Darwin's Blade

2 “B is for Bud”

It took Dar less than fifteen minutes to drive to the crossroads truck stop–cum–Indian casino to which his boss, Lawrence Stewart, had asked him to hurry at all possible speed. In the NSX, with radar detector pinging fore and aft and sideways, all possible speed meant 162 miles per hour.

The truck stop was west of Palm Springs, but was not one of the major Indian casinos that rose up out of the desert like giant adobe fake-pueblo style vacuum cleaners set there to suck the last dime out of the last Anglo sucker’s pocket. This was a run-down, seedy little truck stop that looked as if it had hit its heyday about the same time Route 66 was booming (even though this one was nowhere near Route 66), and the “casino” was little more than a back room with six slot machines and a one-eyed Native American dealing blackjack on what seemed to be a twenty-four-hour shift.

Dar spotted Lawrence right away. His boss was hard to miss—six two, about 250 pounds, with a friendly, mustached face that at the moment seemed quite flushed. Lawrence’s ’86 Isuzu Trooper was parked away from the pumps and the open garage doors, on a heat-rippled strip of concrete just catty-corner from the truck-stop diner.

Dar looked for some shade to park the NSX in, found none, and pulled it into the shadow of Lawrence’s sport utility vehicle. One glance showed him that something was odd. Lawrence had taken out the Isuzu’s left “sealed beam unit” or SBU—car-guy talk for headlight assembly—and carefully laid the bulb and other pieces on a clean work cloth on the Isuzu’s high hood. At the moment Lawrence’s right hand was deep in the empty headlight socket, his left hand was fussing with his right wrist as if the truck had grabbed him, and he was on his cell phone—his ear pressed heavily to his shoulder so that the phone wouldn’t drop. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved safari jacket that he had sweated through in the chest area, under the arms, and down the back. Dar looked again and realized that Lawrence’s round face not only looked flushed, it looked red to the point of impending coronary.

“Hey, Larry,” said Dar, slamming the NSX door behind him.

“Goddammit, don’t call me Larry,” rumbled the bigger man.

Everyone called Lawrence Larry. Dar had once met Lawrence’s older brother, a writer named Dale Stewart, and Dale had said that Lawrence-Don’t-Call-Me-Larry had been fighting that losing battle over his name since he was seven years old.

“OK, Larry,” agreed Dar amiably, walking over to lean on the right fender of the Isuzu, careful to keep his elbow on the work cloth and not the burning-hot metal. “What’s up?”

Lawrence stood upright and looked around. Sweat was running down his cheeks and brow and dripping onto his safari shirt. He nodded slightly toward the plate-glass window of the diner. “See that guy on the third stool in there—No, don’t turn your head to look, damn it.”

Dar kept his face turned toward Lawrence while he glanced at the long window of the diner. “Little guy with the Hawaiian shirt? Just about finished with…what?…scrambled eggs?”

“That’s him,” said Lawrence. “Bromley.”

“Ahh,” said Dar. Lawrence and Trudy had been working on a stolen-car-ring case for four months. Someone had been stealing only new rental cars from one of their corporate clients—Avis in this case—and then repainting the vehicles, shipping them across state lines, and reselling them. Charles “Chuckie” Bromley had been under surveillance for weeks as the ring’s number one car thief. Dar had had nothing to do with the case until now.

“That purple Ford Expedition over there with the rental plates is his,” said Lawrence, still holding the phone to his shoulder by force of jowl. Dar heard squeaks coming from the cell phone and Lawrence said, “Just a minute, honey, Dar’s here.”

“Trudy?” said Dar.

Lawrence rolled his eyes. “Who else would I call honey?”

Dar held up both hands. “Hey, your personal life is your own, Larry.” He smiled while he said it because he knew no other couple as committed to each other and dependent upon one another as Lawrence and Trudy. Officially, Trudy owned the company, and the couple worked sixty-to eighty-hour weeks, living, breathing, talking, and evidently thinking about little other than insurance adjusting and the ever-mounting caseload they were carrying.

“Take the phone,” said Lawrence.

Dar rescued the Flip Phone from between Lawrence’s sweaty cheek and shoulder. “Hey, Trudy,” he said to the phone. To Lawrence he said, “I didn’t know Avis rented purple Expeditions.”

Normally Trudy Stewart sounded pleasantly businesslike and very busy. Now she sounded very busy and very irritated as she said, “Can you get that idiot free?”

“I can try,” said Dar, beginning to understand.

“Call me back if you have to amputate,” Trudy said, and hung up.

“Damn,” muttered Lawrence, glancing over at the diner where the waitress was taking Bromley’s plate away. The little man was sipping the last of his coffee. “He’s going to be leaving in a minute.”

“How’d you do that?” asked Dar, nodding at where Lawrence’s right hand disappeared into the headlight opening.

“I’ve been tailing Bromley since before sunrise and I realized that I only had one headlight working,” said Lawrence.

“Not good,” agreed Dar. People noticed one-eyed cars in their rearview mirrors at night.

“No,” snarled Lawrence, tugging at his wrist. It was firmly stuck. “I know what the problem is. These SBUs have a cheap little fuse connector that comes loose. It’s behind the headlight assembly rather than under the dash. Trudy fixed it the last time the thing joggled loose.”

Dar nodded. “Trudy has smaller hands.”

Lawrence glared at his accident reconstruction specialist. “Yeah,” he said as if biting off a dozen more pertinent and violent responses. “The opening’s funnel-shaped. I got my hand in there all right, even reconnected the damn fuse clip. I just can’t…it just won’t…”

“Let go of you?” prompted Dar, looking over at the diner. “Bromley’s calling for the check.”

“Damn, damn, damn,” muttered Lawrence. “The diner was too small for me to go in without being spotted. I pumped gas as slowly as I could. I just figured that if I worked on this awhile, it would look normal enough…”

“You look like somebody with his hand trapped in a headlight socket,” said Dar.

Lawrence showed his teeth in what was definitely not a friendly smile. “The inside of the circular flange is razor-sharp,” he hissed through those teeth. “And I think my hand has swollen with the last half hour’s attempt at pulling it out.”

“Couldn’t you get to it from under the hood?” said Dar, ready to roll up the work cloth and pop the hood open.

Lawrence’s grimace remained. “It’s sealed. If I could have reached it under the hood, I wouldn’t have gone in through the headlight.”

Dar knew that his boss was an amiable sort, easy to joke with and kindhearted, but he also knew that Lawrence had high blood pressure and a rare but fearsome temper. Noting his boss’s beet-red face, the sweat dripping from his pug nose and mustache, and the murderous intensity of his voice, Dar guessed that this might not be a good time for further banter.

“What do you want me to do? Get some soap or grease from the mechanics in the garage?”

“I didn’t want to draw a crowd…” Lawrence began, and then said, “Oh, shit.”

Four of the mechanics and a teenaged girl were walking toward them from the garage. Bromley had paid his check and was out of sight, either in the men’s room or headed for the door.

Lawrence leaned closer to Dar and whispered. “Chuckie is meeting his boss and several of the others in the stolen-car ring somewhere out in the desert this morning. If I can photograph that, I’ve got them.” He tugged at his right hand. The Isuzu Trooper held its grip.

Dar nodded. “You want me to follow them?”

Lawrence made a face. “Don’t be stupid. Across desert roads. In that?” He inclined his head toward the black NSX. “You’ve got a front clearance of about six millimeters there.”

Dar shrugged in agreement. “I wasn’t planning any off-road work today. Shall I drive your truck?”

Lawrence stood upright, his hand firmly embedded. The grease monkeys and the teenaged girl had arrived and were forming a semicircle.

“How could you drive my truck while I’m attached like this?” hissed Lawrence.

Dar rubbed his chin. “Strap you on the hood like a deer?” he suggested.

Chuckie Bromley came out of the diner, glanced over at the small crowd around Lawrence, and climbed up awkwardly into his purple Ford Expedition.

“Hey,” said one of the teenaged mechanics, wiping his black hands on a blacker rag. “Stuck?”

Lawrence’s basilisk stare made the boy take a step back.

“We got some grease,” said the second mechanic.

“Don’t need grease,” said an older mechanic with missing front teeth. “Just spray some WD-40 in there…Course, you’re still gonna lose some skin. Maybe a thumb.”

“I think we oughta take the grill apart,” said the third mechanic. “Remove the whole damn headlight assembly. It’s the only way you’re going to get your hand out of there, mister, without tearing ligaments. I have a cousin who got trapped by his Isuzu…”

Lawrence sighed heavily. Chuckie Bromley drove past them and turned west onto the highway. “Dar,” he said, “would you get that file off the passenger seat? It’s the case I need you to work on today.”

Darwin went around and picked up the file, glanced at it, and said, “Oh, no, Larry. You know that I hate this sort of—”

Lawrence nodded. “I was going to do it on the way home after photographing the desert meeting, but you’re going to have to cover for me. I may be getting stitches.” Lawrence looked at the huge, purple Expedition disappearing down the highway. “One more favor, Dar. Would you get my handkerchief out of my right back pocket?”

Dar complied.

“Stand back,” said Lawrence to everyone. He tugged hard at his hand, twice. The sharp metal ring had a firm grip in there. On the third tug he pulled hard enough to make the Isuzu rock forward on its springs.

“Aaayargh!” cried Lawrence, sounding like a black-belt karate expert preparing to break bricks. He grabbed his right forearm with his left hand and threw all 250 pounds of himself backward. A spray of blood spattered across the asphalt and almost hit the teenaged girl’s sneakers. She jumped back and stood daintily on her tiptoes.

“Arrrrrurrrr,” said the assembled crowd in unison, an orchestrated groan of disgust and admiration.

“Thanks,” Lawrence said, and took the kerchief from Dar with his left hand, wrapping it around the bleeding meat of his right hand just above the joint of thumb and wrist.

Dar put the cell phone in Lawrence’s upper left safari-shirt pocket as his boss got behind the wheel of the Trooper and started the ignition.

“Want me to go with you?” asked Dar. He could imagine Lawrence getting weaker from loss of blood just as the band of felons noticed the light glinting off his boss’s long lens documenting the stolen car scene. The chase across the desert. The shooting. Lawrence fainting. The terrible denouement.

“Naw,” said Lawrence, “just do that retirement-park interview for me and I’ll see you at our place tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Dar, his voice dull. He would rather have had the desert chase and gun battle with stolen car thieves than to go do this damn interview. It was the kind of thing that Lawrence and Trudy usually spared him.

Lawrence roared away in the Trooper. The Expedition was just a plum-colored dot on the horizon.

The four men in mechanics’ overalls and the teenaged girl were looking at the spray pattern of blood on the white concrete.

“Jeeee-zus,” said the youngest. “That sure was a stupid thing.”

Dar dropped into the black leather of the heated NSX. “Not even in Larry’s top twenty,” he said, got the engine and the air-conditioning roaring, and pulled away, also headed west.

The mobile home park was in Riverside just off the 91, not far from the intersection with the 10 that Dar had driven west on from Banning. He found the proper surface street, pulled into the entrance of the mobile home park, and parked in the sparse shade of a cottonwood tree to read the rest of the file.

“Shit,” he whispered to himself. From Lawrence’s preliminary field report and the data from the insurer, the park had been around for a while before turning into a senior-citizen community. Now one had to be at least fifty-five to live there—although grandchildren and other youngsters were allowed to visit overnight—but the age of the average resident was probably closer to eighty. It looked from the data sheets as if many of the older residents had lived there even before the park had opened as a senior community about fifteen years earlier.

The mobile home park owner was carrying a high self-retention—which was relatively rare—carrying its own risk up to $100,000 before the insurance kicked in. Dar noted that this particular owner—a Mr. Gilley—owned several mobile home parks and maintained a high self-retention on all of them. This suggested to Dar that these parks were considered high-risk, that there had been a high volume of accidents in Mr. Gilley’s retirement mobile home parks over the years, and that the insurance companies had been unwilling to provide the usual full coverage because of the frequency of these accidents. Dar knew that this might indicate a careless attitude on the part of the owner, or just bad luck.

In this case, Gilley had been notified four days ago that there had been a serious accident in this park, and that one of his resident tenants had died—the park was called the Shady Rest, although Dar could see that most of the mature trees had died and there was little shade left. The owner had immediately contacted his business attorney, and the attorney had called Stewart Investigations to reconstruct the accident so that the attorney could evaluate the liability of his client. A fairly common case for Lawrence and Trudy’s company. Dar hated these cases—slip and falls, negligence cases, nursing home lawsuits. It was one reason why he worked under special contract for the Stewarts to reconstruct the more complicated accidents.

No one in the file’s chain of communication seemed to have any detailed facts about this accident, but the owner’s attorney had told Trudy there had been a witness—another resident by the name of Henry—and that Henry would be expecting an interviewer at the clubhouse around 11:00 A.M. Dar glanced at his watch. Ten to eleven.

Dar read through the few paragraphs of transcript from the attorney’s phone call. It seemed that one of the elderly residents, Mr. William J. Treehorn, seventy-eight, had driven his electric-powered cart over a curb outside the clubhouse, fallen from the cart, struck his head, and died instantly. The accident had occurred around 11:00 P.M., so the first thing Dar did was drive to the clubhouse—a single-story A-frame building that needed maintenance—to check the nearby lighting. He could see the security lights that would have illuminated the walkways directly in front of the clubhouse, and there were three low-pressure sodium streetlights on 35-foot poles visible around the curve of lane. Dar was a bit surprised by the low-pressure sodium lights; they were more common farther south near where he lived, near San Diego, because they were supposed to minimize light scatter for the Palomar Observatory. Still, if all the lights worked, there would have been more than adequate lighting in this accident area. A point in favor of the absentee owner.

Dar drove slowly past the front of the clubhouse. He made a note on his yellow legal pad that there was construction going on in front of the community building: part of the asphalt street had been repaved, there were delineators and cones still in place, yellow tape restricted access to several sections of sidewalk, and some repaving equipment remained parked in the roped-off part of the street. He drove around to a small parking lot at the rear of the clubhouse and walked in. There did not seem to be any air-conditioning in the building and the heat was stifling.

A group of older men was playing cards at a table near the rear window. The view out the window was of a pool and hot tub that looked as if they were rarely used—the cover to the hot tub was lashed down and mildewed, and the pool needed cleaning. Dar approached the game diffidently even though the four were watching him rather than their cards.

“Excuse me, don’t mean to interrupt the game,” said Dar, “but is one of you gentlemen named Henry?”

A man who looked to be in his late seventies sprang to his feet. He was short, perhaps five five, and could not have weighed more than 110 pounds. His skinny, white, oldman’s legs emerged from oversized shorts, but he wore an expensive polo shirt, brand-new running shoes, and a baseball cap with an emblem on it advertising a Las Vegas casino. His gold wristwatch was a Rolex.

“I’m Henry,” said the spry oldster, extending a mottled hand. “Henry Goldsmith. You the fella the insurance company sent around to hear about Bud’s accident?”

Dar introduced himself and said, “Bud was Mr. William J. Treehorn?”

One of the old men spoke without looking up from his cards. “Bud. Everybody called him Bud. Nobody never called him William or Bill. Bud.”

“That’s right,” said Henry Goldsmith. The man’s voice was soft and sad. “I knew Bud for—Jesus—almost thirty years, and he was always Bud.”

“Did you see the accident, Mr. Goldsmith?”

“Henry,” said the older man. “Call me Henry. And yeah…I was the only one that saw it. Hell, I probably caused it.” Henry’s voice had thickened so that the last few words were barely audible. “Let’s go find an empty table,” he added. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

They sat at the farthest table. Dar identified himself again, explained who he worked for and where the information would be going, and asked Henry if he was willing to give a recorded statement. “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” said Dar. “I’m just gathering information for the adjuster who reports to the owner’s attorney.”

“Sure I want to talk to you,” said Henry, waving his hand and waiving all his legal rights. “Tell you just what happened.”

Dar nodded and turned on the recorder. The microphone was directional and highly sensitive.

The first ten minutes or so was unnecessary background. Henry and his wife lived across the street from Bud and his wife in the park, and had since before the trailer park had reopened as a senior-citizen community. The families had known each other in Chicago, and when all the kids were gone, they moved to California together.

“Bud, he had a stroke about two years ago,” said Henry. “No…no, it was three years ago. Just after those goddamned Atlanta Braves won the World Series.”

“David Justice hit the home run,” Dar said automatically. He was interested in no sport except baseball. Unless one considered chess a sport. Dar did not.

“Whatever,” said Henry. “That’s when Bud had his stroke. Just after that.”

“That’s why Mr. Treehorn had to use the electric cart to get around?”

“Pard,” said Henry.

“Pardon me?”

“Them carts, they’re made by a company named Pard and that’s what Bud called the cart—his pard. You know, like his buddy.”

Dar knew the make. They were small and three-wheeled, almost like an oversized electric tricycle; a regular battery drove a small electric motor which powered the rear wheels. The little carts could be ordered with regular accelerator and brake pedals like a golf cart, or with brake and throttle controls on the handlebars for people without the use of their legs.

“After the stroke, Bud’s left side didn’t work at all,” Henry was saying. “Left leg just dragged. Left arm…well, Bud used to cradle it in his lap. The left side of his face looked all dragged down and he had trouble talking.”

“Could he communicate?” Dar asked softly. “Make his wishes known?”

“Oh, hell, yeah,” said Henry, smiling as if bragging about a grandchild. “The stroke didn’t make him stupid. His speech was…well, it was hard to understand him…but Rose and Verna and I could always make out what he was saying.”

“Rose is Mr. Treehorn’s…Bud’s…wife?” said Dar.

“Only for fifty-two years,” said Henry. “Verna, she’s my third wife. Been married twenty-two years this coming January.”

“The night of the accident…,” prompted Dar.

Henry frowned, knowing that he was being put back on track. “You asked if he could make his wishes known, young man. I’m tellin’ you he could…but mostly it was Rose and Verna and me who understood him and sorta…you know…translated to others.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dar, accepting the rebuke.

“Well, the night of the accident…four nights ago…Bud and I came over to the clubhouse as usual to play pinochle.”

“He could still play cards,” said Dar. Strokes were strange and frightening things to him.

“Hell, yes, he could still play cards,” said Henry, voice rising again but smiling this time. “Won more often than not, too. Told you, stroke messed up the left side of his body and made it hard for him to…you know…form words. Didn’t hurt his mind though. Nope, Bud was as sharp as a tack.”

“Was there anything different on the night of the accident?” said Dar.

“Not with Bud there wasn’t,” said Henry, his jaw setting firmly. “Picked him up at quarter till nine, just like every Friday night. Bud grunted some things, but Rose and me knew that he was saying that he was going to clean us out that night. Win big. Nothing different about Bud that night at all.”

“No,” said Dar, “I meant, was there anything different about the clubhouse or the street or the—”

“Oh, hell, yes,” said Henry. “That’s the reason it all happened. Those chowderheads who came to repave the street had parked their asphalt rolling machine in front of the handicapped ramp.”

“The handicapped ramp out front,” said Dar. “The one in front of the main entrance?”

“Yep,” said Henry. “Only entrance open after eight P.M. We like to start our games at nine…generally run to midnight or later. But Bud always leaves so as to be home by eleven because he wants to be there before Rose goes to sleep. She don’t sleep well without Bud next to her and…” Henry paused and a cloud moved across his clear blue eyes, as if he had just remembered.

“But Friday night, the asphalt rolling machine had been left in front of the only handicapped access ramp,” said Dar.

Henry’s eyes seemed to refocus from some distant place. “What? Yeah. That’s what I said. Come on, I’ll show you.”

The two men walked out into the heat. The access ramp was clear now, the asphalt new on the street beyond. Henry gestured at it. “The damn asphalt truck blocked the whole ramp and Bud’s Pard couldn’t make it up the curb.” They walked together the twenty feet to the curb.

Dar noted that it was a standard street curb, angled at about seventy-eight degrees to be easier on car tires. But it had been too steep for Bud’s little electric cart.

“No problem,” said Henry. “I went in and got Herb, Wally, Don, a couple of the other boys, and we lifted Bud and his Pard up onto the walk as smooth as you please. Then he drove himself into the card game.”

“And you played until about eleven P.M.,” said Dar. He was holding the tiny recorder at waist level, but the mike was aimed at Henry.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Henry, his voice slower now as he pictured the end of the evening in detail. “Bud, he grunted and made some noises. The other boys didn’t understand him, but I knew he was saying that he had to get home ’cause Rose hates to go to sleep without him. So he took his winnings and him and me left the game and came outside.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Well, yeah. Wally and Herb and Don were still playing…they go way past midnight most Friday nights…and some of the other boys, the older ones, y’know, they’d gone home early. So it was just Bud and me going home at eleven.”

“But there was still the paving machine in the way,” said Dar.

“Of course there was,” said Henry, sounding impatient now at Dar’s slowness. “Think one of them construction knuckleheads had come by at ten P.M. and moved it for us? So Bud drove his Pard to the curb where we’d lifted him up, but it seemed…you know…too steep.”

“So then what did you do?” Dar could picture what happened next.

Henry rubbed his cheek and mouth. “Well, I said, ‘Let’s go down to the corner there…it’s only about thirty feet…’ because I thought the curb’s not so high there. And Bud, he agrees. So he scoots his Pard down past the useless ramp to the corner…come on, I’ll show you.”

Dar accompanied Henry to the corner beyond the handicapped access ramp. Dar noted that one of the low-pressure sodium vapor lamps was right next to the crosswalk there. There was no curb cut. Dar stood on the sidewalk while Henry stepped out into the street, his voice becoming more animated, his gnarled hands moving and gesturing as he spoke.

“Well, we get here and the curb doesn’t look that much lower. I mean, it isn’t. But it was dark, and we figured it was a little lower here, maybe. So I suggested to Bud that we take the front wheel of the Pard and drive it off the curb here ’cause it doesn’t look quite as tall as the other parts of the curb along here. Least in the dark.”

Henry paused. Dar said softly, “So did Bud drive the front wheel off the curb?”

Henry refocused his eyes, looking down at the curb now as if he had never seen it before. “Oh, yeah. No problem at all. I held on to the right handlebar of the cart and Bud drove the front wheel off the curb. Everything was hunky-dory. The cart wheel went right off and I kind of held onto it a little bit so it wouldn’t be a real hard bump. So then we had the front wheel of Bud’s little Pard off the curb and Bud looks up at me, and I remember, I said, ‘It’s all right, Bud. I’ve got the right handlebar. I’ll hold onto the handlebar.’”

Henry pantomimed holding on to the handlebar with both hands. “Bud, he hits the switch with his right hand to activate the motor, but he doesn’t give it any throttle, and I say again, ‘It’s OK, Bud, we’ll get that left rear wheel off the curb and get it down on the street and I’ll hold onto you here—both hands on the handlebar—and then you can just drive forward and the right rear tire, it’ll drive right off the curb, and then we’ll be on the street and then it’s a straight shot home.’”

Dar stood and waited, seeing Henry’s eyes cloud again as he relived the moment.

“And then the cart moved forward and I was holding on to the right end of the handlebar…Used to be real strong, Mr. Minor, worked twenty-six years loading boxes in the Chicago Merchandise Mart till we moved out here but this damned leukemia the last couple of years…Anyway, the left wheel dropped off the curb and the damned cart started to tip to its left. Bud looks at me and he can’t move his left arm or leg, and I say, ‘It’s OK, Bud, I got it with both hands,’ but the cart just kept tipping. It was heavy. Real heavy. I thought of grabbing Bud, but he was…you know…strapped into the cart the way he’s supposed to be. I did everything to hang on to that cart. I had both hands on the handlebar, but I felt it tipping farther and farther…it’s a heavy cart what with the battery and motor and all…and my hands were getting sweaty, and I thought later that I should have hollered for the fellas who were still playing pinochle, but at the time…well, I just didn’t think about it. You know how it is.”

Dar nodded and held the tape recorder.

Henry’s eyes were filling with tears now, as if the full impact of the event was striking him for the first time. “I felt the cart tipping and my fingers starting to slip and I couldn’t hold it anymore. I mean, it was just too much weight for me, and then Bud looked at me with his good eye, and I think he knew what was going to happen, but I said, ‘Bud, Bud, it’ll be all right, I’ll hang on. I’ll hang onto this. I’ve got you.’”

Henry looked at the curb for a full minute in silence. His cheeks were moist. When he spoke again, the animation was completely absent from his voice. “And then the cart tipped farther and fell over to its left and Bud couldn’t do anything because, like I said, he was paralyzed on his left side. Then there was this crash and this…sound…this sickening sound.”

Henry turned and looked Dar straight in the eye. “And then Bud died.” Henry fell silent, just standing there with his arms stretched out in the same position they must have been the instant the handlebars had slipped from his grip. “I was just trying to help him get home so he could say good-night to Rose,” whispered Henry.

Later, when Henry had left, Dar used his tape measure to calculate the fall distance from Bud’s head location while seated in a Pard cart to the pavement. Four feet six inches. But at that moment he said nothing, did nothing, just stood next to the old man whose arms were still extended, his closed fists slowly opening to splayed fingers. The hands shook.

Henry looked back at the pavement. “And then Bud died.”

Dar called it a day and drove down the 91 to the 15 and then headed south, toward his condo outside of San Diego. Fuck it, he thought. He’d started the day at 4:00 A.M. Fuck it all, he thought.

He would type up the transcript of the tape recording and hand it in to Lawrence and Trudy, but he’d be damned if he would follow up on this case. He knew the drill. The manufacturer of the electric cart would be sued, no doubt about that. The park owner would be sued—there would be no doubt about that. The construction company that had blocked the ramp would be sued by everybody, no doubt about that.

But would Rose sue Henry? Probably. Dar had very little doubt about that either. Thirty years of friendship. He was trying to get his friend Bud home in time to kiss his wife good-night. But after a few more months…perhaps a second lawyer…

Fuck it, thought Dar. He would not inquire. He’d never check the file again.

Traffic on the 15 was relatively light, which was one reason that Dar noticed the Mercedes E 340 that had been keeping pace with his left rear quarter panel. Also, the Mercedes’s windows were tinted, front and side, which was illegal in California. State and local cops had helped push that law through—none of them wanted to approach a car with opaque windows. Also, the Mercedes was new and modified for speed, with eighteen-inch wheels and a raised rear end with a tiny spoiler. Dar had a thing about people who bought luxury cars—even autobahn cruisers like the Mercedes E 340—and then hopped them up into performance cars. He thought such people were the worst kind of idiots—pretentious idiots.

So he was watching in his left mirror as the Mercedes accelerated to pass him on the left. There were five lanes along this stretch, three of them empty, but the Mercedes was whipping around the NSX as tightly as if they were on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Dar sighed. It was one of the drawbacks of owning a serious performance vehicle like his Acura NSX.

The Mercedes pulled alongside and slowed, matching speeds. Dar glanced left and could see his own face, sunglasses and all, reflected in the dark window of the big German car.

The instincts of two decades earlier took over and Dar ducked even as the black window rolled down. He glimpsed the barrel of something industrial and ugly and very full-automatic—an Uzi or a Mac-10—and then the firing began. His left window exploded glass onto his ear and hair, and bullets began tearing through the aluminum NSX.