She nodded.

"And do you know what kind of car it was? Could you tell from here?"

"I didn't have to see it from last night. I knew it from other times, too. She drove a black Mercedes. One of the smaller ones, I think, the C-types."

Cuneo looked out, then back at his witness. If this was going to be a positive identification, he wanted to eliminate any possible ambiguities, and one had occurred to him. "Were you facing the way you are now? Toward the car?"

"Yes."

"And she was on the other side of the street?"

"Right."

"So you wouldn't have seen her until she was past you, then. Walking away? Isn't that right?" "Well, sideways maybe. Joseph saw her first. He was standing about where you are."

Cuneo again stared across into the street. After a minute: "Let me ask you this," he said. "Why would he notice?"

Her face clouded for a moment. "I'm not sure what you mean." "Well, I mean, there's four of you-four, right?-four of you standing around having some drinks and Joseph sees some woman walk by outside. So what? Why would he comment on it? Weren't people walking by all the time?"

Striking a thoughtful pose, she crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't recall saying anybody commented about it. Man know better than act like that." She looked at him, almost challenging, maybe waiting for him to show a sign of understanding. When none appeared, she sighed. "He's standing here by the window and suddenly his eyes go wide. Poor fool don't even know he's doing it. So I look to see what he likes so much. And it's her all right. So I give him the look, you know, and he knows he's caught. Man's always been a sucker for a pretty girl, and she was pretty enough."

"So the other two, your other guests. What happened with them?"

"Cyril and Jennifer? They look to see what Joseph's making eyes about. That's all. It wasn't a big thing at the time. Nobody even mentioned it out loud until the fire happened. Then later out in the street, we heard people saying it was Missy in the house with him. This was after we told the inspector we'd seen her."

"So what did you do then? I mean after you heard that?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. What was I supposed to do? I figured I must have gotten it wrong. Until you told me just now that it might not have been her in the house after all. Which had to mean it was her walking by all along."

"But let me get this straight. From last night all the way until when I told you ten minutes ago that maybe it wasn't Missy in the house, maybe it was someone else, you could not have sworn that the woman you saw walking by out there was her?"

Maxine frowned. "No. I didn't think about that. I just figured she went back in later. Maybe went out somewhere and came back. That could explain it, am I right? I thought it was her."

Glitsky sat at his desk reviewing utilization and arrest numbers, lost in the tedium, until the telephone rang and he realized that it had grown dark outside. Surprised anew that Cuneo had apparently decided not to check in with him at all, he got the phone in the middle of the second ring.

"Glitsky."

"Abe." His wife. A sigh of relief. "Good, you're there. Is everything all right?"

He looked at his watch. "I guess not, if the time got away from me so badly. Is it really eight thirty?"

"Close enough. What have you been doing? Last I heard you had been summoned by the mayor and were running out to see her."

"And I did, too. Twice, in fact."

"What did she want?"

"It's a bit of a story. It could even be construed as good news of a sort."

"You sound like Dismas. 'Construed as good news of a sort.' You think you qualified that enough?"

"I said it was a story. It's good that she's got confidence in me, I suppose. I could tell you in person in twenty minutes."

"That'd be nice. I have something that might be construed as good news of a sort myself."

"You got a raise?"

"No, it's not money. That would be unalloyed good news."

"Unalloyed. Talk about a Hardy word. So your news isn't unalloyedly good?"

"Unalloyedly, is that even a word? This is getting too complicated for me. I'll tell you when you get home."

Glitsky lived in a smallish three-bedroom upper duplex just north of Lake Street, in a cul-de-sac that bounded the leafy southern border to the Presidio. He'd raised Isaac, Jacob and Orel there with his first wife, Flo. After the cancer claimed her, he moved a Mexican nanny/housekeeper named Rita Schultz into the living room, where she'd slept behind a screen and helped with the boys for six years. Now Glitsky had a new life, Treya's daughter and all of his sons away living theirs. Rita no longer stayed with them full-time, sleeping behind the screen, but she still came every day to care for Rachel.

If he'd come home when his shift technically ended at five, Glitsky could have had Paganucci drop him at his front step. But since his promotion, he almost never left the Hall until at least seven, and often much later. The job didn't really have anything like regular hours, and to pretend it did was to fail in it. And failure was not on his agenda. So there were always endless meetings-with chiefs, lieutenants, civic and businesspeople, department heads-to attend, tedious yet necessary administrative duties to perform, fences to mend, people to simply visit, flesh to press and parties to attend and press conferences to hold. And all of these things happened on their own timetable, not his. So to get to and from work, he usually checked out a car from the city lot next to the Hall, and invariably had to park it at best a few blocks from his home.

Now Glitsky was on the last leg of a six-block hike from the nearest parking place that he could find. Coming up on the opposite side of the street, with the late-afternoon wind just beginning to ebb now, he stopped and looked up into the lighted front windows of the rent-controlled place where he'd long since decided he would probably die. A shadow moved across the shades and he recognized the cameo of his wife pacing in the living room. The vision stopped him. Against all of his own expectations and preconceptions, he had somehow with Treya been able to find happiness again. Sometimes, as now, the feeling all but overwhelmed him.

"Seor Abe?"

He'd neither seen her in the dark nor heard her on the quiet street, and he reacted, startled at the sound. Recovering, he put his hand on his heart and rolled his eyes with what was, for him, wild theatricality. "Rita," he said. "What are you still doing here?"

"Just talking to Seora Treya."

"What about?"

The housekeeper reached out, took his wrist and tapped on his watch. Looking up, she gave him a look of benevolent understanding. "Women things."

When he got to his front door, twelve steps up from the street, Treya was there holding it open for him. Two-and-a-half-year-old Rachel, awake way past her bedtime and finally seeing her father, broke from around Treya's legs and threw herself headlong at him. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" Catching her up, he gathered her in, smothering her with kisses while she squealed with delight. With a last kiss he pulled her close, then caught something in his wife's eye.

"Rita tells me you and she were talking about women's things. Does that have to do with your maybe good news?" Treya kissed him hello, quickly, on his cheek, then turned away and stepped back to let the two of them in. "Have you been crying?"

She kept herself turned away, shook her head no. But too fast. And she started walking toward the kitchen. Still carrying Rachel, Glitsky followed. "Trey?"

"I'm just emotional," she said. "About this possibly good news, which I so hope it is." She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and turned to face him. "It looks like we're going to have another baby." She waited, breathless for a minute, then unloosed a torrent. "Are you okay with that? Please say you are. I know we never talked about it specifically, I mean whether we were actually trying. And I just found out this morning. I've been wanting to tell you all day, but didn't just want to leave a message, and then when you didn't call me even once during the day or come home, I thought the mayor must have done something awful, and I didn't want to bother you by calling at work if you had some crisis, but then it got so late . . ."

Glitsky closed the distance between them and put his free arm around her.

"Sandwich hug!" Rachel, in heaven between them.

"Sandwich hug," Treya repeated to her daughter, kissing her. Then she looked up at her husband through a film of tears. "Okay? It's okay, isn't it?"

"More than okay," he said. "Unalloyed."

6.

The next morning, Friday, Dismas Hardy made it downstairs at a few minutes past seven. Breakfast noises emanated from the dining room, but he walked directly across the kitchen first, to the coffeepot where he poured himself a cup. Turning right into the family room, toward the back of the house, he tapped the glass of his tropical fish tank and poured some food into it. All his dozen little fishies seemed to be in good health as they rocketed to the surface, the tank was algae-free, the pump gurgled with a quiet efficiency.

"You love those guys, don't you?" His wife, Frannie, stood in the doorway.

"Love might be a little strong, being reserved only for my mate." He crossed over and kissed her good morning. "That would be you, the mate."

"Loves wife more than goldfish," she said. "And people say the romance goes."

"Never with us. Except they're not goldfish, not at forty to sixty bucks a pop."

"Sixty dollars? And they weigh, what, one ounce?"

"That would be one of the big ones."

Frannie stared into the tank for a minute. "I'll never complain about the price of salmon again. Speaking of which, are you eating breakfast this morning? Because if you are, you'd better get in there. The lox is almost gone."

In ten seconds he was standing, glaring down at the dining room table. Both of his children were engrossed in their morning newspaper-Vincent on the comics, Rebecca with the rest of the "Datebook" section. A toasted half bagel rested in front of his regular chair at the head of the table, but there was no sign of any lox, although two small empty plates held traces of cream cheese and crumbs.

"Vincent," Frannie didn't wait to analyze, "didn't I ask you to save some lox for your father?"

The boy looked up in total affront, hands to his chest, all outraged innocence. "Hey, it's not me. I did." He pointed across the table. "Talk to her."

The Beck was a step ahead of her mother. "I didn't hear you say that." She turned to her father. "I would have, Dad-you know I would."

But Hardy didn't get a chance to answer her. This, evidently, hadn't been the first moment of friction between the women in the house this morning, and Frannie's frustration now boiled over a bit. "You were sitting right where you are now when I said it," she said. "How could you not have heard me?"

"I thought you were talking to Vincent."

"So you turned your hearing aid off? Was that it? You know I was talking to both of you."

"Okay, but I just didn't hear you. I didn't think you were talking to me, okay?"

"No, not okay. Join the rest of us in the world here, would you?"

"Uh, guys," Hardy waded in delicately. He never knew what would happen when he got between his wife and his daughter. "It's okay. I got my coffee. I'm happy."

"I'm happy for you," Frannie said, "but that's not the point, and it's not okay. She's been doing this kind of thing all the time lately. And nobody else seems to notice. Or care."

Uh oh, Hardy thought.

"All the time?" Now Rebecca's tone went up a big notch. "All the time! I don't even know what you're talking about. I haven't done anything except eat some stupid lox, which was right out here on the table in front of me. Okay, if I ate it, I'm sorry. But what do you want me to do, Mom? Barf it back up?" She put her finger into her mouth.

Following the action, Vincent suddenly threw his comics page down and jumped up, away from the table. "Easy, Beck. Come on."

Hardy intervened at the same instant. "Don't barf it up. I'll just go throw a couple of my tropicals on this bagel . . ."

"Don't make a joke out of it," Frannie said. "It's not funny."

"I'm not going to really barf it up." Rebecca rolled her eyes in what Hardy believed was an expression of the platonic ideal of teenage pique.

"All right then."

Frannie obviously didn't think it was even slightly all right, but the fight had gone out of her, and she turned and disappeared back into the kitchen. Hardy debated whether to follow her or not and decided they'd both be happier in the long run if he didn't. If he went to her, they'd just keep talking about the Beck and how they were losing control over her, how she didn't respect them any longer, how he didn't take an active enough role anymore. It would all escalate and somehow become all about him and Frannie. Didn't he see the way she was getting? Didn't he care what was happening to his daughter?

He did care. He simply didn't spend as much time with her as his wife did, didn't identify with her in a more or less absolute way, and didn't really think he needed to. His daughter was growing up, becoming independent, which he believed was her fundamental job. And doing fine at it. Better than fine, even, with her incredible grade point average, president of a couple of clubs, working a night a week this semester tutoring math.

Hardy honestly believed that she hadn't heard Frannie issue her warning about the lox. She would never have eaten it if she'd thought it was meant for her father.

But Frannie would have said that was the problem-she didn't think about anybody but herself. To which his answer was, "Of course not, she's a teenager." But this wasn't a popular response.

He sat down and took a bite of his bagel, pointed to the rest of the newspaper down by his son's elbow. "Vin, could you please hand me a section?" he asked. Then, sotto voce to the Beck, "I don't think you ate my lox on purpose, but you might want to go tell your mother you're sorry you yelled at her."

"Except, you know, Dad," she whispered, "she yelled at me." But shaking her head, she got up anyway and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Vincent, back in his chair, shook his own head, rolled his eyes. Girls. Hardy nodded in understanding. In this, he and his son were allies. Then he pointed again, said, "The paper, please. If I can't eat lox, at least I can read my morning paper." Vin reached over and grabbed the front page-double-time-and went to pass it up the table, glancing at the front page as he did. "Hey," he said. "Uncle Abe." And the paper's progress halted.

"Vin." Hardy, his voice suddenly sharp, snapped a finger. "Now. Please."

The tone brooked no argument. In a second, Vincent up and over his shoulder, the two males were reading the caption under the four-column, front-page picture of Glitsky smartly saluting the mayor. "Deputy Chief of Police Abraham Glitsky gets his marching orders from Kathy West yesterday afternoon at the Ferry Building at the beginning of the mayor's first 'Neighborhood Stroll.' The new administration plans to bolster police presence as well as civic awareness in troubled areas of the city, and Glitsky's appearance, according to the mayor, underscored the spirit of cooperation between her office and the Police Department that both sides hope to build upon."

"Uncle Abe's getting famous," Vincent said.

"Just what he's always wanted."

"I always thought he hated that stuff."

"He does. He's going to hate this picture. Maybe I should call him and tell him how cute and official he looks, saluting and all. Subservient, even."

"He'd probably come over and shoot you, Dad."

"Yeah, you're right. Maybe I'll give him a day to get used to it."

Before he checked in at his office, Glitsky stopped in at the homicide detail, where Lieutenant Marcel Lanier sat behind a desk that filled most of his office, and knocked at the open door. "Permission to enter?"

Lanier snorted, said, "Denied," then waved his superior inside. "Early call, Abe. Cuneo?"

"How'd you guess?"

"Incredible psychic powers. He's not happy with things, and I can't say I blame him."

"It's the mayor."

"That's what I hear, too."

"The point," Glitsky said, "is that if we're both going to be working the case, and we are, we ought to be communicating. As it is, I don't know what he knows, and vice versa. I don't think he's even talked to Strout yet, so he might not even know that Missy couldn't have shot herself. Or that Hanover couldn't have done himself, either, for that matter. And taken together, that eliminates murder/suicide and leaves a righteous double."