Batiste pulled up to the desk. “Abe, wait a minute.” He wasn’t about to say Abe couldn’t quit-of course he could quit-but he had to say something. He put his hand on the paper. “Can you just wait a goddamn minute.”

Abe’s stare was flat. “Sure,” he said. “I can wait all day.”

“You know it’ll turn around.”

Abe shook his head. “No, I don’t, Frank. Not anymore. It’s the whole city. It doesn’t need us, and I don’t need it.”

“But it does need us-”

“No argument there. Give me a call when it finds out.” Abe took the paper back and glanced at it again. “ ‘Incredible horseshit,’ ” he said. “It’s a stronger statement, don’t you think?”

Hardy parked at the end of the alley and turned up the heater. His Samurai was not airtight and the wind hissed at the canvas roof. On both sides, buildings rose to four stories, and in front of him fog obscured the canal and the shipyards beyond.

It was not yet 8:30. The gun-still loaded-was in his glove compartment. It was a registered weapon. It was probably one of the few legally concealable firearms in San Francisco. Hardy’s ex-father-in-law was Judge Andy Fowler, and when Hardy left the force, he’d applied for a CCW (Carry a Concealed Weapon) license, which was never, in the normal course of San Francisco events, approved.

But Judge Fowler was not without influence, and he did not fancy his daughter becoming a widow. Not that being allowed to pack a weapon would necessarily make any difference. But he had talked Hardy into it, and this was the first time Hardy had had occasion to carry the thing around.

Okay, he would legally carry it then, even concealed if he wanted to.

He turned off the ignition. He slowly spun the cylinder on the.38, making sure again that it was loaded. Stepping out into the swirling fog, he lifted the collar of the wind-breaker with his left hand. In his right hand, the gun felt like it weighed fifty pounds.