It wasn’t a big headline, just a squib on page four. Three short columns, no picture. But the way it looked made it sound like everybody would know who Murray Belcher was. “It’s a goddamned conspiracy,” R.J. grumbled, slapping the newspaper against the counter. “Oh, yeah? Then it’s gonna cost you extra, my man,” Hookshot said over the rim of a cup of coffee. He slurped noisily, just because he knew the sound would bother R.J. Wallace Steigler, known as Hookshot, was one of R.J.’s closest friends and, outside of Bertelli and Henry Portillo, one of the only people in the world R.J. could really trust. Maybe because, like R.J., he had a couple of different strands of his background pulling at him. Hookshot was a Jewish black man, the product of a brief marriage between an Israeli officer serving at the U.N. and a Harlem beauty queen. His father had been killed by terrorists when young Wallace was a month old. Fifteen years later, Hookshot, a promising high school basketball star, lost his right hand by being on the wrong piece of turf at the wrong time.
