“I’m wrong again, they’ll cut my nuts off.”

Sam finished the bourbon. “Every business has its risks, Alphonse. Point is, you gotta trust me. ’Cause if I’m scamming you, you’re meat anyway. You’re the one sold me to them, remember?”

He’d been in distribution his whole life. Buy something from one source, move the merchandise, and sell it to another for profit. That was the American way.

The only hitch was, in this cocaine business, you had people who were not entirely trustworthy. That was fine, Sam knew, as far as it went. People cheated wherever they could, at solitaire even. But it would be especially stupid to forget it here.

And he had done that with Cruz-forgotten that cardinal rule. After playing straight for all those years, the bastard had just walked away from the deal. Keep Cruz in mind, Polk told himself, if ever again you’re tempted to trust somebody in business.

The arm had stopped bleeding. Alphonse had been right-it wasn’t a bad cut, maybe four inches down the front of his arm.

Since he wasn’t about to trust anybody on this deal, he thought he’d set it up smart. He still thought so. The connection had been from years before. An importer, a businessman. Never touched drugs himself. They’d talked at a party-it must have been the early seventies, when cocaine was just starting to catch on.

But at the time, Sam was doing fine with newspapers-who wouldn’t in San Francisco with the Free Press, Rolling Stone and the other hippie rags, to say nothing of the majors? He hadn’t needed to risk anything back then.

“Hey, any time. I mean it. Seed money’s always in demand,” the connection had said.

So now the newspaper business had gone belly-up, and Cruz had hung him out to dry, cut off using him for distribution, just when he couldn’t afford to go broke. Nika wasn’t the kind of woman to go betting on the come. He’d promised it up front, had delivered up to now. That was their deal. If he broke it, he wouldn’t even blame her for walking.

Who could? A woman who looked like her, who could do what she did, she could have it all, and right now. She could demand it anywhere and get it, and he knew it. More importantly, she knew it.

So he’d made the call to the old connection. One hundred twenty would bring him between three fifty and five, or, if he wanted to step on it himself and peddle the street, maybe a million or two.

No, he didn’t want that. He wanted in and out. What he wanted was to put up the money to make delivery worthwhile. Then unload the stuff. Deal with buyers and sellers individually -to groups of guys who didn’t know each other, who wouldn’t be likely to get to each other and set him up. Everybody makes a profit and everybody needs the middleman, so he’s safe.

That was the theory.

The only problem was he had to take delivery himself. He needed Alphonse for when it was time to pass the trash and deliver him his money, but he didn’t want anybody else involved with the actual delivery. For that, the canal behind Cruz’s had been ideal. He’d gone down last weekend, cut the fence, set it all up perfectly. By all rights it should have been over already.

Goddamn Cochran, he thought. God damn Ed all to hell.

“Jesus, Sammy, no robe even?”

“I don’t notice much on you. Move over.” Nika looked at her husband with approval. He didn’t have a great body, but he was hung like a peeing horse. And for an old guy, he sure wanted to use it a lot. Well, as long as he didn’t try to pull any more of that holding out her allowance he’d tried last week. Two could play the holding-out game. As she’d taught him.

She reached over and touched the cut on his arm. “What happened?”

She ran her finger along the cut.

“A lamp got broken. Linda tripped on a cord.”

“What was she doing here, anyway?” Nika asked.

Sam shrugged. “I forgot to sign some checks, that’s all. She’s gone.”

“Does it hurt?” She moved next to him, thigh to thigh. He felt a hand come to rest above his knee.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Can’t even feel it.”

HARDY HAD never heard of the town of Gonzalez. His first inclination after he got the call was to think that for some reason Cruz had wanted him out of Dodge and had asked one of his workers to call him.

But that would have made no sense coming from Cruz. After he hung up, Hardy went to his map and found the place-south of Salinas on 101. It was a real place.

On the way down, he thought he should have made some calls before getting in his car. He almost pulled over in Redwood City, but then thought it would be better not to worry anybody needlessly. What if it wasn’t what he thought it was?

Also, he was reasonably certain that someone-possibly Cavanaugh, especially after their heart-to-heart yesterday-would have tried to reach him earlier.

He hadn’t been down the Peninsula in nearly a year, and it hadn’t changed. What was left to change? The whole thing had been developed so the only possibility of something new was aface-lift on a business park, a Tastee Freeze turning into a Burger King, Astro-turfing a gas station.

Around Palo Alto, the Bay and the flats struggled for the natural look for a few miles along the freeway before widening out into Moftett Field, with its airplane hangars so big that it rained inside them, and then the other Santa Clara fun parks-the mini-golf courses, batting cages, go-kart tracks.

Hardy kept his eyes on the road. His head hurt just slightly from too much beer. Really from getting up too early, he had told himself. Really from too much beer. The old not-enough-sleep routine as the reason for his hangovers was wearing thin, even to himself.

South of San Jose the countryside began to open up, the foothills still green from the spring rains, the scrub oaks starting to bud. Man, he thought, when California doesn’t screw with itself, it is some kind of beautiful place.

He was speeding and knew it, but didn’t care. The road was all but empty, and he had always had a knack for spotting the Highway Patrol. Besides, he would say he was on a summons from Sheriff Muñoz of Gonzalez and probably get off with a warning anyway.

But for some reason-maybe the thickness in his head-he found he couldn’t concentrate for long on the reason for the trip. It made his headache worse.

Getting into Steinbeck country, he rolled down the car window to Gilroy and the smell of garlic. The sun was higher now, though there were still wisps of mist over the occasional patch of water. It was getting on toward ten o’clock.

A sign at the town limits told Hardy that Gonzalez was the home of the Tigers. “They sure kept the move from Detroit a secret,” he thought as he passed the one-story high school with its faded billboard.

His destination was a square concrete emergency clinic painted an institutional yellow, set two streets back behind what passed for downtown.

Sheriff Muñoz greeted him at the door. With a head of balding gray hair and a deep soft-spoken voice, he had all the authority of the small-town cop with, apparently, none of the arrogance. Maybe he’d been in the job a long time. His uniform was lived in, his body solid and big but with no flab. The face was square, clean-shaven and worried. “Is this your card?”

Hardy nodded.

“It’s the only thing we had tying him to anything.”

“No wallet?”

Muñoz just looked at Hardy-not glared, looked-but his eyes were saying that they’d already covered that.

“Is he still alive?”

“Physically. He hasn’t come up yet. He’ll come around. Now he’s sedated.”

There were only two rooms behind the open reception area. Steven Cochran was in the second one.

Hardy swallowed hard, remembering the vision of the brother, Eddie, less than a week ago, on a similar gurney. Jesus, they look alike, he thought. He hadn’t noticed it before-Steven had initially struck him as much thinner. He forced himself to look. Maybe because the damage appeared so similar. The right side of Steven’s face was covered with bandage, his right arm in a sling with a bandaged hand sticking out of it.