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"Okay, then. Just to make the point."

"I hear you." Bracco shrugged away his misgivings. "Anyway, I'll be logging some time to the case and I thought you'd want to know."

"Okay." Glitsky pushed himself off his desk and wrote the word BOWEN onto the board, with the name BRACCO in the investigating inspector's column. "But, Darrel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Maybe not too much time, huh?"

***

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, Glitsky's grown boys-Isaac, Jacob, and Orel-and Treya's grown girl, Raney, had created a diaspora of their own to places as far-flung as Seattle, Milan, Washington, D.C., and-not so far-flung-Orel was living in San Jose. Now the new family unit with two toddlers ranged in the same old upper duplex on a cul-de-sac above Lake Street.

When Glitsky got home from work-driving his own car instead of being chauffeured by his driver in his city-issued vehicle-he and Treya and five-year-old Rachel had pushed Zack's baby carriage for a mile or so on the foot-and-bike path that ran behind their home at the edge of the Presidio's forest. In their backyard, in the still-warm evening, both kids swung on the new swingset Glitsky and Dismas Hardy and Hardy's son Vincent had built about three years before. Dinner was a store-bought roast chicken, the skin peeled off, with fresh steamed spinach and a side dish of noodles for the kids-since Glitsky's heart attack six years ago, Treya wouldn't let him eat anything with cholesterol in it.

By eight o'clock, both kids were asleep in their separate rooms down the hallway off the kitchen. Abe and Treya sipped tea sitting together in dim light on the leather love seat in the small living room. They had redecorated the room for the birth of Rachel, and now what had been a worn and dark interior sported blond hardwood floors accented with colorful throw rugs, yellow Tuscan walls, Mission-style furniture, plantation shutters.

Taciturn nearly to the point of muteness, Glitsky was happy to let Treya carry the conversational ball as she told him about her day, the machinations of the DA's office, Clarence Jackman's dealings with the board of supervisors, the mayor, the chief of police. It was endlessly entertaining because they both knew all the players and because the city was in many ways such a truly loony and fascinating place to live.

Today's drama featured Treya's boss on a tightrope walk between Mayor Kathy West's edict that declared San Francisco a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, and the U.S. attorney's response that he was going to cut off every federal law enforcement grant to the city if she did anything to hamper the Justice Department's crackdown on arresting and deporting these people.

"That I'd like to see," Glitsky said. "What's he going to do, arrest Kathy?"

"If she actually does anything other than talk the talk."

"You think she will?"

"I don't know. She's talking about it." Treya's laugh was a low contralto. "Talking about not just talking about it."

"Very bold."

"Très. But you never know. She might really do something."

"So what's Clarence going to do?"

Treya laughed again. Sometimes Glitsky thought that her talent for laughter was what had attracted him the most about her. After his first wife, Flo, had died, he had thought for a long while that he would never laugh again. "Clarence," Treya said, "has got eight lawyer positions funded by federal money, but the rest of his budget comes from the city. He is going to wait."

"He's a good waiter," Glitsky said.

"One of the best." She put a hand on his leg. "But here I've been, me, me, me. You seem-I don't mean to spook you-but slightly more upbeat than you've been."

Glitsky shrugged. "Just getting used to the new world order. I actually had a possibly productive talk with Darrel Bracco today."

"I like Darrel. And possibly productive? Wow. The man gushes."

Sipping his tea, Glitsky gave her a sideways look. "Maybe saved him some hours of slog, that's all."

"Okay, retract the gush." She squeezed his leg. "And next you were probably going to tell me what Darrel talked to you about. If you were going to keep on talking, I mean. Not that you have to. No pressure."

This time his smile broke clear. "He was going to be spending half of forever looking into the case files of this lawyer who disappeared last summer because some poor heartbroken girl thinks maybe he didn't run away and desert her and her mother after all. Maybe he was killed instead."

"Is there any reason she thinks that?"

"Not that Darrel knows. But the thing that makes it so sad is that her mother killed herself over it a couple of months ago, and the girl just can't accept it."

Treya took a beat and sipped her tea. "And people say you're not really all that fun. How can that be?" She turned to him. "That heartening, upbeat story was what's made you feel better about the job?"

"Talking to Darrel," Glitsky said.

"Ah. The silver lining."

"I mean, first, you've got to believe Charlie Bowen was a homicide, which there's no sign of, so why are you even looking?"