The Jaguar turned into Berry Street, and Hardy, parked opposite the Cruz building, not in its parking lot, got out of his car and started walking across the street. The Jag pulled into the empty lot, and by the time Arturo Cruz, alone, had opened the door and stepped out, Hardy was standing in front of him. “Mr. Cruz,” he said, “I’ve got a problem.”

“Mr. Cruz, I’ve got a problem.”

The questions weren’t going to go away. He knew that now.

You couldn’t build a whole fabric of lies, he thought, and have it all hang neatly together. And the weight of all of them was still affecting him and Jeffrey.

Especially after the story on Linda Polk had broken yesterday. Of course, they’d run it in La Hora. Thank God he’d been with Jeffrey the whole day Sunday, that the police had another suspect. Otherwise, Jeffrey might have thought he’d killed Linda too.

And now here was the man again. He might as well come clean right now, he thought, get it off his chest.

He couldn’t see Hardy’s face, though he had recognized him as he was driving up. He was forced, looking into the bright, low, morning sun, to squint, then try to shade his eyes. The man was a fighter plane coming out of the sun.

He turned back to the car. There, that was better. He could see fine. He reached inside for his briefcase, then straightened up. “Come inside,” he said, and started walking toward the building. Hardy fell in beside him. “I was going to call you,” he found himself saying. As he did every morning, he unlocked the huge glass double doors.

“What about?”

Cruz pushed the door and held it open. “Linda Polk was killed Sunday?”

“Right.”

“And Sam died when, yesterday? I heard about it yesterday, anyway.”

“Sunday night, we think.”

They were at the elevator, inside it. The doors closed shut quietly. The man, hands folded behind his back, didn’t say another word. Was he humming? The doors opened on the secretary’s station of the penthouse.

“Being in the news business, I tend to hear about things.”

Why wasn’t Hardy saying anything? Well, try again, at least now in his office, on his own turf. He sat behind his desk. “So what’s your problem? You said you had a problem,” Cruz said.

“Why were you going to call about Sam and Linda?”

“That’s your problem?”

Hardy shook his head patiently. He was sitting, very relaxed, in one of the deep white leather half-banquettes in front of his desk. “No,” he said, “you brought that up. I thought I’d pursue it a little.”

“Well, I mean, since Linda and Sam and, uh, that other fellow, the one who died here…”

“Cochran. Ed Cochran.”

“Yeah, since they all worked for the same company. That’s a pretty large coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, I mean…” What did he mean? He hadn’t been planning to call Hardy. He didn’t know why he’d said that-nerves, maybe. But Hardy-he could tell-wasn’t going to let it go.

“What do you mean?” The persistent bastard.

“I mean there must be some connection, wouldn’t you think? Between them.”

I ought to shut up right now, he thought. Say good-bye to him and call my lawyer.

“It’s funny you should mention that,” Hardy said. “It kind of brings it back to my problem. See”-he crossed his legs elaborately, ankle on knee-“the only thing I can see that ties them all together is the Cruz Publishing Company, La Hora, you. And the other thing is, what brought me here in the first place after I thought about it enough, is you lied to me at least twice when we had our first interview.” He paused, letting it sink in. “At least twice.”

Cruz started to turn on The Glare, the one that worked with his employees, even sometimes with Jeffrey, but Hardy held up a hand, said, “No,” meaning, that isn’t going to work, and then folded up the hand, leaving one finger out. “One, you said you didn’t know Ed. His wife says he saw you the week before he died, and had another appointment scheduled right around that night. Maybe exactly that night. The one he died, I mean.”

Cruz was glad he was sitting down. He could feel a sponginess in his legs and knew they wouldn’t have held him if he was standing. He would have had to slump against something.

“And two,” Hardy continued, sticking up a second finger, “you described to me how bad it all looked, with the blood and all. Now my question, my problem” (the bastard was really enjoying himself) “is how you could know what it looked like if you went home at eight-thirty or nine when the lot was empty?”

He tried to swallow, then cleared his throat. No good. Wheeling around in his chair, moving slowly, carefully, he took one of the cut-crystal wineglasses from its tray on the bookshelf behind his desk and pushed the water button on his small refrigerator. God, the water was delicious. He spun back around. “I didn’t kill him.”

“There, now, that’s direct.”

Hardy stood up. Cruz didn’t like looking up at him-it threw off any sense of balance between them-but he still felt too weak in the legs to risk rising himself. “You mind if I get a glass?”

Then Hardy had the water and was sitting back down on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees, holding the glass in both of his hands in front of him.

“What about the black guy, the suspect? We ran his picture in La Hora.”

Hardy nodded. “He’s a suspect.”

“And so am I?”

“Let’s just say my curiosity gets aroused when I get lied to.” Eye to eye. In no hurry whatsoever. “Pretty natural reaction, don’t you think?”

Cruz gulped down the last of his water. “Maybe I should call my lawyer.”

Hardy sat back in the chair. “You’re certainly welcome to. But I’m not here with a warrant. I came to talk.”

“I really didn’t kill him.”

“But you saw him?”

He closed his eyelids, and the sight flashed up behind them again-turning into the dark lot, headlights finding the body. Keeping the beam on it as he drove up, he’d gotten out of the car and stood staring for who knew how long, not recognizing Ed Cochran-there wasn’t much to recognize-but knowing who it had been in any case. “I should’ve called.” He went to drink more water, raising the glass to his lips, but it was empty.

“When was that?”

“When I saw him.”

“That night?”

He found himself sighing, feeling the release, wanting to keep talking now that it had started, with nothing to hide. “I had an appointment with him at nine-thirty. I stayed working until maybe eight, eight-thirty, got hungry and went out to dinner.”

“Where?” Hardy asked.

He didn’t have to think about it. Every minute of that night had been looping in his mind for over a week. “Place called The Rose up on Fourth.”

Hardy nodded. “I know it. Anybody see you there? Could swear to it?”

Of course. Wendell could swear to it. They had flirted a little, discreetly. “I think the waiter I had might remember.”

“What’d you have to eat?”

Again, no need to think. “Calves liver, pasta, some blush Zinfandel.”

“Then what?”

“Then I came back here. There was a car-I assumed it was Ed’s-in the middle of the lot.”

“But you didn’t have your meeting?”

“He was already dead.”

“Just like the police found him?”

“Yes, I assume so.”

Now that he’d said it, he started shaking again. He didn’t trust his hands to reach for his water glass to refill it. He put them on his lap, out of sight under the desk. Hardy leaned back in his chair now, frowning.

“What was the meeting supposed to have been about?”

Did he really want to hear about it? All of it? Cruz realized it might not seem, on the surface, to have made a lot of sense, but if he could just make Hardy understand the issue with Jeffrey- how Jeffrey had started to take Ed’s side-then it would be all right. Anything was better than trying to keep all those lies in his mind.