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happily married man.” He caught the look on McNeal’s face and let his voice freeze. “Really.”
    Sullivan said, “Ever been in trouble with the law, Mr. Banks?”
    Artie hadn’t been expecting it, then realized he should have.
    Stiffly: “No.” And then he remembered. “Just kid stuff.”
    McNeal unfolded from his chair and said, “Would you come with us, Mr. Banks?”
    Neither of them seemed very friendly now.
     
    The conference room had a battered wooden table in the middle surrounded by a dozen folding chairs. A few feet away was a card table with a large coffee Thermos, a stack of paper cups, a small jar of Coffee-mate, and a bowl holding little blue packets of Equal. Artie guessed that the coroner and his assistants met here to discuss the bodies on the floor below.
    The man in the rumpled business suit at the head of the table looked like he was a year this side of retirement. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a belly that pushed against the edge of the table, and looked vaguely familiar. He nodded at Artie to sit down and Artie judged him as curious, friendly, and professionally detached. There was a small ashtray in front of him, a straight-stemmed pipe resting in it.
    McNeal had remained by the door. The suit glanced over at him, then back to Artie. “If you want any coffee, just signal officer McNeal.”
    His voice was familiar, too: heavy and whiskey rough, the result of too many doubles after a shift. When he talked, he flashed a mouthful of gold crowns, and it was only then that Artie recognized him.
    The suit caught the sudden look of recognition and smiled. “My name’s Matt Schuler. I’m a lieutenant of detectives. I used to be assigned to Park Station.”
    It had been a long time, and Schuler had changed a lot. He was a little pudgy now and Artie guessed he’d given up his workouts at the gym years ago. But then he was twenty pounds heavier himself and it wasn’t all muscle, either.
    Schuler glanced at some papers in front of him.
    “Ordinarily I’d have you sign a statement—you can do that later—and I’d fill you in on the investigation and that would be that. Unless we had occasion to call you back. But you were a friend of Dr. Shea’s and I thought we might talk about him a bit, try and figure out just what happened and why.”
    He was a lot smoother than he used to be, Artie thought. Experience counted for something after all.
    “How’d you get my name?”
    “We checked Dr. Shea’s ID when they brought him in, phoned the hospital, and they gave us his schedule. He was on call and they knew he’d be at the restaurant. We checked with the manager and he said a group of you were having a meeting there. Apparently you’ve been meeting there for some years now; he remembered all your names without even checking the reservations list.”
    “The officers told me something of what happened,” Artie said in a strained voice. “Larry was supposed to meet a group of us at the restaurant and he never showed. That’s all I know.”
    Schuler leafed through some yellowing papers in front of him and Artie suddenly realized what they were and why the cops had asked if he had ever been in trouble with the law. Arrest records from when he had lived in the Haight.
    “All of you have known each other for a long time,” Schuler said thoughtfully. “Long before you started having your dinner meetings.”
    For Christ’s sake, Artie thought bleakly, it had been more than twenty years ago.
    Schuler took a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses from his shirt pocket and centered them on his nose before picking up one of the records to read. It was all for show, Artie realized; Schuler had gone over them before he’d even walked into the room.
    “We all do things when we’re younger that we’d like to forget when we grow older.” Schuler glanced at him over the top of his glasses. “I don’t think you’d be up to climbing the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge today.”
     
    It had been after