San Francisco was not Alice Vega’s favorite town, on account of the weather. She preferred the heat straight up, never ran the a/c in her own house in the Sacramento Valley except during the most brutal of heat waves; otherwise, it was windows open. At home she typically walked around in yoga shorts and a tank top, but for work, every day, including today, she wore black— pants, shirt, jacket, boots. A Springfield pistol in a shoulder holster over the shirt, under the jacket. She’d worn the straps as tightly as she could stand it for so many years, just shy of cutting off circulation, that there was now an outline on her skin of the holster pocket, a collection of pink lines like an architect’s sketch on her ribs, just south of her left breast.
Work brought her to a lot of places she didn’t care for. She stood on the front steps of a big yellow house in Pacific Heights and pressed the doorbell, the glass front door wide behind a decorative iron frame. She heard the two-tone echo inside and figured it might be a minute. Lots of stairs. She turned around and looked at the street, empty and quiet for a Saturday. It was noon, fifty-five degrees, and the sun was out but muted, some wisps of fog hanging in the air.
A young tan man came to the door, bald with a black beard and glasses, wearing a mustard shirt and white pants that appeared oversized and expensive. He opened the door; the glass hummed as it shook on the frame.
“Ms. Vega?” he said, tentative.
“Yes,” said Vega. “Mr. Fohl?”
“No, no, I’m Samuel. The Fohls’ assistant,” he said, embarrassed to correct her. “Come in, please.”
Vega stepped into a large hall roughly the size of her whole house. There was a black-and-white-checkered parquet floor, and an ornate carved wooden ceiling. A tiled wall fountain burbled quietly in the corner.
“It’s Tiffany,” said Samuel, catching Vega’s gaze. Vega nodded, accepting the information as she would a ticket from a parking-lot payment machine.
“This way, please,” said Samuel, and led her to an adjoining room.
The ceiling was engraved wood in the new room as well, and there were two wine-red leather couches, not a crease on them, facing each other.
“What will you have to drink?” said Samuel, his hands clasped behind his back. “We have flat and sparkling water, or something stronger if you prefer.”
“No, thanks,” said Vega.
“Very good,” said Samuel. “Anton is wrapping something up. He’ll be with you shortly.”
He left the room. Vega let her eyes travel along the edges of the windowpane. Outside, there was a bush of papery purple flowers clipped into the shape of a box…
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