Cass was judicious. ‘It could have happened. People nowadays do anything to get famous.’

Jeff was in heaven. He would take all the razzing they were going to give him. He was one of them now.

Oscar Franco rolled his bassett eyes around the room. ‘How long you guys been in the business an’ nobody even noticed the really big story today? Just me.‘

Cass looked at Blanchard. ‘That’s the longest sentence he’s ever said, isn’t it?’

‘You laugh,’ Franco said. The big story is in Department Twenty-seven on the Charles Hendrix sting. Fowler threw out the case.‘

‘Oh boy.’ Blanchard sat straight up.

‘That man is a mensch,’ Cass said.

‘What?’ Jeff Elliot didn’t like to miss a big story, no matter whose it was. ‘Judge Fowler? What did he do?’

Oscar explained it to him. Cass and Blanchard sat listening for a moment, then both of them asked him to slow up and start again while they took a few notes. Owen Nash was a good story, but this thing with Fowler might be the opening sally in a protracted war.

They were still into it when Jeff saw the cop – Glitsky, that was it – who’d been at the coroner’s the night before, going towards the elevator. He left his pizza on the small desk, grabbed his crutches and said he had to run, hoping he’d catch the guy before the elevator got to the third floor.

Glitsky wasn’t happy in the first place about having to stay around late on a Friday night booking somebody for murder, writing up a report on his conversation with her, the reasons for his arrest when there wasn’t the hint of an indictment. But more, he’d finished all that, closing in on eight o’clock, still a chance to get out and have a nice dinner with Flo, when he went to his car downstairs and found out that, new tune-up or not, it wouldn’t start.

‘Officer.’ Now there was this reporter again.

The elevators weren’t setting any land speed records and the temperature in the hallway was over eighty degrees.

Elliot came right up next to him. ‘Excuse me, Officer,’ he repeated.

Glitsky corrected him. ‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I look like I’m wearing a uniform?’

‘Sorry. Sergeant. We met last night, briefly.’ Jeff introduced himself again. ‘At the coroner’s. Owen Nash.’

‘That’s right.’

Elliot pushed on. ‘Well, we’re on the third floor. I thought you might be seeing the D.A. about that, about something breaking?’

The one elevator in service after business hours arrived with a small ding. Glitsky stepped in and Elliot stuck with him. ‘I just did an hour-and-a-halfs worth of IRs upstairs.’

‘So something’s happening?’

Jeff thought this was a pretty scary man. ‘Something’s always happening,’ he said. ‘That’s why there’s time – it keeps everything from happening at once.’

The elevator doors closed – finally. ‘As to the third floor, that’s where they give out keys to city vehicles, and my goddamn Plymouth has quit on me again, and all the other cars are out for the weekend, so I’m taking a cab home.’ Elliot didn’t know it, but Glitsky swore about as often as he laughed out loud, maybe twice a year.

‘Where do you live?’ Jeff didn’t miss a beat, and though he’d been planning on stopping back in at his office, he said, ‘I’m heading home now, I could drop you off.’

Glitsky said he lived out on Lake, and Jeff only fibbed slightly, saying it was right on his way. The sergeant thawed a little. ‘That’d be nice. Where are you parked?’

They had reached the ground floor and the door opened, hitting them with a welcome shot of cooler air. ‘First slot out the back.’

‘You’re lucky,’ Abe said.

Jeff grinned his winning grin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Handicapped.’

Except for the green gauzy glow of the fish tank, the lights were out. The bedroom window, facing east to the city’s skyline, was wide open, but no air moved. Hardy’s wife was curled against him spoon fashion, and he was inside her, holding her to him at the waist. They were both sweating, at it now a long time, Hardy wanting to prove something.

‘Diz.’

He shushed her, trying not to hear her and break his own spell. He’d started with his eyes closed, she coming to him, feeling a distance there after the quiet dinner, the brooding in the living room.

‘Diz.’

He didn’t want to hear her and buried his mouth into the back of her neck, under her hair. When he opened his eyes, he could make out the shape of her back in the dim light. Only her back. Any back. Anyone’s he wanted it to be.

But he was closing in on it now, feeling the thrust of her – wanting to help him even if she was ready to quit, reaching down for him, arching herself backward. He pulled at her waist, up against him now, feeling the air now between them, closing the distance, hard up in her wetness. Harder then, pounding, losing her as he felt himself starting, finding it again and driving in again and again and again.

It was Celine’s back. An angry Celine. And Hardy for some reason furious too, feeling her grip, the tight grip she had on him. And now he heard her, crying out, after she thought it was over, liking it rough, and the sound of her cry starting something at the base of his backbone, moving up.

He slapped her against him, as hard as he could, knowing he wasn’t hurting her, crying out himself, his hands now up against Celine’s breasts that were somehow wet, crushing them to her, crushing himself against Frannie’s back, she pumping him, the sweet agony…

Finished now, he lay on his back, breathing hard. He felt the sweat cooling, the lightest warm breeze through the window. Frannie was on her side, leaning on her elbow, all up against him. She kissed his cheek. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Sorry.’

She kissed him again. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. I liked that.’

He pulled her to him and kissed her. She put her head down against his shoulder and started breathing regularly. In one minute she was asleep. Hardy lay with his eyes open, listening to the gurgling of the fish tank for almost an hour.

He woke up refreshed, his devils exorcised by spent lust and deep sleep. In the light of day, he thought it hadn’t done him any harm to fantasize – it was natural once in a while. No need to whip himself over it.

Now he wasn’t fantasizing. Frannie was in his here and now. He was cooking breakfast – french toast and sausages – in his black cast-iron pan, the only artifact he’d taken from his time with Jane. In the decade he’d lived alone, that pan had been one of the inviolate certainties in his world. He cleaned the pan with salt and paper towels, no water, no soap. After every use, he put a drop or two of oil in it and rubbed it in. No food stuck to that pan. It was a joy.

Taking a bite of a sausage link, he turned a piece of sliced sourdough bread over in the mixture of egg, milk and cinnamon – dripping it only for a second so it wouldn’t get soggy – and forked it into the pan, where it hit with a satisfying hiss. Outside, the sun had come up hot again. Maybe they’d get an entire weekend of summer this year.

Frannie was dressed in hiking boots with white socks, khaki shorts and a Giants t-shirt, ready for the historical expedition to Martinez that she, Hardy and Moses had planned for the day. They were going to track down the elusive origin of the martini.

‘Or is it the origin of the elusive martini?’ Moses had asked. This had been last Wednesday night at Yet Wan.

‘The martini itself is not elusive,’ Hardy had replied.

‘But the ideal martini can be elusive.’ Two bartenders, Jesus, finally coming to an agreement. Frannie was smiling, remembering. She came back down the hall from the front door with the morning newspaper and laid it on the table in front of Rebecca, who was finger-painting with baby food on the tray of her high chair. Standing, opening to the front page, she grabbed a sausage and took the mug of coffee Hardy handed her,