Manny didn’t think he had to point out that he and Fred were cheating from the git-go. That wasn’t the point. The point was to build your case from what you decide are the facts you’re going to use. They were doing that very well.

He didn’t want Fred anywhere near a polygraph. Though the results of a lie-detector test were not admissible at trial, it could be a damaging tool, especially at the pre-hearing stage. He stopped at his window, looked down the street, across at the Pyramid. He walked over to his desk again. “I can’t let you do it, Fred.”

“So we’re just going to pack it in, admit that we lied.”

“It’s not that!”

“It even seems like it’s that to me. Think what the D.A. will do with it.”

“The D.A. will just continue plodding along.”

“And drop Medina.”

Gubicza hung his head, putting his weight on the back of his chair. “They will probably not pursue it with much vigor,” he admitted.

“But Medina has to be punished.”

“Fred, compare that good-Medina being punished -with the much greater good of you not going to jail for murder.” He hated to raise his voice, but it was happening. “If they trip you up on Raines and Valenti, not only do those two guys walk, it’s likely you go down. And once they’ve got you seated and hooked up to a polygraph, they might just ask you anything. And it might not be about Hector Medina and Poppy,”

“So just make them promise they won’t.”

Gubicza cleared his throat. “Make them promise they won’t,” he repeated.

“Sure. Make that a condition.”

“Don’t you think that request might be showing our hand just a little bit?”

“How?” Warming to it now, Treadwell was making his case. “Look, they want to talk about Hector Medina, we say okay, but that’s all. They’ll understand that. I mean, we don’t want to muck around with the murder investigation. This is a separate issue. Tied in, maybe, but separate. We build my credibility, we get Hector, it’s perfect.”

“Quit saying that, Fred. Nothing’s perfect.” He sat back down in his leather chair. “God, I hate this kind of Monday,” he said.

Fifteen blocks downtown Art Drysdale hung up his telephone and walked down to his boss’s office. He nodded to Dorothy, Locke’s secretary, and just kept going. Christopher Locke, the elected District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, was on the telephone himself, seated at his desk, and waved his old friend to sit down. Instead, Drysdale went back outside and helped himself to a cup of coffee.

“How’s business?” he asked Dorothy, planting himself on a corner of her desk.

Before she could answer, Locke called from the other room. “Art!”

Drysdale shrugged. “We’ve got to do this more often,” he said to Dorothy, then whispered, “do me a favor, love, and keep the phone quiet for about two minutes.” He went back through the doors, closing them behind him.

“What?” Locke said. He was studying a file on his desk and didn’t look up.

“That’s why they keep electing you,” Drysdale said. “The warm, charming exterior. The man behind the office.”

Locke sighed, shaking his head, keeping it down. “What?” he repeated.

“You owe me a buck,” Drysdale said.

It took a second, but then Locke stopped reading and brought his eyes up to meet Drysdale’s. “Get out of here,” he said.

“Swear to God.”

“Gubicza agreed to it?”

“With conditions.”

“What? That we don’t ask any questions?”

“Nothing about Raines and Valenti.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I agreed, of course.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“I said, and I quote, ‘On my mother’s grave I will never mention those names or anything about those cases.’ ”

“So how are you going to bring them up?”

Drysdale sipped at his coffee. “Well, I thought I’d have the polygraph set up downtown here. That way I’ll avoid the temptation to go stand on my mother’s grave, may she rest in peace. Which is where I said I wouldn’t bring up the murder raps.”

Samson wasn’t really in Dido’s class, or Louis Baker’s. He had this sloppy way, heavy, not tight, with long dreadlocks none too clean, and didn’t put out the kind of vibe Dido had done, where when it wasn’t business he was okay. Dido could laugh and shoot a hoop or two. He bought Lace his shoes. Like that.

And even Baker, you could talk to him. Stuff about the cut, this an’ that, the paint, the Mama. If Dido had to go, Lace could have maybe gone in with Louis-at least until Louis killed Dido. Then maybe not. But if Dido had just died, or moved on, ’stead of Louis having done it…

Yeah, but that hadn’t gone down at all. Now they was both of ’em clear of the cut, and Samson was a whole different breed of badness moving in.

Like here Monday not yet noon, cold as the landlord, Lace and Jumpup only sitting at the curb and he come by just to show ’em and kick ’em into the street. Now what’s that shit?

“This my cut now,” he say, and they watch him walk, one end to the other, couple of his troops tagging.

Where they- he and Jumpup- s’pose to go now?

Nat Glitsky was seventy-two years old and spent most of his time now (since Emma had died) in the synagogue at Fulton and Arguello, which was where his son Abe had picked him up.

They drove north up Park Presidio through the city and took Lombard over to Van Ness, then to Broadway through the tunnel and into North Beach. Nat had a fondness for big Italian lunches, and if his son was paying you couldn’t do better than Cap’s, which had been serving the same meals since he was dating Emma. It had been one of the few good restaurants he could take her to that didn’t mind having a black woman eating with the whites. Hard to remember those times, especially now when there was every kind of humanity seated at the tables.

Nat kept his yarmulke on but hung his jacket on the back of his chair. The waiter came and he said he’d have a Negroni-Campari, bitters and gin.

“How can you drink that medicine?” Abe asked after he’d ordered his iced tea.

Nat patted the hand of his only child. There certainly was a lot of Emma in him-she hadn’t much cared for Negronis either. He wondered if maybe it was something about being part or all black. Negroni. Would he try to develop a taste for a drink called a Hymonie or a Kiker?

But his son was thrashing in deeper waters. All during the ride over here they’d been talking about Abe’s projected move to Los Angeles. Nat wasn’t for it. What was he going to do without his family around? But he didn’t bring that up yet. No sense in getting all riled up about a maybe. And Abe was still just talking-he hadn’t made up his mind. At least Nat didn’t think so. Not yet…

And if Nat knew Abe, it wasn’t so much even the move to L.A. that he needed to talk about. That was just a decision and Abe had never had a problem with decisions. At least, not to talk to his father about. What Abe had trouble with sometimes was lining up the crosshairs so he could get his bead on the real issue. Well, everybody had that problem, Nat thought. Decisions tended to make themselves once you had everything else lined up. Most people just didn’t take the time, acted impulsively, made the wrong moves.

Not Abe, though, not usually, anyway. Which was why they were sitting here now.

Their drinks arrived and they clinked their glasses. “L’chaim.”

Nat sipped, put the glass down and made a kissing sound two or three times, savoring the taste in his mouth. At least Abe looked well rested. And why not? He had Flo, the great kids, the important stuff worked out. But he listened while Abe kept repeating himself about his job this, the job that, nobody cared, some friend of his-Hardy-with a problem. Finally he held his hand up.

“So what are you saying here?” he asked, then shrugged. “The job isn’t good? So change the job. You don’t have to do the same job somewhere else.”