directory. There was nothing listed. But there Hesse was, in an old number of the local weekly, a picture in a backyard in a black short-sleeved shirt and tan linen shorts, a fund-raiser for a preschool, though there wasn’t any mention of Little Marc and no pictures of his smiling, supportive wife.

And no mention at all of the undead.

The article didn’t let slip a street address but referred three times to “Butternut Drive” and even “. . . at the end of Butternut Drive . . .” As they cruised by the numbers, single- and double-digit and nothing more, Jimmy asked Machine Shop what he knew about Hesse.

Nothing, it turned out.

“I move around at the bottom,” was the way Shop put it.

They found the house. The circular driveway was clean and clear, right up to the four-car garage. It didn’t look lived in, but that seemed to be the idea with all the homes on Butternut Drive. Show houses.

Machine Shop didn’t ask any questions, not a one all day, seemed content to just be along for the ride. They stopped for lunch at a sawdust-floor burger joint next to Stanford, a bit on down the peninsula, and then came back up on the 101 into the City. With the working stiffs.

They made one last stop, the building downtown where Hesse’s office was. Jimmy stayed in the car at the curb in a loading zone, let Shop ride the elevator up.

“It’s closed, locked,” Shop said when he came back down.

Which didn’t seem exactly right.

Night fell. Jimmy found a place to park on Haight, and he and Shop set out. They walked up one side of Haight Street eight or ten blocks and then crossed and came down the other. It was a midweek night but the tourists were out anyway. Jimmy and Shop came past the nouveaux hippies again, face-on this time. Nobody seemed to be in any hurry to get anywhere. More laid-back than the sixties, actually. The leader, with his Vandyke beard, who had seemed a little hostile to Jimmy before, this time put his hands together and bowed.

“I know you, Brother,” he said self-consciously, stiffly, the way you greet a foreigner with a phrase not your own.

“Right,” Jimmy said. “Hola.”

There was a flash of red from Shakespeare.

The young sisters were in the back of the group.

“Can I talk to him?” the one with the imploring eyes pressed forward and said. Her sister tried to hold her back.

“Of course,” the leader said. “If he is willing.”

“Hi,” Jimmy said to the girl. She looked about fourteen.

There was a stiff moment, and then the hippie leader said, “We’ll dig you later, Babygirl. We’ll be at The ’Choke.”

And he led his merry band away up Haight. Babygirl’s sister looked back at her, not happy.

“I’m going to get a tea,” Machine Shop said, when he picked up that Babygirl was still hanging back, with him there.

“Got any idea what The ’Choke is?” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, down the street. That’s where I’ll be.”

When Shop was gone, the girl leaned against the wall, took refuge beside a rainspout pipe. She said, “He calls me that, Babygirl, or Cry Baby Cry,” she said.

Jimmy was about to say something.

“But my name is Christina,” she said. “Christina Leonidas?”

Everything’s a question. Maybe everybody’s name is a question.

“Are you doing OK?” Jimmy said.

“My dad calls me Selene,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. He told me.”

He heard a breath, or an unformed word, catch in her throat. The perfect word, that explained everything.

“He’ll be all right,” Jimmy said. “I’m watching him.”

“I thought I saw him the other night.”

Jimmy nodded.

“No, I mean . . . again. Out at the Yards.”

“You mean the Point, Fort Point,” Jimmy corrected.

“No, the Yards. Where we saw you. Down south. I mean, I thought I saw him, but—”

“That’s your sister, right?” Jimmy interrupted. “That’s Melina?”

Christina nodded. Cry Baby Cry nodded.

“She’s . . . different from me,” she said. “She has all these ‘friends.’ I just feel like going home.” She looked at him directly. “I know I can’t, so don’t even.”

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Jimmy said.

“I mean, I know how it is. Sorta.”

“Where are you staying?”

“We were in this apartment place, down in North Beach, with these really nice people, you know . . . Sailors. But then Melina said things were changing, that something big was going to happen now, that we had to move, to be with the right people.”

“So where are you now?”

“With these people, the hippies. But we go back down to the