Out on the ocean a couple of tugs were pulling a ship toward the Golden Gate. Hardy watched it for a while, then looked beyond it, up the Marin coast, seemingly all the way to Oregon. It was still a postcard day-a cloudless sky, the blue-green benign sea.

All right, so it seemed he’d finished the case, at least as far as he was concerned. He was spending all this time wondering why he wasn’t happy, when really, why should he be happy? It wasn’t like it had been a laugh riot. Maybe there would be some small sense of accomplishment down the line about the money he’d helped Frannie get or something like that, but he couldn’t escape the basic ugliness he’d been mucking around in.

But it wasn’t just that. Talking to Steven, trying to get it all straight for the boy, it had gone a little crooked on him. Almost every move he’d made had followed from a basic set of assumptions he had developed in the first day or two of looking at it. What if all those assumptions, or even one of them, had been wrong?

He shook his head. It was a police matter now. The proof would come out-possibly was coming out right now downtown -and then it would be over. It wasn’t his problem anymore.

So what that someone had called in about the body from a phone booth three miles away from the Cruz lot? What did it matter if Alphonse killed Linda with a knife and Eddie was shot? And couldn’t Cruz really have lied out of pure fear, not necessarily to cover up a murder?

Sure. Sure, and sure.

But there was one other thing. It had occurred to him-like a remembered taste-while he was talking to Steven, some vague feeling that he had said something that he had overlooked before about Eddie’s murder, and didn’t have shit-all to do with either Arturo Cruz or Alphonse Page.

He stared at the ship as it continued its slow progress toward the Bridge, sipping Anchor Steam, damned if he could put his finger on what the hell it was.

DICK WILLIS of the Drug Enforcement Agency was sure it was one of those situations where the guy’s name had absolutely determined what he was going to be in life. Bargen had probably been called Plea since the first grade.

Willis, sitting across from him in his cubicle in the D.A.’s office, looked at the nameplate on his cluttered desk, the one that said “P. Bargen,” and wondered if in fact that might be his real name. He didn’t know him as anything else.

Plea leaned back, balancing his wooden chair on its hind legs. His feet were on the corner of his desk, crossed, and he appeared to be sleeping soundly, arms crossed behind his head. His tie was undone, his few hairs uncombed. Still, he wasn’t a slob. His body was trim, his pants still had a crease in them and the shirt was ironed. He was paying attention.

They were listening to Abe Glitsky talk. Willis didn’t intend to stay long. It was the end of the day, and he’d dropped by mostly as a courtesy. At the most, what they were talking about here with the Alphonse deal was about a hundred thousand dollars, and asking him, a major-league drug buster, to put out much effort on that kind of money was like asking a homicide cop to work a weekend to get a purse snatcher.

But he knew Abe and he knew Plea. They’d both delivered in the past, and they might stumble on something if they muddled around in it long enough, see if they could pull together anything that might lead to a bigger score. After all, small amounts of drugs tended to come from bigger shipments, and maybe they could work backward.

But Abe was talking all kinds of nonsense that Willis couldn’t connect to a goddamn thing, and finally he had to hold up his hand and interrupt. “Maybe I came in the middle here, but aren’t we talking about this Polk thing? Alphonse Page? We got a confession, right?”

Plea opened his eyes and came forward in one motion, very smooth. “That’s covered, yeah,” he said.

“So what’s all this parking-lot bullshit?”

“Well, there was a guy killed there a week ago,” Plea said, then added, with a look at Glitsky, “or killed himself.”

“Uh-uh,” Abe said, “nope.”

Willis held up his hand again. “Guys, guys. We go back a ways, right? Right. So look, we’re talking drugs or not? What’s the connection here?”

“The connection is maybe the drop was going to be there.”

Willis stared at Glitsky, wondering if he’d heard right. This was a veteran? He sucked at his front teeth. “Drop? Drop? Did you say drop?” He frowned at Plea. “He said drop, didn’t he?”

Plea concurred.

Willis went back to Abe. “Abe, my man, there ain’t no drop. This isn’t like a shipment of brown coming in stuffed in Aztec jewelry. We’re talking maybe a couple of bags, some condoms full. You forgetting what coke looks like, I got about fifteen tons down in evidence. For that, you need a drop. For this, you meet some guy on a streetcorner and if you’re casing it and you blink, you miss it, it’s over so fast.”

Willis scratched his head, sucking at his teeth again. These guys were in the business, even. It killed him. “Drop. Jesus.”

Plea rolled his eyes, tried to sound patient. “Dick, you dick…” Willis hated when he said that. “The dissertation was nice, but this guy Polk, it was his first buy. Maybe he was being careful, maybe he was nervous, you know.”

Glitsky put in his two cents. “Alphonse said there was gonna be a drop. That’s the word he used.”

“Alphonse is never, ever gonna win the Nobel Prize. In anything.”

“But he says Polk told him the stuff was out in the Bay. They were delivering it by boat. Polk never told Alphonse where, though now he figures they were coming up the canal and dropping it in Cruz’s lot.”

“What a wizard.” This wasn’t going anywhere, so Willis cooled himself down. “Look, spare me the lot noise. Do you guys want to plead down if he’ll talk about his buyer? That’s the extent of my interest.”

The city employees had some other agenda going, but Willis wasn’t going to get bogged down in it. “Unless you got something on Polk himself?”

Glitsky stood up, walked over to the doorsill and leaned against it looking out. Plea sighed. “Polk is a wash. Best we can tell, Polk died by accident in his hot tub.” When Willis made a face, Plea shrugged. “M.E. down the Peninsula confirms it. So there you go. Anyway, nobody knew anything about his source. His wife-we saw her today-killer, by the way…” He stopped. “I mean it, Dick. Be worth your while to interview her.”

Abe turned around, scowling. “Bargen,” he said.

“Yeah, all right. Anyway, completely oblivious. Can’t believe her husband had anything to do with drugs. He was a businessman, that’s all. Straight as they come. Never did drugs himself.”

“How old is she?” Willis asked.

“Christ!” Glitsky said. He walked a few steps out into the corridor. Plea again rolled his eyes, held his hands inverted out over his chest and blew out soundlessly. “Lungs to here, a face to die for.” He raised his voice. “She wasn’t what I call distraught, except maybe over the thought that she wouldn’t get the money Alphonse stole.”

“She won’t if it’s drug money.”

“She will if it’s stolen in this jurisdiction. It was Polk’s, and Alphonse admitted taking it from the safe.” Abe came back to the door, leaning against it. “She knew from nothing,” he said.

“And Alphonse didn’t know? About Polk’s source, I mean?”

Plea and Abe looked at one another. “No chance.”

Willis rubbed his palms against his pants and stood up. “So it’s his buy or nothing?”

“Looks like,” Plea said. “Maybe three, four hundred grand.”

These guys couldn’t see it. “Peanuts,” Willis said, but added quickly, upbeat, “but it might lead someplace.” No sense pissing them off. “Can I talk to him?”

“Sure.”

“Well, set it up for tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can do.” Willis shook hands with both of them. “Thanks for the tip, guys. You never know.” He was out the door about ten seconds when he poked his head back in. “The Polk woman? What was her first name?”