Glitsky was tempted to get into it. This attitude was making him crazy. He wondered if Ms Hammond’s sweet grandmother nature wasn’t really to blame, and everyone on the top ought to start right now being a hard-ass of the first order, whip things back into shape. Kick ass and take names. Fire people like Al Nolan. Then he remembered -nobody ever got fired from a government job. Kill your neighbors, come to work drunk, miss thirty days in a row calling in sick… hey, it robbed a person of dignity to take their job away.

Glitsky found himself sighing. “Louis Baker,” he said. “We’re talking about Louis Baker.”

“Yeah, I just saw him this morning. Seemed okay, a pretty nice guy.”

“Well, we think maybe he killed somebody last night.”

Nolan took a bite of burger. “No shit? Well, these guys can be very cool about things.”

“About killing people, you mean.”

“Whatever. You know, they don’t talk to us. They just check in, lie about having a job or an offer, then split.”

“Did Louis Baker say he had a job?”

“Now you mention it, no.” He seemed to ponder that a moment. “Well, he’s only been out a day. Hasn’t learned the ropes yet.”

Glitsky leaned forward. “So what did you talk about?”

“Mostly the Giants, I guess.”

Glitsky could have guessed, too. The Giants were in the thick of the pennant race.

“I think they’ll stay in the city.”

“Who?”

“Who we talking about, man? The Giants. I mean, a pennant is what we need. No way are they gonna let ’em go to San Jose if we get another pennant. The team is happening. Who’d Baker kill?”

“We don’t know if he killed anybody. He’s a suspect is all.”

“He probably did.”

“Why do you say that? You just said he was a nice guy.”

Nolan shrugged. Glitsky wondered if people here all had shoulder and back problems from the shrugging. “So he’s a nice guy. That just means he’s got manners. I mean, everybody says Ted Bundy was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, and how many people did he ace, twenty, thirty?”