I said, �I don�t like divorce work, Joe. You know that. The only time I�ll do it is when I need money. And right now I don�t need money.�

�Kay doesn�t want a divorce,� DeFalco said.

�Same kind of dirty job.�

�You won�t have to take photos or make tapes or anything like that. Find out who the woman is, that�s essentially it.�

�Essentially?�

�Well, there is a minor complication.�

�There are always complications, and they�re usually not so minor. What�s this one?�

�I�d better let her tell you.�

�Uh-huh. So I find out the woman�s identity � then what? Kay confronts her?�

�She�s not violent, if that�s what you�re thinking.�

I sighed. �Talk it over woman-to-woman, appeal to the dolly�s sense of decency and fair play. Right?�

�Something like that.�

�And what if the girlfriend won�t give him up?�

�Kay�s at the end of her rope. If she can�t put an end to the affair herself, she�ll walk.�

�Yeah.�

�No, she will. You don�t know her; I do.�

I thought: Nobody knows anybody, not really. We don�t even know ourselves. But I didn�t say it.

DeFalco sat slouched in the client�s chair across my desk, watching me with his shrewd reporter�s eyes. He doesn�t look like a newspaperman; nor, for that matter, does he look Italian. He looks like Pat O�Brien playing Father Jerry in Angels with Dirty Faces. People tell him things they wouldn�t tell anybody else. Friends also turn to him for favors in a time of need. And when that happens, Joe being lazy and something of a buck-passer, his first inclination is to dump the whole thing, favor included, into the lap of another friend. In this case, me.

�Well?� he said.

�No,� I said.

�Come on, she�s a nice lady. No bull. I�ve known her since we were radicals together at Berkeley.�

�You were never a radical.�

�In spirit I was,� he said. �Be a mensch, will you? She�s hurting, bad, and she needs help and there�s nothing much I can do for her. It�s your kind of work.�

�Sure it is.�

�You picked the profession, pal. Nobody forced you to become a private eye.�

I sighed again. If this were a comic strip � and my life felt like one sometimes � one of those word balloons would come out of my ear in the next panel and the word printed in it would be sucker! I said, �All right. I�ll talk to her. No promises beyond that.�

He gave me his wise Pat O�Brien smile along with Kay Runyon�s address and telephone number. I wasn�t kidding him, the smile said. It also said I wasn�t kidding myself and we both knew it, didn�t we? Right on both counts, the smug bastard.

At the door he paused and took a look around the half-empty loft, the way he had when he�d first come in. Don�t say it, Joe, I thought; you got this far without saying anything, just let it go. But he didn�t let it go, not my old pal, Mr. Sensitive. He said, �This place is too big for a one-man operation. You ought to take in another partner. Or get yourself a smaller layout.�

I kept my mouth shut.

�Any plans along those lines?�

�No,� I said.

�Think about it,� he said. Then he said, �You hear from Eberhardt since he moved out?�

This time, teeth clenched, I shook my head.

�Me neither. I guess he�s cut off a lot of his old friends.�

No comment.

�I hear he�s not doing too well. That what you hear?�

No comment, damn it.

�Well, he made his own bed,� DeFalco said. �Still, I�d hate to see him go down the tubes. You�d take him back, wouldn�t you? If he can�t hack it on his own and comes begging?�

Enough. �Get out of here,� I said. �Go rake some muck at city hall.�

�You don�t want to talk about it, huh? Eberhardt?�

�Good-bye, Joe.�

�Sure, I know how you feel. I�m on your side. Call me after you talk to Kay.�

�Good-bye, Joe.�

He went. And a little while later, so did I.

At five-fifteen that evening I was legally parked at a meter on Second Street, between Brannan and Townsend. It had taken me twenty-five minutes of cruising around, and a little fast maneuvering to ace out an irate woman in a Cadillac who also wanted the space � and at that I considered myself fortunate. I�d been prepared to do a lot of hovering and/or park illegally to maintain surveillance on the parking garage just down the block. The garage was where Victor Runyon kept his car � a maroon �91 BMW, his wife had told me � while he was in his office around the corner on Brannan.

This was an area of the city that had changed radically over the past couple of decades. Once its streets and narrow alleys and old brick and stone and wood buildings had been home to light industry, to ship�s chandleries and marine supply outfits that catered to San Francisco�s now-moribund shipping trade. In those days it had been known as South of the Slot, �slot� being old-timer�s parlance for Market Street. As the port declined, so did the district. In the sixties and early seventies, some of the industrial outfits had closed down or moved out, and the area had degenerated into an adjunct to Skid Row: flophouses, cheap bars, empty buildings and warehouses, heavy drug use in and around South Park. Then the city fathers, in a rare exercise of good judgment, had stepped in and started an aggressive urban renewal program; and farsighted developers, who had correctly predicted the real estate boom of the mid-seventies, had bought up property and begun tearing down some of the worst of the derelicts and putting up new buildings, and refurbishing the �quaint� old brick warehouses into gentrified office and showroom space. Clothiers and people involved in the interior design trade moved in; so did architects and artists and food and entertainment entrepreneurs. Now what you had was a burgeoning San Francisco version of New York�s SoHo, replete with a similar trendy name: SoMa, short for South of Market. By day it was a diverse �mixed-use� jumble of printing outfits, auto repair shops, social service agencies, pawnshops, transient hotels and senior citizens� residences peacefully coexisting with art galleries, factory-outlet clothing and jewelry stores, gourmet food and wine shops, and a variety of white-collar offices. By night it was a racy Bohemian blend of restaurants, comedy clubs, and gay leather bars and straight dancing clubs along Folsom Street�s so-called Miracle Mile.

I�m not a big advocate of change, but in this case I approved of the South of Market metamorphosis. I could remember the good old days when the area had had a crusty seaman�s flavor, but I could also remember the bad old days when it had been the domain of crumbling buildings and crumbling humanity. Mindless change � the tearing down of the functional old in favor of the glittery, too-often impermanent new � is one thing; reclamation and self-preservation by surgery is another. South of the Slot was dead. Long live SoMa.

The streets were crowded at the moment, with people leaving the offices and galleries and showrooms for the day. I couldn�t have picked Victor Runyon out of the crowd streaming past, even though his wife had provided me with a clear color photo of him; but I didn�t have to try. He rarely left his office until five-thirty and usually not until six, she�d told me � a pattern he had evidently maintained even while in the throes of his affair with Nedra. Maybe so, but where stakeouts are concerned I prefer not to leave anything to chance. While hunting this parking space I�d called his office from my mobile phone, feigning a wrong number. He was there.

I took his photo out again and had another look at it. Handsome guy: fair-skinned, though with brown hair that was on the curly side; ascetic features, soft mouth, gentle brown eyes under abnormally long lashes. There was intelligence and sensitivity in the face, but there was also weakness. I wondered again what went on inside the head of a man like him; how, if his wife was right about him, he could have emotionally paralyzed himself. I understood obsessive-compulsive behavior well enough; I had a mild case of it myself, where my job was concerned. But I recognized the symptoms when they appeared, had always been able to control them. A man who was so weak as to allow an obsession to rule his emotions and then to undermine the foundations of his life was alien to me.

Five-thirty. The crowds and the traffic on Townsend and on Second were thinning. It had been a clear, cool day, and now the sunlight was softening into a mellow gold where it lay in angles and patches on the streets and against buildings. Down along the Embarcadero, now that the remains of the earthquake-damaged Embarcadero Freeway had finally been torn down, that soft gold light on the bay, on the old pier sheds and the restored eminence of the Ferry Building, would be making the tourists sing the city�s praises. The coming night would be nice, too, one where lights and colors stand out in sharp relief against a darkness that seems as hard as black glass. From the balcony of Kerry�s apartment in Diamond Heights, you�d have a miles-wide view as far east as Mount Diablo.

That was where I wanted to be tonight, up there with Kerry. I hadn�t seen much of her lately and I was lonesome. But given the fact that she�d been in conference when I called Bates and Carpenter shortly before five, and her secretary had said she had another meeting scheduled for six, my prospects were poor. Creative director for a small but aggressive ad agency is more than a full-time job; it�s a commitment that takes precedence over just about everything, including a normal personal life. I resented that, but I couldn�t argue with it. It was the same sort of commitment I�d made to my own profession a long time ago. Workaholics, Kerry and me. Chafing at the harness sometimes, sure, but knowing we wouldn�t be worth a damn unless we were wearing it.

Six o�clock coming up. Not too many pedestrians now and I paid closer attention to the ones that passed on this side of the street, approaching from Brannan. Victor Runyon finally showed at three minutes after the hour: alone, walking briskly with a stiff-backed posture, eyes straight ahead. Tan gabardine suit, no tie, light tan trench coat unbuttoned and flapping like wings in the thin evening breeze. I shifted on the seat to get a better look at him as he passed. No expression on his ascetic face. Man with things on his mind... man with a purpose for tonight? I watched him enter the parking garage; then I started the car and backed up a little, to make sure I could get out of the space easily when the time came.

It was not long before the maroon BMW appeared. Runyon was at the wheel; I could see him clearly when he braked before turning south toward Townsend. I eased out behind him.

West on Townsend, driving neither fast nor slow, changing lanes only when it was necessary. I dropped back just far enough to be certain I could make every light he did. Right on Duboce, Duboce to Market, up Market to Twin Peaks. If he�d been going home to Ashbury Heights he�d have then taken Divisadero, or maybe Clayton halfway up; he didn�t turn on either street.

I moved up closer to him as we neared the top of Market, where it becomes Portola Drive. Traffic was heavy and I didn�t want to lose him. He had no idea he was being followed; when you�ve been at the game as long as I have, you can tell when a subject is suspicious. Man with a purpose, all right � totally focused on getting to where he was headed. I could ride his bumper all the way, I thought, and still he wouldn�t have a clue that I was there.

Beyond the big intersection at O�Shaughnessy, he turned left and swung around and back into the Tower shopping center. Going after groceries or liquor, maybe... but I was wrong about that. He parked in front of a florist shop, hurried inside while I hovered illegally in the vicinity, and reappeared a few minutes later with two huge, green-paper-wrapped bouquets of flowers.

From the shopping center he drove back onto Portola and then turned downhill past the Youth Guidance Center and Laguna Honda Hospital. Another turn on Clarendon, a broad avenue that winds along the south side of Mount Sutro above one of the city�s reservoirs. Near the top of Clarendon he swung left into the moderately expensive residential district called Forest Hill.

The streets up there were narrow and twisty, all the houses built along the west sides to take advantage of sweeping views of the ocean, the hills and the flatlands of the city�s western perimeter. The land on the right sides was too steep to build on; thick forest, dominated by eucalyptus, provided a rustic backdrop and the false illusion of country privacy. Attractive part of San Francisco to call home, as long as you didn�t subscribe to the theory that a catastrophic earthquake was going to hammer this old town someday. The houses � smallish, brick or stucco over wood, each with a two-car garage � were all on steep ground, and while there was bedrock up here, there was also plenty of loose topsoil; and too many homes had been built on wooden pilings instead of on concrete foundations dug into the hillside. A big enough shake, centered on the San Andreas Fault nearby, and everything on this hill could conceivably wind up in one disastrous heap on the flats below.

Crestmont was the street Runyon wanted, the dead-end section beyond Devonshire. Secluded little pocket here, very woodsy, hidden away from the eyes and minds of 99 percent of the population. The houses and lots were larger and not quite as uniformly nondescript: wood-shingled or angularly modernistic with too much glass, set back far enough from the street so that most had small fenced-in decks or gardens in front.

There was parking along the right side of the street, where the woods crowded down close against brick and concrete retaining walls. Runyon slowed, pulled his BMW to the curb opposite a wood-shingled house stained a dark red. I drove on past him without slowing down and without looking his way. At the circle where the street dead-ended I turned around and came back far enough to see him getting out of his car with the two bouquets of flowers. Then I parked, too, about fifty yards away.

The dark-red house was his final destination. He opened a gate in the high wooden fence in front, using a key, and disappeared through it. I sat quiet for five minutes; he didn�t come back out. I quit the car then and walked over there, taking my time, like a man enjoying a casual stroll in his own neighborhood.

The house didn�t look large from the street, but it was built on two levels. A wooden staircase ran down along the north side, to a landing and a door that would open into the lower level. Through the gap there that separated the red house from its northside neighbor, I could see Ocean Beach and the Pacific beyond; the westering sun made the water look like something out of a fiery biblical prophecy. The fence in front was too high to see over, but there were chinks between the gate boards that gave me glimpses of potted shrubs, an agave cactus in a wooden tub, a glass-topped table. Affixed to the gate were three block numerals made out of redwood: 770.

On the south side of the fence there was a driveway that led into a smallish two-car garage. I paused there, pretended to stretch, and tried to determine if the garage was occupied. Couldn�t do it; the angle was wrong and the door was window-less. Not that it mattered much either way.

I walked most of the distance to Devonshire, still taking my time. Nothing had changed at the red house when I came back past it. I sat in the car for another five minutes, to make the surveillance a full half-hour in length. Victor Runyon was still inside when I finally went away from there.

In the morning I ran the background check � and a credit check � on Nedra Adams Merchant. She turned out to be thirty-three years of age, divorced, and in fact a fairly prosperous graphics designer who owned and operated Illustrative Image Designs, Inc. Fancy name for a one-woman outfit that specialized in business brochures, convention and sales-promotion posters, and magazine layout. Her business address was different from her home address � a number on Third Street that put it in the SoMa area, within a couple of blocks of the building in which Victor Runyon had his office. That was no surprise. Architect and graphics designer meet somewhere in the area, caf� or restaurant or maybe one of the showrooms, strike up a conversation, find out they have things in common personally and professionally, one thing leads to another... yeah. Affairs were all so damned cut-and-dried once you got past the emotional baggage and down to the basics. Hell, most things in life were. Emotions are what make the human animal the complex mess he is.

The house at 77��Crestmont had gone to Nedra as part of her divorce settlement five years ago. Her ex-husband, Walter Merchant, had shared it with her for the five years previous. He was an attorney. It was her first and evidently only marriage and there had been no children.

Her credit rating had been excellent since the divorce � until approximately four months ago. Then, for a period of three months, she had quit paying her bills. Her gas, electricity, and water had all been shut off at the end of July for nonpayment; in early August she�d ponied up the full amounts owed plus penalties and the utilities were now back in service. Last October she�d bought a new Mercedes 540XL, paying one third of the purchase price of more than fifty thousand dollars as a cash down payment. All payments on time until May, then no payments until the first of this month, just in time to forestall a repossession order being issued by her bank.

Again until May, Nedra Merchant had been an active user of half a dozen different credit cards, with a history of prompt payment of the total amount on each card each month. Over the last three and a half months she hadn�t used any of the cards even once. Nor had she paid her April Visa, MasterCard, and American Express bills until early August. Again, then, all payments to each company in full.

What all of this seemed to mean was that she�d had some sort of sudden financial crisis in May that had lasted for at least three months and to some extent might still be going on. It would have had to be pretty devastating to wipe out any savings she might have had and to take up so much of her income that she could no longer afford to pay even her utility bills. None of my business what the crisis was unless Victor Runyon was somehow involved. Supporting her since the financial crash? Gave her a lump sum at the end of last month, loan or gift, so she could keep herself afloat? Kay Runyon hadn�t mentioned any unaccounted-for expenditures; but it was possible he had cash resources that his wife knew nothing about.

How about Nedra Merchant�s ex-husband? Did he know anything?

I opened the Yellow Pages to Attorneys. Walter Merchant was listed, with an address on Eucalyptus Drive, under the subheading of Personal Injury & Property Damage. He even had a little boxed ad:

Uh-huh, I thought. I wondered if he was one of the breed of attorney who will take on any case, no matter how ethically marginal, if they see an edge or a loophole or just the bare-bones potential for a fat settlement; the shysters who clog up the court dockets with their money-grubbing briefs, who could not care less if real justice is done, because their only interest in the law is how it can best serve them. More and more of that ilk every year, it seems. Used to be that even the worst of them kept their ambulance-chasing out of the public eye, but this is the age of the Big Hype and the Big Buck; what chance do such abstract concepts as professional ethics and integrity stand against rampaging capitalism? Nowadays the personal-injury boys and girls are all over the media, particularly in saturation TV ads in which they and their �satisfied clients� ballyhoo their dubious accomplishments like pitchmen peddling snake oil. �Joe Smith, the dirt bike lawyer, got me $350,000 even though the police report said the accident was my fault and I was charged with felony drunk driving.� Was it any wonder there was so much lawyer-bashing these days? Q. How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A. Two. One to stick his finger in the socket and the other to file suit against the electric company.

But attorneys aren�t the only breed to take their money-loving ways before the public, up close and personal. Televangelists started the trend and in some markets are still flourishing; now any number of other professional groups are taking up the advertising cudgel, too, including one I�d have liked to believe was above that kind of hucksterism � the private investigator. Not long ago I�d heard about one licensed P.I., back East somewhere, who had made and marketed a videotape called �Do You Know Who You�re Dating?� aimed at people who want to check out potential spouses or housemates before they get too involved. On his video the detective tells you how to identify a philanderer and/or fortune hunter, how to spy on someone, and � naturally � how to go about hiring the �right kind� of private investigator.

Maybe one of these nights, I thought, I�ll turn on the tube and there Eberhardt will be, wearing one of his cheap suits and Goodwill ties, puffing on a pipe and flogging his services in that stiff, humorless way of his. �Hello. My name is Eberhardt. I am the sole owner and operator of Eberhardt Investigative Services. My offices are located in a crummy building on Eighteenth and Valencia, but they�re only temporary. I specialize in all types of cases and I guarantee results. I do all my own work � I don�t need anybody for anything. I�m the best, the smartest, and someday I�ll be the biggest dick in San Francisco.�

But it wasn�t funny.

It wasn�t funny at all.

Lawrence April was black.

Merchant hadn�t mentioned this fact, which told me something good about Walter Merchant. There was no question that he hated April, but the hatred was strictly personal; it had no racial overtones of any kind. Which made Merchant that embraceable rarity in today�s society, a person who was wholly unbigoted, truly color-blind. Shyster lawyer or not, this elevated him several notches in my estimation.

April�s offices were downtown on New Montgomery � Cooley and April, Investment Consultants. I figured I would have difficulty getting an audience with him if I used the more or less straightforward approach I had with Merchant, so I went in with a lie ready about being in dire need of financial advice. That wouldn�t have gotten me in to see April either; I knew that as soon as I saw the plush decor, the expensive artwork on the walls. This was a high-rolling outfit. Potential clients wearing seventy-five-dollar Ross Dress for Less suits and a tie without a pin or a tack (this morning I�d been unable to find the gold one Kerry had presented to me last Christmas) would be given the gate as fast as a street person looking for a handout.

The only reason I got to talk to April at all was that he happened to be in the anteroom when I entered, having a discussion with a brittle-looking blond receptionist. As I came up to her desk I heard her call him Mr. April. So I switched gears to the direct approach and said to him, �Excuse me. Are you Lawrence April?�

He looked up. An expression of vague irritation crossed his face when he saw that I wasn�t anybody he knew or was likely to want to know. He bore a small resemblance to Harry Belafonte, although his features were more angular and his hair longer than Belafonte had worn it at the same age. Fortyish, lean, with a sensual mouth and hot dark eyes. Self-assured and impeccably dressed in a three-piece Armani suit. He�d have been a good subject for a Forbes or Business Week profile on the successful black businessman. For all I knew, one had already been done on him.

�Yes?�

�I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time.�

�I�m afraid not. I have a full schedule today. If you�ll state your business to Ms. Green, perhaps she��

�It�s a private matter,� I said.

�Oh?�

�Concerning Nedra Adams Merchant.�

It was as if I�d driven a bolt through his neck and down the length of his spine; his body reacted with the same seizurelike stiffening. His eyes seemed to ignite, then to glow like drops of molten glass. A man prone to sudden rages, for a fact. You could see the turbulence working in him, the struggle for control of it that was going on at the same time.

He said, �Who are you?� in a dead-cold voice.

I handed him one of my cards. He read it, looked at me again with something close to hatred. Then he put the card in his pocket and said to the receptionist, �If you�ll just make that call, Andrea.� To me he said, �Five minutes, no more,� and turned on his heel and went through a door and along a hallway beyond. I trailed after him.

His private office was considerably more opulent than Walter Merchant�s, complete with a small mahogany wet bar. The carpet and the upholstered chairs were an elegant silver-gray. On one wall I noted a framed diploma that said he had an M.B.A. from Stanford. On his desk, angled so that I had a clear look at it from where I stood, was a gold-framed photograph of an attractive African-American woman and two male preteens.

April didn�t invite me to sit down; he didn�t sit down himself. As soon as he shut the door he moved in on me until his nose was about six inches from mine. I don�t like my space invaded, particularly in an aggressive fashion, but I let him get away with it. I was not about to give ground and I didn�t want to make the situation any more unpleasant by crowding him.

He said between his teeth, �Who sent you here?�

�Nobody sent me, Mr. April. I��

�Five years. It�s been five years.�

�What has?�

Veins pulsed on his temples, on his eyelids. �What do you want?�

�To ask you a few questions about Nedra Merchant.�

�What kind of questions?�

�Pertaining to a matter I�m investigating��

�What matter? Whom are you investigating?�

�Not you, Mr. April.�

�Nedra?�

�Among others.�

�If you try to drag my name into any sort of scandal...�

�I don�t do divorce work, Mr. April, if that�s what you mean. I�m a reputable investigator and have been for more than twenty-five years. If you doubt that, I�ll give you half a dozen references and you can check them out before you say another word to me. Fair enough?�

His eyes remained fixed on mine, but the heat in them was cooling. His face lost some of its blood-swell. After ten seconds or so, he abruptly backed off and ran a long-fingered hand over his face.

�I suppose,� he said, and stopped, and then went on with it, �I suppose you know all the sordid details of my relationship with Nedra.�

�I�m not interested in sordid details, Mr. April.�

�But you do know all about it.�

�I�ve been told some things.�

�She was the biggest mistake of my life,� he said. �I don�t like to be reminded of it. You can understand that, can�t you?�

�Yes, I can. If you�ll just answer some nonthreatening questions, I�ll go away and you can forget about her again. About me too.�

He moved away from me, to the wall where the framed diploma hung. He appeared to stare at it for about thirty seconds, but I doubted that he was actually seeing it. Then he turned and came back to face me again, not too close this time.

�What is it you want to know?�

�To begin with, how long it�s been since you�ve seen or talked to Nedra Merchant.�

�Nearly five years. When I came to my senses after the incident with that shyster husband of hers... you know about that?�

�Yes.�

�In explicit detail, no doubt, if you�ve spoken to him. As I expect you have.� When I didn�t respond to that he said, �All right. Once I accepted the fact that I�d made an utter fool of myself over Nedra Merchant, I vowed never to have anything to do with her again. For my sake, for the sake of my family, and for the sake of my business partner and clients.�

�And you haven�t broken that vow.�

�I have not.�

�Have you kept tabs on her, on her career?�

�No.�

�Don�t have any idea how her graphics design business is doing.�

�No.�

�Suppose I told you she�s had serious financial problems in recent months.�

�I�d tell you I�m sorry to hear it, the same as I�d be sorry to hear anyone is in financial difficulty.�

�What if she came to you for advice? Or a loan?�

�She didn�t.�

�It was a hypothetical question.�

�I would refuse to see her. Under no circumstances would I offer my professional services to Nedra or loan her so much as a penny.�

I nodded. �Were there other men in her life while you were seeing her?�

�Her ex-husband.�

�Other than him.�

�No.�

�You�re certain of that?�

�I would have known,� he said.

�But you weren�t her first extramarital affair.�

�No. She admitted that to me. But she was forced into accepting the attentions of other men.�

�Forced by who? Walter Merchant?�

�His stifling treatment of her, yes. It wasn�t something she was proud of. Why do you suppose she was seeing a therapist?�

�I didn�t know she was seeing a therapist.�

�For some time before I met her.�

�Man or woman?�

�Man.�

�Do you recall his name?�

�Duncan? Something like that.�

�Offices downtown here?�

�I don�t remember where his offices were.�

�Did she feel he was helping her?�

�She seemed to. In my opinion he was a crutch.�

�You�re not a believer in long-term therapy?�

�No.�

�Did she ever talk to you about her former lovers?�

�Hardly.�

�Never let even one name slip?�

�No.�

�And you didn�t ask?�

�I didn�t want to know.�

�So you wouldn�t have any idea who she�s been involved with since the end of your affair.�

�No. Nor do I care.�

�Do you know a health club employee named Glen Rigsby?�

�No.�

�How about an architect, Victor Runyon?�

�No.�

The names didn�t seem to sting him any, as they might have if he, like Merchant, was carrying a torch. That strengthened my impression that he�d been telling me the truth.

I asked, �How long did your affair last?�

�A little over four months.�

�You must have gotten to know her fairly well in that length of time.� The look on his face made me add, �Or did you?�

�Not as well as I thought I knew her,� April said. �What kind of food and music and shows she liked, what gave her pleasure, what made her laugh and cry. But not what she was like down deep inside.�

�The real Nedra Merchant.�

�Yes. Glimpses, that was all. Just... glimpses.�

�How would you characterize her?�

�As a good person, basically. Kind, generous.�

�Caring, loving?�

�To a point.�

�What point is that?�

�The point when things... when I allowed matters to get completely out of hand. When I told her I was ready to throw away my marriage and my family for her. Then she rebelled.�

�Rebelled?�

�She became cold, distant. Possessiveness turned her off, she said. She�d had enough of that from her husband. Once she was free of him, she wouldn�t permit herself to be tied down again to anyone.�

�So she�s the one who ended your relationship.�

�Yes. I was bitter at the time, but now I understand that she had my best interests at heart, as well as her own. Forcing me out of her life was an act of kindness.�

�Then you don�t think it would have worked for the two of you in the long run.�

�No. Not anymore I don�t.�

�Why not?�

�Many reasons. Race, temperament, attitude, the fact that I really didn�t know her and she didn�t know me. What we had... it was physical, not spiritual.�

�One person I talked to thinks she�s obsessed with men. That she�s a control freak who uses them for her own amusement, then casts them aside. Would you say there�s any truth in that?�

April frowned. �No, I wouldn�t. She isn�t that way.�

�Isn�t a controlling personality? Doesn�t encourage her lovers to become obsessed with her?�

�Absolutely not.�

�But you were obsessed with her.�

�The fault was mine, not hers. I suppose the person who defamed her character is Walter Merchant?�

I neither confirmed nor denied it.

�Have you met Nedra? Talked to her at any length?�

�No,� I said, �not yet.�

�When you do,� April said, �you�ll see the truth. She�s not some sort of modern-day Circe, for God�s sake. She is a good, warm person who...� He couldn�t seem to find the rest of what he wanted to say. He finished lamely, or maybe not so lamely, �She�s innocent.�

Maybe he believed that, but I didn�t. She might not be the wicked sorceress of Walter Merchant�s depiction; she might even be the basically good person who lived in Lawrence April�s memory. But whatever Nedra Adams Merchant really was, she damned well wasn�t innocent.

It must have been a slow day at TRW: one of the reps called back after only forty-five minutes with the information I�d requested. The credit reports on Lawrence April and Walter Merchant told me nothing much; both had excellent ratings and a long history of paying their various bills on time. The one piece of potentially useful news concerned a man named Glenford Grigsby, who lived in Oakland and who was currently employed by an outfit called Health House in Emeryville.

Grigsby�s credit rating wasn�t so hot. Neither was his past employment record. He�d worked for nine different health and athletic clubs over the past fifteen years, as a masseur, a gym attendant, and an �exercise therapist,� whatever that was. One of the clubs he�d worked for, five years ago, was a SoMa establishment called The New You that had been located on Hawthorne Street within easy walking distance of Nedra Merchant�s former office. I hadn�t visited The New You yesterday because it wasn�t there anymore; it had gone out of business in 1989.

After the TRW rep and I were done with each other, I got Health House�s number from directory assistance and called it and asked the man who answered if Glenford Grigsby was working today. Affirmative. It was a quarter to three by my watch; the Bay Bridge wouldn�t be too crowded yet with homeward-bound commuters. If I hustled I could still get over to Emeryville, talk to Grigsby, and get back into the city before the big rush got under way.

Victor Runyon was back at 77��Crestmont that evening.

And this time he wasn�t alone.

I drove up there because I had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. A long, solitary evening in my flat was definitely out; I didn�t feel like a show or any of the city�s other nighttime attractions. I hung around the office until after six-thirty, finishing up the paperwork. Then, when the rest of the building�s tenants went home and the night silence closed down, I locked up and got my car and headed for Forest Hill.

They were out in front of Nedra Merchant�s red-shingled house, Runyon and a husky, balding man in workman�s garb. The gate in the redwood fence was open and Runyon stood in the opening, as if blocking access; the other man faced him in a flat-footed, belligerent stance. They were arguing about something. Heatedly. I drove by, turned at the dead-end circle, and came back. Runyon�s BMW was parked behind an off-white Ford Econoline van; I veered to a stop in front of the van, shut off the engine. Good vantage point: I was less than thirty yards away.

The two of them were still arguing. I had my window down but I couldn�t make out what they were saying; the wind was stronger up here tonight and noisy in the high tension wires and the woods above and below. The balding man was becoming more and more agitated, waving his arms to emphasize what he was saying, his nose about three inches from Runyon�s. Runyon stood his ground, shaking his head in a helpless kind of way.

This is going to get ugly, I thought. I put my hand on the door release � and in that instant it got ugly.

The balding guy shoved Runyon without warning, a two-handed blow to the chest that slammed him hard into the gate. Runyon bounced back at him like a ball rebounding, his hands coming up in front of his face. He didn�t want to fight; the movement of his hands was defensive. The other man didn�t read it that way, or didn�t want to read it that way. He hit Victor Runyon in the face, closed fist this time, and knocked him backward and down inside the fence. Then he went charging in after him, out of my sight.

I was free of the car by then, but it took me a few seconds to run between it and the van and then across the street and through the gate. Christ! Runyon was still down, on his back moaning, the balding guy straddling him and punching him with both hands in a kind of frenzy. There was blood all over Runyon�s face, flecks of it flying from a smashed nose to splatter the redwood decking around his head.

I caught the balding guy�s shoulder, jerked backward. No good. He was ox-strong and half crazed; he shrugged me off and kept right on hitting Runyon, making a series of snorting sounds like an animal in a rut. To get him loose I had to go to one knee, wrap an arm around his neck and then heave and twist him backward, over on his side. As soon as I did that he started fighting me, or trying to. He couldn�t do any damage because I was bigger, heavier, and had enough leverage to keep most of his body pinned under mine.

The one eye I could see was glazed and rolling at first, like a blue marble under a film of plastic; then it regained focus, and some of the straining wildness went out of him. He said in a choked voice, �Goddamn you, let me go.�

�Not until you cool down.�

�I�ll break your fuggin� head.�

�You think so? Maybe I�ll break yours instead.�

The one eye glared at me for three or four seconds. Then the heat in it died, all at once like a light going off, and he went limp under me. �All right,� he said with his mouth against the deck. �All right. All right.�

I held on to him awhile longer, to make sure he had his wits back and wasn�t going to give me any more trouble. He did and he wasn�t; he stayed limp when I finally eased my grip. I shoved off him, up onto my feet, and backpedaled a couple of paces. Victor Runyon was still sprawled on his back, still moaning; his face was lacerated in half a dozen places, his nose bent toward his right cheekbone. Spiderwebs of blood covered the lower half of his face, the fronts of his blue shirt and blue sport jacket.

�Proud of yourself?� I asked the balding guy.

�He had it coming.� The words were muffled; on one knee now, he was sucking the bruised and torn knuckles of his right hand.

�You might have killed him.�

�Might of had that coming too.�

�Is that right? Why? Who are you?�

�Who the hell are you, slick?�

�A friend of Runyon�s.�

�Yeah? Or Nedra�s, huh? Another of hers.�

�Her what? Boyfriends? Is that what you are?�

�Asshole,� he said.

Neither of us had anything for the other; we were just wasting breath. I watched him get slowly to his feet. He was one of those people whose age is difficult to gauge: he might have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. He had a blocky, ridged face, but with skin that was red as a radish and baby-smooth except for pale, downy brows � as if some curious chemistry had produced an infant that resembled a fully grown adult male.

What was left of his hair was tobacco-colored and as thin and wispy as a dust mouse.

He said, �Hell with it. For now,� and swung away abruptly through the gate.

I went after him. There was nobody else out there, nobody visible at any of the neighboring houses. It seemed as though the three of us had made a lot of noise, but it always does when you�re in the midst of something violent. The wind was an effective muffler, too, this high on a hillside. Even if any of the neighbors had been alerted, I thought, they probably wouldn�t do anything about it. Hear no evil, see no evil.

The balding man was halfway across the street. I called, �Maybe I ought to notify the cops,� to see what his reaction would be.

Not much. �Go ahead,� he said without slowing or turning.

�Aggravated assault. That�s a felony.�

No response.

�So is making threatening telephone calls.�

Another bust. He was at the van now; he yanked open the door, hauled himself inside. The engine revved, the gears ground, and he came away from the curb in a fast, tight U-turn, the van�s front bumper scraping the front bumper of my car. There was not enough room for him to complete the turn in the street; he bounced his wheels up onto the sidewalk, forcing me to jump back out of the way. With one hand he got the van straightened, with the other he gave me the finger. Five seconds later he was gone around the uphill turn.

Hell with it. For now.

Yeah. For now. But I�d see him again � soon.

I have good vision, and there was still plenty of daylight on the street: I�d gotten the van�s license number before he�d made me jump.

I wrote the number down in my notebook: insurance against forgetting it or misremembering or transposing any of the letters or numerals. When I came back through the gate I saw that Victor Runyon had raised himself into a sitting position; but his eyes had a painglaze on them and it was obvious that he still wasn�t tracking very well. I moved past him to the front door, tried the latch. Locked. I pushed the bell, kept my finger on it for about ten seconds. No answer. If Nedra Merchant was in there, she wasn�t dealing with any of this little drama.

Runyon was trying to get to his feet. I helped him, with one arm around his waist for support. �Let me have your key, Mr. Runyon.�

�Key?� he said.

�To the house. So we can go inside.�

It didn�t seem to register. So I patted his jacket pockets, found his keycase and fished it out; he didn�t seem to know what I was doing. I walked him to the door, tried two keys before I located one that unlocked it, and took him inside.

Hallway. Closed door to the garage on the left, staircase to the lower floor on the right; beyond the staircase, a smallish formal living room opened at the front, dappled now with sunlight. At the rear on that side, a dining room. Kitchen straight ahead. Another room � probably a family room � was closed off from the hall and from the kitchen by sliding panel doors.

Silence.

A faint musty odor, as if the place had been closed up a long time. Or not cleaned in a long time.

I took Runyon into the sunlit kitchen. Fine ocean view from here, and a wide balcony across the entire rear width of the house so that you could sit outside on nice days to enjoy it. I got Runyon into one of the two chairs at a dinette table. Found a dishtowel under the sink and ran water over it and then used it to sponge some of the blood off his face. He winced and mewled a little when I touched his broken nose. Otherwise he just sat there, neither helping nor hindering me.

Cut on his upper lip, cut on one cheek, neither one deep or long enough to require stitches. Some bruises and abrasions. The only real damage was to his nose, the source of most of the blood. He�d be all right. Physically, at least.

I opened the refrigerator, looking for ice. There was nothing in it. Nothing in the freezer compartment, nothing in the regular compartment � as bare as if it had just been delivered by Sears.

What the hell?

I rinsed out the bloody towel in cold water, took it to Runyon. He looked up at me blankly, like a child. �For your nose,� I said, and he nodded and held the towel against his face.

There was an uneasy feeling inside me now. I went into the hallway, opened the door to the garage. Empty. I shut the door, started for the stairs, changed my mind and walked over and opened the sliding door to the closed-off room adjacent to the kitchen.

It was like entering a church. Or a funeral parlor.

Two layers of drapes were closed against the lowering sun; the room � family room, as I�d guessed � was full of dark-light and shadows, the shadows given a grotesque, shimmery animation by the unstable glow from a pair of burning candles. So Runyon hadn�t just arrived when the balding guy showed up and braced him; he�d been here awhile, in this room. The candles were on a heavy marble-topped coffee table, flanking something oddly shaped that I couldn�t identify from the doorway. Something that contained a lot of flowers: the damp, sweet smell of them was cloying in the airless space.

Carefully, with the little hairs prickling on my neck, I crossed the darkened room. Two candles, tall and black, in sculpted silver holders. The odd-shaped arrangement between them was a kind of bower: red and yellow roses, carnations, three or four other varieties � the bouquets Runyon had bought last night, all of them recently sprayed with water to keep them fresh. And in the midst of the flowers, an eight-by-ten photograph of a woman in an expensive silver frame. I leaned down to it. Dark, slender woman in some kind of Asian outfit, although she herself didn�t appear to be Asian; waist-length dark hair, sultry smile. Across the front, in a bold hand, was written: To darling Vic. My love, Nedra.

A shrine.

That was the only word for what I was looking at here � a queer, homemade shrine.

I took myself out of there, stumbling once on the carpet in my haste. Runyon hadn�t moved from the dinette table; his eyes were closed, the wet towel tight against his nose and turning crimson again. I gripped his shoulder, shook him gently. Shook him again, harder, until his eyes snapped open and lifted to meet mine. They were focused now; he was more or less aware of externals.

�Where�s Nedra?� I asked him.

His head wagged brokenly.

�Vic, where�s Nedra Merchant?�

�...Gone,� he said.

�Gone? Gone where?�

�Gone,� he said again. His features seemed to crumple like old paper, and he laid his head on his arms and began to weep.

When we were in the car and rolling, I said, �Talk to me, Mr. Runyon. What happened to Nedra?�

No response. I looked over at him as we passed under a streetlamp. He had his head tilted back against the seat, his eyes shut, the bloody towel cradled against his chest as if it were a security blanket. His breathing had a raspy regularity and I thought at first that he�d passed out. But as we neared Clarendon he stirred, groaned faintly, put the towel up to his leaking nose.

I said, �I�m going to keep asking you this until you give me an answer. What happened to Nedra Merchant?�

A few more seconds of silence. Then, �She went away.�

�Went away where?�

�I don�t know.�

�You mean she disappeared?�

�Just... gone.�

�Here one day, gone the next?�

�No, she... I don�t know.�

�Tell me about the last time you saw her.�

�May ninth,� Runyon said. �Saturday, May ninth.�

�Where? Her house?�

�The house. Yes.�

�She say anything then about going away?�

�No.�

�How did she seem? Happy, sad, upset, afraid?�

�Angry,� he said.

�Angry. Why was she angry?�

�We fought. A bad fight.�

�Words, you mean? Or something physical?�

�Words. Just... ugly words.�

�About what?�

�Us. She wanted to...�

�What, Mr. Runyon?�

�End it. End it once and for all.�

�Your affair?�

�Our love,� he said.

�Why did she want to end it?�

�Too possessive, she said. Smothering her.�

Yeah, I thought.

�You asked her to marry you, is that it?�

�Yes. God, she knows how much I love her.�

�But she didn�t want to be tied down again.�

�One bad marriage... it didn�t have to be that way with us. I told her that. I love her too much; I worship her. But she wouldn�t listen. She wouldn�t listen.�

�What happened then?�

No reply. I thought he�d gone away again, retreated behind the wall of his obsession � but he hadn�t. When I asked him the question a second time his body jerked, as if with a sudden chill, and then he answered me in a thin, rusty voice, like hinges creaking in the dark.

�I left her alone. I went home.�

�When did you try to talk to her again?�

�The next day.�

�Called her? Went to see her?�

�Both. She... her machine was on. She wouldn�t answer the door.�

�But she was home that day, Sunday?�

�I don�t know,� Runyon said. �I�m not sure.�

�Then what?�

�I kept trying... a few days, three or four.�

�Calling her, trying to see her.�

�Yes. Finally I went to her house, used my key. Then I knew she was gone.�

�How did you know?�

�Felt it.�

�Was anything disturbed?�

�I don�t... disturbed?�

�Any signs of foul play?�

�No.�

�Her car was missing but her clothes and other possessions were still there, everything exactly as it should be?�

�Yes.�

�No message of any kind?�

�Message?�

�For you or someone else. Written or recorded.�

�No.�

�What did you think happened to her?�

�I thought she�d gone away for a while.�

�Why did you think that?�

�Because of us, the fight we had. To think about us.�

�Was she in the habit of doing that?�

�What?�

�Going away suddenly, unannounced,� I said. �Disappearing for a few days, a week, longer.�

�Once. She did that once, right after we met.�

�How long was she gone that time?�

�A few days. She went to Tahoe.�

�By herself?�

�Yes. She said she did that when she wanted to think.�

�Always to Tahoe? Any special place up there?�

�No. I don�t know.�

�Okay. So at first you thought she went away to think things over � your proposal, your relationship.�

�Yes,� Runyon said. �Give it enough time, she�ll change her mind. I know she will. She has to.�

�You still believe that? That she�s been holed up somewhere for nearly four months, trying to make up her mind?�

Silence. We were on Twin Peaks now, nearing upper Market; oncoming headlights sliced into the car, fragmented and threw splinters of light against his battered face. He had his head tilted back again but his eyes were open, blinking now and then against the glare.

�Is that what you believe now?�

�No,� he said. �I don�t believe that anymore.�

�What do you believe?�

�I don�t know what I believe. I do know she�s alive, she�s all right, she�s not really hurt.�

�Is it possible she went away with another man?�

�No,� he said.

�Wasn�t seeing anybody but you in May? Couldn�t have broken off your affair because she�d met somebody new?�

�I told you why she wanted to leave me.�

�Tell me about the man who attacked you tonight,� I said.

Runyon coughed, spat thickly into the towel. His breathing had become more clogged from the swelling and the blood; it had a scratchy, wheezing cadence, like a man in the last stages of TB.

�Mr. Runyon? The man who attacked you � who is he?�

�...I don�t know his name.�

�He knows yours.�

�Don�t know how he found out.�

�Tonight isn�t the first time you saw him face-to-face?�

�No. Twice before.�

�Where? Nedra�s house?�

�Both times. Just... showed up there.�

�How long ago, the first time?�

�Three weeks.�

Right, I thought. And after you left that night, he followed you home. Easy enough then for him to find out your name and telephone number.

�What did he say to you, that first time?�

�He wanted me to leave Nedra alone.�

�Did he know she was missing?�

�No. He does now. He thinks I did something to her.�

�You tell him she�d disappeared?�

�No. He found out.�

�How?�

�I don�t know.�

�How long did it take him to find out?�

�Not long. A few days.�

�Did he threaten you?�

�Veiled threats. Not like tonight.�

�On the phone as well as in person?�

�Yes.�

�Did he tell you his relationship with Nedra?�

�No. He... talks about her as if he owns her.�

�A former lover?�

�Man like that? No. Nedra would never give herself to a man like that.�

�Like what? A violent man?�

�Crude, uneducated. Ugly.�

�She ever mention someone like him in her past?�

�No.�

�Someone who�d bothered her, made trouble for her?�

�No.�

�Would she have confided in you about that sort of thing?�

�Of course she would. We have no secrets.�

Sixteenth Street coming up. That was the more direct route to S.F. General, over on Potrero, but I didn�t take it; this time of night, it would be jammed around Mission Street with low-riders and the coffeehouse-and-disco crowds. I kept on going to Duboce and turned there.

I asked Runyon, �What have you done to try to find her?�

�Done?�

�You must have done something. Talked to friends, relatives��

�She has no relatives. She�s an orphan.�

�Friends, then.�

�No. Nedra is a private person.�

�Everybody has at least one friend.�

�Me,� Runyon said. He was still wheezing, the words coming out with difficulty. �Lover and best friend. Now especially she needs no one but me.�

Christ.

�People she works with, clients � you talk to any of them?�

�A few.�

�None had any idea what happened to her?�

�Where she was, no. I didn�t say she�d disappeared.�

�Why the hell not?�

�I... couldn�t. Too personal, too painful.�

�What did you tell them?�

�I said she�d gone away for a while and I�d lost contact with her. I said she�d be back eventually. But they wouldn�t listen, they were all so angry.�

�Because of work she owed them?�

�Yes. No loyalty to her, no compassion.�

�I don�t suppose you contacted the police, the missing persons bureau?�

�No, I... I couldn�t.�

�Why couldn�t you?�

�Have to be a relative to file a missing persons report. They couldn�t find her anyway. If I couldn�t reach her � the man who loves her, knows her best � how can strangers?�

Bullshit. You don�t have to be a relative to file a missing persons report; all that�s required is a personal or professional relationship with the individual and a willingness to detail it to the authorities. Maybe Runyon didn�t know that, but he could have found out easily enough. He loved Nedra, he wanted to marry her, he was pathologically entangled with her... but still he hadn�t quite been able to bring himself to uncover his ass and go public with his affair. And then he�d waffled too long and it was too late to do much of anything: he was hamstrung and any fresh leads to Nedra�s whereabouts had gone stale, were probably lost for good by now. Weak and ineffectual personality, operating under a dangerous overload of indecision and worry and stress � that was Victor Runyon. Man caught and strangling slowly on the cord of his obsession.

�Just what exactly did you do, Mr. Runyon?�

�What?�

�To try to find Nedra.�

�Everything I could think of. Went through her papers, her mail, her bills. Listened to her phone messages. Kept checking her favorite places... restaurants, shops, the aquarium, the De Young.�

�That�s all?�

�What else could I do?�

�You paid her past-due bills, didn�t you?�

�Bills? Yes, I paid them.�

�When they shut off the electricity at the house.�

�Yes. I should have paid them sooner.�

I didn�t have to ask him why he�d done it. It was the same reason he�d built the shrine: an expression of sick, blind faith.

�She�ll come back,� he said thickly, �safe and sound. She has to, for both our sakes. You understand? She�ll come back with me.�

Like one of the disciples waiting for Christ to rise from the dead.

The Ford Econoline van was registered to a Richard Rodriguez, with an address on Lowell Street in the city.

Harry Fletcher at the DMV had that information for me fifteen minutes after I opened the office on Friday morning. The balding guy hadn�t struck me as a Latino, but appearances can be deceiving. So can the registered ownerships of vehicles; people who buy used cars don�t always bother to reregister them, and people who drive a particular one aren�t always their owners. Two other automobiles were registered in Rodriguez�s name as well: a second, older Econoline van and a 1990 Olds Cutlass. Whoever Richard Rodriguez was, he believed in buying American. I asked Harry for the license numbers of the second van and the Olds, in case I needed them.

My next call was to TRW, to request a credit check on Rodriguez. Then I punched up the number of the AMA, to see if they�d come up with anything for me. They hadn�t; no licensed psychiatrist named Duncan had practiced in San Francisco or anywhere in the Bay Area within the past ten years. The S.F. Bay Area Psychological Association had drawn the same blank where practicing psychologists and psychotherapists were concerned. Either the man Nedra Merchant had been seeing was unlicensed � some kind of head quack � or Lawrence April had in fact misremembered the name.

I put the Runyon-Merchant matter on temporary hold so that I could take care of the preliminaries on the department-store skip trace and then get some billing done. No bills sent, no checks received: and my cash flow was a little sluggish at the moment. I was working on the billing when the telephone went off.

Kay Runyon. Sounding tired and tense; she didn�t have to tell me she�d had a sleepless night. She said, �He just called again.�

�Who did?�

�The same man, the man who attacked Vic.�

�You answered the phone?�

�Yes.�

�He have anything to say to you this time?�

�God. I wish he hadn�t. He asked for Vic and I recognized his voice and I... I lost it for a few seconds. I called him some names, I told him he wasn�t going to get away with what he did last night. He just laughed.�

�And said what?�

�He thinks Vic did something to Nedra... hurt her or drove her away, I don�t know. I tried to tell him he was wrong. He kept saying somebody had better tell him where she was and she had better be all right. Or else. If I didn�t know, then I�d better find out from Vic or have you find out for me.�

�Me? He mentioned me?�

�Yes.�

�By name or by profession?�

�Both. Didn�t you tell him last night who you are?�

�No. Only that I was a friend of your husband�s.�

�But how...?�

�I don�t know. But I�ll find out. Did he say anything else?�

�No. Then he hung up.�

�How did he sound? His emotional state.�

�Angry. Very angry.�

�In control or not?�

�Yes, but... not underneath.�

�Unstable?�

�Psychotic,� she said.

Overreaction. Or was it? His frenzied assault on Runyon... what was that kind of outpouring of rage if not a psychotic episode? If I hadn�t been there to pull him off, he might have beaten Runyon to death.

But I was not about to admit that to her. I said, �Don�t let your imagination get the best of you. We�ll have a better idea of his mental state after I talk to him, do some checking into his background.�

�Do you know yet who he is?�

�I know who owns the car he was driving, yes. He may or may not be the registered owner; I�ll have that information pretty soon.�

�You�ll call as soon as you know for sure?�

�As soon as I have anything definite,� I said, and changed the subject. �Your husband been up yet?�

�No. They gave him some pills at the hospital, for the pain and to make him sleep. I made sure he took them when we got home.�

�You won�t have to worry about him going out today. He�ll hurt too much when he wakes up to do anything but lie in bed. I know; I�ve had my nose broken.�

�He�ll stay here,� Kay Runyon said grimly, �if I have to drug him and tie him to the bed.�

�Have you contacted a psychiatrist yet?�

�I called six of them this morning. The earliest I could get an appointment with anyone is next Tuesday. Tuesday, for God�s sake.�

I didn�t say anything.

�What does that tell you about the number of disturbed people in this city?� she said. �About the society we live in? We�re a nation of crazy people... we really are, you know.�

The conversation left me feeling bleak. And puzzled. It was possible that the balding guy had gotten my car license at the same time I�d gotten his last night. But how could he have known which car was mine? It was unlikely he�d noticed me drive up and stop; he had been too focused on Victor Runyon. And there�d been several other cars parked in the vicinity. And even if he had picked off my number, how could he have traced it so quickly? He wasn�t a cop or another P.I., not the way he�d acted. I�d have sensed it right away if he were. You get so you can tell when you�re dealing with one of your own kind.

The only other thing I could think of was that he�d recognized me, put the name to the face. My photograph has been in the newspapers and on TV, and not always for the right reasons. Not recently, though � and the photos available to the media hadn�t been good likenesses.

So? How the hell had he found out who I was and what I did for a living?

The uneasiness started as soon as I let myself into Nedra Merchant�s house. Not because I expected any trouble; there was no sign of Cahill or the white van anywhere along Crestmont. And not because technically I was committing a felony trespass. The uneasy feeling was purely psychological.

I was an invader.

Entering a stranger�s house without permission, no matter what the reason, always made me feel that way. Yes, it was the type of job I had; yes, I invaded the lives of strangers in some way nearly every day of my working life. But there is a difference between abstract intrusion and actual physical invasion, between telephonic and paper-trail snooping and laying hands like a burglar on personal and private belongings. In my mind there is, anyway. Even last night, with Victor Runyon on the premises, I hadn�t felt right about prowling through the chambers of Nedra Merchant�s home.

But you do what you have to do, like it or not. And if there were any cold-trail leads left to her whereabouts, this was the most likely place for them to be. The fact that Runyon had gone through her effects himself didn�t mean much. He knew her, but he didn�t know what to look for in a missing persons case. And his perception and judgment were clouded by his emotions.

I put the dead-bolt back on, pocketed Runyon�s key. The family room drew me first. The sweet-decay scent of the flowers was stronger today; combined with the mustiness and the absence of light, it gave the room the dour aura of a mausoleum. I parted the drapes halfway, found sliding glass doors that gave access to the balcony outside, and opened one of those to let in some fresh air. Incoming sunlight slanted across Runyon�s shrine, threw it into ugly and pathetic relief. It was the kind of creation that needed darkness and candle glow to give it symbolism and meaning. With the sun on it, there was no illusion: flowers wilted, candle wax pooled on the table like thick globs of dried black blood, even the silver frame exposed as tarnished goods. It was a dead thing, a dead monument to a dead love.

On impulse I gathered up all the flowers and what was left of the candles and took them out into the garage and dumped them into an empty garbage can. Then I went back into the room and carried Nedra Merchant�s photograph to the window so that I could study it in the bright sunlight.

It was easy enough to see why men were attracted to her, why certain men could lose their heads over her. It wasn�t that she was beautiful; her nose was too large, her mouth too wide, her chin a little too sharp for classic beauty. But there was a dark, sultry allure about her, enhanced by the long black hair and eyes that had an Oriental cast � one of the reasons she affected Asian dress and bedroom trappings, probably. The eyes seemed to radiate a smoky heat. Siren�s eyes; witch�s eyes. Not my type, Nedra Merchant, but I could feel the pull of those eyes even looking at them in a photograph. In person they would be magnetic.

I pried the cardboard backing off the frame, transferred the photo to my coat pocket. I might need it at some point; and if Victor Runyon did come back here soon, as it was probable he would � force his way in if he had to � he�d be better off if her likeness wasn�t around to reinforce his mania. Then I prowled the room, opening drawers and cabinets, looking under sofa and chair cushions, flipping through magazines and books. None of that netted me anything. The kitchen, dining room, and formal living room held no clues either.

Downstairs to her office. On two walls were framed posters, one advertising a computer trade show, the other a local company that specialized in exotic varieties of coffee. Both were distinctive, striking, with accents on sharp angles, unusual typefaces, and splashes of primary color. Unsigned, but no doubt Nedra Merchant�s work. The rest of the office was expensively but functionally furnished: desk in some kind of dark, burnished wood, leather armchair, computer terminal and printer, file cabinet and catchall table in the same dark wood as the desk.

Propped against the table was a drawing board, and on its top were some loose sketches, an artist�s portfolio case, and two small cardboard boxes. I flipped through the sketches: more work in the same style as the wall posters. The contents of the case were samples of business brochures, company and trade magazines, posters of various sizes to be shown to prospective clients.

The cardboard boxes had been put there by Victor Runyon, evidently, because they contained her accumulated mail for the past three and a half months. One was filled with catalogs, flyers, and unopened letters; the other contained opened mail, a sheaf of papers clipped together, and two tiny cassette tapes.

I went through the larger box first. Junk mail, for the most part, plus several trade journals that she subscribed to or maybe had had a hand in designing, plus two packages from the Book-of-the-Month Club. Almost all of it had been addressed to a post office box downtown, near her office; she seemed to get little mail here at the house. There were no personal letters or postcards. No unpaid bills. The only items of interest were three Wells Fargo envelopes: her monthly checking account statements and cancelled checks. I slit each of those envelopes with my pocket knife. The oldest of the statements, dated the end of May, held some fifteen checks, most from late April and early May, none dated after May 7th. The statement for June contained a lone cancelled check, written on May 6th, to a wine shop in SoMa, and cashed too late to be included on the May statement. The statement for July had no cancelled checks. And none of the three showed any ATM cash withdrawals. Nedra Merchant�s checking account balance had been $1,672.61 as of May 7th, factoring in the one late-cashed check, and it was still $1,672.61 three-plus months later.

All but one of the checks had been made out to banks, companies, stores. The exception was a check in the amount of $500 payable to Philip C. Muncon and endorsed on the back in a bold hand. Muncon, I thought. Muncon, Muncon... Duncan. Nedra�s therapist? The names sounded alike; easy enough after five years for Lawrence April�s memory to transform an uncommon name into a common one.

I moved over to the box of opened mail. No personal letters there either. And just one card, a birthday card signed �Aunt Louise.� Plain card, without much sentiment. There was no return address on the envelope, but the postmark told me it had been mailed in Lubbock, Texas, on June 15. So Nedra Merchant�s birthday was sometime around that date, and only one person in her life had cared enough to send her greetings.

The rest of the opened envelopes were Walter Merchant�s three uncashed alimony checks; and bills, two and three each from utility companies, credit card firms, Saks Fifth Avenue and two expensive women�s clothing shops. I checked the itemized charges on the credit card and store bills. None had been made after May 5th. The clipped-together papers were customer receipt portions of the most recent bills, with an inked notation on each of the date and amount paid by Victor Runyon. Careful records of his faith, to be presented to her like an offering on the day of her resurrection.

The cassette tapes would be for her telephone answering machine, I thought. All her messages preserved intact. I put those next to the machine for the time being and went to work on the desk.

Only one of the drawers, the largest on the bottom, had anything for me. Little hooks had been screwed into the wood along one side; keys hung from all but the last in line. Rectangles of adhesive tape, words written on each with a felt-tip pen, were affixed above each hook: front door, side door, car, IID. Spare keys for all the doors and locks in her life. The piece of tape above the empty hook said Thorn., capital T and with a period after the last letter. Abbreviation of somebody�s name � another lover, maybe? Or of a place?

I took the key off the hook marked IID, put it in my pocket, then went to the file cabinet. Personal records, exclusively: paid bills, receipts, cancelled checks and bank statements, income tax returns dating back several years. No business records; she probably kept those at Illustrative Image Designs. Not a single item of correspondence either. Apparently she wasn�t a saver, even of what few cards and letters she did receive. If she wrote any letters, it was either by hand or on her computer; and if she�d saved any copies, they were on the discs stored in the bottom file drawer. If it turned out I needed to go through the PC files, I would have to bring in help. I don�t know a damned thing about computers and I�m too old and too stubborn and too much of a technophobe to want to learn. My loss. Maybe.

One thing I did get out of the file cabinet: Philip C. Muncon was her therapist, all right. Had been for close to ten years. There was a thick file with his name on the tab � bills and cancelled checks dating back to the early eighties. That seemed a hell of a long time to be consulting one particular psychologist, but some people become dependent to the point of necessity � patients and doctors both. Muncon had been at the same address on Sacramento Street the entire ten years, which was a point in favor of his reputability. I copied the address and his phone number into my notebook.

Half-hidden by the answering machine was a Rolodex. I sat down in Nedra�s leather chair and thumbed through it. Lots of names and addresses, but nearly all of them appeared to be business-related. There were no cards for Victor Runyon or Dean Purchase or Lawrence April or Glen Grigsby or Walter Merchant; lovers past and present either weren�t acknowledged this way or were erased completely from her life after they stopped being a part of it. Under L was one marked Aunt Louise, no last name, with an address in Lubbock, Texas, and a telephone number. Only one other card bore a female name: Annette Olroyd, with a local phone but no address. The information for both Aunt Louise and Annette Olroyd also went into my notebook.

Now the answering machine tapes. I rewound and played back the one that was already in the machine. Only two messages, both from prospective clients. Neither of the filled tapes was marked; I picked one and put it in to play. It was the older, dating back to early May. Clients who grew progressively angrier at not hearing from her; a charity solicitation; a soft and somewhat jittery female voice that identified itself as Annette; a husky male voice that said he was Philip Muncon and wanted to know if everything was all right, since she�d missed her appointment and it wasn�t like her not to call. More business messages, the first dun call from a credit card company, another call from Annette � Annette Olroyd, I presumed � and a second from Dr. Muncon, both expressing concern because Nedra hadn�t gotten in touch with them. End of tape.

I switched it for the second full one. Philip Muncon had telephoned a third time, urging Nedra to call or visit him as soon as possible because he was �quite worried� about her. But that was the last message from him, left in early June; I knew the approximate date because a client who rang up afterward gave the date of his call as June 13th. Why nothing more from Muncon? And why no further messages from Annette Olroyd? Had Nedra contacted one or both of them, offered an explanation that put their minds at ease?

The last half of the tape had some interesting messages. Two were from Walter Merchant, who had told me about calling his ex-wife. Both were straightforward, businesslike, and didn�t say much other than that he�d appreciate hearing from her. Then�

�Hello, Nedra. You know who this is, baby?� The man must have assumed she did know, because he didn�t identify himself. He didn�t have to as far as I was concerned; Eddie Cahill�s voice was reasonably distinctive. �I�m back and I�m gonna be around for a long time now. I just wanted you to know I�ll be seeing you. Soon. Real soon. Bye for now.�

Cahill had called again, just how soon afterward I couldn�t tell; but it was the last message on the tape. His tone in the first had been smarmy; his tone in the second had an edge of anger. �I know all about you and Vic the architect. You better get rid of him, sweetheart. And you better not sic that lawyer on me again. I�m warning you on both counts.�

I rewound the tape, replaced it with the mostly blank one, and then got up for another look in the file cabinet. Her attorney�s name was James Keverne; I�d glanced through his file earlier. All the papers had seemed to pertain to her divorce, but I should have paid closer attention: At the rear was a handful of documents that dealt with Edward R. Cahill, including a copy of a restraining order issued by a San Francisco judge two years ago. Evidently Cahill had spent six weeks harassing Nedra Merchant with telephone calls, several of which she�d taped, in which he�d made �overt sexual advances and veiled threats�; and on two occasions he�d accosted her in public before witnesses, the second time �causing her to fall while attempting to flee, the result of this fall being minor injuries requiring medical attention.� Going by what Richard Rodriguez had told me, the restraining order had been issued around the time Cahill was arrested on the unrelated charge of felony assault that sent him to Lompoc.

James Keverne�s name, phone number, and Fremont Street address made a fourth notebook entry. After which I put everything back the way I�d found it and went to sift through the rest of the downstairs rooms.

I came up empty-handed there. But there was no disappointment in that. The leads I�d turned up in Nedra�s office had already exceeded my expectations.

Not Kerry, damn it. Not Kerry!

I didn�t want to believe it... and yet she�d lied to me. She wasn�t a liar, hadn�t once told me an untruth in all the years we�d been together; I was sure of that. Our relationship was built on trust as well as love. So why should she lie to me now unless she had something to hide, something like an affair with another man?

Barney Rivera wasn�t a liar either. A bastard with a malicious streak, but not a liar. If he said he�d seen her with a man at Henry the Eighth�s at ten o�clock last night, then he�d seen her. If he said they�d been snuggling in a booth, drinking wine and gazing into each other�s eyes, then they had been. If he said Kerry had kissed the man on the mouth, then she had.

Trouble in paradise, paisan�?

I slammed my fist down on the desk, did it again � hard blows that made things jump and run and tumble to the floor. The ceramic mug of Jimmy Carter that I kept my pens and pencils in shattered. My hand began to sting, to hurt all the way up to the elbow; I stared at the red mark along the edge of my palm.

And the anger went out of me as suddenly as it had come, was replaced by a dull anxiety.

Stupid, hitting the desk that way. What if I�d broken my damn hand along with Jimmy Carter? I got down on my knees and picked up the shards and the pens and pencils and other items I�d dislodged. Shards into the wastebasket, other stuff back on the desktop.

I was sweating.

I went down the hall to the bathroom cubicle and splashed cold water on my face. It made me feel better, helped to reshape my thinking. Jumping to conclusions... you ought to know better than that. Benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty. Remember when you thought she was having an affair with one of her bosses? Nothing to the Jim Carpenter thing, was there? Big false alarm, right? Same thing here.

She didn�t lie and Barney didn�t lie: half-truths, exaggerations, misconceptions. She�d been at Henry the Eighth�s with a client, she�d kissed him on some impulse or other � that was all there was to it. Worked late, stopped for a drink, nothing wrong in that, but she hadn�t wanted to admit it because she felt guilty about neglecting me or didn�t want me to get the wrong idea. What was the sense in making myself crazy over a minor incident, an innocent misunderstanding?

Goddamn Barney and his frigging needle...

The telephone was ringing when I walked back into the office. Good � get my head back into business. James Keverne? No, a small surprise: Walter Merchant.

�I�ve been wondering,� he said, �how you�re making out with your investigation.�

�Yes? Why is that, Mr. Merchant?�

�Curiosity.�

�You told me yesterday that you�re over your ex-wife.�

�I am. But I do have a certain vested interest � those un-cashed alimony checks of mine. Have you found out yet why Nedra didn�t cash them?�

�She hasn�t been around to cash them,� I said. �She vanished three and a half months ago. Suddenly and without a trace.�

Silence.

�Early May,� I said. �Sometime around the ninth.�

�Jesus,� he said in a hushed voice.

�You have any idea what happened to her?�

�Me? Good God, how would I know? I told you, I haven�t seen Nedra in nearly a year.�

�You also told me you hadn�t been in touch with her in six months. But you called her house at least twice recently and left messages on her answering machine.�

�How did you�� He cut that off and I could hear him suck in a heavy breath. �Never mind that. All right, I called her. I wanted to find out why she hadn�t cashed those checks. Now I know the answer.�

�Why did you lie to me?�

�It didn�t seem like much of a lie. I suppose... well, I didn�t want to get involved in whatever mess she was in. Mess I thought she was in at the time � some kind of triangle situation. This... her disappearing... that�s a whole different can of worms.�

�Yes, it is. Any theories?�

�No. I wouldn�t want to speculate. I just hope�� Another heavy breath. �Three and a half months is a long time to be missing without a trace.�

�You probably know her better than anybody. Is she the type to go off by herself, hole up somewhere for that length of time? For any reason?�

�No,� Merchant said. �Not Nedra. The only two things she cares about in this world are men and her work. She wouldn�t quit either one for four days, let alone nearly four months.�

�Would she give up her work here for a man? Go off with him, start fresh in another location?�

�No.�

�You�re positive? People change in five years.�

�Not Nedra.�

�Do you know a man named Eddie Cahill?�

�Cahill... no. Who�s he?�

�An ex-con who harassed her so badly two years ago she got a restraining order against him.�

�Not one of her lovers? I can�t imagine Nedra taking up with an ex-convict...�

�Probably not.� I described Cahill. �Familiar?�

�No. I don�t know him.�

�Nedra never told you about the harassment?�

�I wish she had.�

�Annette Olroyd. You know her?�

�Who?�

�Olroyd. Annette Olroyd.�

�The name�s not familiar.�

�How about Aunt Louise in Lubbock, Texas?�

�Nedra�s aunt, yes. But if you think Nedra went to see her, or she knows what happened to her, you�re wrong.�

�Why is that?�

�They aren�t close; they hadn�t seen each other in fifteen years when Nedra and I were married. They never even talked on the phone. Cards on birthdays and Christmas, that was all. The woman must be in her eighties now. Besides, Nedra hates Texas.� Sardonic little chuckle. �I think one of her less successful conquests was a Texan.�

�The abbreviation �Thorn.� � does that mean anything to you? First part of a word or name like Thornhill or Thornbridge, possibly.�

�I don�t think so. Why?�

�She had a spare key hook in her desk marked T-h-o-r-n period. The key is missing too.�

�A man�s name?�

�That�s what I�m trying to find out.�

�I can�t help you. It�s meaningless to me.�

�If anything occurs to you,� I said, �anything at all that might help me locate her, will you let me know?�

�Yes, of course. You are looking for Nedra, then? I mean, that�s why you were hired?�

�Not initially. Now... yes, I�m looking for her.�

�The police � have they been notified?�

�No. No one�s filed a missing persons report yet.�

�Good God, why not?�

�Only one person had any real knowledge that she�d disappeared until I found out last night, and he wasn�t in a position to report it. That�s all I can tell you.�

�Then I�ll do it,� he said grimly.

�You can if you like, Mr. Merchant. But you said yourself, three and a half months is a long time. The police aren�t going to be able to follow a cold trail any better than I can � and I�ve already got a running start.�

�If you find out anything definite, then what?�

�That depends on what I find out. If I think the police need to be brought in for any reason, I�ll notify them myself. Immediately.�

�And me? Will you notify me, too, as a favor?�

�I don�t see why not.�

�Anything definite.�

�Yes.�

�All right. We�ll leave it that way for now.�

I held the disconnect bar down, the receiver tucked into the hollow between my neck and shoulder, and fished out my notebook and then tapped out Annette Olroyd�s number. A dozen rings, no answer. Aunt Louise in Texas? There didn�t seem to be much point in contacting her, after what Merchant had told me. Let it go for now.

I cradled the receiver and sat listening to the sounds of silence.

Kerry, I thought.

No, I thought � and got up and got moving.

Dean purchase was a big man physically as well as politically: a wide-body with beefy shoulders, thick waist, powerful legs and thighs, and not too much overlay of fat for a man of fifty-odd. Mane of silver-black hair that was more judicial than senatorial. He dressed conservatively except for his ties. Outlandish ties were his trademark; he�d been cultivating them so long that a local TV station had once done a feature on his collection and private citizens sent him the ugliest and most tasteless ones they could find. The one he had on today was a sort of robin�s-egg blue with bright red and yellow whorls and bright orange interlocking circles. Stare at it long enough and it might put you into a hypnotic trance. If it didn�t make you sick to your stomach first.

I walked into his offices at city hall at 3:40, and at exactly 3:45 he came out of his private sanctum, looked me over, smiled at me as if I were a campaign contributor, pumped my hand, and ushered me inside. I�d been wondering which of his public personas I�d get. He had several: Tammany Hall Jovial, Mr. Hard-Ass, Mr. Sincerity, Man-of-the-People, Hardline Liberal, It�s-a-Tough-Job-but-Somebody�s-Got-to-Do-It, The Humanitarian, The Fund-Raiser, The Comedian, The Confidant, The Bargainer. He could switch from one to another with the deceptive speed of a quick-change artist, as the situation called for; and watching him do it, you wondered if he had a real self left under all those public faces. Or if he � hell, most politicians these days � existed only as a public figure, in the eyes of his beholders. Was in effect just an animated hunk of clay in private, like a New Age state-of-the-art ventriloquist�s dummy waiting to be activated by the presence of an audience.

Purchase�s inner sanctum was big enough to have a cozy little sitting area at one end, complete with a couch and some leather chairs. He invited me to sit, offered me coffee �or something stronger,� and when I declined on both counts, poured himself a cup of coffee so dark it had the color of India ink. Then he plunked himself down companionably in the chair next to mine.

�New Orleans blend,� he said, indicating the cup. �Not too heavy on the chickory. Sure you won�t try it?�

�No, thanks.�

�Well,� he said, and sipped, and said, �Ah,� and smiled again. He did Tammany Hall Jovial well, but it was wearing thin on me; I hoped he would segue into one of the others pretty soon. Even Mr. Hard-Ass would be preferable.

I said, �You�re a busy man, Mr. Purchase, and so am I, so let�s get right to the point. I�m not here to do you any harm. If you�ve checked me out � and I�m sure you have � you know I have a long-standing reputation for discretion, honesty, and straightforward business practices. Your name came up in a case I�m working on. As far as I know, the case has nothing to do with you; but there�s a chance you may know something that will help me get to the bottom of it, so I�d like to ask you some questions. Whatever you say to me is strictly between us � it goes no farther than this office.�

�Well stated.� Purchase�s smile was gone now; he�d adopted a serious, attentive mien. The Confidant. He set his mug down, leaned closer. �You wrote Nedra Merchant�s name on your card. Is she your client?�

�No. She�s involved with a party connected with my client.�

�I see. Are you investigating her, then? Gathering evidence against her for some reason?�

�Not at all. I don�t intend her harm in any way. Nor does my client.�

�Then why are you interested in my relationship with her, such as it is?�

�I�m not. But I have reason to believe you know her fairly well, and I��

�Who led you to believe that, may I ask?�

�Confidentiality, Mr. Purchase.�

�Yes, of course. But I�d like to know what your confidential source alleged was the nature of my relationship with Ms. Merchant.�

�That it was personal.�

�Sexual?�

�Personal. Was it sexual?�

�It was not. Nedra and I were friends, nothing more.�

�Were? You�re not any longer?�

�I haven�t seen her in quite some time,� Purchase said. �We no longer move in the same circles.�

�How long a time?�

�Nearly two years.�

�And how long did you know her before that?�

�A few months. We met at a political fund-raiser.�

�Did you spend much time together?�

�Not much, no. I took her to dinner twice, as I recall. And with my wife�s knowledge and consent, I might add.�

�Did you and Nedra discuss personal matters?�

�What sort of personal matters are you referring to?�

�Her private life. Did she confide in you?�

�You�ll have to be more specific than that.�

�For instance, the names of men she was intimate with��

�No. That topic never came up.�

�Her plans for the future? Places she liked to visit, where she went when she wanted to get away for a while?�

�I don�t recall discussing those topics.�

�Has she ever sent you postcards?� I asked.

The question caught him off guard. �Postcards?�

�Picture postcards. When she was away on a trip.�

�Hardly. Nedra?� He frowned. �Why do you ask that?�

�I thought you might have heard from her recently.�

�Well, I haven�t. I told you, I�ve had no contact with the woman in nearly two years.�

�Does the abbreviation �Thorn.� mean anything to you?�

�Thorn?�

�The first part of a word like �Thornbridge.� �

�No,� Purchase said. He tugged at his lower lip. �What does that have to do with Nedra?�

�It might help me find her.�

�Find her?�

�She�s been missing since early May.�

�I don�t... missing? My God, you mean something�s happened to her?�

�It�s a strong possibility.�

�She simply... vanished? Without a trace?�

�Minute traces, that�s all.�

�And you�re trying to find her after all this time?�

�Among other things, yes,� I said. �I�m not at liberty to discuss the circumstances of my investigation. Confidentiality, as I said before. But I am interested in knowing why she left the city so suddenly and where she is now.�

�The police? Have they been told?�

�Not yet.�

�But they will be?�

�Unless I can track her down myself, within a reasonably short period of time.�

He tugged at his lower lip again; I could almost hear his thoughts grinding together. �If they are called in,� he said at length, �I would be in your debt if you didn�t give them my name. If I could help in any way, of course I would; but I can�t. And you know how the media can distort the most innocent situation, make it into something sordid.�

�Uh-huh.�

�I�d be very grateful. I mean that.�

Now he was Mr. Sincerity. And The Bargainer, covering his tail. If I balked even a little, and he perceived me as a threat, he�d become Mr. Hard-Ass in a twinkling.

I said, �If it�s not necessary to give the authorities your name, Mr. Purchase, then I won�t do it. Fair enough?�

I thought he might argue the point; he wanted a firm commitment. But he didn�t argue. Maybe his intelligence reports had stressed the fact that I wasn�t somebody who could be intimidated or bought off. Or maybe he was just being circumspect.

�Fair enough,� he said, and put an end to our little interview by getting to his feet and holding out his hand. I stood, too, shook the hand even though I didn�t much feel like touching him again. �I hope you find Nedra safe and sound. She�s a fine person; I was proud to have her as a friend.�

I nodded without speaking.

�If there�s anything I can do � privately, just between you and me � don�t hesitate to call on me. Will you do that?�

�Count on it, Mr. Purchase.�

I went out of there thinking that he was a slimy son of a bitch. And that he had yet another persona among his repertoire, one that he�d slipped in and out of the whole time we were talking � particularly where his relationship with Nedra Adams Merchant was concerned.

The Liar.

Matt answered the bell at the Runyon house in Ashbury Heights. Giants sweatshirt today, sleeves cut off at the shoulders; in one hand he held a rumpled copy of the Sporting News. There was a thin line of blond fuzz on his upper lip, as if he�d suddenly decided to grow a mustache. He didn�t seem happy to see me, but then he didn�t seem unhappy either. The young-old eyes were as bleak as they�d been last night at S.F. General.

�How�s it going?� I asked him.

�Shitty. You want to see my mom?�

�If she�s home.�

�Out back in her studio. I�ll show you.�

�How about your dad? Still in bed?�

�No, he�s up.�

�How�s he feeling?�

�I don�t know,� Matt said.

�Not talking?�

Headshake. �I tried and Mom tried.�

�He hasn�t tried to leave the house?�

�No. Not yet.�

He took me through the kitchen, out the back door. A covered walkway connected the house to an outbuilding that had been erected next to the garage. There was still plenty of yard � a long strip of lawn, flower beds, a liquidambar tree between the outbuilding and an eight-foot wooden fence with an access door shaped into it. Beyond the fence, partly visible from the porch, was one of the narrow pedestrian ladder streets that you find in some of the hillier sections of the city.

Matt knocked on the studio door and we went in. It was one big room, naturally lighted: the east wall and part of the ceiling were of glass. Ficus plants in redwood tubs gave it a partial greenhouse effect. But there was no mistaking the fact that it was a painter�s studio. Canvases in various sizes were everywhere � finished, unfinished, blank; some displayed on easels and on the two white walls, others in rows along the floor. Kay Runyon, wearing a paint-spattered smock, stood before an easel set up in front of the glass wall, a table beside her cluttered with paints and brushes and an open bag of dryer lint. But she hadn�t been working; just standing there, arms folded across her breasts, like a sculptured likeness of an artist in repose.

She turned abruptly as we entered. At first she seemed more pleased to see me than her son had been, but that didn�t last long. One careful look at my face told her the news wasn�t good; the hope died flickering. She made a gesture to Matt, who was hovering near the door, and he left us without a word. Then she picked up a rag, wet part of it from a tin of turpentine, and began to scrub at her hands � clean hands, no paint on them anywhere.

�You found out who he is,� she said. �You saw him.�

�Yes.�

�And you couldn�t frighten him or make him listen to reason.�

�No, but I gave him plenty to think about.�

�Is he as... dangerous as I think he is?�

I couldn�t lie to her. �Potentially.�

�I knew it. Tell me about him.�

I told her. Cahill�s name and where he lived, his prison record, the restraining order two years ago, the gist of my conversation with him earlier. She listened stone-faced. When I was done she took cigarettes and a lighter from a pocket in her smock, set fire to a weed before she spoke.

�He�ll come after Vic again.� It wasn�t a question.

�Not if I can talk your husband into filing an assault complaint against him.�

�You can try,� she said without much hope.

�Even if he won�t do it,� I said, �the situation with Cahill isn�t as grim as it looks. He doesn�t want to go back to prison. He knows he can�t hurt your husband again without paying a high price; he�s not anonymous any longer and neither are his motives. He�s smart enough to realize that and I think it�ll force him to put a leash on himself.� I paused. �You know your husband far better than I do, Mrs. Runyon. Is he capable of violence against another human being?�

�My God,� she said, �you don�t think Cahill�s right? That Vic did something to that woman?�

�I don�t, no. I�m asking your opinion, if you think it�s even remotely possible.�

�No,� she said. �Absolutely not.�

�Then no matter how much Cahill might prod and threaten, there can�t be anything for him to find, anything to set him off again. If I can find Nedra, alive or dead, and prove to Cahill that your husband is innocent, he�ll take himself right out of your lives.�

�If,� she said. �That�s a big if.�

�Maybe not. I�ve already turned up some leads.� I told her about the postcards Dr. Muncon had received.

�That proves Nedra is alive, doesn�t it?�

�Not to Cahill; he didn�t believe me when I told him about the cards. I�m not so sure I buy it either.�

�You doubt that she sent them?�

�Muncon said they were in her handwriting and handwriting isn�t as easy to fake as people think. What bothers me is that Muncon received cards but your husband apparently didn�t; and I�ve yet to find any evidence that she sent cards or letters to any of her clients. Why only to her therapist? Something doesn�t ring true.�

�Yes, I see what you mean.� She jabbed out her cigarette in an oyster shell ashtray, immediately lit another. �Even if you do find her, it�ll take time. Won�t it? A lot of time?�

�It might. Then again, I might get lucky.�

�What do we do in the meantime?�

�About Cahill? Unless your husband presses assault charges, I�m afraid there�s nothing much you can do. Except to not provoke him if he calls again. And first thing Monday, contact the phone company and have your number changed.�

�What if he comes here to the house?�

�I don�t think he will.�

�But if he does?�

�Don�t let him in, don�t talk to him under any circumstances. But the best safeguard is not to be here, none of you.�

�You mean convince Vic to go away for a while.�

�The three of you, yes. Visit friends... go someplace you�ve enjoyed together in the past, familiar surroundings.�

�He won�t do that either,� she said. �I can�t get him to do anything anymore. He just won�t listen to me.�

�Is he talking to you at all?�

�Barely.�

�Say anything about what happened with Cahill?�

�Not a word. He�s in a great deal of pain. I think if he wasn�t he�d have tried to leave, to go back to her house today. I hid his car keys, both sets. Ridiculous, isn�t it? Having to do a thing like that with a forty-year-old man?�

I put an awkward hand on her arm. Gently I said, �Maybe I can get through to him. He was willing enough to talk to me on the way to the hospital.�

�To a stranger but not to his wife and son.�

�Guilt, Mrs. Runyon. You know that.�

�Yes, I know, but it still hurts...� Angrily she snuffed out her second cancer stick. �Oh, shit,� she said, �let�s go inside. I don�t know why I came out here in the first place. I thought painting might ease my mind, but I should have known better. I can�t concentrate � I can barely think straight.�

Inside the house, in the kitchen, she said, �Would you like a drink? Some coffee?�

�No, thanks.�

�I�m going to have a Scotch. I need one. You want to talk to Vic alone, don�t you?�

�It would be better that way.�

�He�s in the TV room. At least, that�s where he was earlier. Straight through that door over there.�

I went through the door and across a dining area, following the muted babble of television voices. The TV room was large, comfortably furnished. No Dreamsicle effect here; the color scheme was autumnal browns and golds. Victor Runyon sat in a recliner, both feet flat on the floor. He wore slippers and a bathrobe. The bandage across the middle of his face, the bruises that had spread upward from his broken nose to darken his eyes, made him look grotesque and pathetic. I might have felt compassion for him if he�d been a different sort of man, suffering for different reasons; as it was, I felt nothing. All my tender mercies were reserved for his wife and son.

The pained eyes stared blankly at a twenty-five-inch TV screen, where cartoon characters screeched and gabbled and chased each other across a cartoon landscape. He didn�t know I was there until I moved over to form a block between him and the screen; then he blinked and his head lifted and he stared at me.

�Remember me?� I said. �I�m the detective who hauled your sorry ass to the hospital last night.�

That failed to get a rise out of him. He said in a monotone, �I remember.�

�I�ve identified the man who attacked you. His name is Cahill, Eddie Cahill. He�s been in prison twice before, once for felony assault. Two years ago, before he went to jail the second time, he threatened and harassed Nedra Merchant to the point where she had a lawyer obtain a restraining order against him. She never told you about that?�

�No.�

�He�s a dangerous man, Runyon. A threat to you and your family. Something has to be done about him.�

No answer.

�I�m telling you the hard truth here. I saw him again this afternoon, tried to talk sense to him; he won�t listen. He�s convinced you�ve harmed Nedra in some way. Sooner or later he�ll come after you, or maybe after your wife and son. You can prevent that by pressing assault charges against him. How about it, Runyon?�

�Go to the police? Tell them about Nedra and me?�

�Yes.�

�I can�t,� he said.

�Why not? A lot of people know the truth now � your wife, your son, me, Cahill, Nedra�s ex-husband, her shrink, a couple of others. What difference does it make if the police know too?�

Silence.

�If you don�t give a damn about yourself, fine. But think about your family for a change.�

�I won�t let anything happen to my family.�

�No? How are you going to prevent it?�

�I won�t let anything happen.�

�There�s Nedra too,� I said. �He�ll be a threat to her when she comes home, if you don�t put him back in prison where he belongs.�

�Nedra,� Runyon said. As if he were invoking the name of a deity.

�So? What�s it going to be?�

�I have to think.�

�Don�t take too long.�

�I won�t.� He moved painfully in the chair. �Go away now, will you? Leave me alone.�

�One question first,� I said, and asked him about the empty spare-key hook in Nedra�s desk drawer, the one marked �Thorn.� �Mean anything to you � the abbreviation?�

�No.�

�You�re sure? There�s no place she used to go that starts with �Thorn.,� no person she knows with that kind of name?�

�No,� he said again, and again he shifted position, wincing. �Please go away. Talking makes my face hurt.�

Mine, too � talking to him. I went away and left him alone.

The heavy friday night exodus from the city had eased somewhat, so traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge was no longer a stop-and-go snarl. I drove across and then down into Sausalito. Parking along the main drag, Bridgeway, was out of the question, but I lucked into a space on one of the hillside streets not too far away. Standing-room-only at the No-Name Bar, where I went sometimes when I wanted a gaggle of people around me and where I had once met Sterling Hayden, the actor and writer. I had two beers and didn�t talk to anyone on this visit except a waitress, who looked right through me. I was there fifteen minutes; it was as if I weren�t there at all. A lot of imaginative types think it would be amusing to have the power of invisibility, even for just a day, like the character in the H. G. Wells story. I know it wouldn�t be.

Bayfront and other downtown restaurants were all packed, with waiting lists of an hour or more. I drove out to the north part of town, where there are some little eating places in shopping centers, and found one where I had to wait only ten minutes for a table. I splurged on a crab Louie and another beer. Didn�t talk to anybody there either; the waiter paid no more attention to me as an individual than the No-Name waitress.

Afterward I went for a walk along the bay. The way the dark water moved, the way the lights shimmered on the surface, as though they were trapped beneath it rather than reflected off it, had an oddly hypnotic effect on me. I could feel the pull of all that quiet, rippling dark, the allure of it... and after a while it made me uneasy. This was no place for me tonight, feeling as I did, with the loneliness and the uncertainty about Kerry weighing heavy on my mind. No damn place for a loner to be alone.

Back to the car, back to the city. I knew where I was going without having to think about it.

�Hello?� woman�s voice, not young, not old, with a faint trace of an accent.

�Is this the Blessing residence?�

�Yes, it is.�

�The Paul Blessing who owns Blessing�s Furniture Showrooms?�

�That�s right. You want to talk to Mr. Blessing?�

What would I say to him? Good morning, I�m Kerry Wade�s significant other and I�d like to know if you�re screwing her and how serious things are between the two of you in any case. Oh, and by the way, was that your wife I just spoke to?

�Hello?� the woman said. �You still there?�

�I�m here.�

�Okay, I�ll get him for you��

�No, that�s not necessary. Are you Mrs. Blessing?�

�What?�

�Mrs. Blessing, Paul�s wife.�

�Me?� She made a noise that was either a snort or a laugh. �I�m the housekeeper.�

�Is Mrs. Blessing home?�

�There isn�t a Mrs. Blessing. No more.�

�Oh? Divorce?�

�She died,� the woman said. �Last year.�

I couldn�t think of anything to say to that.

�I have work to do,� she said. �What�s your name? I�ll tell Mr. Blessing and you talk to him��

�Thanks, but don�t disturb him. I�ll call again later.�

I hung up feeling like a fool. So now I knew the Paul Blessing in Tiburon was the right one and that he was a widower. So what? What was I going to do with the knowledge? Confront him � get in his face, tell him to leave Kerry alone? Threaten him, pound on him... the Mr. Macho, Eddie Cahill approach? For Christ�s sake, I had no claims on Kerry, and Blessing was as legally unattached as she was, and we were all adults here anyway, right? These things happened and you had to accept them, bow out gracefully if it came to that, que ser�, ser�. That was the only civilized way to deal with it, the only intelligent way. Even if you were hurting and scared right down to the marrow.

Damn office was cold, even though I�d put the heat on when I came in. Fog capered outside the skylights, running and tumbling under the lash of an icy ocean wind. The wind would banish the fog later on and there�d be sun most of the day, but right now there was the cold and the gray. I got up and put my overcoat back on and sat down again. And stared at the phone. And picked up the receiver and tapped out Kerry�s number.

Click, and a humming, and: �Hello. I can�t come to the phone right now, but if you�ll leave your name and number I�ll return your call as soon as��

I banged the receiver down, the first time I had ever disconnected without talking to her machine. There wasn�t any point in leaving a message. She knew I wanted to see her, and the fact that she hadn�t called meant she was avoiding me. Guilt, fear, whatever.

I stared at the phone some more. God, I wished there was somebody I could talk to about this. Cybil? Kerry wouldn�t have told her mother she was having an affair. Cybil was back on my side after months of shunning me; and Kerry wouldn�t have wanted to upset her now that she had finally recovered from the year-long depression caused by her husband Ivan�s sudden death. And if I broke the news to Cybil, it would do more harm than good. I did not want to burden her any more than Kerry did.

Bobbie Jean? She and Kerry were still friends, but I doubted that Kerry would confide in her about a thing like this. I couldn�t either. I had spoken to Bobbie Jean only once since Eberhardt walked out, right afterward; she�d called to say how sorry she was. It had been an awkward conversation, and a brief one. She was too tightly linked to Eberhardt for us to go on being comfortable with each other, and we both knew it.

Who else was there? Nobody else. Not Barney Rivera, that little prick; the way I felt now I would never deal with him again, personally or professionally. Not Joe DeFalco. Not any of my other acquaintances.

Kerry was the only one.

Well, she wouldn�t hide out for long; she wasn�t made that way. Still, I was not going to just hang and rattle. Better for both of us if it came from her, straight out, so I�d give her the weekend � no more. If she was still avoiding me come Monday, I�d force it. Any longer than that and I might not be emotionally capable of handling it the right way.

One more call, business this time, then I�d get out of here, get some people around me. Worst place for me right now was alone in a room, any room.

Annette Olroyd�s number. Four rings, and an elderly female voice said formally, �Yes? May I help you?�

�Ms. Olroyd?�

�No, this is her mother. Annette is out of town just now.�

�When do you expect her back?�

�Sometime this evening. May I take a message?�

�Yes, please.� I gave my name and profession. �Tell your daughter I�d like to talk to her on an urgent matter concerning Nedra Merchant.�

�Oh. She isn�t in any trouble, is she?�

�Your daughter? No, not at all��

�I meant Nedra. Annette will be terribly upset if she is.�

�Do you know Nedra, Mrs...?�

�Mrs. Davis. I don�t know her well, but I met her once and liked her.�

�Is she a close friend of Annette�s?�

�Not close, no. She was a godsend.�

�How do you mean?�

�Well... her counsel helped Annette through a very difficult time, you know.� Mrs. Davis seemed to think I had some knowledge of the relationship between her daughter and Nedra Merchant; that was one reason she was being open with me. Another was that she was probably the chatty, unassuming type. �Much more so than Dr. Muncon�s, I must say.�

�Dr. Philip Muncon?�

�Yes, that�s right. Do you know him?�

�We�ve met. Is that how your daughter met Nedra, through the doctor?�

�At his office, yes. She was so devastated when Bob left her, it seemed that therapy was the only solution. We didn�t dream that another of his patients would be the one to provide it.�

Right. Who knew men and how to deal with the breakup of a male-female relationship better than a woman like Nedra Merchant? She must have taken pity on Annette Olroyd. She may not have had any women friends � may not have liked women much, as her ex-husband had testified � but the role of sage and mother confessor is difficult for anyone to resist.

I asked, �How long has it been since Annette last saw Nedra?�

�Oh, several months,� Mrs. Davis said. �Nedra left the city suddenly, you know.�

�Yes. I�m trying to locate her.�

�Annette was upset at first; she thought something might have happened to Nedra. You can imagine how relieved she was when she found out that wasn�t the case.�

�How did she find it out?�

�Nedra wrote to her.�

�Wrote to her. A postcard, by any chance?�

�Yes, that�s right.�

�More than one?�

�Two, I believe.�

�Can you tell me where the cards were mailed?�

�A resort area... a lake somewhere. I don�t recall which one.�

�Lake Tahoe?�

�No, I don�t think it was Lake Tahoe.�

�Did you see any of the cards, Mrs. Davis?�

�No, I�m sorry, I didn�t.�

�Did Annette tell you what they said?�

�Oh, you know, the usual things people write on postcards. She was fine and expected to be away for quite a while.�

�Would you know if your daughter saved the cards?�

�I expect she did. Annette inherited my packrat tendencies.�

�Would you be able to find them?�

�...You mean now? Without Annette�s permission?�

�Yes, ma�am. I wouldn�t ask except that it�s very important I locate Nedra as soon as possible. The name of the lake and the town or towns where they were mailed would be a great help.�

�Oh, I couldn�t. I don�t have any idea where she might have put them and I don�t believe in invading anyone�s privacy, even in a good cause. No, I�m sorry, but I think it�s best if you talk to Annette about this when she gets back.�

Agonistes was waiting in his light-blue van when I got up to Crestmont. The van didn�t look like much from the outside, but behind its smoke-tinted windows was some of the most sophisticated electronics equipment available � everything from laser shotguns to spike mikes to microtransmitters no larger than a pea. All sorts of debuggers, too, that being his particular specialty, including a thing he�d shown me once called a nonlinear junction detector that looked like nothing so much as a vacuum cleaner and was used to uncover body bugs and wired briefcases, to find concealed listening devices by scanning radios, tape recorders, TV sets, and the like. None of it made a whole lot of sense to me from the technological standpoint, but then it didn�t have to. I had my end of the detecting business and Agonistes had his, and the twain had no interest in meeting except on rare occasions like this one.

I parked behind his van, climbed out. This being Saturday, the neighborhood wasn�t as quiet or deserted as it was on weekdays: couple of kids on skateboards, a woman working in her front yard, a man washing his car. Homey activities; day-off pleasures. I envied the adults... now more than ever. Theirs was a world I could only observe from the outside, as if through a thick pane of glass. Men like me don�t have weekend lives. For us, every day is Monday, and too often a blue Monday at that�

Bullshit, I thought.

More of the self-indulgent loner crap. I could be one of those Mr. Averages if I wanted it badly enough. Anybody can change; you just need the proper incentive. Maybe if I�d tried harder to integrate myself into the mainstream of society, Kerry and I wouldn�t have come to the big crisis point we were at now.

Agonistes seemed to be in no hurry to quit his van, so I went around to the passenger side and opened the door and slid in next to him. I hadn�t seen him in ten months, but he wouldn�t have changed much if it had been ten years. He still reminded me of a shrub that needed pruning. Thin, brown, gnarly body, topped by a wild tangle of bristly hair like an Afro that had gone to seed. But under that thatch was a mind as sensitive and finely tuned as one of the pieces of equipment he worked with.

�Been waiting long?�

�Few minutes,� he said. �Nice neighborhood. Never been up here before.�

�Country living in an urban environment.�

�What do you suppose one of these houses costs?�

�More than you or I could ever afford.� Especially him. He made a good living, but he had a wife and four kids � and his electronics mistress cost him as much to support as his family.

�Sad but true,� he said. �Neighborhood-watch program here, I�ll bet. See that woman up the street? She�s already noticed us sitting here. Not a good area to set up a lengthy street surveillance.�

�Nope.�

�Your wiseguy live around here?� he asked. �Wiseguy� was Agonistes�s generic term for anyone, male or female, professional or amateur, law officer or felon, who indulged in electronic surveillance.

�No. In Daly City.�

�Probably not simple room bugs then. They send out radio signals on a standard eighty-eight to one-oh-eight megahertz FM band, but they don�t have much range. Half a mile, max, with a relay transmitter.�

�Uh-huh.�

�He could�ve hidden a voice-actuated recorder somewhere within range, but that�s not too likely, not in a neighborhood like this.�

�Uh-huh.�

�Probably not carrier current bugs either. You know what they are?�

�No.�

�Wiseguys put them in the electrical system, inside a wall outlet,� Agonistes said. �Then when they want to tune in, they use a radio somewhere in private, like their own homes. You get hiss and crackle with bugs like that, sometimes too much, and they amplify room noise; I don�t like �em. You said your wiseguy worked for the phone company?�

�Two years ago. I think that�s when he planted the bugs in the house across the street. But a simple phone tap doesn�t have any range either, right?�

�Right. A standard phone tap also doesn�t have a long life.�

�What does?�

�Infinity transmitter.�

�Uh-huh.�

�A nasty little mother,� Agonistes said. �Works off a room�s telephone or electrical current. Endless supply of power � transmission to infinity, theoretically. See?�

�I see.�

�They�re small, about a quarter-inch in diameter, so you can stick them any damn place � telephones, under carpets and furniture, behind electrical outlet switch plates. You can even hard-wire them into walls and cover them with conductive paint, then over that with regular paint. Conductive paint carries electricity the same as copper wires.�

�How do they work?�

�Tone-activated. Wiseguy calls his target�s number and blows a whistle into the receiver as soon as he hears the ring. Whistle shorts out the ring and activates the I.T.�

�And then he can listen in as long as he wants, on his own telephone?�

�Right,� Agonistes said. �Or from any telephone from here to Zimbabwe. If anybody else calls the target while the wiseguy�s listening, the party gets a busy signal.�

�And if the target happens to pick up his phone?�

�Dead or hissing line.�

�Bugs like that must not be too easy to track down.�

�On the contrary. All you need is an R.F. detector. R.F.�� radio frequency.�

�Which you�ve got.�

�Which I�ve got.�

�Can you deactivate I.T.s without removing them?�

�Sure. Is that what you want?�

�For now.�

�Why?�

�It�s a tricky situation.� I explained it to him, in detail. When I was done, his thin lips had a sour, downward pull.

�So what we�re talking about here,� he said, �is one of the same felonies the wiseguy pulled. Illegal trespass.�

�Technically, yes. Morally, no. You have a problem with that?�

�Not if it doesn�t put my ass in a sling. I got mouths to feed.�

�It won�t,� I said. �If Nedra Merchant is alive and well, she�ll thank us for this and authorize you to pull the bugs. Pay you extra for it, too, probably.�

�Suppose she�s not alive and well?�

�Then it�s a moot point. Her only relative is an elderly aunt in Texas and the aunt�s not likely to complain about illegal trespass in a good cause even if she finds out about it. Which she won�t.�

Agonistes sighed. �Let�s get it done.�

He opened up the back of the van and removed a tool kit and his R.F. detector, an instrument about the size and outward appearance of a small black leather suitcase. The woman up the street glanced our way as we crossed to Nedra Merchant�s house, but she wasn�t curious enough or suspicious enough to come down and ask questions. We moved and acted casually, as if we belonged there.

When we were through the gate, Agonistes said, �No talking once we�re inside. Nearest phone first. Kitchen? Living room?�

�Kitchen and family room.�

�Kitchen, then.�

I keyed us in. On the drainboard in the kitchen, Agonistes opened the R.F. detector to reveal a radarlike screen, meters, a set of headphones. He did some fiddling with the equipment, put the headphones on, did some more fiddling. Then he picked up the detector and approached the wall phone, and as soon as he did that the screen and meter needles began to dance. I figured that he was also hearing some kind of tone through the earphones, one that coordinated with the visual register on the screen. The louder the tone, the closer the bug.

There was one behind the plate for the phone jack; he found it in thirty seconds flat, showed it to me when he had the plate off. It looked innocent enough, about the size and shape of a square sugar cube. He did something to deactivate it, replaced the wall plate, and we moved on to the family room.

He found an I.T. in there, too, inside the phone itself. And another in the wall thermostat in the downstairs hallway, halfway between Nedra Merchant�s bedroom and office; that bug evidently drew its power from the wires serving the thermostat. There were two bugs in the bedroom � Cahill making certain he heard everything that went on in there. One was hidden in the extension phone�s base unit. The other had been mounted inside the wall separating the bedroom from her private bath; it was behind the light switch, dangling from a wire down inside the studs.

The last bug was in her office, again inside the telephone. Agonistes swept the storage room, the spare bedroom, the balconies, the garage, without finding any more. The whole operation took slightly more than an hour and a half.

He closed up his equipment and we went out and I closed up the house. I asked him then, �Were all the bugs fully operational?�

�Yep. Your wiseguy knew what he was doing. Not the best electronics, but a professional job of setting up. Wouldn�t surprise me if he�s done some bug work for cash, here and there.�

We went across the street to the van. The fact that the I.T.s still worked, I was thinking, explained how Cahill had found out Nedra was missing. Runyon was the type to walk around the house talking to himself; or to sit in front of his shrine and hold a conversation with Nedra�s photograph. Cahill was no mental giant, but he could put two and two together. The only problem was, he�d factored in Runyon spending so much time alone in Nedra�s house and come up with the wrong equation.

I said, �Now we go to my client�s place. Don�t mention what we found here. As far as the Runyons are concerned, you�ve never even heard of Nedra Merchant.�

�Why? The illegal trespass?�

�Yeah. If there are bugs at the Runyon house, we�re all going down to the Hall of Justice to make a complaint against the wiseguy. You included, as the bug expert. I didn�t tell my client and her son about the bugs here, because they might let something slip to the authorities. Then we�d be compromised and maybe the case against the wiseguy would be too.�

Agonistes rolled his eyes. �First an illegal trespass, then a trip to the cop house. You got any more surprises for me?�

�No.�

�Better not have. And I�d better not be hung up at the Hall all evening. I promised to take Jean to the movies.�

�You won�t be.�

�How about you?� Agonistes asked. He was inside the van by this time, putting his equipment away in specially built and cushioned compartments. �You and your lady got plans for tonight?�

�No,� I said. �No plans.�

�Don�t tell me you and Kerry sit home like old married folks on Saturday nights? Relationships get stale that way, you know��

�The hell with that, George,� I said too sharply.

�...What�d I say?�

�Nothing. Forget it.�

�You are still with Kerry?�

�Sure I am. Why do you ask that?�

�No reason. I just wondered.�

�Did I ask you if you�re still with Jean?�

�Hey, I�m sorry if I touched a raw nerve��

�You didn�t touch any goddamn nerve. Hurry up in there, will you? The sooner we get this operation finished, the sooner we can both go home.�

�Right,� Agonistes said. �Right.�

But the look he gave me was wise and seasoned with pity.

I asked her, �How long ago did he leave?�

�Within the hour. Matt had a date tonight and I went to the store. There wasn�t anything to eat in the house and I thought it would be all right to leave Vic alone for a little while...�

�He seemed okay when you left?�

�Yes. He was in the bedroom, lying down.�

�Did he have much to say after I dropped you off?�

�More than he has lately. He said he was glad you�d talked him into signing a complaint against Cahill. He said now he didn�t have to worry about anything happening to Matt and me.� She made a sticky breathing sound, as if she were having respiratory difficulties. �Oh God, I�m afraid, I�m so afraid.�

I didn�t have to ask her why. I could hear Runyon saying to me earlier, talking about his family: They�d be better off without me. Deep depression, a feeling of hopelessness... and if he�d stopped believing finally that Nedra Merchant was alive, that she�d come back and take up with him again, you had more than a note saying good-bye. You had a man shaking hands with death.

She said, �I think he took a gun with him.�

Fine, dandy. �What kind of gun?�

�I�m not sure... a pistol, for target shooting. He used to take Matt target shooting. It was packed away in the garage and now it�s gone. I looked before I called you.�

�Why didn�t you tell me about the gun before?�

�He hadn�t had it out in so long, I just forgot about it. Until I read that note...�

He didn�t want to do it there, I thought, where she or Matt would find him. Nedra�s house? Would he want to die there, sully the seat of his shrine? Maybe, maybe not. He was a sick man; there was no way to predict what kind of thoughts were working inside the head of a man with his type of affliction.

�I don�t know what to do,� Kay Runyon said. �Tell me what to do. Should I call the police?�

�Yes. As soon as we hang up. Talk to Inspector Branislaus if he�s in, tell him exactly what you told me. Then call the suicide prevention hotline; their people are trained in this sort of thing.�

�All right. Will you try to find him too?�

�I�ll do what I can.�

�That woman�s house...�

�It�s the first place I�ll check.�

�I was going to drive there myself,� she said, �but if he�s there... if he�d already... I couldn�t stand to find him, to see him like that...�

�You don�t have to explain, Mrs. Runyon.�

I heard her draw another sticky breath. �His office... that�s another place he might have gone. Should I try to call there?�

�After you�ve talked to the police and suicide prevention.�

�Yes, all right.�

�Is there anywhere else he might be? Someplace private he goes when he wants to be by himself?�

�Mount Davidson,� she said. �He... the monument up there, the cross. He�s always found it a peaceful place. We used to go together sometimes...�

�Anyplace else?�

�I can�t think of anyplace.�

�Call my car phone if he comes home or you hear from him or the police. If I don�t contact you, you�ll know I haven�t found him and I�m still looking.�

I got her off the line so she could ring Branislaus. The police weren�t going to do much except put out a pickup-and-hold order on Runyon, but it would have been cruel to tell her that. Cops are overworked, especially on summer Saturday nights, and all she had to give them was a husband gone for one hour, a missing target pistol, and an uncorroborated suspicion that he intended to do himself harm; he�d never even mentioned suicide to her or she�d have told me about it. The suicide prevention people couldn�t do much either, except to help hold her together. If anybody tracked down Victor Runyon before he pulled the trigger on himself � or afterward � the chances were it would be me.

The telephone rang just as I was getting out of the shower. I hoped it would be Kerry, thought it was probably Kay Runyon; it was neither. Inspector Branislaus, SFPD.

�Wake you up?� he asked.

�No. I�ve been up for a while.�

�Six o�clock for me. On a Sunday morning that�s obscene. I hate pulling weekend duty.�

�What�s up, Branny? You find Runyon?�

�Not yet, alive or dead. No, I�m calling about Eddie Cahill. I thought you�d want to know.�

�Know what? Don�t tell me he�s still on the loose?�

�Afraid so. Daly City officers went out to his address last night and he wasn�t there. They waited around quite a while, but he didn�t show. Early this morning they went back. He was there, but when they tried to take him into custody he assaulted one of the officers and got away.�

�In the van or on foot?�

�On foot. They brought cars into the area pretty fast, but he still managed to slip through.�

�Armed?�

�We don�t know. Officers got a warrant and searched the house and there weren�t any weapons or spare rounds. But that doesn�t have to mean anything. What they did find was electronics equipment � the surveillance kind, including some of the same bugs Agonistes found in the Runyon house. The old phone company ID too.�

�Hard evidence.�

�Right. He�ll go up for sure once we nail him.�

�He might try to contact his sister,� I said. �Ask her to hide him out or help him leave the city.�

�I already talked to the brother-in-law,� Branislaus said. �He doesn�t like Cahill; he�ll turn him in if he has the chance.�

�Runyon�s wife know about this yet?�

�Yeah. She called here ten minutes ago. I figured she had a right to know.�

�How�d she take it?�

�She seemed numb. All she can think about is her husband.�

�Can you spare somebody to keep an eye on her and her son until Cahill�s picked up?�

�I wish I could. But we�re shorthanded. Hell, when aren�t we?�

�I�ll do it, then. Keep me posted, Branny.�

�Will do.�

I had drip-dried, talking to him. I threw the bath towel into the hamper and got dressed and went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Breakfast? I felt that I ought to eat something, but there was nothing in the fridge that appealed to me. I didn�t want to hang around here anyway. Too much time alone with myself the past eighteen hours; this was a day I needed to spend among people, even if they were all relative strangers.

Cahill said, �Come on in here, slick. Nice and slow.�

I moved ahead, halfway to the couch before I stopped again. You could feel the strain in there, the hard scraping edge of tension, but it wasn�t as acute as it might have been. Cahill was keyed up, sweating, but he seemed to have the furnace of violence in him under control. Kay Runyon was calm; there was no panic in her eyes, only a dull fright. She had been through so much recently, her sensibilities bludgeoned and bruised to the point of numbness. I felt bad for her, and bad for Matt, and angry as hell at the half-wit with the gun.

I asked her, �You okay, Mrs. Runyon?�

�Yes.� Low voice, as stunned as her eyes.

�He didn�t hurt you?�

�No.�

�How long has he been here?�

�More than an hour... just before he made me call you. He forced his way in��

�Shut up,� Cahill said. His gaze, when he shifted it to me, showed more heat. �Don�t talk to her, goddamn it. You talk to me.�

�I don�t have anything to say to you.�

�That�s what you think. You carrying heat?�

�No.�

�Show me.�

I opened my jacket, fanned it up and out, and did a slow turn. �Satisfied?�

�Go stand next to the kid.�

I went over beside Matt. His hands were fisted at his sides, locked down rigid; when I glanced at him I could see his neck cords bulging, the pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat, the faint forward straining of his body. Like a pit bull at the end of a leash, I thought. Release him and he�d try to tear Cahill apart.

I said to Cahill, �What�s this all about?�

�You know what it�s about. You fuckers sicced the cops on me, you and Runyon. Richie told me that.�

�Richie?�

�My fuggin� brother-in-law. He turned my own sister against me. A few bucks and a set of wheels, that�s all I wanted; but no, Richie drags out his piece��� he waggled the Saturday night special � �and sticks it in my face. Would of shot me, too, if I hadn�t taken it away from him. Fixed his wagon for him, the bastard.�

�What�d you do to him?�

�Busted his head,� Cahill said. �Gave Marj a jolt too. That�s what she gets for marrying Richie. A spic � what�s she want to marry a fuggin� spic for anyway?�

His smooth red face turned brooding and petulant; you could see his emotions running naked there. He�d backed himself into a corner, not for the first time in his miserable life, but he didn�t see it that way. It was always somebody else�s fault � in this case, the Runyons�, mine, his sister�s, his brother-in-law�s. Angry, persecuted, trapped, and not very bright, with no place to run and no place to hide, taking out his frustrations on the people he blamed for his trouble.

But that still didn�t explain why he�d come here. This was a bigger risk than anything else he might have done�

Runyon, I thought, that�s why. He�s after Runyon.

And Nedra. Even now, on the run, he can�t let go of his fixation for her.

�Here�s the way it stacks up,� he said. �You give me what I want and I walk out of here and nobody gets hurt.�

�I can�t give you what you want. None of us can.�

�No? I�m talking about Runyon.�

�I know what you�re talking about.�

�I told him we don�t know where Vic is,� Kay Runyon said. �I told him and Matt told him, but he won�t believe us.�

�It�s the truth, Cahill. They don�t know and I don�t know either.�

�You got to have some idea.�

�No. If I had, don�t you think I�d have been out working on it instead of sitting around my office this morning?�

He shook his head stubbornly; he had one thought in there and by God nothing and nobody was going to drive it out. �You people put me on the run � okay, that�s over and done with. But I ain�t going anywhere until I find out what he did to Nedra.�

I asked Kay Runyon, �Did you show him the note your husband left you?�

�Yes.�

�That note don�t mean shit,� Cahill said.

�It means he�s not coming back. It means he may already have done away with himself. What good is it going to do you to hang around here waiting?�

�I ain�t gonna hang around here long. Neither are you. You don�t know where Runyon is, all right, then you go find him and bring him here.�

�Jesus Christ, how am I going to do that? I just told you, he may already be dead��

�He�s not dead. I don�t buy that.�

�I�ve been hunting him ever since he left last night. So have the police. Nobody has any idea where he is. How the hell can I find him if I don�t know where to look?�

�I don�t care how you do it, just do it.�

It was like trying to talk to a wall. I felt bitterly helpless. I couldn�t walk out of here and leave the woman and her son at Cahill�s mercy, not unless I was prepared to go straight to the police and put their lives in further jeopardy by turning this into a SWAT-team fiasco; and I couldn�t stay here because there was no way to negotiate with a monomaniacal simpleton, and no way I could see to disarm him by myself.

One more try: �It�s Nedra you really want, Cahill, we both know that.�

�I want to know what he did to her. She better be alive.�

�I think she is. I�ve got an appointment with somebody later this afternoon, a friend of Nedra�s who might know where to find her.�

�Who? What friend?�

�I won�t tell you that. But I�ll take you with me when I see her � just the two of us. That�s my condition: Leave Mrs. Runyon and her son here and I�ll take you to the friend.�

�Bullshit,� Cahill said.

�What�s bullshit?�

�There�s no friend.�

�There�s a friend. I swear it.�

�Then go get her and bring her here.�

�I can�t do that. You know I can�t do that.�

�Find out what the friend knows, come back and tell me.�

�And then what?�

�I go find Nedra myself.�

And if she�s dead and you still believe Runyon did it, I thought, and Runyon still hasn�t been found, you come back here and throw down on these poor people again. No way. You don�t get Annette Olroyd and you don�t get whatever those postcards of hers reveal.

Cahill said impatiently, �How about it, slick?�

It�s got to be the cops, I thought. Walk out, call Branislaus, tell him the way it�s shaped up in here. He�ll take over, do what has to be done.

And if this airhead shoots Kay or Matt before the negotiators can talk him out? I couldn�t live with that on my conscience.

But there�s no other way...

One other way: Leave, drive off, park somewhere out of sight, take the gun from the car and come back and try to get in quietly through the backyard and kitchen door, try to surprise him and pop him before he has a chance to use his weapon.

Sure, sure, big clumsy guy like me, make noise when I breathe � I couldn�t sneak up on a brass band. Bigger chance of the Runyons getting hurt that way than with trained hostage negotiators handling it. I�m no hero, for Christ�s sake, especially not with other people�s lives at stake.

�Come on, slick,� Cahill said, �make up your fuggin� mind.� Angry now, letting the doors to the furnace blow open. He moved a pace to his right, took the Saturday night special away from Kay Runyon�s head so he could jam it in my direction for emphasis. His eyes had fire in them now � the meltdown glare, bright and crackling and all for me.

And that was good because he didn�t see Matt move. He didn�t but I did � a slow, sideways shifting that brought the boy up next to a spindly table with an orange pottery vase on it. There were maybe fifteen feet separating him and Cahill.

I knew instantly what was in the kid�s mind and I wanted to yell at him not to do it; reach over and grab him and haul him down before he acted. But any sudden cry or activity on my part would probably trigger Cahill. Nothing for me to do but keep Cahill�s attention centered on me and then attack when Matt attacked.

�Listen to me, Cahill,� I said. �You�re making a big mistake.�

�You listen, slick. You shag ass out of here right now, no more crap, or I hurt these two. You understand me?�

Matt�s hand was on the vase.

�Suppose I don�t?� I said. �You going to shoot me down in cold blood?�

�Maybe. You want to find out?�

�You ever killed anybody, Cahill? No, I don�t think so. Not with a gun anyway. You�re not that cold-blooded.�

�You don�t know me, you don�t know what��

Matt swung the vase up and chucked it, all in one quick blurred motion. Oh yeah, a ballplayer � a good one, thank God. The vase slammed into the side of Cahill�s head, knocked him sideways and his hot eyes out of focus. The crack of the pottery shattering and Cahill�s pained bellow and Kay Runyon�s startled cry all seemed magnified, like eruptions blowing away the silence.

Matt was closer to Cahill and I had the couch to get around; he got there first, hurling himself at the bigger man just as the gun came up in Cahill�s hand. The thing went off and Kay Runyon screamed, but the muzzle was pointed downward; the bullet burrowed harmlessly into the floor.

The force of the kid�s lunge drove both of them, reeling, into the far wall. They bounced off, into another table; the table buckled and collapsed under their combined weight, brought them down with it in a tangle of arms and legs and broken wood. I saw the Saturday night special pop loose from Cahill�s grasp, but when I went after it somebody�s leg flailed out and tripped me, sent me sprawling into the back of the couch. Kay Runyon made another noise; I heard Cahill say �Shit!� explosively. I got my footing back, turned in time to see him punch Matt over the eye and break free. He looked for the gun, but I was already lunging for it. I scooped it up, swung around with my finger sliding through the trigger guard.

Cahill wasn�t going to fight me for it. Coward underneath all that hard-ass exterior: he�d turned tail and was running for the hallway.

I yelled for him to stop but he didn�t break stride; he veered away from the front door, though, instinctively realizing I could see him if he tried to get out that way, take a clear shot at his back. He charged ahead into the kitchen. I started after him, but Matt was on his feet by then and between me and the hall. His mother and I both shouted his name, a half-beat apart so that the effect was of an echo. He didn�t listen to either of us. Just pelted, head down, in Cahill�s wake.

I lumbered around the couch, got past Kay Runyon. �Stay here, call nine-eleven,� I told her, and ran on through the hall into the kitchen.

It was empty; Matt had just slammed out the back door. I yanked the thing open, went onto the porch. Cahill was off to the right of the studio, barreling across the lawn toward the fence that separated the Runyon property from the pedestrian ladder street beyond. Matt was twenty yards behind him and gaining.

At first I thought Cahill would slacken speed and jump for the top of the fence, try to scale it. But no, he kept right on going full tilt toward the access door. He hit it like a bull smacking into a bullring wall: head lowered, shoulder up, legs driving. The lock burst loose in a shriek of metal and wood, the door flew outward, boards splintered loose from the fence and the whole thing wobbled and sagged. Somehow Cahill kept his balance, turned uphill on the ladder street. Matt was right behind him. I could hear the two of them pounding up the steps as I ran across the yard.

When I came out onto the street and looked upward, Cahill was on the concrete halfway up, trying to use the iron side railing to give himself greater impetus. But Matt was younger, faster; he caught Cahill by the shirt, yanked him back and around, and smacked him full in the face. I saw blood spurt, heard Cahill roar with pain. Then they were locked together, slugging at each other; and then they were down on the landing, rolling around in an even more frantic embrace.

Cahill had the greater strength, would have won the wrestling match inside of two minutes. But I was up there with them in less than one, jockeying to stay out of harm�s way so I could draw a bead on Cahill�s head. He gave me the opening I was after when he rolled on top of the boy and reared back to throw a punch. I clouted him on the right ear with the flat barrel of the Saturday night special. It stunned him; a grunt came out of his throat and he tried jerkily to turn my way. I clubbed him again, and a third time as he was toppling sideways. The third blow laid him out facedown on the dirty concrete, kept him there.

There was a shout from near the top of the hill. A bearded guy had his head poked over a privet hedge, peering down at us. �What the hell�s going on down there?�

I called back, �Dangerous police situation, don�t interfere,� and his head vanished instantly. I could hear other voices now, here and there in the vicinity, and they kept up an intermittent chatter. But nobody else ventured out onto the ladder street, wholly or in part.

I looked over at Matt. He was sucking at a knuckle, his eyes still bright with rage.

�You okay?� I asked him.

�Yeah, sure,� he said. His shirt was torn, one arm and one cheek were gouged and bleeding, and he was going to have a honey of a black eye before long. �You?�

�Pretty good now.�

�I hope you busted his fucking skull.�

�I didn�t hit him that hard. You took a stupid damn chance, jumping him like that inside. And then chasing him out here. You could have got yourself killed.�

�Yeah, well, I couldn�t take it anymore. I had enough of his crap. You know?�

�I know,� I said. �Real well.�

�You want me to call the cops?�

�Your mother should already have done that. You better go and tell her you�re all right.� I shifted the Saturday night special to my left hand, hauled my keys out and gave them to Matt. �Then go out to my car and bring the handcuffs from the trunk. They�re in a box in there.�

�Right.� He trotted away down the steps.

I sat in a patch of warm sunlight and listened to the neighbors and watched Cahill. He was beginning to stir around. Pretty soon he lifted himself onto all fours, raised his head. His nose was bent and crooked, leaking blood; Matt had busted it as effectively as Cahill had busted his father�s. When his eyes cleared and he saw me he tensed, started to pull his feet under him.

�Don�t even think about it, slick,� I said. �I�ll shoot your eye out if you don�t sit still and keep your mouth shut. Believe it. It�d be a pleasure.�

He believed it. He sat still and kept his mouth shut, before and after Matt brought the handcuffs.

Narrow and several blocks long, Mountain Lake Park is tucked away behind Lake Street apartment buildings and stands of tall cypress and eucalyptus. The little lake there reaches up into a corner of the Presidio army base. It used to be called Laguna de Loma Alta, Lake of the High Hill, after the Presidio�s four-hundred-foot elevation; �Mountain Lake� is a poor substitute. Thick shrubbery rims it to the waterline, except for a thin stretch of beach on the south end. Ducks, swans, and patches of tule grass occupy its relatively clean waters. Soothing, well used, and safe in daylight � that�s Mountain Lake Park. Just the kind of place where a paranoid munchkin would feel secure.

I got there just past four. My meeting with Annette Olroyd was supposed to have been at three, but the law had kept me at the Runyon house until three-thirty. Branislaus had come out, among others, and before and after Eddie Cahill had been carted off to jail there were strings of questions to answer. When I saw I wasn�t going to get away in time to keep the three o�clock appointment, I�d called Ms. Olroyd and switched the time. She hadn�t liked that, but I�d soft-talked her into it. It was even money as to whether or not she would actually show up.

I parked on the short section of Eleventh Avenue that deadends at the park, walked across gopher-hole-pocked grass toward the lake. There were a lot of people around, walking and running and bicycling; tennis players exerted themselves on the nearby courts and kids made a racket in the playground farther down. Not as many as there would have been earlier though. Fog was starting to sift in from the ocean and a wind had sprung up and the day was turning chill. In another hour the sky would be a sullen gray, the wind salt-sharp and numbing.

I found the big rock with no trouble; it was the only one around. The plaque embedded in it said that Juan Bautista de Anza had camped on this spot a couple of hundred years ago and that in 1957 the Daughters of American Colonists had considered the fact to be worthy of commemoration. I doubted that one in fifty thousand users of the park had ever heard of Juan Bautista de Anza, much less knew what it was he�d accomplished. It made me a little sheepish to realize I wasn�t the one exception. I sat down on his memorial, thinking wryly that at least somebody had remembered him; nobody was going to remember me a couple of hundred hours, let alone a couple of hundred years, after I croaked. Or erect anything in my memory except a headstone.

Not far away, a lean, homely dog was snagging a Frisbee tossed by a guy wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt � both of them in defiance of the park�s leash law. That dog could really get up off the ground, a sort of canine version of Michael Jordan elevating for a slam-dunk. Air Dog. I watched him until his owner got tired of the game and the mutt wandered off to take a dump in some bushes. Then the Grateful Dead guy and I both pretended Air Dog had temporarily ceased to exist.

I looked out over the lake and listened to the steady hum of traffic on Park Presidio Boulevard and thought about Eddie Cahill. Close call in Ashbury Heights earlier; it was a small miracle nobody had been hurt except Cahill. I couldn�t find too much fault with Matt Runyon, though. He was a good kid, if too impulsive for his own good. His mother�s son, not his father�s: strong, tough inside where it counted. He�d get through this ugly time without too many scars. So would Kay Runyon. Or maybe I just wanted to think that was how it would be for both of them.

Victor Runyon. Dead yet or not?

Nedra Adams Merchant. Dead or not?

My relationship with Kerry. Dead or not?

I shifted around on the rock and looked at my watch. Ten after four. The fog was rolling in fast now; a gust of wind bothered my hair and made me shiver. Air Dog and Grateful Dead were heading out toward Lake Street. So were several others.

Come on, lady, I thought � and behind me, not too far away, a tentative voice said my name.

I craned my head around. A woman in a knee-length blue coat was standing there peering at me through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. I hadn�t heard her approach; she�d come over grass and she walked soft. I wondered how long she�d been standing there studying me, making up her mind.

I said, �Yes, that�s me. Ms. Olroyd?�

She nodded and came forward hesitantly and stopped again about three feet away. She had no intention of sharing the rock with me. She was about forty, thin, ash-blond � not unattractive except for the fact that she wore about a pound of makeup. Bright red lipstick, green and purple eyeshadow, rouge on her cheeks... as if, consciously or unconsciously, she�d constructed a mask to hide behind.

She said in her munchkin�s voice, �May I see some identification, please?� Not quite making eye contact as she spoke.

�Of course.�

I produced my wallet and opened it to the Photostat of my license and leaned forward to hand it to her. She took it carefully, so as to avoid touching my hand; squinted at the license for a full thirty seconds before she returned the wallet.

�Okay?� I said.

�Yes.�

I put the wallet away, smiling at her. She didn�t smile back. �Thank you for coming, Ms. Olroyd. I appreciate it.�

�For Nedra�s sake,� she said. �That�s the only reason I�m here.�

�Me too.�

A little silence. Then: �Do you honestly believe the postcards will help you find her?�

�They might, yes. Did you bring them?�

�Yes.�

�May I see them?�

She opened a canvas handbag, peered inside, brought out a pair of cards. Held them for a few seconds, as if she couldn�t bear to let go of them, and then thrust them in my direction � again without making eye contact.

Two standard-size picture postcards, one labeled Clear Lake and depicting an aerial view of that large body of water and its surrounding hills, the other labeled Lakeport and showing a cluttered view of the town�s municipal pier and boat harbor. I turned them over. The postmark on one was smeared and unreadable; the postmark on the other read �Lucerne CA 95458.�

�Well?� Annette Olroyd said.

I didn�t answer her. I was reading the messages written on the cards, one in purple ink, the other in blue ink. The handwriting was the same on both, but firmer and deeply indented into the card on the older of the two, dated June 10, as if it had been written in anger or some other strong emotional state. The words on that one said:

The other card, dated July 9, was a little shaky, as if Nedra hadn�t been feeling well that day. Its message was briefer and even more nonspecific:

I looked up and caught Annette Olroyd�s eye; she lowered her gaze immediately. �Well?� she said again.

�Did Nedra ever mention Clear Lake or Lakeport to you? In person, I mean.�

�No, I�m sure she didn�t.�

�So you don�t know where she might have been staying when she wrote these cards?�

�No.�

�Not even a guess?�

�I said no.� Her voice rose querulously on the last word. She put her hand out. �May I please have the cards back?�

I laid the postcards on her palm. My fingers brushed her skin; she jerked away from me as if I�d burned or contaminated her. Timorous, paranoid, afraid of the male animal... Nedra Merchant hadn�t helped her much after all. I wondered if she�d always been like that, or if the husband who�d left her had been responsible. If it was the husband, he must be a piece of work � one of the breed of men who would have served society best if they�d been castrated at birth.

She said, �I�ll be going now,� and stuffed the cards into her handbag. �When you find Nedra...� She let the sentence trail off, staring over the wind-ruffled water.

�Yes, Ms. Olroyd?�

�Please ask her to call me. I need... I�d like to talk to her. Will you do that?�

�Of course.� If she�s alive, I thought.

�Thank you.�

And away she went, body drawn in and shoulders hunched against the wind. I waited until she reached the Eleventh Avenue entrance before I headed out myself. I didn�t want to add to her anxiety by following too close.

Tag end of summer in Lake County: hot, dry, the hills all brown and dusty and crawling with rattlesnakes, the hordes of vacationers and summer residents and beer-swilling youths thinning as the new school year approached � though at night they would still swarm as thickly as the mosquitoes and gnats. Lakeport and the other resort communities come alive in late May, thrive from mid-June to mid-September, and are done blooming by the first of October. The rest of the year � except for bass-fishing season, and year-round activities at Konocti Harbor Inn on the south shore � they�re pretty much the domain of retirees, small business services, and vacation-industry people making preparations for next summer�s influx.

I came in on Highway 20 from Ukiah, past Blue Lake and along the northern rim of Clear Lake. Even though it was Monday, traffic was heavy on the two-lane highway � slowed and clogged by cars and campers and behemoth motor homes and pickups towing boats. The midday heat was intense; I was simmering in my own sweat by the time I rolled into Nice.

At one time I�d driven up here once or twice a year, mostly by myself, to fish for bass and catfish at Rodman Slough, midway between Nice and Lakeport. I remembered the last trip, four or five years ago. Eberhardt had come along and we�d rented a lakeside cabin in Lucerne. He�d caught two fat white cats the first morning, six pounders, and I�d caught some channel cats and a bullhead; we�d had fish fries three nights running, and drunk a couple of cases of beer each, and taken the rented boat all the way down to Jago Bay at the southern tip. We�d had a fine time... or at least I had. But when I�d suggested going back the following year, Eberhardt had backed out without much explanation.

Now, maybe, I knew why.

Damn the way things work out sometimes.

Nice hadn�t changed much; I would have been surprised if it had. Lake County isn�t affluent, and with the exception of small, upscale new communities at Soda Bay and Konocti Harbor, its resorts cater to young party animals and down-home middle-class adults who don�t need fancy golf courses, tennis courts, and nightclubs to enjoy their summer vacations. Give them a small boat, a funky old tourist cabin, a good cheap restaurant, and a bar that has dancing to live country and western bands on weekends, and they�re content. From what I knew of Nedra Merchant, she didn�t fit into that down-home category � but then you never know about people. Maybe she had enough sophistication in the city and came up here for the change. Or maybe she hadn�t come here of her own volition, back in May. Or maybe she�d never come here at all...

The village had the same unassuming, countrified look and feel that it had had forty years ago, the first time I�d visited here, and that it had probably had for decades before that. All that had been added recently were a few more houses on the steep folded hills rising inland from the lakeshore, at least one new restaurant and some junk shops masquerading as purveyors of antiques. If I�d been in a different mood, without so much weighing on my mind, I would have felt good coming back here. As it was, what I felt was relief that the long, hot trip was over.

Lakeview Drive hooked up off the main road; I turned there, wound my way along the lower reaches of the dry brown hills until I came to a sign that said Thornapple Way. It wasn�t much of a street, just a two-block extension of asphalt that ran steeply up one side of a broad humpback. There were three houses on it, two down close to Lakeview Drive and the other atop the dogleg at the upper end, built into a notch in the hillside.

I drove up to the one in the notch: start at the top. No cars were parked at any of the three; the upper one had a garage, but it was closed and windowless. Nobody answered the bell there, or at either of the lower two. The middle one had its shutters up already, which no doubt meant the owners had closed it up and gone home. There were no names on mailboxes or anywhere else on the three properties.

Only one of the nearby houses on Lakeview Drive was occupied, by a thin middle-aged woman who didn�t want to be bothered by somebody she didn�t know on an errand she had no interest in. She had no idea who owned any of the houses on Thornapple Way, she said, which may or may not have been the truth. Ditto her claim, when I showed her the photo of Nedra Merchant, that she�d never seen the woman before. She minded her own business, she said, which was more than she could say for some people. Whereupon she shut her door in my face.

Friendly folk in the country. Or more likely, she was a city transplant who hadn�t yet learned country ways and country manners and probably never would.

I took the light off her, swept it around. Grotesque shadows capered over wood and stone and packed earth; an object gleamed in one corner like a creature with a huge dead eye. Overhead, the beam picked up a low-wattage bulb suspended from a rafter, a piece of string dangling below it. I moved ahead, caught hold of the string and yanked. Most of the dark disintegrated under a burst of dim yellow.

It was like a cave in there. Or an animal�s lair.

Or a prison cell.

The part just inside the door had once been a pantry about six feet deep. Shelves covered the bare-wood walls on both sides, some bearing a small cache of canned goods; the lower section of one shelf had been torn down, torn apart, its broken pieces since picked up and stacked neatly to one side. You could see where a wall and another door had enclosed the rear of the pantry: the vertical beams and hinges were still there. The rest of the construction had been removed to open up the part where the woman was, where I now stood.

That part was maybe ten feet square, with a low, sloping ceiling that was no more than six feet high at the far end; limestone walls shored up by thick crossbeams and a floor that was partly packed earth and partly bare rock. Root cellar. Houses in this section of the state, those built into hillside notches like this one, still had them; they made for relatively cool storage places in the hot climate. A hole had been bored through the rock from under the house and a length of one-inch PVC pipe inserted through it � probably for ventilation purposes. A four-outlet extension cord ran in here from a wall plug in the pantry; the fan was plugged into that. So was the object that had gleamed like a dead eye: a small TV set. The rest of the space was cramped with a rollaway bed, a rocking chair, a portable camper�s toilet, and a table piled high with magazines and artist�s tools � sketchpads, pencils, paints.

Nedra Merchant was crouched on the bed, her hands covering her eyes now � the posture of a child. Her fingers were cut and torn, two of the nails ripped completely off, all painted now with iodine. She�d tried to batter her way out with shelf wood, dig her way out with her bare hands: there was a pathetically small hole in the earth along one wall. She was stick-figure thin, her ribs showing, bones jutting against dead-white skin, her cheeks and eyes deeply sunken as if all the flesh were rotting away. Her hair was clean, washed within the past couple of days, and she�d been put in here with a fresh white dress that she�d taken off and thrown on the floor, and she wore lipstick that made her mouth look like a bloody wound. All prettied up and waiting for Baby.

The wound opened and words came out. �Turn off the light, Baby. It�s better in the dark.�

�Open your eyes, Nedra. Look at me.�

The unfamiliar voice brought her hands down; she blinked several times, peered at me through slits � and then shrank back hard against the wall. �You�re not Baby,� she said in a whimper.

�Who is? Who did this to you?�

�I don�t know you. What are you doing here?�

�I�m a friend. I came to help��

�No. Where�s Baby? I want Baby.�

Looking at her, listening to her, had unleashed a storm of emotions in me � rage, compassion, a sickening remembered dread. It was as if I were back in that frigging Deer Run cabin, looking at myself after all those days I�d been chained to the wall, seeing myself as I would have looked if I hadn�t been strong enough, if my ordeal had broken me as Nedra Merchant�s had broken her. The parallel was terrifying. I had come away scarred but whole. Nedra Merchant was going to come away in pieces that all the king�s horses and all the king�s men might never put together again.

How long had she held out? A week, a month, two months, longer? Fighting until she couldn�t fight anymore, and then... what? Had she gone over the edge clawing and screaming or had she just let go? One thing for sure: When she�d landed it had been in a place that submerged her fear, turned hatred for her jailer into clinging need. In that soft, twisted place he had stopped being her tormentor and become her protector, the only person who could save her and set her free.

I wanted to kill him for what he had done to her, just as I had wanted to kill the man who imprisoned me. Nobody, no matter who she�d been or what she�d done in her life, should have to suffer the way Nedra had; the person responsible deserved to die for it. The impulse was so strong in me I began to shake. I had to take a double grip on the flashlight, clutch it tight against my chest to keep my hands still. The bloodlust, and the heat and the foul air, brought on a dizziness, a churning in my stomach. I needed to get myself out of here almost as much as I needed to get her out.

I moved toward her. Doing it slowly so I wouldn�t frighten her any more than she already was. But she scrambled backward anyway, came off the bed onto her feet. �No! Stay away from me; don�t come near me!�

�I won�t hurt you, Nedra.�

�Stay away!�

�I swear I won�t, I only want to help you...�

I kept on crooning to her, gently, moving all the while. She hugged the wall, crouched and motionless, until I was within two steps of her; then she yelled, shrill and wild, and flung herself at me with her hands hooked into claws.

Even as emaciated as she was, she had a maniacal strength. I dropped the torch and caught her wrists, but I couldn�t hold her. Broken nails raked across my neck; she brought up a knee that I turned away from just in time, took on my upper thigh. I drove her backward with my body, pinned her against the rock, got her arms locked down at her sides. She went right on twisting and straining against me, all boneless sinew and muscle, like a cat struggling for release.

�You�re safe now, Nedra, it�s all right, you�re safe...�

She spit in my face, twice; screeched obscenities in my ear. I went on crooning in a soft monotone. The soothing quality of my voice, if not what I was saying, got through to her; or maybe she just ran out of breath and strength. The obscenities trickled off into little mewlings, and her struggles grew feeble, and finally she sagged limply in my grasp.

I relaxed my hold a little, to find out if she was shamming. She wasn�t. I backed up, taking her with me; let go of her wrist and slid my arm up and around her shoulders and turned her toward the door. She came along all right, muttering something under her breath � the same words over and over, as if she were reciting some kind of lesson.

�I don�t care, I don�t care, I don�t care...�

I walked her into the pantry section, into the open doorway to the kitchen. There was sweat in my eyes from all the exertion, impairing my vision like rainwater on window glass; I couldn�t wipe it away because of my grip on Nedra. I saw movement on my right as we passed through the doorway, but indistinctly, and when I turned that way, blinking, she came alive in my arms.

She brought her heel down hard on my instep, emitting the shrill cry again, and then tore loose. I clutched at her, missed � and something hit me from the side, high up across the bridge of my nose. My vision went completely cockeyed. A second blow, hard on my left temple, thrust me backward; my feet slid out from under me and I went down, banging my head against one of the shelves.

I lost consciousness. Not for long � a clutch of seconds, no more than a minute. All at once, then, I was aware of a ringing in my ears, of pain. And then I was up on one knee, shaking my head, pawing at my eyes.

When I could see again I was looking at the door to the kitchen. It was closed now, shut tight. I heaved to my feet, stumbled to it, twisted the knob and shook the door; it wouldn�t open, wouldn�t open�

Baby had come back. And Baby had Nedra again.

And now I was locked in this hellhole in her place.

On the way out of nice I had a wrangle with myself. Call the county sheriff? Baby and Nedra would be out of Lake County by now, and the law up here was not going to put out a pickup order on my say-so, not unless I came in and showed ID and told my story in person. Call the SFPD? Branislaus had had weekend duty, which meant he wouldn�t be working today; I�d have to talk to another inspector, fill him in, try to convince him to make this a priority matter � and by the time they acted, Baby and Nedra would be at their destination. So would I, probably. Besides, if the cops came bulling in on them, there was no telling what he might do. He hadn�t harmed her directly and he wouldn�t as long as there was no provocation, but if officers with guns and bullhorns showed up... No, this was a situation better handled by me alone, one on one. Time was on my side too: I was only about an hour behind them, and if I got lucky, drove faster than he did, I might be able to cut the gap down to half an hour or so.

I got half lucky. Traffic heading west on Highway 20 was fairly light once I passed Upper Lake, and I was able to make pretty good time except for a two-mile snag behind a slow-moving camper. It was just five o�clock when I reached the junction with 101 above Ukiah. On the freeway I opened up to seventy, to seventy-five on the straighter stretches; I was afraid to risk any higher speeds. If a highway patrolman stopped me, I would have to sit still for questions and maybe some hassle. Before leaving the Thornapple house I�d taken an antiseptic bandage from the first-aid kit in the trunk and covered the cut on my forehead, but my face was still beat-up and my neck bore the marks of Nedra�s nails. Any cop would take one close look at me and become suspicious as hell.

I made good time until I neared Santa Rosa. Then I ran into an accident jam, and by the time I got past the blocked lane on the south side of town, I�d lost most of the twenty minutes or so I�d gained early on. Sometimes when you roll the dice you come up with snake eyes.

It was six forty-five when I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and after seven when I reached Forest Hill. They were there, all right; his car was parked in front of the red-shingled garage. I stopped across the street. The only firearm I own, a lightweight .38 Smith & Wesson Bodyguard, I keep clipped under the dash; I popped it free, put it into the pocket of my jacket, then donned the jacket as I got out.

The gate in front of the house was shut. I still had Runyon�s key but I did not want to go in the front way if I could help it. I detoured to the side stairway, descended slowly to the landing midway down the hillside. The storeroom door was recessed under an overhang there.

The key worked that lock as well as the ones on the gate and the front entrance. I eased the door open, myself inside; shut it behind me. Stood listening until my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I could see the way across to the interior door. There were no sounds to hear.

I picked my way through the storeroom, peered into the downstairs hall. More empty silence. Wherever they were and whatever they were doing, they were being quiet about it. I entered the hall, moving quickly now that I had carpet underfoot, and poked my head around the doorway into the master bedroom. They weren�t in there, which was a small relief. It would have been bad, walking in on them having sex; I don�t know what I would have done. Consensual abuse is still abuse, the more so in Nedra Merchant�s case.

I padded down to her office and the spare bedroom; they were also empty. Back to the stairs... and above, not far away, I heard somebody cough. It didn�t sound right � liquidy, strangulated, the cough of a person in pain.

I went up fast to the middle landing, where the upper half of the stairs turned back in the opposite direction. A decorative wrought-iron banister ran partway around the staircase and through the pickets I could see into the entrance hall. What was up there made me stop, put a fresh clutch of tension across my shoulders. It also knocked me mentally off-balance, because it was not at all what I�d expected to find here.

He was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall facing me, his feet splayed out in front of him. Blood, a lot of it, had dyed the front of his pale-blue shirt a glistening crimson. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and I couldn�t tell if he was breathing... until his chest heaved and another cough, then a ragged series of coughs, racked his body. The floor around him was littered with objects: two large plastic bags that evidently had been dropped, spilling their contents. Cosmetics, perfumes, two small gift-wrapped packages, a bottle of champagne, several food items. On its side half in and half out of the bathroom doorway, as if it had been dropped or kicked there, was a suitcase � Nedra�s suitcase, the one that I�d seen in the bedroom at the Thornapple house.

I climbed up the rest of the way, cautiously, with my gaze swiveling between the formal living room on my right and the kitchen straight ahead. Nothing and nobody to see in either place. I went into the kitchen, then the family room; looked out onto the deck; checked the attached garage and the bathroom. Nedra wasn�t here. Nobody was here except Baby.

I knelt beside him. The wound in his chest was down low, under the right breast. Maybe life-threatening, maybe not; he�d lost a half pint of blood and it depended on the angle of penetration and where the bullet had lodged. Shot with a small-caliber handgun � probably a .22. There was no sign of the weapon among the litter on the floor.

It must have been Nedra, I thought... But then where was she and where was the gun? I could see her shooting him, if she�d somehow thrown off her psychological dependency and acted in a rush of hatred. But I couldn�t see her doing it and then charging out of the house on foot with the weapon in her hand. He�d turned her into a burrow animal, and animals don�t run wild in the daylight when they�re hurt. They hide in the dark and lick their wounds.

Whoever did it, I thought, it�s partly my fault. If I�d called the SFPD from Nice, this wouldn�t have happened. Then I thought: No, damn it, you don�t know that�s so. Explanations, priorities... the cops might not have gotten here any faster than you did. Some of the fault is Nedra�s and most of it is Baby�s; none of it is yours.

He coughed again, then started to shiver. I hurried downstairs and got a blanket out of the master bedroom and brought it up and put it around him. It didn�t stop the shivering. I leaned down and said against his ear, �Who did this to you?� His eyes stayed shut and he didn�t answer. He was conscious � wheezing with his mouth open, licking at cracked lips with a liverish tongue � but his awareness was a small, shriveled thing huddled somewhere in the dark within.

Seeing him like this, I felt nothing for him except the thin, detached pity I would have felt for any gunshot victim. No rage, no compassion, no sense of sorrow. Every man has demons and he�d let his destroy him, nearly destroy several innocent people; I had no patience with a man like that, no room inside me for understanding and forgiveness. I reserved my feelings for the fighters, the bogey-bashers and demon-slayers, the selfless ones who might hurt themselves but could never be driven to harm others.

The front door was locked; I opened it and took a quick look at the latch. No scratches, no marks of any kind. Then I went back into the family room. Something in there had caught my eye on the first pass: a glass on the coffee table where Runyon�s flower shrine had sat. It was a tall glass, half full of a dark liquid that was probably bourbon and three melting ice cubes.

Right.

From the phone in there I called 911, told the dispatcher who answered that I had a gunshot emergency and needed an ambulance right away at 77��Crestmont. She asked my name, and I hesitated and then disconnected without giving it to her. It wasn�t the smartest move, to walk away from the scene of a shooting, especially if one of the neighbors happened to see me doing it. But I couldn�t bear the thought of hanging around here, waiting, going through another endless Q. & A. session. I had a pretty good idea now of where Nedra was and who had shot Baby. And I could do something about it if I got out of here immediately.

He was still sitting as I�d left him, still wheezing, still licking his dry lips. I went past him, opened the door again. There were no sirens yet, but it wouldn�t be long before an ambulance and a police cruiser or two came shrieking up the hill. Gunshot emergency response in the city is usually fast... in upper middle-class white neighborhoods like this one anyway.

Leaving the door open, I crossed the deck and cracked the gate. The street was empty and there were no pedestrians. To make things as easy as possible for the cops and the paramedics, I left the gate ajar too.

It was the last thing I could or would do for Victor Runyon.

Kerry and I finally had our little showdown on Tuesday evening.

There was another message from her waiting when I got home Monday night, but it was too late and I was too exhausted to return it then. I called her at Bates and Carpenter on Tuesday morning and we arranged for her to come to my place at seven o�clock. It wasn�t much of a conversation and it didn�t make me feel particularly optimistic; but then, there wasn�t anything ominous in her tone and I didn�t have any premonitions of doom.

She got there right at seven. We kissed � not much of a kiss � and went into the living room. I asked her if she wanted something to drink; she said no. She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly against her teeth. It made a sound like wind in a hollow place.

�There�s something I have to tell you,� she said, �and I�d better get right to the point. I haven�t been working every night the past couple of weeks. I lied to you about that. I�ve... been seeing someone part of the time. Another man.�

�I know.�

�I didn�t want it to happen, I tried to keep it from�� She stopped as what I�d said kicked in. �You know?�

�Paul Blessing. Blessing Furniture Showrooms.�

�My God. How did you...?�

�Barney Rivera. He saw you and Blessing together one night and couldn�t wait to tell me.�

�How long have you known?�

�Since Friday night, for sure.�

�Why didn�t you say something?�

�I would have,� I said, �if you�d been available.�

�You didn�t... I mean...�

�Follow you around? Spy on you? No. I thought about it, but I didn�t do it. I didn�t want to make something sordid out of it � bad fifties melodrama. I have too much respect for you for that. For myself too.�

She was silent for a time. She�d come here to do this a certain way and I�d rocked her equilibrium; she was regrouping.

I asked her, �Do you love him?� It was the question uppermost in my mind and I wanted it out in the open first thing.

�I don�t know,� she said. �I don�t think so, not the way you mean. A strong physical attraction... and he�s a good man, kind...� She let the words trail off. Then, almost angrily, she said, �God, I hate this.�

�That makes two of us.�

�I haven�t slept with him. I want you to know that.�

�All right.�

�I mean it. I haven�t.�

�I believe you.�

�I wanted to, I admit that. I almost did, Saturday night.�

�What stopped you?�

�You did. How I feel about you, what we�ve been to each other. I have too much respect for you too.�

�It shouldn�t matter, I guess, but it does. I�m glad.�

�So am I.�

We held eye contact; then we both looked away, as if by mutual consent. It got quiet in there, so quiet I could hear the faint ticking from the old ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. My mother�s clock, brought here from Italy nearly one hundred years ago; the lock of my long-dead sister�s hair in a yellow envelope was still tucked into the back. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

When the silence got to be too loud I said, �So what happens now?�

�I don�t know,� Kerry said.

�You intend to keep on seeing him?�

�I... don�t know.�

�Which means you want to.�

�Part of me does. I can�t deny that.�

�How about me? Is there a part of you left for me?�

Her eyes had taken on a moist sheen, but at least they were looking at me again. �You think I want to end it between us?�

�Do you?�

�No.�

�That�s good. Neither do L But I�m not up to a competition with Blessing for you. I�m too old and too tired and too psychologically beat-up to get into that kind of game. If you want me, fine. If you want him, I�ll try to back out as gracefully as I can. But it�s got to be one way or the other. No dancing back and forth.�

�I wouldn�t do that to you.�

�Babe,� I said, �you already have, for a while now.�

She closed her eyes, opened them again. �I know,� she said, soft. �I�m sorry. I won�t let it go on much longer.�

�How long?�

�No more than a few days. Right now I�m confused and ashamed and emotionally screwed-up. I need to get away by myself, somewhere where there�s no personal or professional pressure and I can sort out my feelings. Can you accept that?�

�Yes.�

�I�ve already talked to Jim Carpenter. He�s letting me have a long weekend off, starting Thursday afternoon.�

�Where will you go?�

�No idea. I�ll probably just get in the car and drive until I find someplace to stop.�

�Call me as soon as you get back?�

�Yes. That�s a promise.�

There was really nothing more for either of us to say. She stood and I went with her to the door. I said, �Have a safe trip,� and she said, �I will. You take care too,� and out she went. We didn�t kiss and we didn�t touch, not even a pat or a hand clasp.

When she was gone I felt all the things I�d felt since Barney Rivera�s call: sad, lonely, hurt, needy. But not despondent. The whole business was out in the open finally. And she hadn�t slept with Blessing. And she hadn�t told me to take a hike, not yet anyway. And there was so much history between us, so many good things. I felt hopeful. Not confident, not secure, just hopeful.

Kerry came back on Sunday night. She didn�t call; she showed up unannounced at my flat shortly before nine o�clock. The doorbell rang, jarring me out of a half doze in front of the TV set, and when I went and opened up, there she was. Looking much more composed than she had on Tuesday � well rested and at peace with herself.

�I drove down to Big Sur,� she said when we were settled on the couch. �There�s nothing like the ocean to help you relax and see things clearly.�

�So what did you decide?�

�I decided I�m not going to see Paul Blessing anymore,� she said. �But that isn�t all. I decided something much more important than that.�

�Which is?�

�That you�ve been right all along. You and Cybil.�

�Right about what?�

She took a slow, deep breath, like somebody about to dive off a high board into very cold water. �Do you still want to marry me?� she said.

�Do I...� I gawped at her.

�You do, don�t you?�

�Well, sure, of course I do.�

�Then I accept.�

�You mean you... you�re willing to��

�Not just willing � I want to marry you. Tomorrow, next month, whenever. I love you. I love you and I don�t want to be with anybody else and I don�t know why I thought I did.�

I didn�t say anything. I couldn�t say anything. I just sat there grinning at her like a fool.