“So to what do we owe this surprise, Diz?”

“I think the big surprise is hearing you yell at someone.”

Drysdale waved it off. “Aw, that’s just Locke. Sometimes the old seniority isn’t the blessing it’s cracked up to be.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Somebody’s got to investigate a couple of cops.”

“That’s ugly.”

“Yeah. Plus it’s nothing we’d ever charge on our own. But we’re showing our continued sensitivity to the plight of harassed gays by the fascist police force. Subtle stuff like that.”

“Why’d you draw it?”

Drysdale grinned. “Cause it’s such a lemon. Locke gives it to a rookie here and bingo, end of career, or at least end of cooperation for a year or two with the department. Me, I’m immune I guess. Seniority. I’ve offended everybody at least once anyway. Can’t do any more harm.”

“Who are the guys?”

“Clarence Raines and Mario Valenti. Homicide. You know ’em?”

“No. But Homicide guys?”

“I know.” Drysdale picked up an autographed baseball and tossed it back and forth. “Plus there’s my well-known discretion.” He flipped the ball across to Hardy. “But you, sir? Coming back to the trade?”

Hardy laughed, said no and ran down his last twenty-four hours.

Drysdale was thoughtful for a moment. “Ingraham left here after you, right?” He shut his eyes, remembering. “Something went wrong.”

“What was that?”

“Gimme the ball.”

Hardy tossed it back to him. It flashed from hand to hand, faster than Hardy could follow it. Drysdale closed his eyes again, a juggler in a trance. Finally he stopped. “Nope, it’s not there.”

Hardy lifted his shoulders. “Well, he’s dead anyway. I guess it can’t matter too much anymore.”

“I know a guy, though, hates his guts. You might want to talk to him. Tony Feeney.”

“He should’ve died a long time ago.”

Feeney was Hardy’s vintage but a different grape. Dark hair, pressed three-piece suit, trim body, shined shoes. No hint of mellowing out.

“Well, he did die this morning.”

Feeney seemed to gather something inside himself. Then he astounded Hardy by giving himself a thumbs up and saying, “Fuckin’ A,” like he’d just won a big one.

Then, realizing what he had done, he came back to Hardy. “If he was your friend I’m sorry, but-”

Hardy stopped him. “Before yesterday I hadn’t seen him in half a dozen years.”

“How’d it go down?”

“Looks like somebody shot him.”

“I hope he walks, whoever did it.”

“Well, whoever did it shot his girlfriend too.”

“You know who it was?”

“Yeah, they think so. I think so.”

Feeney opened his desk drawer and popped a life Saver. He offered one to Hardy. “Fuckin’ Ingraham. Always gotta be a woman around. Girl should’ve known better.”

Hardy didn’t know what that meant, but he’d come back to it. “What’d he do to you?”

Feeney had an unlined angular face with a small mole on the same spot of each cheek. Hardy thought he could be a model-not so much handsome but a definite ‘look.’

“There was a cop named Hector Medina,” he began. “Used to be in Homicide. Now he runs security over at the Sir Francis Drake.”

Feeney went on to explain that about seven years before, over a casual dinner with some D.A. friends, Rusty Ingraham had told the gang that ‘everybody knew’ Hector Medina had killed Raul Guerrero instead of arresting him. Guerrero had been a lowlife who’d been hassling women for years in the lower Mission and had come under suspicion for rape and murder. When Hector had gone out to question him, the official story was that Guerrero pulled a gun and Medina had to shoot him.

As with any incident of this type, there had been an investigation and Medina had been cleared.

Now, though, at this dinner, Ingraham had gotten into it. He was showing off for the woman he was seeing, impressing her, Feeney guessed, with his inside knowledge, and he’d said everybody knew that Medina had planted a gun on Guerrero and simply blown him away.

Okay, people are allowed to bullshit each other. But then the story got to the D.A., and Ingraham got called in and he didn’t retract it. It was the truth, he said. Everybody knew it.

And so they’d started another formal investigation on Hector Medina, and Feeney had drawn the assignment.

“You know what it’s like coming down on a cop?”

Hardy nodded. “Drysdale was just talking about it.”

“He pulled Valenti and Raines, didn’t he? Poor bastard. I hope he doesn’t need any investigating done for the next two or three years.”

“They lock you out, huh?”

“What do you think?”

Hardy the ex-cop knew. Nobody closed ranks tighter than policemen. “So Ingraham testified, or what?”

Feeney shook his head. “No. It never came to that. There just wasn’t any evidence. I couldn’t get it to trial. But you know how these things are. Medina was suspended for the second time during my investigation. The word got around. Soon enough everybody believed he’d purposely killed Guerrero, who, of course, was a scum. They reinstated Medina, gave him his back pay, but he only lasted about three months before he quit. Nobody feels too good about a killer cop, even if-”

“But he wasn’t.”

“Well, there was no evidence. But sometimes two accusations are enough to put a man down.”

“So what about Rusty?”

“The only thing Ingraham did was screw up my career for the next few years. I mean, whatever Medina was or wasn’t, I was the guy digging up dirt on this inspector sergeant of Homicide. So testifying cops get sick on the day I go to trial, evidence isn’t tagged right or gets lost, reports get filed in the wrong folders, witnesses don’t live where they’re supposed to. They’re a real creative bunch, homicide cops, when they put their minds to it. And I had Ingraham to thank for it.”

Hardy sat back, his ankle on his knee, and looked at the city behind Feeney’s back. All this was interesting, but didn’t seem to have much to do with Louis Baker, or Rusty being dead. “So that was it?” he asked.

Feeney laced his fingers behind his head, arching his back. Hardy heard a few pops. “No. The good part is that old Rusty lost his credibility with Locke. The assignments just dried up. He only lasted maybe four months longer than Medina.”

“He got fired?”

“What he got was the message. He sought, as we say, other meaningful work.”

“So you haven’t seen him in…?”

Feeney straightened up in his chair. “Many years,” he said. “And when did you say he was killed?”

“Last night.”

He nodded. “Good. For the record, I was playing poker with four other guys from this office all last night. I can give you their names if you want.”

It was like a thing, man. If you ran with Dido, you did something with your shoes.

Lace was checking it out. It was like a sign in the cut that you were part of it. Lace looked down at his feet, at the high-top Adidas, the shoelaces curling like skinny snakes around his feet.

He pushed off the building, hands in his pockets, and looked out through the cut. Dido doing some business. Couple of honkies waiting in the shiny black car. One guy out talking with his man.

Dido looked bad. Dido always looked bad, but today, hot and still, you could see him. He wore the Adidas, like always, yeah, but that’s why he had his name. With the black tank shirt you could see the power-the dark skin looking oiled, shining in the sun. Arms like Lace’s legs. Couple of years ago, when Lace still a boy, he and Jumpup used to ride around, one each on Dido’s shoulders.

The only man around bigger than Dido was just got back from the big house. He was out doing something now with his shack. It was in Dido’s cut, so it was Lace’s business.

He kicked his way slowly down the cut, his long shoelaces trailing in the dust behind him. With a nod of his head, he drew in Jumpup, a year younger than himself, but bigger. At thirteen, Jumpup could nearly jam a basketball already.