'Butter will kill you, you know.'

Farrell nodded. 'Either that or something else. This calamari milleottocentoottantasei, for example.'

'Or pronouncing it.'

A handsome young man in a business suit – every male customer in the restaurant wore a business suit – was approaching the woman's table. He pulled a chair out across from her, smiling, saying something. She was looking up at him, her expression cool, reserved. Farrell noted it, and something else.

'Don't look now,' he said, 'but isn't the guy sitting down with her – doesn't he work for you?'

Wes Farrell was on his schlumpy way up toward Columbus and the North Beach walk-up out of which he ran his law business. Dooher lingered in the doorway at Fior d'Italia, then turned and went back inside to the bar, where he ordered a Pellegrino.

He sipped the bottled water and considered his reflection in the bar's mirror. He still looked good. He had his hair – the light brown streaked with blond, camouflaging the hint of gray that was only just beginning to appear around the temples. The skin of his face was as unlined as it had been at thirty.

Now, at forty-six, he knew he looked ten years younger, which was enough – any more youth would be bad for business. His body carried 180 pounds on a six-foot frame. Today he wore a tailored Italian double-breasted suit in a refined shade of green that picked up the flecks in his eyes.

From where he sat at the bar, he could watch her in profile. She had loosened up somewhat, but Wes had been right – there was a tension in the way she sat, in her body language. The man with her was Joe Avery – again, Wes had nailed it – a sixth-year associate at McCabe & Roth, the firm Dooher managed. (McCabe and Roth both had been forced to retire during the downsizing of the past two years. Now, in spite of the name, it was Dooher's firm, beginning to show profit again.)

He drank his Italian water, looked at himself in the mirror over the bar. What was he doing here?