EXCERPT FROM

Taylor Chu was dead.

It said so in the San Francisco Chronicle, on all the local radio stations, and on the six o’clock television news.

The death of Taylor Chu was a major story, given his renown as a courtroom defense attorney, and particularly due to the grisly nature of his demise.

Taylor had tossed a lot of business my way over the years. Without him around, I would see a significant hole in my cash flow.

I was sitting in my office, savoring the bottom half of my second jigger of Glenlivet single malt, and chucking darts at a baseball board propped at the far right corner of my desk. I had scored five runs in the last two minutes. It was getting to be a bit of a rush.

My office was on the second floor of a small building on Jefferson at Fisherman’s Wharf. Outside, sea lions were serenading a solid wall of fog as it rolled over Mount Tam and started to swallow the Golden Gate. Within minutes, I wouldn’t be able to see Alcatraz, which was fine by me.

I was expecting visitors.

They arrived just as the fog settled enough to leave the towers of the bridge piers poking above the mire. There was an insistent knock at the door. Before I could answer two men walked in. The first, the obvious boss, was about my height, just a little over six feet, and his clothes smelled like the camphor balls his wife put in the closets to keep the moths away.

The gold badge on his jacket told me he was an Inspector First Class with the SFPD. The twisted scowl on his face told me he was here on business. Five years as my partner in a black and white bubbletop, cruising the tough streets of SoMa until a decade earlier, told me he didn’t like it much.

“Gold,” he said. It fell somewhere between a greeting and just the acknowledgement that I was in the room.

“Inspector.”

I tried to ignore the other one. He was taller, and a damn sight dumber, and the few times I had crossed paths with him left me with the disappointingly cynical impression that he had benefited greatly from somebody’s juice down at the Civic Center.

Frank Raymond, my former beat partner on the force, lowered himself into one of the leather-upholstered chairs facing my desk. His current partner, Dexter Spears, remained standing.

Frank stared at me. He always did that. I think he was counting his blessings that he hadn’t gone down my path.

I picked up the bottle of Glenlivet and poured another half-jigger.

“Want a snort?” I asked.

Frank looked over his shoulder at Spears, and then back at me. His face looked tired and shopworn. Twenty years as a cop will do that to you.

“Did you really just use the word snort?” he asked.

“Comes with the territory. What can I do for you, Frank?”

As if on cue, Spears came to life.

“We have a problem,” Spears said.

“Have you tried Viagra, Dexter?”

“Can you spare some, Gold?” he said.

“Oooh,” I said, turning to Raymond. “Do that again, Frank. Then do the thing where you make him sing while you’re drinking a glass of water.”

Frank Raymond smiled briefly, but I noticed he was careful not to let Spears see it.

“Have you seen the news?” he asked.

I tapped a copy of the Chronicle on my desk. The headline read ‘NOTED TRIAL ATTORNEY SLAIN’.

“Yes, Frank, I have.”

“Then you should know why we’re here.”

“I figured you would drop by sometime today.”

“Want to tell us where you were over the last seventy-two hours?”

“No.”

“Why’s that?” Spears asked. He liked yanking my chain.

“Because then I would have to hire a sign painter to re-letter my office door,” I said, pointing toward the frosted glass with the legend EAMON GOLD, DISCRETE INVESTIGATIONS on it.

“You need to do that anyway,” he said. “Discrete is misspelled.”

“Only for the linear thinker, Spears. Perhaps the average investigator would think the e-e-t version more appropriate. However, among its many meanings, the word discrete is a synonym for ‘special, singular, or diverse’. You are right, though. It was intended to be discreet. You wouldn’t believe the deal I got on the painter. If I tell you where I was the last several days, I would not be discreet. I do have other clients besides Taylor Chu. They pay me to keep our matters private.”

“Cut the shit,” Raymond said.

I took a sip of the single malt, and smacked my lips. It was rude.

I didn’t care.

Didn’t have to.

“If you’re asking whether I killed Taylor Chu, cut off his hands, feet, and head, and dropped him off the Bay Bridge, the answer is no.”

“You can prove that?” Spears said.

“You’re just going to have to take my word for it, unless you want to get a court order. You do that, though, and you are going to piss off some very powerful people.”

“Your other clients...” Spears said.

“Among others.”

Frank Raymond said, “We can hash all this out later. We came to you because you were working for Chu. We thought maybe you knew what he was working on, might have an idea who would want to toss him off the bridge.”

“Move aside, Spears,” I said.

“What?”

I sighed.

“Take your right foot, lift it off the ground, and put it down again, about one foot to your right. That’s the hand you eat with. Then do the same thing with your left foot.”

“We gotta put up with this asshole?” he asked Raymond.

“Just move aside,” Frank told him.

Spears stepped to his right, and I tossed one of the darts between him and Raymond. It described a perfect arc as it traversed the office, before landing feathers-up in the top of the sealed banker’s box I had prepared for just this moment, and had placed by the door.

“That’s what you want,” I said. “All my records of my work for Taylor Chu. They aren’t going to do me any good sitting around the office. He sure as shit isn’t going to keep paying my retainer. I don’t think he gives a damn about confidentiality anymore. Take it.”

Spears started to cross the room to pick up the banker’s box. Frank didn’t move. He just stared at me.

It was kind of creepy.

“Sure you don’t want a snort?” I asked.

He shook his head, sadly.

“You know, Eamon, someday someone is gonna cut off those big brass balls of yours and hang them in front of a pawn shop.”

“My goodness, Frank, who told you I have three?”

“It’s in the air. You could choke on all the testosterone in this room.”

He rose from the chair and turned to Spears.

“Let’s go. We still have a few stops to make.”

He turned back to me.

“This is all of it, Eamon?”

“Every last scrap. I... uh, did keep some copies of specific items.”

“And why did you do that?”

“Public relations,” I said. “Someone flings one of your better customers off a bridge, it looks good if you check it out a little.”

“I don’t want you interfering with an active investigation.”

“Hell, we both know who did this.”

He paused for a second, glanced back at Spears, and then nodded as he turned back to me.

“Meaning?”

“Someone kills a guy, then lightens him by the weight of his hands, feet, and noggin, and tosses him into the Bay. Smells like gang shit to me. If I were you, I’d be sniffing down along Grant Avenue, check out the tongs. Do we think alike?”

“Yeah. Maybe we do. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get in my way, though.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” I said.

Without another word, Spears hefted the banker’s box with Taylor Chu’s records, and the two of them left the office. I could hear them clomping down the stairs to the street. After the outer door at the sidewalk slammed shut, I heard a toilet flush in the bathroom adjoining my office.

“You can come out now,” I said.

The door opened, and the fellow who had been hiding in the bathroom walked out and sat in the same chair where Frank Raymond had been a minute earlier.

“I hope to hell,” I said, “that this isn’t some kind of sick joke.”

“Me too,” Taylor Chu said as he reached for the Glenlivet.