McMichael looked at her over his menu. "Tell me about that."

"He said if she ever asked me for a house key the answer was no. I asked him why and Pete said it was none of my business. Then that Pete smile- the one where you couldn't tell if he was wicked or just amused. I dropped it, because I figured it really wasn't any of my business, but I think she'd disappointed or hurt him in some way. Could have been years ago, for all I know."

The waitress took their orders and brought more wine.

"So," said McMichael. "Did Patricia ever ask you for a key?"

"No. Never."

McMichael leaned back and let the warmth from the fireplace seep into him. He watched Sally Rainwater stare into the flames.

"Pete talked a lot about Anna," said Sally. "She's only been gone three years. They got married when they were seventeen. Pete quit school at fourteen to fish. He got his first boat at fifteen, to work the market trade. But he said the Italians had the markets cornered and the fish were getting thin, so he needed a bigger boat for longer runs. Anna's family didn't have much money, but Pete convinced them to loan him six hundred dollars for a bigger boat. He paid them back in two years. Ten years later he bought them a two-story house off of Rosecrans."

"Sounds like Pete talked more about Pete," said McMichael.

"Always! He really was an arrogant old man. But he was sweet, too. He told me the only regret he had was all the worry he caused Anna. He wished he'd have been gentler with her, because life was just as hard for a woman left onshore as it was for a man who went to sea. Three, four months sometimes. Pete said all the money and gifts in the world didn't make up for the days and nights they'd never get to spend with each other. He really, genuinely missed her. He wanted that lost time back, now that he couldn't get it. Don't we all?"

He saw how Pete Braga could have fallen for Sally. It wasn't only youth and beauty and character. It was something simpler, too. She was there to receive what Pete never gave Anna enough of- his hours.

"What did he say about his will?"

Sally sipped her wine. "He told me once that he was going to make sure I got the house when he died. The first time he said that I think I ignored him. The second time I told him I didn't want his stinking house. He liked that. He laughed at that. He said it did stink- it stunk like tuna fish. That was all he ever said about the topic."

With a cool little wobble of nerves, McMichael remembered Hector's words: Maybe she wants the really cool stuff. Like a house at the beach.

"Why didn't you want it?"

She looked at him steadily. It struck McMichael that she was weighing something in him rather than in herself.

"It didn't seem right," she said. "I did accept gifts from Pete- you saw some of them. I told you about the ten grand for the car. I thought about those gifts before I took them. I thought a lot about what was right and what wasn't. I guessed at his fortune to understand what these things were costing him. And I came to believe it was good for me to take them. But his home? Where he'd lived with his wife and raised a family? No, that had a completely different meaning to me."

"What did he want in return?"

"Nothing."

"You believed that?"

"I did and still do. He ordered me to his bed the second week I was there. I told him I wouldn't, and if he brought it up again I'd have to quit. He didn't, and that was that."

McMichael said nothing, thinking of Pete and Angel and Victor.

"It surprised me, Tom. I was ready for that second pass. I was ready to go find another job. But what he wanted was my time and my company. Though he understood all along that for me it was work. He understood that I gave my time for his money."

"Maybe he was going to rewrite his will for you anyway."

"I guess Pete was capable of that."

"Old Grothke said so."

"Pete also loved to needle and tease and taunt and shock," she said. "When he gave somebody something, he wanted credit for it. He wanted to be thanked and lauded and praised. So I think if he'd made that change, he'd have told me."

McMichael told her about Pete's calls and visits to the firm, his meetings with Grothke Jr. at the Seamarket Restaurant after mass at St. Agnes's. "He kept the mailing receipts in his wallet, that's how important those letters were. By early January Pete was ready to change law firms. He was talking to Myron Camlin about taking over his legal affairs. A few days later he was dead."

She studied the fire for a long while. "He didn't say one word about any of that to me."

They had another glass of wine after dinner. They talked about Johnny and autographed guitars and Sally's life at the age of seven: dirt poor in the town of Hagville, Kentucky – a place she said she would never go back to so long as she lived. McMichael saw the darkness pass over her face as she said this, realized it was no joke at all. Once… when I was hardly more than a girl, a man died and I could have prevented it…

"I got a job," she said. "Elderly woman out on Coronado. Very nice. I'll be with her five nights a week from five until eleven. You can get me there on the cell, anytime."

"I'll call," he said.

She smiled and brushed his hand lightly.

Behind Sally's little house they stopped under a streetlight and kissed. He wondered idly if they looked like a movie. Her hands were cold underneath his jacket. McMichael surrendered to the taste of her, his vision focusing south to the great blackness of the borderland and Tijuana, where the faint lights dotted the hills. He felt strong and protective and tender. She led him by the hand from the sidewalk to her room, letting go only long enough to fish the keys from her purse.

Hector met him outside the headquarters employee entrance at seven-thirty the next morning. His face was dark and humorless and he looked like he'd barely slept.

"We gotta talk but we can't do it here," he said.

They walked over to Spider's, next to the boxing club on Fourteenth Street. The Internet-and-coffee room was empty as Hector grimly led the way through a blue door in the back. The bar was empty too- billiards tables brushed and balls racked for play, the big televisions all turned to a Super Bowl preview featuring four ex-pro quarterbacks.

McMichael and Hector took a corner booth and the bartender brought them coffee, then turned up the TV volume to give them a little privacy.

Hector leaned up close. "First of all, Rainwater isn't her real name. It's Gaglosta. Second, she killed a guy with a meat cleaver when she was seventeen. She was his caretaker."

McMichael said nothing to the hostile pity in his partner's eyes.

"Dade County Juvenile Court judge ruled self-defense, sealed the record because she was so young," said Hector. "She legally changed her name when she was eighteen. Didn't get a Social Security number until then. That's why Rainwater didn't pop when we ran the records and warrants check that night."

"Let's take a walk, Heck."

Hector dropped some bills on the table and they walked back out. The fierce morning sun and turquoise blue sky did nothing to brighten McMichael's oddly tunneled and unfocused eyesight.

"A meat cleaver?"

"Uh-huh."

"What happened?"

"She was in the guy's house. Working, late morning. She said the guy started groping her, wouldn't stop. She said he was going to rape her if she didn't do something. They were in the kitchen and the meat cleaver was handy. Dade County prosecutors wanted to charge her, but the juvenile court petitioned and the state kicked it down to them."

"How many times she hit him?"

"Once."

"How old was the guy, what condition?"