A pair of lights came around the corner up at Geary, tires screeching, heading right for him. It pulled in front of him, a door opened and two men jumped out of the open bed of the truck, another from the front seat.

'Thank God, guys. You gotta-' But they weren't listening. One of them had a hand on his bad arm, pulling. Another grabbed his leg, lifting. 'Hey! What…?' They had him by both legs now and lifted him over the sides of the truck into its bed, the three men holding him down.

'He in?' the driver yelled, but without waiting for any answer, the tires squealed again.

One of the men who had grabbed him snapped Shea's head against the metal floor. 'You don't know nothing,' he said. 'You tell anybody anything, you're dead meat. We'll find you.'

They were gaining speed, taking one corner, then another. He was all turned around, held down, trying to get some bearings, anything. The three men were panting, holding him down.

Then, he didn't know if there was some signal or what, but the truck screeched, pulled over, stopped. With one last warning that they would kill him if he said a word, they threw him out, then were off in a spray of gravel and the stink of burning rubber.

Wednesday, June 29

6

'What is this about, Chris?'

'It's about civil war, Elaine. Is your television on?'

'Almost never.'

'Well, check it out. Now. I'll wait.'

'What channel?'

'Any channel.'

Elaine Wager had been asleep. The call was from her boss and self-appointed mentor, San Francisco District Attorney Christopher Locke, who took a special interest in Elaine Wager.

She, like Locke, was black. She was also intelligent and already, though just barely twenty-five, a good lawyer, a tenacious prosecutor. Added to this were her considerable physical charms – mocha-colored skin as finely pored as Italian marble, a leggy, thin-waisted body, an Assyrian face. Of more importance to Chris Locke than any of these attributes, though, was Elaine's mother, Loretta Wager, a United States senator and the first African-American of either sex to be elected to that office from California.