“Abe, you’ve arrested tons of black people.”

“Yeah, but usually, I hope, with a little evidence.”

“And you don’t have any evidence here? Then that’s it, not race.”

He shook his head. “Maybe that’s why I had to come here. I want to get that son of a bitch off the street and I got motive to burn, attitude like you wouldn’t believe and no hard evidence at all.”

Flo was silent a moment. Then, quietly, “And you’re not sure he’s a son of a bitch?”

“No, I’m pretty sure he’s that. I’m just not certain he committed this particular murder. But I don’t know if I want to risk Hardy’s life on it one way or the other.”

Glitsky’s wife stood up again and came around in front of him, pulling his head into her chest. “Is there anybody else who worries about doing the right thing as much as you do?”

Glitsky grunted. “I should just bring him in, shouldn’t I?”

She kept him hugged close. “Maybe a lot of people would.”

He pulled away and looked up at her. “I can’t, Flo.”

“I know,” she said. Stepping back now, businesslike. “So given that, what do you see here?”

“What I want to see,” he corrected her, “is… okay, the door maybe forced, but some sign of cat and mouse, Ingraham trying to get away. I mean, look, he’s sitting here thinking Baker is going to come and kill him. Then, lo and behold, Baker shows. What would you do?”

“The woman was naked. He was on the bed. Could be they weren’t paying attention.”

Abe shook his head. “Not if he thought someone was going to come and try to kill him. Nobody pays that little attention.”

She smiled. “You have.”

But he wasn’t playing. “Not in a situation like that, I wouldn’t.”

“How about this?” Flo asked. “The whole night before, he’s been up worrying about it. He lies down for a nap. The woman is in the shower. Baker knocks open the door, but it’s more a bump than any big noise. Ingraham rolls over but doesn’t wake up. The woman goes on with her shower, thinking the barge just moved against a piling or something.”

“Okay,” Abe said, “okay…”

“So Baker comes in and shoots Ingraham in bed. No doubt now the woman hears the shot and comes running out. Bam, bam, bam. Baker runs, knocking over the lamp on the way out in the dark. Ingraham, it turns out, isn’t dead yet. He staggers out of bed and goes outside and over the side.”

Abe sighed. “To be washed away by the tide?”

“Maybe.”

“Why the neck brace?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the gun in the canal?”

Flo had no answer. Abe put his hands in his pocket and walked back to the open door. The moon was higher, its harvest quality gone. Now it was a bright silver coin above the bridge. Flo’s was a theory he at least hadn’t independently arrived at, and it was as plausible, or implausible, as any of the ten he’d come up with. And what really happened might be one of the ten, or Flo’s, or something else altogether. Lots of people were good at theories. What made a good cop was finding one with evidence to back it up or-more-finding evidence and going from there.

Flo came up behind him, putting her arms around him. “How ’bout dinner?” she asked.

“It’s all bass ackwards,” he said. “I don’t see anything I hoped to find here.”

Flo turned him around and put her hands up to his face, closing his eyes with her thumbs. “Just set it in that brain of yours, what you see and feel now, and it’ll click in when you need it, if you need it.”

He felt her up against him and closed his arms around her. “Like you do when I need you.”

“Yep,” she said, “just like that.”

Chapter Nine

Sometimes when Johnny LaGuardia was pounding into her, like now, Doreen Biaggi made herself think about the way it had started between them, when she had thought he was such a nice sweet man.

She had been walking out of Molinari’s with some deli instead of a real dinner because she didn’t have much money, when some of the young North Beach neighborhood boys started following her, teasing her as they had always teased “the Nose.” Doreen keeping her head down, trying to walk faster, crying to herself. She was always nice to people. Why did they have to pick on her?

“What you got there, Noseen, some nose slaw? Maybe some nosadella?”

Ha. Ha. Ha. Snatching at her clothes, making honking noises, grabbing at her package of deli food.

And then there was this big man, not too old, chasing them away, walking her home. Johnny.

She looked over her shoulder at him, eyes closed now, rocking back and forth, taking his time…

Embarrassed at her tears, at her looks, she wanted to just thank him and go upstairs to her studio apartment. But he was so caring, or seemed so then. Brushing away the tears with a gentle smudge of his thumb. Taking her out to Little Joe’s-now ‘their’ place-to cheer her up.

Opening up to him. Telling him that she hated herself, her big schnozzola, everything. And him saying (lying, but nice) it wasn’t so bad, but if she hated it why didn’t she just get a nose job?

But where was a clerk at City Lights bookstore going to get the money for a nose job? It had been nothing but scrape scrape since graduation from high school-three years now-and it was enough of a struggle paying rent, eating, wearing decent clothes. And so long as she looked this way she’d never be able to get out of where she was, going nowhere. It was a catch-22…

He was speeding up now, and she got into it a little, leaning back into it, maybe hurry him along. She reached back between her legs and ran her fingernails along the bottom of his scrotum and he made that sound that meant it wouldn’t be too long now…

He had made it sound so easy. His friend Mr Tortoni could lend her the money for the surgery. With her new looks she could get hired someplace that paid better, then pay him back when she could. Until then there was only the vig to worry about, and for her it would be nothing, maybe a hundred good-faith money a week-which at the time, with Johnny Mr Sincere LaGuardia selling her not only on the idea of the loan but on her natural beauty, her chances for coming up in the world and glorious future, had seemed like nothing.

It started seeming like something soon afterward. The nose job had been a success and she now looked like a young Sophia Loren, but she couldn’t parlay that into a job that paid any better, and after six weeks of buying nothing, not even going out to a movie, she couldn’t come up with the vig.

And Johnny, who had been her friend and protector when she had been the Nose, had told her he could cover for her, just up the vig on a couple of other clients, but it was risky and he had to have some payment, some sign of good faith.

But she didn’t have anything.

He’d put his hand on her, right there-the first time anybody had touched her there-and said that that was worth more than a hundred a week.

Then she was pulling away, scared, from that different Johnny-and didn’t even see the hand come up so hard she thought he had broken her face-and then he was on top of her.

And she remembered listening to him explaining afterward that she didn’t have a choice. Somebody had to come up with the vig. He didn’t want her to be hurt and he could protect her. He hadn’t hit her because he was mad at her. He wasn’t mad at her. But she needed to take a little reality check. He was her friend…

“Oh, oh, Jesus Mary and Joseph.” Johnny LaGuardia said the litany every time he came. Collapsing, he fell against her back, his arms wrapped around her.

She felt his weight on her, and she started to cry. She would never be able to come up with the vig. This was never going to end.

At Frank’s Extra Espresso Bar on Vallejo, Umberto Tozzi was on the jukebox singing ‘Ti Amo,’ sounding like an Italian John Lennon. ‘Ti Amo’ was Angelo Tortoni’s favorite song, and whenever he was in the place he played it at least once an hour. If anybody minded, they didn’t say.