The taste of beer in Adam’s mouth when I kissed him was thrilling and dangerous, not because it made me want to drink, but because it savored of the forbidden. Was it a good idea for me to take up with a straight guy who wanted sex without strings when most days, emotionally flayed as I was, I was nothing but strings? I knew I should run it by Larry. Then I thought about how Adam’s body had felt against mine, like steel sheathed in silk, and the way his stomach muscles bunched when he came beneath me as I fucked him. I remembered his mouth on mine, his hand gripping my hand, our legs tangled together. In my chilly bed, I remembered his warmth. Maybe Larry didn’t need to know yet, I told myself. After all, it was only sex. There was no step in AA against that.

I called Michael Lauro and explained who I was and what I was doing.

“Well,” he said, hesitantly, “I wasn’t there when Billy died. I can’t tell you anything about that.”

“I’m more interested in his background. Mrs. Donohue said you and he were boyfriends, before he met Nick.”

“You say Nick’s gonna get the insurance money?”

“If everything checks out.”

“Well, I guess she put in the time,” Lauro replied. “On her back.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You want to know about Bill? Come over Saturday morning.”

The address he gave me led me to an Art Deco apartment building on a street midway between Union Square and the Tenderloin. Two blocks east were posh restaurants, the American Conservatory Theater, the St. Francis hotel and Macy’s; two blocks west and junkies were shooting up in the doorways of shuttered storefronts. It was the San Francisco out of a ’thirties noir novel. When the intricately ornamented bronze elevator door slid open to take me up to Michael Lauro’s apartment, I half expected Joel Cairo to step out into the marble lobby. Instead, a girl in jogging sweats emerged, twisting her long hair into a ponytail for her morning run.

I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor and as I stepped out of the elevator, a male voice said, “Henry? Over here.”

Michael Lauro was medium height with a gym-built body accentuated by tight Levi’s and a clinging gray T-shirt. He would have been a twink when he was younger—that gay term for boyish and cute—but now there was gray in his stubble and short black hair and his features were settling into middle age. He gave me a friendly smile as he waved me into his apartment, a one-room studio artfully arranged to appear bigger than it was.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating the black leather sofa. “You want some coffee?”

“Thanks.”