And what about Jane?

Jane had been through it with him, all of it, finally getting back to him, reaching through whatever dark tunnel he’d constructed to let him see some light, to realize that life wasn’t all black. There were good times. There was love. Sex. Whatever it was, it was more than sex. He’d gotten along well without that for enough years to know. So call it love, Diz. You tell Jane you love her. You feel like it’s love.

But, admit it, not like it used to be. Not the bells ringing and heart pounding and choked up with happiness, unable-to-talk kind of love.

So what do you want? Be real, Diz. That’s puppy love, and sure, you don’t have that with Jane. How could you, after you lost your baby together, after the divorce, after another intervening marriage for her?

And come on, be fair. There are good things with Jane but she just has much more of her own life, doesn’t need you as much as Frannie seems to.

No commitment, though, right? He, once in a while, trying to talk about the long term, and Jane not ready, always not ready yet…

He yanked himself away from such thoughts. The water had, by degrees, become clearer. He could easily see his hand at the end of his extended arm. A shadow-perhaps a striped bass-flashed in his peripheral vision.

After surfacing he saw he was within fifty yards of the mouth of the canal. He looked at his watch. It had only taken twenty-two minutes and the tide wasn’t even running at full ebb yet. The last rays of the sun still lit the top of the skyline and the towers on the Bay Bridge, but the canal and its banks were in shade. He struck out for the shore, feeling he’d accomplished something.

Manny Gubicza had his manicurist in the office. He had set up a small table to the right of Gubicza’s desk with a couple of bowls of lotion, a little cushion on a towel to rest his hand, some emery boards and files. Manny didn’t look at the manicurist at all. He sat back, eyes closed, his massive desk between himself and Fred Treadwell.

Out the window behind Gubicza’s head the sky was still light. Although it was a Saturday, Manny Gubicza was in full lawyer regalia. The coat of his three-piece suit was hung onto a wooden valet just behind and to the left of his chair. There were the purple suspenders and matching purple tie, the light lavender silk handmade shirt with the monogram MAG stitched in slightly darker color over the breast pocket. The shirt was French-cuffed, of course, and now with the cuffs pulled back for the manicure, the ruby cufflinks sat a couple of inches apart on the desk, staring at Treadwell like the eyes of a drunk bulldog.

“All in all, I think it’s worth the risk,” Gubicza was saying. “We can’t just do nothing.”

Treadwell was still in shock and mourning. After Hector Medina had left the night before, he had cried himself out, then finally called Manny and made this appointment to discuss their strategy. This morning he had made the arrangements to bury Poppy and left him off at the vet’s. It had been the longest, saddest day of his life.

“Is there any way we can kill him?” Treadwell asked. “I’d rather kill him than anything else.”

Gubicza shook his head. “Fred, we’re trying to get you off on a double murder. I don’t think, strategically, it’d be wise to kill someone else right now.”

“I don’t care.”

Gubicza glanced at the manicurist, who didn’t look up. “I know you’re hurting. It’s natural.” He started playing with one of the cufflinks. “But it’s my job to keep you out of jail. I am the first to admit I find this behavior atrocious. Unbelievable, really. I’ve never heard of anything like it. I can’t believe the police would be so stupid.”

“He wasn’t the police. I don’t believe he was the police.”

Gubicza flicked his right hand dismissively. “Of course he is. Officially or not, he represented them, and it seems to me this is a death threat against you.”

“But he killed Poppy!”

“Yes, I know. That’s horrible, it is, Fred. But I think what we must concern ourselves with is how to respond to this threat against you.”

Treadwell was leaning forward in the brocaded loveseat. “I want to punish him.”

“Of course you do. And that’s the right approach. I suggest we just continue with our original strategy. In a sense, our case is stronger, since this Medina fellow really was there and did damage, whereas in the other charge… well, you know, the evidence with them is rather slim.”

“My ankle is really broken. That’s real.”

Gubicza smiled, warm as a toad. “Yes, and we know how that really happened, don’t we? I’m not sure we want to get into that.”

Treadwell sat back and pulled his cast up to rest on the loveseat. Outside it had darkened, it seemed, all at once.

The manicurist finished Gubicza’s right hand and was moving the other side of his chair, bringing his table with him. The lawyer pushed a panel on his desk and the lights in the room became brighter. He reached out and pulled the chain on a small Tiffany-style lamp on his desk, holding his palm under it, admiring the manicurist’s completed handiwork. “Very nice,” he said.

“But what about what Medina said, about no one believing me this time?”

“Why would you lie about it? Why would you kill your own beloved pet?” He laid his left hand on the table now, and the manicurist began. “No. Don’t forget that the community is our strength. They will believe you. You are being harassed by the bigotry of the straight cops. And incidentally,” he said, “if we don’t present a pretty convincing case, you get charged with a couple of killings you did…” He covered the manicurist’s hand with his own and squeezed. “You didn’t hear that, David.” The lawyer came back to Treadwell. “Honestly, Fred. This could be a very good thing for our case.” He almost said, “I wish I’d thought of doing it myself.”

When he got back to the parking lot Louis Baker stood on the side of the court and watched six boys playing basketball. The court was between his car-Mama’s car-and where he now stood, and after nearly an hour he decided no one was watching it.

He could be wrong, but he had a hand on the gun in his pocket as he crossed the no-man’s-land in case it came to something.

He looked different. With his stolen money he had gone into the St Vincent de Paul store and bought himself some clothes that fit, traded in the tennis shoes for hiking boots, picked up a Forty-Niners jacket, some sunglasses and a mock leather driving cap. He shaved in the bathroom of a gas station on Geary before walking back to his car.

He knew the address-he had burned it into his mind nine years ago. Turning left out of the lot on Fillmore, he headed up to Jackson Street, where Hardy had lived, might still live-you never knew. Either way he’d find him soon enough.

It was funny with Rusty Ingraham dead now, and Dido, and how the unexpected sometimes just put things in your hands. You left the joint, you maybe got intentions to go a certain way, but things happened around you and pretty soon you’re sailing along like you never gave a thought to direction. The wind blew, you’d be a fool to fight it.

And now they wanted him for murder again, like they’d always done. There’s trouble, first they looked to him. This time he hadn’t even gotten the smell of the prison soap off him before the hassling began. Okay. Just so he knew.

It wasn’t like they said it would be, but then he hadn’t really believed them anyway. But he wondered why they spent so much time trying to convince the cons with the lie. In the House, see, they kept telling you that things would be different on the outside. There’re all kinds of agencies and people set up to get you going straight. Which, you know, the first year you just roll your eyes and figure they got to tell you something-might as well be a fairytale. You’re in the joint a while, though, and it starts sounding possible, like, maybe there really are jobs out there.