And if Nat knew Abe, it wasn't so much even the move to L.A. that he needed to talk about. That was just a decision and Abe had never had a problem with decisions. At least, not to talk to his father about. What Abe had trouble with sometimes was lining up the crosshairs so he could get his bead on the real issue. Well, everybody had that problem, Nat thought. Decisions tended to make themselves once you had everything else lined up. Most people just didn't take the time, acted impulsively, made the wrong moves.

Not Abe, though, not usually, anyway. Which was why they were sitting here now.

Their drinks arrived and they clinked their glasses. "L'chaim."

Nat sipped, put the glass down and made a kissing sound two or three times, savoring the taste in his mouth. At least Abe looked well rested. And why not? He had Flo, the great kids, the important stuff worked out. But he listened while Abe kept repeating himself about his job this, the job that, nobody cared, some friend of his-Hardy-with a problem. Finally he held his hand up.

"So what are you saying here?" he asked, then shrugged. "The job isn't good? So change the job. You don't have to do the same job somewhere else."

"But I'm a cop, dad. It's what I do."

"You do something else. You're a man first. Am I right?"

"Yes, but..."

"Of course I am. Now you listen to me. How old are you? Not a child, okay? So. You know a job. A job is the same I don't care where you are. You telling me a cop in New York or Tel Aviv is different than a cop in San Francisco? Or Los Angeles? No. I don't believe it. More, I know it. Look at me. I am-before I retire-by the grace of God I have a trade. I can fix things. First I'm a kid in Delaware-Delaware! I know you know this but listen. I'm fixing bicycles and sewing machines in Delaware. I go to school. I can do things with engines and now they start calling me an engineer and I get a job in California in a little shop. So the shop gets bigger and they sell it to somebody else. I don't like how they do business. I move on. Another shop. Two, three. All the while I'm raising you and trying to keep your mother happy, which you and I know is some kind of full-time endeavor. And you know what I find? The job is a job. I don't care if it's old Mr Levine's shop on DuPont Street or Lockheed down in San Carlos. You do your job and you get paid so you can live your life. But your job is not your life."

Nat lifted his glass again, puckered, shook his finger at his son. "You should know this, Abraham. This is not nuclear physics we're discussing here."

Abe grinned, tightening the scar through his lips. "Okay. What else am I gonna do?"

"What do you wanna do?"

"I want to be a cop."

"You can't be a cop here in San Francisco?"

"What have I been telling you?"

"Tell the truth, I don't know. Some people are making gold bricks. Some others taking the easy way. So what? What does that have to do with you?"

"It affects how I do my job."

"Why is that? You tell me why that is."

"Come on, dad. There's all kinds of cooperation needed to finish a case, any case."

"Baloney. Excuse me, Abraham, but kosher baloney."

Abe shook his head. "You don't know."

"I don't know? You telling me I don't know?" He reached over the small table and rested his hand over his son's. "Look, twenty years ago, you're in school, your mother's starting to get sick, they hire a new supervisor they call a vice-president at the Ford plant over to Fremont, you remember the place. So the new man tells me-I am quality control manager at this time-he tells me we have to cut costs, don't spend so much time checking everything. I tell him cut costs doesn't mean cut corners. He looks at me like I'm from Mars. We got to cut costs, he says. Bottom line. So. It's my job. I can't quit. I mean, I can, but is it worth it for the trouble to you and your mother? No, it's not."

"And the moral is?"

"The moral is, this man makes it hard to do my job. He cuts staff, hours, ups production schedules. Damn near impossible. We having the special?"

The waiter was standing over them, taking their orders. The special started with soup and bread and proceeded through pasta, salad, a main course (roast pork today), ice cream (spumoni), and coffee.

"So what happened?" Abe asked.

"So eventually they shut down the plant."

Abe chewed bread for a minute. "Did I miss something?"

"The point is, while there was a job to do, I kept doing it right. But there's always something, everywhere you go." He buttered some bread of his own. "All I'm saying is this... you want to be a cop, don't kid yourself it'll be different in L.A. You're either supported or you're not, but what does it matter? You're raising your family, you're doing something worthwhile."

"But-"

"But what you don't do," Nat interrupted, "is you don't do it half-assed." He looked up at the waiter, who had brought the soup and a carafe of red wine. "Bring a glass for my son here, would you?" he said. "He's taking a day off."

"Now see?" Abe said, his spoonful of spumoni halfway to his mouth. "The very case I've been talking about." He indicated a young burly man who was nodding his way across the room. Nat always said it could be a very small world sometimes.

"You eat your ice cream. Have another cup of coffee. I think I'll just go have a word with him."

Nat shrugged. "How could it hurt?"

The man was talking to the waiter as Abe pulled out a chair and sat himself backward on it. "Don't mind me," he said. Then, to the waiter, "I'd like an herb tea, please. His tab. That right, Johnny?"

"Sure, sergeant."

Glitsky put on a smile and asked Johnny LaGuardia how he was doing. He was doing fine. He tucked his napkin in over his tie and rearranged the silverware a little in front of him. He kept his sports coat on, probably for the same reason Abe hadn't taken his off. It was awkward, showing your piece in a public place.

He'd been a very sweet-faced teenager, Abe supposed, but now, in his late twenties, there was starting to be a fleshiness under his cheeks and just a hint, a premonition, of jowls. His eyebrows were starting to meet over his fighter's nose, and his thin forehead, under the still thick black hair, was shiny with oil. He'd shaved very close, and Abe could see the tiny capillaries through the stretched skin on his face, could smell the overstrong cologne. Johnny fiddled with his water glass now. He wore three heavy rings on his right hand.

"I'm here with my father," Abe said, motioning over to where Nat was.

"That's nice," Johnny said. He looked over, creased his brow, came back to Abe. "He must of left."

Half-turning, Abe saw that he hadn't. "Old guy with the skull cap on. That's my dad."

He enjoyed watching Johnny having trouble doing the math. "Yeah, well, it's good to get out with the old man," he said.

The waiter brought Johnny a beer and Abe his herb tea. They both took small sips, Abe waiting it out. Finally, Johnny put the glass down. "So what's going on?" he asked.

"Your name came up the other day. Then I'm in here eating lunch and here you are and I think what a coincidence. I think maybe we can talk and it saves me two or three days of running around."

"How'd my name come up?"

Abe pulled the chair right up against the table, lowering his voice. "That's the thing, Johnny. Your name came up talking about prints we found at the scene of a murder."

Johnny shook his head. "Goddamn."

"What?"

"Rusty Ingraham, right?" Johnny drank off half his beer, put it on the table, belched politely and said, "Shit, I knew it."

"Knew what, Johnny?"

"You lose your temper, you get in trouble."

"Yeah, that happens a lot. You lose your temper with Rusty?"

"Hey, I didn't kill him."

"Nobody said you killed him."

"You think I killed him, you're wrong. The girl neither."

"Read my lips, Johnny, we don't think you killed them. We got another suspect in custody at County Hospital. We think he killed them, which is why he's under arrest. But what I was curious about was your fingerprints. And you knew the girl was there?"

"She was already dead."

"And Rusty? Was he already dead?"

Johnny shook his head. "I never saw no Rusty. The girl was in the hall blocking the back of the place. I took a look at her and didn't do, like, the inventory."

"You just took off?"

"Hey, sergeant, what am I gonna do? Call the cops? What do you think they do they find me with a couple stiffs?"

"What am I doing now?"

"This is different. You got a guy on ice already. If it'd been me called the cops, you wouldn't even be looking for him 'cause I'd be your suspect."

Glitsky hated to admit it but Johnny wasn't too far off on that one. Especially lately. He sipped some tea. "Yeah, but the fingerprints, Johnny. I could take you in on those."

"But you got a suspect!"

"So now let's say I'm just curious. An inquisitive guy like myself, I hate when I don't know how everything fits together."

"Maybe I should get a lawyer or something."

Abe cupped his hands around his tea, still close in, still whispering. "Johnny, you're not under arrest. We are talking, that's all. Loan sharks aren't my beat. If it's not homicide, I'm not busting anybody."

Johnny finished his beer. The waiter came with minestrone. Johnny ordered another beer, then tore off a bite of bread, swirling it around in the soup.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, here's the deal. Ingraham's vig was six."

Glitsky's eyebrows went up. "A week?"

Johnny nodded. "That's how we do the vig, capisce?

"Six hundred dollars a week?"

Johnny popped some bread into his mouth. "Guys pay more. So anyway-"

"Wait a minute. What was Ingraham doing business with you for? He owed, what, six grand? Why didn't he get it from other sources?"

"Like where?"

"How 'bout a bank, for example. He was a lawyer. He must've had credit."

Johnny shook his head. "Banks generally don't lend money to put on the ponies."

"Ingraham played the ponies?"

A slug of beer. "The ponies owned the sucker. The guy was a mess." He put his spoon down. "One of these guys that say he hits the daily double, he stays around for the Exacta and puts the extra money down on it."

"Was he any good?"

"Guys like that are never good. There's something else pushing 'em. It's like a sickness. I been collecting vig from him on and off since I started working for Mr Tortoni. Just keeps getting bigger and bigger."

"And he's never paid it off?"

"The principal? No way. He gets that kind of money, he plunks it on some nag's nose."

Abe had finished his tea. The waiter came by and put down a steaming plate of ravioli, taking away the soup bowl. "How's a guy get into it that deep?"

Johnny lifted his shoulders. "I told you, he can't help it. He gets a hunch, he's gotta play it, you know? That's how it all started, a couple hundred he didn't have. Twenty a week vig. Who can't make that? Then the vig's a hundred. One week he can't make the hundred, so he rolls it, borrows more to pay the vig. Between you and me, this is suicide. But he keeps paying, the vig keeps growing."

"So what happened at Rusty's?"

Johnny studied a piece of ravioli on his fork for a minute. "I been in some heat with Mr Tortoni lately. Couple guys stiffing me, coming in short." He shrugged, trying to make light of it, but Abe could see his worry. "It's business, you know, and Mr Tortoni is someone who takes his business very serious."

"So?"

"So I gotta explain to Mr Tortoni about how there's a body at Ingraham's, plus there's no money. So I'm short six hundred there on top of short"-he paused-"other places." He put his fork down without eating. Abe had the impression he was about to tell him something more personal, but the moment passed. He shrugged again, went back to his food. "So I got mad. I was in trouble here, you understand."

"And what'd you do? First you broke in." The face closed up. "Johnny, B and E is not murder either. I don't give a shit if you broke the door down."

"We had an appointment. He was supposed to be there."

"Okay."

"So I'm inside, there's this body. I know Mr Tortoni's getting no money here. It really pissed me off. I wanted to throw something, knock something down."

"So you grabbed the lamp?"

"Yeah. Threw it down. It didn't help much."

"You ever get it worked out, the anger?"

Johnny seemed to be remembering something. He let out a breath. "I guess that's why they invented pussy," he said.