But he also wasn't a child and wasn't kidding himself – they were both too tired for heavy philosophy. And like it or not, reasonable or not, the air was also thick with import… something was happening with them. She asked if he wanted to come inside, have a nightcap. He didn't drink more than five times a year, but he used the excuse to himself that he'd talk about Kevin Shea, about his work.

They were in a book-lined room. Glitsky sat in a red-leather armchair, his feet planted flat on the Oriental rug. Loretta was pouring amber liquid into snifters on a sideboard next to a fireplace. 'You ask somebody in for a drink, you ought to pour them a drink at least.'

She had taken off the jacket to her suit. Her blouse was purple silk. Glitsky had removed his own leather jacket and hung it on a peg by the hallway near the front door.

Now he sat mesmerized by the angle, the view, as she leaned over, striking a match and laying it against the gas log in the fireplace, the silhouette through the sheer blouse. Some memory stirred in him. He should get out of here.

She turned off the other lights in the room and brought the snifters over, handing him one, then opening his knees and kneeling between them. They touched the snifters – a clear ringing bell from the crystal – and drank. Resting her forearms along his thighs, she whispered to him. 'Hold my glass.'

He took it, chained.

Her fingers moved to his belt. She looked up at him then, confident. Her eyes came up and stayed on his. Slowly, the belt came undone, the zipper pulled, hands still burning where they rubbed him through the fabric.

She leaned forward, over him, and brought herself down, her hands holding him, around him, almost as if she might be praying.

He surrendered to the moment, the touch, the ecstasy.

Carrie, Jerohm Reese's live-in girlfriend, did not want him going out, not now, not so soon after he had just been released from jail. But Carrie was young. Unlike Jerohm, she didn't have an intuitive understanding of how things worked. Jerohm knew that you did what you did for one of two reasons – either when you were forced to or when it was easy. And tonight was going to be easy.

The times you were forced were when you were most likely to get caught. If you didn't plan, didn't take a little time, that's what happened. As it had with Mike Mullen.

Jerohm had been a mule for running dope for nearly three years and making a nice clean life of it, with a steady income, the occasional woman. He had learned about the dangers of spontaneous action, and tried to avoid it whenever possible, but with what turned out to be Mike Mullen, suddenly he had had to act and act immediately. He had had no time, no real choice in the matter.

It came down like this-

Jerohm's supplier and partner, Carlos, was expecting his supplier, Richard, to be delivering three kilograms of Chinese white heroin that had, supposedly, recently arrived in the city. Carlos, in turn, had arranged to unload his supply to a local bar owner named Mo-Mo House, who would then step on it and get it moving through its normal channels.

Which was how it always had worked in the past. Except on the day this delivery was due – the day before Mike Mullen died – Richard did not appear. There was no product. This made everyone more nervous than they normally would be – Carlos, Jerohm, Mo -Mo – looking over their shoulders, thinking their mothers might be undercover narcotics officers.

But Mo-Mo had worked a long time with Carlos, so he gave him a chance, with the condition that if the heroin wasn't delivered to Mo's place, the Kit Kat Klub, by sundown the next day, the deal was off. Mo-Mo would take his delivery from somebody else.

Which alone would have been all right, perhaps a hassle to reestablish Mo-Mo's confidence in the Carlos/Jerohm supply line, but nothing too serious. As it turned out, Richard finally did arrive near the end of the next day as the sun was sinking. Carlos had a commitment to buy the drug, but without the sale to Mo-Mo he wouldn't have anything to pay Richard with, and the last man who didn't pay Richard didn't see any more mornings.

Now Jerohm, by the time Richard showed up, had figured he wasn't going to have any work today, no run to the Kit Kat, so he had helped himself to a little PCP, and suddenly he found he had to go steal a car off the street in the time it might take him to blow his nose. And, with angel dust driving his engine, paranoid over Richard and Carlos and most everything else, Jerohm took his.38 Police Special from the place he kept it stashed under the stairs.

There had been no cars on the street. Nobody had parked and left their keys inside, he couldn't get the use of any wheels. And Jerohm was out of time.

Which turned out to be the worst bad karma for Mike Mullen, who was sitting, window down, bouncing along to some tune on the radio. Jerohm couldn't believe he had come all the way to Dolores Street already, which seemed as though it were halfway across town. He had to make his move. The sun was going down and if he didn't get his hands on a car he was dead meat.

So he shot Mike Mullen, pulled him out of the car, and took off. There wasn't any remorse, any particular thought involved at the time or later. Jerohm's feeling was that everybody had their allotted time and this had been Mullen's. It could have been anybody. It was nothing personal. He was merely the agent of blind fate.

Jerohm got the car, got it back to Carlos, took the heroin to Mo-Mo. Everybody was happy.

But though that episode had worked out fine from Jerohm's perspective, generally speaking he had been forced to do what he did, and in that direction lay trouble.

The other way, why he was out tonight, was when it was easy.

Jerohm was wearing black nylon warm-up pants, a black turtle-neck under a black sweater and a pair of Converse black tennis shoes. There had been riots earlier in the day not far from his house on Silver Avenue, and then later tonight up in the Mission District, Dolores Park. Jerohm reasoned they'd pull the National Guard up from Silver, leaving the place deserted, hoping most everybody would stay in because of the curfew.

He smiled to think of it. Citizens were so lame.

He was in good shape. The few days in jail hadn't hurt him any. He could have just run up to Silver but he needed something to carry the stuff away in, and he thought he'd wait a while before trying to score another car off somebody new. Last time hadn't worked out the best.

So leaving his apartment a little after one in the morning, he took his under car – the throwaway he used for business – and rode with the lights out all the way up to Silver, where he slowed down looking out at the playground, although nobody was playing.

He kept driving, running dark, until he came to the row of storefronts, then pulled over in front of the second building – Ace's Electrics – and got out, his sneakers crunching the broken glass under his feet. A few steps over the sidewalk and he was through the broken window, into the shop. He took out his flashlight and checked the shelves. More than he thought there'd be – the guard must have been doing good, keeping out the looters, until they left.

The problem was that the stuff in the shop wasn't high-end – it was the wrong side of town for that. Only radios, clocks, whatever the hell else Mr Ace thought he'd call 'electrics.' But Jerohm didn't waste any time moaning about it. Whatever was here was here for the taking. It would bring him something. Lifting a few of the fancier-looking radios, he came back out through the broken window and put them in his back seat.

Three doors down was Ratafia's Body Shop – a lot better, though he had to break his own window to get himself in. They had a couple of pretty good looking toolboxes jammed to the top with shining gear. They weighed a ton but it would be worth it to carry out – bring some real cash.