After a minute, Hardy tapped the file. “Like here. Look at this.”

Glitsky came to stand over his shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s weak,” he said.

“ ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to…’” Hardy read. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe he had to go to the bathroom.”

“Maybe anything. Griffin calls this a suicide note?”

“He doesn’t say not.”

Hardy closed the file. “Abe, this isn’t exactly what you’d call compelling. Where’d they find it?”

“In the car.” Glitsky pointed down on the page. “See, there. In the car.”

“Not on his person even? He might’ve written this a year ago.”

“I know.” Glitsky crossed to the window, leaned out over to see the street down below. “Maybe something else is going on.”

“Yeah, and maybe that something is screwing Frannie out of her insurance.”

Glitsky, without turning around, nodded. “Maybe.”

Hardy went back to reading, tipping the beer back. “And this? Griffin couldn’t tell me this?”

“What?”

“The gun was fired twice. What? Ed wanted to take a few rounds of target practice so he’d be sure he didn’t miss?”

Glitsky said nothing. Hardy turned more pages, paused at the photographs, closed the file and drank more beer. “Sucks, this really sucks.”

Glitsky went back to the file drawer and leaned against it. “I tell you what, Diz. You find me some evidence for feeling like that.”

Hardy nodded. This was a first-time, maybe one-time offer. A good sign. It undoubtedly nagged at Glitsky too. Hardy forced himself to look back at the pictures of Ed, the gun maybe a foot from his right hand. Under his head, a large pool had formed, looking black under the camera’s lights. He stared at the picture a long time, the body lifeless, lying on its side, perhaps two feet from the building.

“You also wonder, if he killed himself, that he wasn’t sitting back against the building when he pulled the trigger,” Hardy said.

Glitsky finished his coffee and dropped the Styrofoam cup into the wastebasket. “Yeah, you do,” he said. “It’s a marvel how much there is to wonder about.”

ARTURO CRUZ had the top down on his Jaguar XK-E, enjoying the rare warm evening as he drove up out of China Basin on his way home.

Last night, he’d been furious with Jeffrey. For one of the first times since they’d been together, they hadn’t made love. Jeffrey had gotten huffy and stormed out before dinner and hadn’t come back until this morning.

So when he walked into the office, all Cruz could think of was his relief that he was back, and he hugged him, his anger forgotten, the reason for the fight, everything. If he was back, then everything was okay.

And everything had been all right again. A good day, a good issue on the streets, another good one put to bed. The May figures of La Hora had come in and ad linage was up six percent over last May. Revenues up over fourteen percent!

And the revenue increase was all because of their circulation, on which they based their ad rates. And now, with distribution going in-house, the bottom-line figure would skyrocket next year. If they could keep El Dia away from their market share. But they would do that. La Hora was the better paper. El Dia was still a rag, maybe five years away from quality.

Still, the threat, though distant, caused him to frown. He had to keep his eye on the ad linage. If that dipped, even a little, it might mark a trend. He’d better have some projection graphs made tomorrow.

He dictated a memo on that, then put the handheld tape recorder into its holder on the dashboard. That was enough business. And it had been a good day.

Until that fellow Hardy had come back. And thinking of that, he almost got mad again. Why had Jeffrey told Hardy he had known Ed Cochran? And how had he, Cruz, then been so stupid as to deny it? The day before, he’d told the other inspector, Giometti, that they’d been business acquaintances. Well, that’s probably what Hardy had come back for, about that inconsistency.

Cruz would just say-now that he’d examined it-that he thought Hardy had been talking about a personal relationship between him and Cochran. That would take care of it. But in any event, he had to clear up the misunderstanding with Jeffrey.

He turned his car left onto Market, lowered the visor against the setting sun. He should have taken care of it today, but with Jeffrey coming back, he’d been so happy, it had just slipped his mind. That wouldn’t do, he thought. That kind of carelessness.

He would have to watch it. And, uncomfortable though it might be, he would have to talk to Jeffrey about it again. But this time it would be when he was relaxed. And he wouldn’t be angry -he’d simply explain it all very clearly so that all the nuances would be understood. Then, if Hardy or Giometti came around again, they’d be ready for him, and the questions could stop.

That was all he wanted, really. That the questions stop.

Hardy opened the door to Schroeder’s, an old-fashioned German restaurant downtown, and was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu. It had been a favorite haunt back in his post-cop days as an assistant D.A., before the divorce with Jane.

He realized he hadn’t been in the place since that time, maybe eight years before. He wasn’t at all surprised to find it hadn’t changed a bit. What was atypical, he knew, was how he felt-he actually wouldn’t mind casually running into someone. Almost anybody. And Schroeder’s had been that kind of place back then -off-duty cops, other D.A.s, reporters, attorneys who weren’t corporate and didn’t want to be. People hanging out, mingling, schmoozing over a few beers.

Tonight, if it worked out, he might get back in touch with the city he lived in. Or not. He thought it sort of interesting that he considered it.

Afterward, he wasn’t sure about the order of the two jolts. He had just gotten his Dortmunder and was looking around, enjoying the feel of things, when his ex-wife Jane stood up not forty feet from him across the room. That was the first one. Then came the sharp first tremor of the earthquake.

Hardy stood up and made his way through tables, away from Jane, until he got to the hallway leading back to the rest rooms.

It was a good shaker, perhaps a five or six, and it continued rolling as he walked. The restaurant became quiet as everyone held their breath. The chandeliers swung heavily and several glasses fell from the back of the bar. Hardy stood, in theory secure under a beam, and waited.

The tremor stopped, and after a round of nervous laughter, the room went back to being itself. Hardy watched Jane walk directly toward him.

She looked, after eight years, impossibly the same. Now thirty-four, she could have passed for twenty-five. Her face was still as unlined, unmarked by the passage of years, as a baby’s. That made sense, Hardy thought. It’s what lack of a sense of guilt could do for you.

She was still unaware of him, and he couldn’t help taking her in. Tall, slim, radiant dark hair casting highlights even in the dim room. Looking down slightly as she walked-graceful, serene. The face again, he kept coming back to the face, with its slightly Oriental cast, though no one knew where that had come from. It was really only a heaviness in the eyelids, but with the wide cheekbones, the rosebud lips, there was a geisha air. She was elegantly dressed, as always. Gold earrings. A blouse in pink silk, pleated dark blue skirt, low heels.

Now ten feet away, she finally looked up, and there it was, that million-dollar slow smile that had completely changed his life.

She stopped, looked, let the smile build just slowly enough to work on him. And it did. He found himself smiling back.

“Small world,” he said, his first words to her since he’d left their house.