He opened a can of hash and spooned it into a heavy cast-iron skillet. When it had stuck well to the bottom of the pan, he pried under it and turned it nearly whole. Poking three holes into the mass, he dropped an egg in each, covered it, and went to the tank in his bedroom to feed the tropical fish.

He went back to the kitchen and opened a newspaper to the sports section. The Giants were at home. That ought to keep the ghosts at bay.

He ate the hash and eggs out of the skillet slowly, thinking. When the skillet was empty, he placed it back on the stove, covering the bottom with salt. He turned the gas under it up high. When the pan was smoking, he took the wire brush that hung from the back of the stove and ran it around under the salt, dumping what he’d worked loose into the garbage. In twenty seconds, the pan was spotless. He ran a paper towel over it, then left it on the stove.

He’d had that pan longer than almost anything else he owned. It was the only household article he’d taken when his marriage to Jane had ended. If he treated it right-no water, no soap-it would last a lifetime. It was one of the few things he was absolutely sure of, and he didn’t mess with it.

In his bedroom, he put on a three-quarter-length green pea coat, boots, and a misshapen blue Greek sailor’s cap. Grabbing a pipe from the rack on his desk, he risked a glance outside, but someone might just as well have erected a slate wall there.

With the pipe clamped between his teeth, he walked through the echoing house as though fighting a gale. As he flicked the light switch in the hallway, there was a pop and a flash, then a reversion to darkness.

While he’d been in Cabo the wood in the front door had swollen. Normally, Hardy took care of carpentry that needed to be done, but he hadn’t gotten around to replaning the door.

He had to yank on it twice to get it open. Standing for a moment in the hallway, contemplating nature’s perversity, he drew on the cold pipe. Then he stepped into the swirling mist.

On the way to Candlestick Park he considered stopping by the Steinhart Aquarium to see if Pico would like to accompany him. But he decided against it. Pico would talk about his great passion -getting a live great white shark into the aquarium. Long ago, Hardy had helped “walk” the traumatized sharks that fishing boats brought in, hoping to coax them into swimming on their own. None of them had ever made it, and Hardy didn’t do it anymore.

He didn’t do anything like that anymore. You could put your hope in anything you wanted, he figured, but to put it in hope itself was just pure foolishness.

And as Hardy often said, “I might be dumb, but I’m no fool.”

THE MEXICAN guy in the upper-deck front row two sections from where Hardy sat was trouble. He probably weighed two hundred fifty pounds. Sitting with his shirt off, a red bandanna around his head, and a big meaty arm around a stout Latino woman, he was intimidation incarnate.

By Hardy’s best count, since the vendor had stopped coming around in the bottom of the fourth inning, the guy had put away a dozen large beers. He brandished a near-empty pint brandy bottle in his free hand. The entire upper deck smelled like marijuana.

Hardy had gotten his ticket from Jimmy Deecks, a cop who was working the second deck casual, moonlighting. Mostly it was an easy gig, consisting of exchanging tickets with the scalpers- you took their game tickets and gave them citations. Once in a while you’d take a drunk to the holding tank. Occasionally, like tonight with Hardy showing up, you’d give an old buddy one of the scalped tickets. You’d see a lot of good baseball.

But sometimes, Hardy knew, you had to work. A guy would try to prove he was the world’s greatest asshole; Hardy had a feeling about tonight and this guy. Jimmy was going to earn his bread.

Although the sun was barely down and the sky was still blue, the lights were on. The asshole was standing up, waving his arms, trying to get the attention of a beer vendor, screaming “Cerveza” as though someone were torturing him by putting him through beer withdrawal cold turkey. Like a foghorn. Players on the field looked up to see who was making the racket.

Hardy looked around, wondering when Deecks and his partner were going to come bust the guy. Suddenly the asshole took a swing at the fan sitting behind him. The fan swung back, missed, and took one aside the head that sent him sprawling. That got some other guys up. A couple of women screamed.

The crowd up there roared, of course. What a good time! A bonus during the ballgame! Hardy left his seat. Jimmy Deecks or not, this bullshit had to stop.

But then he saw Jimmy running down the steps loosening his nightstick, no partner in sight.

The Mexican woman was pulling at her man’s arm, trying to get him to stop, but three or four other guys were joining in now, with the asshole just screaming and swinging at random. Jimmy blew on his whistle to no effect. Hardy tried to keep moving through the seats, but more and more people were closing in to see the fun.

“All right, enough, hold it, break it up.” He heard Jimmy’s words, the same ones always used, the ones that never worked. Things started to quiet when Jimmy laid a couple of taps on shoulders with the nightstick.

Hardy, trying now to step over some seats, saw that only the asshole was still standing. His woman was pulling on his arm, glaring at Jimmy Deecks.

“Come on, now. Let’s go downstairs.”

The sweet voice of reason. Hardy loved it. He caught Jimmy’s eye briefly, then saw him fix on the woman, seeking an ally. “Get him downstairs and take him home, huh? How ’bout that?”

The asshole just kept glaring. The woman pulled at his arm again and he looked down, as though just being reminded she was there, and casually cuffed her face, backhand.

“Shut up!” Then something else in Spanish.

Hardy couldn’t get through the crowd that had formed. Jimmy rolled his eyes toward him, as if for support, then unsnapped his holster. Though drawing down on fans wasn’t a recommended procedure at the ballpark, it seemed to work for an instant; the asshole appeared to forget what was going on. He looked up behind Jimmy Deecks and started yelling for beer again.

It was all the distraction Jimmy needed. He stepped toward the guy and slapped him hard alongside the head just over the ear, and the guy went down sideways right now.

There was a hearty round of applause from the stands. The woman, her own nose bleeding, leaned over the asshole, seeing if he was all right.

Jimmy turned again to Hardy, a plea for help in his eyes.

Somebody yelled a warning and he turned as the asshole was about to slam into him. Drunk, stoned, and probably half concussed, the guy was formidable. Jimmy sidestepped the main force of the tackle but still fell backward across some seats. The asshole was up again, as fast as he was, and he charged back down the steps.

Hardy saw Jimmy duck away and swing hard with his nightstick as the guy passed, hitting him high on the back of his neck, probably aiming for and certainly hitting the lower edge of the bandanna. The guy’s momentum carried him down to the railing, which he slammed into, leaned over, weaving, went over some more, and finally, almost in slow motion, disappeared off the second deck.

Abe Glitsky was figuring out his chances.

He was one of 1,780 policemen in San Francisco. The voters in their wisdom had just rejected a mayor’s referendum calling for a city/county-wide increase of two hundred cops. The rejection, completely unexpected though maybe it shouldn’t have been in the City That Once Knew How, had come after the department had already hired many of the new officers, which meant they would now be laid off.