"Wait a minute." Tombo came forward, no sign of laughter in his eyes now. "You think the CCPOA had something to do with Palmer's death?"

"We don't know," Shiu said. "We do know the union has muscle and isn't afraid to use it. We also know that people who run against the candidates it supports, especially in the rural counties, have had bad things happen to them, to their campaign headquarters, like that."

Juhle had listened to enough of Shiu's irresponsible chatter. Next he was going to tell them that they were looking into the possibility that Jeannette had paid somebody, maybe one of Palmer's union enemies, to kill him. This was where they'd been in Lanier's office early in the day. But since then, having come that far, Shiu might tell them that they'd realized that they didn't need Jeannette as the prime mover at all. It might have been some union henchman all on his own. Pretty soon, if Shiu kept it up, they'd hear all of their theories on television. "Anyway, what we'd like to see Parisi about," he said, "is maybe some context on this, that's all."

"But you've got her with the other victim somehow," Tombo said. "Isn't that right?"

Juhle evaded. "Again, context." He was getting out of the booth, his body language bringing Shiu up and out along with him. "When you do see her," he said in his most amiable tone, "would you mind telling her we'd like to talk to her? If we don't before, ask her to wait around, and we'll catch her on the wrap-up."

"This incredible story she was going to break." Fairchild didn't appear to be having any trouble with the dolmas. He was finishing his fourth. "That was why New York was really going to want her. She was going to be this amazing investigative reporter. Anyway, that's what started it."

"You told her it didn't matter."

"I had to." Fairchild shrugged. "It didn't matter. It doesn't."

"She tell you what it was?" Tombo asked. "The story."

"Some. But I got a better sense of it right now, talking to these guys."

"What?"

Fairchild leaned in over the table, lowered his voice. "It's one thing you get some union thugs to mess with people, right? But how about if you actually spring inmates for a night or two to do crimes? That's what she was looking at."

Tombo had already pushed his plate away, mostly uneaten. He was filling up on water. "To do what?"

"Whatever needs to be done. Trash a campaign headquarters. Intimidate some assemblyman leaning the wrong way on prisons appropriations. I don't know, maybe assassinate somebody. And meanwhile, they've got the perfect alibi if anybody ever comes and looks-they were locked up."

Tombo raised his eyes, shook his head. "No."

"'No,' what?"

"No everything. It couldn't happen."

"Why not?"

"Because, Spencer, here's what happens you let a convict out. He keeps going. He doesn't go do the job you've kindly asked him to do. He probably leaves the state. At the very least, he doesn't come back to his friendly local prison, having just killed somebody for you, or trashed a campaign headquarters, to peacefully serve out the remainder of his term."

Fairchild chewed for a moment, considering. "He does if, say, his brother's in the slammer with him and might have a fatal accident if you didn't come back."

"Oh, yeah. The ever-popular two-brothers-in-the-same-prison trick."

"Might not be a literal brother. Might be another relationship. Or," getting into it now, Fairchild said, "or how about you get conjugal rights every night, plus dope, plus liquor, cigarettes, any combination of the above? They bring it all in for you."

"Who does?"

"The guards."

"The guards who are guarding you?"

"Yeah, those guys."

"And where's the warden all this time?"

"He's in on it. He's just taking care of the union's business. It's grateful. He gets a bonus under the table every week. Not surprisingly, it's not a credit business."

Tombo was frankly smiling now, enjoying the idiocy. "How about they get him a Harley to drive around the yard with, too? I agree to go out and kill somebody, I'd demand a Harley."

"Maybe not the Harley," Fairchild said. "Too visible. Piss off the other inmates."

"Like conjugal rights wouldn't?"

"They might at that."

"This doesn't happen, my man. I can't believe Andrea was really looking into this."

"I think she was. She might be still. And I mean this minute."

"Even after you told her it wouldn't get her to New York?"

"Maybe it was the Palmer case. If she thought that it could have happened with him. I mean an assassin out of one of the prisons. She could break the case, get famous on her own, make the move to New York without my help."

Suddenly serious, Tombo went silent and twirled his empty water glass on the table.

"You think that hard, I can actually hear the cogs turning," Fairchild said.

"They don't spring inmates," Tombo said in a nearly breathless whisper. "They use parolees."

"What are you talking about?"

"Spencer, what have we been talking about? Union muscle. Andrea was onto something, but it wasn't the inmates. It's the parolees. They get their parole violated and sent back to the joint if they don't do what they're told. Then whatever they do, maybe up to murder, they're alibied by their parole officers."

"That's a stretch, Rich. I can't believe you'd get many cops who'd have any part of that."

"No. I don't think many cops would, either. But parole officers aren't cops."

"Sure they are."

"No, they're not."

"What are they, then?"

"Technically. They're prison guards. CCPOA."

Devin Juhle's opinion was that Gary Piersall had too much hair for a guy in his fifties, all of it a perfect shade of gray, and not a one out of place. At least six foot four, he probably didn't weigh two hundred pounds, and his perfectly tailored light gray suit was shot through with almost but not quite invisible threads of neon blue. A strong aquiline nose under a wide forehead gave him a patrician cast that was only accentuated by piercing milky blue eyes.

They were in his office, seventeen floors above San Francisco. The firm had four floors in the building on Montgomery Street, and Piersall's lair was about a third of the way to the top, in the northeast corner, which afforded views of the bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate. Piersall had greeted Juhle and Shiu at the door and had offered them the wing chairs that faced his desk while he had gone around to put the ornate piece of cherry furniture between them.

"I'm afraid I still don't understand why you've come to see me," he was saying. "What connection do you have between George Palmer's murder and the CCPOA?"

Juhle, unruffled, sat back comfortably in the oversize chair, one leg crossed over the other. "Well, sir, it wasn't much of a secret that the judge was threatening to freeze the union's funds and put it into receivership."

Piersall assayed a thin smile. "The key word there, inspector, is threatening. You have to understand that this was a game he liked to play, although frankly he had cried this version of wolf enough that the entire exercise had become much more tedious than worrisome."

Shiu, in contrast to Juhle, sat in the front six inches of his chair, his feet planted flat on the carpet. "So you're saying that he didn't have enemies with the union?"

"No. I'm sure he had several. He was biased and unsympathetic to the guards and loved the limelight. He bought all the bullshit the cons were selling and was a loud, sanctimonious son of a bitch on top of that. So, yeah, he had an enemy or two, Jim Pine maybe being the most visible of them."