Treadwell sat back, comfortable again. “You must be joking.” He leaned forward and spread himself some paté on a cracker. “Perhaps you don’t understand. These men are gay-bashers. They were about to have me charged with the murder of two people, one of whom I cared about very much. Very much.”

“It’s the classic, isn’t it?” Hector said. “You charge them to get the heat off you.”

“I don’t think it’s impossible that they killed Brian and his friend.”

Hector drank some more of the wine. This wasn’t working. He never really believed talking would do any good, but he thought it might be worth an effort. Okay, he’d made the effort. “You know,” he said, “you could get hurt a lot worse than you are right now.”

Treadwell cocked his head, surprised, almost amused. He glanced behind Hector, to the cabinets in back. “That sounds very much like a threat.”

“A statement,” Hector said.

“I should warn you that on the advice of my attorney I have a voice-activated recorder in the apartment here.”

Treadwell smiled, and Hector thought it looked very much like the smile Raul Guerrero had given him when he thought he had beaten another rap and was going to walk. The smile Raul Guerrero had been wearing as Hector shot him through the heart.

Hector hung his head a moment, then looked back up, now wearing a smile of his own. He took another sip of wine, spread some paté on a cracker. He held it out for the poodle, who obediently jumped off Treadwell’s lap and skitted across to Hector.

The dog ate the cracker and Hector rubbed around its ears. It came a couple of steps closer and yipped cutely, begging. Hector moved his hand back from the ears, caught the poodle by the neck and flipped it by the head, breaking it over his knee.

Treadwell screamed.

Hector stood up, and while Treadwell struggled out of the couch in his cast, almost falling across the table trying to reach his dead pet, he went over to the drawers under the cabinet and lifted the tape from the cassette player.

“You’re an animal!” Treadwell, looking up, tears on his face.

Turning around, Hector clucked once. “I asked you nice first.” He started for the door. “Oh, and thanks for the tip on the tape,” he said.

“I’ll get you for this. I’ll call the police.”

“You do that. That’d be good. Your good friends the police will certainly believe another far-out accusation. It’ll do wonders for your credibility.”

Treadwell lunged for him, but the cast made the effort ludicrous. Hector moved back a step, now at the door. “There’s hardball,” he said, “which is a game. And then there’s the life-and-death one. Think about it.”

Then he was out walking down the hallway, Treadwell’s sobs echoing through the closed door behind him.

The lap of the water.

The moon out over the bay, its reflection like a long yellow aisle up the canal.

Early on a balmy evening, a salt breeze carrying on it the soothing susurrus of the Friday night traffic on the Bay Bridge.

On a bed, all the lights out, with a beautiful woman.

“This is romantic,” Flo Glitsky said.

Abe tightened his hand in his wife’s.

“I mean, this is much better than all the dates our friends have. They do boring old things like go out to dinner or a movie. Get together with friends. Concerts, the opera, dancing. Not me and my man, though. Uh uh. The romance has not faded from our lives. We go to murder scenes and hang out.”

“We’ll be going to dinner soon enough,” Abe said.

“I’m serious, who needs dinner.” She moved her hand on his leg. “I’ve got hors d’oeuvres here anyway.”

“Flo…”

“I know,” she said. “All right.”

“I’m just trying to see it,” Abe said. “This was about the time, maybe a little later.”

“Didn’t you say like ten o’clock?”

“Between eight and midnight is the best guess. I figure after it was dark. Like now.”

“The moon-” she began.

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Fog, remember?”

“Would the fog have muffled the shots?”

“Well, nobody heard any. But the people at the next boat up were out ’til about ten-thirty, eleven.”

“So it was before then?”

Glitsky nodded in the dark bedroom. “Likely.”

Flo turned sideways and rested her head on the pillow that remained at the head of the bed. She wore designer-style jeans and wrapped her legs around her husband’s waist and closed her eyes.

“I’m just trying to picture it,” he said.

“I know.” She leaned forward a little and rubbed his back. “Take your time. I was kidding about dinner.”

The high tide was running a little stronger and the barge bumped lightly against the tires on the walk. Abe let out a long breath. “You think I take this too seriously, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“But sometimes?”

Ro turned on her side, resting on her elbow. Her blond hair gleamed in the moon’s light that came in through the open back door. “I find a time like this a little difficult to understand, yes.”

“Why is that?”

She thought about it a minute. “Because of the hassles with your work lately, I guess. Applying down to L.A. One side of you pulling away from all this, and the other here at the scene with sexy old me on our night out.”

“It’s habit maybe.”

“No. It’s not habit. I know your habits and this isn’t one of them.” She paused. “Thank God.”

They were both comfortable. Her legs were still wrapped around him and he rubbed the one across his lap with both his hands.

“So what does being here tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing I didn’t know. Consciously, anyway.”

“They found the gun-the murder weapon-in the canal?”

“Yeah, they found a gun, but I had a hunch she wasn’t poisoned anyway.”

“Maybe it’s Dismas.”

“Oh, it’s partly Diz, no doubt about it.”

“What part, huh?”

He nodded. “That’s the thing.” He extricated himself from her legs, ignoring her “hey!”, and walked to the door of the bedroom, flipping on the light switch.

“Diz has got Louis Baker coming in here and blowing Rusty Ingraham away. Diz is not dumb. And he is legitimately scared.”

“Right.”

“But the problem is, where is Rusty’s body?”

“Maybe out in the bay?”

Abe walked over to the back door and leaned against the sill. “Washed out by this raging torrent, huh?”

She had gotten up and stood next to him. “Maybe.”

“And the girl-excuse me, woman-Maxine Weir? Why was she killed?”

“Because she was here, Abe. That makes sense. Louis Baker killed her too.”

“Okay, but why the neck brace? M.E. report says her neck was fine.”

“That I don’t know.”

Glitsky sat down on the bed again. “Why is everybody so quick to believe it’s Louis Baker?”

Flo came beside him. “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? He threatened Ingraham and Hardy both. He said he’d do it, Abe.”

“It’s pretty convenient. Or stupid. I’m not sure which more. The actual day he gets out of prison…”

Flo shrugged. “Crime of passion. Waited a long time and couldn’t wait anymore.”

“Then he would’ve done Diz too, wouldn’t he? Or tried?”

“Maybe he did. Maybe he couldn’t find him.”

“If he found Rusty…”

She was silent.

“I think what bothers me, still, is that it might be because he’s black and an ex-con-”

“Black ex-cons can be bad people, Abe.”

“So can white ex-cons. How about whites with no records? How about a husband who’s jealous as hell and comes out here and kills his wife and her lover with nothing to do with Louis Baker?”

Flo was rubbing his back again. “You said you’re checking that, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“So check everything-as if you wouldn’t anyway.”

“And meanwhile what if Louis Baker kills Diz?”

Flo stopped rubbing. “Ah,” she said. “Getting to it.”

“Right. You know me, Flo. I never think of this black, white bullshit. Maybe I should’ve arrested Baker already. Maybe I’m just dragging my heels ‘cause he’s black and I’m-’