Glitsky almost laughed, but he didn't think this was funny. "Because he'd been a cop?"

"Partly. Mostly, I think, because we're related and they thought he could influence me."

"What does the security director of Tow/Hold do, exactly?" Glitsky asked.

This brought a prim smile to the mayor's mouth. "In theory, he coordinates the off-duty regular city officers and the rent-a-cop staff that guard the lots. In practice, not much. In spite of which it pays pretty well." The smile was gone. "In case you were wondering, a hundred and forty thousand dollars. It was a bribe, plain and simple," West went on. "Harlan turned them down flat, said he didn't want any part of it."

"So then they went to Hanover?"

West nodded. "He-I'm talking about Paul now- Paul told me he'd had threats, but that he didn't put any stock in them. They came with the territory, he said. Happened all the time, nothing to worry about. Then when…" She wound down and stopped. "I didn't know how to handle it, Abe. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be underhanded or duplicitous with you. But I didn't know what to do. I still don't. I'm afraid, if you must know the truth. And you know, a mayor-particularly a woman mayor-can't appear to be afraid. Venal, petty, selfish, arrogant, anything else, but not that."

Glitsky clipped off his words. "You could have just asked me directly."

"I didn't know how to do that. You're rather famously nonpolitical and I didn't want to contaminate you." She held a hand up. "I'm not flattering you. You wouldn't have even started if you'd thought this was all just about politics. If it's any consolation, I didn't know myself exactly what I expected you to do."

He hesitated, then said, "You should know that I've already talked to Nils Granat."

Even in the warm morning, she suppressed a shiver. "It's all so nebulous," she said. "On the one hand, I can't imagine it's real, that someone would kill a wonderful man like Paul Hanover over a business deal. On the other, if they could do that…"

Glitsky had spent a lot of time and energy on this already, all of it under false pretenses, and realizing that put him in a cold fury. His patience-always thin under the best conditions-was gone. He wasn't in the mood for her conjectures. He cut off her. "Excuse me," he said, "but what do you want me to do now? That's the question. Leave it to Cuneo?"

West's eyes went up. She drew a quick breath. "That's the other thing."

"What is?"

"Inspector Cuneo. You know that hundred-and-forty-thousand-dollar job I told you about with Tow/Hold?"

Hardly able to credit what he was hearing, Glitsky squinted into the sun. "Cuneo's up for it," he said. His voice rang hollow in his ears.

West's shoulders sagged. "It's a lot more than cops make, even inspectors, as you know," she said. "When Harlan turned it down, word got out that the position was there, and several policemen applied. I've seen the list and Cuneo's one of them. Of course, there'll be no job for anyone if Bayshore gets the contract, but…"

"But Cuneo's not going to investigate them for these murders, no matter what. That's your point."

"That's right."

"So you want me to keep looking?" "I think it's the only way we may get to the truth, don't you think?"

"Unless it comes out at the trial." "What trial?" "Catherine Hanover's."

West sighed again. "I don't believe it will come to that, Abe, and certainly not if she's innocent." "Certainly not? Why not?"

West's expression of surprise was, he thought, like the MasterCard commercial-priceless. "Well, they'll find out before they get that far, I'm sure."

There was no point in arguing. Glitsky stood up. "In the event they don't, though?"

West stood, too, moved a step toward him, put a hand on his arm. "Whatever you can do, Abe," she said with great, if unintentional, ambiguity. "I'd really appreciate it if you stayed involved."

He bit back his first three responses, all inappropriate. This was, after all, the political leader of San Francisco.

He mustered a salute. Unintentionally, if anything is truly unintentional, his words came out as ambiguous as hers had been. "I'll see what I can do," he said.

The picture of Catherine Hanover that Cuneo had snapped when she'd gone out to get her newspaper on Saturday morning turned out to be a good likeness. He'd used his 35mm Canon with an excellent close-up lens and good color film and had snapped seven shots in rapid succession, then printed them out in eight-by-ten format. In the one he liked the most, she was looking directly at him, so much so that he wondered if she'd in fact seen him, but her reaction of absolute shock when he'd knocked at her door fifteen minutes later with the warrant had been, he was sure, completely genuine. She'd had no clue.

What he liked about the picture wasn't merely how good she looked-no surprise, since Catherine Hanover seemed to get more attractive with every sighting-but that the angle was so very close to the one in the newspaper picture of Missy D'Amiens that he'd been showing around. Not only that, Missy's hair had been up in an elegant coif, and Catherine, obviously and recently post-shower, had hers wrapped in a towel. So nothing blocked the contours of either face. The biggest difference was that Missy was smiling, at a party, and Catherine's expression was inward. She was nearly frowning.

When he had first put the two pictures together, they confirmed what he'd noticed from the first time he'd seen the Missy photo. The two women weren't close enough in looks to be identical twins, of course, but the similarity between them was marked. They could easily have been sisters. Both had high, broad foreheads, strong chins and noses, well-defined cheekbones. Both had a near-identical widow's peak at the hairline.

Maxine and Joseph Willis sat with Cuneo at around noon at the back of their house, this time, under the strong light in the kitchen. They were looking at both of the pictures now, side by side, in silence. After a half minute or so, Maxine raised her head and said to Cuneo, "You're bouncing the table, Inspector. If you're impatient, maybe you'd like to walk around while we look."

The identification issue, and the couple's disagreements over it, sat at the table with them all like an unwelcome guest. Cuneo was inclined to let them take whatever time they needed, but it was difficult for him not to move while he waited. After Maxine spoke to him, he asked if he could get a glass of water, and so he was over by the sink when Joseph turned in his chair and said, "If I had to swear, I'd say it was Missy."

This was not what Cuneo had been hoping to hear, but now Maxine-who'd at first been so certain that the woman she'd seen had been Missy-was shaking her head from side to side.

"You don't agree, Mrs. Willis?" Cuneo asked. He was back at the table with his glass of water, pulling up his chair again. She reached out and put her index finger on the color picture of Catherine. "I know I've seen this girl before," she said. "You look again, Joseph!"

The small man drew the photo back directly in front of him and stared down at it. Joseph clearly didn't want to discuss this with his wife any longer. Now she was saying- wasn't she?-that it had not been Missy D'Amiens on last Wednesday. And more, that the person they'd both seen had been the woman in this other picture.

Joseph, in his heart, wasn't completely certain that it had been either of them. If the truth be known, Joseph hadn't been looking too carefully at the woman's face at all. He'd assumed it was his attractive neighbor, whose walk he'd often admired, but this time he'd been more drawn to the woman's generous bosom. That, and not her face at all, was the reason he'd entertained his doubts over whether the woman had been Missy D'Amiens. She'd just seemed, well, bigger. As for the face, he couldn't swear that he'd even glanced at it.