Fisk neatly palmed the tape recorder and slipped it into his pocket. "I'm sorry we got on this difficult subject," he said. "It's a part of the job I don't much enjoy. But you've been very helpful and the lunch was fantastic."

Nancy Ross also reached for the check. Harlen and his aunt objected, but she overrode them both. Bracco, deeply relieved, stammered out his thanks. He'd caught a glimpse of the figure-$147.88, not including the tip. This was half what Bracco paid his father every month for rent.

Then everybody was standing up and kissing everyone else on both cheeks. Nancy Ross seemed to have completely recovered from the depressing financial talk. For Bracco's part, he shook Nancy's hand and then Kathy's, told them how pleasant it had been, how much he'd enjoyed it. And in a way, he realized, it was true. It had been an intimate glimpse into another, totally separate world that coexisted with his own.

And in that world, Malachi Ross had money trouble.

Wes Farrell got the news about Mrs. Loring from Strout's office about five minutes after he arrived at his office. After thinking about it for a minute, he decided that this wasn't the kind of uplifting information you wanted to immediately share with your client: "Hi, Chuck, it's Wes Farrell here. Great news. They're digging up your mom's body and cutting it up for science." No. He didn't think so.

It was, however, a good break for him, a cause for celebration, and in the past months there'd been few enough of them. He made a valiant attempt to conduct other business until lunchtime. But once he locked the door and headed back for his house, he suddenly knew that it was going to take more will than he possessed to get him back in his office before a new day had dawned.

He had an artichoke and a can of tuna fish for lunch, then took a half hour power nap in his living room. Now he was outside, accompanying his sixty-five-pound boxer, Bart, on a walk around Buena Vista Park. He sported a pair of threadbare slacks, high-tech tennis shoes, and a sweatshirt that from a distance read BUSH and up close contained the tiny, lowercase fill-in letters ll it. Farrell liked to think that hanging in his closet he had perhaps the world's premier collection of bumper-sticker wisdom affixed to shirtwear.

The sun had broken through the cloud cover and the day threatened to grow almost warm. It had been warm only two days before, and no San Francisco native would reasonably expect a reprise so soon. And yet it appeared to be happening. Wonders would never cease.

And among them was the appearance of his beloved, Samantha Duncan. Cute, fit, feisty, and now almost forty, Sam had moved in with Wes over five years ago and both considered the arrangement permanent, although a formal marriage was not in their plans-Wes had been there, done that, and had issues with it, and Sam thought that was fine.

As soon as he'd gotten home, he'd called her where she worked at the Rape Crisis Counseling Center on Haight Street and asked her if she wanted to take some time off and maybe engage in some consensual adult activity-the kind of humor she hated in everyone else in the world, but tolerated in Wes. But she'd been busy and wasn't likely to be able to get away.

But suddenly now here she was, falling in step beside him, taking his hand. He stopped, kissed her, held her against him for a minute. "How'd you get away?"

"Fate. One of the volunteers just decided to come in and work." Bart was pulling at his leash, and they both started walking. She turned to look up at him. "So what happened that it's suddenly a holiday?"

He told her, trying to give her some of the flavor of Hardy's idea, Strout's original reluctance, this morning's turnaround, the immediate and salutary effect it might have on his billings. He could, for the first time in about five years, find himself involved in a high-profile case, get his name in the paper, attract a broader client base.

"Which I've heard you say more than once you don't want to do."

"If I said it, it must be true," he admitted. "But that's the problem. You get a lot of people to start paying you, next thing you know they want you to actually do work for them. It's a hell of a drain on resources."

"But you're going for this anyway?"

"Got to. You've seen what happens when you try to hold your practice to only five or six solid clients at a time, as I have so masterfully done. You find yourself turning into some kind of a legal specialist. You turn in the same motions five times each, except you've changed the names and one or two details. So you cut your work by a fifth and multiply your billings times five. It's just a beautiful license to print money. Fortunately I'm man enough to swallow my principles and bill the shit out of all these people, while still providing excellent service, of course."

"Of course." She dropped his hand. "I have no idea why I like you."

"I'm more fun than everybody else, is why. But I'm even more fun than that if I've got spending money. Hence my five-client plan. Except then what sometimes happens, as we've recently seen, is one Supreme Court ruling and the bottom falls out, the money dries up, you leave me. Then I probably kill myself. It's horrible, and all because of the Supremes and their picky little decisions."

"Those darn guys," Sam said.

"And two women, don't forget, as I'm sure you never would. Anyway, so I figure this might be good press and a golden opportunity. I can expand the business again. Then I can pick and choose great clients who can afford to pay huge fortunes for very little work on my part, and then you and I can go on in our life of meaningless hedonism."

"You sound like an awful, awful person. Do you know that?"

"I keep telling you. It's the real me."

"The real you who spent all those nights at your office last summer getting the Mackeys' suit included with the others, and then forgot to charge them anything for all that work?"

"I know." Farrell wore a look of chagrin. "I almost fired myself for that. Besides, my real plan was that they'd win the lottery and be so grateful that they'd split it with me. Don't look at me like that-it could still happen."

They'd come around to the grass at the very top of the park. Sam sat, and Wes stretched out on the ground and put his head on her lap. Bart, getting on in years, rested his muzzle on Farrell's stomach.

After a few minutes, Sam stopped combing Wes's hair with her fingers. "I don't understand something," she said.

"No," he said, "you pretty much seem to get everything."

"What you're trying to get is lucky, isn't it?"

"I'm shocked and dismayed that you could think such a thing." He put a finger to his forehead theatrically, spoke as if to himself. "Oh no, wait. I can't be both." Then back to her, "I'm shocked, Sam, that you could think such a thing. I'd never stoop to flattery hoping to coax a carnal favor from you. Our love is too precious and too real."

"I should have worn boots," she replied. "It's a little thick out here."

Wes shrugged. "All right, I'll be serious. What don't you understand?"

"All this talk about clearing beds. Mrs. Loring even. Dismas Hardy says one possible motive someone might have had for killing her is to get the bed empty. But, so who does that help, if the bed's empty?"

"Then they can put somebody else in it," Wes said.

"Right. That's the part I don't understand. You've got a sick person in a bed, and then that person dies and the next day you've got another sick person in the bed. They're paying the same thing for the same bed, right? So why is it to anyone's advantage to get rid of person A in favor of person B? I just don't see it."

Farrell lifted his head a fraction of an inch. "Bart, you want to tell her? Ow! Those hairs are precious to me."