After that hang-up, Hunt’s mouth twitched. “Well, Mick, that’s at least one for you.”

The penultimate message was from a real client, another of Roake’s junior associates calling about scheduling a deposition for the first two days of the following week, and would Wyatt call to verify his availability.

Finally, the tentative woman again, maddeningly repeating her first message almost verbatim-she’d call back later, when they were there.

“Leave a message!” Mickey actually yelled at the telephone. “Leave a goddamn message. What’s the matter with you?” He looked at his sister. “What’s the matter with her? She afraid somebody’s going to jump through the phone and bite her?”

But Tamara could only shrug and turn to her boss. “How do you want to divide these up?” she asked.

Hunt decided that calls number one and three-Nancy Neshek and Cecil Rand-were worth his time and energy, and that Mickey would take the other ones, leaving Eric Canard to Mickey’s own judgment as an obvious flake and publicity hound, but one who in fact had probably spent a significant amount of time in and around the lagoon and might have seen something, and who would never, ever, under any circumstances, talk to the police.

For his own part, Hunt first called Nancy Neshek’s home number and left a message. Then, still before nine A.M., he called Sanctuary House, which had apparently not yet opened its main office for the day. Leaving another message there, he next called Cecil Rand, who picked up on the first ring and told Hunt he’d meet him at Johnny Rockets Diner on Chestnut Street in the Marina District. Rand told Hunt he was old and black and run-down-looking; “you’ll think I’m a bum, but I’m not.” And he would be wearing an almost-new Raiders jacket. Hunt said he’d be in his Cooper if Rand was outside waiting.

Hunt made it down there in about fifteen minutes and saw a man fitting that description standing in the doorway to Johnny Rockets. He was rolling down his window to say hello and ask if he was Cecil Rand when the man pointed at him, said, “Hunt?” and got a nod in return. He jaywalked, stopping the traffic, through the opposite lane, passed in front of the car, over to the passenger door, and got in.

“Cool car,” he said, fastening his seat belt. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these. Bigger than it looks, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I love it,” Hunt said. “Plus, you wouldn’t know to look at it, but it’s a rocket ship. The thing hauls.” He looked across at his passenger, who came exactly as advertised. “So where we going?”

“Hang a right. The lagoon.”

Hunt gave him another quick glance. His clothes were worn but clean, and he exuded a kind of raw confidence that made Hunt glad he’d included Cecil as among the legitimate tipsters. And his saying that they ought to go to the lagoon was promising. It was, after all, if not the scene of the crime itself, then, nevertheless, a venue of significant interest.

They’d just turned off Chestnut when Rand volunteered that he almost hadn’t called, probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been about Dominic. “Although if it turns out I get some of the reward, you know, that wouldn’t hurt none either. But even then, if it wasn’t Dominic, I don’t know if I’d have bothered. But whoever killed him, they got to get caught.”

“You knew Mr. Como?”

“Yeah. The guy saved my life.”

The phrase struck Hunt, since he’d heard so many other people use it in recent days. “How’s that?” he asked.

“I did some time growing up. Down at Corcoran. You know that’s a prison.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Lot of folks haven’t, you’d be surprised. Well, you get out of prison, it’s hard to find work, maybe you’ve heard that too.” His unshaven face wrinkled. He obviously thought he’d uttered some kind of witticism.

“So I got nowhere to go when I get here, back to the city I mean, and I’m in town maybe two weeks, standing in line outside the Divisadero kitchen, the money they give me out of the joint just about all gone, and I’m thinking, ‘Shit, what now?’ And suddenly up comes this limo and pulls in and this guy-it turns out it’s Dominic but I don’t know it then-he’s dressed up like a banker, better’n a banker, he gets out and he’s smiling, talking to people, right at home with brothers, all like that.

“So by the time I’m inside, he’s there, too, his jacket’s off, and he’s actually serving up food on my tray and I’m thinking this is some strange dude, and I don’t know why but I stop there in front of him and the Lord speaks to me and tells me to ask him if he knows where an ex-con like me can get myself a job. And he just stands there lookin’ at me a minute and then says don’t let him leave without snagging him again.

“So I don’t take my eyes off him, and then he’s putting on his jacket and I get up and he actually comes over to me and asks me what I want to do and when can I start. And I tell him anything and right now. And I can see he likes that ’cause he says come on out with him and he drives me in his limo out to this house they’re rebuilding over on Fell and next thing I know I’m carrying drywall and learning how to put it up. Got pretty good at it too.”

“I bet you did.”

Rand nodded, satisfied. “So there it was. Steady work with his rehab people until I learned what I was doing and then Dominic caught me onto a regular crew, I mean real construction work. Saved my life. Here, pull over here.”

They’d come all the way up to the north end of the lagoon, near where Mickey had found Como’s body. By now, the only water left was visible as little more than a sinuous puddle that ran down the middle of the mud slick that used to be the bottom of the pond.

“Now, before we get to it, maybe I should have said this first.” Rand put a quick hand on Hunt’s arm, stopping him from getting out. “I want to keep it that my name don’t get out in front of the police on this thing. If it turns out it’s somethin’, then it’s what it is, is all. But I don’t want anybody telling the police who got you here and how’d I see it when nobody else did. Good?”

Hunt didn’t like to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep, but he didn’t want to shut Rand down either. So he nodded ambiguously and let him continue.

“’Cause you know,” Rand went on, “they get somebody like me done time, next thing it’s how’d he know where to look? He must have been part of it. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

“I do.”

A brusque nod. “Least not till they doin’ the reward, when it’s over.”

“I hear you.”

“Okay, then.” And they both reached for the door openers.

As soon as they got out of the car, Hunt could smell rotting vegetation and gas. And he noticed that all along the opposite shore, the degraded shoreline had been fenced off, no doubt in preparation for the improvements, the new rock-and-concrete wall.

Cecil Rand came around and led him across the street, then down across the grassy lawn to the old retaining wall. They were still quite a ways from the water-hugging trees that marked the exact site where Como had been found, but Rand didn’t seem to know or care about that, and stopped perhaps fifty yards short of it, and on the street side.

“Okay, now,” Rand said as they stood looking out over the mud. The sky today was heavily overcast and the gray morning light flat and without glare. “Now, I ain’t saying this is absolutely somethin’, it’s just what it is.”

“All right,” Hunt said. “What are we looking at?”

Rand moved in closer next to Hunt and pointed slightly off to his right. “I was walking by here last night before dark and stopped right here. Seen it and started thinkin’ on the reward. Put my stogie out here to mark the spot, so I’d get it right.”

Hunt looked down and saw the carbon X on the low wall. Then his eyes came up, following where Rand was pointing.

“Just this side of the last of the water,” Rand said. “It’s still there.”