‘More iced tea, Your Honor?’

Mauritio, the maitre-d‘, had sent the youngster over to check the judge’s glass. Mauritio always took good care of him.

Giotti gave his practiced, friendly nod to the white-jacketed waiter and the young man poured. The boy could have been him, forty-five years before, earnest and efficient, making sure the patrons were happy. He moved on to the next table and the judge sighed again.

‘You don’t look very cheerful. Is something wrong?’

Giotti hadn’t even noticed his wife’s approach. Pat Giotti was still a fine-looking woman, with an unlined, ageless face, high cheekbones, a graceful figure. He raised his face and she kissed him, then seated herself across the table, immediately reaching over and taking his hand, squeezing it. ‘Sorry I’m late. Are you all right?’

His face animated itself. ‘Just feeling old for a minute.’

‘You’re not old.’

‘For a minute, I said.’ He squeezed her hand. They had made love the night before and he was telling her he remembered very well. She was right, he wasn’t old.

‘Are you thinking about Sal?’

He shook his head. ‘Actually, no. The waiter just reminded me of when I used to work here.’ The judge looked down at the boats for a second. ‘Maybe a little.’

She eyed him carefully, seemed satisfied, then reached for a roll and broke it. ‘I’m sure it was for the best,’ she said. ‘Sal, I mean.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ he agreed. ‘It’s just…’ His voice trailed off. ‘I look down there at the moorings, I can almost see the Signing Bonus, see Sal waving up at me. It’s hard to imagine him gone.’

‘He’d lived his life, hon.’

‘He was my age. I think that’s part of it.’

‘He was sick, remember? He was dying anyway. It just would have gotten worse. His suffering’s over now.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It isn’t all bad. It’s much better this way.’

‘I know you’re right.’ He looked out the window. ‘This was probably just the wrong table for today, being able to see down there. It brings back those memories.’

‘But this is our table, Mario. They hold it for you, the judge’s table.’

He squeezed her hand again. ‘I’m just saying he was my friend. I miss him, that’s all.’

‘The idea of him, love, the idea. He wasn’t the same friend at the end, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

She met his eyes again, squeezed his hand.

‘You must know that,’ she said.

‘I do know it, Pat. It’s better all around. It’s just not easy.’

The waiter came by and took their orders. Pat ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio to go with her scallops. The judge was having a crab Louis and his iced tea – of course, no wine. He was going back to court in the afternoon.

They sat in silence for a while, until her wine arrived. She took a taste, then put her glass down. ‘Did you read this morning’s paper? They’re saying maybe it wasn’t a suicide.’

‘Maybe? It wasn’t,’ the judge said flatly.

The wine seemed to stick in Pat Giotti’s throat. She took another sip to clear it. ‘Why do you say that?’

The judge shrugged. ‘It’s got all the earmarks of an assisted suicide. Look at the morphine vials, the labels removed. Some medical person was there, helped him along. I had Annie’ – his secretary – ‘stop by at the Hall of Justice and pick up a copy of the autopsy this morning.’

‘And?’

The judge thoughtfully tore a piece of his sourdough, then seemed to forget about it. ‘The morphine dose wasn’t that large. Acting alone, Sal would have probably done lots more to be sure. He had three more vials at his place he could have used. But whoever helped him put it right in the vein.’

‘Which would not have been enough in the muscle?’

Giotti nodded. ‘So it was a medical professional. At any rate, somebody who’d know that.’ In spite of the topic the judge had to smile in admiration. ‘You don’t forget anything, do you? What was that, Ellison?’

His wife looked pleased at the compliment. Giotti was referring to a medical malpractice case he’d heard on appeal a few years back, U.S. v. Ellison Pharmaceuticals, where the doctor’s decision to administer one of Ellison’s drugs intravenously (IV), rather than intramuscularly (IM), had proved fatal to a patient. The doctor had tried to place the blame on the drug company, but the strategy hadn’t worked; drugs injected directly into a vein had a great deal more effective potency than drugs administered IM, and Giotti had ruled that every doctor on the planet knew that, or ought to.

Pat Giotti, whose life revolved around her husband’s, made it a point to read as many of his cases as she could. She didn’t have a profession hadn’t worked since the earliest days of their marriage. She harbored a lingering fear that she and her husband might someday have nothing to talk about, so she kept up on the law as well as the trivia that each case provided.

Giotti sat back, letting go of his wife’s hand as the waiter set their plates in front of them. ‘One thing I’m sure of,’ he said. ‘We haven’t heard the end of it, especially now they’re saying it might not be a suicide.’

Pat Giotti put her fork down. ‘They haven’t done that, have they?’

‘If it’s not a suicide, it’s some kind of murder. And murder means it gets investigated.’

‘That may be the law, but they shouldn’t do that. They ought to just leave it alone.’

He reached across the table and took her hand again. ‘Who can say how much pain he was in? And even if he was, what if he wanted to endure it for some reason? What if it wasn’t his decision to die just then, at that moment? That’s the issue.’

That was her Mario, she thought, ever the judge. Always considering the issues, the law.

‘That’s why they want to find out who was there,’ he said.

Hardy figured out how much time he’d spent outdoors on this beautiful day. He’d walked through the fog near his house this morning at a little after seven – call it four minutes to get to where he’d parked the night before. Then he’d stood outside Graham’s house for a total of about two minutes, taking in the sunlight, birdsong, smell of blossoms, talking to Lanier. Thirty seconds walking back to his car at one-fifteen. Two minutes getting from the downtown garage to his office.

Now it was seven forty-five and the sun was a recent memory, the dusk just settling on the buildings around the office. Hardy stood at his window overlooking Sutter Street, his tie undone, coat off, eyes burning. Between Graham Russo and Tryptech, he’d already put in a thirteen-hour day and in that time he’d spent all but eight and a half minutes indoors.

The deposition with Terry Lowitz of the Port of Oakland had ended fifteen minutes ago. They’d had sandwiches brought up at five-thirty when it looked as though it was going to go on for another couple of hours. He’d called Frannie and told her he was going to be late. She was less than thrilled.

Lowitz was a maintenance supervisor whose skills as a raconteur were, Hardy thought, woefully inadequate. It had taken Hardy three tries to get the guy to put his name on the record properly. Mr Lowitz was of the general opinion that the Port of Oakland had never in its history allowed one machine of any kind to run for an instant without being in perfect repair, especially the loading transoms.

Over the course of five hours Hardy had brought up perhaps thirty examples of accidents at the Port, large or small, that might have been attributed to faulty equipment, but Mr Lowitz, when he answered intelligibly at all, had an alternate interpretation for every mishap. He was not going to lose his job by criticizing his employer. Ever.

Hardy walked back to his desk and, without thinking, picked up one of the three darts that lay upon it and flung it at the dartboard across the room. A nanosecond after he released it, he remembered that he was theoretically in the middle of a record round and was shooting for the ‘3.’