Lunchtime, and Lou the Greek's was hopping. Without any plan or marketing campaign, and in apparent defiance of common sense or good taste, Lou's had carved its unlikely niche and had remained an institution for a generation. Maybe it was the location, directly across the street from the Hall of Justice, but there wasn't any shortage of other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, and none of them did as well or had hung on as long as the Greek's. People from all walks of life just seemed to feel comfortable there, in spite of some fairly obvious drawbacks if one chose to view the place critically.

The entrance was through a frankly urine-stained bail bondsman's corridor, which led to an unlit stairway-six steps to a set of leatherette double doors. The floor of the restaurant was five feet below ground level, so it was dark even on the brightest day and never smelled particularly, or even remotely, appealing. A row of small windows along one wall was set at eye level indoors, though at ground level out. This afforded the only meager natural light. Unfortunately, it also provided a shoe's-eye view of the alley outside, which was always lined with garbage Dumpsters and other assorted urban debris, and often the cardboard lean-tos and other artifacts of the homeless who slept there. The walls had originally been done in a bordello-style maroon-and-gold velveteen wallpaper, but now were essentially black.

The bar opened at 6:00 for the alcohol crowd, and did a booming if quiet business for a couple of hours. There'd be a lull when the workday began across the street, but at 11:00 the kitchen opened and the place would fill up fast. Every day Lou's wife, Chui, would recombine an endless variety of Chinese and Greek ingredients for her daily special, which was the only item on the menu. Lou (or one of the morning drinkers) would give it a name like Kung-Pao Chicken Pita or Yeanling Happy Family, and customers couldn't seem to get enough. Given the quality of the food (no one would call it cuisine) and the choices available, Lou's popularity as a lunch spot was a continuing mystery even for those who frequently ate there themselves.

The party at the large round table by the door to the kitchen fit in this category. For several months now, in an unspoken and informal arrangement, a floating group of professionals had been meeting here on most Tuesdays for lunch. It began just after the mayor appointed Clarence Jackman the district attorney. At the time, Jackman had been in private practice as the managing partner of Rand & Jackman, one of the city's premier law firms, and the previous DA, Sharron Pratt, had just resigned in disgrace.

Jackman viewed himself mostly as a businessman, not a politician. The mayor had asked him to step into the normally bitterly contested political office and get the organization back on course, prosecuting crimes, staying on budget, litigating the city's business problems. Jackman, seeking different perspectives on his new job, asked some colleagues from different disciplines-but mostly law-for a low-profile lunch at Lou's. This move was startling enough in itself. Even more so was everyone's discretion. Lunch at Lou's wasn't so much a secret as a nonevent. If anyone noticed that the same people were showing up at the same table every week, they weren't talking. It never made the news.

Jackman faced the kitchen door. The coat of his tailored pin-striped suit hung over the back of his chair. His white dress shirt, heavily starched, fit tightly over the highly developed muscles in his back. His face was darkly hued, almost blue-black, and his huge head was perched directly on his shoulders, apparently without benefit of a neck.

Lou the Greek must have gotten a good deal on a containerload or so of fortune cookies, because for the past couple of weeks a bowl of them, incredibly stale, was on every table for every meal. The DA's lunch today had been consumed with the serious topic of the city's contract for its health insurance, and when Jackman cracked one of the cookies open and broke into his deep, rolling laughter, it cut some of the tension. "I love this," he said. "This is perfect, and right on point: 'Don't get sick.'" He took in his tablemates. "Who writes these things? Did one of you pay Lou to slip it in here?"

"I think when they run out of license plate blanks at San Quentin…" This was Gina Roake, a longtime public defender now in private practice. Despite the thirty-year age gap, she was rumored to be romantically linked to David Freeman, another of the table guests.

"No way." Marlene Ash was an assistant DA on Jackman's staff. She'd taken her jacket off when she sat down, too, revealing a substantial bosom under a maroon sweater. Chestnut shoulder-length hair framed a frankly cherubic face, marred only by a slight droop in her right eye. "No way a convict writes 'Don't get sick.' It'd be more like 'Die, muthuh.'"

"That'd be an unusually polite convict, wouldn't it?" Treya Ghent asked.

"Unprecedented," Glitsky agreed. "And it's not a fortune anyway." The lieutenant was two seats away from the DA and next to his wife, who held his hand on top of the table. "A fortune's got to be about the future."

Dismas Hardy spoke up. "It's in a fortune cookie, Abe. Therefore, by definition, it's a fortune."

"How about if there was a bug in it, would that make the bug a fortune?"

"Guys, guys." San Francisco 's medical examiner, John Strout, held up a restraining hand and adjusted his glasses. A thin and courtly Southern gentleman, Strout had crushed his own cookie into powder and was looking at the white slip in his hand. "Now this here's a fortune: 'You will be successful in your chosen field.'" He looked around the table. "I wonder what that's goin' to turn out to be."

"I thought you were already in your chosen field," Roake said.

"I did, too." Strout paused. "Shee-it. Now what?"

Everybody enjoyed a little laugh. A silence settled for a second or two, and Jackman spoke into it. "That's my question, too, John. Now what?"

He surveyed the group gathered around him. Only two of the other people at the table hadn't spoken during the fortune cookie debate: David Freeman, seventy-something, Hardy's landlord and the most well-known and flamboyant lawyer in the city; and Jeff Elliot, in his early forties and confined to a wheelchair due to MS, the writer of the "CityTalk" column for the Chronicle.

It was Freeman who spoke. "There's no question here, Clarence. You got Parnassus sending the city a bill for almost thirteen million dollars and change for services they didn't render over the last four years. They're demanding full payment, with interest, within sixty days or, so they say, they're belly up. It's nothing but extortion, plain and simple. Even if you owed them the money."

"Which is not established," Marlene Ash said.

Freeman shrugged. "Okay, even better. You charge their greedy asses with fraud and shut 'em down."

"Can't do that." Jackman was using a toothpick. "Shut 'em down, I mean. Not fast anyway, although I'm already testing the waters with some other providers. But it's not quick. Certainly not this year. And the Parnassus contract runs two more years after that."

"And whoever you're talking to isn't much better anyway, am I right?" Hardy asked.

"Define 'much.'" Jackman made a face. "Hopefully there'd be some improvements."

Treya put a hand on her boss's arm. "Why don't we let them go bankrupt? Just not pay them?"

"We're not going to pay them in any case," Marlene Ash answered. "But we can't let them go bankrupt, either. Then who takes care of everybody?"

"Who's taking care of them now?" Roake asked, and the table went silent.