"Enemies."

"And his state of mind, his clarity."

"Sharpen your little pencil, McMike. Come on down to the galley and we'll get some coffee."

The pot was already made. Patricia poured two mugs black and sat across from him in one of the booths. McMichael looked out the porthole to the south. He could see the navy shipyards and the Coronado Bridge and the cold blue sky. He tapped his pen against his notebook.

"First of all," she said, "Grandpa's state of mind was pretty good. He wasn't particularly forgetful or paranoid or having visions. He was a tough old man. He couldn't see all that well, and he kept driving- like I told you. I think he was a menace to society behind the wheel of a car. But this is the deal, Tom- my grandfather had enemies. He had business enemies, political enemies, personal enemies. You made a crack about dividing his estate by five. Well I don't know if Hank Grothke told you, but Grandpa has three living children and six living grandchildren. He disinherited four out of nine- that's pushing fifty percent."

"Tell me about the disinherited son."

"Carl is gay and Pete disowned him the second he came out of the closet. Carl had just graduated from high school. He's up in San Francisco now. I'll invite him to the funeral but he won't come. He also wouldn't sneak in and kill him. He's a decent and gentle man. One suspect down."

McMichael wrote and considered. "And his daughter?"

"That's my aunt, Liz DeCerra. She's sixty-one now, I think. Lives in Colorado. She's in the will. There, two suspects down."

"What about the grandchildren?"

"There are Cassie, Quentin and Max DeCerra. Pete wrote out Cassie because she ran off with a drug dealer, Quentin because Quentin punched him in the face, and Max because he broke into Pete's place and stole a bunch of cash and Anna's Lady Rolex."

"They sound like nice kids."

"Whatever, Tom. They were his grandchildren. Grandchildren have problems like anybody else."

McMichael wrote. "That leaves you and your brother and sister. Your side of the family stayed in favor."

"We lacked the physical courage of the DeCerras, that's for sure."

McMichael wasn't so sure. Things were about as physical as they could get, back when they were eighteen and seeing each other in secret, and Patricia had always gone straight for the forbidden settings: her parents' shower, her big sister's bed, her grandfather's deck, the living room, the patio chaise longue, the car. There was ample opportunity with her father at sea on one of Pete's boats and her mother a bookkeeper at the cannery. Then there was the beach at night, a picnic bench up on Palomar Mountain, the Regency Hotel by the hour, the sand dunes out toward Yuma, even a sweltering gas station bathroom on the way home.

He smiled and Patricia smiled, too, then she set her sunglasses on the table. Her eyes were dark and clear and McMichael instantly located the golden fleck in her right iris that he'd spotted for the first time when he was ten. And actually written a poem about when he was thirteen, with a rhythm and rhyme pattern based on Joyce Kilmer's "Trees." She'd given a photocopy of it back to him, covered with red lipstick prints and drenched in her perfume, but kept the original.

"What about Quentin or Max?" McMichael asked. "Do you think either of them might club the old man just for spite?"

"No. Those DeCerras are all hot-tempered, but they cool off fast."

McMichael looked up from his notepad. "Victor gets a nice piece of the estate."

She looked at him and shook her head. "And he's nothing but a ten-year-old in a sixty-three-year-old's body. Thanks to Gabe."

"That was never proven."

"He bragged about doing it. We Portuguese aren't exactly deaf, McMichael. And you Irish aren't exactly quiet."

"Is he ever violent?"

"Well, no. But he's a little short on self-control sometimes."

"Did he and Pete get along?"

She stared out the porthole. When she looked back at him he saw the moisture in her near-black eyes. "They loved each other. A man and his firstborn son. And with Victor the way he is, it was like Grandpa had a ten-year-old boy forever. Saddest goddamned thing I ever saw- two old men sitting in the Waterfront bar drinking port, one of them talking about fleet rates or whatever and the other showing him his new baseball cards or this new Game Boy gadget or a rock he found. Broke my hard little heart. Victor can blow up in about half a second, but never at Pete. Never. He's Pete's boy all the way, no matter how old he is. Forty, fifty, sixty- always the same."

McMichael had an image of Gabe and Tim Keller shuffling drunk along Kettner while Victor happily jaywalked or checked the newspaper racks for quarters. Living history. Past as present. Learn from or repeat.

"Pat, are you surprised that Pete left so much to the church and foundation? At the expense of his heirs?"

She shrugged and gazed out a porthole. "I wouldn't leave the Catholics three and a half million bucks. But I'm not complaining about my million plus, either. I'd give it up in a heartbeat to have Grandpa alive and complaining and annoying everyone again."

McMichael studied her profile, the elegant lines of neck and jaw framed in the fur of the anorak. Age had made her more beautiful. She turned her dark brown eyes on him.

"How old is your boy now, Tom?"

"Seven."

"Good kid?"

"He's a really good kid. Doesn't understand why Mom and Dad still love each other but don't live together anymore."

"Her decision?"

"Basically."

"But you go with the we love each other but decided it was best to be apart story? For his sake?"

McMichael nodded.

"No wonder he doesn't understand. Half of the explanation always sounds like a lie. How's the new hubby, the dentist?"

"Oral surgeon. Tassled loafers, a Testarosa."

"Revolting," she said.

"Yeah, well, she seems happy. Lost thirty pounds, got her face Botoxed and her chest hiked up."

"And you're what, paired up with some young cadet or playing the field?"

McMichael smiled and sat back. "Just working my ass off."

"No sand dunes?"

"Not right now." But damned if he didn't picture Sally Rainwater leaving foot pocks in white sand, looking back at him, a blanket over one shoulder and sandals in her hand.

"You could take the nurse out," said Patricia, somehow reading his mind. "She's pretty enough, but watch for bullet holes."

He cut her with a look but she just smiled.

"Victor still hang at the Waterfront?" asked McMichael.

"His home away from home."

"What about the dealership- was Pete's business going okay?"

"He was grossing a million a year income off of it."

"Arguments with his employees?"

"Every waking second, but nothing serious. They're all making a buck."

"Was Pete a gambler, sports or the tables or the horses?"

"He'd hit Del Mar in the season, drop a few thousand. He was always too tight with a dollar to gamble much."

Tight with a dollar, thought McMichael. He imagined Grandfather Franklin back in the summer of '52- a jovial, failed publican thirty-three years old with a rowdy son, a tubercular daughter, a pregnant wife and very little money. After his first tuna hunt and three bad-luck months aboard the Cabrillo Star, he was trying to get his pay out of Pete. His hat in his hand, Tommy. Your grandfather always so jolly and gentle, even with so much riding on his shoulders. And Pete tells him his quarter share on a bum trip like this one just covers Dad's room and board and fuel for the ship so he doesn't owe Franklin even a dollar. And Dad tells Pete he worked as hard as the others but Pete says that's the way it is with all first-timers on a bum trip, you only get the real money when you're making a half share on a good trip where you find the fish quick and don't burn up time and fuel looking for them.