“Chief —”

“What? Make it quick. I’m busy.”

“I’m better on the ground. I close cases, and my record bears that out. I’m spinning my wheels in my office, and those guys who want to be lieutenant, well, you should promote one of them, Chief. You need someone in my job who wants it.”

“Okay, now that you’ve started this, I’ve got a couple of other things to say to you,” Tracchio said.

He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a cigar, chopped off the tip of it with a pocket guillotine gizmo, and puffed blue smoke into the air as he lit his stogie.

I waited breathlessly.

“You’ve got room to grow in this job, Boxer. When it comes to crime solution, the SFPD is dead last across the board. In the whole country! You need to learn to supervise better. Help other cops with your experience. You need to put out a positive image of the SFPD. Be a beacon of good. You gotta help us recruit and train. You’re nowhere when it comes to that stuff, Boxer, and—I’m not finished!

“Not long ago you got shot and almost died. We almost lost you for good. You weren’t even on duty that night, and you showed no self-control at all. Jacobi invites you on a stakeout, you say, ‘Let me at it.’”

Tracchio stood, whirled around, put his hands on the back of his chair. His reddened face radiated exasperation. “You know, I don’t even understand what the hell you’re beefing about. You’ve got it easy. How would you like my job?”

I stared at him dully as he began ticking off departments on his sausage fingers: “I’ve got Homicide, Robbery, Narcotics, Anticrime, and Special Victims. I got the mayor and I got the governor, and if you think that’s like getting the red-carpet treatment on Oscar night —”

“I think you’re making my point for me, Chief.”

“Look, why don’t you do yourself and everyone else a big favor and suck it up, Lieutenant. Request denied. Now we’re done.”

I felt like a little kid as I picked myself up and left Tracchio’s office. I was humiliated and mad enough to quit—but I was too smart to do it. Everything the man had said was right. But I was right, too.

Recruit and train?

Learn to supervise?

None of that had anything to do with why I’d become a cop.

I wanted to be back on the streets of San Francisco.

Chapter 28

CINDY THOMAS SAT on the back bench of courtroom 4A of the Civic Center Courthouse, squeezed between a reporter from the Modesto Bee and a stringer for the LA Times. She felt keyed-up, focused, and very, very possessive. This was her town, her story.

Her laptop was warm on her knees, and Cindy tapped at the keyboard, making notes as Maureen O’Mara’s first witness was sworn in.

“Good morning, Mr. Friedlander,” O’Mara said. The lawyer’s long auburn hair glowed against the flat blue wool of her suit. She wore a white blouse with a plain collar and a simple gold watch on the wrist of her ring-free left hand.