"Do you know how long he worked for Three Fillies?"

"Oh, I don't know. He was there before I left."

"How long have you been gone?"

"Nine years."

"And what was his job?"

"God, I don't know," Sherry said. "He was always around with his storm troopers. So tight. So shiny. So controlled. So anal-retentive. So full of violence."

I looked at Susan. She was studying the row of people sitting at the counter across the room. "Are you still with the guitar player?" I said.

"I'm not with anyone," she said. "Freedom is best pursued alone."

The waitress came by and put the bill down on the table.

"Whenever you're ready," she said.

I had been ready since Sherry Lark sat down, but I'd come all the way to San Francisco to talk with her. I made a final stab.

"Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed Walter?"

"I don't think of death. It's very negative energy. I'm sorry, but I prefer to give my full energies to life."

I nodded. Susan was still studying the counter, though I thought I could see the corner of her mouth twitch. I picked up the bill and looked at it.

"Would it be rancorous capitalism if I paid this?" I said.

"We both know if you didn't you'd feel threatened," Sherry said.

I paid. We left.

THIRTY-NINE

"YOUR INSECURITY WAS pathetically obvious," Susan said when we were alone walking up Powell Street. "The way you grabbed that check."

"I feared emasculation," I said.

"And had you waited for her to pick it up," Susan said, "we'd have grown old together sitting there in the booth."

"You have any thoughts?" I said.

"Based on an hour of observation?"

"This isn't a clinical situation," I said. "We have to make do."

"I have no thoughts," Susan said, "but I can give you some guesses."

"Guesses are good."

"Well, she's not as stupid as she seems. Brief hints of intelligence slip through the hippie mumbo jumbo."

"Not many," I said.

"No. I didn't say she was brilliant. And mostly she recycles things she's heard. But it is not uncommon, for instance, for fathers to encourage their daughters to marry men against whom the fathers can compete successfully. She may have simply heard it said, but she understood it enough to apply it to her husband."

"If it's true," I said.

"I told you these are guesses."

"What else?" I said.

I was trying to breathe normally, as if the climb up Powell Street were easy. And I checked Susan closely. Her breathing seemed perfectly easy. Of course, I was carrying eighty or ninety pounds more than she was. And I'd been shot several times in my life. That takes its toll.

"She's full of anger."

"At?"

"At her husband, at men, at Penny, at a world where she is marginalized, and probably at the guitar player who dumped her."

"Can I believe what she says about Penny?"

"No way to know," Susan said. "Her anger may be accurate, and well founded, or it may be a feeling she needs to have for other reasons."

"Do you think she loves poetry and beauty and peace and flower power?"

"I think she hates being ordinary," Susan said.

"You think she loves her daughters?"

"She left them when the youngest was, how old?"

"Fifteen."

"And she moved to the other side of the continent and she sees them rarely."

"So if she does love them, it's not a compelling emotion."

"No."

"And the money she didn't inherit?"

"It would have helped her to be not ordinary."

"It will support her daughters," I said.

"One thing you can count on," Susan said, "and this is an observation, not a guess: Whatever it is, it's about Sherry."

"All of it," I said.

"Every last bit."

"I'm more confused than before I talked with her," I said.

"And you came all the way out here to do it."

"Well, you came out too."

"Every dark cloud," Susan said.

We reached California Street. Susan paused for a moment.

"I'm willing to give in first," she said.

"You need to rest a little?" I said.

"Yes."

"Thank God," I said.

We stood on the corner watching people get on and off the cable cars. We were in the heart of Nob Hill hotel chic. The Stanford Court was behind us, the Fairmont across the street. Up a little past the Stanford Court was the Mark Hopkins, where one could still get a drink at the Top of the Mark. In the distance, the Bay was everywhere, creating the ambient luminescence of an impressionist painting. It imparted a nearly romantic glow to litter in the streets and the frequent shabbiness of the buildings. Behind us, below Union Square and along Market Street, there were so many street people, and they were so intrusive, that I didn't want Susan to walk around alone… Being Susan, of course, she walked around alone anyway, in the great light.

"What's confusing you most?" Susan said.

"There's so much conflicting testimony from so many unreliable witnesses."

To the right, down California Street a little ways, was Chinatown, with its pagoda'd entrance, everything a Chinatown should be. And way down, on the flat, was downtown, which was everything a downtown should be. Even when no cable cars were in sight, the hum of the cable in the street was a kind of white noise as we talked.

"And yet there are some things which seem clear when I listen to you talk about it."

"Like it's clear that I don't know what I'm doing?"

"Like everything changed after the father's death."

"Maybe it was naturally, so to speak, the way it is now, and he prevented it."

"Or maybe someone else has stepped into his place and reshaped it," Susan said. "Either way, he was the power and now he isn't. So who is?"

"A number of different people say Penny, and they say so in pretty much the same terms."

"As Sherry," Susan said.

"Yes."

"As an outside observer, let me suggest that there is one thing which hasn't changed."

"Suggest away," I said.

"The security company."

"Security South," I said. "Jon Delroy. You like him for it, don't you?"

"He was there when the father was alive. He is there now," Susan said.

"Pud suggested that Delroy and Penny were involved sexually."

"What do you think?"

"At the time I thought it was preposterous. She's adorable. I was kind of offended."

"And now?"

"Now… well, we only know what we know. Delroy's still there, and several people say that Penny has the power."

"Life is full of heartbreak," Susan said.

"Luckily I have a fallback position," I said.

"You certainly know how to turn a girl's head with your slick talk," Susan said.

"The truth of the matter is," I said, "you are my position. Everything else in life is fallback."

Susan smiled and bumped her head once against my shoulder.

"You okay to walk down to the hotel now, old fella?" she said.

"Wait a minute, you were the one wanted to tarry awhile."