Sam shouldered his way to a rope run down to the foot of City Hall. On the side opposite of him, the people parted as a dozen or so policemen cut an opening and held up the rope, letting in a tall man with great bulging eyes. He wore a homburg and tall coat with a fur collar. Smiling and holding leather gloves, he strode across to the mayor and the police chief, Brady and their ilk, and shook a lot of hands.

Sam didn’t recognize him. But he heard whispers of “Hearst” all around him.

The band started up.

The police began to march to Market Street.

The D.A., the chief, and mayor, and William Randolph Hearst led the way.

Boots marched from City Hall, along the cleared roadway, and past the big Bull Durham advertisement on the last building standing on the cleared grounds. The trees newly planted and immature, the lampposts all new and polished. The smiles on the leaders’ faces. Hearst confident, hands in pockets, sharing a quick joke with Judge Brady. A quick smile from Chief O’Brien.

“Say, how about making way for a kid?”

Sam felt an elbow in the back and looked back to see a man with a ruffian boy on his shoulders trying to catch a glimpse of the big blue walk. The kid smiled with amazement, and his father handed a tiny flag up to him and he waved it and yelled. His father held on to his legs and smiled at the syncopated rhythm of the police boots, the strength of it.

Sam stayed there until the blue parade moved down onto Market, heading toward the Embarcadero. The crowd began to mass up toward the steps of City Hall, where workers put the final touches on a great wooden dais. Soldiers walked the grounds, spending time with country virgins and proud old men. They shook hands and patrolled with rifles strung across their backs. Sam asked one of them about the handouts for the veterans, and the soldier, a pink-faced boy with hair the color of straw, pointed him to a series of trucks parked along Larkin in front of the library.

Sam waited there in line for nearly two hours before being handed a pound of flour and a hand-painted greeting card thanking him for his effort overseas.

He stared back at the old soldier who’d handed this to him, the old man himself leaning on a crutch and missing part of his left leg. The soldier smiled with apology, offering a warm hand, and turned back to the next in line, the line of cripples, lungers, and shell-shocked boys-now men-stretching down around McAllister Street.

Sam kept the flour and tossed the greeting card into the trash by the public library.

He sat on the steps and smoked two cigarettes. CHAUCER. SHAKESPEARE. MILTON. HAWTHORNE. POE. Other names he didn’t recognize carved in marble on the library walls.

He walked up the steps and went inside.

19

There’s no way this Petrovich fella is smarter than Craig Kennedy,” Phil Haultain said. “He’s pretty sharp,” Sam said. “He understands people.”

“Well, so does Craig Kennedy. Craig Kennedy isn’t just a detective, he’s a scientist. He uses his knowledge of chemistry and physics to chase down criminals. Does that fella Petrovich ever look through a microscope?”

“He’s got a sense for body language.”

“Does he have a nice car?”

“The book was published in 1866.”

“How ’bout a horse?” Haultain asked.

The men were side by side in long separate tubs filled with hot mud. Sam smoked a cigarette. Phil smoked a cigar.

They’d driven north up through Napa Valley the day before and found rooms in the old wooden hotel downtown. Calistoga was a terrible town for shadow work, only about a half dozen buildings along a single street. The girls were staying at a resort down the road, but Phil said they came in for dinner every night. Phil knew their schedule and movements, the shifts of their guards, and the whole racket. He’d been watching them for nearly a week before picking up Sam. But there wasn’t much sense in watching them today, so they’d taken the afternoon off, waiting for the girls to come back to town.

“You’re going to ruin your hat.”

“Some steam is good,” Phil said. “That mud helping you breathe?”

“Like an elephant on my chest.”

There was a strange sense about lying neck-deep in the mud-you lost the sense of your body, your outline, and shape. You didn’t see yourself anymore, couldn’t find yourself. Phil seemed fine with it, though, a big smile on his face and chomping on that wet cigar, refusing to take off his big brown Stetson.

“So she knows who you are?” Sam asked.

“Sure,” Phil said. “No sense in hiding it. I think Zey kinda gets a kick out of the danger. She slips out with me at night, kinda like we’re a couple kids. She doesn’t care for Ma Murphy a bit. The old woman puts them on a schedule of when they eat, when they take their exercise, and probably when they go to the toilet.”

“How many guards?”

“Two.”

“You know ’em?”

“Couple Frisco cops. Uniform boys outta uniform. Never seen ’em.”

“Can we get the girls out?”

“Sure.”

“Arbuckle’s new attorney, Gavin McNab, wants ’em.”

“When?”

“Soon as we can.”

“The problem won’t be the cops. The problem is the girls.”

“How’s that?”

“They got the life up here. They get served a big fat breakfast and go for walks and swims. They take mud treatments and mineral baths. I mean these girls don’t have to do a thing.”

“Maybe they’re bored.”

“Can we have one more night with ’em?”

“Sure thing.”

“I don’t know if I could stand much more anyway. I’m up in the hills with my field glasses when they go for their treatments, when they dip ’em in mud and massage ’em and all that. I’m there when they come outside to the hot springs. Do you have any idea what that can do to a man?”

“It’s a rough assignment, Phil.”

“You bet it is,” Phil said. “They come out in robes, their bodies all slathered in dried mud, like they got some kinda tight brown dress on, still showing their curves and humps and all that, and then dip down into the little hot springs. All that steam and heat bubbling up from the earth, the women not even having the decency to stay covered. They get up and play on the rocks and just plain frolic.”

“It’s the frolicking that bothers you.”

“You bet. You ever seen a nude woman frolic? Let alone two? It ain’t good for your head.”

“I’m real sorry, Phil. Nude showgirls. Tough stuff.”

“You’ll see.”

A very large woman in white walked into the baths and without a word opened a large spigot over Phil’s tub, dropping in more mud, and then opening another over Sam. Sam closed his eyes and tried to breathe with the heft on his chest. He thought of being outside himself and liked that idea, hoping he could emerge from the bath with a repaired body but knowing better.

“What’s your favorite part?” Sam asked.

“Of what?”

“The girls.”

“Zey has a mole on her ass. I don’t know why, but it does something for me.”

“We should get the car gassed up tonight.”

“Will do.”

WHEN ROSCOE FIRST SAW Judge Louderback, he thought to himself, You got to be kidding. The guy looked like any other Joe walking the street, playing the market and punching the clock at some downtown firm. He was thin and young-too young, in Roscoe’s estimation, to be a judge-with neatly combed brown hair and a casual, friendly way of addressing the court. Light smile and eyes, soft voice. Roscoe thought a judge should be an old man with a weathered face and crooked fingers that wrapped around the gavel, not some young businessman type.

McNab sat by Roscoe as they waited for Louderback to finish up his docket before they started the first round of jury selection. A frail Chinese man in silks with a down-turned head and a woman translator stood small and distant before Louderback as Louderback read out a short list of charges, most of them dealing with theft. Apparently the Chinese man, Yuk Lee or something like that, had stolen five bags of rice from a grocer and then gunned down the grocer.