'I guess you got over it.'
'Not over what made me consider it. Being a black man, I'd had occasion to ponder the fact that life wasn't fair. I pondered it in Vietnam, watching black men sent by white folks to kill Asians and sometimes dying instead, and I pondered it when I came home and saw too many of my friends drifting into trouble for lack of much else life offered them. I thought maybe I could defend them, get some a fairer shake.' His voice remained soft. 'Maybe you didn't know I came from the Bayview.'
'No,' Terri admitted. 'I didn't. So what changed your mind?'
Monk's gaze grew distant and reflective. 'More like I recalibrated my thinking. A cop can make the judgment on whether something is a case or not, try to make sense of it all. Whatever notion of justice he has, without the cop there'd be no case.
'The people I grew up with were struggling in their world, trying to survive. I thought maybe I could make that world a safer and fairer place—make the righteous cases, and let the rest go. Maybe even save a few young men and women by steering them right.' Pausing, Monk shrugged, gazing back at Terri. 'Like a lot of notions, life complicated it some. The more I lived it, the less sure I became of what justice really was. You just do the best you can. Like you're doing now, I guess.'
'What I'm doing now,' she answered, 'is trying to keep the State of California from killing someone else. That includes figuring out how Rennell Price lost the lottery.' She gazed at Monk, curious. 'That day with Mauriani, did you think Rennell would end up being sentenced to die?'
Monk gave her an ironic smile. 'Not in San Francisco,' he answered flatly. 'That took some doing of its own. Payton's work, mostly. Maybe with a little help from the lawyer.'
ELEVEN
IT WAS KIT'S BIRTHDAY.
Christopher Peralta Paget, officially age seven, sat at the head of the Pagets' candlelit dining table, his piece of chocolate angel food cake now reduced to rubble. To his left sat his parents, to his right his thirteen-year-old sister, Elena—dark and slight like Terri, with round, expressive eyes—and his brother, Carlo, Kit's hero. With an expression of deep well-being, Kit contemplated the cake sitting on its pedestal, the familiar faces in the candlelit glow.
'I love my birthday,' he announced to his parents. 'Thank you for creating me.'
Briefly, Chris smiled at Terri. 'No trouble,' he informed his younger son. 'Just another day at the salt mines.'
As Kit looked from one face to the other, seven-year-old merriment crept into his eyes; without being sure why, Terri saw, Kit knew that the exchange was funny. Except, perhaps, to Elena, who rolled her eyes in disgust.
'I know,' Terri said to her with gentle wryness. 'Unthinkable.' But, though she could not acknowledge it, Terri knew too well that this involved far more than teenage squeamishness. Terri had once done these embarrassing things with Elena's father, before she discovered the unspeakable things Ricardo Arias had forced on his own daughter. Some trace of that would stay with Elena forever, as everyone present knew but Kit. Once more, cringing inside, Terri imagined Thuy Sen with Rennell Price, her client.
With the grace that characterized him, Carlo draped his arm around Elena's shoulders as though nothing notable had happened. 'It's like earthquakes,' he advised her. 'You just put it out of your mind.'
Terri wished she could.
* * *
Afterward the two Paget men sat in the living room amidst the bright modern paintings, drinking coffee.
'Nice birthday party,' Carlo said. 'Kit's pretty funny.'
'He is.' Still pensive about Elena, Chris glanced up the stairs. 'I should put him to bed pretty soon. It's getting to be story time.'
This was Chris's nightly task: Kit was the only one of the children he had helped raise from the beginning, and he savored the rituals of parenting in a way a younger man might not.
'What are you reading him?' Carlo asked. 'I still remember James and the Giant Peach.'
'Not violent enough. His current favorite is Greek Myths for Children. Incest, fratricide, and beheadings—in cartoon form, with funny captions.'
'You're serious.'
'Completely. Sorry you missed out on it.'
Terri entered the room. 'Kit's ready,' she told her husband with exaggerated weariness. 'At last.' Turning to Carlo, she asked, 'Did you hate having your hair washed?'
'Always,' he answered with a smile. 'Still do.'
Terri sat beside her husband. 'Sorry to interrupt,' she told him, 'but there hasn't been time to ask Carlo about Rennell's grandmother.'
At once Carlo was somber. 'Waiting for God to call her home. She's not got much to show for her last two decades on earth.'
Surprised, Chris turned to his son. 'She's still alive?'
'Barely,' Carlo answered.
* * *
Eula Price was morbidly obese now, and plagued with diabetes. She lay in her bed, a massive form beneath white sheets with, Carlo was certain, legs too swollen to move. The gaunt, elderly friend in a straight black wig who had ushered Carlo in retreated to the tiny living room.
Eula lived in public housing in the Bayview: three cramped rooms in a complex largely inhabited by welfare recipients and crack dealers, families which formed and dissipated, seemingly at random. The remnant of Eula
