Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) Page B

conversation. When I came in, they both glanced toward the door, and when they saw the look on my face, their expressions went from glum to concerned.
    Hank said, "Shar, what's wrong?"
    In spite of my own preoccupation, I realized with a shock that he looked terrible. I couldn't remember having seen Hank so drained and tired in a long, long time. I glanced at Jack; his eyes moved from me to Hank, then back. I thought I caught a warning there:
Don't say anything to upset him
.
    I heeded it. "Nothing much. I need to talk to Jack, that's all."
    Hank has known me long and well; he can sense when I'm engaging in half-truths. But that night he seemed to want to believe me. He nodded and drained his glass, looking slightly sick after he swallowed, then stood. "Well, I've got to be getting home, anyway." To Jack he added, "Thanks, guy," and walked unsteadily toward the door.
    My own concerns had momentarily been pushed aside by anxiety for Hank. I turned to Jack, my mouth open, about to form a question. He shook his head—Hank was still within hearing—and guided me into the other part of the kitchen, where a jug of Gallo's cheapest stood on the drainboard of the sink. He picked up a glass of dubious cleanliness, filled it, and handed it to me.
    "What is it?" he asked.
    "Rudy Goldring's dead."
    He went very still for a few seconds, then his mouth twitched at one corner. "How?"
    "He fell and hit his head on the stove in his kitchen. The police suspect homicide—an accident during an argument."
    "Argument with whom?"
    "You know the derelict who guards his front steps?"
    "My God, not Bob. When?"
    "This morning, between ten and noon, I'd say. Judging from the degree of rigor—"
    "You were there at his place?"
    "Yes, I… oh hell." Suddenly I felt queasy and lightheaded and annoyed with myself. "Look, let's sit down."
    Jack motioned at the table, and I took my favorite place, facing the window beyond which all the marvelous lights of downtown San Francisco blaze. Only they didn't blaze tonight—they were fog-smeared and dim. And they weren't marvelous, either. To me in my present mood, all they represented was the greed of the developers who were overbuilding and ruining my city.
    I looked away from them, at Jack.
    He was the newest addition to our staff of attorneys, had come to us about a year before. We'd long needed an expert on criminal law—which was Jack's specialty—and with the departure of Gilbert Thayer, an unpleasant young man who had looked like a rabbit with a stomachache and acted like the proverbial serpent in the grass, we'd also had a place for someone who could handle contracts. Unlike the universally despised Gilbert, Jack fit in perfectly. He was a veteran of the same poverty wars—Los Angeles branch—as Hank and Anne-Marie and the other senior partners. He and Hank had carried on a correspondence for a number of years and were in perfect accord as to how a law cooperative should function. When Hank had heard Jack wanted to relocate because his attorney wife had received a good offer from a prestigious Montgomery Street firm, he'd hastened to ask him to join our staff. Jack had accepted just as eagerly and had plunged into the work as if he'd been with the co-op since its founding. He related well to the clients; was as enthusiastic about his contract negotiations as his criminal cases; and seemed as much at ease wearing his three-piece suits to a meeting in a boardroom as he was wearing his jeans and wool shirts to a conference in the back room of a laundry.
    After six months, however, the Stuart marriage had crumbled, and Jack had moved into one of the rooms on the second floor of All Souls. No one said much about it, but I gathered the marriage had been shaky for some time and simply hadn't stood up to the stresses of a major move and two job changes.
    Jack himself seemed kind of lost. In his spare time he wandered about the house looking for people to talk to; he kept starting books and then setting them