Father came forward now in his chair. “Eddie was a very smart kid. He put a few things together and came up with the idea that Polk was going to do something illegal-he didn’t know what. So he came by here and wanted my take on some options he’d worked out. But at that time he really didn’t know much, so he left pretty unresolved. Anyway, when I saw him the next time-”

“And when was that?”

Father looked out the window, trying to remember. “If I’m not mistaken, that was Sunday.”

Rose frowned, trying to remember something. Lord! It was hard always remaining a silent fly on the wall. But then she saw Father look at her and smile. She lit up with contentment. With his memory, he was undoubtedly right, and that was the end of it.

“In any event”-he turned back to the others-“he had kept on kind of pushing Alphonse to say specifically-”

“Alphonse? The employee was Alphonse…” That seemed to excite the sergeant. Rose was forgetting to dust.

“Yes, I think that was the name. Anyway, evidently Alphonse wasn’t too bright and said something about drugs.”

“Well, excuse me, Father, but it’s not clear to me where you come in.”

She knew this was a hard question for Father. She knew where he came in-for Eddie, for two dozen or more other people, really for anyone who asked. But how does he tell the sergeant without sounding like he’s bragging?

“Oh, I think Eddie just wanted someone to talk to about it.”

“About what?”

She was getting a little annoyed at the sergeant. He didn’t have to push-Father would tell him.

“What he should do, I guess.”

“This is what he was telling me,” Dismas said to his friend, “at the Shamrock.”

Father nodded sadly. “You had to know Eddie. He was”-he paused, then went on a little more quickly-“he was kind of like all of us were back in the sixties. Thought it was his business to be involved. That if he just stuck his head in and pointed in the right direction, people would see it. He would go and talk to Mr. Cruz-you know him?” Both men nodded. “And see if there might be some way to get back his business for a period of time while Army-Eddie’s company-rebuilt. Then in the meanwhile, if that happened, he thought he had a chance of talking Polk out of it”-he paused-“out of doing something wrong, something that might hurt him.”

Now Father hung his head. “So he asked me about it, and I”- his eyes turned back to the room, pained now-“I, wizard counselor that I am, said he might as well go ahead, that he didn’t have anything to lose.”

Silence. He didn’t need to add-nothing except his life.

“One more thing,” Hardy was saying as he got into his car. “Last night I remembered another thing Cruz had lied to me about.”

“Cruz? Oh yeah, Cruz.” Glitsky was late for another appointment, not at his most attentive.

“I asked him about the scene-his parking lot-what shape it had been in. He told me it was pretty bad.”

“And it wasn’t?”

“No, Abe, wrong point. How could he have seen it? His boy, secretary, whatever, told me it was cleaned up by the morning.”

Glitsky thought a moment “Maybe he saw it on the late news, ran down to check it out.”

“Who called it in?”

Abe rolled his eyes to the still-clearing sky, reached into his car and handed something over the roof to Hardy. “You coming down for the Polk interview? One-thirty?”

Hardy nodded.

“So study the report between now and then and bring it back with you.”

Hardy took the folder.

“But as you’re going through it, checking out Mr. Cruz, say two words to yourself every couple minutes, would you?”

“What’re those, Abe?”

“Alphonse Page.”

MATTHEW R. Brody, III, was the managing partner of Brody, Finkel, Wayne & Dodd. The firm had twenty-eight associates and the entire fourteenth floor of Embarcadero I.

Brody, forty-one, stood six feet four and had lately begun using Grecian Formula on his thick head of (now) black hair. He wore a charcoal pin-striped three-piece suit, the coat of which now hung on the gilt rack inside the door to his office.

His face still looked as young as he wished his hair did, with a wide but shallow forehead, a patrician nose, a strong chin. The only moderately distinctive thing about his looks, and it wasn’t much, was his upper lip, which was too long by a centimeter. He would have worn a mustache-did, in fact, while he was in school-but his wife had told him it made him look foreign, so he’d cut it.

(It was one thing to shoot hoops with blacks and have a beaner roommate, she’d told him after he’d passed the bar, when she’d decided to marry him, but another altogether to look like a successful attorney.)

Brody didn’t build the firm to its present status by taking on poorer Latino clients such as those litigating against La Hora for distribution hassles. But neither did he do it by being unfriendly or turning down clients.

In the La Hora matter, he had gone to bat for Jaime Rodriguez because he was the cousin of his college roommate Julio Suarez, who, in turn, just happened to run the most successful construction company in Alameda, which was currently developing a three-and-a-half-acre waterfront mall about two miles from the naval station. Coincidentally, Brody was handling the paper on that development.

Rodriguez had been distributing La Hora in Lafayette and part of Richmond. After meeting with Brody, he had talked all of his fellow distributors, except the main guy in San Francisco, into the co-op lawsuit.

After he’d studied the facts of the case, Brody got into it a little. It wasn’t often he ran across a real human issue. This wasn’t wills or codicils or a contract featuring an endless series of “WHEREAS” followed by a “NOW THEREFORE.”

Of course, there wasn’t much money in it, but it wasn’t strictly pro bono either. Hell, someone had to represent these folks. He felt good about it.

From his desk in his corner office he could see the clock on the Ferry Building. It was eleven-thirty. He was prepared for the meeting. He was always prepared, he knew, but when Judge Andy Fowler sent someone his way it was doubly important to have done his homework.

Donna buzzed him and told him Mr. Hardy was here. He had, of course, checked back with Andy about Hardy. Used to be the son-in-law. Brody tried to recall if he’d ever met Jane’s first husband, but that had been before he was successful enough to have joined Olympic and gotten to know the judge. Still, he was ready to recognize him if he looked at all familiar.

He didn’t. The man was a little too casually dressed for Brody’s taste. Andy had said Hardy was an attorney, and there were rules of dress within the fraternity. But then, Hardy didn’t practice law anymore, so maybe something else was going on.

He declined coffee, tea, anything, which was good. Brody had said he’d give him an hour, but hoped it wouldn’t take that long. Interesting cases were one thing, but let’s not forget time was money. Hardy did thank him immediately for his time. Maybe he was still in the club.

Brody shrugged and smiled. “When His Honor beckons… How can I help you?”

“I’d like to find out, if I may, if this man Cruz might have had a motive to murder one of Sam Polk’s employees.”

Brody sat up straight, then fished for a cigar in the humidor on the desk. He didn’t like being surprised when he ought to know what was happening. Lighting the cigar gave him a moment. He took a stab in the dark.

“Polk, the San Francisco distributor?”

“That’s him.”

Brody inhaled the cigar. He probably hadn’t heard the name in six months, but he hadn’t taken memory training for nothing.

“There’s been a murder in this case?”

Hardy shook his head. “We don’t know for sure. There’s two dead people as of now, with an angle to Polk. There may be some connection to Cruz.”