the desk and stood up. I'll leave a note on the door.'

They waited in line at an espresso place down the street from the Center. Sam's general theme on men had narrowed to the specific.

'Wes Farrell?' Christina was saying. 'Where do I know that name?'

'He's Levon Copes's attorney.'

'No, that's not it. I didn't know that before you just told me. I know that name from somewhere else.'

Sam had omitted the details of her interaction with Wes Farrell, leaving it only that they'd met and she'd given him a piece of her mind.

'Maybe you saw it on one of Glitsky's reports or something.'

'Maybe.' Christina ordered a latte, her brow still furrowed, trying to remember. When they'd gotten served, they sat at a tiny two-seat table up by the window, in the sun. They shared the sill with two cats, and one of them purred up against Christina's arm. 'Anyway,' Christina said, 'I didn't think last week was the greatest time to tell you - just when you were finally starting to believe that I was a real person who genuinely cares about the people I try to help, which I am.'

'I know that now. I see that.'

'Well, but... so now this is a little awkward, but I wanted to give you notice that pretty soon I'm going to have to stop coming into the Center, doing this.'

A long dead moment. 'Because of this Tania Willows thing?'

'No. Really because in about a month I'm taking finals, then graduating, then studying for the Bar and working full-time for a firm downtown, which I hear is about a hundred hours a week. Then taking the Bar. I'm not going to have any time.'

Sam stirred her coffee. Stopped. Her eyes restlessly scanned the street in front of them. 'Damn,' she said finally. This always happens.'

'I know. I'm sorry.'

'It's all right. I just get so tired of it, when it seems you finally get to where you might connect with somebody ...'

'Then they leave. I know.' Christina was holding her coffee mug in both hands, trying to keep them warm. 'So you didn't convert Wes Farrell away from defense work?'

Sam made a face. 'I was dumb. I just got mad at him. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway, whatever I did. Copes would just go out and hire another one. Fucking lawyers ... oops, sorry.'

Christina waved it off. 'That's okay. I'm not a lawyer yet, and I'm not going to be that kind of one anyway.'

'It's funny, because he seemed like a nice guy otherwise. A great guy, really.'

'Who?'

'Who are we talking about? Wes Farrell.'

Christina looked over her coffee. 'You liked him, didn't you?'

'I don't know. I might have. Maybe I would have. I don't know.'

'Call him up. Say hi. He's got to be in the book. Tell him he's making a mistake with Levon Copes but that you were too hard on him. You'd like to buy him a drink.'

Sam shook her head. 'I don't think so. I don't know if I want to buy him a drink.' Sighing. 'It's not that simple.'

'But wouldn't it be nice?'

The conference room at McCabe & Roth was meant to intimidate. The dark cherry table was twenty-four feet long and the shine on its surface encouraged neither relaxation nor work. It was a table at which to sit. And listen. And be impressed. The subliminal message from such perfection was that to leave so much as a fingerprint upon it was to vandalize a work of art, so briefcases stayed on the floor, notes were taken on laps.

Coffee cups? Paperclips? Drinks? Food? Forget it.

At one end of the room, the floor-to-ceiling windows worked their power-view magic, while the walls were covered with heavily textured, light green cloth wallpaper. Original oils in heavy frames glowered. Sconced lighting kicked in when the black-out drapes were drawn.

After his debacle with Trang earlier in the day, Dooher was primed to win one. He'd had a bad day all around, in fact, with the Archbishop giving vent to his frustration that even his top offer of $600,000 had not been immediately accepted. Dooher still found himself smarting from the carefully phrased reproof. 'It's really not like you, Mark, to let a beginner get the upper hand like that in your negotiations.'

There had been nothing he could say. And now close of business had come and gone and he hadn't heard back from Trang, so the Archbishop's offer was no longer on the table. And Dooher knew it was all going to get much worse.

But for now, this moment, he was going to enjoy himself. He sat at the head of the conference table, and checked his watch - 5:40. The other eight partners should begin arriving any minute.

He found himself smiling, thinking of David and Bathsheba, and of Bathsheba's poor first husband, whom David sent off to war, promoting him so that he would be at the front of the troops, leading the charge against the Philistines, a hero.

Alas, never to return.

'Joe, you may have heard rumors to the effect that the firm has been considering expanding into new market areas. Well, we're all gathered here now to put an end to those rumors. They're absolutely ... true.'

A polite ripple of masculine chuckle.

Joe Avery smiled nervously from his end of the conference table. Several of the other men looked his way, nodding and smiling. Dooher continued, 'We've reached the decision that the first satellite office should be in Los Angeles. As you know, we do a lot of business down there - many of the cases you've been working on, as a matter of fact. We've all been impressed with the hours and effort you've put in over the years here, and we'd like to reward you now by asking you to put in some more.'

Another round of club laughter.

'But seriously, and before we get down to the nitty-gritty of what we're expecting down in LA, all of us wanted to take a minute and say congratulations. And, I should add - I'm afraid I've hinted at this to you before' - here Dooher included most of the partners around the table in a conspiratorial wink - 'we kind of rushed your partnership through committee a little earlier than you might have expected.

'We'd like you to take the helm down in Los Angeles, Joe, open the office, get us up and running and put us on the map down there.' Again, an inclusive gesture around the room. 'Gentlemen. I've seen the future of McCabe & Roth and its name is Joe Avery. Congratulations, Joe.'

Heartfelt applause. Joe Avery stood, beaming and basking in his colleagues' approval. And Dooher knew that even if it meant losing Christina, the fool wouldn't let this job get away. 

CHAPTER TEN

On the next Thursday night, Dooher suddenly stopped his reading in the library on the lower floor of the turret. His eyes raked the shelves quickly, all of his senses alert with an overwhelming prescience. Something was going to happen - he could feel it!

The telephone rang. He knew who it was and he trusted these things implicitly. Besides, the timing was about right - four days since Avery had been promoted. He picked it up on the first ring, resisting the urge to answer with her name.

Instead, he was as he always was. 'Mark Dooher here,' he said. The library doubled as his private office, with a personal phone that he answered in business tones.

A longish pause, then: 'Mark, hi.' Another breath. 'It's Christina Carrera. I'm sorry to bother you at home.'

'Christina!' Heartfelt surprise and enthusiasm. 'It's no bother. I wouldn't have given you my home number if I was going to get mad at you for using it.' Dooher carried the portable phone across the room and quietly pushed the door closed. It was a little after 9:00 p.m. and Sheila was watching television in the kitchen, doing the dinner dishes. The closed door was a signal that he was working - she wouldn't disturb him. 'To what do I owe this pleasure? What can I do for you?'

'I don't know, maybe nothing. I feel very awkward about calling you ... but then again I've been awkward about everything lately.'

As he listened, Dooher re-crossed the room, went to his bar and poured a couple of fingers of bourbon, neat, into a brandy snifter. He was nodding, fully engaged.

'. . . but I didn't know who else I could talk to. I think I need some advice.'

'Advice is my business and my rates are reasonable - well, not completely reasonable. No one would respect me if they were.'

He could almost see the relief in her face, her smile. Their banter - Mark's light touch - put her at ease. He was her friend and she was glad he was here for her. He heard it in her voice. 'Okay,' she said, 'I'll pay.'

'Good. Lunch on you.' Then, more seriously: 'What's the problem, Christina? The job again?'

This time, the silence continued for several seconds. He waited. 'Really it's not so much the job. It's more personal.'  

'You're not in legal trouble, are you?'

'No! Nothing like that.'

'But personal?'

'Joe,' shejsaid simply. 'I just don't know what to do.'

He sipped his drink, still standing by the wet bar. 'We can talk, Christina, but if it's Joe, maybe this would be better discussed with him.'

'That's what I'm trying to avoid. I don't want to always be so negative with him. Not when he's so happy with everything.'

'It's the transfer, I presume?'

A bitter laugh. 'I almost want to blame you.'

'For promoting Joe?'

'I know. It's stupid.'

'No, not that. But this move has been in the works a long time. Certainly before I ever met you.' This was not strictly true. The decision to open an LA office had been considered months before, but Dooher's decisions to go ahead with it and then to appoint Avery was finalized over the last six weeks or so. In administrative matters, Dooher rode roughshod over his nominal partners - he ran his firm his way. It was making money and if the partners didn't like his decisions, one of them could try to do what he did - but without him. He and his business would go elsewhere.

'I know. I know that.' She sighed. 'God, I'm such a bitch.'

'I haven't really noticed that. Are you being hard on Joe?'

'Not yet. I think that's why I needed to call you.'

'For my permission for you to be hard on your boyfriend? I don't think so.' He couldn't bring himself to call Avery her fiance. Also, he wanted to deliver the subliminal message - boyfriends were temporary and insubstantial.

'I don't want to be a nag all the time. That's just it. I'm not an unhappy person. Don't laugh. I'm really not.'

'I'm not laughing.'

'But now, I can't seem to accept... if I talk to Joe, everything I say lately comes out like I'm not being supportive of his career. I probably shouldn't  even be talking to you.'

'You can stop saying that, Christina. I'm glad you called. I'm just not sure what I can do. The decision's already been made.' The drink was kicking in - he eased himself down onto a barstool, relaxing.

'I guess I'm not asking you as the managing partner, Mark. And I don't know if I'm presuming. But you've been... I feel like you' ve been a friend, is that all right? And I need to have a friend who can talk about this, who can understand both sides.'

'All right, then I'll take off my managing partner's hat.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm touched that you thought of me. And I really don't know if I can be of any help, but I'm listening.'

The good husband, Dooher was finishing a second drink at the table in the kitchen nook, confiding to his wife about the call. 'So the poor kid's in a bind. What's she going to do?'

Sheila was drinking her de-caf. 'This is the really stunning girl from the party, isn't it? Christina?'

'That was her.'

'And she called you?'

He pointed a finger, broke a sardonic grin. 'Actually, the truth is she wanted me to leave you for her. Said she couldn't live another moment without me and I can't say I blame her. But I had to tell her I was taken.' He reached across the table and took his wife's hand. 'Happily.'

'Are you?'

A reassuring squeeze, eye contact. 'Completely, Sheila. What kind of question is that? You know that.'

'I know, but lately...'

'Lately we haven't exactly been flying. Okay. We've pulled out of dives before. We're going to do it again.' He shrugged. 'Of course, she was devastated, but she's young. She'll get over it. Probably.'

Sheila was shaking her head.'To think that someone who looks like she does could have problems...'

'People have problems, She. You did - we did - especially when we were young, trying to figure everything out.'

'But I never looked like her.'

'Not like, but every bit as good.'

His wife beamed and covered his hand with both of hers. 'You've got a half-hour to cut this flattery out. I mean it.' She let go of his hand, picked up her cup and sipped. 'Aren't you glad we're not starting out now, you and I? I don't know how these kids do it. I mean, in our day, if you'd been transferred I'd have gone with you, no questions asked. In fact, I did go. Berkeley, then waited through Vietnam, then LA, then back here.'

'I remember. And you never complained.'

She couldn't stop smiling at him. He was getting back to his old self, the little compliments, the kindnesses. 'Well, complained sometimes, but never thinking I wouldn't go with you. Now - these girls nowadays - I mean women of course, they're women -I mean, she must be in her mid-twenties if she's getting out of law school - we had all our kids by that age, do you realize that?'

'We were unusually wise and mature. Still are.'

'But now look at what this girl is dealing with. And all because she wants her precious career. And what's a career? Who wants to have to work your whole life?'

'She wants to be able to work, Sheila. There's a difference. Maybe she'll need to. It's hard to say nowadays. It's a different world.'

'I think it's a damn shame. I'd tell her to just go with her man, and the rest will take care of itself.'

Dooher's face broke into a conspiratorial smile. 'I don't think I could put it exactly like that. She'd think I was the last of the reactionary pigs. Well, maybe not the last.'

'But you wouldn't be wrong.'

'Maybe not, but I'm afraid in today's social environment it's one of life's little truths that she's going to have to discover for herself.'

'So what's she going to do? What did you advise her?'

'I was punctiliously PC - told her, if it were me, I'd stay here and do a great job this summer, study for the Bar and pass it, be supportive of what Joe was doing. If they're in love, it'll work out eventually, maybe sooner. Lots of people get separated by jobs, by life. The ones that are meant to make it, make it. It doesn't have to be a crisis.'

She took his hand again. 'You know, Mark, sometimes I forget what a romantic you are.'

He shrugged it off. 'I'm just trying to be a good boss. They're both valuable assets to the firm - if they're not happy they won't be productive.'

'Oh, and that's it? All this paternal advice is simply an ingenious management technique?'

'Essentially.' He tipped up his glass. 'Mostly.'

She shook her head, smiling. 'Yes,' she said, 'I'm sure.' Motioning to his empty glass, she asked if she could get him another one.

He hesitated. 'I'm not trying to be an enabler here, but would you consider joining me?'

She still wasn't anywhere near telling him about the Nardil, her anti-depressant drug. She didn't think she'd ever get to there. But Mark was relaxed, in a sensitive mood, open to her. She'd gone back to her wine over the past few weeks and there'd been no ill-effects. Now Mark wanted her to join him for a nightcap. If she said no, the mood would be gone, and she wasn't going to risk that.

Midnight.

Sam Duncan sat up abruptly, terrifying Quayle, who'd been asleep in bed with her. The dog yipped twice, then whimpered, and she reached out a hand to calm him, bringing him over the blankets on to her lap.

Petting the dog absently, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She hated it when she couldn't sleep, and she' d made a resolution that she wasn't going to drink even a drop of anything to make her nod off. The last time she'd had a drink was St Patrick's Day, and look where that had gotten her.

To right here.

The couple who lived in the unit above her - Janet and Wayne - were silent now, though from the sound of it, they'd had a hell of a good night. Actually, it had been like one of those scenes in the movies where the couple next door let out all the stops and just completely went for it. Perhaps Janet and Wayne didn't realize that Sam had come home. Maybe they didn't think sound carried that well through the old building. Regardless, they put on some show - pretty much the complete range of the audio spectrum - vocals, screams, thuds, creaking springs, sighs and moans, you name it. In the movies, it was often pretty funny.

For Sam, tonight, it wasn't. It was damn near tragic, she thought.

But she wasn't going to panic. She was a mature woman and if fate had not supplied her with a mate after all this time, she had dealt with it, made a successful life for herself. The men had come and gone, a few steadies, a fiance once for a couple of weeks, but for the past four or five years, she'd simply decided to stop pursuing it, stop worrying about it, concentrate on her career and let whatever was going to happen in her love-life simply happen. The problem was that nothing significant had happened.

Not until Wes Farrell.

She hadn't been with him more than two hours, but in that time - stupidly, without any reason or explanation - she'd felt more alive, simply better, than she could remember. There was just a whole different quality to the way they'd related - complete ease, immediate rapport, sexual attraction, attitude, humor. Of course, she'd been half in the bag. But the half that hadn't been thought it remembered pretty well.

And then he'd turned out to be ...

Well, what, really? A guy who did a job she didn't approve of. Didn't it come down to just that? What was so bad about him? It wasn't like he was a mass murderer, a professional wrestler, a car salesman. And the violence of her reaction to what he did - though she hated with all her heart to admit it - might have had just a tad of a tiny bit to do with alcohol.

So she did the wise thing first - went completely on the wagon. Thought about the whole issue soberly and while sober. She was thirty-five. She hadn't been lonely before, but now, damn it, she was. Well, no, not exactly that. What she wanted was another fix of him.

Christina had said to look him up in the book, and after two days of struggling with herself, she had. There was a work number, on Columbus, no home number listed. And the number was there right now on the notepad on her bed-table under the lamp.

'Shit,' she said, flicking on the light.

What the hell, she was thinking. It's midnight. He's at home and I can just talk to the machine at his office, apologize for being such - no, not apologize, don't start on that note. I'd just like to talk with him. And she'd leave her number.

But wait. He knew where she lived, and if it had been important to him, he could have come by, rung the bell...

Except that, no, she'd thrown him out. He'd probably think, with some justification, that she was a nutcase. Even if he was tempted to come back, he'd think twice, maybe ten times - and decide he'd better not. She couldn't blame him. Also, if she was really, as he'd said, the first woman since his marriage, he'd be skittish. And again, she couldn't blame him.

It was going to have to be her.

I've got to find out if his marriage is over, she thought. That's got to come first. I'm not getting involved with a married man. I don't know him at all. This is dumb.

But she was punching the numbers and the phone had started ringing.

'Hello.'

'Oh, I'm sorry. I must have the wrong number.'

She was about to hang up. She wasn't prepared to really talk with anybody, certainly not with him. She was only going to leave a message. 'Sam? Sam, is that you?' It stunned her. He recognized her voice?

She clenched the phone. She should just slam it down. Wrong number. Wrong time. Wrong.

'Sam?' he repeated. 'Is that you?'

She sighed with frustration. 'I wanted to apologize. No! Not apologize, explain. I thought I'd get your machine.'

'You want, I'll turn it on, promise not to listen till tomorrow morning.'

'That'd help. Are you still working, I mean at work?'

'If you ask questions, my machine won't be able to answer. It'll get all confusing.'

'You're right.'

'Also, I think you should know that I got my client - Levon Copes? - I got him off today. If that's what you were calling about.'

'You got him off?'

'They dropped the charges. The DA decided the evidence wasn't going to stick. He's out of jail.'

She took a breath. 'Well, that's not exactly what I called about. Maybe a little, but not mostly.' Another pause. 'Listen, if I promise not to get psycho on you, would you like to meet me sometime for some coffee or something?'

'Sure. I mean okay. I guess. Why don't you tell me when?'

'Would, like, about now be all right?' 

Part Two

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sergeant Paul Thieu, an investigator in Missing Persons who doubled from time to time as a translator, rode in the passenger seat of Glitsky's unmarked green Plymouth, chattering away as though he was on his way to a wedding or a party, instead of a murder scene. Next to him, Glitsky kept his eyes on the road - it was dusk and the fog clung around the car like wool.

Actually, Glitsky was thinking that it wasn't so bad hearing a voice with some animation in it. There wasn't much cheeriness in the rest of his life, especially around his house, where now they had a nurse coming in every day.

Flo wasn't going to spend her last days in any hospital - they'd discussed it and the family was going to be around her. Not that she was there yet, to her last days, but they were coming. Also, Nat - Glitsky's father - was spending a lot of nights on the couch in the front room, taking up the slack with the boys, trying to keep things in some perspective, as if there could be any.

But Glitsky had hjs job. Going to it was a kind of a relief. And Thieu, chatter or not, represented the beginning of what might turn out to be a more than normally interesting case.

By far the majority of homicides in the city were what law-enforcement personnel referred to as NHI - 'no humans involved' - cases. One person from the lowest stratum of intelligent life would kill another, or several others, for no apparent reason, or one so lame that it beggared belief.

Last week, Glitsky had arrested a twenty-three year-old woman whose IQ soared into the double digits and who'd killed her boyfriend in a dispute over what television show they were going to watch. After she'd shot him, she sat herself down and watched all of Roseanne before thinking, 'Well, hey, maybe I'd better see if I can wake old Billy up now.' Which, with a bullet in his heart, proved an elusive undertaking.

But occasionally someone with a more or less normal life got killed for a real reason; the deadly sins did continue to reap their grim rewards. These were the cases Homicide cops lived for. Glitsky and Thieu were driving to what looked like one of them now - an attorney named Victor Trang, who'd been stabbed in the chest.

'So the way I figure it, there's no way I'm going to get to Homicide by moving up the list.' Thieu was referring to the seniority list by which promotions in the SFPD were controlled. 'The other guys up there - isn't that true? - they put in their fifteen-twenty and by the time they get assigned to Homicide, they are completely burned out. Then they discover they actually have to work weekends and nights if they want results. But they don't want to put in that kind of time. Hell, Homicide's a reward, isn't it? But they can't be touched because of their seniority. And they still want the prestige of the Homicide detail, so they take the job and then don't do it.'

Glitsky shot him a glance. 'I do my job, Paul. Other guys do their jobs.'

Thieu didn't seem affected by Glitsky's lack of agreement. Certainly it didn't shut him up. 'I'm not saying that, Abe. I'm not talking about you. You know who I mean.'

A non-committal nod. Glitsky did know who he meant, and Paul had perfectly analyzed the deadwood problem within the unit. It was not Glitsky's inclination, however, to bad-mouth anyone else in his detail. These things had a way of getting around.

'But the point is, I'm being the squeaky wheel. I want to do this. This is the action and I crave it.'

Something in Thieu's enthusiasm for the work forced Glitsky to consider smiling. The idea of the thrill of the chase had slid away from his vision of his job over the years.

'And imagine this!' The gush went on. 'I get this call in Missing Persons and we wait our three days and I just know. I know this is a homicide.'

'It's a rare gift, Paul.'

Thieu caught the intonation and realized he was pushing too hard. But who could blame him for being excited? When he got the call from the Vietnamese-speaking mother about her missing son, he'd had a hunch. In San Francisco, a missing person had to be gone for at least three days before it became an official police matter. And Thieu had gone by the book, waiting the full three days, but sticking with the story as it developed.

'So how many calls did you get in total?'

Thieu didn't have to consult his notes. A graduate of UCLA in police science, crew-cut and clean-shaven, he represented the increasingly new brand of San Francisco cop. He wore a light green business suit and a flamboyant red and green silk tie that somehow worked. 'His mother, his girlfriend, one of his clients.'

'And how long was he missing?'

'This was in the first day, before it even got to us.'

'Three people in the first day? This was a popular guy.'

'Well, evidently that's a question.'

Glitsky, driving slowly, flicked him a glance.

'I looked into it a little, did some background before he got filed officially as an MP.' A missing person. 'Something the mother said about a lawsuit this guy was working on.'

'Which was?' 

'Well, evidently he was well known, but not particularly liked - except by his mom and girlfriend.'

'Why not?'

'Why not what?'

'Why wasn't he liked?'

'Oh. Well, appears the guy was a politician in the Vietnamese community here. Glad hand, big smile, full of shit.' Thieu looked over at Glitsky, checking for his reaction, which was not forthcoming. He was watching the road. 'That's not me speaking ill of the dead. It's what I've heard.'

Glitsky was paying attention to Mission Street. They were now at the light on Geneva, which wasn't working. Traffic was a mess. The fog made it worse. Darkness was closing in fast.

So Thieu kept chattering. 'Anyway, seems this guy Trang was always showing up at parties, gatherings, weddings, funerals, giving his card to everybody ... a real nuisance.'

'I think I met him,' Glitsky said, straight-faced.

'Really? You met Trang?'

Another sideways glance. 'Joke, Paul. Not really.'

Momentarily taken aback, Thieu slumped a little in his seat. Glitsky, perhaps oblivious to his passenger's distress, said, 'The heck with this,' and pulled his flasher out, putting it on the roof, turning on the siren. In five seconds, they were through the intersection, rolling. 'So what did his mother say?'

Glitsky's rhythms put Thieu off his own - he'd lost the thread of what he'd been saying. 'About what?'

'About some case he was working on that made you think there might be trouble, which as it turns out there is, if you define trouble as getting yourself killed, which I do.'

'Well, apparently Trang was suing the Archdiocese of San Francisco for a couple of million dollars or something ...'

'What for?'

'I don't know. Not yet. The mom said he was over his head, and knew it, but it was a big case. He was scared, she said.'

'Of what?'

'I don't know. Just playing at that level, I think. The mom seemed confused about the Church and the Mafia and thought getting mixed up with one was like the other.'

Glitsky nodded. 'I've heard worse theories. So he was scared. Did he get any threats anybody knew of, the mother knew of? Anything like that?'

'No.'

'Well, there's a help.'

As was often the case, Glitsky was the first of the Homicide team to arrive. The body had evidently been discovered at around 4:15 p.m. by someone from Trang's weekly cleaning service, who, undoubtedly not wanting to call attention to his immigration status, had gone back to the main office and reported it to management. After suitable discussion, the company had called the police. Squad cars from Ingleside Station had confirmed the stiff.

Since they had a tentative identity for the victim, Glitsky had made a courtesy call to Missing Persons and asked if they had an outstanding MP named Victor Trang. Which had alerted Paul Thieu, who'd asked if he could tag along.

A couple of squad cars were parked in front of a squat, faceless, depressing building on a side street off Geneva. Two uniformed officers stood shivering four steps up in a little semi-enclosed portico, smelling of urine and littered with newspaper and broken glass. Identifying himself and Thieu, Glitsky asked them to wait until the coroner and the Crime Scene Investigators arrived.

Then he and Thieu opened the door and entered the building.

Inside, two bare bulbs illuminated a long hallway, in which three doors were staggered on opposite sides. At the far end, the other two officers and either another plainclothes cop or a civilian stood in a tight knot, whispering. Glitsky was aware of his and Thieu's echoing, hollow footfalls on the wooden floors.

Though the other doors in the hallway were wood-faced, pitted and stained, with the lacquer peeling off, this one's top half was of frosted glass, upon which had been etched the name Victor Trang and under it, in script, Attorney At Law.

'He had that door made special,' the civilian said. His name was Harry something and he lived upstairs and said he managed the place.

Poorly, Glitsky thought.

Harry did have master keys for the building - the uniforms had located him as soon as they'd set up. It was a minor miracle, and Glitsky was grateful for it. 'Must of cost him a thousand bucks, the door.' Harry was trying to be helpful, talking to be saying something.

Glitsky ignored him and turned to Thieu, to whom the likely presence of a dead person was having the opposite effect than it was having on Harry. Thieu had stopped chattering. 'You ever do this before?'

'No.'

'You might want to wait then.'

Steeling himself- it was never routine - Glitsky opened the door, flicked on the light. Fortunately, he thought, it had been cold in the office. Even now the room was chilly, but he could detect, before he saw anything, the distinctive smell. Something was rotting in here.

In Glitsky's experience, real-life crime scenes tended to be prosaically ordinary, rarely capturing the vividness, the sense of evil and foreboding so favored by cop shows and B movies. This one, though, Victor Trang's office, came close.

Trang had evidently blown all of his appearances money on his door. Once inside, the office reverted to the form of the rest of the building and neighborhood. The long desk was an eight-foot slab of white-washed plywood - in fact, Glitsky realized, it was another door, perhaps the original. At an L to the desk, a table held a computer and printer, the phone and answering machine.

The walls were a fly-specked shiny beige which might once have been white, and they were absolutely bare - not a calendar, not a picture, not even a post-it. Behind the desk, a dark window, without blinds or curtains, was a black hole. There was an off-green couch along the side wall, a wooden library chair with a pillow seat, a folding chair set up facing the desk.

Slowly taking it in as he moved, Glitsky walked around the folding chair. Had it been set up for an appointment? Was it always where it was now?

He stopped. The chair behind the desk had been knocked over - he could see it now up against the back wall.

The body rested along the length of the desk in an attitude of repose, almost as though - no, Glitsky realized, exactly as though - it had been placed there. Carefully laid down.

Trang had been wearing an off-white linen suit, and now it was striped with red, in neat rows. There was a large bloodstain in the center of the chest, but it was roughly circular - it hadn't run down the front of his shirt. Therefore - strangely - it hadn't bled much until Trang was already on the floor.

Glitsky stood looking for a moment, letting it all sink in. He would wait until the coroner arrived, until he'd read the forensic reports, but his impressions were coalescing into a certainty. He knew what the red stripes were. It chilled him.

The killer had used a knife, then had held Trang up in some death embrace, holding him up, maybe for as long as a minute, leaving the knife in, perhaps twisting it toward the heart. Then, with his victim good and completely dead, he'd laid him down carefully on the floor, finally pulled out the knife, then calmly wiped the blade off on Trang's suit - two or three swipes at first glance.

Glitsky had been a cop for twenty-two years, in Homicide for the last seven of them. From the evidence of what he was seeing here, he thought he might be looking at the most cold-blooded, up-close and personal murder of his career.

CHAPTER TWELVE

'Mark, are you all right?'

Christina stood in the doorway, one arm propped against the frame. Her hair was down. She wore a navy blazer over a white silk blouse, two buttons open, just this side of demure. She wouldn't start her summer job until late June, but she'd been coming in regularly for the past couple of weeks - ever since Dooher had counselled her to be supportive yet independent - to help Joe get his workload organized for the move south.

She'd also gotten into the habit of stopping by Dooher's office after business hours, just before she went home. Daylight Savings Time had begun two weeks ago, and the office was above the fog layer, bathed in an amber light from the sunset. 'Is something wrong?'

'No. Nothing's wrong.'

'Something, I think.' Moving into the room, she stopped behind the brocaded easy chair, hands resting on it.

He took in a deep breath, held it a moment, exhaled heavily. 'The Trang thing, I guess. Can't get it out of my mind.'

He raised a hand to his eye and rubbed. Weary and distressed. An apologetic half-smile at Christina, a shake of his head. 'What's the sense in it, huh? Here's a guy who's just getting started, prime of his life, perfect health ... I don't know. You wonder. It rocks you.'

'The big plan?'

'Yeah, I guess. The big plan.'

'Maybe there isn't one.'

'It's all random, you mean?'

'If it isn't, what's free will?'

He paused a minute, nodding as though in agreement. 'That's a good lawyer question. I'll have to get back to you on it.'

Her lips curved up slightly and she came around the chair, sat on the edge of it, pulling at her skirt, meeting his eyes, then looking down. 'You do hide behind that, you know? That lawyer pose. The glib answer.'

'I am a lawyer, Christina. If I'm glib, it's a line of defense. First we argue, then we deflect the direction words might be going, and on those rare occasions when it doesn't look like we're going to win, we ... obfuscate. But I'm not hiding from you. I hope you believe that.'

'I do. I know that.'

He shook his head again. 'I feel bad about Trang, but what's the point of belaboring it? Nothing's going to bring him back. It's the simple fact of it ... of life being so fragile. I don't feel so glib about that. Not at my age.'

'Your age again. How old are you, anyway? Sixty? Sixty-five? You couldn't be seventy.' She was teasing him, trying to cheer him up.

'Eighty-three next month,' he said. 'But I work out.' He pushed around some items on his desk. 'Actually, since you're as young as you feel, I couldn't be a day over eighty-one.' He shook his head. 'Sometimes the world gets to me, Christina. I shouldn't burden you with it.' Shifting around behind the desk, he flashed his self-deprecating grin. 'You're just lucky, I suppose, getting to listen to my moaning.'

'I do feel lucky.'

'Well, I'm glad. I do, too.'

'You do?'

He nodded. 'Why do you think the managing partner takes fifteen minutes at the end of the day just to visit, risking not only the office gossip but the wrath of people who think they need my time?'

'I don't know. Part of me thought you were just watching out for me, after talking me into coming here, that I wasn't screwing up.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Well, a small part, but some . . .'

'None. Not the smallest bit. I don't take care of people professionally - you either do it here or you're out.'

'No. You wouldn't. ..'

'I don't recommend you try me. But I have no worries about you. Not one.'

She sat back in the chair. 'Then I don't know why ...?'

'Yes, you do, Christina.' He leveled his eyes at her across his desk. The moment called for a matter-of-fact, intimate tone, and he got it. 'You know, life goes along, and people get so they don't talk to people - I mean you talk, but it's mostly surface, but with you and me, maybe we got lucky that first morning, Ash Wednesday, you remember?'

'Of course.'

'What I mean to say is this, it's not common - in fact, it's rare. And valuable. I value it immensely. You ought to know that. I'd hate to die suddenly like Trang did, and you not know. This isn't business. You and me isn't business, okay?'

'Okay.'

'And another thing, while we're on it - I'm happily married. My wife is a great partner and a wonderful person and not a half-bad cook. I'm not going to accept any gossip about you and me that this office is likely to put out, and I hope you don't either.'

She was smiling now, with him. 'I won't. I don't.'

'Good. Now, how are things with your boyfriend?'

Abe Glitsky, in a pair of khaki slacks and a flight jacket, was walking down one of the muted hallways toward Dooher's office, accompanied by the night receptionist, an exceptionally attractive black woman of about twenty-five. She was explaining that Dooher's secretary had gone home - was Glitsky sure he had an appointment for this time, 6:30? Normally, the receptionist was explaining, if she'd known that, she would have stayed.

'I made it with Mr Dooher personally,' he said, non-committal. 'Maybe he didn't mention it to her.'

Glitsky was struck by the color of the light. The doors to several west-facing offices were open and the sun was going down over the cloud banks, spraying the hallway with crimson.

In almost every office he saw a young person hunched over a desk, oblivious to the sunset, to everything but what they were reading or writing. Fun job.

Dooher was standing in his doorway, talking to yet another beautiful woman. Glitsky figured they grew on trees at this altitude. 'Sergeant Glitsky?'

She was smiling at him, holding out her hand, and he realized he knew her - from the rape clinic, and then that visit to his office. What was she doing here?

'Christina Carrera.' Helping him out.

 'Right. Levon Copes,' he said. 'And I'm still looking.'

This seemed to register positively. 'I'm glad.'

The man with her - Glitsky presumed it was Dooher - stepped forward. Protectively? 'You two know each other?'

Christina quickly explained while Glitsky checked out the man in his thousand-dollar pale gray Italian suit. The only wrong note was the hair - no gray, which meant the guy was vain and had a bottle of Grecian Formula hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Glitsky figured if he looked like Mr Dooher, he'd be vain, too. But he'd have to go some before he decided to dye his hair.

The receptionist had disappeared. Christina was asking if Glitsky was the only Homicide Sergeant in town. 'Sometimes it feels like it.'

'I don't know how you do it,' Christina said. 'Up until a couple of months ago, I never knew anybody who'd been murdered, and now I've met two -Tania Willows and Victor Trang. It's unsettling.'

 'You knew Trang?'

'I met him here in Mr Dooher's office once. Still...'

 'It is easier if you don't know them first.' Glitsky tried to mitigate the cop humor of what he'd just said by smiling, but his scar got in the way. 'I know what you mean, though.'

'It's terrible,' Dooher said. 'Christina here and I were just talking about Victor Trang, the waste of it.'

'You were in Vietnam?'

Christina had gone away - Glitsky had no questions for her. He and Dooher went into the big corner office and they had more or less finished with the routine questions. Glitsky was still seated on the sofa, his tape recorder spinning silently on the coffee table. The receptionist had brought him a cup of tea, and it was excellent. With a slice of lemon yet. He would take the moment of peace until the cup was drained. They were hard enough to come by.

Dooher was volunteering information. It probably had no connection with Victor Trang, but Glitsky's experience was that a murder investigation led where it took you, and the most innocuous comment or detail could be the hinge upon which it all eventually turned. He sipped his tea and leaned back in the soft leather, waiting for whatever was coming next.

The strange red sky had gone mother-of-pearl and Dooher had loosened his tie. He was drinking something amber without ice, pacing around, leaning on the edge of his desk, crossing to the easy chair, to the floating windows. Nervous, Glitsky thought. Which wasn't unusual. He knew that people -even attorneys - got jittery when they talked to Homicide cops. It would be more suspicious if he wasn't.

'That's why I was surprised I found myself liking him. Trang, I mean.' Dooher sighed. 'I don't like to admit it, but it's one of the prejudices I've carried around all these years. Maybe it's genetic. My dad had the same thing with the Japs - the Japanese. He always called them Japs. Me, now, some of my best friends ...'

Glitsky kept him on it. 'So how'd you like it, Nam?'

'You go?'

He shook his head. 'Bad knees. Football.'

'Yeah, well, maybe you've heard - it sucked.'

Glitsky had come upon that rumor. 'You see action?'

'Oh yeah. We got ambushed and most of my squad got killed.' He swigged his drink. 'I still don't know why I survived and the other guys ... and then the warm welcome at home, that was special.' He looked over at Glitsky. 'I was bitter for a while. Blamed it on the Vietnamese. Ruined my life - all that.'

'Did they?'

Dooher took in his plush surroundings. 'No, that was all youth, I suppose. Excuses. Look around, my life isn't ruined. I've been lucky.'

Suddenly he snapped his fingers, went around his desk and opened a drawer; he pulled something out and handed it to Glitsky. 'These were the guys.'

It was a framed color photograph of a bunch of soldiers, armed and dangerous, goofing and scowling. Dooher was in the front row, on the far right, with his captain's bars, his weapon propped next to him. 'I had this up in that space in the bookshelves here till just before Trang came up here the first time. Then I realized it would be offensive to him. I guess I can put it back up now.'

Glitsky handed it back. 'They're all dead?'

'I don't know all. Three of us came home, I know that. But I haven't seen either of the other two in maybe fifteen years.'

The tea had cooled. Dooher went back around the desk and placed the frame in its former space, in full view now. 'Anyway, they trained me pretty well,' he was saying, 'to hate 'em. Charlie, I mean.'

'So what happened with Trang?'

'Like anything else. You finally meet one personally, get to know 'em a little, and you realize they're people first. I just put off meeting any of them for a long time. I wanted to keep hating them, you see? So the war would make some kind of sense. Dumb. It's so long ago now.'

'So who still hated him?'

'Trang? I don't know.'

'I understand he was suing you.'

Dooher had settled in the easy chair. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. 'Well, that's technically accurate. He'd filed a lawsuit where some priest took money from a woman. He was amending the suit, that was all. Trying to get more. Hey, it's his job. Anyway, I represent the Archdiocese. The whole thing hadn't gone very far. That's just our business. Litigation. Personally, we were on good terms.'

Glitsky didn't have any reason to doubt Dooher. He did believe that the killer was probably a tall, strong male, and though that described Dooher, he didn't have a patent on the build. 'I'm wondering if he mentioned anything to you about anybody else - clients, colleagues...'

The attorney gave it a long moment. 'Honestly, I can't think of anybody. I'll put my mind to it if you'd like.'

'I'd appreciate that.' Standing, Glitsky turned off his recorder and slipped it into his pocket. He handed Dooher his card. 'If something comes to mind, that's me, day or night.'

Dooher accompanied him to the door, opened it for him. The cotton clouds out the window had begun to glow with the lights coming on in the streets below. 'Do you have any leads at all, Sergeant, on who might have done this?'

'No, not yet. It's still early, though. Something may come up.'

'Well, good luck.' They shook hands, and Glitsky turned to leave as the door closed quietly behind him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Wes Farrell and Sam had been going out for a couple of weeks now and hadn't yet moved into the 'serious' phase, as they called it, of what they were also calling their quote relationship unquote. There was no plan as yet to escalate. Things were nicely physical. They were getting along, moving back and forth between their places, taking care of their respective dogs, although Quayle and Bart had yet to meet.

Wes was flirting with what felt like his first happy and carefree moment in about half a decade. It was the Saturday evening after a noon wake-up, followed by love-making and the Planetarium in Golden Gate Park. They'd sat in the plush reclining seats holding hands as the night sky came up indoors - Farrell learned more than he ever thought he'd need to know about the planet Neptune. Although you never knew - facts had a way of coming in handy.

They ended up sharing a short drink at the Little Shamrock, the bar where they had met.

It didn't hurt that the winter cold had lifted. Not that it was balmy, but anything above forty-five degrees seemed a gentle gift. The wind and fog were both gone, and here at dusk Wes was comfortable half reclining in the chaise outside, wearing blue jeans and a sweater on Sam's tiny fenced-in deck, surrounded by potted greenery, in the cupola created by three large redwood trees. She'd handed him a perfect martini - gin had always been, to Wes, the harbinger of summer - and told him she'd be out in a minute to join him, as soon as she'd put the game hens on to roast.

Sam was making him dinner, a first step into the heretofore dreaded return of the domesticity that had failed him so miserably the first time around.

They had talked about the implications of the dinner and decided they could risk it. Besides, Sam had pointed out, it wasn't going to be just the two of them and Quayle. Nothing that intimate. Other guests would be there to buffer the raging magnetic attraction that was nearly ripping the skin off their bodies. There was going to be some lawyer woman from her office, Christina, and her fiance, another lawyer, Joe. And Sam's brother- remember Larry and Sally? - would serve to balance out the lawyer ratio.

Wes sipped his drink. Sam thought he might be nervous meeting all these people in her circle at the same time. He supposed one day long ago this kind of situation might have had that effect, but today there was nothing but a sense of the exhilaration of new beginnings. Hope. It was great. 

The door creaked. A hand on his shoulder. The scent of her as she leaned over from behind the chaise, laid a soft hand against the side of his face.

'You know what I can't believe?' she said. She came around the lounge chair, holding her own martini. Farrell loved a woman who drank like he did. He also loved the look of Sam - the way she had filled her glass right to the rim, slurping at it delicately to get that first taste, puckering her lips around it. 'Um-um.' She was wearing jeans, too. And a white sweater. And hiking boots. She looked seventeen.

He smiled up at her. 'What can't you believe?'

'I can' t believe that Pluto' s going to be inside the orbit of Neptune for the next eleven years. So it's not Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto anymore; it's Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, and Neptune.'

'That wacky old solar system,' Wes said. 'Just when you think you got it all figured out.' He moved his legs off the recliner, patted it with his palm, and Sam sat, the haunch of her leg tight up against him. He grinned at her. 'The good news is that this is the kind of fact on which I believe we can make some money.'

Larry and Sally arrived first. The sun was down and Wes was back inside with Sam - another round of gin poured and good smells emanating from the kitchen - everybody already getting along, laughing about St Patrick's Day.

'Hey, the parts I remember were great.' Larry, defending himself from his sister's mock attack.

'And how many parts do you remember?'

Larry paused, considering. 'At least two.'

'Including meeting Wes?'

He gave Farrell an appraising glance, shook his head. 'I'm afraid that particular moment didn't make the cut. Where were we exactly? No offense, Wes.'

'You had the T-shirt,' Sally said to Wes. She was as tall as her husband, with long dark hair that had gone about a third gray. Her friendly, attractive face showed more age than Sam's. She also wore nicer clothes, some makeup, dangling earrings.

'That's what did it,' Sam said.'The shirt. I saw that shirt and read the message and said, "Here's a guy I've got to meet.'"

'I thought it was how it fit me.'

That, too,' she said. That's what I meant.'

'You guys.' Sally was smiling. 'No foreplay until after dinner. It's one of the rules.'

'What shirt?' Larry asked.

Farrell recognized them both immediately. Shaking Joe's hand, taking in the woman - Christina Carrera. Yep, it was her, no doubt about it. Not looking any uglier either, he noticed. And it looked as though she'd found the right guy. Joe Avery was tall and thin, with an angular, clean-shaven face, shoulders a yard wide and no gut at all. It wasn't fair.

'You're at McCabe and Roth, aren't you?'

Joe included Christina. 'We both are.'

'Not quite yet.'

'Close enough.' Then, placing Wes. 'You've been to the office ...'

'No more than two, three hundred times. Mark Dooher's my best friend.'

Christina snapped her fingers. 'That's it.' Explaining: 'I knew I knew the name Wes Farrell. When Sam told me... it's been driving me crazy. You go on camping trips or something with Mark, right?'

'Occasionally. Retreats, we call them.'

Joe Avery was looking a question at Christina, but Sam was coming up, kissing her on both cheeks, getting introduced to Joe. 'Okay, you lawyers, break it up. No professional talk until we've all said hello. At least.'

The moment passed.

Sam and Sally were in getting dessert and Larry had gone to the bathroom.

Joe turned to Christina. 'So how do you know about these retreats?'

'Mark told me about them, one of the first times we talked. I don't remember exactly. It just came up.' She turned to Wes, hoping to deflect the line of questioning from Joe. 'He said you guys go out and get re-charged on life.'

Farrell shrugged. 'Mostly we drink,' he said. Then, continuing to make light of it, 'Get away from the day-to-day. Talk about what we believe in, in theory. Try to beat the burn-out which you know, Joe, is a constant.' Wes drank some more wine and smiled at Christina. 'You'll find out after you've been at this business a year or so.'

Joe shook his head. 'I can't see it with Mr Dooher... Mark. He doesn't  seem like he's on the burn-out track. He's always geared up.'

'Joe, he's got to act that way,' Christina, rushing to Dooher's defense, nearly blurted it out. 'You don't want your managing partner moping around, making you feel like it's all so hard.'

'Well, he doesn't do that, that's for sure.'

'Yeah, but I think Christina's right. He acts tough, but if you know him. ..'

Christina laughed. 'Don't tell me he's a pussycat. A gentle heart, maybe, but. . .'

'No way,' Joe couldn't envision it. 'Maybe with you guys, but I've worked for him a lot of years, and Mark Dooher does not invite closeness.' Joe looked around the table, perhaps realizing he was being too negative. He caught himself, nearly knocking himself over backtracking. 'Although, lately, I must admit -I don't know exactly what happened - he's been fantastic.'

'You got over the hump, that's all,' Farrell said. 'You proved yourself.'

'Is that it?'

Farrell nodded. 'That's Mark. He used to be too soft - one of the guys, you know. Didn't want to give orders, set himself above anybody.'

Avery laughed. 'Well, he sure got over that one.'

'Joe!'

'That's a fact, Christina. Say what you want about Mark, being afraid to give orders isn't what he's about anymore.'

Farrell stopped them. 'You're responsible for ten people dying, Joe, it hardens you right up.'

In the silence, Christina finally spoke up. 'What do you mean, dying?'

Farrell made a face. He hadn't intended to bring this up. It was too personal. One of Dooher's true ghosts. But to drop it now would only arouse more curiosity. Better to downplay it - God knew it did relate to their discussion.

'Mark was in Vietnam,' he said. 'Platoon captain, about a dozen guys under his command. This being Vietnam, as you may have heard, the guys smoked some dope.'

'Did they inhale?' Joe asked. 'Mr Dooher smoked dope?'

Farrell shook his head. 'No, I don't think so. But his men did.'

'So what happened?' Christina asked.

'So Mark knew how bad things were over there, and he knew the dope made it bearable for his troops - regular guys pretty much his age - so he made an unspoken policy that they had to be straight when they were going out on maneuvers, but otherwise he wasn't busting anybody for a little dope. He thought it was a reasonable rule and so everybody would follow it.'

'What was a reasonable rule?' Larry, returning from the bathroom, didn't want to be left out.

Wes shortened it up. 'My best friend happens to be the managing partner of Joe's law firm,' he said. 'We were talking about how he got to be such a hardass to work for. And the answer is Vietnam. He didn't exert his authority, didn't take charge. So when his troops went out on patrol, it turned out they were stoned to the eyeballs and got themselves ambushed and most of 'em died. I don't think he's ever forgiven himself for that.'

'Jesus.' Joe clearly wasn't used to stories like this one. 'You get used to thinking in business terms, how maybe somebody beat him in a deal or something, but this. ..'

'No, this wasn't like that. This was real. So now he's more careful. He's got to be. Problem is - and I've known him my whole life - underneath he really does want to give people a break, but people, you cut 'em some slack once and next time they expect it again, so they don't perform as well as they might and that doesn't help anybody. So he's a bastard at the firm.'

'He is not.' Christina didn't like the language at all. 'He is nothing like a bastard.'

Wes held up his hands. 'He's my best friend, Christina. We're a little free with what we call each other. He's been known to be less than flattering to me.'

'Who has?'

Sam was coming back in with a large plate of cut fruit and cheeses. Wes rolled his eyes. They weren't going over this whole thing again. Enough Mark Dooher, already. 'Nothing,' Wes said. Then: 'I've got five dollars that says Neptune is the last planet in our solar system.' He winked at Sam.

'No, it's Pluto,' Joe said.

'It is Pluto.' Christina was sure, too. Larry and Sally were nodding in agreement.

Wes extended his hand out over the table. 'Five bucks,' he said. 'Just slap my palm.'

'That was cruel,' Sam said.

The guests had all gone home. She and Wes were having some Port, sitting on the loveseat they'd pulled in front of the wood-burning stove. Quayle was curled over her feet.

'Cruel but cool,' Wes said, 'and we did make fifteen dollars; it could have been twenty if Sally had ponied up her own five.'

'They're married,' Sam said. 'Married people never do that.'

'I remember.'

A piece of wood popped in the grate. Wes raised his glass to his mouth and realized he'd had enough tonight - gin, wine, Port. Maybe for tomorrow, too. The silence lengthened.

'You all right, Wes?'

He brought her in closer against him. 'I'm fine.'

'"Fine" isn't the strongest word in the dictionary.'

'Okay, I'm ecstatic.'

'This wasn't too much tonight - the family stuff, dinner at home?'

He had to chuckle. 'I assure you, this wasn't anything like any dinner I've ever had with Lydia, at home or anywhere else. In the first place, you can cook.'

'I'm not pushing anything,' she said.

'I know, not that I couldn't handle a little of that, even. But it was fun. I had a great time. I enjoyed your brother and sister and thought your friend Christina was charming and lovely and I think you are fantastic, although I'm not absolutely sure I'm going to respect you in the morning.'

She put her own glass down, took his hand from where it rested on her shoulder and placed it on her breast. 'I hope not,' she said.

'Let's go find out.'

At about the same moment that Wes Farrell was enjoying his first martini that evening, Mark and Sheila entered St Emydius church to attend Saturday-night Mass.

They walked together down the center aisle and chose a pew about ten rows from the front. There were more than fifty people in the church, a good showing. The congregation had come early to take part in the Reconciliation Service, which had for most Catholics replaced the old, often-humiliating sacrament of Confession. Now, sinners were offered an opportunity to reflect on their weakness, privately resolve to do good, and then be communally absolved of any guilt without having to confront another human being or suffer the minor indignity of a formal penance.

Today, though, before the priest had come on to the altar to begin the Reconciliation Service, Mark leaned over and whispered to Sheila that he was going to use the real confessional, which was still an option. 'I'm old fashioned,' he said. 'It does me more good.'

He didn't know what priest would be sitting in the confessional, but there was a good chance he'd know Dooher, and vice versa. All the priests at St Emydius knew him. Maybe not, though. Often a visiting priest would get the chore of Saturday Confession.

Dooher would let fate dictate it.

He nodded his head, made the sign of the cross, stood up and opened the confessional door. The familiar smell of it - dust and beeswax - filled his soul, as did the comforting darkness. Then the window that separated him and the priest was sliding open. The man recognized him immediately.

'Hello, Mark, how are you doing today?'

It was Gene Gorman, the pastor, who'd been to the house fifty times for poker, for dinner, for fundraisers, who got a bottle of Canadian Club every Christmas, who'd baptized Jason, their youngest.

Dooher paused. 'Not so good, I'm afraid,' he whispered. He let the silence gather. Then: 'I don't want to burden you, Gene.'

'That's what the sacrament's for, Mark.'

Dooher hesitated another moment. Hesitation heightened the gravity of things. 'Would you mind not using my name? Is there someone in the other stall?'

The confessionals at St Emydius, as in most Catholic churches, had three compartments - one in the middle for the priest, and one on either side of him for the repentants. This time the hesitation came from Father Gorman. Dooher heard him slide open the window on the other side, then close it. 'No, we're alone. You can begin.'

The old words, the ritual he so loved. Again he made the sign of the cross. 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.'
 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

John Strout, San Francisco's coroner, was a gangly Southern gentleman of the old school. He had a prominent Adam's apple, a perennially bad case of dandruff in his wispy gray hair, poor taste in clothes, and a pronounced Dixie accent. He was also, rube or not, one the country's most respected forensics experts, and now he was taking a morning walk with Glitsky through the debris and detritus of south-of-Market San Francisco.

It was Monday morning - sunny, breezy, and cold. Strout was, of course, a medical doctor, and - after a lifetime of bad morning coffee and stale donuts - had recently been a convert to the theory that a healthy breakfast was the key to a long life and perhaps even more luxuriant hair growth. Like all good converts, he had found the truth and was going to spread the word around, goddamn it. Like it or not.

So, whenever feasible, he'd taken to briefing cops and DAs about his forensics reports over breakfast in one of the city's eateries. It never occurred to him that discussing the finer points of often-gory violent death, complete with color photographs, might not be particularly conducive to stimulating the early-morning appetite.

It did occur to Glitsky.

Strout had finished the PM on Victor Trang on the previous Friday afternoon, and Glitsky had - atypically, in Strout's experience, probably because of his troubles at home - said he'd be free to discuss the results first thing Monday morning. Let the weekend intervene. Why not?

'I'll just look at the pictures while we're walking here, if you don't mind, John.' With a show of reluctance, Strout handed over the folder, and put his now-empty hands into the pockets of his greatcoat against the chill. 'What do we have?' Abe went on. 'Any surprises?'

'Well, as a matter of fact...'

Glitsky closed the newly opened folder. 'What? I'll listen first.'

'Surprises may be too strong a word, but the deceased here got himself gutted by a pig sticker of the first order.'

'Pig sticker?'

'Knife.'

'A pig sticker is a certain kind of knife?'

Strout's expression betrayed a certain intolerance. 'Damn, you Yankees ... pig sticker means knife. Genetically. Victor Trang got stabbed by a big knife, is that clearer? And not just any big knife, something like a Bowie or my own favorite guess, a bayonet. Y'all familiar with the term "bayonet"?'

Glitsky played along. 'I've heard of it. Made by the Swiss Army people, right? Whittling tool.'

'Yeah, that's it, 'cept the large version.' Strout put a hand on Glitsky's arm and stopped him as they walked. 'Open the file,' he said. The breeze gusted and they moved into the entrance of an office building, out of it. 'The photos.'

Glitsky followed instructions, flipping over glossies of the murder scene, the body as he'd found it, then as it looked from various angles stripped on the morgue table. Finally Strout put his finger on one. 'There you go. That one.'

It was a color close-up that Glitsky recognized all too soon: the wound itself, after the area had been washed - long and wider than most knife-wounds he'd been witness to.

'You see there?' Strout was saying. 'Right at the top?'

Glitsky squinted, not clear what he was supposed to be seeing. Strout moved in closer, put his finger on the area over the top of the gash. 'Right here. You see that half-moon? The little circle under it? Know what that is?'

Glitsky took a second, then guessed. 'It's an imprint from the haft of the knife.'

The coroner was pleased. 'I must say, it is a pure pleasure to work with a professional. That's exactly what it is. The perp stabbed him so hard and so far up, the haft left this little fingerprint, which is pretty damn distinctive, you ask me. Actually cut into the skin above the blade area. I wouldn't put my name on it as a definite,' - this was because he could never prove it for certain and some attorney might discredit his entire testimony if he wasn't one hundred percent positive and correct on every detail - 'but between us, this could be nothing but a bayonet.'

Strout reached inside his greatcoat and extracted a folded brown paper shopping bag. 'As a matter of fact...'

'You just happen to have one handy.'

This wasn't as unusual as it might have appeared. Strout's office contained an impressive collection of murder weapons from throughout the ages - maces, crossbows, garrotting scarves, sabers, handguns and Uzis. And, apparently, bayonets.

He withdrew it from the bag, hefted it affectionately, and handed it to Glitsky. 'I thought I'd cut my steak with this at breakfast. Make an impression on our waiter. But look.'

Abe was already looking. It was, as Strout had noted, a pig sticker of the first order. Where the blade met the handle of the knife was an oversized steel haft with a half-inch circular hole through the metal.

Strout was pointing again. 'That's where it connects to the mount of the rifle.' Then back to the picture. 'It's also why there's that kind of double circle - the top of the haft, then the punch-out area . . . couldn't really be any thing else.' 

'How common are these things, you think?'

Strout shrugged. 'Well, they ain't exactly Carter's Pills, but anybody wants could get ahold of one. Army/Navy stores, gun clubs, mail order, good old paramilitary-type boys saving our country from the government... your guess is as good as mine. Round here they probably wouldn't be as common as, say, in Idaho or Oregon, but you'd find 'em.'

'Also, ex-Army,' Glitsky said. Suddenly, he experienced a small jolt of connection. Mark Dooher. Vietnam and his dead troops. He closed his eyes, trying to re-visualize the photograph he'd seen in the attorney's office, whether there might have been a bayonet mounted on any of the many weapons displayed. He couldn't see it, couldn't bring it back.

But Strout was going on. 'Actually, Abe, that might be a tougher nut. If memory serves, they take your weapons away when they muster you out. 'Course, you could smuggle 'em ... people probably been known to.'

Rubbing his thumb over the bayonet's blade, Glitsky nodded. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'That would be illegal.'

After his Monday-morning breakfast meeting with John Strout, Glitsky had planned to get right on the Trang investigation - murders that didn't get solved in the first couple of days very often never did. But when he'd come back to the office, there had been another homicide. He had been on call last week, so normally this would have been someone else's problem, but this week's Inspector had called in sick and gone salmon fishing, and Glitsky appeared just as his Lieutenant, Frank Batiste, had despaired of finding an Inspector to assign.

Apparently, a fry cooker who'd been fired from a Tastee Burger in the lower Mission had returned to the scene of his humiliation and gone Postal - a new expression Glitsky loved. The ex-employee naturally killed none of the people with whom he had a gripe. He did, though, by mistake before he killed himself, end the life of a seventeen-year-old high-school student who'd stopped in for a hot chocolate. This new homicide brought Glitsky's workload to seven active cases, and put him inside and around the Tastee Burger for the rest of the day.

Now it was just before noon on Tuesday and finally he was at Mrs Trang's clean but cluttered apartment with Paul Thieu, his enthusiastic interpreter.

Victor's mother had been Glitsky's first choice of where to begin asking questions, but like so many other of his plans lately, this one hadn't panned out. He had respected the fact that she had been too distraught to talk in the immediate aftermath of her son's death. Then there had been the wake and funeral. This morning was the earliest they could get together.

The apartment was a study in lace. Every smooth surface was covered with some type of crocheted thing - a doily or hankie or tablecloth. There was lace over the back of the overstuffed couch that Glitsky and Thieu were directed to, lace over the coffee table, on the end tables under the lamps and photographs, on the television set, under the phone on the little hall table. A feeble sunlight struggled to pierce a veil of web-like lace drapery covering the front windows.

Trang's mother was petite and weathered, with flat gray hair and a shapeless tiny body, made more so by its enclosure in an oversized man's black business suit, over the shoulders of which she had thrown a crocheted white shawl. She offered them small flavorless cookies of some kind and coffee - near boiling, chicory-laced and appalling to Glitsky's taste, but Thieu sucked the first cup right up, black, and accepted a second. She sat still as a rock at the coffee table, responding to his opening expressions of regret in a patient and compliant way, without any interest. Her life, along with her son's, was apparently over.

But now, finally, he was getting to it. 'And the last time you saw your son was?'

He waited for Thieu to interpret, listened to the woman's inflection as she answered, trying to piece something in advance from sounds alone, but the tonality was too flat. Thieu nodded to Mrs Trang, then turned to him: 'She saw him the day before he was killed, but talked to him that night, that evening, after dinner sometime. She's not sure exactly what time.'

Glitsky pretended to scribble on his pad and kept his face impassive, his voice low and conversational. 'Paul, would you please just say the words she says, exactly? Don't tell me what she says. Say what she says.'

The younger man nodded, then swallowed, suitably chided. 'Sorry.'

'It's okay.' He sat forward on the couch, spoke directly to the mother. 'Mrs Trang, how did Victor seem to you the last time you saw him?'

Thieu translated. The wait. 'He was hopeful. We had a nice dinner. He tries to come over at least once a week, on Sunday, sometimes more. He...' She paused and Thieu waited. 'It saves him money to come here and eat, I think. He has taken a little while to start making money as a lawyer, and he felt that he was about to make a lot.'

'And how was he going to do that?'

'He had a client who was suing the Archdiocese, and he said they - the Archdiocese - had offered to .. .' Thieu listened, turned to Glitsky. 'She's apologizing to me,' he said. 'She doesn't know the jargon.'

Glitsky pointedly ignored Thieu. 'That's all right, Mrs Trang, just do your best.'

She came back to him, began talking again. Thieu picked it up: '. . . to settle it... before going to court. They were not going to go to court and he thought he would make a lot of money.'

'He was pretty certain of that?'

'Yes. He seemed very sure, very hopeful. But also worried.'

'What about?'

'That it wouldn't happen. That something would go wrong.' A pause. 'As it has.'

'Did he say what might go wrong? What he was worried about?'

'That this was a lot of money, and the Church might use ... connections ... in the court, perhaps, so that even though Victor was right, even if the law was on his side, they could stop him.'

'Did you think he meant violently?'

'No. Now, I don't know. Maybe so.'

'How much money was he talking about?'

'He didn't say exactly. Enough to pay off his loans. He thought he would move his office, get a secretary. He wanted to get me a new place.' She motioned around their cramped quarters. 'Buy me some new clothes.'

'Okay, then, how about the next night, when he called? Did he call or did you call him?'

'He called me. The attorney for the Archdiocese ...'

'MarkDooher?'

'Yes, I think that was his name. He had called Victor and asked him to stay in the office to wait for a phone call, and they were going to offer more money that night.'

'Did he say when he'd gotten that first call, from Dooher?'

'I thought it was just then, just before he called me.'

Glitsky made a note on his yellow pad. There would be a phone record of the precise time.

Mrs Trang said a few more words, which Thieu related. 'It's why he stayed late.'

'Would he have called anyone else about this, to tell them, perhaps, about the possible settlement?'

'No. I wanted to call my sister and tell her and he told me to wait, that he was going to wait, too. Not to talk to anyone until it was done. He didn't want to ...' Thieu frowned, trying to find the right word '... to bring it bad luck, to jinx it. He told me this.'

'But that doesn't mean the girlfriend or somebody else didn't just happen to drop by.' Thieu wanted to talk about it. Still and always.

Glitsky was driving the unmarked Plymouth back to Trang's office, trying to keep from jumping to conclusions, glad he didn't usually work with a partner. He was coming to believe that entirely too much credence was given to the round-table discussion. Sometimes - a radical idea in this bumptious age, he knew - but sometimes solitary contemplation did produce results.

'It had to be somebody he knew, right?' Thieu persisted. 'It wasn't a robbery - nothing was missing.'

'We don't know that. We don't know what was there to be missing.'

'I mean his wallet, personal effects ...'

'It might have just been botched.' If Thieu wanted to play these games, Glitsky could at least make them instructive. 'Guy's in there and Trang comes back from dinner...'

'He didn't leave for dinner.' Paul had done his homework. 'The autopsy didn't find anything in his stomach.'

'So he came back for his keys or something. Or went to mail a letter. If he left, though, and came back, discovered the perp burglarizing the place, who killed him, then decided he'd better split...'

'That didn't happen,' Thieu said.

'No, I don't think so either. But it could have, which is my point. What I think is what you think - a strong male who knew him killed him.'

'Dooher?'

'Maybe, or maybe one of his clients. Maybe one of the people he was hassling for business.' Abe gave the other man a sidelong glance. 'That's what they pay us for, to find out.'

Trang's office didn't look much better in the daytime, and to Thieu it felt worse. The crime-scene tape was still across the door. Inside, the way it had been left by the Forensics and Homicide teams on Friday night created a sense of abandonment that, to Thieu, was overwhelming.

He noticed that none of whatever weak sunlight there had been outside made it into this cavern. Ever.

Glitsky had zipped up his flight jacket. His breath showed in the chill. He crossed to the one window - the black hole of the other night - and opened it into the brick of the building next door, about four inches away. He stuck his head out and looked up, down, sideways. 'If the perp came through here,' he said, 'he is one skinny dude.'

It was the first even remote touch of levity Thieu had heard from the Sergeant. Emboldened by it, he dared ask another question. 'What are we looking for?'

Glitsky had moved back to the desk, was sitting in the library chair. He motioned to four cardboard boxes lurking in the corner with manila file folders visible in them. 'Anything. Why don't you start by looking through those boxes?' Thieu shrugged - the well of Glitsky's humor was proving to be relatively shallow - and went to work.

The files weren't alphabetically arranged, and he'd gone through the first three of them - notes from law school! - when he heard a click and a hum behind him, and turned to see Glitsky at the computer, legs stretched out, arms crossed, scowling at the monitor. After a minute, the Sergeant sat forward and began clicking the mouse.

Thieu left his boxes, straightened up and came around behind him, resolving to ask no questions, though it wasn't his style not to ask. He liked people and believed that the truth emerged from a full and free discussion of ideas and theories. Also, it had been his experience at UCLA that asking professors what they wanted was how you found out what to give them. It wasn't any mystery, just simple communication. And then at the Academy it got drilled into them that you should just ask questions and senior officers would always be happy to help you.

He didn't think anybody had briefed the Inspector here on that part.

The monitor was scrolling the pages of a document that was evidently some kind of an organizer. Glitsky got to the day of Trang's death, a week ago yesterday now, and leaned forward. 'Look at this,' he said.

Thieu already was. There were four entries:

10:22 - called MD, told him need answer by COB today or filing tomorrow. $3.00 million.

1:40 - MD message. I called back. He was at lunch. WCB.

4:50 - MD callback. F. out till 6. Extension till midnight tonight okay.

7:25 - MD from F's. Settlement possible. Offer $$ still unresolved. Midnight firm.

Thieu couldn't stop himself. That last one, that's when he called his mother. Who's "F"?'

Glitsky was scrolling backward now, eyes on the screen. 'The Archbishop,' he said. 'Flaherty.'

As expected, it didn't appear that Victor Trang had had a lot of business. The screens reflected few clients, appointments or telephone numbers. At the screen for a couple of weeks earlier, Glitsky stopped on another screen: MD, $600KH! Declined.

'That's something,' Thieu said.

Glitsky nodded. 'Youbetcha.'

'He turned it down?'

'Looks like. I guess he thought he could get more.'

There was an answering machine with calls from Trang's girlfriend, Lily Martin, and Mrs Trang and Mark Dooher and Felicia Diep, all wondering if Victor were there, why he'd not called back, would he please call when he got the message.

'Dooher?' Thieu asked. They were heading back downtown where Glitsky was to talk to Lily Martin, who'd volunteered to come to the Hall of Justice for an interview. 'I'd just bring him in and grill him.'

'About what?'

'About what? About all this is what!'

'This isn't anything, Paul. This is squat. We are nowhere yet on this.' He didn't really want to bite off Thieu's head. After all, what the man was saying could be correct. But there was, as yet, no evidence that it had been Dooher, not even enough to insult him by asking him pointed questions. And Glitsky was still smarting from his fiasco with the undoubtedly guilty Levon Copes, where he had just known what had happened. He wasn't going to make the same mistake here. But he was really being an unnecessary hardass. He didn't want to burn the kid out before he even got lit.

Although he knew he wouldn't require any translator with Lily Martin, Glitsky decided on the spur of the moment to invite Thieu to remain for the interview with her. Besides, Glitsky knew there was a chance he might need him again. 'Let's talk to the girlfriend first, Paul. See what she's got to say.'

'One million six hundred thousand dollars was the settlement figure. Which was . . . would have been . . . five hundred and thirty-three thousand for Victor.'

Lily Martin was absolutely certain.

She was conservatively and, Glitsky thought, inexpensively well dressed, and she spoke English perfectly, having been in this country since she was four. Her father, Ed Martin, had fought in Vietnam, married her mother over there and brought them all back here. Now she was twenty-five. Working, as she did, as a junior accountant doing her internship with a Big 8 firm, the money angle was no mystery to her.

'Victor's mother said he told her he wasn't going to call anybody to tell them,' Abe said gently. 'He didn't want to jinx the deal.'

'He didn't call me -I called him. Like a minute after he got the call.' She broke a brittle smile, which cracked almost immediately. 'This was going to be the start of our life, of everything. Of course I called him.'

'That night? Last Monday?'

'Yes.'

'And what did he say?'

'He said that Mr Dooher had just called from the Archbishop's office, and he wanted ... before he presented a final number to the Archbishop... he wanted to run it by Victor to see if they were going to be in the ballpark.'

'And that number was ...?'

'What I just told you, Sergeant, a million six.'

'I just want to get this straight, ma'am. Dooher told him they were going to be talking in that range?'

That's right.'

'And if they - Dooher and Flaherty - if they didn't come through?'

'Then Victor was going to file, but he didn't think... no.' She folded her arms, too quickly, over her chest. Glitsky recognized the classic body language - she'd decided to clam up about something.

'No, what?'

'Nothing. I'm sorry. Go ahead.'

The interrogation room was small and windowless. There was no art on the walls. The furnishings consisted of three folding chairs around a pitted wooden table. This setting could play on the nerves of even the most cooperative witness. The air got stale. People froze, imagined things, got weirded out in any number of ways.

Suddenly Glitsky leaned back, straightened, shook his shoulders, getting loose. He lifted the corners of his mouth, scratched his face. Finally, there was the trick he did with the eyes, letting them go out of focus. He fancied this made people think there was something soft in there. He turned his head to include Paul Thieu. 'How about if we all take a break, get a cup of tea or something?'

'So then, after you talked this night.. .?'

'He was going to come to my place. He asked me not to call again - Dooher might be there. He'd call when he knew, or when it was over.'

'And when he didn't?'

'I just thought it must have gone real late. He just went home. I waited all the next day at work, but no call. I tried his office, his home . . . even Mr Dooher's office.'

'And what did he say?'

'He didn't talk to me.' Glitsky and Thieu exchanged glances. Lou the Greek's seemed unusually cavernous, nearly empty here in the mid-afternoon. It provided a better environment for talking than the tiny interrogation room at the Hall. 'So eventually I went by the office and knocked, but there wasn't any answer. Of course.' By now she was sniffling occasionally into a napkin. 'And then I called the police.'

Glitsky kept it casual. 'Why wouldn't Dooher talk to you?'

She shook her head. 'I don't think it's so much he wouldn 't, he just didn't. His secretary took my message, which was that I was a friend of Victor Trang's and did he have any idea where Victor was? Had he seen him? Then she called back and said he was concerned, too. Maybe we should both call the police. So that's where I left it.'

Glitsky was tearing his own napkin into tiny bits and piling them neatly on the table. 'Ms Martin. Upstairs a while ago there was something you didn't want to talk about, about the settlement with Dooher...'

She cast her eyes to the ceiling and sighed deeply. 'Okay,' she said.

That night, at the Glitsky home, it was almost the way it used to be. His sons were watching television, perhaps even doing some homework to the mindless background, in the bedroom shared by the two younger boys.

Flo was feeling better today. It went up and down. But tonight it was way up. She was dressed in tight bluejeans, gold sandals and no socks, a maroon blouse. Diamond stud earrings and a brush of makeup, a light touch of lipstick. A maroon scarf artfully curled around her head to hide the hair loss.

The nurse was off at night. And Flo had sent Glitsky's dad back to his home. She told him he needed some time for himself. He should take in a movie, go solve one of the mysteries of the Talmud.

Nat must be sick of taking care of things here and Flo was able to cope today. Who knew how long it was going to last, but for now - maybe a couple of days, maybe more - she craved some semblance of normalcy for them all.

And somehow - she was a genius - she'd done it. Created that feel. Made dinner of stuffed flank steak (everybody's favorite), home fries with onions and peppers, broccoli and cheese sauce, vanilla ice cream over cherry pie. 'You know, I just never seem to worry about cholesterol anymore.'

Jokes yet.

Now she was rinsing dishes - about a freightcar full - piling them carefully in the dishwasher. Glitsky sat on the counter next to her, telling her about his day, just like old times, about what Lily Martin had suddenly gone quiet about, which was that her boyfriend never really thought he would win the lawsuit if he filed it.

'You mean he was basically trying to extort money from the Church?'

'Lily didn't want to put it so bluntly, but essentially, yeah.'

'That is scuzzy.'

Glitsky shrugged. 'He's a lawyer. Was a lawyer.'

'You think that's why he got killed?'

'Just because he was a lawyer? I don't know, Flo, that's a tough theory. There's lot of lawyers out there and many of them are alive.'

She gave him the eye. 'Because of the deal, Abraham.'

He temporized. 'I don't know yet. I think it might be possible.'

Another look. 'Sergeant goes out on limb. Film at eleven.'

He smiled at her, his real smile. My problem is this: so what? This guy Dooher may have had all this against Victor Trang, but you don't go out and kill somebody who's suing your client. And this killing was personal.'

'How about if you thought you might lose your client if you lost?'

'But they weren't even playing yet. Nobody was going to lose that big. They were settling.'

'Maybe the client wasn't happy about the settlement terms. They'd go with this one because they had to, it had gone too far, whatever - but afterwards they fire the lawyer. Or he thinks they might.'

'So he kills the guy?' Abe shook his head. 'I just don't see it. It doesn't make any sense. Besides, this lawyer we're talking about, Dooher, he's managing partner of a big firm downtown. He's been at this all of his life. He's not going to kill a professional adversary over a case. Besides, they lose a case, they lose a client, it's not the end of the world. His firm's probably got a hundred clients.'

'Only probably? You didn't check?'

Glitsky had to smile. 'Yeah, Flo, in my free time I ran a D&B on them. Firms don't usually run on one client.'

Flo shrugged. 'Okay, so who then, if it's not money?'

'I know. I just hate to see a money motive go nowhere.'

She put the last dish into the dishwasher, closed it up, and came to stand in front of her husband, between his legs. She put her arms around him. They kissed.

'I remember that,' Glitsky said.

Flo nodded toward their bedroom. 'Race you.'

For a half-hour, he'd forgotten all about real life. 

Then she was breathing regularly and he was back in it. The clock said 9:45. It was a school night - he had to get the boys down to bed. He had to move, but if he didn't, maybe it would all just stop right here, where he was, where they all were.

She shifted slightly. 'Abe?' Not sleeping after all. 'Find somebody else. Promise me that.'

There was a tremor, a tic, above his eye. The muscle of his jaw tightened. The scar through his lips went white with a surge of anger so sharp it grabbed his next breath.

'I don't want to talk about it.' He stood. 'It's time I got those kids to bed.' 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Christina knew it had happened at the dinner on Saturday at Sam's ... its aftermath.

On the drive back to her apartment, Joe going on and on. How could Christina think she knew Mark Dooher so well? What was with the two of them? Where did she get off, saying he was nothing like a bastard? And while they were at it, what was the real story behind her knowing about these retreats with Dooher and Farrell?

And she'd closed her eyes, too tired to fight him anymore, to explain, to care. The certainty had come in a flash - that Joe wasn't right for her, and all the rationalizing and wishing in the world wasn't going to change that.

He would never be right. She didn't love him.

There had been early admiration, then a desire born of curiosity, followed by a leap of faith. But the fact was that she didn't feel much about him one way or the other. Except when he started talking about /acts. And even then she didn't hate him - she just found him irritating and boring.

Pleading a headache, she'd gone into her apartment alone, said she'd call him when she felt better.

Which wasn't Sunday. Then on Monday he'd flown to LA and stayed overnight. She'd been out both nights, studying. She'd come home and listened to his petulant messages and it all got clearer.

Now, Wednesday morning, she stood at his office door. He was, as always, hip-deep in work. Ear stuck to his telephone, he was signing something and reading something else, passing paper to his secretary, who hovered beside him with a notepad and an expression of exasperated fear.

Yep, Christina thought, Joe is going to make it.

Fate sealed the decision. At that moment Joe reasonably spoke into the telephone: 'I don't think you've got all your ducks lined up, Bill, and that's the plain fact of it.'

She came forward into the room. Seeing her, Joe held up one finger, pointed at the phone and smiled as though she were a client he'd been expecting. He mouthed, 'Be right there.'

She sadly shook her head and put the envelope containing the ring and her letter on his desk. Patting it once, she turned and walked out.

'I feel like a coward, just running out like that. I should have faced him.'

'And said what?' 

'I don't know. Told him.'

'Would he have listened?'

'Maybe to the fact that I was leaving him. Maybe that.' She looked out at the whitecaps pocking the blue bay, sailboats half-keeled in the breeze, San Francisco in the distance, the Golden Gate beyond the Sausalito curve to her right. At Sam's expression, she laughed. 'No, you're right. Not even to that. And that look isn't fair.'

'What look? And I didn't say anything.'

'You know what look. And you didn't have to.'

They were at Scoma's, having taken the ferry to Sausalito. Sam had two experienced volunteers working at the Center and decided she could afford a few hours off. For her part, Christina, after leaving her envelope, had been tempted to go to Dooher's office and tell him about it, but thought it would smack of leading him on, which she flatly wasn't going to do.

To what end? He'd made it clear he was married, not interested in her in that way. And what a relief, really, though she did think he was terrific.

She sometimes thought every other man on the planet was incapable of seeing who she was inside. But not Mark. He simply liked her, who she was. It was a joy.

She was aware, however, that her decision to break off with Joe had come about because she'd been unable to avoid contrasting the younger man to Dooher, with his heady mix of physical good looks, substance, experience, power, and humor. She decided that her growing friendship with him would be the litmus test for the kind of relationship she would eventually ... not settle for, as she had with Joe. But settle on. Someone of Dooher's quality, if he could be found at all. It might take a while.

But that was the other thing, the other wonderful result of this friendship with Mark Dooher - if some other man didn't come along to validate who she was, it didn't have to be the end of the world.

She was trying to explain this to Sam. 'I don't know why it took me so long to realize. Sometimes I think about the only man who's ever liked me for me, besides my dad, is Mark.'

Sam, mopping up the perfect Dore sauce with the perfect piece of fresh sourdough bread, was matter-of-fact. 'It's the curse of fabulous beauty.' She raised her eyes. 'I'm serious.'

Christina knew better than to flutter her lids with false modesty. 'Well. But now at least I'm getting a glimpse that maybe I'm worth something by myself.'

'As opposed to?'

'I don't know. The lesser half of some guy I happen to be with?'

'The trophy?'

Christina nodded. 'On some level it's flattering. Or something. So I let it happen -I become the person they want me to be.'

'It's tempting, that's why. It is flattering. It's also what everybody's always taught you. You want to please. You're hard-wired for it. So it gets internalized.' Sam mopped more sauce. 'I cannot make a sauce this good at home. How do they do this?' She took the bite, chewed a moment, sighed. 'It's one of the hard truths.'

'The sauce?'

Sam laughed, shook her head. 'What sauce?' Another laugh. 'I'm all over the place, aren't I? No, the hard truth about who we are. I went through the same thing about ten years ago.'

'I think you've lost me. What same thing?'

'This decision that I wasn't what some man thought I was.'

'And you did it, just like that?'

'No.' Smiling again, she held up a finger. 'But I tried. I acted that way for all the world to see. Got my heart broke four or five times. Got bitter and cynical about men. But I did get better about me. I think. Eventually.'

Christina nodded. 'Well, I'm not going back. Not the same way. Not to another Joe.'

'Good. Hold on to that feeling. You're going to need it when it's been six months. You get a little lonesome. Trust me on this.'

'I think I can handle lonesome. I've done lonesome before. The difference was that lonely was always clearly the time between one guy and the next guy. Now, I think I'll cultivate some friendships.'

'Friendships are good,' Sam said. 'As long as you don't get confused.'

'You mean Mark Dooher?' Christina shook her head. 'No. He's not like that.'

Sam raised an eyebrow. 'He's not a sexual creature?'

'No.' She laughed. 'He exudes ... confidence that way, I suppose. But he's married. He's happy. He's got it in balance. He's never come on to me in any way. In fact, more the opposite. Hands off. Be a person first. It's great, actually.'

'I've got to meet this guy. Wes thinks he's God, too.'

'Speaking of...'

'God - or Wes?'

Christina nodded. 'MrFarrell.'

'I'm afraid I let lonesome get the better of me and pursued him a little more, uh, recklessly than I would have liked. Now I like to think we're moving cautiously toward friendship, but we've got a ways to go before we get beyond superficial.'

'Which isn't so bad, is it?'

Sam shrugged. 'I don't really know. That's the funny thing. It makes me a little nervous - what we've been talking about all day here. There's no way I'm investing any of this,' she tapped her heart, 'until I know him better.'

'Until you know it's real.'

Sam's face was a kaleidoscope of emotions. She nodded sheepishly. 'That's always the question, isn't it?'

Glitsky really hated it when he talked himself out of a plausible murder suspect, and that's exactly what his two talks - the one with his wife and the other with Paul Thieu - had accomplished.

Not only did he lack any physical evidence pointing to Mark Dooher as Victor Trang's killer, but - as he had told Flo - there was no reasonable way that a successful corporate lawyer was going to stab another lawyer to death over the terms of a possible settlement. That solution, much as he would love it if it did, just didn't scan.

So he was going to have to get another approach, and to that end he had dropped in on Paul Thieu in Missing Persons and asked him to call Felicia Diep and set up an appointment for some time, if possible, before afternoon tea.

In the meanwhile, Glitsky went upstairs to Homicide.

The room looked as it always did - a large open area with twelve desks, no more than three of them occupied at any one time; the doorless corner cubicle 'office' of the Chief of Homicide, Lieutenant Frank Batiste; two massive dry wall columns papered, stuck and tagged with every poster, fax, ammo sale notice, car repo slip, random prostitute's phone number - and so on - that had crossed some Inspector's desk in the past four years or so and which, at the time, had seemed too important, funny, or unusual to simply discard in a waste basket.

Glitsky's desk was next to one of these columns. He pulled his chair in, crossed his arms behind his head, and put his feet up. His eyes came to rest on the Xeroxed note at his eye level: Don't let your mouth write a check your ass can't cash.

He let his chair back down, trying to will away the nagging sense that he shouldn't stop concentrating on Mark Dooher who was, in some ways, the least likely probable candidate for the murder. But for just that reason ...

Instinct counted. That was the problem. Glitsky's instincts were screaming something that he couldn't prove - Trang's murder had to have been personal. Someone had hated him passionately.

And that element just didn't seem to be there with his business adversary, Mark Dooher. So Glitsky should stop wasting energy on him. Except if Trang represented something Dooher hated passionately. Like Vietnamese people.

No. Forget that. He had a lot of other work, six other pressing homicides.

It might, after all, be the girlfriend, Lily. Girlfriends always had a motive or two. And Lily stood to benefit if Trang accepted Dooher's settlement. Maybe she'd gotten mad at him when he hadn't? Yesterday he'd told himself that no, she was too small; she could never have held Trang up. But - sudden thought - what if she had another boyfriend? She'd known Victor was alone in the office. He'd overlooked that. If she sent boyfriend number two over . ..

'Abe - got a minute?'

Frank Batiste stood in the doorway to his cubicle. The Lieutenant and Glitsky had come up together through the ranks. Both were nominal minorities - Glitsky half-black, Batiste a 'Spanish surname' - and both had elected to disregard any advantages, and they were legion, accruing to that status in San Francisco. It had created a bond of sorts. And although Batiste currently outranked Glitsky, they'd been in the department the same number of years and felt like equals.

So Glitsky got up and by the time he reached the doorway, the Lieutenant was sitting behind his desk.

'What's up, Frank?'

'Come on in. Sit down. Get the door.'

A joke, since there was no door. Glitsky took the folding chair across from the desk. Batiste pulled a pencil from his drawer and began tapping the table. 'So you know how to tell the prostitute in the Miss America contest?'

'I'm afraid I don't, Frank.'

'She's the one with the banner reading I-da-ho?

The one saving constant in the office, Glitsky thought. Somebody's always got a dumb joke. And Batiste was on a roll. 'Okay, another chance for you: you know the difference between Mick Jagger and a Scotsman?'

Glitsky broke a small smile. 'I give up.'

'Mick Jagger says "Hey, you, get offa my cloud," and the Scotsman says "Hey, McCloud, get off my ewe.'"

'You gotta get an agent, Frank. The right agent could make you a star.'

'That's true, the downside being that it would leave a vacancy here,' Batiste said. He pulled himself up straighter, getting to business. 'Which is what this is about. I notice you aren't taking this year's Lieutenant's exam. You don't want to make more money?'

'More money would be good.'

'Then what?'

'Maybe I don't want to be a Lieutenant. Maybe I don't want to leave Homicide.' Typically, a promotion to Lieutenant meant a transfer out of the detail to which an officer had been assigned. There were exceptions to this rule. Batiste himself had been a Homicide Inspector before his promotion. That wasn't something to count on, but Batiste was hinting that it could happen again with Abe. But, of course, first he had to take the exam.

Batiste opened the side drawer of his desk and took out a giant handful of peanuts in the shell. He dumped them on the desk between them, then grabbed one and cracked it. The peanuts were a constant in the Homicide detail. No one remembered when or how they'd first arrived, but they were always there. 'That's fine if that's what you want. I just didn't want it to be an oversight. I know you've had a lot on your mind lately.'

Batiste chewed and cracked another peanut, busy with it. This was awkward ground. 'You want my opinion, you want to take the test, keep your options open.'

Glitsky gave it a minute, then nodded. 'Okay, I'll do that. Thanks for mentioning it.' 

'Good.'

The sound of peanuts being cracked. Neither of the men moved. 'Hey, Frank.'

'Yeah?'

Another long moment. Batiste took another handful of nuts out of his drawer and Glitsky got up, dropped his shells into the waste basket, looked out through the open entrance of Batiste's office, then sat back down. 'Are you sure there isn't anything else? I could handle it, there was.'

'Like what?'

'Like I've got so much on my mind that I'm not doing my job?' Glitsky's voice remained matter-of-fact, but his eyes became distant. 'That I'd be better off pushing paper as a Lieutenant in the traffic division than as a lowly Inspector with a real job in Homicide.' The eyes rested on his Lieutenant. 'I'd like to know, Frank, I really would. If I'm an embarrassment...'

'Who's saying that?'

His shoulders sagged. 'I am, I guess. I'm asking. I couldn't close on Levon Copes. Then I get assigned this clown who shoots up the Tastee Burger when there is no investigation to conduct but it keeps me off the streets? This kind of stuff, it makes me wonder.'

Batiste had stopped with the peanuts. He shook his head. 'Nobody's saying anything like that, Abe. I don't even think it.'

Glitsky took a breath. A beat. Another one. Three.

Batiste. 'You all right?'

'I'm reading everything wrong, Frank. Sorry. I didn't mean to lay it on you. I'm just getting everything wrong.'

Batiste told Abe he didn't have to worry so much about what he might be doing wrong. So what if he wasted a few minutes? They worked in the city's last bastion where results - not hours - were what counted. If Glitsky felt he wasn't on all cylinders, enough were still firing to get the job done. So he should put aside the doubts about why he thought it was Dooher.

Sometimes professionals had hunches. You asked yourself every question you could think of, even if you didn't exactly know why you needed to ask it. Answering them all probably wouldn't take fifteen minutes.

Then he could go talk to Lily Martin again, or Felicia Diep. Or the Pope.

Which gave Glitsky an idea.

'By the way, I met your girlfriend again the other night. I think she likes you.'

Wes Farrell, leaning against the padded back wall, was sitting on the hardwood floor on the squash court, breathing hard. Dooher wasn't even winded. He was absently whacking the ball into the wall, hitting it back on the short hop. A machine.

'I've got so many, Wes, which one are we talking about?'

'The pretty one.' 

Dooher inclined his racket slightly, the ball bounced, shot straight up off his racket, and arced into his waiting palm. 'They're all pretty,' he said, smiling.

They're not all as pretty as she is. The girl from Fior d'ltalia? Christina. Your summer clerk. Ring a bell?'

Dooher corrected him. 'One of my summer clerks, Wes. I think we're bringing on about ten. And I hate to ruin your fantasies, but we've remained platonic.'

'I thought I was talking about your fantasies.'

'I have no fantasies. I live an ordered and disciplined life, which is why I will beat you in this next game. Besides, Sheila and I are enjoying a little renaissance right at the moment.' Dooher gave his practiced shrug, minimizing personal complicity in all the good things, such as his wife's sexual favors, that constantly came his way, and bounced the ball off the floor. 'Double or nothing? I'm ready. Where'd you see her?'

Farrell slowly pulled himself to his feet. 'Actually, I'm having a little renaissance myself.'

'With Lydia?'

'Lydia who? Her name's Sam.' He was all the way on his feet now, half limping, holding his back. 'How did I get so decrepit, anyway? I eat right, I drink right. Am I not at this very moment exercising?'

Dooher was tossing the ball up and down, catching it without looking. 'Whose name is Sam?'

'My girlfriend, you fool. And Christina Carrera is a friend of hers. We were at a dinner party.'

'And my name came up?'

Wes shrugged. 'When we realized half the people there knew you. I said you weren't as bad as you appeared. I'm afraid I told them your Vietnam story.'

Dooher's face clouded for a moment. 'That story. I don't think it's come up once in the past ten years, and just the other day ...' Dooher explained about Glitsky. 'So I showed him the picture. What was Christina's reaction to all this talk of me?'

'She didn't need your tragic background to think you were a hero. She's one of your fans. Obviously, someone has deluded her into thinking you are a sweet and gentle soul under that craggy exterior.'

'She's got a keen insight into human nature,' Dooher said. 'Maybe I'll give her a raise.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Flaherty's Appointments Secretary was initially inclined to be coldly officious, but after Glitsky had explained that he needed a personal appointment with His Excellency to talk about the murder of one of his flock, the man had first gotten interested, then had thawed. He checked. Flaherty had a two o'clock, but his lunch had broken up early - he was in the office right now. Would Glitsky wait a moment?

Okay, the secretary had told him, if he could get down to the Chancery Office, the Archbishop would give him between when he arrived and his appointment, say twenty minutes if he flew.

He flew.

The windows were open and the sound of children playing down below drifted up to them.

They sat kitty-corner in wingchairs. The spartan office was chilly. Glitsky kept his jacket zipped. The rest of the room reinforced the theme of minimal creature comfort - Berber rug, flat-top desk, computer, the chairs, some photos of Flaherty with unknowns and kids and sports figures, a crucifix, a wall of books. With no pretension or sign of earthly power, it was nothing that Glitsky had expected.

Neither was the man himself. In his black pants, scuffed loafers, white socks, green and white striped dress shirt, the Archbishop might have been a high-school teacher. The gray eyes, though, were singular. Intelligence there, Glitsky thought, lots of it. The ability to calculate. To see through things.

But in spite of that, he didn't seem to be following Glitsky's line of questioning. 'Are you saying that Mark Dooher told you we had a meeting here on Monday a week ago?'

'He didn't say that, no.'

'Good. Because that didn't happen.'

'There was no meeting to talk about an increase in the settlement you were willing to give Mr Trang?'

'Yes, we had that meeting. But it was, it must have been three weeks ago. Maybe more. And we decided no. We were sticking with the six hundred thousand.'

Clearly, the settlement issue still rankled. But Flaherty wanted to go back. 

'I'm curious. You said you talked to Mark, Mr Dooher, is that right? So if he didn't mention this meeting, who did?'

'Victor Trang's girlfriend. And his mother. Independently.' Glitsky felt he ought to explain a little further. 'I've been talking to people as they've been available, sir. Dooher was first.'

'Where did you even get that connection? Dooher to Trang?'

Flaherty might try to present a low profile, but he was used to command. Glitsky sat back, kept his voice low. 'Dooher called Missing Persons. Him, the girlfriend, the mother. That's where I started. And Dooher didn't volunteer anything about the meeting, but since that time I've heard about it from two sources. I'm trying to find out if it happened.'

'Why didn't you go back to Dooher?'

Now Glitsky leaned forward, made some eye contact. 'Excuse me, sir, but do you mind if I ask a couple of the questions? That's how we usually do this.'

The Archbishop let go with a deep-throated laugh, recovered, told Glitsky he was sorry, to go ahead. He'd shut up.

'So there was no meeting?'

'No. Not that Monday night. Not any night. As I said, we discussed the settlement terms at one of our regular daytime business meetings.'

Glitsky consulted the notes he'd taken with Lily Martin. 'You never discussed the figure of a million six hundred thousand.'

'No chance. Mark wouldn't even have brought me a figure like that. He knows that would have been insane. Hell, what we did offer - the six hundred - that was insane.'

'But Trang turned it down?'

The Archbishop shrugged. 'People are greedy, Sergeant. It's one of the cardinal sins and I bet you wouldn't be surprised how often it comes up.'

'So where was it going from there? The lawsuit?'

'I'd guess Mr Trang was going to amend the complaint and then file it. And lose.'

'That's what everybody seems to think. Which makes me wonder why he was going to do it.'

Another shrug. 'It was a power play, Sergeant, pure and simple. That's all it was. Mr Trang evidently thinks - thought - that we have infinitely deep pockets. He was, I gather, inexperienced in these matters, and evidently thought he could get more simply by holding out, putting the squeeze on a little tighter. But the suit itself had little merit.'

'And yet you were going to settle for six hundred thousand dollars?'

Flaherty broke a cold smile. He hesitated, uncrossed his legs, and leaned in toward Glitsky. 'In real life, Sergeant, an untrue accusation can be as damning as a conviction. We were willing to pay something to keep a lid on the accusation.'

'But not a million six?'

'No. Not even half that, as I've told you.' 

'Did Dooher ever mention to you how he felt about Trang personally?'

'No.'

'Didn't like him or dislike him?'

'He was an adversary. I don't think they saw each other socially, if that's what you mean.' Flaherty sat back. 'You can't honestly think Mark Dooher could have had a hand in any of this, do you?'

Glitsky pointed a finger, toy-gun style, risking a faint smile. 'You're asking questions again, but the answer is I don't have a clue. Trang's death seems to have been good for the Archdiocese ...'

Finally, a degree of frustration peeked through. 'Sergeant, we're in constant litigation about one thing or the other. One lawsuit, one scandal, more or less, just isn't going to make too much difference. And that's God's truth.'

Not that Glitsky necessarily bought it, but that direction wasn't taking him anywhere. 'All right, one last question. Do you have an appointments calendar I might glance at? See what you were doing that Monday night?'

This marked the obvious crossing of the Archbishop's threshold into active annoyance. Flaherty nodded curtly, stood up, and went to the door and out. In a moment he returned with a large black book. He carefully placed it open onto Glitsky's lap. 'That the day?'

'Yes, sir.' He looked down. 'Catholic Youth Organization convention. Do you remember that? Did it go on late?'

Flaherty was no longer Glitsky's friend, that was certain. But he answered civilly. 'It was at Asilomar, Sergeant, down in Pacific Grove. You know it? It's a hundred miles south of here.' He picked the book up and closed it firmly. 'And see the line here, to noon the next day. That means I spent the night.'

In one of those amazing coincidences, Glitsky thought, just then there was a knock on the door and the Appointments Secretary opened it, stuck his head in, and told Flaherty that his two o'clock had arrived.

Glitsky looked at his watch, closed his notebook, and stood up. The interview was over. He put out his hand and the Archbishop took it. 'Thank you, sir. You've been a big help.'

Flaherty's grip was a vice and his eyes had gone the color of cold steel. 'You know, Sergeant, I try not to stand upon it, but most people address me, at least, as "Father". Some even say "Your Excellency".'

Glitsky squeezed back. 'Thank you. I'll remember next time.'

But what did it mean?

He'd better begin to consider the possibility that there had been no meeting on Monday night. At least not with Flaherty and Dooher. So why did the two women - Lily Martin and Mrs Trang both - think there had been?

But wait - who said the meeting had been in person in Flaherty's office? Maybe Flaherty hadn't been able to talk to Dooher until later because .. . but no, that meant Flaherty was at the least just plain lying, and at most implicated in the actual murder. And though Glitsky ran into liars every day - murderers too - he did not really believe the Archbishop was involved here. He'd just not been able to resist the urge to jack him up a little. He'd always had a problem with people who thought they spoke directly to God.

He'd picked up a piroshki and a celery soda and sat having a late lunch in his car just off Market Street, his windows down. It was warmer outside than it had been in Flaherty's office and the air smelled sharply of coffee. One of the nearby restaurants must be roasting its own.

He kept coming back to the meeting, or non-meeting. For now, he was going to believe that the meeting never took place. Further, he didn 't believe Flaherty had even talked to Dooher on that Monday night.

Which did not mean that Dooher hadn't talked to Trang.

Did it?

Glitsky was wrestling with it, trying to piece together some rationale for Trang to have written up messages on his personal computer, purporting to have come from Dooher, if there had been none. It could have been that he was going to extraordinarily great lengths to run a false story past his mother and girlfriend - 'See, I'm just on the cusp of greatness, just about to be rich and successful. It's going to happen any day now. The other side is about to cave in. Look, here are the messages from their attorney to prove it. I'm not a nothing, as you've all believed. I'm going to make it big.'

Was that too much of a stretch? Glitsky wasn't sure. He'd known a lot of people - perennial losers - who'd tried to fool themselves and others in similar ways. Maybe that had been Trang, trying to convince himself as well as the women in his life. And then when the settlement didn't come through after all, he'd fall back into victim mode. It hadn't been his fault. The breaks were against him, the power of the Church, the bigger players had ganged up.

But - Glitsky brought himself up short - the truth was that there had been a substantial offer. Six hundred thousand dollars had been on the table, and Trang had turned it down. Would he have done that if he wasn't fairly sure he was going to get more?

No. He would have taken it.

Which meant - what?

That the penny-ante psychological profile Glitsky had been drawing of Trang-as-loser was not valid. And if that were true, then at the very least, Trang believed something was happening with Dooher and the settlement. He hadn't made it all up. Or possibly any of it.

So Dooher had called him. Twice on that Monday. Maybe three times.

He wondered if he'd admit it. It didn't exactly reek of probable cause, but Glitsky knew he could find a judge to give him a warrant for Dooher's phone records based on the inconsistencies. But if Dooher hadn't called Trang from his home or office, any other call would be nearly impossible to verify - the phone company kept track of the calls you made, but didn't keep records of non-toll calls received.

He chewed the last of his piroshki, tipped back the soda. Well, at least now he had a plausible excuse to go back and talk to Dooher, take another look at the Vietnam photograph while he was at it. Maybe casually bring up some other topics. 'Say, I was doing the crossword this morning and came across a seven-letter word, starts with "b", means infantry knife. What do you think that could be?' Subtlety was the key.

Dooher was going to be in meetings out of the office for most of the rest of the afternoon, but if he checked in for messages, his secretary would tell him the Sergeant had called.

So the rest of Glitsky's Wednesday afternoon was lost in paperwork. He labored over his initial report on the Tastee Burger killing. He checked the transcription of his interviews with three of the witnesses there.

Moving along, he filled out the warrant for Dooher's business and personal phone records. Then there was the application for the Lieutenant's exam.

A final Homicide issue involved re-booking a burglar who'd killed a seventy-year-old man last week. The elderly resident had had the bad luck to wake up and grab his .38 in the middle of the night when he'd heard the noise.

At 5:10, completely fried with the paperwork, as he was putting on his jacket to go home, his telephone rang. 'This is Mark Dooher,' he said to himself. And it was.

Dooher was free now, but maybe if the Sergeant just had a quick question or two, he could answer it on the phone, save him a trip. Glitsky wondered if he really needed to actually see the Vietnam photograph again. It was quitting time. He wanted to go home and be with his family. He'd worked a long day as it was. He wasn't the same cop he had been. He said some questions should do it.

'Sure, I talked to him that day.'

'More than once?'

'I may have. I believe so. Why?'

'When you and I talked last time, you didn't mention it.'

'Did you ask about it? I'm sorry. I don't—'

'I thought it might have occurred to you as relevant, talking to a murdered man just before he was killed.'

No answer.

'Do you recall what you talked about?'

'Sure. He was asking for my strategic advice on another case he was handling. As I told you, we kind of hit it off. I think he was hoping I'd offer him a job at the firm here.'

'You didn't discuss the settlement of your suit?'

Another pause. 'No, not that I recall.'

'Although he was threatening to file it the next day, ratcheting up the figures?'

'And then we'd duke it out in court. That's how we do it, Sergeant. 'Those lines had been drawn. There wasn't anything to talk about.'

'And he didn't seem concerned, worried, anxious?'

 'Not to me. He seemed normal.'

'Do you remember what the other case was about, the one he wanted your advice on?'

'Sure, it was another settlement on a personal injury. Sergeant, am I under some kind of suspicion here?'

'The case is still open,' Glitsky said ambiguously. 'I've been trying to get a sense of what Mr Trang did in those last hours.' But may as well just come out with it. 'Did you have a bayonet as part of your gear in Vietnam?'

So much for the subtle approach.

'It sounds like I should contact my lawyer.'

'Or just answer the question.'

'Yes, I did. Did a bayonet kill Victor?'

'We believe so. Do you still have yours?'

'No. The Army takes it from you when they send you home.'

'Do you mind telling me where you were last Monday night?'

A sigh, perhaps an angry one. 'I believe I went to the driving range, then came back to the office here and worked late. Sergeant Glitsky, why on earth do you think I'd consider killing a man, any man, much less Victor, whom I've told you I liked?'

'I didn't say I did. I'm collecting all the information I can, hoping some of it leads somewhere.'

'The implications are pretty damn infuriating.'

'I'm sorry about that. Archbishop Flaherty thought so, too.'

'You talked to the Archbishop? About this?'

'He's your biggest client, isn't he?'

'By far. So?'

'And Trang's death means the suit gets dropped ...'

'Trang's death means Mrs Diep gets another lawyer, Sergeant. And that's all it means.'
 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The earthquake that rocked the city at 5:22 the next morning wasn't as destructive as the World Series Quake of '89 - it didn't collapse any part of the Bay Bridge, for example, or any freeways. However, with a magnitude of 5.8 and an epicenter just a mile into the ocean northwest of the Cliff House, it was by no means a minor temblor. The eventual damage total exceeded $50 million. Seventy-seven people were injured seriously enough to seek medical help, and four people died.

Bart was going insane. He jumped up on Farrell's bed, howling like a coyote rather than the intelligent and sensitive Boxer that Farrell knew him to be, so something must be wrong, but Wes had no idea what it could be. He cast a quick glance at the clock next to his bed. 5:19. What the hell! 'Bart, Bart! Come on, boy. It's all right. It's all right.'

But apparently Bart knew more than his owner on this score. Wes was grabbing for the dog's collar to pull him nearer. It sounded like he was dying. Wes was thinking, I knew I shouldn't have given him that lamb bone. That's what it is - it's cut his stomach to shreds.

He flicked on the light, holding the dog close now, murmuring to him, petting to try and calm him down. 'Please don't die. Come on, hang in there, I'll call—'

Wham!

It was a sharp up-and-down, similar to the Northridge quake that had done so much damage to Southern California. The experts later estimated that the shock was equal to a vertical drop of five and half feet. It was probably fortunate that Farrell had no art on his walls and very little furniture, so there wasn't much to fall or fly around.

After one terrified bark coupled with a desperate escape maneuver involving claws and fangs that scratched Farrell's face badly, Bart got himself to a corner of the room and set up another howl.

The lights went out. There was a second, smaller jolt, and Farrell rolled from his bed and started crawling, eventually arriving at the bedroom doorway, his hands gripping both sides of it for support should the foundations shake again.

His hands were sticky and wet.

Glitsky hadn't been able to sleep and didn't want to keep Flo up, so at around midnight he'd gone out to read on the couch in the living room. Taking a cue from his father Nat, a Talmud scholar, he had been immersed for weeks in Wilton Earnhardt's epic tome Gospel, a story about the missing New Testament book of Matthias. This was about as far from San Francisco crime and politics and his home life as he could get. Which was the point.

Eventually, he'd nodded off.

What got him up wasn't the shock but Flo screaming his name. The lamp next to him crashed to the floor. Sparks and broken pottery. One of the kids - he thought it was Jake, his middle one - was also calling him. God! Why were the other ones quiet?

'Abe!'

'Yo! Coming.'

Another shake, knocking him sideways. Bare feet on broken shards. In the short hallway, he turned on the light. Another step, the bedroom, the light. Flo looked at him, eyes wide and tearful, as though he were a ghost.

As well he might have been.

The six or seven-hundred pound oak armoire in which they kept their hanging clothes had jumped four feet across the room and fallen, landing on Glitsky's side of the bed, where he normally would have been lying.

Flo was up and in his arms, and Jake cried out again.

Sheila Dooher nudged her husband. 'Earthquake,' she said, swinging her feet around, finding the floor. Louder, another push. 'Mark! Now!'

People said you never got used to earthquakes, but Sheila had lived in the Bay Area most of her life and had experienced over twenty of them. The great majority of the time, they shook the ground or the building you were in and then stopped. And the other quakes . . . well, by the time you worked yourself up to really scared, they were over, and then you dealt with what they'd done.

Mark opened his eyes, immediately awake in the darkness. He knew that Sheila had moved to her pre-arranged location in the doorway to the stairs - it was a drill. And he did the same to his, four steps over to the bathroom door.

'You all right?' he heard her say.

There was another, smaller shake. They rode it out - three seconds max -

'Fine.'

For Sam Duncan, living in a seventy-year-old underground apartment with brick walls, there was no time for any thought. Either Quayle was a sounder sleeper than Bart was, or he wasn't as finely attuned to the tiny movements of the earth by which animals can supposedly predict earthquakes. In any case, Quayle didn't whine, or bark, or howl preceding the event. Sam was sleeping one moment, and the next - feeling something moving, falling around her in the split second she had to react - covering her head as the wall behind her bed gave, collapsing over her. 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Before Christina was awake, her father Bill had gone downtown to the bakery and come back with hot ham-and-Swiss-filled croissants, her favorite. Irene, her mother, left the steaming cup of French roast on the nightstand in her room and brushed a strand of hair back over her daughter's ear.

She stirred.

'Your coffee's here,' her mother said.

Having driven down to Ojai in six hours, she'd arrived unannounced at ten-thirty last night and they'd kept the visiting short; she was tired and planning to stay through the weekend, get rested before finals next week - they'd get time to catch up in person. They'd all turned in early, around midnight.

Late April, before noon, and she was sitting out by the pool in her bathing suit, in perfect comfort. She wondered again why she was living in San Francisco, in the wind and fog and bustle. Here it was already warm as midsummer, the pace was slow, life itself seemed to have an element of fluid grace.

Her parents' house was on the side of one of the encircling hills at an elevation of about 400 feet, and the pool hung out, cantilevered over a deck that seemed to drop off into space.

Far below, the town sparkled in the pristine air, a little terra-cotta jewel nestled in its verdant setting. In the distance, the Topa Topa Mountains and the Los Padres National Forest lent some drama to the view. Closer in were the avocado and orange orchards, the golf course, the orange-roofed landmarks of her own childhood; over to the right she could just spy the edge of her high school, Villanova, for good Catholic girls as she had been.

There was the Tower at the Post Office, and in the peace of the morning she could hear Some Enchanted Evening coming up on the thermals - the Tower played show tunes on the hour.

Her eyes continued to roam. There were the trees over Libbey Park, downtown, where she'd gone to dozens of incredible concerts - blues, classical, jazz, rock 'n' roll - all the great LA players loved coming up here. This is where Hollywood came to drop out.

Ojai was the Chumash Indian word for Nest, and she thought it captured the place perfectly. It was her nest, her home. She wondered, again, if she'd ever really have another one. 

Her mother was walking down from the house with some iced tea. She normally worked in her husband's brokerage house as his assistant, but decided she'd take the day off to catch up with her daughter.

Irene Carrera had a buffed leather complexion from too much sun, and her body, toned with regular exercise, was still twenty pounds overweight. Nevertheless, in a casual way she believed herself a beautiful woman, and so nearly everyone else thought she was, too. She frosted her hair and wore gold slippers padding about out by the pool and she appeared to be as shallow as a petri dish. But she'd never fooled Christina.

Now she sat in the wicker chair next to her daughter's chaise longue, put down the tray that held the pitcher and glasses, and placed coasters on either side of the table. 'You picked the right day to come down. San Francisco's had another earthquake.'

Christina sat up straight. 'A bad one?'

Her mother handed her a glass. 'They're saying moderately serious. Although if you ask me, they're all bad.'

 'You can ask me, too.'

 'Do you want to call anybody?'

'No, no. They don't want you to use the phones after emergencies anyway, Mom. Besides,' she took a sip, 'there's nobody to call.'

Her mother sat back, gestured to her daughter's left hand. 'Your father and I noticed there's no ring. We didn't want to press last night. I guess we're not going to be meeting Joe.'

'I guess not.' A sigh. 'It was my decision. It wasn't going to work out.' Irene took a minute stalling with her iced tea - lemon, sugar, mint.

 'You gave it enough of a chance? You're sure?'

Christina shrugged. 'Come on, Mom, you know. Over a year. It just wasn't ...' She trailed off. 'I'm not sad about it, so I don't think you should be.'

'I'm not sad about you and Joe, hon. I worry about you, that's all. These relationships that get to ...' She took a deep breath and plunged ahead to intimacy,' that go on a year or more, then end. They must be taking their toll.'

'I know.' Christina was nodding. 'They are.'

'I just look at you now - and I know this is foolish, don't laugh at me - and I don't see my happy little girl. It just breaks my poor silly heart.' Christina started to stop her, but her mother touched her shoulder and continued. 'No, I know what you've been through. I do, or a little. With Brian, and the pregnancy, and now this. I do know, hon, how it must hurt, how you're trying. But it just seems to me that every time you give up, when you let it end, then part of you dies. The part that hopes, and you don't want to lose that.'

A tear coursed down Christina's cheek. She wiped it with a finger. 'The good news is I didn't put much hope in Joe.'

'Then why did you say you'd marry him?'

'I don't know. I was stupid. I wanted to convince myself that I could do just what you said - commit to somebody and make it stick. To get there, Mom. You know what I mean? You get so tired of waiting, of things being empty.'

Her mother sat back in her chair and looked for a moment out to the horizon. 'It has to be right, that's all. The right person to begin with.'

'Yeah, well where is he? That's what I want to know, Mom. Where the hell is he?'

'Christina? It's Mark Dooher.'

'Mark. Are you all right?'

A refined chuckle. 'I'm fine. I was worried about you. We've had a pretty good earthquake up here, you might have heard. Several people didn't make work and you were one of them. So we tried to reach you at home and you never called back'

'Was I scheduled to come in? I've got finals next week. I wasn't starting until after that. I thought I told Joe...'

'No, no, it's all right. I was concerned, that's all. I remember you'd told me about Ojai, so I thought I'd see if your parents had heard from you, if you were okay.'

'I am. In fact, I thought of you five minutes ago. We're drinking champagne. Remember? The lost art of pouring?'

'I do. How is it down there, by the way?'

She looked out through the French doors. A balmy evening was settling. 'It's the pink moment,' she said. 'The classic pink moment.'

She could almost see his grin. 'I'm on my car phone, just at the Army Street curve on my way home and it's the classic gray moment here.' A moment went by. 'I heard about you and Joe. I'm sorry.'

'Yes, well...'

The pause seemed a little awkward to Christina. She was thinking that Mark didn't want to push. But then he spoke up. 'Well... good luck on your finals, then. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks?'

'I'll be there.'

'I know you will. If it's any help to you, Joe should be down in LA by then. There shouldn't be any awkwardness.'

'I know. I guess.'

'No guesses. This is a promise. If you have any problems, I want you to come see me, hear?'

'I hear. I will.'

'Okay, then.' There was a crackle on the line. 'Sorry, the call's breaking up. You hang in there, Christina. Things'll turn around, you watch. I'm glad you're okay.'

'I am. And Mark?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks for checking. It matters.'

It might be the pink moment, but it was also the yellow jacket moment. At dusk, the vicious bees seemed to come up like locusts, scouring the foothills for food, and making outdoor hors d'oeuvres a challenge at best.

But it was one to which Bill and Irene rose whenever they could. Christina remembered sitting inside a hundred times as a child, afraid to go out. Until one day her father had sat her down: 'Look, we can either go outside where the weather's great and we've got the view and the air and things taste better, except we' ve got the chance of being molested by yellow j ackets, or we can sit cooped inside wishing there weren't such a thing as yellow jackets, but definitely inside, and definitely not having half the fun. I'll take the risk every time.'

So tonight they had broken out some paté, three kinds of cheeses, cornichons, French bread, the works. After she'd hung up with Dooher, she stood a moment at the French doors, looking out at her parents who were sitting in their matching wicker chairs, holding hands, laughing at something.

Okay, she thought. There was her father and there was Mark Dooher. Two good ones. It wasn't impossible. She would simply have to bide her time, do her work, live her life.

The pink shifted, almost imperceptibly, to mother-of-pearl, and she stood in the door, struck by her third revelation this week. The first had been that she didn't love Joe. Then recognizing something deeper - something fundamentally different and better - in the way she and Mark Dooher related, something that would be part of her from now on, of any future she had.

Then, watching her parents, the last illumination - that she was still afraid of the yellow jackets, so wary of being bitten that she was afraid to go outside. That was why she had always settled for her lesser men.

It was so clear now, suddenly, and so wrong-headed: there had always been yellow jackets on otherwise perfect evenings, and she'd never gotten stung. And taking that risk of getting stung put you out where you really wanted to be.

It was the only way, with luck, to get you to where her parents had gotten.

To where she wanted to be.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

'Of course nothing happened to you,' Wes said. 'Why did I even feel like I had to ask? In fact, now that I think about it, I'm surprised some fissure didn't open in your backyard revealing a vein of gold.'

'I didn't tell you about that?' Dooher put a hand on his friend's shoulder. 'Just kidding,' he said. 'How's the face?'

Farrell had needed seven stitches and a tetanus shot. He had one bandage under his blackened left eye, another on the side of his mouth. 'Let's go with unpleasant.'

'No, how's it feel?

Farrell gave him a look. 'Funny.'

It was Friday morning a little before noon, the day after the quake, and they were in Wes's office. Dooher took a seat in the ragged armchair. His friend was putting books back on the shelves. Bart, giving no sign that he'd ever been jumpy in his life, slept under the table.

'So how'd your office make out?' Wes asked. 'Don't tell me, it wasn't touched.'

'A little. It's a relatively new building with all the codes up to date. They don't shake much.'

Farrell turned around. 'You mean nothing, don't you?'

'Nothing structural. Couple of bookshelves fell over, like here.'

'Not like here, Mark! Not like here. Here we got cracks in all the walls, maybe you didn't notice, the place has got to get completely repainted, we got plaster in the ducts, the water's out in the bathroom, every single one of my books hit the floor running,' he whirled further around, pointing, picking up some steam, 'that window, check it out, is now plywood...' He blew out a long breath. 'No! No, decidedly not just like here.'

Bart came awake, barked once, went back to sleep.

Dooher, sympathetic as a hangman, held up a hand. 'Du calme, Wesley, du calme.'

'Du calme, my ass. Easy for you to say.' His body sagging, Farrell crossed to his desk and edged himself onto the corner of it. 'I know there's no justice in the world, and nothing happens for any reason, it's all random -I know all of that - but what I don't understand is why all this perverse, random shit happens to me!'

'It's like Grace,' Dooher said.

'And don't give me any of that Catholic stuff, either.'

'Not that Grace.' Dooher crossed a leg, enjoying himself. This lady, Grace, she's born ugly as sin, half-blind, one leg missing, her hair never grows, she gets cancer at thirteen, a mess. Dies horribly and goes up to the Pearly Gates. God looks at her, says, "Grace, you're going to hell."

'"But why?" she asks. "Why, God? I've tried to be a good person, tried to please You, suffered my whole life ..."

'"I don't know, Grace," God says. "There's just something about you that pisses me off.'"

Farrell was shaking his head. 'I can understand why that joke would appeal to you. You are lucky. I, on the other hand, am cursed.'

'Oh bullshit, Wes. People—'

'Stop! Stop! I know what you're going to say. That people make their own luck. That is what every lucky person in the world says, and that is bullshit!' He pushed himself off the desk, stepping on Bart's tail. 'Ruff!'

'You, dog, shut up! I don't want to hear anymore out of you.' Back to Dooher. 'Look at me here, Mark. Look at me. My apartment is trashed, my office is ruined, my fucking dog - man's best mauling machine - nearly tears my head off...' he sank back to his corner of the desk, staring at his shoes.

'Wes...'

Tm sorry. I'm just a whining sack, aren't I? But I have to tell you, sometimes the weight of what appears to be random bad luck just gets a little hard to take. It's not like I want something terrible to happen to you, but don't you sometimes wonder when it never does? Does this mean something about me? Jesus!'

'Hey, come on.' Dooher got out of his chair, walked over to his bud, put his arms around him. 'Come on. I love you, Wes, you know that. You need help here, I'll send over some of my associates. You need it at home, some money, whatever, you got it. You want, I'll put a couple of gashes into my own face, bleed a little.'

Farrell looked up, shook his head in disgust. 'I'm a waste, aren't I?' Dooher pinched his good cheek. 'But cute. Come on, let me buy you some lunch.'

It wasn't fancy, but the Chinese food was spicy hot and excellent. There were only six tables in the place, and Farrell took the opportunity to point out that he came here twice a week and never got an empty table.

But Mark Dooher walked in the door, and there was one with his name on it, and no, they didn't mind if the dog came in, too. The owner had a dog looked just like Bart. This led Farrell to wonder aloud if there was any part of Dooher's experience untouched by good fortune.

'For the record, I've got some pretty estranged, screwed-up kids, and you don't.'

'I never see my kids,' Farrell said. 

'But when you do, they don't hate you, do they?'

'No. At least I don't think so.'

'Mine hate me. My failed artist namesake son hates me. My lesbian daughter hates me. My skiboard bum son hates me.'

'They don't.. .'

'Trust me, they do. You know it, too. Now I don't know whether that's luck or not, but it's not good. I must have had something to do with it.'

'Okay, that's serious. Your life isn't perfect. I apologize.'

A macho shrug, Dooher's mini-lesson in handling the pain the way a man should. 'It's life,' he said. 'It hits us all. Which is actually, since we're on the subject, why I wanted to see you this morning. More bad luck for me. But this is business.'

'What business?'

'I want to put you on retainer for a while as my personal attorney.'

Farrell stopped with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. 'I'm listening.'

'Victor Trang.'

'Okay, what about him?'

'I think the police think I might have killed him.'

'Get out...! You! Are you kidding me?'

'I don't think so.'

'Why do they think that?'

'I don't know. I'm not even a hundred percent sure they do, but this cop Glitsky called me the other—'

'Glitsky?'

'Yeah, that's his name. You know him?'

'He was the cop handling my last case, Levon Copes. Screwed it up completely.'

'Well, that's a relief. He might be screwing up this one, too.'

'He thinks you killed Victor Trang? Why?'

'Take it easy, Wes. I'm not sure. But he's called me back a couple of times, zeroing in, asking questions - where was I, did I talk to Trang, that kind of thing.'

'And you answered him?'

Dooher shrugged. 'Sure. I've got nothing to hide. Why wouldn't I talk to him?'

'That doesn't matter. The first rule is never talk to a cop about a crime in your time-zone without your lawyer sitting there.'

'But I didn't—'

'Doesn't matter. What did he ask? What did you tell him?'

'Does this mean you're on retainer?'

Farrell nodded. 'Yeah. Of course. What do you think?'

It was quarter past noon on Friday afternoon. Glitsky was walking the hallway on the 4th floor, heading back to Homicide. He'd spent the morning interviewing witnesses who lived in apartments on either side of his seventy-year-old victim, who'd owned a handgun for protection - the man whose last thought had been that his gun was going to help him if a burglar ever broke in.

Nope.

The last couple of days had been well over the line into surreal. At home, the earthquake damage had been serious but, miraculously, all cosmetic. They'd straightened up the armoire and rehung the clothes. In the boys' room, Jake had been crying out because it was dark and he'd been tipped out of his bed. Isaac and O.J. had remained so quiet because they'd slept through it all. (As he had, he reminded himself. If Flo hadn't yelled out for him...)

Then, all day yesterday, his wife wouldn't stay still. She had been up and around, throwing away the broken dishes, shards of pottery and glass, straightening, vacuuming, rearranging, even washing the windows. Nesting, nesting.

The day of the quake he'd stayed home. (A good day for it, as it turned out. There was not one homicide reported in San Francisco.) Today, day two, he couldn't stand seeing Flo working so hard, singing to herself, reborn. So much energy and sense of purpose - it was going to come crashing down. He couldn't let himself get his hopes up.

This was pure adrenaline - hers.

He wanted no part of it, and she didn't want him moping around, bring her down. They'd almost had a fight about it - would have, if he hadn't left.

So he'd gone to his morning interviews. Now, back at the Hall, his plan was to call around, line up some more witnesses on his other cases, call the phone company and check on the progress of Mark Dooher's records.

There was a package on his desk and he ripped it open. The phone records on Dooher weren't supposed to be delivered for at least another day, maybe two or three, but now here he was holding them in his hands.

Wonders did never cease.

Dooher's home was easy. He'd made no phone calls at all on the Monday that Trang had been killed. His office was a little more interesting. He'd called Trang twice - 1:40 and 4:50 - precisely the times noted in the dead man's computer.

Which meant that if Trang had been making up a story to impress his mother and girlfriend, major elements of it were close to the truth. His pulse quickening - the thrill of the chase indeed - Glitsky turned to the last little packet of sheets. There, as promised by Trang, was the third call, from Dooher's cellphone, at 7:25.

And even though Glitsky thought the official policy on miscreants in San Francisco was, 'Three strikes and you're misunderstood,' this time he was getting willing to call Dooher out. He sat back in his chair, feet up on his desk, wondering what, if anything, it meant.

Trang's computer notes might have been cryptic, but they also told a consistent story - Mark Dooher was working on the settlement, not acting as an adviser on a personal injury case as he'd claimed. Glitsky could imagine no reason why Trang would lie to himself in his electronic notebook.

And here was another tantalizing entry -MD from F. 's. The 7:25 call that Glitsky had interpreted to mean that Dooher had called from Flaherty's office. But, in fact, he'd made it from his car. What did that mean? Was it possible that F wasn't Flaherty?

Another thought - did Trang even have any personal injury cases in his files? This, Glitsky thought, was a job for the ever-eager Paul Thieu. And the note? MD message. There might be something the lab could salvage from the tape that had been in Trang's answering machine, even if it had been recorded over. He leaned forward, pulled his yellow pad toward him, and started writing.

He longed to catch Dooher in his lie. In any lie. There had to be one. In a kind of trance, he was lost in his notes. Then staring into the space in front of him, he picked up the telephone and punched some numbers.

'Law Offices.'

'Hello. This is Sergeant Glitsky, San Francisco Homicide. I'd like to talk to Mr Dooher's secretary, please. And I'm sorry, I don't remember her name.'

'Janey.'

'That's it. Thanks.'

'Mr Dooher's office.'

'Janey?'

'Yes.'

Another introduction, a little riff of bureaucratese, then he was saying: 'Janey, I need to confirm a couple of things your boss told me. This is just routine.'

It turned out Janey did remember the call from Trang on the day he had died. He'd called while Dooher was at lunch, left an urgent message that Dooher get back to him.

'This was about the settlement deadline, isn't that right?'

Janey paused, perhaps wondering if she was saying too much. Glitsky didn't want to lose her. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'that was the impression I had.' Let her think he'd gotten it from Dooher.

It worked. Janey continued: 'Mr Trang reminded me to tell Mr Dooher that he needed to hear from him before five, no later, or that he'd have to go ahead and file the amended complaint the next day.'

So Trang's call to Dooher had been about the settlement. Janey had said as much. And that made Dooher a liar.

And if that were true, it dramatically increased the odds that, at the very least, Dooher knew more than he was letting on, and at the most, that he was a killer.

Glitsky was bouncing it off Frank Batiste. The Lieutenant was sitting forward in his chair in his office, arms on his desk, pencil in hand, shaking his head. 'I believe you, although I'd be a little happier if you had any idea why.'

'Wasn't it you who's told us a zillion times that we're not in the motive business, we're in the evidence business?'

'Yep, that was me, and I was right.'

'So?'

'So what? Where's your evidence then?' Batiste continued drumming his pencil. 'Because we agree you don't have a motive.'

But Glitsky didn't want to let the motive go. In his experience, people didn't often get killed - not by someone they knew - for no reason whatever. 'Look, the Archdiocese is Dooher's biggest client. If the case gets filed, he gets fired.'

'Why would that happen?'

'Because he hasn't done his job, which is keep the lawsuit hush hush.'

'And why would that be?'

Glitsky rolled his eyes. 'Because, Frank, it's politically embarrassing to the Archbishop.'

'So to keep it from getting filed, Dooher kills Trang? That's a reach, Abe.'

'I know. But it's all I can think of.'

Batiste straightened up, bopped his pencil a couple more times, stretched out the crick in his neck. 'Are you sure you're not just on Dooher because you haven't got any other suspects?'

'Maybe there aren't any other suspects because he did it, Frank.'

'Maybe that's it.' Batiste didn't want to fight about it. He took a beat. 'Well, that was instructive and a hell of a lot of fun. We should do it again sometime. This was where we started, isn't it? No motive? So let's leave motive. You came in here wanting to talk evidence. Evidence is good. What do you got?'

But there wasn't much. Glitsky had gotten his search warrant for Dooher's phone records by trotting out the old probable cause argument to Judge Arenson, who knew him fairly well and was aware that he didn't abuse the privilege.

Now the question was whether the information in the phone records - the three calls that coincided with Trang's notes - moved things along the probable-cause trail. Glitsky knew that the Judge wasn't about to give him carte blanche on the more invasive search warrants he was going to want to request - Dooher's house, office, car, and so on - unless there was something real, whether or not it was physical evidence, to back up Glitsky's suspicions.

He was hoping the phone calls would be enough, but Batiste wasn't buying that either, and didn't think Arenson would. 'So is this just your day to be difficult, Frank, or what?'

The pencil was tap-tapping again. 'What do they prove, Abe, the calls?'

'Dooher said they were talking about a personal injury case. Trang's notes say it was the settlement.' Even as he said it, Glitsky knew the objection, and it was valid.

'So it's "he said this, but he said that.'"

'But Dooher's secretary, Janey, agrees with Trang.' 

'She didn't overhear the last two calls.'

'Why would Trang have written fictitious notes to himself on the calls? That just doesn't make any sense.'

Batiste held up the pencil. 'Abe, even if they talked about the settlement, even if Dooher is lying about it, we got nothing. Maybe Dooher was sleeping with Trang's girlfriend.'

'Or his mother,' Glitsky said. 'Maybe his girlfriend and his mother.'

Batiste liked it. 'Now we're on to something.'

Glitsky's lips were pressed tightly together in frustration, and the scar stood out in relief. 'I need a warrant. I've got to look through the guy's laundry.'

Batiste didn't think so. 'Arenson won't do it, not with what you've got so far. You're going to need more. What about the bayonet?'

'He never brought it home from Viet—' Stopping short.

Batiste broke a smile. 'Says he.'

'Lord, I'm stupid! The wife!'

If she invited him in, he would not need a warrant.

He kept a white shirt and regimental tie in the drawer of his desk for the occasional forgotten court date. He changed in the men's room and traded his flight jacket until tomorrow for Frank Batiste's gray sports coat - a little short in the sleeves, but the chest fit. It would do.

He was on the semi-enclosed front porch, his badge out, introducing himself to Sheila Dooher. There had been sun and a cool breeze at the Hall, but out here, a mile from the ocean, the fog clung and a savage wind dug itself into his bones. He didn't mind, though. At this moment, it was to his advantage.

'... the Victor Trang case. You're familiar with that?'

'Yes. It was really such a tragedy. Mark was very upset about it.'

'Yes, he was. I'd been planning on coming by a little later, when your husband was home, but I was in the neighborhood, and thought I could save some time. I wanted to ask you a few questions, too.'

'Me?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'What about? I didn't even know Victor Trang.'

Glitsky shrugged. 'But you know where your husband was on the night of the murder.'

'Yes. Well, I don't know. You don't think ...?'

'I don't think anything at the moment, Mrs Dooher. But the fact is that your husband was one of the last people we know who talked to Victor Trang. So, far-fetched as it might seem to you, he's a suspect. And you could eliminate that possibility right now. Was he here that night, Monday a week ago?'

He noticed that she was gripping the door handle, her face set, eyes shifting. 'I think I should call Mark,' she said.

'You could do that, but you understand that anything you say to me now, before talking with him, will have a lot more weight. You could verify his alibi right now and that would be the end of any suspicion.' He added conspiratorially, 'Really, ma'am. It would be a good thing.'

She wrestled with it a moment, then dredged it up. 'Monday night he went to the driving range, I think. I could check.'

'That's what your husband said.' Glitsky broke his smile. 'See, that wasn't so bad.'

Behind him, the wind gusted, and Sheila Dooher seemed to notice it for the first time. 'I'm sorry, Sergeant. Would you like to come in out of this weather?'

'I wouldn't mind, now that you mention it.'

She fixed him a cup of tea. They were sitting on either side of a marble bar in a sky-lit kitchen that was about the size of Glitsky's duplex. Through the French doors, he had a partial view of an expanse of manicured lawn, a patch of early daffodils, stubbly bare roots and trunks marking an ancient rose garden.

He took a slow sip of the tea, swallowed, then plunged in. 'Mrs Dooher, your husband was very upset by Victor Trang's death. He asked me if there was anything he could do to help with our investigation.'

Her expression, pleasant concern, teased at the edges of his conscience. But, more importantly, it meant that Dooher hadn't told her that he was under suspicion.

'That's Mark,' she said, waiting for Glitsky to continue.

'I really didn't think much about it until we discovered that Trang had been stabbed with a bayonet.'

'Oh God, how horrible!'

He nodded. 'Yes, ma'am, it was bad. But the point is, we weren't able to go much farther than that. The weapon hasn't been found - undoubtedly the murderer's thrown it away. Anyway, I mentioned all this to your husband - he wanted to be kept in the loop - telling me that if we could just identify exactly what kind of bayonet it was, from the size of the blade and so on...' he assayed a smile, speaking more quickly now, hoping to keep her riding on the flow of verbiage '. . . the forensics guys can tell these things, that we might be able to determine where it had been bought, or what war it might have been used in, that kind of thing. And from there maybe get a lead as to where the murderer might have got it.'

He hoped.

She was paying attention, still with him.

'I was hoping to compare it with the one your husband brought back from Vietnam. Trang being Vietnamese, it might narrow it down to someone in that community. It's a long shot, but might be worth checking.'

She was nodding. 'I'm not sure I completely understand, but it sounds like it might be a good idea.' She stood up. 'I think it's out in the garage, up pretty high. You might have to help me get it. Do you mind?'

CHAPTER TWENTY

By dusk, Farrell still hadn't reached Sam.

It worried him enough that he decided to drive by her house, find out what was going on.

Yesterday, the day of the quake, okay, lots of lives had been disrupted, his own more than many others. While he was trying to get his own mess cleaned up, he'd tried to call Sam a few times, but had no luck.

He'd been sure he'd get her today.

But he'd started calling as soon as he woke up, had placed maybe two dozen calls, and nothing. Her machine hadn't even picked up, neither had the phone at the clinic, no one had heard from her. Her brother Larry had an unlisted number.

Farrell eventually even thought to call Dooher back after their surprising lunch, to see if by any chance he had Christina Carrera's number, if she might have heard from Sam. But no, Dooher said Christina was in Ojai, visiting her parents.

Why and how did Mark know that?

The first indication that something might really be wrong was the construction equipment all the way up Ashbury Street, stopping traffic trying to get up over Twin Peaks. Farrell was in his 1978 Datsun, painted by his son six years previously in what Lydia called a 'fetching puke yellow'. (Lydia was driving the metallic green 1992 BMW - he really hated her.) Bart wasn't enjoying the wait in the fog and fumes anymore than he was.

Finally, when divine intervention produced a parking space, he pulled in and decided he and Bart would hoof it. It was time Bart met Quayle anyway, he thought. He attached the dog's leash and they got out.

But drawing up close, getting to Sam's block, he was struck by the air of disaster, and hurried his steps. There were more than a few police cars, plus other emergency vehicles. A revolving knot of gawkers milled around in the street, quietly taking in the destruction.

Four brick structures in a row on the west side of the street, with Sam's third on the way uphill, had taken the big hit. All of them had lost their chimneys, a majority of their street-facing windows. Though crews were still there and had obviously been at the cleaning a while, piles of brick rubble and roof slate still littered the area.

Supporting scaffolding had already been erected around the two downhill buildings, but Sam's, from the look of it, might be beyond salvage. The front corner appeared to have caved in completely, and the entire house listed forward as though waiting for one more tiny aftershock to send it toppling.

My God! he thought. That was Sam's room. She was in there!

Farrell walked up to one of the blue-uniformed policemen who were keeping the crowd from getting too close to the unstable structure. 'Excuse me. I know somebody who lives in that building. Do you have any news about the tenants?'

The cop turned around, his eyes sympathetic. 'Have you tried the hospitals? Maybe I'd start there.'

Wes nodded mutely, then stood another minute, struck again by the power of moving earth. 'Excuse me,' he repeated. 'Do you know if anybody died in these buildings?'

The cop shook his head, commiserating, conveying the worst. 'I'd check the hospitals,' he said again.

Once Sheila Dooher admitted that her husband had owned a bayonet - although it was no longer in the garage - Glitsky thought that getting his search warrant would be easy.

He filled out his new one and brought it down to this week's duty Judge, Martin Arenson. But Arenson, like everyone else, was cleaning up from the earthquake. He'd handed off his magistrate assignments to another Municipal Court Judge, Ann Connor, and she hadn't been particularly receptive to Abe's version of probable cause. She'd refused to sign the warrant, which put him in a bind, since once one Judge in the Muni Court declined to sign a warrant, no one else there would touch it.

Glitsky did have another option - one he'd used in emergencies in the past. He could go to Superior Court and get a sealed warrant from one of the Judges on the Senior Bench. He was fairly well known in Superior Court since most trials he attended were for homicides. And he was anxious to move quickly, before Dooher had a chance to hide or ditch anything else.

'But the wife can't testify against him.' Judge Oscar Thomasino had the search warrant in front of him on his clean desk, awaiting his signature. He'd listened to Glitsky's tale and wasn't close to sold on more probable cause. 'And am I wrong? I don't see anything pointing to this man, except your questionably legal search.'

'She let me in, Judge.'

Thomasino waved a hand. Sixty-ish, he wore his gray hair brush cut. He had thick slab of a face, a swarthy, liver-spotted complexion, and a reputation as a judicial hardass.

It was Friday night and he had been going home after a grueling week of earthquake-related delays, but Glitsky had caught him at the back door and tried to guilt him back inside. He'd come, but out of duty, not guilt, and now he wasn't disposed to be cooperative, and he treated Glitsky to his bushy eyebrow trick - up and down over the glare. No words.

'I don't need her testimony, your honor,' Glitsky repeated. 'I just need what might be in the house.'

The Judge smoothed his hands over the grain of his desk. 'Abe, this is a prominent man, not some lowlife from the projects, not that as a matter of law that makes any difference, of course. And you're telling me you didn't find out anything incriminating from the phone records?'

Glitsky more or less agreed, but tried to sweeten it by riffing around it for a couple of bars. Thomasino stopped him. 'I don't see this one, Abe.' The Judge straightened up in his chair, considering something, then decided to come out with it. 'You know, Abe, this business of coming to Superior Court when Muni turns you down is tricky. I know you've got good instincts; you might even be right. But what I see here, I don't have enough. Connor didn't either.'

'Judge...'

Thomasino held up his hand again. 'I understand you can't go back to Muni, not now. But you've got to get me a little more. If you find it, come by the house, I'm around all weekend. I'll sign off. But I need something I can point to. Do you even know where he was on the night in question?'

'He was killing Victor Trang.'

A face, the eyebrows. 'Okay. But what does he say?'

'He says he went to the driving range, then came back to his office and worked late.'

'Well, if he did that, maybe somebody saw him. Or didn't.'

'That may be.'

'Well, good luck,' the Judge said. 'Have a nice weekend.'

Glitsky was damned if he was going to find himself a picture of Mark Dooher and go trotting with it out to the city's driving ranges, showing it to employees and asking if they specifically remembered seeing him a week and a half before. If he thought that course of events would produce any results, he might have considered it, but he believed what he'd told Thomasino. Dooher had been killing Trang that night, not hitting golf balls.

But the bottom line was that he didn't have the signed warrant and couldn't go looking where he stood a chance of finding, so what the hell else was he going to do?

Pondering, he was standing in the downstairs lobby of the Hall, by the elevators, hands in his pockets, oblivious to the passing throngs checking out for the weekend.

'Too much lemon in your tea, Abe?' Amanda Jenkins, the Assistant DA who'd shared Levon Copes with him, had moved out of the flow of humanity and, amused, was looking up at him. 'That expression - I just sucked on a lemon - it's so you.'

'It so happens I did just suck on a lemon.' He held up the unsigned warrant. 'But what's really made my day is Thomasino's call on this.' 

Jenkins snatched it away and scanned it quickly. 'This looks good to me. House, car, office, personal effects. What's the problem?'

'You'll notice the good Judge didn't sign it. My first choice for perp appears to be a pillar of the community, so he's got a higher probable cause threshold than lesser mortals.'

'Ah, democracy.'

'Ain't it grand? I don't have any evidence, so I can't get permission to look for evidence.'

'It's a beautiful system,' Jenkins agreed. 'So what do you have? You got anything? You must have something.'

Glitsky started to tell Amanda what he did have - his hunches, the settlement background, the discrepancy between Trang's women's story and Mark Dooher's, the hazy alibi, the bayonet that had mysteriously - and apparently recently - disappeared, and finally the one search warrant Thomasino had signed off on, for Dooher's phone records.

'They don't by any chance include a earphone, do they?'

'Yeah. But so what?'

Jenkins's normally stern visage cracked. Her eyes lit up with excitement, with the thrill of the chase. 'You got time to take five, get some coffee? All may not be lost.'

The downstairs cafeteria was nearly deserted, cavernous and echoing with the cleanup workers' efforts. Glitsky and Jenkins brought their paper cups over from the long stainless steel counter and were sitting down across from one another at one of the fold-up tables. Amanda was already rolling with it, explaining the new technological investigating-tool breakthrough that had been discovered as a by-product of the cellular phone network. 'You never heard of it,' she enthused, 'because I don't think anybody's ever used it to find out where someone was. Normally, they use it to track where somebody is, right now.'

She could see Glitsky still wasn't clear on the concept. 'Abe, you remember that big kidnap/ransom thing in Oakland last year? Okay, the kidnapper, he's calling the victim's family every five minutes, making ransom demands, changing the drop point, making sure there's no trail, the usual. So guess what? He's using his earphone, and one of our guys remembers an article in one of those magazines we all throw away. He gets a brainstorm. He calls the phone company, asks if there's any way they can tell, even roughly, where a cell call originates. You know how it works?'

'I'm listening.'

'Big metropolitan area like Oakland, there's maybe ten towers around the city - cells, hence the name. Clever, huh? And they work like a combination amplifier/receiver. If you're in your car, you move from one cell to the next and there's a record of it.'

'Okay.'

'But, and this is the cool part, within each cell there are also pie-shaped cones that pick up the signals. So this guy, the kidnapper, he's talking on the phone, calling again, yack, yack, yack. They figure out exactly which block he's driving around, and they nail him.'

Glitsky was nodding. Amanda was right. This, if true, was cool. 'But I don't see how it helps me here,' he said.

'I don't either, Abe. But Thomasino said he only needed a little more to get to probable cause, right? So maybe your perp was ten miles away when he said he was at the driving range, that kind of thing. Prove he lied. Hell, you've got the warrant for the phone records already. Might as well use it all up.'

Sheila told him what she'd done.

'Are you kidding me?! That son of a bitch! He came in here, lied to you, invaded our privacy? I'm calling Farrell, calling somebody. This is pure harassment. I'll have the bastard's badge!'

He threw his leaded crystal bourbon glass with all his might and it smashed into the bottom pane of one of the French doors, shattering glass all over the kitchen. 'That son of a bitch!'

Sheila was in a deep couch in her living room, crying. She was of a class and station that had grown up believing in authority. Sergeant Glitsky had represented that to her. And he had betrayed her, tricked her and used her to insult her husband. She had put her husband in jeopardy. She couldn't stop sobbing.

Mark came over and handed her a large glass of white wine and she held it with both hands. He sat down next to her. 'It's all right, Sheila. How could you know?'

She shook her head, mumbling through her tears, over and over: 'I should have known. I should have just called you.'

He put the palm of his hand under her glass and helped her raise it to her lips. She had to admit that it helped. She took another mouthful, the good cool wine.

She'd been getting back to a glass or two regularly lately and it hadn't caused her any ill-effects. The doctors nowadays were always so paranoid about alcohol. She should have started out taking their dire warnings with a grain of salt. This wasn't hurting her at all. In fact, it was helping.

She got her breathing back under control. 'The whole story didn't make much sense to me, Mark, but I just thought—'

'It's all right,' he repeated. 'There's no harm done. I didn't even have any damn bayonet.'

'I know. But I didn't remember.'

'I lost the damn thing on a camping trip five ten years ago, maybe longer. You don't remember?'

'But why would he think, the Sergeant...?'

Her husband shook his head. 'I have no idea. I knew Trang. Maybe I'm the most convenient warm body. I think that's how these guys work.' He reached out, laid a hand on her shoulder.

'So what happens now?' she asked timidly.

Mark sat back into the couch. 'Now I think he'll probably come back with a warrant and tear the house apart, and maybe my car, and the office. I've got the M-16, after all, and he's seen it, and some Judge will probably believe that means something and give him the search warrant. After all, I did steal it from the Army, demonstrating my long-standing history of criminal moral character.'

'You were twenty-three years old!' she cried. 'You haven't broken a law in almost twenty-five years.'

'Well, I did cut the tag off a mattress once.'

'Don't be funny. Please, not now.' She was shaking her head. 'God, this is unbelievable. This can't be happening to us.'

Farrell kicked himself for being so stupid, but at the moment he hadn't seen any alternative. He had to drive all the way home in the lower Sunset District to leave Bart anyway, and he decided to make his calls to hospitals from there. Ten minutes later, he found himself in his car again, driving the three miles back, nearly an hour at this time on a Friday night, to within 500 yards of where he's started - St Mary's Hospital.

Wes hated almost everything about hospitals - the smells, the light, the sound which somehow always seemed to be simultaneously muted and amplified. As the elevator opened on the fourth floor, he let out a sigh of relief. This wasn't the Intensive Care Unit. He realized he'd been afraid to ask.

He stopped at the door to the room. The bed wasn't visible - the room separators had been pulled halfway around it - but Larry and Sally, Sam's brother and his wife, were sitting next to one another, talking quietly.

'Hey, comrades,' he said. 'She never calls, she never writes. Is this the party?' Then, seeing Sam, her head wrapped in gauze, one arm above the blanket and one strapped to her body, he came forward, up beside her bed. 'Hi.'

He found his hand clutched by her free one. There were sickly black and yellow wells under both of her eyes, a bandage over the bridge of her nose. He saw her make the effort, to try to smile to greet him, but it cost her. Her eyes moistened, and he leaned over to her, gently brought his cheek next to hers, left it there. 'God,' he said. 'Thank God.'

'She's going to be okay.' He heard Larry behind him. 'Couple more days and she's out of here.'

He straightened up, still holding her hand, looking at her. 'I'll ask these guys,' he said.

Larry and Sally told him. Sam had, actually, been very lucky, suffering only a concussion, a broken nose, a broken collarbone, multiple bruises and abrasions. She'd been buried by brick and mortar, but the beams in the ceiling had prevented the house from collapsing on her. They'd pulled her out within three hours.

'And how's Quayle? Is he okay?'

Her grip tightened. She shook her head and a tear broke and rolled across her cheek.

Glitsky thought the day might never end, but the trail was getting hot, and this was where you didn't quit.

After he left Amanda, he ran up the outside stairs to Homicide, where he called the cellphone company. Because of the earthquake, a supervisor, Hal Frisque, was actually on duty, working late, pulling a ton of overtime. He would love to help.

So five minutes after faxing a copy of his warrant to Frisque, Glitsky was again on the phone at his desk, a map of San Francisco open in front of him.

'We're talking the seven-forty call, is that right?' Frisque asked.

That's what I've got here,' Glitsky said.

'Okay.' A pause. 'That's zone SF-43. You got a map there? Looks like he was on the 280 Freeway. Had to be, because a minute later, he got picked up in SF-42, so he was going west.'

Glitsky was lost in possibilities, but none of them helped him very much. True, Trang had been killed near the 280 Freeway, south of it, on Geneva Avenue, but to get to the San Francisco Golf Club and Driving Range, or to Dooher's home for that matter, his car could have taken the same route.

But Frisque was continuing. 'Okay, now he moves to DC-3.'

'Further west?'

A short moment, then: 'No, mostly south. DC, Daly City picked him up. Check your map. I'd say it looks like he left the freeway at Geneva and went south. No way to tell how far, because the call ends. Sergeant Glitsky?'

'I'm here.'

Dooher left the freeway and turned south on Geneva at 7:41, knowing at that time that Trang was sitting in his office alone.

Got him!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Archbishop Flaherty had canceled his other appointments for this Monday morning. This was more important. The entire situation was getting out of hand, as a matter of fact. Over the weekend, the police had torn apart Mark Dooher 's world, finding nothing that tied him to Victor Trang in the process. It was unconscionable, irresponsible and appalling.

So his spartan office was crowded with a gaggle of lawyers. His full-time staff corporate counsel, Gabe Stockman, was punching something into his laptop. Dooher and he had been in touch over much of the weekend, and now he and his attorney, a man unknown to Flaherty named Wes Farrell, had arrived. They were pouring themselves some coffee from the small table near the window that overlooked the schoolyard.

'What I'd like to know,' Flaherty said, 'is why they seem to have settled on you, Mark.'

Wes Farrell, the new guy, stopped stirring his coffee. 'Mark owned a bayonet once. He talked to Trang. They don't have anybody else. That's what they have. Beyond that, I've got a theory if you'd like to hear it.'

'At this point, I'd like to hear anything that makes sense.'

'Glitsky. Sergeant Glitsky. I understand you've met him, too. That he attacked you, as well.'

'That might be a little strong,' Flaherty said. 'He wasn't very sociable, let's just say that.'

'Well, regardless, Your Excellency, I did a little checking, a couple of people I know at the Hall of Justice. He is having some serious personal problems. His wife is dying. He screwed up his last major investigation - which happened to be another one of my clients. At the same time, he's bucking for promotion and he needs a high-profile success in a bad way. And guess who oversees police promotions? The Chief, Dan Rigby, who's a pawn of the Mayor, who is, in turn, just a little bit left-wing.'

Flaherty interrupted. 'You're telling me this is political.'

Now Stockman looked up, putting in his own two cents. 'Everything's political.'

Emboldened by the support, Farrell was warming up. 'So here's how it breaks. The Mayor's support is ninety percent blacks, women's groups and gays, am I right? Hell, he's got two gay supervisors in his pocket. The Catholic Church, represented by my client here, Mark Dooher, is anti-abortion, anti-women priests, anti-gay.' 

'That's not entirely accurate,' Flaherty said. He really didn't like the anti-this and anti-that rhetoric. If Farrell was going to be representing Dooher, he'd have to try to get him to re-tool his vocabulary. The Church was pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage. It was not a negative institution.

But Farrell waved off his objection and kept rolling. 'So Glitsky is willing to go the extra mile to bring Mark to grief. Even if the evidence is lame, and it's less than that, he puts himself on the side of the people who can promote him, who can watch out for his ass. Pardon the language.'

The room went silent.

'Could that really be it?' Flaherty asked. 'That's very hard to believe. I mean, this is the police department of a major city.'

Farrell sipped his coffee. 'It's one man.'

Dooher held up a hand. His voice was cool water. 'Glitsky's not the issue here, Wes. There is absolutely no evidence tying me to Victor. I was out driving golf balls. I forgot to tell Glitsky that I had stopped on Geneva to get gas on the way out to the range. I foolishly paid with cash. The attendant who took my money had his nose buried in some Asian newspaper and consequently didn't remember me or my car. Or anyone else, I'd wager. So Glitsky thinks I lied, covered up. That's not it. Even if Glitsky's out to get me, somebody out there has got to believe I'm innocent. Maybe the DA himself, Chris Locke.'

This, Flaherty realized, was why he valued Dooher so highly. He saw things clearly. Even here at the center of this maelstrom, he was formulating a firm, effective strategy. It was ridiculous to think that Mark Dooher would ever have to resort to violence of any kind. He was too smart. He could destroy without a touch. 'Let me try that,' Flaherty said. 'I'll call Locke, explain the situation. See if he can help clear things up.'

Chris Locke was the city's first black District Attorney and a consummate political animal, and he was sitting alone in his office thinking about Archbishop James Flaherty, with whom he had just spoken.

Locke knew that Flaherty influenced a lot of votes in San Francisco through parish homilies, position papers, public appearances, pastoral letters. He also knew that conservatives, comprising perhaps thirty percent of the city's voters, played at best only a peripheral role in any election, but that it would be foolish to ignore them completely. Locke, though a prosecutor, was on the Mayor's liberal team (as any elected official in San Francisco had to be), but his private support of the Archbishop might in some future election tip the scales in his favor. Locke thought that cooperating with a powerful conservative like Flaherty, behind the scenes, was worth the risk.

But something in Locke knew it wasn't just the votes. It was more visceral, more immediate, and he was addicted to it - having something on people who held authority and power. And Flaherty had taken the unusual step of asking Locke for a favor. That was worth looking into.

Though he directed all prosecutions in the city, Locke was rarely current on the progress of investigations being conducted at any given time - they were police business. The DA came later.

But, of course, he had his sources. He could find out.

Art Drysdale sat behind his desk juggling baseballs. Now in his late fifties, he'd played about two weeks of major league ball for the Giants before he'd gone to law school, and the wall behind him still sported some framed and yellowing highlights from college ball and the minors.

For the past dozen years, Drysdale had run the day-to-day work of the DA's office, and Locke depended on him for nearly all administrative decisions. The DA had come down to Drysdale's smaller office, knocked on the door, and let himself in, closing the door behind him.

Drysdale never stopped juggling.

'How do you do that?'

'What? Oh, juggling?'

'No, I wasn't talking about juggling. What makes you think I was talking about juggling?'

The balls came down - plop, plop, plop - in one of Drysdale's hands, and he placed them on his desk blotter. 'It's a gift,' he said. 'What's up?'

'What do you know about Mark Dooher?'

The Chief Assistant DA knew just about everything there was to date about Mark Dooher. Drysdale believed in a smooth pipeline from the police department, through the DA's office, and on to the courts. He stayed in touch with Chief Rigby, with the Calendar Judge, with his Assistant DAs, such as Amanda Jenkins. He generally knew about things before they officially happened, if not sooner. If asked, he would undoubtedly say that his prescience, too, was a gift.

So he ran the Dooher story down for his boss. It was a tasty mixture: Flaherty's fears, Dooher's mysterious turnoff onto Geneva near the time of the murder, the bayonet question, the interviews with Trang's women, Glitsky's recent over-aggressive stand on Levon Copes, the stress he was under because of his wife's illness.

'But not much evidence yet?'

Drysdale shook his head. 'Not that I've heard. They searched all weekend.'

'Flaherty says this Dooher is a pillar of the community.'

'Community pillars have been known to kill people.'

'We know this, Art. But His Excellency thinks that maybe Glitsky's harassing Dooher for some reason.'

'The famous "some reason"

'The point is, Flaherty is really unhappy. Really unhappy. He's also worried that Glitsky will arrest Dooher for murdering Trang anyway, even if he's light on evidence.'

Drysdale was shaking his head no. 'Glitsky's a stone pro, Chris. He's not going to arrest him without a warrant. If there's no evidence, there's no evidence.' 

'And there is none?'

'Nowhere near enough. So far.'

'So I can tell the Archbishop he needn't worry?'

'If things don't change. But,' Drysdale held up a warning finger, 'they often do.'

'I'll keep that in mind, Art. But in the meanwhile,' he stood up, 'if we're hassling this guy, whatever reason, I want the word out it's to stop. We get righteous evidence or we let it go. We in accord here?'

'That's the way we always do it, Chris.'

Locke was at the door. 'I know that. I don't want to criticize a good cop who's having problems, Art, but Flaherty seems to know that we've got no matching hairs or fibers or fingerprints, no blood, no bayonet. And no motive. Am I right?'

'Yep.'

'All right.'

Drysdale stared at the door for a moment after it closed behind the DA. Then he picked up his baseballs again. Locke, he thought, had his own gift: the man knew how to deliver a message.

Glitsky's fears about his wife were well founded. After three days of whirlwind house-cleaning following the earthquake, she had faked feeling better on Sunday morning. When Glitsky had left to continue serving his search warrant, she had gone back to bed.

She sent all three boys out to the movies, with instructions not to return until dinnertime. Flo knew that her nurse, and Abe's father Nat, would be back on Monday. She thought she'd be fine until then. She didn't want to burden anybody, which is all she did anymore.

But this morning she hadn't been able to get out of bed. The nurse was in with her. Abe had put off going to work and now he and Nat sat in the living-room armchairs in the same attitude - hunched over, elbows on their knees.

'She's got to do what she's got to do, Abraham. Maybe all the cleaning, it did her some good. For her soul.'

Glitsky didn't have it in him to argue anymore. It had been a thoroughly dispiriting weekend. Hours of work and nothing to show for it. There had been no sign of Mark Dooher's bayonet. The lab would be coming in with microscopic results over the next few days, but Glitsky held out little hope of finding anything. Dooher had lots of suits in his closet at home, ten pairs of shoes, and all of them were pristine. It had been basically the same story at his office - fewer clothes, but everything spotless. His files gave no indication of any meeting with Trang. He kept his golf clubs in the trunk.

And in pursuit of those meager pickings, Abe hadn't been there for Flo, and now his father was talking about her soul. Well, he no longer cared about her soul. He cared about her body - that it wasn't causing her pain, if it could somehow stop betraying her. Even, God forgive him, that it let her rest for good. 'Maybe you're right, Dad. Maybe it helped her soul.' 

'But you don't think so?'

He shrugged. 'It doesn't matter. She did it. It wore her out. Now she's worse.'

'But for those couple of days, she was better.'

There was nothing Glitsky wanted to say. He might feel like howling at the moon, but he didn't want to yell at his dad, who was cursed with the need to find meaning in life, an explanation for the randomness of experience.

The telephone rang and he made some hopeless gesture to Nat, got up, and went to the kitchen to answer it.

It was Frank Batiste. Locke's message had made its way through the system, and he heard it, said, 'Thanks,' and hung up.

'Who was that?' His father was standing in the hallway between the kitchen and his bedroom.

Glitsky stared ahead. 'Work.'

'If it's important, you can go in. I'll be here. Flo—'

'No,' Glitsky said. 'Just a case closing, that's all.'

Part Three 

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

On Tuesday, June 7, about six weeks after Abe Glitsky was told to forget about Mark Dooher and Victor Trang, he got a call at his home. It was 11:14 by the clock next to his new bed. He had gotten home an hour before, turned on and off the television, made a cup of tea, opened a book. Finally, he had gone in to his bedroom to lie down.

The house was empty now, except for him. The boys were staying at a friend's until Glitsky could finish the interview process for the nanny/ housekeeper he was going to hire.

In the first five days after Flo's death, he'd talked to two pleasant-enough young women, and both interviews had been disasters. Glitsky knew he had been to blame - he probably wouldn't have hired himself under these conditions. He should give himself a week or two to come to grips with his desolation, his anger, his despair.

He was fighting to keep desperation out of the picture, too, reminding himself that there really was no hurry; it had only been a few days. He'd find someone.

The new bed was a double. He and Flo had had a queen, but the first night after she was gone he found he couldn't make himself get into it. He knew he would keep turning as he tried to sleep and be newly surprised to find her side empty time after time. So that first night he'd slept, or tried to, on the couch in the living room. The next day he'd called the Salvation Army and they'd come and then the bed was gone. But even the smaller one felt enormous.

He was still in his clothes, one hand over his eyes, squinting at the digital clock. He reached for the telephone.

'Glitsky.'

'Abe, this is Frank Batiste. I know you're on leave and you can say no, but they got me at home and asked, and I thought you'd want to decide for yourself. We just got a nine one one from a frantic husband in St Francis Wood. His wife's been stabbed. She's dead.'

'Okay.'

'The caller was Mark Dooher. The woman's his wife.'

His feet were over the edge of the bed, on to the floor. 'Send a squad car by. I'll hitch a ride with it.'

Glitsky didn't hear Batiste start to ask if he was sure, he didn't have to ... he'd already hung up. 

He remembered the house more vividly than he would have thought. He saw a lot of homes in his job and they tended to blur together. But this one was distinctive with its tiled front courtyard behind the low stucco fence, the turret in the front, the semi-enclosed entrance, the broad sweeping lawn with its fifty-year-old magnolia tree which was in bloom, scenting the clear, still-warm air.

Glitsky stood a minute surveying the front of the house, now all lit up. Someone was moving in the turret, but he couldn't see through the blinds. The coroner's van hadn't yet arrived, but there was an ambulance in the driveway. Three other black and white squad cars from the early responding officers were parked on the street. The yellow crime-scene tape had been hung over a wide perimeter around the driveway and across the lawn. Within it, a couple of uniforms were standing guard, talking.

Glitsky had to remind himself that this was St Francis Wood, and that police response time here was measured in minutes, not hours as was often the case in less tony neighborhoods.

He was directed to the driveway and saw three other men standing in front of the ambulance. The two in uniform would be the Lieutenant and the Sergeant from the district station, which was Taraval. The third saw Glitsky and started walking down toward him. It was Paul Thieu.

On Glitsky's recommendation, Thieu had recently been detailed full-time to the death department, and he'd been in the office at the Hall pulling long hours when the eight-oh-two - a coroner's case - had been patched through from emergency services. Thieu had called Batiste, which was why Abe was here.

Glitsky met him halfway. Further up the drive, he noticed the pool of light under an open side door. 'Where's Dooher?'

'Library downstairs, over in that turret area. Couple of guys are with him.' Thieu had quickly improved in the chatter department. He'd also learned how to answer questions. 'Okay. I guess he'll wait.'

They approached the Taraval station people - Lieutenant Armanino and Sergeant Dorney - and Thieu introduced Glitsky around. Armanino was taking pains to explain to the downtown Homicide Inspectors that the guys from his station had secured the place well. The woman upstairs was, in fact, dead. She'd been obviously and thoroughly dead when they got here. So the paramedics hadn't moved the body or touched anything.

Thieu needed to talk. 'Stabbed in her bed, Abe. It looks like a burglary gone bad, maybe attempted rape. Sheets and blankets tossed pretty good. Lots of blood - she must have cut the guy.'

Hands in his pockets, Glitsky nodded. 'Okay, let's go on up.'

'Before you do,' Armanino interrupted, 'there are a couple of other things, Sergeant. The paramedics and responding officers were here when we arrived, but we got here right after. Nobody else had been on the driveway. There was no obvious blood on it, though there might be a drop or two, some spatter. I'll keep it clean till the crime-scene guys get here.' Armanino was a stickler for details. Glitsky thought it was undoubtedly how he'd made Lieutenant. 'But in the meanwhile, one of my guys' - he indicated the policeman standing on the driveway - 'found this.' He showed Glitsky a Ziploc bag containing something white dotted with red.

Glitsky took it. 'What is it?'

'It's a surgical glove. It was there in the dirt by the back door, which was evidently the point of exit. Maybe entry, too. The light bulb, by the way,' again he indicated with gesture, 'was dark, unscrewed.'

'Unscrewed?'

Armanino nodded. 'Dorney here put on his own gloves and turned it and it came right back on. And this.'

Another, larger bag contained what, at a glance, appeared to be the murder weapon - a high-quality kitchen knife. The blade's pretty clean, isn't it?'

'It got wiped.'

'But a lot upstairs?'

Armanino shrugged. 'You'll see.' What it meant, if anything, wasn't for him to determine. Neither was Glitsky's definition of 'a lot'. He was simply reporting what he and his men had found.

'That it?'

Armanino looked at Dorney and the Sergeant nodded. A well-oiled machine, these two. Good cops. 'For now, I think so.'

'Okay, Paul,' Glitsky said, 'let's go.'

At the side door, he turned and added quietly, 'Thanks for having Batiste call me.'

The side door opened on to a laundry room with black and white checkered tile floors, a washing machine and dryer. They walked through into the beautiful, marble-countered kitchen, where Glitsky had once sat with Sheila Dooher and had tea.

There were voices coming out of the turret room, but Glitsky followed Thieu as he turned into the foyer and they ascended the stairs to a balustraded landing. It seemed that every light in the house must be on.

A large, circular rug with a Navajo design covered the floor up here. Two panelled doors on the left were now closed.

The bedroom was huge and well lit. Double French doors led to a balcony. There were two darkwood dressers, and a door through which he could see a makeup area and, beyond that, the bathroom.

The woman lay diagonally across the king-sized bed in an awkward position - half turned with one arm under her, the other splayed. Glitsky stood a minute, registering it. Something, though he couldn't say precisely what, struck him as odd. She looked almost as though she'd been dropped.

He remembered the face and looked at it now. In death, there was no sign of fury in Sheila Dooher's last moments - in fact, Glitsky thought, her expression was remarkably peaceful. The hair, mussed from sleeping, still bore the traces of its last brushing and, perhaps tellingly, no visible blood.

Which is not to say there was no blood elsewhere. A blood-spattered white cotton nightie was bunched around her neck, covering her left breast, leaving the right exposed. Only one wound was visible, a inch-long slit out of which seeped a brownish-red ribbon. Her underpants were still on, though they'd been pulled down forcefully, and were ripped.

Glitsky straightened up, backing away a step for a wider angle. Thieu's statement about the blood was a relative one. But Glitsky knew that blood was one of those things - if you weren't familiar with it, a little could go a real long way.

Glitsky's first take on the blood in this case was that there wasn't nearly enough of it. Even Victor Trang had bled substantially more than this, and his killer had used the bayonet to plug the flow. If the knife-wound here had gone to the heart with the victim on her side, which was what it looked like, there should have been massive quantities of blood. Pints. Not a cupful.

'What?' Thieu asked.

But Glitsky didn't answer. Instead, from his new vantage point, back a little from the bed, he noticed something he should have seen immediately. He wasn't going to touch or move the body to make sure, but there were four or five other apparent blood marks on the nightie - he leaned in to see more clearly, now that he thought he knew what he was looking at. They were like brush strokes - straight-sided and tapering, the concentration of blood heavy at one end and lighter at the other.

It could only be one thing, something he'd seen only once before - with Victor Trang - in his career.

The killed had wiped the blade off on his victim's clothes.

Farrell didn't look like a lawyer at the moment.

He was in the pair of white painter's overalls that had been next to his bed. He'd finally finished all the repairs, the caulking and the cracks in the walls of his apartment. For the past few weeks, after work, when he wasn't visiting Sam, he had been haphazardly painting a baseboard here, a door there.

Tonight, after the midnight call from Mark, he threw on the paint-stained pants, stepped barefoot into his trashed topsiders, threw on a ragged and grubby University of California sweatshirt, and grabbed his Giants hat from the peg by the door.

So he didn't look like a lawyer, but he wasn't here as a lawyer. At least he didn't think so. He was here as a best friend. Mark's voice had been calm, though there was no mistaking the anguish. They'd had a burglar, he said. Sheila was dead.

He pulled his Datsun up behind the police cars. The driveway and the street in front of Mark's house were clogged with the ambulance, the coroner's van, the knot of curious neighbors, two local news trucks. 

He went up to the nearest uniform. 'Excuse me, I'm a friend of the resident here. He asked me to come over. I'd like to go up to the house.'

The cop had his orders, though. His arms remained crossed, and he shook his head. 'Afraid not. This is a crime scene. It's closed to the public.'

'I'm not the public. I'm an attorney.'

The officer looked him over.'Then be an attorney outside. This is still a crime scene.'

'Look, why don't you go ask Mr Dooher if he wants Wes Farrell up there with him?'

'You're Wes Farrell?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, Wes, we don't run things the way Mr Dooher wants them run, especially at a murder scene. You know what I mean? We're investigating a crime here. We don't want people tramping all over the evidence. That's how we do it. Now, when we're done, you can go up. Meanwhile, somebody comes out, I'll send word up if I can see some ID.'

Wes patted his empty pockets. He could visualize his wallet on the top of the dresser next to his bed at home.

He considered breaking and running up the pavers, but figured he'd get shot or arrested or something for his troubles. No. The only hope was to drive the two miles back home and get his goddamned ID. 'Have a nice night,' he told the cop.

A polite smile. 'You, too.'

The CSI - crime-scene investigation - unit knew the drill, and Glitsky knew them. He didn't want to step on toes, but he wasn't working backward from any theory now. This time he was looking at what he knew was evidence, not wanting it to go away through inadvertence or simple bad luck.

He walked up to Sergeant Jimmy Ash from the photo lab, a gangly, forty-year-old freckled albino who, tonight with the late hour, even had pink eyes, and who'd already 'painted the room' in videotape. Ash was standing by the bed, taking stills of the body that had been Sheila Dooher.

'Hey, Jimmy. You got any special technique for splatter stains?'

'The blood?' He swallowed, a prominent Adam's apple bobbing. 'No, nothing special. Clear photos - my particular area of expertise, you know - and something to provide perspective in the picture. You see something?'

'I think so.'

'Then you got it.'

Thieu was standing next to them both. Glitsky could figuratively almost hear him panting there, dying to ask what he'd seen and having no clue. He started to take pity on him, turned to answer, when Alice Carter, the coroner's tech from the other side of the bed, spoke up.

'Abe?' She pointed a finger at him and curled it toward her. Come here. 'Anybody move this body?'

'I don't think so. Not since I've been here.' 

Thieu spoke up. 'She was this way when I came in, too.'

'I think you want to be sure on this. The responding officers still below?'

Thieu was already moving out the room's door, going to get them if they were still there.

'Why?' Abe asked.

Ms Carter pointed at Sheila Dooher's bare right shoulder, the exposed back beneath it, a slight darkening, red under the skin. 'Because we've got what looks a whole lot like fixed lividity here in the upper right quadrant.'

'Which means she was moved ...'

'Right, and after she'd been dead a while.'

It was well after midnight. Thieu trailing behind him, Glitsky stopped in the doorway to the library and caught Dooher in an unguarded moment, sitting back in his wingchair, legs crossed, talking with another man. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but Dooher's expression was bland, his body language relaxed.

It had been a week now since Abe had lost his wife and he had yet to draw an easy breath. His tired muscles seemed as though their ache would never end and his jangled nerves, strung with fatigue, twitched like a thoroughbred's.

And here was Dooher, his wife gone less than three hours, all but holding court. The comparison invited conclusions. Glitsky was going to have to concentrate to keep his personal feelings from intruding.

This had to be by the book.

Today's date is Wednesday, June 8th. The time is approximately 0020

hours. This is Sergeant Inspector Abraham Glitsky, star number 1144.

/ am currently at 4215 Ravenwood Drive, San Francisco. Present

and being interviewed is Mark Dooher, Caucasian male, 4/19/47.

With me is Sergeant Inspector Paul Thieu, star 2067, and Mr Dooher's

attorney Wes Farrell.

Q: Mr Dooher, I'll be tape-recording your statement, as you can see.

Do you have any objection to this?

A: No, none.

Q: But, for the record, your attorney did raise some objections to

your coming downtown to give your statement.

A: (Farrell) Sergeant, we've been through that. It's after midnight

and the man's wife has just been killed. Since Mr Dooher wasn 't home

all night, he couldn't possibly be a suspect in this crime. He voluntarily

has agreed to give a statement here and now. There's no reason to go

downtown.

A: (Dooher) It's all right, Wes. What do you need for the statement,

Sergeant?

Q: How about starting by telling what you found here tonight?

A: All right. At about nine forty-five, I got home from hitting a couple

of buckets of golf balls at the San Francisco Driving Range, (pause) 

As you know, I've had some bad luck with driving ranges lately.

Q: You got home at quarter to ten . . .

A: Right. I came inside . . .

Q: What car were you driving and where did you park?

A: I was driving my Lexus. It's light brown with personalized plates

reading ESKW. I drove up the driveway and parked in the garage

behind the house. I closed the garage door behind me - it's automatic

- and walked out the side door of the garage on the path next to my

back lawn, to the driveway, and in the side door.

Q: Was the door locked?

A: I don't remember, to tell you the truth. I wouldn 't have noticed

anyway. I always just put my key in first, give it a turn, it opens. I

don't remember specifically.

Q: Do you remember if the overhead light was on?

A: No. I don't believe it was. It must have burned out.

Q: Okay. What did you do then?

A: I went to turn off the alarm system - we have a box next to the

doors - and I noticed it hadn 't been set.

Q: Was that unusual?

A: Unfortunately, no. Sheila... that was one of the things she wasn't...

A: (Farrell) Give him a minute, here, would you ? You all right, Mark?

A: (Dooher) Yeah, okay. Sorry. Sheila often forgot to set the alarm

system. She would go in and out a lot and thought it was silly -

unnecessary - while we were home. She thought it was more for when

we went on vacation, times like that. She thought I was paranoid.

Q: All right. Then what?

A: Then I went into the kitchen, did the dinner dishes which were still

there. Then I had a beer and read the mail.

Q: You thought your wife had gone up to bed?

A: I knew she had gone up to bed, Sergeant. We'd split a bottle of

wine for dinner. She hit the wall around seven-thirty and said she

wanted to turn in. So I thought I'd go to the range. Anyway, I finished

my beer and went upstairs . . .

Q: Did you touch your wife?

A: No. I turned on the lights and it was obvious she was dead. I

suppose I froze a minute or two. I don't remember. Then I guess I

called nine one one.

Q: And then what?

A: Then I sat on the stairs and waited. No, I checked the other upstairs

rooms, too.

Q: You didn't try to resuscitate her, anything like that?

A: (Farrell) Sergeant, he's answered that. She was obviously dead.

Q: Did you touch the body at all?

A: (Dooher) There was blood all over the place! There wasn't any 

doubt - you can tell when somebody's dead. I didn 't know what to do,

to tell you the truth. I don't even know exactly what I did. I was afraid.

I suddenly thought the guy might still be in the house. I don't know. I

just don't know.

Q: I'm sorry, Mr Dooher, but I need a specific answer to the question.

Did you at any time up to right now touch Mrs Dooher's body?

A: No.

Q: All right, let's go back. Earlier in the day, before . . .

A: (Farrell) What's that got to do with anything, Sergeant?

A: (Dooher) It's okay, Wes. My attorney here wants to make sure I

don't say anything to incriminate myself. But I can't incriminate myself

since I didn't do anything. How far back do you want to go, Sergeant?

Last week?

Q: Let's start when you got off work.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Christina stood by the French doors and watched Dooher move about his backyard, greeting the other mourners.

She was fighting the feeling that she really didn't belong here, guilt that in her heart she didn't mourn Sheila Dooher's passing. It freed Mark - there was no sense denying it. She sighed heavily.

'I'm glad you're here. I don't know anybody.'

She turned to see Sam Duncan, her arm still in a cast. 'You know me now. But why are you here?'

Sam gestured behind her. 'Wes. He's taking over details for Mark for a while. Even without the police stuff, this whole thing is just so horrible.'

Christina laid a hand on Sam's arm. 'What police stuff?'

'Damn.' Sam's face clouded. 'I'm not supposed to talk about it. Wes doesn't want any rumors going around.' She lowered her voice. 'He's worried that they're going to say Mark did it, killed his wife.'

Christina mouth dropped. The idea was absurd. 'What? He wasn't even here, was he? How could he have—'

'I know, but Wes is afraid they might. I mean, so soon after the Trang thing and all.'

'But they didn't find anything there either.'

'No, but apparently our friend Sergeant Glitsky didn't like being proven wrong. And he's the Inspector on this case.'

'But Mark wasn't even here!'

'Evidently the police can make a case that he was.' Sam held up a hand. 'Wes says if they really want to get you, they can make your life pretty miserable.'

'I guess they didn't really want to get Levon Copes.'

Sam made a face. 'Still a sore subject. But that was Glitsky, too.'

'But what does Glitsky have against Mark?'

'No one knows. Wes isn't sure if there's any reason. And nothing's happened yet. He's just worried. He thinks Glitsky might be overworked and guessing wrong. He did screw up on Levon Copes. And you know about his search warrant on Mark. There's two strikes.'

'You don't think he'd plant evidence, do you? The police don't really do that, do they?'

Sam shrugged. 'I don't know what they'd do.'

Farrell was sitting in a corner of the kitchen with a beer, listening to Mark's two youngest children, Jason and Susan, talking to their friends. He'd known the two kids their whole lives, and they looked very much alike, both very thin with slack blondish hair, waif-like features, and piercing green eyes - Mark's eyes. Susan wore black silk - tunic and pants - and Jason had the baggy pants, an outsized brand-new dress shirt buttoned to the collar, a camouflage jacket.

None of Farrells own kids had made it home for the funeral, which very much disappointed him, especially since Sheila and Mark had been godparents to Michelle, his youngest. But he consoled himself with the fact that neither had Mark's eldest, Mark Jr, the wildcatter sculptor.

Wes had tried to help Dooher out with breaking the brutal news, making the call to Mark Jr, and had been unprepared for the venom he'd heard. His dad never needed him for anything before - he didn't need to see him now. Besides, it was too much of a hassle to come down from Alaska, he said. His mom was already dead anyway. What good was it going to do? And he didn't have the money to spare.

Oh, Dad was offering to pay, to fly him down? No, thanks - one way or another, he'd wind up owing him. He'd have to pay. Even for something like this.

All the young people were drinking beer.

He was comfortable here in the kitchen with them, especially since Lydia was out in the great room, mingling as she did. So he was avoiding her. And he didn't particularly want to introduce her to Sam, either. That kept him in here, too, not that it had been uninteresting up to now. He was learning a lot, listening. Just edit out the 'dudes' and profanity and most of it was English.

Jason, sitting on the counter now, had sat next to his sister in the pew with Mark, but both of them down five feet or more from their father. An eloquent-enough statement. The boy cried at the Mass, but was over that now.

He was enthusing over the snow in Colorado, the winter he'd spent back there, how he was going down to Rosarito from here, surf the summer away, like, starting tomorrow. He had to get out of here. This scene here with his dad was just too weird.

His sister leaned up against the sink, holding hands with another young woman. 'How Mom took it I don't know,' she said.

More Dad-trashing coming up, Wes thought - even a child could do it. Suddenly, stoked by the beers, he stood, deciding to butt in. 'Hey, guys. How about you give the old man a break, would you? He's having a tough enough time.'

Susan nearly snorted. 'Dad doesn't have tough times.'

'I've just been through one with him, dear.'

'I'm sure.' She dropped her girlfriend's hand and walked the four steps over to him - a bit unsteadily. 'You think you know my dad, don't you? You think he's devastated by all this?' She shook her head hopelessly. 'You're a good guy, Wes, I really think you are, but dream fuckin' on,' she repeated. 

'Dream on what, Susan? What are you talking about?'

Jason: 'Hey, come on, look around.'