The Frenchman was no work of art himself. He wasn't French either-he was Belgian, but the sort of people he dealt with couldn't handle the distinction. Gnomish, hunched, sallow, he had damp lips and rheumy yellow eyes under a wispy blond comb-over. He was sixty-seven, but he dressed younger, wore jeans and the white cowboy shirt and a blue bandanna tied around his turkey-gullet throat. Sometimes he suspected this sort of outfit made him look ridiculous. Jeans riding just beneath his tits. A cowboy shirt misshapen by his sunken chest and his bulging, flaccid belly. But what could he do? This was San Francisco, a young town. You wanted to do business here, you had to look jaunty. This was as close to jaunty as he could get.

He heard the clasps of the second briefcase snap open behind him. The customer was looking at the. 45 now. A 1911 retooled into a compact powerhouse. Shoot a man in the guts with that at close range, and there'd be nothing left in the middle of him. He'd just be a head on top of a pair of feet.

The Frenchman waited, killed another minute looking out at the bright blue day. Across the street were the pastel town houses of Haight-Ashbury, a half-block row of them. A young mother pushed a stroller along the sidewalk beneath. The Frenchman savored the shape of her breasts in her orange sweater. As he watched her pass, a chorus of men's shouts rose to him through the floor.

" Heeyai! Heeyai! Heeyai! "

A deep sound, a strong sound. He drew it into himself with a breath.

It was coming from the dojo directly beneath him, on street level. It was his dojo. They were his men. They were big, muscular brutes, real bully boys, black belts all of them, not just black but with red stripes and Japanese letters and God knew what else. They were practicing their martial arts, going through their motions and routines, chopping the air with their hands, kicking the air. Shouting like that.