"He was drinking that night at Spellacy's."

"Me too. But here."

"Anybody else your dad was mad at?"

"Me."

"How come?"

"It really made him mad when the cars weren't clean by nine."

"Nine in the morning, before the dealership opened?"

"Uh-huh. Especially the dark ones."

McMichael saw the tremble of his chin. Victor looked at him and McMichael waited for him to cut his embarrassed glance away, but Victor stared straight back as the tears ran down his face. He thought of Johnny and how a child could cry without shame.

"Nobody's perfect, Victor."

"Usually by nine-thirty I could do it."

Distract him, McMichael thought, ask him a question like he would ask Johnny after he'd fallen and scraped a knee. "Use a pressure hose or a regular one?"

"Just a regular one," said Victor. "With a good chamois. The chamois's the secret. But they only soak up water when they're wet, not when they're dry. You'd never think of that, but they do."

McMichael sipped his liquor while Victor sighed, wiped his eyes with his fist again, then took two gulps of scotch.

A Jaguar U-turned out front and double-parked. Garland Hansen bounded out, his white hair catching the streetlights and his coattails flapping as he rounded the coupe.

He cleared a gutter puddle in one long stride and bent over the low wall, grabbing the tabletop. "You loser," he said to McMichael. "What do you think you're doing?"

"This is Victor Braga," said McMichael. "We're talking."

"Come with me, Vic."

"Okay, Gar."

"Drink up."

"I am, I am."

"A city full of shitbags and you have to hassle Victor?" Hansen asked. His thumbs were tight on the rim of the table.

The bartender was looking their way again. "We had a drink, talked Fords," said McMichael.

"Maybe the chief would like to know how you spend your time."

"Tell him Victor had scotch and I had tequila. And don't even think about trying to toss this table."

Victor drank down his scotch, burped, then stood. He was taller than McMichael had thought, thicker, too. "Can we get some ice cream, Gar?"

"We'll talk about that in the car."

"Get him some ice cream," said McMichael.

"See you, Detective," said Victor.

"Take care of yourself, Victor. When I make an arrest, you'll be the first to know."

Hansen pushed away from the table with a strenuous Nordic smile and turned back toward his car.

Back home McMichael poured another tequila and called Sally Rainwater. She was up to her shoulders in a molecular biology text but glad to hear from him. She said the peptones were interesting. McMichael, sitting in the dark and looking out a window past the swaying palm fronds, pictured Pete's painting and the director's chair and the dinette where she studied. He told her a little about Kyle Zisch and Patricia and Victor, feeling just exactly how he'd felt whenever he talked to Steffy about work- vague and controlled and editing as he went. No wonder they lose interest, he thought. Who wouldn't?

"Patricia Hansen said she wasn't happy about Pete giving you those things. Said she made some threats," he said.

"We both knew she couldn't do anything. Pete liked me and she couldn't change that. She called me some ripe names, though."

"She's got a foul mouth sometimes."

"Pete said she was a fisherman trapped in a woman's body."

"Might be some truth to that."

"And he told me about this guy she started to like back when she was twelve. A McMichael. How this guy's father had beaten up Victor, ruined him. But Patricia didn't listen, didn't care. She liked this guy. So Pete and her father stashed her on one of Pete's big tuna boats and hired a tutor and kept her out at sea- off and on- for almost a year."

McMichael smiled at the memory. And at how Patricia had returned home, bigger, more beautiful, and pointedly uninterested in him. How he'd suffered and dreamed and died a thousand heroic deaths for her. How he'd known it was wrong but loved her anyway. How Gabriel had caught him trying to call her and beat him; caught him trying to mail her a letter and beat him again. Most of all, he smiled at the memory of Patricia circling back at him a few years later, hormonally charged and wildly vindictive toward her family. He'd thought it was love.

"When you came to Pete's house that night I didn't put it together," she said. "Until later. I wondered if you were that McMichael."

"I am."

"Nothing's simple as it seems, is it? Not even a damned peptone. So, did you and Patricia get back together when she came off the boat?"

"It took a while, but yeah."

"Then what happened?"

"She dumped me."

"Because of the family feud?"

"Just because I was me."

"You don't want a fisherman in drag anyway."

"I married a woman named Stephanie and I have a son, John Gabriel. He's seven."

"Then you're a lucky man."

"He's really something."

A pause then, while McMichael wondered what Johnny would make of Sally Rainwater. It was a year since the separation, only six months since the divorce. McMichael had never tried such a thing. Maybe there was a book about how to do it.

"I know you're not a walk-in clinic," he said. "But invite me over. Right now."

"No. I'm free tomorrow night."

McMichael decided quickly between Sally Rainwater and his son.

"Can't do that," he said. "How about lunch? It would be Johnny and me."

"There's a good place down here called Mario's, right on Seacoast. Great pizza. Noon okay?"

Johnny sat sullenly until the pizza arrived. Then he ate with the manners of a pig and pushed a drink into Sally Rainwater's lap.

McMichael guided Johnny out of the booth by his ear, then to the counter to get some towels to wipe up.

"Apologize, son," he said on the way back. "You don't do that."

"Sorry," Johnny mumbled at Sally.

By then she was standing, her back to the booth, wiping herself down with a towel supplied by a busboy. The busboy now hovered nearby, uncertain how to help.

"Don't worry," she said. "Jeans won't hurt that soda."

Johnny walked past her and threw himself into the far side of the booth.

Angry, but feeling as if he'd somehow betrayed his son by his interest in this woman, McMichael got another towel from the counter girl.

When he came back Sally was still dabbing at her pants and his son was gone and the busboy was looking out the window, where McMichael saw an enormous black utility vehicle hunch into a shrieking skid and plow toward Johnny.

McMichael slammed through the door and into a white billow of tire smoke. Another scream of tires to his left and he broke through to see Johnny frozen in the far lane- arms out and eyes wide- as a pickup truck braked and tried to swerve away. The boy looked at his father questioningly. The back end of the truck came around in a cloud of smoke as McMichael hurtled in front of it, tackled Johnny and landed hard. He rolled once and came to rest on his back, clamping his son against him, looking up at a grille and a headlight.

He carried his son to the sidewalk, holding him tight. Johnny was crying now and McMichael felt the tears and the ferocious strength of Johnny's skinny little seven-year-old arms around his neck.

"Are you okay, Johnny? Are you okay?"

Then the pickup driver: You all right? Should I call nine-one-one? I never saw him! Didn't see him 'til he jumped out!

"Don't put me down, Dad."

McMichael was swaying with him the way he did when Johnny was a baby. His heart pounded hard and fast and his eyes burned. "Are you sure you're okay? Let me look at you."