Freeman the kind mentor was merely reminding him. "This is why, my son, I'm afraid you're going to die impoverished and there is really no excuse for a good lawyer to die poor."

"Yes, sir. I believe you've mentioned something like that before. Anyway, I emphasized to Glitsky that he's a witness, not a suspect."

"Ah." Freeman nodded genially. "The good lieutenant wants to get to know him a little better, is that it?" The old man pulled himself up straight behind the desk and summoned his courtroom bellow. "Are you out of your mind?" He got his voice back under control. "A witness, not a suspect? He's a prime suspect! And I'll tell you something else. Kensing sure as hell thinks he is. Why do you think he wanted to get a lawyer onboard? In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like him."

"You've never met him."

"So what? You've only met him once. Are you trying to tell me that you know he's not guilty of murder?"

"He injected Markham with potassium?"

"Or ran him over. Maybe both."

"David-"

"Why not? The dead guy was screwing his wife, which is the oldest motive in the world."

"So after waiting two years, he killed him?"

His worldview intact, Freeman sat back, serene as Buddha. "Happens every day. Seriously, Diz. What about this doesn't work for you? It looks pretty good to me. Solid enough, anyway, for an indictment, easily for an arrest. You know how that works."

Seeing it now through Freeman's eyes, he was forced to concede that his client in fact did have motive, means, and opportunity to have killed Tim Markham. In his day, Hardy had won many grand jury indictments with any two of them, occasionally with only one.

And now he'd brokered this stupid little meeting with the head of homicide in a few hours. Kensing might show up here in the office and if more evidence had come to light, Glitsky might serve him with a grand jury subpoena, or even arrest him on the spot.

And all Hardy had done for Kensing to date had been to send him off to work with some low-watt advice and a little kneecap humor. He realized now that the familiar settings of the aquarium and the Shamrock and the two men's mutual friendship with Pico Morales had gotten him off on the wrong foot here, temporarily blinding him to the realities Kensing faced. What had he been thinking?

Suddenly he was on his feet. "Excuse me, David," he said. "I've got to get out of here."

"I have this incredible sense of de´ja` vu," Glitsky said.

"Didn't we already do this?"

"That was this morning," Hardy replied. "New opportunities abound if we but have the courage to face them."

The lieutenant leveled his eyes at his friend across his desk, then zipped open the side pocket of his all-weather jacket, pulled out a few disks of some kind of white stuff, broke off a piece, and popped it into his mouth. "Want some of this rice cake? It's awful." He looked at it for a long moment before he pitched it into the wastebasket.

"What happened to the peanuts?" Hardy asked. For years, one of Glitsky's desk drawers was the homicide detail's peanut receptacle and the lieutenant would often carry a few handfuls around with him. "I could eat a few peanuts."

"Too much cholesterol, or fat, or one of those. I forget which."

"So on top of the heart stuff, you got CRS, too?"

Glitsky sat back, folded his arms, and stared. "I'm not going to ask."

"Okay, fine. If you don't know, you don't know. And if you guessed wrong, you'd just say something negative anyway. But it's never too late to change, you know. Accentuate the positive."

"Latch on to the affirmative." Glitsky's voice was the essence of dry. "I've got another one for you. Let's call the whole thing off."

Hardy's brow clouded. "Different song. And notice, a negative theme again. But this time, as it turns out, precisely what I had in mind."

"What's that?"

"Well, I regret to inform you that my client will not be available for our interview this evening after all. This case is just too hot for me to let him talk. However, if you'd like to give me inquiries in writing, I'd be happy to try and get you any information you require."

Glitsky chortled. "And if you'd like to kiss my toes, perhaps I shall become a ballerina. It's been my dream."

The two men looked benignly at each other. Glitsky finally broke the impasse. "All right," he said. "What's CRS?"

Hardy paused for dramatic effect. "Can't…remember…shit." He grinned. "One sad day, you won't ask."

Glitsky had made it clear that the respective performances of Bracco and Fisk yesterday during the interview of Anita Tong left something to be desired, so much so that he'd forbidden them to talk directly to any of the other witnesses Tong had mentioned. Specifically, they were not to approach Eric Kensing or anyone at Parnassus headquarters. If they developed new leads for themselves and found anyone else on their own, they could use their judgment. Provided they immediately reported back to homicide-daily-with any results.

The lieutenant had even suggested that, since it was their area of expertise, maybe it would be an effective use of their time to visit some body shops and car washes, follow up on patrol sightings of suspicious vehicles in the projects and neighborhoods. Fisk accepted this assignment with relative good humor, tinged possibly with acceptance and even relief, but after a couple of hours of it, driving around in a continuous steady rain, Bracco lost his patience.

"Goddamnit, this isn't a hit and run anymore, Harlen! Glitsky told us to build a case, and we're probably gonna break some eggs making any kind of decent omelette out of it. But I'm damned if I'm driving around anymore looking for a fucking car all this miserable day. That's not what killed him anyway."

They had come up from the Mission and now were stopped at a red light on Van Ness near city hall. Fisk, huddled down in the passenger seat with his arms crossed against the chill, was shaking his head. "Glitsky said look for the car. Don't mess with Kensing."

"Okay, but how about his wife? She's fucking Markham, you know she's in this somehow."

This made Fisk uncomfortable. "I don't know. That's pretty close to Kensing, don't you think? Besides, where is she?"

"Up on Anza, behind USF. I've got her address."

"How'd you find that?"

"I called information and asked." He grinned over at his partner. "Believe it or not, it works. She lives like four blocks from the Kaiser on Masonic. I played a hunch and called there. Sure enough. You ever notice how all doctors' wives are nurses? I say we go talk to her."

Fisk still didn't like it, but after a beat he brightened. "You know the other night you dropped me at Tadich's? I mentioned the case to my aunt Kathy, and she said the whole Parnassus mess had been really hard on Nancy Ross. She felt so sorry for her."

"Nancy Ross?"

"Malachi's wife."

"I don't know Malachi Ross," Bracco admitted.

Fisk allowed a small smile. "Parnassus," he said. "With Markham gone, he runs it now. You didn't read 'CityTalk' today? It was pretty interesting."

"Are you turning into a cop on me, Harlen? So your aunt knows his wife?"

"Pretty well, I think. She knows everybody."

"It's something." Bracco pointed. "And even as we speak, city hall looms on the right." Abruptly making up his mind, he pulled directly over to the curb. "Let's go say hi."

Kathy West showed no sign of sharing any of her nephew's genes. Maybe, Bracco thought, she was the wife of the blood relation to Harlen. In her mid-fifties, with a no-nonense, stop-and-start demeanor and frail bone structure, her little bob of gray-peppered hair, she reminded Darrell Bracco of nothing so much as a sparrow. A friendly, really intelligent sparrow.