Elvis Cole 07 – Indigo Slam – Crais, Robert

SEATTLE

At two-fourteen in the morning on the night they left one life to begin their next, the rain thundered down in a raging curtain that thrummed against the house and the porch and the plain white Econoline van that the United States Marshals had brought to whisk them away. Charles said, ‘C’mere, Teri, and lookit this.’ Her younger brother, Charles, was framed in the front window of their darkened house. The house was dark because the marshals wanted it that way. No interior lights, they said. Candles and flashlights would be better, they said.

Teresa, whom everyone called Teri, joined her brother at the window, and together they looked at the van parked at the curb. Lightning snapped like a giant flashbulb, illuminating the van and the narrow lane of clapboard houses there in Highland Park on the west side of Seattle, seven and one-half miles south of the Space Needle. The van’s side and rear doors were open, and a man was squatting inside, arranging boxes. Two other men finished talking to the van’s driver, then came up the walk toward the house. All four men were dressed identically in long black slickers and black hats that they held against the rain. It beat at them as if it wanted to punch right through the coats and the Hats and hammer them into the earth. Teri thought that in a few minutes it would be beating at her. Charles said, ‘Lookit there at that truck. That truck’s big enough to bring my bike, isn’t it? Why can’t I bring my bike?’

Teri said, ‘That’s not a truck, it’s a van, and the men said we could only take the boxes.’ Charles was nine years old, three years younger than Teri, and didn’t want to leave his bike. Teri didn’t want to leave her things either, but the men had said they could only take eight boxes. Four people at two boxes a person equals eight boxes. Simple math. ‘They got plenty of room.’ ‘We’ll get you another bike. Daddy said.’ Charles scowled. ‘I don’t want another bike.’ The first man to step in from the rain seemed ten feet tall, and the second seemed even taller. Water dripped from their coats onto the wooden floor, and Teri’s first thought was to get a towel before the drips made spots, but, of course, the towels were packed and it wouldn’t matter anyway. She would never see this house again. The first man smiled at her and said, ‘I’m Peterson. This is Jasper.’ They held out little leather wallets with gold and silver badges. The badges sparkled in the candlelight. ‘We’re just about done. Where’s your dad?’

Teri had been helping Winona say good-bye to the room they shared when the men arrived fifteen minutes ago. Winona was six, and the youngest of the three Hewitt children. Teri had had to be with her as Winona went around their room, saying, ‘Good-bye, bed. Good-bye, closet. Good-bye, dresser.’ Beds and closets and dressers weren’t things that you could put in eight boxes. Teri said, ‘He’s in the bathroom. Would you like me to get him?’ Teri’s dad, Clark Hewitt, had what he called ‘a weak constitution.’ That meant he went to the bathroom whenever he was nervous, and tonight he was very nervous.

The tall man who was Jasper called, ‘Hey, Clark, whip it and flip it, bud! We’re ready!’

Peterson smiled at Teri. ‘You kids ready?’

Teri thought, of course they were ready, couldn’t he see that? She’d had Charles and Winona packed and dressed an hour ago. She said, ‘Winona!’

Winona came running into the living room with a pink plastic Beverly Hills 90210 raincoat and a purple toy suitcase. Winona’s straw-colored hair was held back with a bright green scrunchie. Teri knew that there were dolls in the suitcase, because Teri had helped Winona pack. Charles had his blue school backpack and his yellow slicker together on the couch.

Jasper called again, ‘C’mon, Clark, let’s go! We’re drowning out there, buddy!’

The toilet off the kitchen flushed and Teri’s dad came into the living room. Clark Hewitt was a thin, nervous man whose eyes never seemed to stay in one place. ‘I’m ready.’

‘We won’t be coming back, Clark. You’re not forgetting anything, are you?’

Clark shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You got the place locked up?’

Clark frowned as if he couldn’t quite remember, and looked at Teri, who told him, ‘I locked the back door and the windows and the garage. They’re going to turn off the gas and the phones and the electricity tomorrow.’ Someone with the marshals had given her father a list of things to do, and Teri had gone down the list. The list had a title: Steps to an Orderly Evacuation. ‘I just have to blow out the candles and we can go.’

Teri knew that Peterson was staring at her, but she wasn’t sure why. Peterson shook his head, then made a little gesture at Jasper. ‘I’ll take care of the candles, little miss. Jasper, get ’em loaded.’

Clark started to the front door, but Reed Jasper stopped him. ‘Your raincoat.’

‘Hunh?’

‘Earth to Clark. It’s raining like a bitch out there.’

Clark said, ‘Raincoat? I just had it.’ He looked at Teri again.

Teri said, ‘I’ll get it.’

Teri hurried down the hall past the room that she used to share with Winona and into her father’s bedroom. She blew out the candle there, then stood in the darkness and listened to the rain. Her father’s raincoat was on the bed where she’d placed it. He’d been standing at the foot of the bed when she’d put it there, but that’s the way he was – forgetful, always thinking about something else. Teri picked up the raincoat and held it close, smelling the cheap fabric and the man-smell she knew to be her father’s. Maybe he’d been thinking about Salt Lake City, which is where they were going. Teri knew that her father was in trouble with some very bad men who wanted to hurt them. The federal marshals were here to take them to Salt Lake City, where they would change their names. Once they had a Fresh Start, her father had said, he would start a new business and they would all live happily ever after. She didn’t know who the bad men were or why they were so mad at her father, but it had something to do with testifying in front of a jury. Her father had tried explaining it to her, but it had come out jumbled and confused, the way most things her father tried to explain came out. Like when her mother died. Teri had been Winona’s age, and her father had told her that her momma had gone home to see Jesus and then he’d started blubbering and nothing he’d said after that made sense. It was another four days before she’d learned that her mother, an assistant night manager for theGreat Northwest Food Store chain, had died in an auto accident, hit by a drunk driver.

Teri looked around the room. This had been her mother’s room, just as this house had been her mother’s house, as it had been Teri’s for as long as she could remember. There was one closet and two windows looking toward the alley at the back of the house and a queen-size bed and a dresser and a chest. Her mother had slept in this bed and kept her clothes in this chest and looked at herself in that dresser mirror. Her mother had breathed the air in this room, and her warmth had spread through the sheets and made them toasty and perfect for snuggling when Teri was little. Her mother would read to her. Her mother would sing ‘Edelweiss.’ Teri closed her eyes and tried to feel the warmth, but couldn’t. Teri had a hard time remembering her mother as a living being; she remembered a face in pictures, and now they were leaving. Good-bye, Mama.

Teri hugged her father’s raincoat tight; just as she turned to leave the room she heard the thump in the backyard. It was a dull, heavy sound against the back wall of the house, distinct against the rain. She looked through the rear window and saw a black shadow move through the rain, and that’s when Mr. Peterson stepped silently into the door. ‘Teri, I want you to go to the front door, now, please.’ His voice was low and urgent.

Teri said, ‘I saw something in the yard.’

Peterson pulled her past a third man in a still-dripping raincoat. The man who’d been loading the boxes. He held his right hand straight down along his leg and Teri saw that he had a gun.

Her father and Charles and Winona were standing with Mr. Jasper. Her father’s eyes looked wild, as if at any moment they might pop out right onto the floor. Jasper said, ‘C’mon, Dan, it’s probably nothing.’

Her father clutched Jasper’s arm. ‘I thought you said they didn’t know. You said we were safe.’

Jasper pried Clark Hewitt’s hand away as Mr. Peterson said, ‘I’ll check it out while you get ’em in the van.’ He looked worried. ‘Jerry! Let’s move!’

The third man, Jerry, reappeared and picked up Winona. ‘C’mon, honey. You’re with me.’

Jasper said, ‘I’ll check it with you.’ Jasper was breathing fast.

Mr. Peterson pushed Jasper toward the door. ‘Get ’em in the van. Now!’

Jasper said, ‘It’s probably nothing.’

Charles said, ‘What’s happening?’

A loud cracking came from the kitchen, as if the back door was being pried open, and then Peterson was pushing them hard through the door, yelling, ‘Do it, Jasper! Take ’em!’ and her father moaned, a kind of faraway wail that made Winona start crying. Jerry bolted toward the street, carrying Winona in one arm and pulling Teri’s father with the other, shouting something that Teri could not understand. Jasper said, ‘Oh, holy shit!’ and tossed Charles across his shoulder like a laundry bag. He grabbed Teri hard by the arm, so hard that she had never felt such pain, and she thought her flesh and bone would surely be crushed into a meaty red pulp like you see in those Freddie Krueger movies, and then Jasper was pulling her out into the rain as, somewhere in the back of the house, she heard Mr. Peterson shout, very clearly, ‘Federal Marshals!’ and then there were three sharp BOOMS that didn’t sound anything like thunder, not anything at all.

The rain fell like a heavy cloak across Teri’s shoulders and splattered up from the sidewalk to wet her legs as they ran for the van. Charles was kicking his legs, screaming, ‘I don’t have my raincoat! I left it inside!’

The driver had the window down, oblivious to the rain, eyes darting as Jerry pushed first Winona and then Clark through the side door. The van’s engine screamed to life.

Jasper ran to the rear of the van and shoved Teri inside. Clark was holding Winona, huddled together between the boxes and the driver’s seat. Winona was still crying, her father bug-eyed and panting. Two more BOOMS came from the house, loud and distinct even with the rain hammering in through the open doors and windows. The driver twisted toward them, shouting, ‘What the fuck’s happening?!’

Jerry yanked a short black shotgun from behind the seat. ‘I’m with Peterson! Get ’em outta here!’

Jasper clawed out his gun, trying to scramble back out into the rain, saying, ‘I’m coming with you!’

Jerry pushed Jasper back into the van. ‘You get these people outta here, goddamnit! You get ’em out now!’ Jerry slammed the door in Jasper’s face and the driver was screaming, ‘What happened?! Where’s Peterson?’

Jasper seemed torn, but then he screamed back, ‘Drive! Get the hell outta here!’ He crushed past the cardboard boxes to the van’s rear window, cursing over and over, ‘Always some shit! Always goddamn bullshit!’

The van slid sideways from the curb as it crabbed for traction. The driver shouted into some kind of radio and Jasper cursed and Teri’s father started crying like Winona, and Charles was crying, too. Teri thought that maybe even Federal Marshal Jasper was crying, but she couldn’t be sure because he was watching out the van’s square rear window.

Teri felt her eyes well with tears, but then, very clearly, she told herself: You will not cry. And she didn’t. The tears went away, and Teri felt calm. She was soaked under her raincoat, and she realized that the floor was wet from rain that had blown in when the doors were open. The eight cardboard boxes that held the sum total of their lives were wet, too.

Her father said, ‘What happened back there? You said we were safe! You said they wouldn’t know!’

Jasper glanced back at her father. Jasper looked scared, too. ‘I don’t know. Somehow they found out.’

Teri’s father shouted, ‘Well, that’s just great! That’s wonderful!’ His voice was very high. ‘Now they’re gonna kill us!’

Jasper went back to staring out the window. ‘They’re not going to kill you.’

“That’s what you people said before!’ Her father’s voice was a shriek.

Jasper turned again and stared at Teri’s father for the longest time before he said, ‘Peterson is still back there, Mr. Hewitt.’

Teri watched her brother and sister and father, huddled together and crying, and then she knew what she had to do. She crawled across the wet, tumbled boxes and along the van’s gritty bed and went to her family. She found a place for herself between Winona and her father, and looked up into her father’s frightened eyes. His face was pale and drawn, and the thin wet hair matted across his forehead made him look lost. She said, ‘Don’t be scared, Daddy.’

Clark Hewitt whimpered, and Teri could feel him shivering. It was July, and the rain was warm, but he wasn’t shivering because he was cold. Teri said, ‘I won’t let anyone hurt us, and I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.’

Clark Hewitt nodded without looking at her. She held him tightly, and felt his shaking ease.

The van careened through the night, hidden by the darkness and rain.

Three years later: Los Angeles CHAPTER 1

It was plant day in the City of Angels. On plant day I gather the plants that I keep in my office and take them out onto the little balcony I have overlooking West Los Angeles, where I clean and water and feed them, and then spend the remainder of the afternoon wondering why my plants are more yellow than green. A friend who knows plants once told me that I was giving them too much water, so I cut their rations in half. When the plants turned soft as well as yellow, another friend said that I was still drowning them, so I cut their water in half again. The plants died. I bought new plants and stopped asking other people’s advice. Yellow plants are my curse.

I was sneering at all the yellow when Lucy Chenier said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to get away until much later, Elvis. I’m afraid we’ve lost the afternoon.’

‘Oh?’ I was using a new cordless phone to talk to Lucille Chenier from the balcony as I worked on the plants. It was in the low eighties, the air quality was good, and a cool breeze rolled up Santa Monica Boulevard to swirl through the open French doors into my office. Cindy, the woman in the office next to mine, saw me on the balcony and made a little finger wave. Cindy was wearing a bright white dress shirt tied at the belly and a full-length sarong skirt. I was wearing Gap jeans, a silk Tommy Bahama shirt, and a Bianchi shoulder holster replete with Dan Wesson .38-caliber revolver. Theshoulder holster was new, so I was wearing it around the office to break in the leather.

Lucy said, ‘Tracy wants me to meet the vice president of business affairs, but he’s tied up with the sales department until five.’ Tracy was Tracy Mannos, the station manager of KROK television. Lucy Chenier was an attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but she had been offered a job by KROK here in Los Angeles. She had come out for three days to discuss job possibilities and contract particulars, and tonight was her last night. We had planned to spend the afternoon at the Mexican marketplace on Olvera Street in downtown LA. Los Angeles was founded there, and the marketplace is ideal for strolling and holding hands.

‘Don’t worry about it, Luce. Take all the time you need.’ She hadn’t yet decided if she would take the job, but I very much wanted it to happen.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure, I’m sure. How about I pick you up at six? We can go for an early dinner at Border Grill, then back to the house to pack.’ Border Grill was Lucy’s favorite.

‘You’re a dream, kiddo. Thanks.’

‘Or, I could drive over and pull the veep out of his meeting at gunpoint. That might work.’

‘True, but he might hold it against me in the negotiation.’

‘You lawyers. All you think about is money.’

I was telling Lucy how rotten my plants looked when the outer door opened and three children stepped into my office. I cupped the receiver and called, ‘Out here.’

The oldest was a girl with long dark hair and pale skin and little oval glasses. I made her for fifteen, but she might have been older. A younger boy trailed in behind her, pulling a much smaller girl. The boy was wearing oversized baggy shorts and Air Nike sneakers. He looked sullen. The younger girl was wearing an X-Files T-shirt. I said, ‘I’m being invaded.’

Lucy said, ‘Tracy just looked in. I have to go.’

The older girl came to the French doors. ‘Are you Mr. Cole?’

I held up a finger, and the girl nodded. ‘Luce, don’t worry about how long it takes. If you run late, it’s okay.’

‘You’re such a doll.’

‘I know.’

‘Meetcha outside the building at six.’

Lucy made kissy sounds and I made kissy sounds back. The girl pretended not to hear, but the boy muttered something to the younger girl. She giggled. I have never thought of myself as the kissy-sound type of person, but since I’ve known Lucy I’ve been doing and saying all manner of silly things. That’s love for you.

When I turned off the phone, the older girl was frowning at my plants. ‘When they’re yellow it means they get too much sun.’

Everyone’s an expert.

‘Maybe you should consider cactus. They’re hard to kill.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’

The girl followed me back into my office. The younger girl was sitting on the couch, but the boy was inspecting the photographs and the little figurines of Jiminy Cricket that I keep on my desk. He squinted at everything with disdain, and he carried himself with a kind of round-shouldered skulk. I wanted to tell him to stand up straight. I said, ‘What’s up, guys? How can I help you?’ Maybe they were selling magazine subscriptions.

The older girl said, ‘Are you Elvis Cole, the private investigator?’

‘Yes, I am.’ The boy snuck a glance at the Dan Wesson, then eyed the Pinocchio clock that hangs on the wall above the file cabinet. The clock has eyes that move from side to side as it tocks and is a helluva thing to watch.

She said, ‘Your ad in the Yellow Pages said you find missing people.’

‘That’s right. I’m having a special this week. I’ll find two missing people for the price of one.’ Maybe she was writing a class report: A Day in the Life of the World’s Greatest Detective.

She stared at me. Blank.

‘I’m kidding. That’s what we in the trade call private-eye humor.’

‘Oh.’

The boy coughed once, but he wasn’t really coughing. He was saying ‘Asshole’ and masking it with the cough. The younger girl giggled again.

I looked at him hard. ‘How’s that?’

The boy went sullen and floated back to my desk. He looked like he wanted to steal something. I said, ‘Come away from there.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘I want you on this side of the desk.’

The older girl said, ‘Charles.’ Warning him. I guess he was like this a lot.

‘Jeez.’ He skulked back to the file cabinet, and snuck another glance at the Dan Wesson. ‘What kind of gun is that?’

‘It’s a Dan Wesson thirty-eight-caliber revolver.’

‘How many guys you kill?’

‘I’m thinking about adding another notch right now.’

The older girl said, ‘Charles, please.’ She looked back at me. ‘Mr. Cole, my name is Teresa Haines. This is my brother, Charles, and our sister, Winona. Our father has been missing for eleven days, and we’d like you to find him.’

I stared at her. I thought it might be a joke, but she didn’t look as if she was joking. I looked at the boy, and then at the younger girl, but they didn’t appear to be joking either. The boy was watching me from the corner of his eye, and there was a kind of expectancy under the attitude. Winona was all big saucer eyes and unabashed hope. No, they weren’t kidding. I went behind my desk, then thought better of it and came around to sit in one of the leather director’s chairs opposite the couch. Mr. Informal. Mr. Unthreatening. ‘How old are you, Ms. Haines?’

‘I’m fifteen, but I’ll be sixteen in two months. Charles is twelve, and Winona is nine. Our father travels often, so we’re used to being on our own, but he’s never been gone this long before, and we’re concerned.’

Charles made the coughing sound again, and this time he said, ‘Trick.’ Only this time he wasn’t talking about me.

I nodded. ‘What does your father do?’

‘He’s in the printing business.’

‘Unh-hunh. And where’s your mother?’

‘She died five and a half years ago in an automobile accident.’

Charles said, ‘A friggin’ drunk driver.’ He was scowling at the picture of Lucy Chenier on my file cabinet, and he didn’t bother to look over at me when he said it. He drifted from Lucy back to the desk, and now he was sniffing around the Mickey Mouse phone.

I said, ‘So your father’s been gone for eleven days, he hasn’t called, and you don’t know when he’s coming back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

Charles smirked. ‘If we knew that, he wouldn’t be missing, would he?’

I looked at him, but this time I didn’t say anything. ‘Tell me, Ms. Haines. How did you happen to choose me?’

‘You worked on the Teddy Martin murder.’ Theodore Martin was a rich man who had murdered his wife. I was hired by his defense attorneys to work on his behalf, but it hadn’t gone quite the way Teddy had hoped. I’d been on local television and in the Times because of it. ‘I looked up the newspapers in the library and read about you, and then I found your ad in the Yellow Pages.’

‘Resourceful.’ My friend Patty Bell was a licensed social worker with the county. I was thinking that I could call her.

Teri Haines took a plain legal envelope from her back pocket and showed it to me. ‘I wrote down his birth date and a description and some things like that.’ She put it on the coffee table between us. ‘Will you find him for us?’

I looked at the envelope, but did not touch it. It was two-fifteen on a weekday afternoon, but these kids weren’t in school. Maybe I would call a lieutenant I know with the LAPD Juvenile Division. Maybe he would know what to do.

Teresa Haines leaned toward me and suddenly looked thirty years old. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that we’re just kids, but we have the money to pay you.’ She pulled a cheap red wallet from her front pocket, then fanned a deck of twenties and fifties and hundreds that was thick enough to stop a 9mm Parabel-lum. There had to be two thousand dollars. Maybe three. ‘You see? All you have to do is name your price.’

Charles said, ‘Jeezis Christ, Teri, don’t tell’m that! He’ll clean us out!’ Charles had moved from the Mickey phone and now he was fingering the Jiminys again. Maybe I could handcuff him to the couch.

Teri was looking at me. ‘Well?’

‘Where’d you get the money?’

Her right eye flickered, but she did not look away. ‘Daddy leaves it for us. It’s what we live on.’

Teresa Haines’s hair hung loosely below her shoulders and appeared clean and well kept. Her face was heart-shaped, and a couple of pimples had sprouted on her chin, but she didn’t seem self-conscious about them. She appeared well nourished and in good health, as did her brother and sister. Maybe she was making all of this up. Maybe the whole thing was their idea of a joke. I said, ‘Have you called the police?’

‘Oh no.’ She said it quickly.

‘If my father was missing, I would.’

She shook her head.

‘It’s what they do, and they won’t charge you. I usually get around two grand.’

Charles yelled, ‘Ripoff!’ A small framed picture fell when he said it, and knocked over three Jiminy figurines. He scuttled toward the door. ‘I didn’t do anything. Jeezis.’

Teresa straightened herself. ‘We don’t want to involve the police, Mr. Cole.’ You could tell she was struggling to be calm. You could see that it was an effort.

‘If your father has been gone for eleven days and you haven’t heard from him, you should call the police. They’ll help you. You don’t have to be afraid of them.’

She shook her head. ‘The police will call Children’s Services, and they’ll take us away.’

I tried to look reassuring. ‘They’ll just make sure that you guys are safe, that’s all. I may have to call them myself.’ I spread my hands and smiled, Mr. Nothing-to-Be-Afraid-of-Here, only Teri Haines didn’t buy it. Her eyes cooled, growing flinty and hard and shallow with fear.

Teresa Haines slowly stood. Winona stood with her. ‘Your ad said confidential.’ Like an accusation.

Charles said, ‘He’s not gonna do frig.’ Like they’d hadthis discussion before they came, and now Charles had been proven right.

‘Look, you guys are children. You shouldn’t be by yourselves.’ Saying it made me sound like an adult, but sounding that way made me feel small.

Teresa Haines put the money back in the wallet and the wallet back in her pocket. She put the envelope in her pocket, too. ‘I’m sorry we bothered you.’

I said, ‘C’mon, Teresa. It’s the right way to play it.’

Charles coughed, ‘Eat me.’

There was a flurry of fast steps, and then Teresa and Charles and Winona were gone. They didn’t bother to close the door.

I looked at my desk. One of the little Jiminys was gone, too.

I listened to Cindy’s radio, drifting in from the balcony. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were singing ‘Music Is My Aeroplane.’ I pressed my lips together and let my breath sigh from the comers of my mouth.

‘Well, moron, are you just going to let them walk out of here?’ Maybe I said it, or maybe it was Pinocchio.

I pulled on a jacket to cover the Dan Wesson, ran down four flights to the lobby, then out to the street in time to see them pull away from the curb in a metallic green Saturn. The legal driving age in the state of California is sixteen, but Teresa was driving. It didn’t surprise me.

I ran back through the lobby and down to the parking level and drove hard up out of the building, trying to spot their car. A guy in a six-wheel truck that said LEON’S FISH almost broadsided me as I swung out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, and sat on his horn.

I was so focused on trying to spot the Saturn that I didn’t yet see the man who was following me, but I would before long.

Chapter 2

Teresa Raines’s Saturn turned south past the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station, then east onto Mel-rose. I didn’t careen through oncoming traffic to cut her off, and I didn’t shoot out her tires. Teri Haines was driving just fine, and I wasn’t sure what to do if I stopped them. Hold them at gunpoint for the police?

Fairfax High School was just letting out, and the sidewalks were dotted with boys toting book bags and skateboards, and girls flashing navel rings. Most of the kids were about Teri’s age, some younger, some older, only these kids were in school and she wasn’t. Charles leaned out of the passenger-side window and flipped off a knot of kids standing at the bus stop. Three of the kids gave back the finger, and somebody threw what appeared to be a Coke can which hit the Saturn’s rear wheel.

Teri cruised along Melrose past hypermodern clothing outlets and comic-book shops and tour groups from Asia until she turned south onto a narrow residential street. Modest stucco houses lined the street, and the curbs were jammed with parked cars. Some of the cars probably went with the houses, but most belonged to people who’d come to shop on Melrose. I stopped at the corner and watched. The Saturn crept halfway down the next block, then turned into the drive of a yellow bungalow with an orange tile roof and a single royal palm in the yard. The three Haines children climbed out of the car and disappeared into the bungalow. Retreatingto familiar territory after an unsuccessful meeting with the detective.

I cruised past their house, found a parking space on the next block, and walked back. Screams weren’t coming from within, no music was blaring, and no smoke was rising from either windows or roof. Charles had probably passed out.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house next door and thought about things. When I was following them I had known exactly what I would do: I would locate their residence, then call one of my friends at Children’s Services or the LAPD, and that would be that. Only the house and the yard, like the car and the children, appeared well maintained, and now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe these kids were fine, and all calling the cops would get me was a house full of frightened children. Still, all I could see was the outside of the house. Inside, there might be rats. Inside, there might be squalor and vermin. Only one way to find out. When in doubt, snoop.

I slipped past the Saturn and walked up the drive and climbed atop their gas meter to peek into the kitchen. I couldn’t see the kids, but the kitchen was neat and orderly and clean. No rats, no flies, no towers of unwashed dishes. I moved to the next set of windows, chinned myself on the sill, and peered through a little dining room to the living room. It occurred to me that Charles might see me peeking in the window and bean me with a brick, but these are the chances you take when you’re a world-class private eye. Life is risk. The TV was on, and Charles and Winona were watching Aeon Flux. No one was pushing, no one was shoving. Like the kitchen, the living room was neat and orderly and in good repair. Eleven days without an adult, and everything looked fine.

I dropped back to the drive, then went to my car. I watched the house and tried to look unthreatening so that nervous neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. A black guy in a gray LeBaron cruised past. I smiled and nodded, but he looked away. Maybe I wasn’t unthreatening enough.

Two hours and ten minutes later I started the car and left to pick up Lucy Chenier. I wasn’t sure that I was doing the right thing by leaving them alone, but I wasn’t sure it would be best to have them scooped up by a herd of social workers and put into a foster home either. Of course, they might be safer in such a home, but they didn’t look particularly endangered where they were. Maybe I should stop advertising in the Yellow Pages.

The KROK studio and corporate offices are on Olympic Boulevard, just west of Doheny Drive along the southern edge of Beverly Hills. It’s a large, modern building of steel and glass in an area of chain grocery stores and expensive high-rise apartments and upscale health clubs. Twentieth Century-Fox isn’t far away, and neither is Century City.

Olympic was jammed with rush-hour traffic, and the valet parking attendants at the health club across the street from KROK were running double time to keep up with the incoming flux of agents and lawyers and studio execs anxious to pump iron and shoot hoops after a hard day telling the truth. Four guys in Versace suits were standing together outside the health club, staring toward KROK, only they weren’t staring at the building; they were staring at Lucy Chenier. Lucille Chenier is five inches over five feet, with light auburn hair and green eyes and the rich, healthy tan of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. She had attended Louisiana State University on a tennis scholarship, and she still played regularly and was serious about it. You could see it in the way she carried herself, and in the way her muscle’s worked beneath her skin. I pulled to the curb and felt myself smile as she climbed into my car. ‘Did you take the job?’

‘Not yet, but they made a very interesting offer.’ Her green eyes were amazing. Absolutely without bottom.

‘How interesting?’

She smiled wider.

‘That’s pretty interesting.’

She leaned across the shifter and kissed me, and I kissed her back. ‘Did you make a reservation at Border Grill?’

‘I did.’

‘Fantastic!’ She settled back in the seat. ‘We can eat, then I’ll pack, and then we’ll have the rest of the evening to sip champagne and do whatever.’

I smiled at her, and felt an enormous warmth grow between us. ‘Whatever.’

Lucy told me the particulars of her interview as we drove toward Santa Monica, and then I told her about Teresa Haines. I told her about Charles and Winona, and how I had followed them back to their home, and as I told it, a vertical line grew between Lucy’s eyebrows in a kind of frown. She said, ‘They’ve been alone for eleven days?’

‘Yep.’

‘With no adult supervision?’

‘That’s right.’ The line grew deeper.

‘And you looked through the windows?’

‘Everything seemed fine.’

Lucy was squirming so hard that I thought she was going to pop out of the seat. She shook her head and held up her hands and said, ‘Seeming fine isn’t enough. We’d better turn around.’

I said, ‘Hunh?’

‘Turn around. We’re going into that house and make sure.’

I turned. Maternal hormones are awesome to behold.

Twenty minutes later, we left Melrose and once more cruised their house. Everything appeared in order and unchanged, and the Saturn was still in the drive. At least they weren’t out joyriding. ‘They’re fine.’ The professional detective makes his pronouncement.

‘Stop.’

We parked in the drive behind the Saturn, went to the front door, and rang the bell. Charles threw open the door without checking, and when he saw us his eyes bulged and he tried to slam the door. ‘Run! They’ve come to take us away!’

I pushed open the door and stepped inside, Lucy behind me. He was a game kid, grunting and huffing against the door as he slid across the floor. I said, ‘Relax, Charles. No one is going to take you away.’

Teresa Haines said, ‘Stop it, Charles.’ She said it once, sharply, and he stopped.

Teresa and Winona were in the living room. The TV was off, so they probably hadn’t been watching it. Winona was standing behind Teresa, and Teresa looked calm and in absolute control of her environment. She wasn’t looking at me,- she was looking at Lucy. I said, ‘I wanted to make sure you guys were okay.’

Charles said, ‘I tol’ ya we shouldn’t’a said anything! They’re gonna put us in a home!’

Teresa crossed the living room, and extended her hand to Lucy. ‘My name is Teresa Haines. Who are you?’

Lucy took her hand. ‘Lucille Chenier. I’m a friend of Mr. Cole’s.’

The house smelled faintly of tomato sauce and garlic. Teri said, ‘Are you with Children’s Services?’

Lucy smiled, friendly and relaxed. ‘Not at all. I don’t live in Los Angeles. I’m just visiting.’ Lucy released Teresa’s hand, but kept the smile as she walked to the kitchen. ‘Mr. Cole tells me that you’ve been without your father for over a week?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’

‘I’m sure he will. Do you mind if I look around?’ Her smile was warm and reassuring.

Charles said, ‘What about a search warrant? You gotta have a search warrant if ya wanna look around!’ He was scowling at us from the door, his hand still on the knob as if he might suddenly throw open the door and run for it if we made the wrong move.

Teri said, ‘If it will make you feel better.’ Ignoring Charles.

Lucy disappeared into the rear. Teresa looked back at me and cocked her head. I shrugged. ‘She’s a mother.’

‘Did you have second thoughts about helping us?’

‘I wanted to make sure that you’re okay.’

‘So you followed us.’

‘Sure.’ Grilled by a kid. ‘I wanted to see your living conditions. Also, Charles stole a figurine from my office.’

Charles yelled, ‘I didn’t do anything!’ He made a big deal out of waving his arms and pulling at his hair. ‘Why does everyone blame met’ Drama.

Teri said, ‘Charles.’ Her eyes narrowed and it sounded like a warning.

I held out my hand. ‘Give it over, kid.’

Charles dug the Jiminy out of his pocket and threw it on the floor. ‘Frig!’

Teri glared lasers at him. ‘Charles.’

Charles scooped up the Jiminy, then skulked over with it, ready to run in case I tried to hit him.

He put it in my hand, then scuttled away. I looked at the Jiminy, then tossed it back to him. ‘Keep it.’

Charles looked surprised.

Teresa said, ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I know.’

She said, I’m sorry about this.’

I shook my head. It happens.

Teresa Haines took a breath, then said, ‘So you’ve seen that we’re fine.’

‘Looks like you’ve got things under control.’

‘So you won’t have to call the police.’

I looked into the calm eyes, only they weren’t so calm anymore. A tiny flame of fear was burning behind the oval glasses. ‘You were aware of that possibility when you came to see me, yet you came anyway. You must be very concerned for your father.’

The flame grew brighter and her face worked, and then the flame was gone and the eyes were calm again. She had fought to control herself, and she had won. Some kid. She said, ‘Of course I’m concerned. He’s my father.’

Lucy came back and headed into the kitchen. ‘Your room is very neat, Teresa. Do you share it with Winona?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The smile. ‘Charles’s room is a mess.’

Teresa said, ‘I know. You can’t get him to make his bed.’

Lucy laughed. ‘I know what that’s like. I have an eight-year-old son who’s the same way.’

Charles made the coughing sound, and this time you could make out the word ‘Bitch.’

I said, ‘Hey.’

Charles skulked into the dining room as far from me as he could get, put the Jiminy on the table, and pretended to play with it.

I could hear Lucy open the refrigerator and the stove and the pantry. A serious inspection was taking place, and it was coming from somewhere very female. Something was happening between Lucy and Teresa and, in a way I didn’t quite understand, I was no longer a part of it. ‘What do you and your brother and sister eat, Teresa?’

‘I cook for us.’

Winona said, ‘I cook, too.’

Lucy came back and smiled at Winona. ‘I’ll bet you’re a good cook, honey.’

‘We make spaghetti.’

‘My favorite. Did you have spaghetti for breakfast?’

Winona laughed. ‘We had Cheerios.’

Lucy smiled at Winona again, then glanced at me and nodded. I said, ‘Is there food?’

‘Yes.’

Teresa said, ‘I shop and cook for us even when Daddy’s home. It’s no big thing.’ She seemed affronted that anyone would think otherwise.

I said, ‘We just wondered, that’s all. It looks like you’re in good shape.’

Teresa looked hopeful. ‘Then you aren’t going to turn us in to Children’s Services?’

I frowned at her. ‘You’re underage. You can’t live here alone.’

Lucy hooked her arm through mine, and squeezed. Tight. She smiled warmly at Teresa. ‘He won’t call them just yet, dear, but we’ll have to consider that as we go.’

Now I frowned at Lucy. ‘What’s this ‘we’ business?’

Lucy squeezed tighter. ‘But don’t you worry about that for now, Teri. Right now, he’s going to find your father.’

I said, ‘I am?’

Lucy turned the warm smile my way. ‘Of course you are. If you know what’s good for you.’

I said, ‘Mm.’

Lucy turned back to Teresa. ‘Have you eaten dinner yet?’

‘I was about to cook.’

Lucy beamed. ‘We were just on our way to a very nice restaurant. Why don’t you join us?’ She gave my arm a little shake. ‘Wouldn’t that be fun?’

I said, ‘Mm.’

Winona said, T want spaghetti.’

I phoned Border Grill and asked if they could make the reservation for a party of five. They could.

The five of us went to dinner – me, Lucy, Teresa, Winona, and Charles. We had to take the Saturn. Winona sat between Lucy and me,- Charles threw a sauteed shrimp at the waitress, tried to steal a pepper mill, and ate two desserts. The bill came to a hundred eighty-two fifty.

Mm.

Chapter 3

I took Lucy to LAX early the next morning and waited with her at the gate. When it was time to board we held each other, and then she disappeared into the jetway. I went to the observation window, stared at her plane, and tried not to look depressed.

An older gentleman with a walking stick appeared at the glass next to me and shook his head, glum. ‘Another visit, another parting.’ He shook his head some more. ‘Me, I never say good-bye.’

‘Good-byes are tough, all right.’

‘They’re permanent. You say good-bye, you’re inviting disaster.’

I looked at him. ‘What do you mean, permanent?’

‘The big birds come in, the big birds go out, and you never know what’s going to happen.’ He sighed. ‘I hope nobody put a bomb.’

I looked at him harder. ‘Do I know you?’

He made a shrug.

‘I think I’ve seen you here before.’ He was stooped and balding with baggy, old-man pants.

He shrugged again. ‘God knows, it’s possible. I spend my whole life in this place, picking people up, sending people off. All without a good-bye.’

‘I’m pretty certain.’

He patted my arm and smiled. It was a kindly smile, and wise. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, young man. The only thing certain is death.’ He patted my arm again and leaned close. ‘I hope you didn’t say good-bye. For her sake.’

Great.

I left him at the window, walked out to the car, and took Sepulveda Boulevard north through the city, the footloose and fancy-free detective reentering the workaday world. I was missing Lucy already and feeling grumpy because of it, but I was also excited and hopeful. She felt that the job with KROK was going to work out, and, if it did, she and her son, Ben, would move here and then I could see her all the time. Thinking about that made me smile, and the grumpiness faded. The sun had climbed nicely, the air had warmed, and a slight orange haze was building in the east past Baldwin Hills. Perfect convertible weather even with the coming smog.

I followed Sepulveda north to Washington Boulevard, then turned east past the old MGM Studios to La Cienega when I spotted a gray Chrysler LeBaron edging across the white line three cars behind me. He stayed on the line a few seconds without changing lanes, the way you do when you want to see something ahead of you, and then he disappeared. I thought that maybe it was the same LeBaron I had seen outside Teri Haines’s home, but then I said, ‘Nah.’ I was probably watching too many episodes of Cops.

Fifteen minutes later I parked behind Teri Haines’s Saturn and went to the door. I kind of expected to find the house in smoking ruins, but I guess Charles had passed out from overeating. Lighten up, Cole. He’s only a kid. Sure. They probably said that when Attila was a kid, too.

Teresa answered the door in jeans and pink Keds and an oversized white T-shirt. I said, ‘Where are Charles and Winona?’

‘I took them to school.’ I guess she could read my surprise. ‘Charles is in sixth grade and Winona is in third. You don’t think I’d let them grow up stupid, do you?’

‘I guess not.’ Put in my place by a fifteen-year-old.

The house was as neat and clean as it had been yesterday, only now it was quiet. A washing machine chunked somewhere beyond the kitchen and street sounds sifted in through the windows. Teresa let me in, and stood well to the side as she showed me into the living room. Watchful. ‘Would you like coffee? I always make coffee before I take them to school.’ A blue mug sat steaming on the coffee table atop an issue of Seventeen.

‘What about you?’

‘I have a cup.’

‘I meant about school.’

She sat at the edge of the couch and laced her fingers over a knee. She was so close to the edge that I thought she might slip off. ‘We move around a lot, and I got tired of always being the new kid, so I took the GED exam last year when we moved to Arizona.’ GED. General Equivalency diploma. ‘I don’t go to school.’

‘Ah.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I’m sorry, but is talking about me going to help you find my father?’

‘Maybe. You just told me that you used to live in Arizona, which is something I didn’t know. Maybe he went there.’

She flushed a hard red behind the glasses. I guess she didn’t like being shown up either.

‘If I’m going to find your dad, I’m going to need what we in the trade call a lead. That means I’ll ask you a lot of questions, you’ll tell me what you know, and maybe we’ll get somewhere. You see?’

She nodded, but she wasn’t happy about it.

I took out my pen and prepared to make notes. ‘Tell me about him.’

Her father’s name was Clark Rudy Haines. He was thirty-nine years old, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred fifty-two pounds. He had light brown hair, though he had lost most of it years ago, and brown eyes. He wore glasses. She told me about the glasses, then she had some of the coffee, and then she stared at me.

I said, ‘Okay.’

‘Okay, what?’

‘I need more than that.’

She looked uncomfortable, as if she couldn’t imagine more than that. As if she was suddenly thinking that having me here was a bad idea, and she was wishing that she’d never come to my office.

I tapped my pen on the pad. ‘You said he was a printer. Tell me about that.’

‘Okay.’ She said that her father was a commercial offset operator, and that they had left Tucson for Los Angeles because he had been offered a job with Enright Quality Printing in Culver City. She told me that he had been laid off, and that he had been concerned about finding another job. Then she shut up and watched me some more.

‘So you think he left in search of another job?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘He’s done this before?’

‘Not for this long.’ She explained that printing was a nomadic life because companies got big contract orders and hired printers like her father to fill those orders, but that when the jobs were done, the printers were let go. She said that when her father was let go, he would have to look around for another job and that was why they moved around so much.

‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

She looked surprised. ‘We move around too much for that.’

‘How about friends?’

She frowned, thinking hard. ‘I don’t think he has any friends here either. He might’ve in Tucson.’

I thought about her GED. I thought about her not liking being the new kid in school. ‘How about you?’

‘What?’

‘Do you have friends?’

She sipped more coffee and didn’t answer. Guess they moved around too much for that, too.

‘Does your father have a criminal record?’

‘No.’

‘Does he gamble? Maybe hit the card clubs down in Belflower or put money on sporting events?’

‘No.’

‘He drink, or have a history of mental problems?’

‘Absolutely not.’ The fifteen-year-old face hardened and she gripped the cup with both hands. ‘Why are you asking questions like that?’

‘Because a man doesn’t just walk away from his children.’

‘You make it sound like he abandoned us.’

I stared at her, and the washing machine changed cycles.

‘He isn’t anything like that. He isn’t a drunk, or have brain problems. He’s a good father. He’s kind and sweet, and he’s been gone before, but he’s always come back.’ She shook her head. ‘There are too many printers and too few jobs. When you hear of something you have to follow up fast or you’ll lose out.’ She looked affronted, like how could I suggest anything else? ‘I’m worried that he went somewhere and had an accident. What if he has amnesia?’ Amnesia.

I circled Enright Printing on the little pad. ‘Okay. I’ll talk to the folks at Enright and see if they know something. Also, it might help if I had a picture.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t think we have a picture.’

‘Everybody has pictures.’

She bit at her lower lip. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, maybe you have a snapshot.’ I knew a friend with a fifteen-year-old daughter. She had about a zillion pictures of her cat and her friends and siblings and vacations and school and things. Boxes of the stuff.

Teresa shook her head. ‘I guess we’re just not camera people.’

I put away the pad and stood. ‘Okay, let’s go look in your dad’s bedroom.’

She looked horrified. ‘I don’t think he’d like us snooping in his room.’

I spread my hands. ‘When you hire a private eye, you hire a snooper. Snooping is how you find people who walk away without telling you where they’ve gone. Snooping is what I do.’

She didn’t like this either, but we went along a little hall and into a bedroom at the back of the house. It was a small room, sparsely furnished with a double bed and a dresser and a nightstand. There were no photographs on the nightstand or the dresser, but large ink drawings of all three children were thumbtacked to the walls. The drawings were done on coarse construction paper with colored felt-tip pens, and appeared to have been torn from a notebook. They were signed CH. ‘Wow. Did your father do these?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s some artist.’ The drawings were almost photographic in their realism.

‘Unh-hunh.’

When I opened the dresser’s top drawer Teresa stiffened, but said nothing. I looked through the dresser and the nightstand. Maybe a half-dozen undershirts and underwear and socks were in the dresser, and not much else. There was a closet, but there wasn’t much in it, just a single sport coat and a couple of pairs of thin slacks and a raincoat. ‘Does it look like he packed for a long trip?’

She peeked into the closet like something might jump out at her, then shook her head. ‘Well, I know he had two coats, and two pairs of pants are missing.’

‘Okay. So he packed some things.’

‘I guess so.’

I stood in the center of the room and tried to come up with an idea. ‘Do you have any pictures of your mother?’ If there was a picture of the mother, maybe Clark would be in it, too.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ Jesus. I had never seen a house without pictures before.

‘Okay. Forget pictures. Where does he keep the credit card receipts and bank statements and things like that?’

‘We don’t use credit cards.’

I stared at her.

‘We pay for everything with cash. When you’re on a budget, cash is the best way to manage your money.’ She was very certain of herself when she said it.

‘Okay. No pictures, no credit cards.’ No clues.

‘We have a checking account and a savings account, though. Would you like to see them?’

‘That, and your phone bills.’

The eyes narrowed again. ‘Why would you need to see that?’

‘The phone bills will show any toll calls made from or charged to your phone. You see?’ My head was starting to throb. I guess she wanted me to find him without clues. Maybe I was supposed to use telepathy.

But she finally said, ‘Well, okay.’ Grudgingly.

‘You know where to find that stuff?’

‘Of course I know where to find it.’ Offended.

I thought that she might find the stuff in her father’s room, or maybe lead me out to the kitchen, but she didn’t. She brought me to her room. Two twin beds were set against adjoining walls, a small army of stuffed animals on one, pictures of David Duchovny, Dean Cain, and Gillian Anderson above the other. Again, there were no photographs of Teri or her family. I said, ‘Who likes Duchovny?’

Teri turned red and disappeared into her closet. Guess I’d gotten my answer.

She reappeared with a shoe box held together by a large rubber band. She put the box on the empty bed, then sorted out thin packets of paper held together with large paper clips. She knew exactly what was what and where it belonged. ‘Are the phone bills in there?’

‘Un-huh.’ A large wad of cash was mixed in with the packets, even larger than the roll she’d brought to my office. She saw me looking at the cash, frowned, then put it in her pocket. Better safe than sorry.

Far away something chimed, and Teri stood. ‘That’s the washing machine. I have to put our clothes in the dryer.’

‘Okay.’

The checking and savings accounts were from the First Western Bank of Tucson, Arizona. The savings account was a simple passbook account with a balance of $1,104.16, and showed no unusual deposits or withdrawals. The checking account held a balance of $861.47, with the last deposit having been made just before they’d left Tucson for Los Angeles. The entry record was neat and orderly and made in a teenage girl’s rounded hand. I put the banking papers aside and paged through the phone bills. Since they had been in Los Angeles for only four and a half months, there were only four bills, and most of the toll calls were in the LA area, with more than half to Culver City. Most of those were in the first month. Probably Clark looking for a job, but maybe not.35

Two of the calls were to Tucson, and five to Seattle, three of the Seattle calls made in the last month, and two of them lengthy. When Teri came back, I said, ‘Who’s in Seattle?’

She stared at me as if she didn’t understand what I’d said.

‘You’ve got five calls to Seattle here, three in the last month, two of them for a pretty long time.’

‘My mom’s up there.’

That’s where she’s buried?’

Nod.

‘So your dad might have friends there.’

‘I doubt it.’ She adjusted her glasses. ‘We didn’t like it there. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t go back.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I’m positive he wouldn’t.’

‘Fine.’ Like I shouldn’t even waste my time.

I tamped the phone bill pages together, folded them, then put them in my pocket. She didn’t like it when I did that either. I gave back the rest of her bills. ‘Okay, I’m going to try to find your father, but we have to have an understanding.’

She stared at me, watchful and suspicious.

‘I will not notify the authorities that three minors are living here alone so long as the three of you appear safe and in good care. Maybe your father will come home today, but maybe not. Maybe I’ll find him fast, but maybe not. You’re doing okay right now, and that’s good, but if at any time I feel it’s in your best interest to notify the police, I will do so. Are we clear on that?’

She looked stubborn. ‘Will you tell me first?’

‘I won’t tell you first if I think you’ll run.’

She liked that even less.

‘I’m willing to let things stay as they are for now, but I won’t lie to you. That’s the way it has to be.’

She looked at me for a time, and then she looked at her papers. ‘Are you finished with these things?’

I nodded. She took the checkbook, secured it to the bank statements and canceled checks with the same paper clips, and returned it to the shoe box. She did the same with the utility bills and the little pack of cash receipts all written in her hand. Fifteen.

‘How long have you been paying the bills?’

She knew exactly what I was saying. ‘My father is a good man. He loves us very much. He can’t help it that she died on him. He can’t help it that these things are hard for him.’

‘Sure.’

‘Someone has to take care of Charles and Winona. Someone has to clean the house.’

I nodded.

‘Someone has to hold this family together.’

I thought there might be tears but her eyes were clear and sharp and hard behind the glasses. Determined. She put the remainder of her papers back into the box, put the top on the box, and again sealed it with the big rubber band. The matter-of-fact eyes came back to me and she dug out the wad of bills. ‘We never settled the amount of your fee.’

‘Forget it.’

The eyes hardened. ‘How much?’

We sat like that, and then I sighed. ‘A hundred dollars should do it.’

The hard eyes narrowed. ‘In your office you said two thousand.’

‘It’s not as big a job as I thought. A hundred now, a hundred when I find him.’

She peeled off two of the hundreds and gave me both. ‘Take it all now. I’d like a receipt.’

I gave her the receipt, and then I left to find her father.

Chapter 4

I phoned information for Enright’s address, then left Teresa Haines alone with her coffee and laundry, and headed south along La Cienega toward Culver City. I wanted to tell her not to drive, and to be careful if she walked to the mall, but I didn’t. She had been living like this for quite a while, and I knew she would ignore me because I would be saying it more for me than for her. That’s the way adults often talk to children. You know they’re not going to listen, but you want to tell them anyway just so you know that you have.

Enright Quality Printing was located in a two-story industrial building just off Washington Boulevard three blocks from Sony Pictures. On the way down, I was thinking it would be a small copier place like a Kinko’s, but it wasn’t. Enright was a big commercial outfit with employees and overhead and presses that run twenty-four hours a day, the kind that does large-scale jobs on contract for businesses and government. The building occupied most of the block, and what wasn’t building was a neat, manicured parking lot for their corporate customers and a loading dock for the six-wheelers that delivered their product. The loading dock was busy.

I put the car in the parking lot, then went through the front entrance into a little waiting room. An industrial rack was built into one wall, filled with pamphlets and magazines and thick heavy manuals of the kind Enright produced. There were chairs for waiting and a counter with a young woman behind it. I showed her a card and said, ‘Is there someone in charge I might see?’

She looked at the card as if it were written in another language. ‘Sorry. We don’t do cards.’

I took back the card. ‘I don’t want cards. I’d like to speak with someone in authority.’

She squinted at me. ‘You mean Mr. Livermore?’

‘Is he in charge?’

‘Unh-hunh.’

‘Then that’s who I’d like to see.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘Nope.’

‘He might be busy.’

‘Let’s give it a try.’

If we’re patient we’re often rewarded.

She said something into her phone and a few minutes later a short, thin man who was maybe a hundred years old came out of the offices and scowled at me. ‘You want something printed?’

‘Nope. I want to ask you about a former employee.’

I gave him the card and he scowled harder. ‘This is shit work. Ya oughta get your money back.’ He handed the card back and I put it away. Just the way you want to start an interview, getting crapped on by an expert. ‘You the cops?’

‘Private. Like it says on-the card.’

He made a brushing gesture. ‘I didn’t get that far. I see shit printing, I gotta look away.’ This guy wouldn’t let up. He said, ‘Listen, you wanna talk, I’ll talk, but you gotta walk with me. I got some ass to kick.’

‘No problem.’

I followed him along the hall and onto the floor of the printing plant, walking fast to keep up with him. I guess he was anxious to start kicking ass.

The plant itself was large and air-conditioned and brightly lit with fluorescent lights. It smelled of warm paper. Machines that looked like cold-war era computers bumped and clunked and whirred as men and women monitored the progress of paper and cardboard and bindings. The machines were loud, and most of the workers wore hearing protection but not all of them, and most of them smoked. A woman with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth was wearing a T-shirt that said EAT SHIT AND HAVE A CRAPPY DAY. ‘I’m looking for an employee you let go three weeks ago, Clark Haines.’

Livermore made the brushing gesture again. ‘Got rid of’m.’

‘I know. I’m wondering if you have any idea where he might be.’

‘Try the morgue. All fuckin’ junkies end up in the morgue.’

I said, ‘Junkie?’ I think my mouth was open.

Livermore stopped so suddenly that I almost walked into him. He glared at two guys who were standing together by a large offset press, then made a big deal out of tapping his watch. ‘What is this, vacationland? I ain’t payin’ you guys to flap gums! We got orders to fill!’

The two men turned back to their machines, Livermore set off again, and I chased after. So much ass to kick, so little time to kick it. I said, ‘Are you telling me that Clark Haines is a drug addict?’

‘Guy was a mess since day one, always runnin’ to the John, always shakin’ with the sweats an’ callin’ in sick. I knew somethin’ wasn’t right, so I started keepin’ my eyes open, y’see?’ He pulled the skin beneath his right eye and glared at me. Bloodshot. ‘Caught’m in one’a the vans, Haines and another guy.’ He jabbed the air with a stiff finger. ‘Bammo, they’re outta here. I got zero tolerance for that crap.’

I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem to fit, but then it often doesn’t. ‘Have you heard from Clark since that day?’

‘Nah. Why would I?’

‘Job reference, maybe? He told his kids he was looking for work.’

‘Hey, the guy’s a top printer, but what am I gonna say, hire a junkie, they give good value?’

Livermore beelined to a short Hispanic man feeding booklet pages into a binder. He grabbed a thick sheaf of the pages, flipped through them, then shook his head in disgust. ‘This looks like shit. Redo the whole fuckin’ order.’

I looked over his shoulder. The pages and the printing looked perfect. ‘Looks okay to me.’

He waved at the pages. ‘Jesus Christ, don’tcha see that mottle? The blacks’re uneven. Ya see how it’s lighter there?’

‘No.’

He threw the pages into a large plastic trash drum, then scowled at the Hispanic man. ‘Reprint the whole goddamn run. Whadaya think we’re makin’ here, tortillas?’

I guess printing isn’t a politically correct occupation.

The Hispanic man shrugged like it was no skin off his nose, and began shutting down the binder.

Livermore was again stalking the aisles. I said, ‘Who was the man with Haines?’

‘One of the drivers. Another fuckin’ junkie, but him I could figure. Him, he had asshole written all over’m.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Tre Michaels. I think Michaels was the dealer.’

‘Did you call the police?’

‘Nah. Hey, I thought about it, okay, but they put up such a fuss, whinin’ and cryin’ and all. Michaels is on parole, see? I coulda violated him easy, but I figured, what the hell, I just wanted him outta here.’

‘Think I could have his address?’

Livermore made a little waving gesture and walked faster. ‘Go back up front, and ask Colleen. Tell’r I said it was okay to give you what you want.’

Colleen was only too happy to oblige.

Tre Michaels lived on the second floor of an apartment building just south of the Santa Monica Freeway in the Palms area, less than ten blocks from Culver City. It was just before eleven when I got there, but Michaels wasn’t home. I found the manager’s apartment on the ground level, told her that I needed to speak with Mr. Michaels about a loan he had applied for, and asked if she had any idea when he might be back. She didn’t, but she was only too happy to tell me that Michaels worked at the new Bestco Electronics that had just opened, and that maybe I could find him there. She smiled when she said it and I smiled back. We are nothing if not the finest in West Coast detection.

Five minutes later I turned off Overland into the Bestco’s lot, parked, and went inside. Bestco is one of those enormous discount electronics places, and as soon as I stepped through the doors three salesmen in sport coats and smiles surrounded me, anxious to meet or better any advertised price in town. I said, ‘I’m looking for Tre Michaels.’

Two of them didn’t know the name, but the third told me that Michaels worked in ‘big screens.’ I walked back to ‘big screens.’

Tre Michaels was drinking black coffee from a Styro-foam cup as a gentleman of Middle Eastern descent argued with him about price surrounded by thirty large-format televisions displaying exactly the same image of Arnold Schwarzenegger throwing a guy through a window. I recognized Michaels because he wore a little plastic name tag that said TRE. The Middle Eastern guy was saying that he could get a better price elsewhere, but if Bestco matched that price, then gave him five percent for cash and threw in free delivery and a free two-year full-service warranty, he might be willing to deal. Michaels said that if the man could produce a published price he might be able to give him an extra two percent, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to do it. He seemed more interested in Arnold.

Michaels was an overweight guy in his early thirties with a wide butt and a hairline that hadn’t seen his eyebrows in years. He had pale skin and washed-away eyes and dry lips that he continuously licked. The lips made me think he was feeling short and thinking about his next fix, but that’s only because Livermore had said he was a junkie. Tre Michaels didn’t look like a junkie, but then I’ve never met a junkie in real life who looked like Johnny Rotten.

Michaels glanced over when he saw me, and I pointed at a fifty-two-inch Mitsubishi. ‘When you’ve got a moment, I’d like to buy this unit from you.’

He nodded.

‘Full price.’

Michaels came over without a second glance at the Middle Eastern man and said, ‘Will that be cash or charge, sir?’

The Middle Eastern guy started making a big deal out of it, but another salesman drifted over and pretty soon they were gone. I said, ‘Do you have an office?’

Michaels smiled like the thought was silly. ‘We’ll just write you up over here by the register.’

I lowered my voice and went close to him. ‘You don’t need to write me up. I want to ask you about Clark Haines.’

Tre Michaels froze as if he was suddenly part of a great still photograph. He glanced at the blond salesclerk. He twisted to look around at the other salespeople and customers, and then he wet his lips some more. He made what he hoped was an innocent smile. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone by that name.’

‘C’mon, Tre. I’m not here to make trouble for you. I just want some information about Clark Haines.’

More licking. Around us, images of Arnold crashed up through a floor, spraying a hail of lead at faceless bad guys as the world exploded around him. I said, ‘That Arnold is something, isn’t he? Walks through a world of hurt and all of it slides right off.’ I turned the smile back to Tre Michaels. ‘Too bad it doesn’t slide off the rest of us like that, isn’t it?’

Tre nodded, kind of stupid, like he wasn’t sure if he should talk to me or not, like he was scared to talk, but scared what I might do if he didn’t.

I’m not the police, Tre. I’m looking for Clark, and I know that you know him. I know that you and Clark know each other from Enright. I know that you’re on parole for narcotics, and that you sold Clark drugs at least one time.’ I spread my hands. ‘Talk to me about Clark and you’ll never see me again.’

‘Sure.’ He kept looking around. He kept licking his lips and looking at Arnold, but Arnold wasn’t coming to help.

‘Clark’s missing and I’m trying to find him.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Tre. I’m betting if I push down your socks or check your arms, I’ll find needle tracks. I’ll bet if I check your apartment, I’ll find dope. If I think you’re lying to me, I can call a couple of cops I know. Violation is only a phone call away.’

‘I’m not lying. I swear to Christ I don’t know where he is.’

‘He buy from you often?’

Head shaking. ‘A couple of times. Maybe three, four.’

‘What did he buy?’

‘Dime bags of heroin.’ Jesus Christ.

‘When’s the last time you saw him?’

He shook his head and made a kind of shrug, as if it was tough to remember. ‘A couple of weeks ago he calls me. He says he’s going away for a few days and he wants to buy enough to get’m through.’

‘He say where he was going?’

Michaels shook his head again. An older guy I took to be the floor manager was watching us now. Michaels saw him and didn’t like it.

I said, ‘Think hard, Tre. Did Clark mention a name or a place? A girlfriend, maybe?’

More shaking. ‘Look, that was, what, two weeks ago? I haven’t heard from him since, okay? I swear to Christ I haven’t.’

The floor manager sidled closer, trying to listen. Michaels leaned toward me. ‘These guys beef me out of the job, it’s going to go like a bitch with my parole officer. Please.’

I left Tre Michaels in the sea of flickering Arnolds and slowly drove north to my office. The day was warm and clear, but the air felt dirty and the weight of the sun seemed heavy as if the light was a burden. I thought about Teresa and Charles and Winona, and how the daddy I was trying to find wasn’t the same daddy that Teri was searching for, and I thought how sad it was that we often never really know the people around us, even the people we love.

Chapter 5

It was after two that afternoon when I took the winding drive up Laurel Canyon to the A-frame I keep just off Woodrow Wilson Drive in the mountains above Hollywood. It’s a long drive up Laurel, but I’ve found that as you climb through the trees and cut rock to the top of the mountain and leave the city behind, you’re often able to leave the clutter and stress of modern life with it. Often, but not always. Less often still when you’re thinking about three kids with a missing father who turns out to be a drug addict.

I parked in the carport, turned off the alarm, and let myself in through the kitchen. The home was cool and still and smelled of Lucy’s presence, but I probably just imagined it. Wishful thinking. I said, ‘Anybody home?’

No answer.

I share the house with a large black cat who has shredded ears and a fine flat head that he carries cocked to the side from when he was shot with a twenty-two. I think it soured him. He is not the world’s friendliest cat, and he’d hissed twice when Lucy arrived, then scrambled through his cat door and disappeared. He had watched us drive away that morning, so I thought he’d be inside waiting for me by now, but there you go. He sulks.

I took an Evian from the fridge, had some, then put Clark Haines’s phone bills on my kitchen counter and looked at them. Tre Michaels had said that Clark was going on a trip, and the phone bills showed calls both to Tucson and Seattle, but the dope changed things. People died from drug overdoses, and people were often murdered when they were trying to buy drugs, so there was a very real possibility that the only trip Clark Haines had taken was to the morgue. I spent the next thirty-two minutes on the phone with hospital emergency rooms and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office asking if anyone named Clark Haines or fitting his description had been admitted, living or dead, but no one had. Whew. Dodged that bullet.

I went through the bills, noting the two calls to Tucson and the five to Seattle. Over four months, there were also eighty-six local-area toll calls. The Tucson calls were to two different numbers. The five calls to Seattle were to two numbers, also, one number once, the other four times. I called the Tucson numbers first, getting a woman who answered, ‘Desert Moving and Storage,’ and asked her if Clark Haines was there, or if she knew how I could reach him. She told me that she knew no one by that name. Clark had probably used them to move to LA from Tucson, and she didn’t remember the name. A woman named Rosemary Teal answered the next call. I asked her if Clark was there, and she told me that he’d moved, though she wasn’t sure where. I asked her how she knew that he’d moved, and she told me that she was his neighbor. I asked if she’d heard from him since they moved, and she said only once. She said he’d called to ask her to please check and be sure he’d turned off the gas. When she insisted that I identify myself, I hung up. Turn off the gas. The junkie as concerned neighbor. I called the Seattle numbers next. When I called the first number, a young woman’s voice answered, ‘New World Printing.’ I again asked for Clark Haines, and she told me that no one by that name worked there. I dialed the second number, and on the third ring a hoarse male voice said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, is Clark there?’ Bright, and kind of cheery.

The voice said, ‘Who is this?’ Suspicious.

Tre Michaels. Clark said he was coming up and gave me your numher.’

‘I think you got the wrong number.’ Clark Haines had spoken to someone at this number for over an hour on two separate occasions.

‘I’m sure I copied the number right. We’re talking Clark Haines, okay? Clark said he’d be at this number or that you’d know how to reach him.’

‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’ He hung up, and he didn’t sound anywhere close to credible.

I called my friend at the phone company, gave her the area code and number, and asked for an ID. Forty seconds later she said, ‘That service is billed to a Mr. Wilson Brownell. You want his address?’

‘Sure.’

I copied the address, then hung up and thought about the two hundred dollars I had taken from Teresa Haines. Wilson Brownell clearly knew Clark and, under normal circumstances, would be the next step in the investigation. A ticket to Seattle and a hotel would normally be a billable expense, but having a fifteen-year-old kid for a client wasn’t normal. Teresa and Charles and Winona were minor children living alone because their father, unemployed and now established as a drug user with a spotty employment record, had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned them. There was every real possibility that Clark Haines might never return, or even be found alive, and the smart thing to do would be to call the police and let them handle it. If I went to Seattle, I couldn’t reasonably expect to recover the cost.

Only I had promised Teresa Haines that I would try to find her father, and it bothered me to leave the lead to Wilson Brownell untested and unresolved. I thought about the two hundred dollars again, and then I picked up the phone and dialed another number.

First ring, and a man’s voice said, ‘Pike.’ Joe Pike owns the agency with me.

‘I’m looking for a guy named Clark Haines, and I believe he’s gone to Seattle. He has three kids and I need you to keep an eye on them while I’m up there.’

Pike didn’t respond.

‘Joe?’

We might as well have been disconnected.

‘They’re doing okay, but I don’t like the idea of them not having an adult around if they need help.’

Pike said, ‘Three children.’

‘I just want to make sure they don’t burn down the house.’

More silence.

I was still waiting for him to say something when the cat came in through his cat door and growled so loud that Joe Pike said, ‘Is that your cat?’

The cat trotted into the living room and growled again. Angry. He went from the living room into the kitchen and then back out to the front entry. He would trot hard, then stop and sniff, then growl some more. I said, ‘I’ll call you back in a few minutes.’

I hung up and watched the cat. ‘You okay, buddy?’

His eyes narrowed but he didn’t come near.

I sat on the kitchen floor, held out my hand, and after a while he finally came over. His fur was warm and coarse, and he needed a bath. I stroked his back, then felt his ribs and hips and legs. I was thinking that someone had shot him again or that a coyote had gotten him, but nothing seemed broken or tender or cut. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’

He jumped away from me and disappeared through his door and that’s when I saw the blood.

Three drops of red were on the kitchen floor hy the door jamh, two overlapping small drops, with a third larger drop nearby. I had stepped over them when I had let myself in. I said, ‘Sonofagun.’

I touched the large drop and it was tacky.

I thought that maybe he’d brought in a ground squirrel or a field mouse, but there was no dirt or debris or fur. Sometimes he’ll bring a kill up to my loft, so I went upstairs to check. Nothing. I went back down and looked through the living room and the dining room and the pantry, but there were no remains there either, and my scalp began tingling. I checked the doors and the windows, then went upstairs again and once more worked my way through the house. The handguns I keep locked in my nightstand were still there, as was the ammunition. The shotgun and rifle were still secure in the closet. My watches, jewelry, cash, and credit cards were all in their places, and their places looked unchanged, yet maybe not. I was pretty sure that the clothes hanging in my closet had been pushed to the right, but now they were spread evenly across the bar, and someone or something had smudged the dust on the two top shelves of my bookcase. Yet maybe not. Nothing was missing, but I felt an acute sense of difference in the shape and way of things, and a growing suspicion that someone had been in my house, and that they hadn’t been here to steal. I went down the slope to check the alarm box on the side of my house. Fresh scratches gleamed in the metal around the screw heads. It looked like someone had beat the alarm, then let himself in through the kitchen. The cat had probably nailed him or her going out because he’d already completed his search. I said, ‘Man, this really sucks.’

The cat was stalking around at the top of the slope, still growling, still pissed. He is an obsessive animal and does not let go of anger easily.

I said, ‘Come here, you.’

He stalked over, surly and growling and making little noises.

I picked him up and held him close. ‘I’m glad you weren’t hurt.’

He squirmed until I put him down. Pity any dog that tried to grab him now.

I went back inside, washed my hands twice, then called Joe. ‘Someone went through my house.’

‘Have anything to do with the father?’

I thought about it. ‘I don’t know why it would, but I’m not sure.’

‘Maybe I should watch you instead of these kids.’

‘Maybe.’ I told him their address. ‘Meet me there and I’ll introduce you. I’ll take a flight out early in the morning.’

‘Whatever.’

Pike hung up, and I stood in the center of the kitchen and listened to the silence. Someone had been in my home, and it made me feel creepy and violated and angry. I pulled out the Dan Wesson, sat it on the kitchen counter, and crossed my arms. ‘Let’s see’m come back now.’

Acting tough will sometimes help, but not always, and the gun did not lessen the feeling that I was vulnerable and at risk. They seldom do.

I shut off the lights, locked the house, and reset the alarm. It hadn’t helped, but you do what you can.

I drove down to see Teri Haines.

Chapter 6

It was just after six that evening when I rang their bell and Charles threw open the door. He threw it wide, just as he had before, without regard to who might be on the other side. I said, ‘Always ask who it is.’

Charles showed me a twelve-inch serrated carving knife. ‘You don’t have to ask when you’re ready.’

Sometimes you just have to shake your head.

Today Charles was wearing the oversized shoes, the monstrously baggy shorts, and a black Wolverine T-shirt that hung almost to his knees. Teresa appeared over his shoulder, and said, ‘Did you find him?’ Hopeful.

‘Nope. But I’ve got a couple of ideas. How about I come in and we talk about them?’

Winona was sitting at the dining table, and plates were there for Charles and Teresa. I’d interrupted dinner. Spaghetti, again. Maybe it was all they knew how to make. ‘Smells peat.’ Mr. Cheery.

Teresa said, ‘We were just finished, but there’s more if you’d like some.’

‘That’s okay, but thanks.’

‘Just let us clear the table.’

‘Sure.’ I wandered into the living room and sat on the couch. I had to move a library book to sit. Brennert’s Her Pilgrim Soul.

Winona slid from her seat, placed her silverware onto her plate, then carried the plate and her glass into the kitchen. Teresa gathered her things, too, and so did Charles. No one had to badger him. Everyone knew what to do and everyone did their job as if it were part of a larger accepted pattern. They gathered their things and brought them into the kitchen, and then Teresa and Charles returned, Teresa picking up the place mats and Charles wiping off the table with a damp cloth. Like they had done it a thousand times and would do it a thousand more, and had accepted it as a natural part of their lives. A ritual. I watched them and wondered at the secrets families keep. Teresa wanted me to find her father, but the man I was finding didn’t appear to be the man she knew. And the man that I would eventually find would be different still. It is often that way in my line of work.

When the table was clean, Teresa came over, sat in the big chair, and gave me a smile. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Well, if you change your mind.’ Prim and proper. In absolute control of her environment, and of this meeting with the employee. ‘Now, what have you found?’

Water was running in the kitchen. Winona’s night to do the dishes. ‘Has your father mentioned a man named Tre Michaels to you?’

She shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

‘How about Wilson Brownell?’

She stared thoughtfully as if maybe this rang a bell, but then she shook her head. ‘Unh-unh.’ Charles skulked in from the dining room and leaned against the wall.

‘Tre Michaels worked with your father. He saw your dad a couple of weeks ago, and your father said that he was thinking of taking a trip, but he didn’t say where. At about that same time, your dad made five long-distance calls to Seattle and spoke with Wilson Brownell, twice at considerable length.’ When I mentioned Seattle Teri and Charles glanced at each other, and Charles crossed his arms. ‘I phoned Mr. Brownell, but Brownell denied knowing your father. I think he’s lying, and I think maybe your dad went to Seattle to see him. I’m going to fly up tomorrow to ask Mr. Brownell in person.’ I didn’t mention the drugs, or why Clark had been fired from Enright.

Teresa looked nervous. ‘Why do you have to go to Seattle?’

‘I told you why.’

She frowned harder. I thought she wanted to object some more, but you could tell that whatever her objections might be, her desire to find her father was stronger. ‘Okay. I guess I should pay you some more money.’

I raised a palm. ‘Forget the money. I’ll take up that part of it up with your father when I find him.’

Charles was frowning, too. He seemed less happy about my going to Seattle than Teresa. She said, ‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Two days, maybe three. Less if I get what I’m after right away.’

They were watching me now, all big eyes.

‘I’ve asked my partner to come over. His name is Joe Pike, and he’ll be around if you need anything.’

Charles looked sulky. ‘What are we gonna need? You think we’re babies?’

‘No, but I’ll sleep better if I know there’s someone to help you if you need it.’

The doorbell rang. Charles grabbed his knife and raced for the door. I said, ‘Ask who it is.’

Charles threw open the door and there was Joe Pike, filling the frame, motionless. Pike is six-one, with long ropy muscles, short dark hair, and a face that gives you nothing unless you know him well. His arms are laced with veins, and bright red arrows had been tattooed onto the outside of his deltoids a long time ago. They point forward. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and blue Levis and bottomless black pilot’s glasses. The glasses tilted toward Charles.

Charles dropped the knife and screamed, ‘Run!’ He tried to slam the door, but Pike caught the door without effort, and gently pushed it open.

I said, ‘Lighten up, Charles. This is Joe Pike. Joe works with me.’

Charles was leaning into the door with everything he had, making little sounds like ‘Grr, grr, grr.’

Teresa snapped, ‘Charles!’

Charles jumped away from the door and ran past Winona into the kitchen, breathing hard. Winona was standing in the kitchen door, hands soapy and dripping, sniffling like she was about to cry.

Teresa said, ‘It’s okay, honey. He’s one of the good guys.’ She looked back at me and shook her head. ‘We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need a baby-sitter.’ Charles peeked out from behind the door.

Joe Pike looked at the knife on the floor, then at the children, and then at me. ‘Baby-sitter?’

I spread my hands. ‘He won’t live with you. He’ll just be around, and you’ll have his phone number. If there’s anything you need, you can call him.’ I looked at Joe. ‘Right?’

Joe’s head swiveled so that the flat black lenses angled my way. I thought he might be amused, but you never know.

Teresa’s mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘It’s all right. We’re fine.’

I said, ‘Look, I’m not leaving you guys here alone. Joe will be outside, and he might drop in a time or two, and that’s the way it has to be.’

Teresa wasn’t liking it, but I wasn’t giving her a lot of choice. ‘Well, I guess there isn’t much I can do about it, is there?’ Stiff.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

Charles finished eyeing Joe and skulked out from behind Winona. ‘Lemme see your gun.’

Pike picked up the serrated knife, flipped it into the air, then caught it by the blade. He looked at Charles, and Charles ducked behind Winona. Pike walked over and held out the knife. Handle first. ‘Put this away before someone gets hurt.’

Charles took the knife and disappeared into the kitchen.

Pike turned to Teresa. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Haines. My name is Joe.’ He held out his hand and she took it. I think she blushed.

Winona smiled. ‘My name’s Winona.’

Pike glanced over at me and said, ‘Go ahead and leave. We’ll be fine.’

That Joe. To know him is to love him.

I left them like that in the deepening purple of twilight, and went home.

I approached my house with a suspicion I do not often feel and let myself in. The three drops of blood were still by the cat’s door, and the quiet house still held an air of alienness that I resented. The cat slipped in through his cat door, sniffed the three drops, then snicked across the floor and sat by his bowl. Guess he had moved past it.

I gave him a can of Star Kist tuna, then opened the sliding glass doors that lead to my deck. The twilight air was cool and scented with wild sage. I put Jimmy Buffett on the CD player, then poured a glass of Cuervo Gold, had some, then went out to the side of my house and selected a fat green lime from the tree I planted two years ago. It went well with the Cuervo. My home had been invaded, and I could either let my feelings for the place be changed by that event or not, but either way would be my choice. The event is what you make of it.

I spent the next two hours cleaning both bathrooms and the kitchen and the floors. I threw out my toothbrush and opened a new one, and I washed the sheets and pillowcases and towels. I pulled the plates and the silver from the cupboards and drawers and loaded them into the dishwasher, and vacuumed the couch and the chairs and the carpets. I scrubbed the floors hard, and spent the remains of the day cleaning and drinking until, very early the next morning, I had once more made peace with my home.

I packed, then fell into a fitful sleep as Jimmy Buffett sang about Caribbean sunsets, over-the-hill pirates, and a world where fifteen-year-old girls didn’t have to carry the emotional weight of their families.

Later that morning I went to Seattle.

Chapter 7

Seattle is one of my favorite cities, and I often think that if I did not live in LA, I might live there. Where the sky over Los Angeles is more often dimensionless and illdefined, Seattle is capped by a continually redefined skyscape of clouds that makes the sky there a visibly living thing, breathing as it moves, cooling the city and its people with a protective cloak, and washing the air and the land with frequent rains that come and go in a way that freshens the place and its people. You can get the best coffee in America in Seattle, and browse in some of the best bookstores, and fish for silver and blackmouth salmon, and, until recently, the real estate prices were so low compared to those in Southern California that herds of Californians moved there. A friend of mine from Orange County sold her house and used the equity to buy a beautiful home on the water at Bainbridge Island. Cash. She used the balance of her equity to invest in mutual funds, and now she spends the bulk of each day painting in watercolors and digging for butter clams. So many Californians did this that property values in the Seattle area went through the roof and many native Seattleites could no longer afford to live in their own town. Whenever I visit I say I’m from Oregon.

I picked up a Ford Mustang and a street map from the Sea-Tac rental people, then followed Highway 509 north toward Elliot Bay and a seafood house I know that lies in the shadow of the Space Needle. I had a crab cake sandwich and fried new potatoes and mango iced tea for lunch, then asked a parking meter cop for directions to Wilson Brownell’s address. With any luck, Brownell and Clark might be sitting around Brownell’s place right now. With any luck, I might be on the next flight back to LA and not even have to spend the night. It happens.

Brownell lived across the Duwamish Waterway in an older, working-class part of West Seattle called White Center. It is a community of narrow streets and old apartments and wood-framed homes surrounding a steel mill. Young guys with lean, angry faces hung around near the mill, looking like they wished they could get work there. The ground floor of Brownell’s building fronted the street with a secondhand clothing store, a place that refinished maritime metalwork, and a video rental place called Extreme Video. The video place was papered with posters of Jackie Chan and young Asian women tied to chairs with thousands of ropes. Extreme.

I missed Brownell’s building twice because I couldn’t find the building numbers, then found it but couldn’t find a place to park. I finally left the car by a hydrant six blocks away. Flexibility in the art of detection.

Three young guys in T-shirts were hanging outside the video place when I got back, drinking Snapple. One of them was wearing a Seattle Mariners cap, and all of them were sporting black Gorilla boots and rolled-cuff jeans. A stairwell protected by an unlocked wire door had been carved from the corner of the building just past the metalwork place. There was a directory on the wall, and a row of mailboxes with little masking-tape tags for names and apartment numbers, only Brownell wasn’t one of the names on the directory and the names on the masking tape had faded to oblivion. I said, ‘Any of you guys know Wilson Brownell?’

The one with the cap said, ‘Sure. He comes in all the time.’

‘You know which apartment he’s in?’

‘I’m pretty sure it’s apartment B. On the second floor.’ You see how friendly it is in Seattle?

I took the stairs two at a time, then went along the hall looking for B. I found it, but the apartment across the hall was open and an older woman with frizzy hair was perched inside on an overstuffed chair, squinting out at me. She was clutching a TV remote the size of a cop’s baton and watching C-Span. I gave her a smile. ‘Hi.’

She squinted harder.

I couldn’t hear anything inside Brownell’s apartment. No radio, no TV, no voices making furtive plans, just the C-Span and street noises. It was an older building without air-conditioning, so there would be open windows. I knocked, and then I rang his bell.

The woman said, ‘He’s at work, ya dope.’ Just like that, ya dope. ‘Middle’a the day, any worthwhile man finds himself at work.’ Eyeing me like that’s where I should be.

She was maybe seventy, but she might’ve been eighty, with leathery ochre skin and salt and pepper hair that went straight up and back like the Bride of Frankenstein. She was wearing a thin cotton housecoat and floppy slippers and she was pointing the remote at me. Maybe trying to make me disappear.

‘Sorry if I disturbed you.’ I gave her my relaxed smile, the one that says I’m just a regular guy going about a regular guy’s business, then made a big deal out of checking my watch. ‘I could’ve sworn he said to come by at two.’ It was six minutes before two. ‘Do you know what time he’s due back?’ The World’s Greatest Detective swings into full detection mode to fake out the Housebound Old Lady.

The squint softened, and she waved the remote. Inside, congressional voices disappeared. ‘Not till five-thirty, quarter to six, something like that.’

‘Wow, that’s a lot later than I planned.’ I shook my head and tried for a concerned disappointment. ‘An old buddy of ours is in town and we’re supposed to get together. I wonder if he’s been around.’ For all I knew Clark was inside asleep on the couch. You cast a line, you hope for a bite.

She made herself huffy. ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t spy on people.’

‘Of course.’

‘People come and people go. You’re old and livin’ alone, no one gives you the time a day.’ She went back to C-Span, and now I could smell cat litter and turnips.

‘Well, he’s a little shorter than me, thinner, glasses, a hairline back to here.’

She turned up the sound and waved the remote. ‘People come, people go.’

I nodded, Mr. Understanding, Mr. Of-Course-I-Wouldn’t-Expect-You-to-Remember. Then I slapped my head and made like I’d just realized that I was the world’s biggest moron. ‘Jeez, he must’ve wanted me to meet him at work! I’ll bet we’re supposed to meet there, then go out! Of course!’ The World’s Greatest Detective employs the Relatable Human Failing technique in an effort to cultivate rapport.

The woman frowned at her television, then muted the sound again. ‘What a bullshit story.’

‘Excuse me?’

Her face cracked into a thin, angry smile that said she was as sharp as a straight razor, and if a guy like me didn’t watch out she would hand back his head. ‘If there’s something you wanna know, just ask. You don’t have to make up a bullshit story about old friends getting together. What a crock!’

I smiled again, but now the smile was saying, okay, you nailed me. ‘Sorry about that.’ Shown up by the Bride of Frankenstein.

She made a little shrug, like it wasn’t a big thing. ‘You hadda try, you just went too far with it. A guy making out as nice as you wouldn’t be caught dead being friends with an asswipe like Will Brownell.’ I guess they didn’t get along. ‘What’s the real story?’

‘Brownell’s friend owes me six hundred dollars.’

She cackled and shook her head. ‘I mighta known. Sooner or later it always gets down to money, doesn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Everyone relates to greed. ‘How about the guy I described? Has he been around?’

She made the shrug again, but it seemed sincere. ‘That’s not much of a description, young man. Could be anyone.’

‘Fair enough. Can you tell me where Brownell works?’

‘He works at some printing place.’

‘New World Printing?’

‘Maybe.’ The other Seattle number that Clark had phoned.

I said, ‘You won’t tell Brownell that I was around, will you?’

She turned back to the television. ‘What’d the sonofabitch ever do for me?’ Nope, I don’t guess they got along.

I went back down the stairs to the street and checked out the building. Two of the kids were gone, but the kid in the Mariners cap was sitting in the doorway to the video store on a wooden stool, inspecting a car magazine. The C-Span Lady’s apartment was above the metalwork place at the front of the building, which meant Brownell’s apartment was in the rear. I walked down to the end of the block, rounded the corner, then came up the service alley. A rickety fire escape ran up the back of the building to the roof like a metal spiderweb. I counted windows and visualized the location of the C-Span Lady’s apartment so that I would know which windows belonged to Brownell. There were a lot of windows. Potted plants nested around some of the windows and drying clothes hung from the rails outside others, and a kid’s tricycle rested on the fire escape outside still another. Figure that one. Brownell’s windows were closed.

I used a Dumpster to reach the fire escape ladder, chinned myself to the rail, and let myself into Wilson Brownell’s dining area. One should always lock one’s windows, even in friendly cities like Seattle.

Clark Haines was not asleep on the couch. The apartment was quiet and warm from having been closed, and smelled of coffee and Jiffy Pop. The dining area opened into a living room ahead of me and a kichenette to my right. Beyond the kitchenette was a door that probably led to a bedroom and a bath. A vinyl couch and a mismatched chair filled one corner of the living room opposite a Sony Trinitron and a VCR. A coffee table was angled between the couch and the chair, scattered with magazines and a yellow rotary phone. A small pine table and three chairs sat in the dining area, along with an Ikea shelving unit showing a couple of plants, a bright orange goldfish in an oversized pickle jar, and some photographs of an African-American woman with a pretty smile. The woman looked young, but the photographs looked old, and I thought that the woman might now be, also. Precise, photo-realistic drawings of the woman had been framed and hung on the walls. They were signed Wilson, but in style and technique they looked exactly like the drawings that Clark Haines had done of his children.

You hope for the obvious: a sleeping bag and pillows on the couch, a suitcase, a note stuck to the fridge saying ‘meet Clark at 5,’ anything that might indicate an out-of-town guest, or the location of same. Nada. A case of beer cooled in the fridge and the cabinets were filled with enough booze for a booksellers’ convention, but that didn’t mean Brownell had company. Maybe he was just a lush. The magazines turned out to be trade catalogs for commercial printing equipment and industry magazines with dog-eared pages and supply brochures. The marked pages all noted paper and ink suppliers in Europe and Asia. Four of the catalogs still had their mailing labels, and all of the labels were addressed to Wilson Brownell. A hot topic in most of the magazines seemed to be Digital Micro-scanning Architecture for Zero Generation Loss. Whatever that meant. I guess if you’re a printer, you like to read about printing.

I took a quick peek in the bath, then went to the bedroom. Clark Haines wasn’t there either. A neatly made double bed sat against the wall, along with a chest and a dresser and a drafting table. I glanced into the closet. One bed, one toothbrush, one set of toiletries, one used towel, no luggage or alternative bedding. More photographs of the same woman sat upon the chest and the dresser, only some of these showed a smiling African-American man. Wilson Brownell. An in-progress drawing was tacked down onto the drafting table, pen and ink, done with very fine lines, showing an almost photographic reproduction of the Seattle skyline. Wilson Brownell might be a lush, but he was also a gifted artist and I wondered if it was he who had trained Clark. Maybe Clark had come up here for art lessons.

I went through the nightstand and the chest, and was working through the dresser when I noticed a small Kodak snapshot wedged along the bottom edge of the dresser’s mirror, half hidden behind yet more photographs of the woman. It was a color shot of two couples standing on a fishing pier, one of the couples Brownell and the woman, the other a much younger Caucasian couple. The Caucasian woman had dark wavy hair, pale skin, and glasses. She looked exactly like an older, adult version of Teresa Haines. She was smiling at the camera, and holding hands with a thin guy whose hairline was already starting to recede. I took down the picture and turned it over. On the back, someone had written: Me and Edna, Clark and Rachel Hewitt, 1986. I looked at the picture again. The Caucasian woman had to be Teri’s mother, and the man had to be Clark, only the name wasn’t Haines, it was Hewitt.

I put the picture in my pocket, made sure everything else was like I had found it, then let myself out the window, walked around to the street, and once more climbed the stairs. The C-Span Lady’s door was still open, and she was still shaking her remote at her television. Guess if I watched Congress all day I’d want to shake something, too.

I said, ‘One more thing.’

Her eyes narrowed, and she muted the sound.

I held out the picture, and this time I didn’t bother to smile. ‘Is this one of the people who come and go?’

She looked at the picture, then she looked back at me. ‘He owe you money, too?’

‘Everybody owes me money. I have a generous nature.’

She held out her hand and brushed her thumb across her fingers. ‘How about extendin’ some’a that generosity my way?’

I gave her a crisp new twenty.

‘He showed up a week ago, Thursday. Stayed a couple of days, then left. You shoulda heard all the carryin’ on.’

‘What do you mean?’

She made a sour face and waved the remote. ‘Moanin’ and cryin’, moanin’ and cryin’. I don’t know what all was goin’ on in there.’ She made a little shudder, like she didn’t want to know. ‘I ain’t seen him since.’

‘Appreciate the help.’

She turned back to the C-Span and made the twenty disappear, ‘Don’t mention it.’

Sooner or later it always gets down to money.

Chapter 8

New World Printing was east of the Duwamish Waterway between Georgetown and Boeing Field in a tract of older industrial buildings that were built when red bricks and ironwork were cheap. The front of the building contained a fancy glass entrance and a receptionist who would pick up her phone and tell Mr. Brownell that a Mr. Cole wanted to see him. Considering Mr. Brownell’s uncooperative response when I phoned, it was likely that Brownell would (at worst) refuse to see me, or (at best) be warned of my approach and therefore prepared to stonewall. This was not good. I have found that if you can surprise people in their workplace, they are often concerned with avoiding an embarrassing scene, and you can jam them into cooperating. This is advanced detective work at its finest.

I parked at the curb and walked around to the loading dock on the side of the building where two men were wrestling a dolly stacked with about ten thousand pounds of boxed paper into a six-wheel truck. ‘You guys know where I can find Wilson Brownell?’

One of the men was younger, with a thick mustache and a hoop earring and a red bandana tied over his head like a skullcap. ‘Yeah.’ He pointed inside. ‘Down the aisle, past the desk, and through the swinging door. You’ll see him.’

‘Thanks.’

I followed an endless aisle past shipping flats stacked with boxes of brochures and magazines and pamphlets. I picked up two boxes and carried them with what I hoped was a purposeful expression, just another worker bee lugging paper through the hive.

A balding guy with a potbelly and tiny, mean eyes was sitting at the desk, talking to a younger guy with a prominent Adam’s apple. The balding guy was thin in the arms and chest and neck, but his belly poked out beneath his belt-line as if someone had slipped a bowling ball in his pants. He squinted at me the way people do when they’re trying to remember who you are, but then I was past him and through the swinging door and into a cavernous room filled with whirring, kachunking, humming machines and the men and women who operated them. A woman pushed a dolly past me and I smiled. ‘Wilson Brownell?’

She pointed and I saw him across the room, standing at a large machine with two other people, one a kid in a KURT LIVES T-shirt, and the other a middle-aged guy in a suit. A large plate had been removed from the side of the machine so that they could see inside.

Wilson Brownell was in his early sixties, and taller than he looked in the pictures at his home. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a simple plaid shirt, with short hair more gray than not and black horn-rimmed glasses. Professorial. He was using a pen to point at something inside the machine. The guy in the suit was standing with his arms crossed, not liking what he heard. Brownell finally stopped pointing, and the suit walked away, still with crossed arms. Brownell said something to the younger guy, and the younger guy got down on the floor and began working his way into the machine. I walked over and said, ‘Mr. Brownell?’

‘Yes?’ Brownell looked at me with damp, hazel eyes.

You could smell the booze on him, faint and far away. It was probably always with him.

I positioned myself with my back to the kid so that only Wilson Brownell would hear. ‘My name is Elvis Cole. I’ve phoned you twice trying to find a man named Clark Haines.’

Brownell shook his head. ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

‘How about Clark Hewitt?’

Brownell glanced at the kid, then wet his lips. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ He looked past me. ‘Did they let you in?’

‘Come on, Mr. Brownell. I know that Clark phoned you six times from Los Angeles because I’ve seen his phone record. I know that he’s been at your apartment.’ He wasn’t just stonewalling; he was scared. ‘I’m not here to make trouble for you or for Clark. He walked out on his kids eleven days ago, and they need him. If he isn’t coming home, someone has to deal with that.’ Elvis Cole, detective for the nineties, the detective who can feel your pain.

‘I don’t know anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He shook his head, and the booze smell came stronger.

‘Jesus Christ, those kids are alone. All I want to do is find out if Clark’s coming home.’ You’d think I wanted to kill the guy.

He held up both hands, palms toward me, shaking his head some more.

‘This isn’t an earth-shaker, Wilson. Either I’m going to find Clark, or I’m going to turn his kids over to Children’s Services, and they’re going to take custody away from him. You see what I’m saying here?’ I wanted to smack him. I wanted to grab him by the ears and shake him. ‘Clark is going to lose his kids unless he talks to me, and you’re going to be part of it.’ Maybe I could guilt him into cooperating.

Wilson Brownell looked past me, and his eyes widened. The bald guy with the bowling-ball paunch was standing in the swinging doors, frowning at us. Brownell’s face hardened and he stepped close to me. ‘Do everybody a favor and get your ass out of here. I’d help you if I could, but I can’t, and that’s that.’

He turned away but I turned with him. ‘What do you mean, that’s that? Didn’t you hear what I said about his kids?’

‘I said I can’t help you.’ Wilson Brownell’s voice came out loud enough so that the kid on the floor peeked out at us.

Two men had joined the bald guy in the swinging doors. They were older, with thin gray hair and wind-burned skin and the kind of heavy, going-to-fat builds that said they were probably pretty good hitters twenty years ago. The bald guy pointed our way and one of the new men said something, and then the bald guy started toward us. Brownell grabbed my shoulder like a man grabbing a life preserver. ‘Listen to me, goddamnit.’ His voice was a harsh whisper, lower now and urgent. ‘Don’t you mention Clark. Don’t even say his goddamn name, you wanna walk outta here alive.’ Wilson Brownell suddenly broke into a big laugh and clapped me on the shoulder as if I’d told him the world’s funniest joke. He said, ‘You tell Lisa I can get my own date, thank you very much! I need any help, I’ll give’r a call!’ He said it so loud that half of British Columbia could hear.

I stared at him.

The bald guy reached us, the two new guys still in the swinging door, watching through interested eyes. The bald guy said, ‘I don’t know who this guy is. He just walked in here.’

Brownell kept his hand on my shoulder, letting the laugh fade to a grin. ‘Sorry about that, Donnie. I knew this guy was coming by, and I shoulda told you. He’s a friend of mine.’

I glanced from Brownell to Donnie, then back to Brownell, wondering just what in hell I had walked into.

Brownell shook his head like, man, this was just the silliest thing. ‘This guy’s wife has been tryin’ to set me up with this friend of hers for three months now. I keep sayin’, what on earth am I going to do with a new woman when I’m still in love with my Edna?’

Donnie squinted the ferret eyes at me like he was deciding something. ‘What, are you a mute or something? Don’t you have anything to say?’

Brownell was looking at me so hard that his eyes felt like lasers. I shook my head. ‘Nope.’

Donnie made his decision, then glanced back at the two guys in the swinging door, and shook his head once. The two guys vanished. ‘You know better’n this.’

Brownell said, ‘I’m sorry, Donnie. Jesus Christ.’

The tiny eyes flicked back to me, and then a smile even smaller than the eyes played at the edges of his mouth. ‘C’mon, I’ll show you the way out.’

I followed the bald guy out, got into my car, and drove to a Seattle’s Best Coffee, where I bought a double-tall mochachino and sat there feeling confused, a more or less natural state. I had flown to Seattle expecting some difficulty in dealing with Wilson Brownell, but nothing like this. Wilson Brownell seemed stark raving terrified to mention Clark’s name. In fact, Brownell seemed not only terrified of me but also of his fellow employees. Maybe there was something to it, or maybe Brownell was just a goofball suffering from some sort of paranoid psychosis. Goofballs are common. I could sit here and guess, but all I would have are guesses. I needed to ask Wilson Brownell, and there were only two options: I could shoot my way back into New World and pistol-whip the information out of him, or I could wait and ask him when Wilson left work. The C-Span Lady had said that Brownell got home between five-thirty and a quarter to six, which meant that he probably left work between five and five-fifteen. It was now forty-three minutes after two, giving me two hours and twenty minutes to fill, and I decided to visit Rachel Hewitt’s grave. If Clark had visited her grave, he might’ve left flowers. If he left flowers, there might be a florist’s tag, and if there was a florist’s tag, I might be able to get a line on Clark. A lot of it’s and maybes, but it’s and maybes define my life.

The Seattle’s Best people let me use their Yellow Pages. Twelve cemeteries were Listed in the greater Seattle, Mercer Island, and Bellevue area. I copied their numbers on a napkin, traded three dollar bills for quarters, and started dialing. The first four cemeteries I phoned did not have a Rachel Hewitt listed, but a woman who answered the phone at the fifth said, ‘Why, yes, we do have a Rachel Hewitt as a client.’ Client.

I said, ‘Did you know Rachel Hewitt?’

‘Oh, goodness, no.’

‘You knew she was there without having to look it up.’ She had said it that quickly.

‘Oh, well, I had to look it up just last week for another gentleman. On a Monday, I believe. Yes, that’s right, a Monday.’

‘Over the phone, or in person?’

‘Oh, he was here.’

I described Clark. ‘Did he look like that?’

‘Oh, no. Nothing like that. This gentleman was tall and blond, with short hair.’

I got directions, hung up, and eighteen minutes later I pulled through the gate onto the grounds of the Resthaven Views Cemetery and parked at the office. The woman I’d spoken with was older and sweet, and named Mrs. Lawrence. She showed me a large plot map of the grounds, and directed me to Rachel Hewitt’s grave site. I said, ‘The man last Monday, do you know who he was?’

‘Oh, a friend or relative, I imagine. Like you.’ Like me.

Rachel Hewitt had been laid to rest on the side of a grassy knoll near the western edge of the cemetery with a clear and pleasant view of Lake Washington. I left my car in the shade of a sycamore tree and walked north counting headstones. Rachel Hewitt’s was the fifth headstone in, but the headstone was bare. Guess Clark hadn’t been out, or if he had, he’d skipped the flowers.

I said, ‘Well, damn.’

No flowers meant no lead.

Three cars were parked below me, and I could see people trudging among the graves, some sitting on the grass, some standing, one older gentleman in a lawn chair he’d brought, visiting old friends or loved ones. Above me, twin mausoleums stood on the crest of the hill with what would be sweeping views of the lake. Trees stood sentry around the mausoleums, lending shade, and a couple of cars were parked among the trees, one a faded tan pickup, the other a black Lexus. Someone was sitting in the Lexus, but they were so far away I couldn’t see them clearly. Something flashed, and I thought they must be looking through field glasses. Admiring the view, no doubt. Enjoying another fine day with the dead.

I brushed at the headstone and took out the photograph that I’d taken from Brownell’s apartment and again thought how very much Teri looked like her mother. I put the picture away and stared at Lake Washington and tried not to feel sour. No mean feat when you’ve spent your own money to fly a thousand miles to stand clueless beside a woman’s grave. I was still confident that I could find Clark, but the odds that I could do it within a reasonable amount of time were diminishing, and I would need to do something about the kids. Of course, even if I found Clark, I was thinking that I still might have to call Children’s Services. Clark wasn’t shaping up as the World’s Finest Dad. Rachel might not like it, but there you go. Maybe she should’ve done a better job of selecting their father.

I left the cemetery and drove south along the lake. It was a lovely afternoon, and the lake was flat. People rollerbladed along the water and sunbathed on short strips of beach, and none of them were bummed because they had just visited a woman’s grave.

I turned west at Seward Park and stopped at a red light next to a woman in a green Toyota. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. Friendly. Then I glanced in the mirror and saw a black Lexus two cars behind. It looked like the Lexus from the mausoleum, but I couldn’t get a clear enough look at it to be sure. I said, ‘Come on, Cole, you’ve got to be kidding. First LA and now Seattle?’

The woman in the green Toyota was staring at me. I looked away, embarrassed. ‘Get a grip, Cole. Now you’re talking to yourself.’

I snuck another glance, and now she locked her door.

The light changed and the Lexus stayed behind me, but two blocks later I slowed, and the Lexus sped by. A guy with a blond buzz cut was driving and a dark man who looked about as big as a Kodiak bear was in the passenger seat. Neither of them looked at me. I said, ‘You see? It was nothing.’

The woman in the green Toyota passed me, too. Fast.

I parked a block and a half from the New World main gate at eighteen minutes before five. At five, employees started filtering out both on foot and in cars; at six minutes after, Wilson Brownell nosed out of the lot in a small yellow Plymouth hatchback. I let him get one block ahead, then I pulled out after him. He went west across the Duwamish directly to his apartment and parked at the curb in sight of the C-Span Lady’s window. I pulled into the mouth of an alley a block away and waited for him to go into his building, but he didn’t. He locked his car, then walked north to the next corner and disappeared. I left the car blocking the alley, trotted after him, and made it to the corner in time to see him go into a place called Lou’s Bar. There was a case of beer and damn near a dozen bottles of booze in his apartment, but I guess he wanted to stop off for a couple before he went home for the serious drinking. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be alone.

Wilson Brownell watched the bartender pour Popov vodka over ice as I entered. I waited for the bartender to finish and move away, then I took the stool next to Brownell. Two women were hunched together over a little table in the shadows, and three of us were at the bar, but the third guy was facedown on the wood. Brownell saw me and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’

I looked serene. ‘No, but we’re often confused.’

‘I got nothing to say to you.’ Brownell tried to get up, but I hooked one of his feet behind the stool and pushed down hard on his shoulder, digging my thumb into the pressure point at the front of his neck. I didn’t like being tough, but I was willing to if that’s what it took to find Clark Hewitt and get his butt home to his kids. No one in the bar seemed to give a damn. He said, ‘Ow. My goddamned neck.’

‘Relax and I’ll let go. If you try to get up, I’ll knock you on your ass.’

He stopped trying to get up and I released the pressure.

As soon as I let go, he took a belt of the Popov. ‘Goddamn. That hurt.’

I took out my wallet and opened it to the license. ‘A fifteen-year-old girl who told me that her name was Teresa Haines gave me two hundred dollars to find her father.’

Brownell took another helt of the vodka.

‘I have come up here at my own expense because Teresa, whose name I now discover is really Hewitt, and her two younger siblings have a missing father who has apparently abandoned them.’

Another belt.

‘I have discovered that Clark Haines, whose name is also Hewitt, is a drug addict. I have discovered that Mr. Hewitt has come to Seattle, has spent time with his old friend, Mr. Brownell, but that Mr. Brownell doesn’t give enough of a damn about these minor children to cooperate in helping me find their father.’ I put away the wallet, then took out the picture of Brownell and Clark and their wives and put that on the bar.

The picture was creased from having been in my pocket. Brownell’s jaw tightened. ‘You went into my home.’

‘Yes.’

His jaw flexed some more, then he picked up the picture and put it in his own pocket. He had more of the vodka, and I saw that his hand was shaking. ‘You don’t know a goddamn thing about anything.’ His voice was soft and far away.

‘I know Clark was with you.’

He shook his head, and the soft voice came again. ‘You’re in somethin’ now you don’t know anything about. If you’re smart, you’ll just go home.’

‘So tell me and I’ll go.’

He shook his head and tried to lift the Popov, but his hand was shaking too badly. I didn’t think it was shaking from the booze. ‘I can’t help you and I got nothing to tell you.’ He blinked hard, almost as if he were blinking back tears. ‘I love Clark, you see? But there ain’t nothing I can do. I don’t know where he went and you shouldn’t be asking about him. I’m sorry about his children, but there ain’t nothing I can do about that. Not one goddamned thing.’ Brownell’s hand shook so badly that the Popov splashed out the glass.

‘Jesus Christ, Brownell. What in hell’s got you so scared?’

The bar door opened and the blond guy from the Lexus came in. He was maybe six-two, with hard shoulders and sharp features and ice blue eyes that looked at you without blinking. He stepped out of the door to make room for his friend, and the friend needed all the room he could get: He was a huge man, maybe six-five, with great sloping shoulders, an enormous protruding gut, and the kind of waddle serious powerlifters get. His thighs were as thick as a couple of twenty gallon garbage cans. The buzz cut was wearing a blue sport coat over a yellow T-shirt and jeans, but his friend was decked out in a truly bad islander shirt, baggy shorts, and high-top Keds. The big guy had a great dopey grin on his face, and he was slurping on a yellow sucker. The buzz cut said, ‘Willie.’

Wilson Brownell said, ‘Oh, shit.’ He knocked over his stool as he lurched from the bar, then hurried through a door in the rear. Gone. The bartender didn’t look. The women didn’t look. The guy sleeping on the bar stayed down.

The buzz cut and his friend came over. ‘You are coming with us.’ The buzz cut spoke the words with a careful, starched pronunciation that made me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, only the accent was Russian.

‘Sez who?’ I can slay ’em with these comebacks.

The weightlifter reached under his shirt and came out with a Sig automatic. ‘You’ll come or we will shoot you.’ He said it in a normal speaking voice, as if he didn’t give a damn who heard. Another Russian.

I said, ‘Have you guys been following me from Los Angeles?’

The weightlifter shoved me, and it felt like getting blindsided by a backhoe. ‘Shut up. Walk.’

I shut up. I walked.

Maybe Wilson Brownell was right. Maybe I was in something deeper than I realized, and now it was too late to get out.

Isn’t hindsight wonderful?

Chapter 9

The buzz cut held the door as the lifter walked me out, then followed behind us. The big guy let the gun dangle along his leg but made no effort to hide it. A woman with two kids came out of a bakery across the street, saw the gun, then grabbed her kids and stumbled back into the bakery. I said, ‘Don’t you guys know it’s illegal to walk around with that thing?’

The big guy said, ‘This is America. In America, you can do what you want.’

‘I’d put it away if I were you. The cops will be here in seconds.’ Maybe I could scare him into letting me go.

He made a little gesture with the gun, as if it were the gun shrugging, not him. ‘Let them come.’ Guess not.

‘Who are you guys?’

The buzz cut shook his head. ‘Nobody.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the car.’ Everybody’s a comedian.

The black Lexus was parked by a fire hydrant at the end of the block. This morning I was boarding a jet to fly to Seattle to find the missing father of three children in what should have been a no-big-deal job, and now I was being taken for a ride by two unknown Russian maniacs. I was willing to walk with these guys, but I did not want to get into the car. There are two crime scenes at every kidnapping. The first crime scene is where they snatch you, the second is where the cops find your body.

The lifter didn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention, but the buzz cut was looking at everything. He scanned the storefronts and alleys and roof lines, his ice blue eyes moving in an unhurried, practiced sweep. I wondered what he was looking for, and I wondered where he had picked up the habit. I said, ‘Afghanistan.’

The ice blue eyes never stopped their search.

The big guy said, ‘Da. Alexei was Spetnaz. You know Spetnaz?’

The ice blue eyes flicked at the big guy, and Alexei mumbled something soft in Russian. The big guy’s eyebrows bunched like dancing caterpillars. Nervous. I guess he was scared of Alexei, too.

I said, ‘I know Spetnaz.’ Spetnaz was the former Soviet army’s version of our Special Forces, but they were really more like Hitler’s SS. Motivated zealots with a penchant for murder. ‘That’s a kind of Austrian noodle, isn’t it?’

The ice blue eyes flicked my way, and Alexei smiled. The smile was wide and thin and empty. ‘Da, that’s right. A little noodle.’

I wondered how many Afghan kids had seen that smile before they died.

The big guy was walking behind me, but Alexei was maybe three paces back and to the side so that he wasn’t between me and the gun. If I could put Alexei between me and the lifter, I could use him as a shield from the gun and perhaps effect an escape. Superman could probably do it, and so could the Flash. Why not me?

I slowed my pace, and almost at once Alexei slid sideways, brought up a Clock semiautomatic, and locked-out in a perfect two-hand combat stance. Guess they both had guns. He said, ‘The car is safer, my friend.’

I showed him my palms and we went on to the car. So much for effecting an escape.

They put me in the front seat. Alexei got behind the wheel and the big guy got into the back. When he got in, the car tilted. Steroids. We started away and the big guy leaned forward and pushed a CD into the player. James Brown screamed that he felt good, and the big guy bobbed his head in time with the music. He said, ‘You like James Brown, the king of soul?’

I looked at him.

Alexei said, ‘Turn it down, Dmitri.’

Dmitri turned it down, but not very much. He made little hand moves with the music as if he were dancing, looking first out one side of the Lexus, then out the other, as if he wanted to take everything in and miss nothing. ‘I enjoy the king of soul, and the Hootie and the Blowfish, and the Ronald McDonald’s. Do you enjoy the Big Mac?’

I looked at Alexei, but Alexei wasn’t paying attention. ‘I prefer Burger King.’

Dmitri seemed troubled. ‘But there is no special sauce.’ He spoke Russian to Alexei.

Alexei shook his head, irritated. ‘No. No special sauce.’

I said, ‘Are you guys for real?’

The lifter said, ‘What is that, ‘for real’?’

Alexei pointed the Clock at me. ‘This is real. Would you like to see?’

‘No.’

‘Then keep your mouth shut.’

Crump.

A light patter of rain began to fall, and Alexei put on the windshield wipers. We took the Alaskan Way Viaduct up past Elliot Bay into Ballard, then turned toward the water and bumped along an older part of the wharf to a warehouse at the edge of a pier. The warehouse, like the pier, was old and unkempt, with great rusted doors that slid along tracks and peeling paint and an air of poverty. Dmitri climbed out, pushed open the door, and we drove inside to park between a brand-new $100,000 Porsche Carrera and an $80,000 Mercedes SL convertible. Guess the air of poverty only went so far.

The warehouse was a great dim cavern that smelled of fish and rain and marine oil. Dust motes floated in pale light that speared down through skylights and gaps in the corrugated metal walls, and water dripped from the roof. Men who looked like longshoremen were driving forklifts laden with crates in and out of the far end of the warehouse, and did their best to ignore us. Alexei blew the horn twice, then cut the engine and told me to get out. A row of little offices was built along the side of the warehouse, and, with the horn, a pudgy guy with a cigarette dangling from his lips stepped out of the last office and motioned us over. We were expected.

The three of us went through the door into a shabby office in which it was even harder to see. The only light in the place came from a single cheap lamp sitting atop a file cabinet in the corner. Three men were around an oak desk that had probably been secondhand in the thirties, two of the men in their mid-fifties, the third maybe younger. The younger guy was the one who’d waved us in. I had hoped that maybe Clark would be there, but he wasn’t. Probably just as well.

An empty folding chair was in the center of the room. The pudgy guy gestured at it and said something in Russian. Alexei said, ‘For you.’

‘I’ll stand, thanks.’

Alexei glanced past me to Dmitri and then an M-8o went off in my ear. I rocked sideways and went down to one knee, then felt myself put into the chair. Alexei leaned toward me. ‘No more jokes, now.’ His voice was far away. ‘That was a slap, do you see? If Dmitri closes his hand, it will kill you.’

‘Sure.’ His face tilted crazily first to one side, then the other, and I thought I was going to throw up.

A fourth man entered, this guy a little shorter than the others, but wider, and hard to see when your eyes are blurring. He was in his fifties, with crinkly gray hair and a florid face and a dark blue shirt open at the neck to show a lot of grizzled chest hair. He was also holding a McDonald’s soft drink cup. Large. I guess that’s where Dmitri got it from.

When the new guy entered the other men stood, and murmured greetings of respect. The new man spoke more Russian, and Alexei handed over my wallet. The new man put his cup down and sat on the edge of the desk to look through my wallet. Deciding my fate, no doubt.

I rolled my head one way, then the other. The disorientation was beginning to pass, but the soft tissue around my ear felt tight and hot.

The new guy finished going through my wallet, then tossed it to the floor. His eyes were tired and lifeless and uncaring. Just what you want to see when you’re being held in a chair by a four-hundred-pound Russian with steel fingers. The new man said, ‘I am Andrei Markov.’

‘All right.’ He spoke pretty good English.

‘Where is Clark Hewitt?’ It hung like a chime tone in an empty room. All of this was about Clark.

‘I don’t know.’

Markov nodded and the steel fingers tightened into my shoulders like pliers. Alexei backhanded me with the Clock and a starburst of pain erupted from my other ear. Some days suck. Some days you shouldn’t even get out of bed. I said, ‘Who is Clark Hewitt and why is he so important?’

Markov said, ‘Tell me where he is, or I will kill you.’