“No, thank you, I’m fine.” I closed my notebook. “That’s it, for now. I’ll be on my way.”

Nick remained in the kitchen while Mrs. Trejo walked me out. I indicated the four graduation photographs on the living room wall.

“Your kids?”

“Yes. My daughter Isabel and my boys, Tomás, Salvador and Nick.”

“Nick said your husband passed,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”

“He worked in the shipyards in Oakland,” she said, “and he got the asbestosis.”

“Nick’s your baby.”

“Nick is everyone’s baby,” she said, at the door. “Drive back safe to the city.”

I was halfway across the Bay Bridge when it occurred to me that neither of the Trejos had asked when my investigation would be completed and they could expect a check. A hundred thousand dollars would be a fortune to the Trejos. I didn’t doubt Mrs. Trejo’s sincerity when she called Bill Ryan family or that Nick’s grief was real. Still, it seemed an odd omission which, with the lie about the source of the gas leak, raised a flicker of suspicion in my mind which as yet had no label.

That night I went to an AA meeting in Blessed Savior’s community hall. I’d been a lot of meetings there, but I’d never given much thought to what went on upstairs, in the chapel. From what I knew of the church’s position on homosexuality— “an objective disorder,” was the official line—Peg Donohue’s description of a parish that welcomed gays and lesbians seemed pretty implausible. The chapel was set between the rectory and the community hall. I stood on the sidewalk waiting for the meeting to start and watched parishioners climb the steep set of stairs from the sidewalk to the entrance of the chapel. Some, like Peg Donohue, were older people, women mostly, clinging to the handrails as they made their way up the stairs. Others were younger, male, and unmistakably gay. A couple of the men, with tell-tale marks of AIDS wasting upon them, were assisted up the steps by friends. I searched my limited recollection of the Catholic liturgy but failed to recall any regular services conducted on weekday evenings. I stopped a man who, down to the dark blue bandana hanging from the left back pocket of his very tight Levi’s, was a Castro clone incarnate.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked.

“Forty hours,” he said, and hurried up the stairs as the church bell tolled seven o’clock. I headed into the community hall for the meeting.

The doors to the church were still open when the meeting ended an hour later. Somewhat hesitantly, I made my way up the stairs. I paused at the entrance, sniffing incense. As I stepped inside, I could not remember the last time I had darkened the threshold of any kind of church.