Death in North Beach by Ronald Tierney

expectations, except for those she had of herself. After her shower, she checked her cellphone in the event that she had slept through a call. No missed calls. No messages.
    She dressed, took her coffee and her laptop out to the deck off the bedroom. Sprinklers were on and the wet greenery shined in the sunlight. Today she’d get through as much of the list as she could. Maybe she’d get a line on artist Lili D. Young and photographer Frank Wiley from the gallery people. They might know something about Nathan Malone as well.
    After looking at news headlines and noting that no killer asteroids were heading toward earth, Carly checked her email. She had a message from the newspaper publisher Bart Brozynski and another from Supervisor Samuel McFarland’s office. She read the publisher’s email first. He was free at four in the afternoon – this afternoon. She would have to come to him. No additional information. McFarland’s office wanted to set up an appointment weeks from now. That wouldn’t do. She’d call when she got back from her run. But her day was filling up nicely.
    This morning she ran with Louis Prima’s ‘Just A Gigolo’ piped into her ears. It was a happy, bouncy tune. Up the hill toward Lafayette Park, around it and then through it, all the while thinking about William Blake. Had she picked that CD on purpose? The gigolo piece was paired with ‘I Ain’t Got Nobody’. She tried to repress a smile. She felt a little giddy and, she told herself, this wasn’t something a woman of her age should feel. But what a charmer. She thought about Noah Lang’s warning that Blake was playing her. Certainly, he possessed those skills. If he was as successful as he appeared to be as a ‘professional companion’, he’d have to have a good game. Lang was right. She’d have to be careful.
    Second shower of the morning. The first was to wash away sleep, the second to cool off. Now in her robe, she poured herself a second cup of coffee, opened a small carton of yogurt to which she added fresh sliced peaches. As she prepared her breakfast snack, she thought about what she should wear downtown. What do you wear to high-quality art galleries? She had a light gray suit, but that seemed a little stuffy, especially so on a day that would grow warmer. She finished her yogurt and returned to the bedroom, where, staring deep into her closet, she was about to make the toughest decision of the day. Did she have anything elegant but fun? Arty?
    Lang had awakened early, traipsed down to the coffee shop at Hayes and Central and walked over to the Park between Oak and Fell streets. He sat on a bench near the bike path and watched as healthy, anti-global warmers and those who could not afford such luxuries as cars and gasoline, pedaled to work. Beyond the path were open fields and dog lovers were giving their charges a chance to answer nature’s call and get in a little exercise before most of them would be left in the apartment for the day. The dogs were off their leashes and well behaved.
    He liked dogs. He liked them better than humans. The lazy PI nibbled at the top of a muffin and sipped his coffee as he watched the goings on under the tall eucalyptus and the big blue sky. He had coffee at home but this, paper cup and all, was better and he enjoyed the fresh air. There were times when his place seemed a little claustrophobic.
    Lang tossed the remainder of the muffin on the grass. Some creature would be rewarded. He opened the copy of the Fog City Voice , a weekly he picked up at the coffee shop. The paper focused on politics and entertainment, though in San Francisco the two were pretty much the same. Lang checked the masthead to see if the publisher was the one on Carly’s list. He was. Also, among the contributors was Nathan Malone, another one on Carly’s list.
    Lang flipped through the movie listings, glanced at the masseuse ads and then checked out the