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too. A man was dead. One of the women nudged him, and he shut up, as though realization had settled into his bones.
    “Do you need a ride back?” one of the women asked. “They’re bringing around cars to take us back to the Haight.”
    “Thanks.” I stood off a bit from them. I didn’t want to discuss the case. Three police cars came around and we all piled in, three at a time into the backseats, and they drove us back to The Select.
    “They’re not filing charges against you, are they?” the young woman asked me. She’d ended up sitting next to me, with the excited guy on the opposite side.
    “Not yet,” I said. “I don’t think I’m supposed to discuss it.” I nodded toward the officer who was kindly giving us a ride back.
    That resulted in silence, and I looked out the window as we headed back to the bar. I used the time to think.
    My kid. Leonie. They should have been on a plane by the time the attack occurred. Mila would be sure they were fine. But I hadn’t heard from Mila.
    This violence had to be random. It had to be. But there’d been a poisoning attempt on a Round Table member, and now this…
    The police detail was still working the bar. In the back an investigator was digging through the recycling bins. He’d probably find the bloodied plank soon enough. I walked around to the front of The Select, the crime scene tape decorating the door. It would be a few more hours before I could go back into the bar, one of the investigators told me. I could see they had cut out part of the mirror where a bullet had gone. A tech was taking photos of the bar and of the dead Russian from several different angles. The dead man’s hands had been bagged. Had I caused a defensive wound on his hands? I couldn’t remember.
    “I have an apartment above the bar,” I told the officer. “It has a separate entrance in the back. Is it all right if I go up there?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Thank you.” I moved away from the crowd that was watching the police—a mix of tourists and neighborhood regulars; of the homeless who’d made this neighborhood their home; of employees of the vintage music shops, the clothing stores, the other bars, the fancy grocery at the end of the street.
    I went up to the apartment. I opened the door and saw a man tapping furiously at a keyboard. He had a bald head; wore a graying goatee and old-fashioned eyeglasses, narrow and black like my grandfather’s, and was in his late forties with a spare, lean build.
    “Hello, Felix.”
    Felix Neare—The Select’s manager—stood up from the computer. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes. I didn’t know you were here.”
    “I thought it best to make sure everything up here was safe. The cops didn’t search up here.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief.
    “Mila called. They’re safe; they’re away from…whatever this is.”
    “They headed back to New Orleans?”
    “Well, via Los Angeles. Mila wanted to keep Daniel and Leonie with her until we knew more information about tonight.”
    “That’s a relief,” I said.
    “What the hell happened? Is this tied to the poisoning of Monroe ?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “He’s part of the Round Table, and now our bar’s attacked. No way is that a coincidence.”
    I felt sick.
    “I’ve been busy cleaning any incriminating Round Table evidence off the computers. Just in case you didn’t get released.”
    “They didn’t arrest me yet, but they could decide to charge me.” I explained how speaking Russian to Rostov had been part of the eyewitness accounts and how it had raised DeSoto’s suspicions.
    “Good thing I’ve also found the blueprints for each county jail,” Felix said. “In case I need to break you out tomorrow.”
    “Wow, you’re prepared.” I managed a smile.
    “I even have a shovel.”
    Felix Neare. I’d read a file on him Mila sent me when I arrived in San Francisco. Felix had moved four months ago to San Francisco. He’d worked for the Round Table for seven years, starting