'You'll let me know. First. Before you do anything.'

A nod. 'Absolutely.'

Canetta was gone. He told Freeman and Hardy that he thought he might see if Valens could be found tonight, and get this lie he'd told Hardy straightened out. Canetta knew the city's hotels like the back of his hand - Sat.u.r.day night like this three days before the election, Kerry probably had five different appearances in various banquet rooms downtown. Shouldn't be too hard to catch up with the candidate. And his campaign manager would be with him, easy to talk to. This homicide stuff - a child could do it.

Meanwhile, the two attorneys had written down the names of every person in the investigation and now they had a bunch of yellow pages from legal pads strewn around the table with the by-now familiar names - Valens and Kerry, Pierce, Ron Beaumont. Even Frannie and Carl Griffin. The plan - Freeman's, with his love of context, as he called it - was to fill in connections under each name and see if they could connect the dots.

'OK,' Hardy said, 'you don't know anything about this. Where do you start?'

Freeman didn't hesitate. 'Griffin.'

A smile flitted at the edges of Hardy's mouth.

'What's funny?'

'Only that it never fails. I would have picked him last.'

Freeman chomped on his cigar, long since extinguished. 'He was the first horse at the trough, n 'est-ce-pas? That alone.'

This, Hardy thought, was why Freeman was so valuable. His input always triangulated the evidence, bringing different targets into sharper focus. 'OK, but Glitsky tells me he wasn't working Beaumont the morning he got killed...'

'It wasn't his case, or he wasn't working it.'

'No, he drew the case, but he had some others, too. He was in the field on one of them.'

'How did Glitsky know that?'

'Griffin told him before he went out the morning he got it.'

'He told him.' Freeman snorted the word.

'Why would he lie?'

The old man squinted across the table. 'Because you have been working all day and you're tired and stressed out, I'll just pretend you didn't ask that. Now, do we know what the other cases were?'

It continued like that around the daisy chain. Details about Griffin's death - time, location - that might not jibe with the other cases he'd been a.s.signed. Valens' lie about Bree's report. Hardy felt a little uneasy as Freeman, on his own, put Bree together with Damon Kerry. Also with Jim Pierce. 'a.s.sume the worst, Diz. Life won't disappoint you so much. Bree slept around, maybe a lot with different guys. It gives us more to work with.'

Hardy wanted to avoid a.s.suming the worst about women and their secret affairs. It was too close.

Forcing his attention back, Hardy listened as Freeman asked about Jim Pierce. 'a.s.suming he was sleeping with Bree, too.'

But having met the stunning Carrie Pierce during the day, this was difficult terrain for Hardy to negotiate. 'His wife is a world-cla.s.s beauty, David. I can't see it.'

Freeman took the soggy cigar from his lips. 'You know, Diz, Jackie Kennedy wasn't exactly chopped liver. You know the basic difference between men and women around s.e.x?'

'Equipment?'

'No, wise guy. Men want as many women as they can get. Women want the best man they can get. A fundamental truth.'

Hardy nodded. 'I'll write it down when I get home. But there's one other name we've left out here that I thought you'd enjoy.'

'Who's that?'

'Canetta.'

Hardy succeeded in surprising Freeman so rarely that when he did so, as now, he derived a disproportionate pleasure from it. Now the old man's eyes narrowed with interest. 'So how are you playing him?'

'I'm thinking he might tell me a lie. I'm thinking he's too involved too soon.'

A satisfied nod. 'You know, just when I think you're getting soft...'

'It's a long shot,' Hardy admitted. 'But he walked a beat near her place, he provided security at some functions for both Pierce and Bree, he let her off on a DUI...'

Freeman's bushy eyebrows shot up. 'That's real.'

'Real enough. They also had several curbside conversations.'

'Several?'A beat. 'All of them curbside?'

'That's what he says. But he wants me to believe he was truly infatuated with her. And maybe he was. I don't know.'

'And so you put him to work to find her killer.'

'Or to lead me away from looking at him.'

Freeman leaned back, pulled the cigar from his mouth, looked it over critically, and popped it back in. 'Sweet,' he said. 'You need me here, you know I'm in.'

Hardy nodded. 'I appreciate it, David. But let's remember that whoever this is, the guy's serious.'

A dismissive wave. 'Serious, schmerious. I've told you a thousand times, I'm bulletproof.'

'I've told you a thousand times, I hate when you say that.'

Freeman grunted. 'Doesn't mean it isn't true.'

20.

She was out again. Jim Pierce couldn't face another society event, this one with adults wearing masks and other madness he didn't even want to consider. Hallowe'en. He'd begged off, as he had nine times out of ten for the past half-dozen years, fed up to the teeth with these c.o.c.k and tail parties whose function was to make sure that his friends knew he was their friend, and they would tell by the size of the check.

Friends? He was too rich. He trusted no one. He hadn't a friend in the world.

The last one of these parties he'd attended - it had been a year before - had pretty much sealed his decision that he wouldn't be part of that scene anymore. This one, even for San Francisco, had been revolting.

The financial and political elite of the city were in a big, open warehouse in the South of Market area. There was often some artsy-fartsy performance supposedly related to the fundraising ent.i.ty at these affairs, and that night after everyone had had a few, the main event began.

A naked couple appeared suddenly on a black-lit stage. Awful, drum-pounding noise made conversation impossible. The woman began carving some kind of devil worship symbols into the man s back.

Pierce had been twenty feet away, trying to talk to the district attorney and the mayor before the drums took over. What they were witnessing wasn't being done with mirrors. The blood flowed. And that was a mere preamble.

The woman had a bottle of Jack Daniel's bourbon from which she drank. Then she poured it over the man's new cuts and he screamed and screamed, writhing - but to the obscene beat - in real pain. The strobe lighting went red.

The drums increased. The man spread his legs and leaned over and - Pierce had trouble believing it still, though he had seen it with his own eyes - the woman shoved the neck of the Jack Daniel's bottle...

Thank G.o.d Carrie hadn't gone to that one - it might have given her a heart attack. But he'd gone, and that was enough. He was through.

The television droned in the small room under the stairwell. ESPN Sports Center. Twenty-four hours' coverage. Weekends he'd catch a good percentage of it, though it mostly repeated every half hour, the same stuff and the occasional update. But it kept him up on sports, something he needed for his image - a regular guy at work.

Well, not a regular guy. One of the bosses, actually, but at least one of the accessible ones. He hit the mute b.u.t.ton and stood up, unsteady on his feet.

He'd promised Carrie he'd get himself something to eat. She'd be home in less than an hour now, and all he'd done was drink - couple of Scotches and a bottle of Pinot Grigio. He'd better eat if he didn't want to endure another round of the third degree.

Carrie had been going on and on lately - why wasn't he eating? He ought to take better care of himself. This drinking every night wasn't doing him any good either. What the heck was the matter with him? Maybe he should see a therapist. How come he wasn't working out anymore?

How about a back rub, he wanted to say. A Lewinsky maybe. Ha! Never. Not even when they'd first started out and every single time had been such a precious meaningful gift of her beautiful self, back when she at least pretended she liked it. Not often, but if everything was perfect and he was romantic, whatever that meant. Then he might get lucky. Lucky with his wife. Somehow the concept seemed a little skewed.

In the bathroom, there he was in the mirror. He'd aged ten years in five weeks, he thought, although n.o.body else seemed to have noticed. He moved closer, slapped hard at his cheeks, but couldn't feel them. Tugged a few times half-heartedly at his p.e.n.i.s. Nothing.

They each had their own private boxes - Carrie's jewelry safe in the floor of her upstairs closet, and Jim's business safe, in his office where Carrie never went.

He went to it now. Behind the desk he lifted the corner of the Persian rug and pushed down on the two parquet tiles while he simultaneously held the b.u.t.ton under the top right drawer. This freed the other six tiles so that he could pull them up.

In another minute he was sitting in his big chair at the big desk. He held the gun - b.u.t.t and barrel - in both of his hands. After a minute, he turned the cylinder to make it click once, then spun it.

He brought it up to his face. Oil and cordite and something else. The potential to bring instant death. Could you actually smell that?

Closing his eyes, he was just going to feel it there with his senses - smelling, the cold metal, the power of it. A wave of dizziness then.

He leaned into it. With exaggerated slowness, he brought it up and around until no part of the weapon touched him except the end of the barrel, tight up against the center of his forehead.

Abe Glitsky was not having his best evening.

Of all holidays, Hallowe'en was his least favorite. But beyond that, as a cop, he sensed in his bones that this Hallowe'en - tonight - was shaping up to be a disaster. It had the big triple whammy going against it - a beautiful, almost balmy night; a Sat.u.r.day; and, as an extra added bonus, a full moon.

Scientists might debate whether a full moon had an effect on human behavior, but no policeman ever wondered about it at all. It was an immutable fact, and when the moon was full and the night happened to be Hallowe'en, watch out.

Glitsky had listened to all the news reports about the Pulgas water poisoning, and still was more than half convinced that it had simply been a Hallowe'en trick. That's the way Hallowe'en was - goofy little pranks involving razor blades and Ex-Lax and strychnine and now, in an exciting wrinkle for the new millenium, gasoline poisoning of the water supply.

So, although he would never be truly prepared for what the night might bring, Glitsky was in ready mode. He knew that every lunatic in the city was going to be in the streets tonight. Before morning he was going to be called on a couple of deaths.

It put him on edge.

That and his son Orel being out among the crazies. And Rita having gone for the weekend. And his judgmental (and right) father snoring on the living-room couch. And the irregular staccato of firecrackers, sometimes sounding enough like gunfire to fool even a veteran lieutenant of homicide.

As soon as Orel had gone into the night without a costume - which made Glitsky wonder why he was going out at all, but you picked your fights - he'd blown out the candle in the front window's jack-o'-lantern. Also in the front of the house, he had turned out all the lights, as well as unscrewed the bulb on the stairs to the front door of their duplex. He didn't want little streams of kids in horror outfits ringing his doorbell all evening.

Now he sat at the kitchen table with a large bag of frosted cookies, a cooling pot of tea, and the box of doc.u.ments that Sharron Pratt had finally delivered up to his office. His mood was not improving as he read, and got positively ugly when the doorbell, as he knew it would, rang.

He'd let it go. They'd get the message - no candy here - and go away.

They didn't. The bell rang again.

They were going to wake up his father, that's what all this ringing was going to do, if it hadn't already. He pushed away from the table so violently that his chair crashed to the ground behind him. Uncharacteristically, he swore aloud.

Between the chair falling and the swearing, one of them succeeded in waking his father. 'Abraham. All right in there?'

'Just getting the door.'

'So much noise.'

Tell me about it, Abe thought, striding to the blasted door. Whoever it was, he was going to give them an earful. He almost hoped whoever it was would try some cute stuff - break an egg against the door, leave a burning bag of dog-doo for him to stomp out, or any one of the ever-popular Hallowe'en standbys - so he'd have an excuse to chase them down and haul them in downtown.

G.o.d, he hated this night.

He flicked on the lights inside the entryway and jerked open the door.

Dismas Hardy was standing there. 'Trick or treat,' he said. 'I think your porch light must be out.'

'... so I thought since n.o.body's home at my house, there's no reason to go there. And it's well known you're the saddest, most pathetic bachelor slash widower on the planet. You had to be home, right? I mean, where else could you be?'

Hardy was rummaging in Glitsky's cupboard, pulling out the occasional food item, giving it the once over, either replacing it on the shelf or putting it on the counter next to the sink. 'Anyway, I figure the two of us could hang out here, solve Bree Beaumont, eat some canned food, drink too much. Just have ourselves a good, old-fashioned guys' night out, except we'd be in. Sound good?'

Nat Glitsky had gone back to sleep on the front-room couch and his snores carried into the kitchen. Abe had pulled one of the chairs around and straddled it backwards. 'I don't have any alcohol in the house.'

Hardy pointed a finger, jumped all over him. 'See? That's exactly what I mean. Sad, pathetic, negative.'

'Yeah, well, I don't drink, as you may have noticed over the past twenty years.'

Hardy was still rummaging. He noticed several California lottery tickets stuck to the front of the refrigerator with magnets. He pulled them off and held them up. 'You realize that the lottery is the tax for people who aren't good at math, don't you? Did you win?'

'Probably,' Glitsky said. 'I usually do. Couple of grand or so every week. I'll check tomorrow's paper and let you know.'

Hardy shook his head and went back to the cupboards. 'OK, but while we're on this, let me just say that I am appalled to find Spam in your larder.'

This finally got a rise out of Abe. 'I love Spam. It's the great unsung food of our time. And PS, you like canned corned beef hash.'

'That's because hash has flavor.'

'Spam does, too. In fact, it has more.'

'Yeah, but it's a bad flavor.'