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breath, a debater’s breath. “If people thought the government, the IRS, the post office, were fair…If people treated each other with respect…”
    “What about Brother Cyril—”
    “No,” he snapped. “Let’s focus on the greater impact of the Mutual Respect Project. This is critical,” he said, back in stride. “Because, really, what choice do we have? In an age when anyone can buy a gun, when you can blow up a building with fertilizer, how are we going to protect ourselves? More police, more metal detectors, more roped-off areas—if you think that’ll make you safe, then you’re really talking pie in the sky. No battalion of guards or miles of barbed wire can keep out a crazy committed to killing.
    “The only chance we’ve got is to go at conflict from the other end. When you’ve got a disgruntled employee with a bomb, there are two things to look at. We know there’s no way we can prevent him from making the bomb. Maybe, though, we can keep him from becoming so disgruntled.”
    “An inspiring concept, Bryant. But all great generalities come back to the particulars. Brother Cyril. What happens when he’s preaching half a block off Telegraph and the street vendors bring in a band and drown him out. What happens to your mediation settlement then?”
    Hemming’s smile looked fragile. “Mediation stresses the integrity of the parties involved”—he paused for an instant—“but occasionally people do have second thoughts, and we are prepared to consult with them. It’s part of our service—”
    “But you’ll be in Washington. Gone.”
    “Bryant Hemming will be gone, yes. The Arts and Creativity Council, the umbrella organization for our mediation service, will still be here, headed by my fine assistant, Roger Macalester, an old-time Berkeley hand.”
    “Lucky Roger,” Howard said. “Hope he’s got a mop.”
    “I never heard of Brother Cyril till he started marching down Telegraph like it was Palm Sunday. Who is he anyway?” I hadn’t meant the question to throw us into shoptalk. But if I had mapped out the evening with the goal of improving it, I couldn’t have taken a better turn. When I was going through my divorce years ago, and Howard and I were bent on ignoring the attraction that itched beneath every epidermal centimeter, we clothed our unacceptable urges in the garb of talking cases. We spent long, intense evenings palpating the pulsating questions of warrant data, digging our fingers deep into the hidden meanings in suspects’ interviews. Looking into forbidden eyes, brushing against fingers, talking ever more intently till our words barely bobbed above the sea of wanting.
    Talking shop had served us well. It still could.
    But Howard took the bait only halfway.

CHAPTER 5
    H OWARD HEADED UPSTAIRS. N ONE of the tenants was home, but any of them could burst into the living room at any time, with any number of friends. Howard was the chief lessee of the house, and it was his—in theory. Practically, the only rooms he controlled were his bedroom and the section of mine in which he stored his excess stuff. He longed to buy this place, which was entirely too large for us, and have space for every friend traveling through town, plus a study, breakfast room, library, game room, and never to have a whim he couldn’t house. It unnerved him that I could go on comfortably without so much as putting my mark on his bedroom, where we slept, or unpacking my cartons in my furnitureless room next door.
    I checked for messages, though Howard surely would have told me if Ott had deigned to call (he hadn’t). Then I followed Howard upstairs.
    He settled on his California king-sized bed and leaned back against the headboard.
    “So, Cyril?” I prodded, punching my own pillow into sitting shape.
    “Cyril’s been around Monterey County for a while. Had a storefront church, one of those that make you wonder how he comes up with the rent.
    Then he hit on the idea of soliciting guys from the halfway