thousands and thousands of years.' When you opened the card, it read 'Thanks for planting them.'
'These are pretty good,' Abe admitted.
Hardy nodded. 'I laughed at the first seventeen of them myself.'
'I wish I'd thought of this. Hey.' He snapped his fingers. 'Maybe it's not too late.'
'It's way too late,' Hardy said.
'Was it important?' Frannie asked.
Another shrug. 'Everything's relative.' He moved back up to his chair and hovered a moment over the chessboard, raised his eyes quickly to Glitsky. 'You moved something.'
'Just one little knight. It was my turn.'
'That's all you moved?' He stared back down, saw it, swore under his breath.
'Tut-tut.' The lieutenant wagged a ringer, then checked his watch and stood up. 'But enough of this wild partying. I think I'd better go spell Treya.'
'So what did you decide about Nat?' Hardy asked, somewhat unexpectedly, out of context.
The question stopped Glitsky and he considered for a minute. 'He'll get used to it, I suppose. I just hate to disappoint him.' They'd gotten to the door. Frannie had opened it, and Abe was putting on his jacket.
'You want,' Hardy said, 'you and I could do a field trip to the crime scene tomorrow. Maybe get a tidbit for your dad, make him feel better, like you're working on it. Maybe we even do some early Christmas shopping.'
'I'll check my social schedule,' Glitsky said, 'but sounds like a good idea. You'd really do that?'
'Sure. What are friends for? Say ten, eleven?'
'I'll let you know.'
When he was gone, Frannie closed the door and turned to him. 'Maybe do some early Christmas shopping? Since when?'
'It could happen,' Hardy said.
'Okay, but what else?'
'But that call from John? It turns out it was pretty important. The police want to talk to him about this guy Silverman's death. Abe's father's friend.'
'What about him?'
'Whether he was involved somehow.'
'Involved? How could John be involved? In what way?'
'In the way of whether he had something to do with killing him.'
6
The sun broke through while Hardy read the morning paper at his kitchen table, waiting for Glitsky's call, which never came. He finally called Abe's and left a message at around eleven. Next he tried Holiday at home- useless-then at the Ark. Nothing.
His own house had been empty now for an hour and a half. Though for years he'd fantasized about the magic day when he and Frannie's lives weren't ruled by the schedules of his children-the lessons and ballgames, the colds and homework and simple stuff that had cluttered his every waking moment for the past sixteen years-now that the time was upon him he wasn't sure how much he liked it.
Frannie was dropping the kids off somewhere and in an ironic turnabout he wasn't sure he fully appreciated, she was seeing one of her clients on a weekend morning. Technically still a student, Frannie had gotten hooked up with a psychologist friend of hers, Jillian Neumann, and was working about twenty accredited apprentice hours a week in family counseling.
So with the day looming empty as his house before him, Hardy went into the kitchen and took his black cast- iron pan down from where it hung off a marlin hook behind the stove. He ran his knuckles across its surface- silk.
Automatically, he threw in a big pinch of salt-Frannie had switched to kosher salt and kept a bowl of it open next to the burners-and turned on the gas. He went to check the refrigerator, grabbed a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from the top shelf, opened it, and drank. In two minutes, he'd cut up garlic and scallions, poured in some olive oil, added leftover rice, a can of sardines, a good shake of red pepper flakes. It occurred to him that he was eating too often at Lou the Greek's if he found himself hankering for this kind of treat, but the smell pushed him onward. Soy sauce, some plain yogurt, and then, finally, an egg to bind it all. When it was done, it looked awful but he almost couldn't wait to get back to the table to dig in. He thought it was even possible that he'd stumbled upon one of Lou's wife Chui's secret recipes such as Athenian Special Rice or even, wonder of wonders, Yeanling Clay Bowl.
First, though, before he sat down to eat, he kept the heat up and threw in more salt. Swiping at the bottom of the pan two or three times with a dish towel, he then dumped the contents into the garbage can. The magic pan was as it had been before he began-black, gleaming, oiled.
As he ate his masterpiece, his thoughts returned-if in fact they'd ever left-to Holiday. To most outside observers, the failed pharmacist was not typical of Hardy's friends. The serious overdrinking, the gambling, the women. Certainly, bartending and trying to keep the bar he'd inherited afloat, he wasn't working on any kind of career. That alone set him apart. Beyond that, Holiday had ignored his earlier friends until he lost them. He'd burned out his parents and the rest of his solidly suburban family, rejected their values and hopes for him.
This was because John Holiday had no real hopes anymore himself. They'd been dashed six years ago when his wife and eight-month-old baby daughter-Emma and Jolie-had been killed by a hit-and-run driver who'd run the red and never even slowed down.
Hardy, too, had lost a child. In another lifetime, he'd had a son, Michael, who'd lived seven months. A couple of years into his first marriage, to Jane Fowler, the child had somehow pulled himself up over the bars of his crib one day, fallen to the hardwood floor. For about ten years after that, his own marriage and fledgling legal career having collapsed under the weight of the grief, Hardy drank Guiness Stout, bartended at the Little Shamrock. Like Holiday, he was glib all the time.
So Hardy knew what made Holiday the way he was. He didn't blame him, wouldn't judge him, didn't expect anybody else to understand the connection. It was what it was.
He was no longer eating. He was considering his friend's life, and wondering if it could now have led him to a murder.
Holiday grew up in a middle-class home in San Mateo. His father, Joseph, ran three independent and successful sporting goods stores until they were bought out by a nationwide chain in the eighties. His mother, Diane, stayed at home with the kids-John, his younger brother Jimmy, and their two sisters, Margie and Mary-until Mary was in kindergarten; then she went back to teaching.
He went to an all-boys Catholic high school, lettered in baseball and track, became the school's 'blanket' player- the best all-around athlete whose name went on the blanket that hung in the school's gymnasium. For a time he held the WCAL record in the half mile. Popular with students and faculty alike, he was secretary of the student body his senior year. Academically, he was sixth in his class with a 3.88 GPA, a National Merit and California State Scholarship Finalist, and a lifetime member of the California Scholarship Federation.
These accomplishments were impressive, but said little about Holiday's essence. Evidently between the ages of fifteen, when he lost his virginity, and thirty-one, when he got married, his chief persona was sexual predator. The first time was with Anne Lerner, a neighbor and friend of his mother, who…
It was a warm, windy Saturday afternoon in late spring and he was with his three best buds from school buying sodas at the Safeway where they'd been let off by one of the moms after the ballgame. In the checkout line, Anne Lerner-the youngest and always the foxiest of Mom's married friends, with a really cute bobbed-nose face and a great smile-was her usual friendly self to all of them. Every one of John's pals admitted having the private hots for her- Mrs. Lerner was the only adult who got mentioned when the guys were making one of their frequent lists of the cutest girls, the best breasts, and so on. Today she looked almost like a teenager herself with her long, tan legs, the short white tennis shorts, the ash-blond hair hanging around her shoulders.
She had a cart full of grocery bags and all four of the guys were happy to help her load them into the back of
