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I made my first road trip of the season with the Wolves, for our Sunday game in Seattle against the Seahawks, even leaving a couple of days early. While I was away, my principal at Hunters Point, Joey Rubino, coached the Bears on Saturday to a tie. It wasn’t a win, but it wasn’t a loss, either, and the team held first place in our league with the playoffs not far off.

Then the Wolves won big against the Seahawks on Sunday, in perhaps Billy McGee’s best performance since he’d returned to the league. With a month left in the regular season, the team was closing in on its first playoff spot in years.

I took one call over the weekend, from Ben Cantor, while waiting for our team plane to take off for the flight back to San Francisco. He said he wanted me to know that he wasn’t being taken off either case—my father’s or Thomas’s.

“Good to know.”

“That’s it?” he said.

Then I told him what I was always telling my high school players.

“Do your job.”

We got back late on Sunday night from Seattle, having been fogged in for a few hours. The next morning, I drove over to the Flood Building, on Market Street, where my brother Jack had rented office space for Wolf.com.

His website had spent the past few days running with the story about Cantor and me, even circling back to Ryan Morrissey’s sleepover at my house, doing everything possible to make me sound like either a woman of extremely easy virtue or perhaps a bigger menace to society than the late John Gotti.

The Flood Building was a twelve-story high-rise that despite having undergone several makeovers had stood for more than a hundred years at the corner of Market and Powell. Now the San Francisco landmark housed what I considered a modern form of media whorehouse: Wolf.com.

I took the elevator up to the tenth floor and entered a loftlike space that was big enough to hold a dozen desks. I spotted Seth Dowd in a corner, phone to his ear, typing away.

He nodded at me in greeting. I offered him my most dazzling smile and gave him the finger.

Jack had a glassed-in office that faced Market. His door was closed. I could see that he was talking on the phone but walked right in anyway without knocking.

He put the phone down when he saw me, stood up, and said, “If you take a swing at me this time, Sis, I want to warn you, I’m swinging back.”

“At least it won’t be the kind of sucker punch you threw at Danny.”

“He had it coming. You might forgive and forget. I’m not that guy.”

He sat back down, almost impatiently, and said, “What do you want?”

I sat down across from him.

“I want to tell you a story.”

“We’re always on the lookout for good stories at Wolf.com. What’s this one about?”

“About my going to see Dad on his boat the night he died,” I said.

I saw genuine surprise on his face.

“You were there?”

“Right before you were,” I said.

Ninety-Three

“I ASSUME THIS ISan off-the-record conversation,” Jack said.

“Said a brother to his sister.”

“Is it off the record or not?”

“Shouldn’tIbe the one askingyouthat?”

“I’ve got a better question,” he said. “Did your boyfriend ask you to wear a wire?”