“You knew Bill’s story, then. You were friends.”

“I don’t know if having a drink now and then qualifies as friendship, but then Bill was kind of a loner.”

“You knew Nick?”

“I met him.”

“How were things between them?”

He gazed at me steadily. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I’m trying to understand why Nick would turn down a hundred thousand dollars. My sense, from talking to his sister, is that he feels guilty about something.”

“His sister?”

“Isabel Trejo. She’s a P.I. lawyer. She’s the one who called me and told me Nick didn’t want the money.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how things were with Bill and Nick. We mostly talked business and baseball. I can tell you he became obsessed with AIDS, but then who isn’t around here? I gather a couple of his friends died early on. I told him to do what I do, assume you’re infected and get on with life.”

“Did he take your advice?”

“I don’t know. Bill Ryan was like a lot of us in this neighborhood. He came here from East Jesus after his family threw him out and found a community and a life he could never have imagined, only to watch it slip away when AIDS hit. I wouldn’t blame him if he ignored me. How do you get on with your life when you can see a tsunami coming at you?”

“That’s a good question.”

He turned his chair to face the window that looked out on Castro Street. “I used to sit in the barber chair in Harvey’s store across the street with all the other young refugees and plot how we would turn San Francisco into the gay homeland. A gay Israel with the Castro as our Jerusalem.” He turned back to me. “Now it looks like that’s all going to end with us.”

It sounded like an epitaph. Something in me resisted. “Some of us will survive.”

“Traumatized and disillusioned, and more stigmatized than ever. We had one generation of liberation and now it’s back to the dark ages.” He smiled dolefully. “Excuse me, Henry. One friend died this morning and I have to speak at a memorial for another one tonight. It’s not a good day.”

That explained his funereal mood. I wanted to console this elegant, decent man, but couldn’t come up with anything better, “I’m very sorry.”

“Back to business,” he said briskly. “You were telling me about the insurance policy.”

I nodded. “Since Nick declined the benefit, I assumed the estate would want to claim it.”

“How much did you say it was?”

“Fifty thousand doubled to a hundred thousand for accidental death.”

“Wow. I’d be violating my fiduciary duties to the estate if I didn’t make a claim. Have you finished your investigation?”

“Not quite yet. But soon.”