Hardy looked at her nonexistent stomach. "Sorry, baby," he said to it, reaching over and patting.

She put her hand over his and held it there a second. "I almost don't believe it still," she said. "If it would kick or something. There's no other sign..."

Hardy took his hand away and his eyes rested for a second on her breasts. "Yes there is," he said.

She laughed, embarrassed, sipped at her coffee. "I don't know. I guess I just decided to keep working until it's born. It's nice not to need the money, but I want to keep busy. If I get too much time to think..."

Hardy knew what too much time to think could do. Frannie had gotten nearly a quarter million dollars from Eddie's life insurance. She was twenty-five years old. There would be time not to work if she wanted that.

Hardy reached out and patted her hand again. "And now a houseguest to boot."

"I'm sorry about the couch," she said.

"The couch is fine."

"And you're really in trouble, aren't you?"

Hardy shook his head. "Not trouble. Maybe a little danger. It's why I need a place nobody would think to look for me."

"And it's also why you have a gun with you."

"That too."

Frannie put down her mug. "It's still hard for me to believe people just get up in the morning intending to go and shoot somebody."

Hardy nodded.

"And you're sure this man... ?"

"Louis Baker."

"Louis Baker. You're sure he killed your friend?"

Hardy worked it around for the time it took him to swallow his coffee, nodded again. "Yep."

"Then why didn't Abe Glitsky go arrest him yesterday?"

Hardy had thought about that a lot last night. Why hadn't Abe just gone down and taken him off the streets? It worried him, but he said only that Abe had told him that there were other suspects.

"But couldn't he arrest more than one person and question them all?"

Hardy shook his head. "They don't like to arrest people unless they charge them. Abe said my suspicions weren't evidence."

"Well, isn't there any? Evidence I mean."

"I don't know. It'll turn up."

"And you're sure he did it?"

They were sitting at a teak table in a round breakfast nook off the kitchen. Hardy looked past Frannie, down the hill, to a school-bus stop at the corner. A dozen or so students were milling around-mostly black kids. For a moment, Hardy wondered if his certainty about Baker might possibly have to do with his color. There were other possibilities, things that might've happened there on Rusty's barge. But the probability, the overwhelming probability, was Baker. Hardy didn't base his suspicions on Baker's race. Hell, Glitsky was half-black, and Abe was one of his best friends. He had to smile at that-"Some of my best friends..."

"Dismas?"

She saw the smile lines fade around his eyes. He came back to her, refocusing. "Sorry. Went away for a minute."

"You see something?"

"Yeah, I saw a bunch of kids down there and wondered if I was getting to be a racist. But then I thought about Baker, who is nothing like you or me or them."

Frannie had been raised by her brother Moses and had known Hardy since Moses had gotten back from Vietnam. Hardy had saved Moses' life over there. She had sat on his lap when she was twelve and thirteen, fantasizing about her brother's friend, Dismas the hero, now a policeman, handsome in his pressed blue uniform. Then Hardy had gone on to law school and become an assistant district attorney. He'd gotten married and had a child with Jane Fowler, then the boy had died and Hardy had gotten divorced, quit his job and had been around more, first drinking at Moses' place, the Little Shamrock, then becoming a bartender there.

That's when she had gotten to know him again, stopping in for a beer at the Shamrock to visit Moses. And had it not been for the "keep off" sign he had worn like a badge, she might have started fantasizing again. But instead she turned him into a litmus test. She would not date a guy twice unless he was "at least as good a man as Dismas Hardy," she told her college girlfriends. And she'd found one-Eddie Cochran-and she had married him. And lost him...

She stared across the table at the worried face, so different than Eddie's had been. Hardy's face had lines and creases and whole chapters of his life on it. She thought now it was more interesting than handsome. But he was like Eddie-or Eddie had been like him-both worried so much about doing the right thing, about good motives. Dismas would never put it that way, but Frannie knew him, and that's what it was.

Now someone was trying to kill him, and he didn't want to suspect him for the wrong reasons. She got up and went around behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders. "You and I both know you're not a racist," she said. "Not even close."

Hardy shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think of it as an issue anymore. Maybe that means I don't care about it. All I know is that Baker was an animal ten years ago, and we put him in a cage and he swore when he got out he'd kill me and Rusty, and Rusty is dead and gone the day he gets out. What would you think? How much more evidence would you need?"

She thought a moment, then leaned over and kissed him on the top of the head. "I don't think much."

"That's the right answer," Hardy said.

Abe Glitsky, returning a little late for work, parked in a space behind the Hall of Justice and went in through the back door, nodding to the pair of uniformed officers who stood by the metal detectors. He turned left by the booking station and went around to the elevators, stopping to pick up an early morning candy bar.

There were six elevators in the bank, and he waited, by his watch, three and a half minutes for the first door to open. During this time he spoke to no one and munched his candy bar, thinking about Hardy's problem, deciding he probably had one. He owed it to his friend to talk to Louis Baker-at least talk to him, see where he had been two nights ago.

It was dead quiet on the floor. For a moment he thought there must have been a sick-out or some other protest a little more formal than golf clubs. He stuck his head in Investigations and found no one around. No one.

He had been around when Dan White killed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the Hall had the same feel it had this morning. He opened the door to Homicide, passed through the small reception cubicle, which was empty, and opened the door.

The wide-open room was jammed with what looked like every investigator-homicide, robbery, white collar, vice -in the department. The chief himself, Dan Rigby, was talking in front of Lieutenant Frank Batiste's office.

No one even acknowledged Glitsky's arrival. He leaned back against the doorpost he had come through and folded his arms, listening. Rigby was speaking very quietly.

"... persons responsible for this will be let go. You got a message to give me, any of you, you come deliver it in person, or you want to memo it, that's fine, too. But this, this..." He paused and Glitsky saw the vein standing out on the side of his neck. "These insulting, demeaning, unprofessional acts not only won't be tolerated, they will be investigated with the whole weight of the department, and the perps here will be charged with criminal trespass, criminal contempt"-he was hammering the word criminal-"destruction of city property, vandalism and anything else me and anyone on my staff can think of."

Rigby stopped talking. A couple of guys had come in behind Abe, catching only the last words. One of them said "What's up?" which everyone ignored. Several people were smoking in the room, and even through the smoke Abe could detect a locker-room smell beginning to rise. People were nervous, moving in the few seats, shifting from foot to foot.

Rigby looked around the room, making eye contact with everyone who had the guts to meet it. It took a long time, and nobody else said a word.

"So," he said finally, "I'm giving you perps-and I know you're in this room-one chance this morning to own up. You come to me, to my office..." and at this a couple of people snickered. "You think it's funny?" Rigby bellowed. Even Glitsky jumped. The snickering stopped.

Rigby went back to his near whisper. "You come up to see me, wherever I am, by noon. Save the department the time and expense of finding out who you are and you'll get to keep your pension. If we're forced to launch a full-scale investigation to find you, you're out of the department, you lose your pension and if I have any clout at all with the D.A., and I do, you'll do time."

The guy behind Glitsky whispered again. "Somebody get killed? What'd I miss?"

Rigby was coming through the massed bodies in the room, following one of his aides. Glitsky moved from the doorway to let him pass. Others started streaming out behind him.

Frank Batiste had been standing next to Rigby and now motioned to Abe. He threaded his way around the outer wall, overhearing snatches of people's remarks: "Guy can't much take a joke, can he?"

Impersonating Rigby's whispered voice: "Criminal trespass, criminal criminal..."

"At least he'll get out of his office for a while, maybe see what's going on around here."

"... my office by noon. Right. Like noon some day next month."

Laughter. And some people making noises under their breath as they left the room, sounding like cluck cluck cluck.

"Jesus. What happened, Frank?"

Batiste motioned Abe inside his office and closed the door behind them. "Just tell me you didn't do this, Abe. Please tell me that."

"Do what?"

"Come on, Abe."

"Swear to God, Frank. I just walked in this morning to this. I have no clue what's going on."

Batiste searched Glitsky's face for some sign that he was lying. Perhaps satisfied, he went around his desk and sat down wearily. "Last night somebody let themselves in Rigby's office with about four chickens."

Glitsky had been to Rigby's office a couple of times. There was a rug on the floor that had been a gift to the city from the Shah of Iran; a heavy, stunning mahogany desk; several pieces of leather furniture that, Glitsky guessed, cost about what a patrolman made in a year. It took a moment for the significance of the chickens to sink in, and when it did, he smiled. "Pretty clear message," he said.

"It isn't funny," Batiste said. "The room is floating in chicken shit."

"You don't think it's funny?" Abe said. Then, at Frank's scowl, "No, sir, me neither. That sure isn't funny."

"Rigby doesn't think it's funny."

Glitsky bobbed his head. "I picked that up. I'm a trained investigator."

"Abe, your ass is in a major sling if you did this. I mean it."

Glitsky rolled his eyes and came back to his lieutenant. "Frank, what in the world makes you think I had anything to do with this? There's a hundred-odd people in this department."

"Yeah, how many of them are applying to L.A.-?"

"Thinking of applying-"

"Okay. But who just happened to use the phrase 'chicken shit' the day before this-this fiasco?"

"I think I used 'horseshit,' Frank."

"Horseshit, chicken shit, same difference."

Abe was fighting back his laughter now, wanting to get into the difference with Frank, but feeling it wasn't really a good time, maybe never would be a good time. Instead he said, "If somebody'd trotted a horse in there-"

But Batiste had had enough. "Get the fuck out of here."

Back at Glitsky's desk, Marcel Lanier was waiting. "So the judge says, 'Farmer Brown, you are charged with the most heinous, of crimes, the crime of bestiality, of having sexual intercourse with animals...' "

"Not now, Marcel," Abe said.

But Lanier continued. " 'Specifically, you are charged with carnal knowledge of horses, cows, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens.' Just then Farmer Brown holds up his hand and says, 'What kind of pervert do you think I am, your Honor? Chickens? Yuck.' "

Glitsky found the paper he'd been looking for, making sure of what he had written under 'Reason for Leaving Present Employment.' He wondered if it was strong enough.

Hardy had fond feelings for the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When his father returned from the Pacific Theater after World War II he had spent his first night back in the States in a VIP room the hotel had reserved for returning POWs. Later he and Hardy's mother had the honeymoon suite; it was possible that Hardy had been conceived there.

But the great hotel, a block north of Union Square in the heart of downtown, had not so much fallen upon hard times as it had been victimized by the boom times.

The San Francisco Hardy's father had returned to had been the City That Knew How. It had a vital port, a refreshing year-round climate, great food, neighborhoods, a tiny downtown with an accessible feel. In fact, it had much of what corporate America wanted. Men who had been in the war and passed through the city on their way home were now running businesses and did not see why they had to slave away, freeze in the winter, sweat the summers out in Cleveland or Detroit or Omaha when they could have a corner building on Russian Hill.

And these men, the first generation, knew what they had and did not much want to mess with it. San Francisco's lack of a skyline was part of its charm. The city did not need big buildings to make a big statement. If you wanted to take a moment to look around at this twinkling clear gem of a city spreading before you, you could go to the Redwood Room high atop the Fairmont Hotel. You could hit the Top of the Mark, or Coit Tower. Or, downtown, you could go to the Starlight Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Forty years ago.

Hardy sat there now, at the bar. It was just after eleven in the morning, and he looked through the streaked windows to the other Francis across the way-the Saint Francis Hotel, which dwarfed the Drake. A few blocks further north, the Bankamerica building threw its fifty-six stories' worth of shade around the surrounding ten blocks of downtown; the Transamerica Pyramid, the Embarcadero Center Towers-in their fashion as symbolic, Hardy thought, as the spires of medieval cathedrals. Just a different god.

Hardy took his coffee and walked across the faded rug of the nearly empty Starlight Room. Except for due south, which afforded a view of the shipyards and Hunter's Point, every direction was blocked by highrises.

Hardy had danced up here with Jane, had stood with his arm around her at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down all around them at their city. It had been a genteel place, a spot to touch base or regroup, out of step with the hipness of the rest of the city. Even then it had been, from Hardy's and Jane's perspective, where 'old people' of forty or fifty drank Happy Hour doubles and danced to a combo, not a rock band.

Now Hardy felt like one of the old people himself. A voice behind him said, "They gotta get to these windows."

Hardy spun around, jittery. For a moment he had almost forgotten he was being hunted. "It doesn't really matter," he said, "there's not much to see anymore."

Hector Medina was a short, squat man with a square face and thinning hair. He wore a brown business suit and black shoes, which were not shined. He showed Hardy his security-cop's badge and they went back to the bar, where Hardy had his coffee refilled and Medina ordered a glass of plain water, no ice, no lime. "

"This must be my week for cops," he said. "Memory lane."

"I'm not on the force anymore," Hardy said. "The message I left..."

"Yeah I got it. Ex-cop, cop. I'm an ex-cop. I still feel like a cop."

"You're chief of security here, aren't you?"

Medina coughed. "Yeah. Some Japanese tour lady loses her purse and I get to investigate and find it under her bed. A farmer from Kansas finds out the hooker he picked up is a guy and has a fit. Tough cases." He sipped at his water. "Shit, what am I talking about? It's a good job. But don't mistake it for real police work." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "So how can I help you?"

Hardy wasn't sure how Medina could help him. It wasn't entirely clear to him why he'd even come down here, but it was better than sitting at Frannie's with a loaded gun and a head full of questions. He'd thought he might as well get some of them answered. "It's about Rusty Ingraham."

Medina picked up his glass again, then put it down. "You know, I had a feeling."

"Why's that?"

"You know Clarence Raines?"

The name sounded familiar but Hardy shook his head.

"The department is fucking him over. Him and his partner."