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He had already put in a day’s work and he was planning to canvas the North Beach bars this evening. There was a lot of pressure these days. On one hand citizens were complaining about too much police overtime. On the other, they were complaining not only about the rise in the murder rate but about how few murders were solved. Lab reports on DNA were taking months in some cases and there was bickering between the medical examiner and the police and the District Attorney.
    He had just met with the chief and the DA. Because this was a high-profile case, Gratelli would have whatever resources he needed. His lab requests would be priority. He was paired again with Rose and Stern, two homicide inspectors who helped on an earlier case involving people who were just a little more important than the average citizen. The two cops could get on his nerves, but they were more than competent. Now he snored, feet up on the sofa, trying to store a little energy for a reluctant night on the town.
    Lang tried to keep his work at work. Through the afternoon – and with Thanh’s expert search skills – Lang worked his own list:
    Marshall Hawkes, artist. Warfield despised his effeteness.
    Agnes DeWitt, memoirist, wrote her own tell-all.
    Marlene Berensen, Warfield’s mistress. In the will?
    Richard Sumaoang, poet/painter, publicly challenged Warfield’s honesty.
    Elena Warfield, Warfield’s wife and wronged woman.
    Ralph Chiu, developer, political activist, conservative, vilified by Warfield.
    While Thanh pounded the Internet, Lang found a phone number in the White Pages for Richard Sumaoang, among the last, it appeared, to give up a landline. The guy proved amenable to a discussion of Whitney Warfield and a meeting was set up for the evening.
    Thanh provided Lang with files of information gleaned from newspapers, websites, and other sources. One page was a photograph of Agnes DeWitt. She had to be eighty. There was a sense of spirit in her eyes, but she was quite likely incapable of chasing down Whitney Warfield, hopping a fence, and stabbing him in the neck. Even so, she was added to the list of people to talk to. The murderer, after all, might not be on the list.
    The other thing that struck Lang was that not only was Agnes DeWitt too old to be chasing Warfield around North Beach in the middle of the night, Marshall Hawkes and Elena Warfield weren’t exactly young gazelles.
    A number of articles were written about Hawkes. He had endless mentions on Google, was listed in Wikipedia, and the stories about him were published in very reputable publications – The New York Times, The Financial Times, Art World, Art Forum to name a very few. His work had been auctioned at some of the prestigious auction houses – Sotheby’s, Christie’s and, locally, Bonhams & Butterfields.
    Lang skimmed the articles and found a Q & A on how Hawkes fit in with the history of art. He was smug, condescending and funny. His comment about there being no great women artists in history set up a long discussion that fell victim to Lang’s short attention span.
    Thanh also included a sheath of documents on Warfield himself. Fascinating reading. No one, it seemed, really liked the guy personally, though he had admirers of his work and his ‘take-no-prisoners’ philosophy. He was among the early practitioners of fictionalizing fact or factualizing fiction. It was difficult to tell which was which sometimes. Warfield’s language was colorful, strong, passionate and his characterizations often mean-spirited.
    â€˜Life is mean,’ Warfield was fond of saying. ‘It’s a battle.’ He was a fan of the rebelliousness of the Beats, of the truth-telling of the movement’s artists and writers. They wrote about things that weren’t necessarily pretty. They challenged the status quo. They didn’t mind insulting what they considered the uptight middle-class masses with their words and actions. But