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Hardy was right, Glitsky thought. This was an execution spot.
    “Besides,” Hardy continued, “Eddie wouldn’t kill himself. He wasn’t, as they say, the type.”
    He rolled the window back up.
    “All right,” Glitsky said, “you knew him.”
    “Put it out of your mind, Abe. It flat-out didn’t happen.”
    “I’m not arguing.”
    But Hardy was staring into the middle distance again, unhearing. He abruptly jerked open the car door. “I better get going.” He turned to Abe. “I’ll probably be in touch.”
     
    Hardy came up to the doors where he worked and pushed his way through. Moses, who hadn’t been home, was at the bar. Six closers—four at the rail and two at one table—were passing the time until last call. Willie Nelson was singing “Stardust” on the jukebox. No one was throwing darts. Hardy stood a minute, taking it in. Home, as much as anything could be.
    “Hey, Diz.” Moses automatically started a Guinness for him.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Sent Lynne home early. Felt like tending some bar.”
    Hardy pulled up a stool in front of the spigots. Reaching over, he stopped the flow of the stout. The glass had gotten about two-thirds full.
    “What am I supposed to do with that now?” Moses asked, his weathered face creased with laugh lines that Hardy knew wouldn’t get much use in the next weeks. “You losing weight again? You stop drinking Guinness, my business goes to hell.”
    Hardy couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He cleared his throat, took off his hat and put it on the bar. “You hear anything from Frannie tonight?”
    Moses started to answer. “You know, it’s funny. She called here maybe—” Stopping short. “What happened?”
    Hardy held up a hand. “She’s okay.”
    Moses let out a breath. Frannie was about ninety percent of everything he cared about. “What, then?”
    Hardy met his eyes. Okay, just say it, he told himself. But Moses asked. “Eddie okay? She called to see if he was here.”
    “We gotta go up there, Mose. Eddie’s dead.”
    Moses didn’t move. He squinted for a beat. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Dead?”
    Hardy turned on his stool. He slapped the bar. “Okay, guys, let’s suck ’em up,” he said. “We’re closing early.” He got up, went behind the bar and sat Moses down on the stool back there. He was hearing the beginnings of the usual drunks’ stupid moanings about how they needed last call and it wasn’t fair. He lifted the shillelagh, an end-knotted, two-foot length of dense Kentucky ash, from its hook under the counter and ducked back out front of the bar.
    He tapped the bar a couple of times, hard, making sure he had their attention. “Don’t even suck ’em, then. We’re closed and you’re all outside. Now.”
    Everybody moved. Hardy had wielded the stick before, and most of them had seen it. He glanced at Moses. “Let’s go, buddy,” he said quietly. “Let’s go tell Frannie.”

3
    ALL TWELVE TRUCKS were parked in their spots behind the squat building that was the office of Army Distributing.
    At a backboard against the building, a tall black man named Alphonse Page shot hoops. He was a rangy semi-youth, with a hairnet wrapped around his head, his shirt off, revealing a hairless and flat chest, and high-topped generic tennis shoes. His fatigue pants were doubled up at the cuffs, showing six or seven inches of shiny Thoroughbred leg between his white socks and his knees.
    The backboard was set flush against the building, making layups all but impossible, although if you swished the basket just right you could get a reasonable bounce back into the key and maybe follow up with an inside hook.
    A fading orange Datsun 510 pulled into the lot, around the trucks, then behind the building back by the wrapping shed. Alphonse stopped shooting and began dribbling, all his weight on his right foot, bouncing the ball slowly, about once a second, and waited for Linda Polk to appear from around the building, which she