'I'd hoped we were getting to there, but no, not by – not in time.'

'And no names, not an initial, a nickname…?'

She shook her head. 'No, nothing, I don't think. I wish… I'm sorry.'

'Did you take any notes I might look at? Maybe there was something.

'I know I took some. I'll go check. It wouldn't have been much, but maybe…' The Sergeant's face had clouded – he was staring blankly out through the fogged glass, out into the desultory traffic on Haight. 'Can I get you anything?' she asked. 'Cup of coffee or something?'

Glitsky didn't answer.

She touched his arm. 'Sergeant?'

Back with her. 'Sure. Sorry. Just thinking.'

'Are you all right?'

Suddenly the face wasn't terrifying at all. What she saw was sadness. Tm a little distracted,' he said. 'My wife's sick.' Then: 'Some tea would be nice, thanks.'

It still wasn't noon.

Christina was just tired, she told herself. After all, with the party, she'd been awake until nearly two last night, then had her nightly argument with Joe. This morning, then, her ashes and the long, strangely emotional breakfast with Mark Dooher, her car not starting, the neo-hippie woman in the park, Sam's disapproval.

Then Tania Willows and Abe Glitsky with whatever his sorrow was – his sick wife.

Suddenly, the rain launching a new attack behind her back against her grimy window, the lights off as she sat alone in her tiny cubicle, something broke in her. She wiped the back of her hand roughly against her eyes – as a child would – trying to will away the tears, but they kept coming.

She was just tired.

This – the sudden collapse – hadn't happened in almost two years. She wasn't going to let herself think it was anything to do with the baby she'd lost, with her past. Not that again. That was behind her and she wasn't going to let it get to her anymore. It was the events of the morning, that was all.

She'd just toughen up. That was it, that was what she'd do. Swiping again at her face, sniffling, she got up from her desk, pulling her Gore-Tex up around her face. The rain would hide the tears. No one would see.

His Excellency didn't have to explain it all to Dooher, but if it made him feel better, Mark would let him go on – he was the client, and every hour was $350. They were sitting in the Archbishop's office, above the children's playground at Mission Dolores. Their informal meetings always took place here, in the serenity of the laughter of children that floated up into Flaherty's sanctum sanctorum.

Although the Archdiocese employed a full-time attorney of its own, its mandate was far too broad for one man to do it all, and so a lot of the work needed to be farmed out to private firms. And over the years, Dooher's firm had come to specialize in the Church's secular affairs - dozens upon dozens of slip and fall cases, liability, property management, personnel.

Dooher, personally, had gotten close to Flaherty not only for his ability to handle the tougher cases diplomatically and with dispatch, but because there was an unstated but perfectly understood ruthlessness in each of the men.

Both got things done. Sometimes what the Archbishop needed to accomplish was better handled outside of his office. Dooher was unofficial but defacto consigliere.

Also like Dooher, Flaherty was an athletic man who looked a decade younger than he was. Still, at fifty-seven, he was running about fifty percent in his squash games (non-billable) with Dooher. Here, in private, the Archbishop wore tasseled black loafers, black slacks, a white dress shirt. Dooher, deeply molded – nearly imbedded – into the red leather chair, had his coat off, his tie loosened.

'I don't know why these things always take me by surprise,' Flaherty was saying. 'I keep expecting better of my fellow man, and they keep letting me down. You'd think I'd learn.'

Dooher nodded. 'The alternative, of course, is to expect nothing of your fellow man.'

'I can't live like that. I can't help it. I believe that deep down, we're all made in the image of God, so our nature can't be bad. Am I wrong, Mark? I can't be wrong.'

Dooher thought it best not to remind His Excellency that he had predicted exactly what would happen back in the early stages of the decision-making process over the current lawsuit. But he'd been over-ridden.

'You're not all wrong, Jim. You've got to take it case by case.'

Flaherty was standing by the open window, looking down over the schoolyard. He turned to his lawyer. 'As neat a turn away from philosophy and to the business at hand as one would expect.' He pulled a chair up. 'Okay, where are we today?'

Reaching down for his props, though he didn't need them, Dooher pulled his briefcase from the floor, opened it, and extracted a yellow manila folder labeled Felicia Diep.

Mrs Diep had come to the United States in 1976 from Saigon, a young single mother with a substantial nest egg from her deceased husband in Vietnam. She'd settled in the lower Mission District of San Francisco, where she became a regular parishioner at St Michael's Parish and, not incidentally, a long-time paramour of its pastor, Father Peter Slocum.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Mrs Diep gave Father Slocum something in the order of $50,000 for one thing and another, and all might have been well had not the good priest decided to take his promotion to Monsignor and move away from her, down the peninsula to Menlo Park.

He had abandoned her and she wanted her money back, so she decided to go to a young lawyer in her community named Victor Trang.

Trang wasn't in the medical field, but if he was, he would have qualified as an 'ambulance chaser'. Barely making a living in his first three years after graduating from one of the night schools that taught law, he took the case, hoping for no more than his fee of one third of the fifty grand Mrs Diep wanted.

He sued the Archdiocese for fraud – Father Slocum wasn't celibate as promised, and he'd taken Mrs Diep's money under false pretenses, promising her over the years that he would eventually leave the priesthood and marry her.

This was where Dooher got involved, and it hadn't been a big item on his plate. One of his associates took care of the preliminary motions in response to the lawsuit, then passed them up to him. He and Flaherty had determined that they would offer ten grand as a settlement and if Mrs Diep didn't accept it, they would go to court and take their chances.

So in the middle of the previous week, Dooher had called Victor Trang, conveying the settlement offer. It was then he discovered that things had changed, and he'd arranged this meeting with Flaherty.

The Archbishop's face did not exactly go pale, but he was rocked. He lifted his eyes from the folder. 'Three million dollars?'

The lawyer nodded. 'Trang's got nothing else to do, Jim. The Church has deep pockets so he went looking.'

Flaherty was trying to read and listen at the same time. 'Not very far, it seems.'

'No.'

'Slocum was sleeping with the daughter, too?'

'Veronica, now nineteen. That's Trang's story. To say nothing of several other immigrants whose names he didn't provide. He may be bluffing.'

Flaherty closed the folder abruptly. 'I know Slocum. It's possible Trang's not bluffing. This is nowhere near the first allegation.'

This was not welcome news. Dooher leaned forward. 'If you knew some of this, why'd you make him a Monsignor?'

A crooked smile. 'I didn't know it. They were allegations we'd heard. We thought we'd remove him from the temptation, put him where he didn't have the same freedom of movement, give him more responsibility.'

A shake of the head. 'And thereby change his nature?'