"Yeah, I know that fits your father's version of history," said Patricia. "But tight and dishonest are two different things. Pete was honest. With his crews he was generous. Hell, later they bought Fords from him, so they couldn't have hated him."

McMichael said nothing for a long moment, thinking instead about the way the past forms the present, and how impossibly hard it was to change things once they were set in motion. Fifty years of hatred and vengeance born from a bad fishing trip and- most likely- two stubborn and hungry men who wouldn't back down until one of them was dead. And their children damaged in different ways, and their children still bickering over what had happened and why and who was to blame.

"I'm hearing talk about the old airport and the new Airport Authority, and Pete maybe switching sides," he said. "I heard Pete wouldn't let the Tunaboat Foundation sell some of its holdings because he thought the price would go higher. Sounded like he was getting the other port commissioners and foundation guys against him."

"That's all in the papers, McMike. If you want to know who was on Pete's side and who wasn't, you've got to talk to the Tuna Foundation and the Port Commission."

"Give me names. People who lined up with Pete."

"Try Malcolm Case, on the Port Commission. The Tuna Foundation, though, I don't know. But they take over the Cuba Room at Raegan's cigar place on Friday nights. Purely, I think, because it pissed Pete off to see his precious foundation doing business with a McMichael. Maybe Raegan could bug the room for you."

"Good idea."

"Nice seeing you, Tom."

McMichael stood and looked around the galley, wondered what it would have looked like filled with hungry men two months into a journey that might take them halfway around the world. Too tight for me, he thought, too cramped and noisy.

" Franklin was sitting exactly where you were," said Patricia.

"And Pete where you were."

"That's right."

"You always liked the risky places, Pat."

"I always liked what moved my blood."

McMichael guessed the distance between himself and Patricia at about a yard. With your arm out and a gun in it, you were talking maybe six inches between barrel and body. Pete would have been close enough to catch the backspray on his face.

"In my father's version of it," said McMichael, "Pete pulled the gun and Franklin grabbed him."

"In Pete's version, Franklin had a knife. That was also the cops' version- a folding knife with a five-inch blade."

"Gabe said Pete put it there after."

"Pete said it missed his throat by about half an inch. Took about thirty stitches to fix his arm. Did Gabriel say that cut was part of the setup, too?"

McMichael nodded then smiled. "Of course he did. No wonder it drove them all crazy that we were in love."

"They tried their best to split us up, Tommy."

"They couldn't do it, could they?"

"Never," she said.

"Only you could."

"Yeah. I broke your heart. And I've been apologizing ever since."

"It worked out right. I got Johnny."

"More than I could have given you."

He looked down to where Franklin would have fallen. Right at his feet, probably. Unless he reeled around fighting, like a lot of gunshot victims do. He thought about shooting someone that close up, how you really had to mean it, had to be ready for the blood and the fury. From habit he looked for bloodstains on the floor, but who knew how many times it had been sanded and refinished. He even looked at the paneling behind him for some sign of the exited bullet, but there was nothing.

"It didn't have to happen," he said.

"Most of life's that way."

She walked him abovedecks. "I remembered something that might help. About six months ago Pete told me that twenty grand was missing from his garage. He always kept a little cash out there, in cigar boxes, just-in-case money. Anyway, he said it was gone and I said, damn it, Gramps, the gardener or the nurse or the neighborhood kids or the rats probably made off with it. And he said, no, if it was the gardener he would just take it and go back to Mexico. The rats are too busy chewing into the dog food. And he says it couldn't be the nurse, because she's sweet and he's given her so many nice things, why would she make off with a little bit of cash? That's when he told me about the paintings and some stupid stuffed fish and God knows what else she's fleeced him for."

Twenty grand, thought McMichael. Lots of cash to hide in a garage.

Gifts to Rainwater, he thought. Pete addled? Pete in love?

Then, a brain thorn. But what was it? The cigar boxes? The gardener? The rats? For just a moment he let his mind wander and eddy but he couldn't come up with it. He wrote BT in his notebook and put a star beside it.

He wondered why a multimillionaire would stash twenty grand in his garage. Then he wondered why not? "What did you make of Pete's gift giving to his nurse?"

"It frosted my balls," said Patricia. "It still does. And I told him so. But it's not like I could change his mind, or fire her, or make her give the stuff back."

"Did you say anything to her?"

"I told her very calmly- calm, for me- that I thought she was a common prostitute. I threatened legal action, but we both knew Pete could do whatever he wanted. And Pete really liked her. He told me to leave her alone- he'd do what he wanted with her. That was that."

"Why didn't you tell me about the missing cash that night at Pete's?"

"I didn't connect it with a murder two hours old. And you kind of ran us out, because of Garland 's big mouth. That was an awfully bad night for me, McMike."

"Yeah, I know it was."

"Did Rainwater bother to tell you about the gifts she took?"

McMichael nodded.

"Well," said Patricia, "now that her sugar daddy's dead, she'll have to hustle along and find a new one."

"I don't think it was like that."

"What was it like?"

"I don't know yet."

"Just ask her- I'm sure she'll tell you nothing but the truth."

McMichael walked down the ramp and onto the dock. It was dark already and the waterfront lights seemed bright and cheerful now that the storm had passed. The tourists were out, bundled and strolling past the Star of India and the Berkeley and the restaurants. The brain thorn was still in there but he couldn't get a fix on it. Something Patricia had said. It hovered then vanished and then twinkled again, like a small star you only see when you look away.

He walked toward the Gaslamp Quarter and it struck him again how small and useless had been the death of Franklin McMichael, father of almost three, a lousy businessman but a willing quarter-share fisherman at the no-longer-young age of thirty-three. McMichael wondered at the commonplace desperation that had led him to the Cabrillo Star in hopes of talking Pete Braga out of a paycheck that he had coming- bum trip or not. McMichael figured- had always figured- that Pete Braga owed Franklin something for his labor and his time. It angered him that Pete had given him only a bullet, then walked. Walked, and gotten respect for killing a man. Of course it was self-defense. You cheat a man out of food for his family, get ready for self-defense. Braga was wrong. And what someone had done to his firstborn son just a year later- that was just as wrong. Maybe it was Gabriel, he thought, but maybe it wasn't. His father had sworn upon a Bible that he did not know who beat Victor senseless behind the Waterfront that night. Either way, his father had grown from a haunted boy into a ruined man. Either way, to McMichael it was all just proof of how human beings were dishonest, blind and murderous. Proof of why they needed laws. And cops. Otherwise you just got the same story over and over.