“I’ll let you in on a little something,” he said. “I grew up right in this neighborhood. A rowhouse on Fourteenth Street, two blocks south. All my older brothers wore Crip blue. It’s kind of a long story, but I wound up wearing a beret at the opposite end of the color spectrum.”

Ricci nodded.

“The flash was black with a wide diagonal gray stripe, yellow borders,” he said. “Delta Force, attached to Joint SpecOps. I wouldn’t’ve considered you for my replacement without reading your personnel file.”

“I don’t suppose.”

Ricci regarded him through a haze of cigarette smoke.

“Any special reason you joined the service besides wanting a change of scenery?”

“Like I said, long story,” Glenn said. “Maybe we’ll get to it sometime. Meanwhile, you can have one crack at guessing where I choose to live nowadays.”

“Fourteenth Street. Two blocks south.”

“My, you are an astute son of a bitch,” Glenn said.

He drank, smoked, and listened to his music.

“Family ties why you’re back here?” Ricci said.

“Family’s gone, one way or another.”

“Then what’s holding you?”

Glenn’s broad shoulders went up and down.

“Maybe it’s my volunteer work,” he said. “I do a lot with teenage kids.”

“Why the ‘maybe’?”

Glenn finished his second beer, pushed the bottle aside.

“I think part of it’s that I’m just stubborn,” he said. “Civil boosters and quick-kill real estate brokers hate the sight of rowhouses. They’d be glad to sweep everybody out of them like litter and doze them flat to make room for more hotel towers, art galleries for rich people who can’t draw a straight line to hang their junk, and ritzy apartment lofts where the Swells can live. Try moving into one of those pads—you need to show your broker that you earn fifty, even a hundred times the monthly rent in income.”

Ricci looked at him.

“Sounds to me you’re on a crusade,” he said.

“Could be,” Glenn said. “But, you know, the Mexican gangs that smuggle drugs across the border into this city, players like the Quiros bunch we brought down a couple years ago, have a Spanish expression, plata o plomo. The silver or the lead. You’re either a friend and taking their bribes or an enemy taking their bullets.” He shrugged again. “I read a paper by some professors comparing what they do to unfair pressure tactics in business and politics. Fat cat landlords, brokers, and public improvement committees, they just use legal harassment instead of guns. Sometimes to influence each other. Mostly to put the squeeze on tenants. Same principle, different methods.”

Ricci sat without offering any comment. The barkeep had dropped onto a chair behind the counter and was watching a ball game on the television above his head, following its action with the volume down—Seattle Mariners, Oakland A’s, forty-three thousand screaming fans. Although it was not yet nine P.M., his smattering of customers had evaporated and left him to tend only the two Sword ops in their rear booth and a skinny old drunk at the bar. The drunk was slouched over a shot glass, mumbling to himself as he threw left jabs and hooks into the empty air. Ricci watched him a moment or two, noticing the punches had snap. Probably the guy had done some real boxing once. Coulda been a contender.