‘Are you saying I’m under arrest?’

Again, she gave him nothing and he stammered into the breach. ‘Look, I can’t let this happen to me. I cannot get arrested for prostitution. I don’t care what that girl says – she’s a friend of mine. I’ve got to call my lawyer.’

‘If you’re going to call your lawyer, you can do it just as well from the Hall of Justice.’

He lowered his voice. ‘Look, what if… I mean, can’t we take care of this here? Maybe we can-’

She cut him off. ‘Don’t make it worse, George. Attempting to bribe a police officer is a crime too. Maybe you didn’t know that. Let’s pretend that for now, huh? Now let’s go.’

He was cracking. ‘No, look, please-’

She raised her voice again. ‘Hey!’

One of the officers stopped what he was doing and began trotting down to her. ‘Everything all right, Inspector?’

She held up a hand, keeping the officer out of earshot distance. ‘One minute, thanks. Stay close.’

She looked back to George. ‘Turn around,’ she said. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

The officers wanted to put him in the black-and-white, where there was a screen and no handles on the back doors. But Sarah was a homicide inspector – the top of the hierarchy – and they knew it from the call number the dispatcher had given them: 14-H. She told the uniforms they could drive the hooker around the corner and let her go. The John was a witness in a homicide investigation and she was going to squeeze him now. In her car.

He was in the backseat, handcuffed, shivering with fear or cold or both. She got into the front seat and spun around. ‘I’d like to make you a trade.’

A born trader himself, George narrowed his eyes at the unexpected gambit.

Sarah didn’t let him get an answer out. ‘My real interest is your brother.’

‘Graham? What’s Graham got to do with this?’

‘This is going to make you tell me where you were when your father got killed.’

‘Fuck you. Why should I?’

Sarah looked flatly at him for a minute, then turned around and started the car.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute!’

‘We can talk downtown.’

‘No, no. I was just…’

‘Being an asshole?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry. What do you want to know about Graham?’

She turned the car’s engine off. ‘I don’t want to know anything about Graham. I want to know about you. Graham didn’t kill your father.’

‘My father isn’t dead,’ George said. ‘I work with him every day.’

‘Sal.’ She clipped it. ‘Don’t get even slightly cute with me one more time or this discussion’s over. Understand?’

George didn’t give much away, but he did nod. ‘Okay, Graham didn’t kill Sal. So what?’

‘Okay, so somebody else did. I’m eliminating suspects.’

He leaned back, the haunted look in his eyes giving way to something else. Shrewdness, a deal in the making. ‘You can’t think I had anything to do with that. I didn’t even know where Sal lived.’

‘That’s what you’ve said, but I don’t know it’s true. You wouldn’t tell Graham’s attorney or anybody else where you were that afternoon.’

‘Why should I? It’s nobody’s business. You cops never asked.’

‘Well, it’s my business. I’m asking now. You can tell me where you were and I’ll go away and that’ll be the end of tonight’s little adventure. Or not, and I can write you up, fill out an incident report, you get to see your name in the newspaper.’ She leaned forward. ‘Look, all I want to know is where you were. You don’t tell me, I’m going to become a lot more interested in you as a murder suspect. Every minute of your last year is going to get a profile.’

‘I don’t-’

‘On the other hand, you tell me where you were and if it’s got nothing to do with your father, then this moment tonight, your girlfriend, everything – it all stops here.’

‘You don’t write it up? Or whatever it is you do?’

‘I won’t do anything.’

‘My father, especially. He can’t know.’

This phraseology slowed her momentarily until she realized George was talking about Leland, not Sal. ‘He won’t.’

Infuriatingly, as she was closing in, he skittered away again. ‘How do I know I can believe you?’

She smiled. ‘Well, the truth is, George, you can’t. Either way, you’re no worse off than you are right now.’ Her voice became conversational. She knew the battle was hers if she kept it cool. There was no need for the heavy artillery; enough hits with the light gauge would accomplish the same thing. ‘Look, George, it’s simple. You’ve got nothing to lose. Just tell me.’

He closed his eyes and swallowed, then mumbled it out. ‘Mitchell Brothers.’

‘What?’

He repeated it. The Mitchell brothers had been San Francisco’s kings of pornography for years until one of them had shot and killed the other one, which threw a damper on their partnership. Still, the original Mitchell Brothers Theater – five or six blocks from Baywest Bank – continued to thrive under the original name.

In terms of sexual provender, it went a good deal farther than the titillating nudity of the North Beach tourist shops. Featuring hard-core live sex shows, private booths, one-on-ones, and kinkiness of every imaginable kind, it was as raunchy a place as San Francisco could provide.

‘It’s my rotten luck.’ George was slumped now, going on. ‘The one day I do anything, the one hour, that’s when Sal dies and everybody wants to know where I am, where I was. And if Leland finds out where I was…’ He shook his head. ‘He’d cut me out, too, like Sal did. Then it would really be over.’

‘What would?’

‘My life,’ he said. ‘My career, everything he’s raised me to do.’

She had to ask. ‘So why did you risk it? Why’d you have this girl tonight? Why don’t you get yourself a girlfriend?’

This was torture. ‘There’s no… Leland wouldn’t…’

‘Like any of them? Approve?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t make any mistakes.’

She tried to understand. George blamed himself for being abandoned; if he had been better or more lovable or something, it might not have had to happen. He might never understand the way it had formed him, but now he was an adult with an adult’s needs and desires, and, stunted by the fear of rejection, he was afraid to pursue them. Legitimately.

It saddened her, so she spoke gentry. ‘I’m afraid you’re on the wrong planet for no mistakes, George. Everybody makes them here on earth. They’re allowed.’

‘Not to me. You don’t know.’

But the defenses were coming back up. He straightened in the seat. His eyes narrowed again, seemed to focus more sharply. The slackness went out of his face. ‘So anyway, that’s where I was,’ he said. ‘Is that what you wanted? Do we have a deal?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t tell my father?’

‘That’s right. But sooner or later, you know, something else like this is going to happen. He’s going to find out.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s going to stop.’

Just what he needs, she thought, as though he weren’t already one of the most repressed young men she’d ever met. But she wasn’t his counselor. She’d tried, even – against her instincts – cared for a moment.

Someday he’d change, or he would implode. Or he might stay the same and live a miserable, pinched life of money and toys. Either way, Sarah wasn’t going to have anything to do with it.

She didn’t know how she could check it out, but for the moment George had given her a believable alibi. And this solved one of her immediate problems.

But it hadn’t solved Graham’s.