Parishioner

“You didn’t have to come, man. You look like you really are sick.”

Johnson forced a smile and said, “Looks can be deceiving.”

“There’s not a bone of deceit in your entire body,” Ecks said.

The car had not moved.

“No,” Winter agreed, “but you know I got this phone call.”

“From who?” Ecks asked. He wasn’t worried, but if the call had come from the police he might never see his apartment or run his paper route again. He might even have to go into self-imposed exile from Father Frank’s church.

He wouldn’t be the first.

“Cindy,” Win said.

“The girl that dropped you?”

“Uh-huh. Where you wanna go?”

“Home.”

Winter glanced over his left shoulder and eased out into the street, headed south. Approaching Wilshire he put on the left blinker.

They had made it all the way to La Brea before Ecks asked, “So what does Cindy have to do with you coming to pick me up?”

“She said that Braxton was a dog and he was still seein’ that Laurel chick on the side.”

“Okay.”

“She said that she realized that she shouldn’t have left me, that I was good to her and she was a fool.”

“Then why aren’t you with her instead of me?” Ecks asked. He appreciated Winter’s gesture of friendship and more-he was happy for the distraction from the murder investigation and the sudden turmoil in his life.

“Did I tell you what Cindy looked like?”

“Just about her kisses and wiggles and how you could talk all night.” This gave Ecks a notion. “With all that it didn’t seem to matter too much how she looked.”

“When I was in high school the girls didn’t like me too much,” Winter said. “I never was too big and I got tongue-tied real easy. Even today if a girl smiles at me I’m liable to blush.

“So when Cindy come up I didn’t know what to do. Her face is gorgeous and she got the body of a Playboy model. You know-high breasted and a tight butt like a ripe apple. I know I’m not supposed to look at women like that but it’s hard, you know.”

“I certainly do,” Ecks said.

“Anyway … Cindy said that she wanted me to forgive her and get together tonight.”

“And?”

“I said no.”

“You said which?”

“No.”

“Wow. No?”

Winter smiled, and Ecks wondered why his parents hadn’t named him for a warmer season, or maybe a summer month.

“I just said no. She asked me why and I said that I had some things on my mind. I was sorry about her boyfriend but that didn’t have anything to do with me. She asked if maybe I’d call her sometime. I said maybe. And you know what, Ecks?”

“What’s that, Win?”

“I actually didn’t care about that girl no more. And that was a real change for me. There had not been one solitary moment in my life up until that moment that I wouldn’t have given my left nut just to be seen on the street with a girl like that. I could’a had cancer and I’d still be at her door with chocolates and condoms. Shit. You know I hung up that phone and said to myself, ‘Winter Johnson, something has changed in you.’ ”

They were still headed east, getting closer to Flower Street.

“So?” Ecks said to continue the conversation.

“So what?”

“What does any of that have to do with you coming to get me when the last time we were together I killed one man, almost killed another, and brought you down into a graveyard of dead children, men, and women?”

Winter winced and then said, “You from back east, right, Ecks?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m a California boy, born and raised. We all New Age and cuttin’-edge around here. I know that if I wake one day and the world is different I got to pay attention. If I could say no to Cindy Simpson and not even care-well, that’s better than a PhD from UCLA. You put me through hell, Ecks, but I come out the other side. You had to fight them men, and it’s obvious you didn’t put them people in that vault. That was truly horrible down there, but I saw it and I survived. And when Cindy called me I told her, ‘No, baby, I’m a man now.’ ”

Winter grinned and Xavier Rule laughed.

“You a fool. That’s what you are,” Ecks said.

“Prob’ly so. I can’t deny that, brother. But you know, every day I woke up for the last seventeen years I was the same man lookin’ at me from the other side of the glass. And if you ain’t changed then you ain’t lived. That’s all there is to it.”

The laugh dried up and died in Xavier’s chest. His friend’s silly words seemed to anchor themselves somewhere between his former life and the carrot of salvation that Father Frank and his congregation offered.

“What’s wrong, Ecks?”

“What you mean, Win?”

“You look like somebody just kicked you in the teeth.”

“I was just thinking about what you said.”

“And we parked out in front of your place,” Winter added to underscore his meaning.

“Oh.”

On the way up the stairs Xavier thought about the broad arc of his life, though he might not have put it in those words. He thought about how he had always been angry just below the surface, about wanting to change when confronted by Frank in that dark bar on Skid Row.

He had tried his best to become a new man. It took Frank and an entire congregation to put him on the path he now followed. But he had never done anything as brave and as singular as what Winter Johnson had accomplished almost solely on his own.

Up until then Xavier had still thought that his strength and single-mindedness were what made him special. Now he wondered whether it was these same qualities holding him back.

She was leaning against his front door doing nothing-not reading or looking at her smartphone-she didn’t even seem to be thinking. She wasn’t doing a thing, just standing there staring at the blank wall opposite her.

“Ms. Richards,” Ecks said.

“Elizabeth,” she said.

“Say what?”

“That’s what my father wanted to call me. My mother said that he lost the privilege when he abandoned us.”

“Why?” Ecks asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did he leave?”

“That’s a cruel question.”

“Maybe,” he said, taking the front door key from his pocket, “maybe not.”

“She died before I could think to ask her.”

Ecks pushed the door open and said, “Come on in.”

They sat across from each other at the yellow table. She had declined a drink. He’d poured himself a Mexican beer. She wore a pink dress festooned with big black outlines of squares. There were spaghetti straps up over her shoulders, pretending to be holding the dress up. Her pumps were white and sleek.

Benol Richards had dressed for this encounter. She was sexy and vulnerable, looking younger than her years and wise beyond Ecks’s ken.

“What can I do for you?” Ecks was saying.

She pursed her lips, considering a different meaning to the same words.

She smiled.

“Come on now, girl,” he said. “We way beyond all that.”

“Never,” she said.

He felt a flutter in his chest. It was part enchantment, part fear. This sudden feeling put him back in the stairwell, where he was climbing, climbing, and at the same time, with similar strain, questioning the value of his vaunted manhood.

He felt his nostrils flare.

Benol’s smile broadened.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Richards?”

“I said you could call me Bennie.”

Xavier laced his fingers and put his elbows on the table as Detective Tourneau had before him. He perched his chin in the soft web of skin between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand and looked hard at his guest.

“You know you don’t have to be so serious all the time, Mr. Noland,” she said lightly. “A woman sits across from you in a summer dress and smiles. That’s nice, right?”

“You and me,” Xavier said, “we been through the back door of the shit house enough times to know what it’s like.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She was still smiling.

“That air freshener don’t take the place of good plumbing.”

Her smile vanished and was replaced with something like controlled anger. She considered things. In her eyes and shoulders Xavier could see her standing up and walking out, slapping his face, spitting on the pitted linoleum floor.

Her left nostril raised in a sneer.

“I got a lead on Brayton,” she said.

“You did?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Twenty-three years is a long time. How’d you even know where to look?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You asked me all those questions and I told you about Beatrix Darvonia, Brayton’s old girlfriend. After thinking about it for a while I realized that she wasn’t really all that old. I mean, I was a kid and she was maybe thirty-five, forty. So I looked her up and found her number. She was still living in the same house.”

“And you went there?”

“Of course not. I couldn’t be sure that the police hadn’t interviewed her after what happened.”

“You called?”

“I told her that I was a secretary for a lawyer and that Brayton had been named in an uncle’s will.”

“Did she say anything about the police?”

“No. She said that the last thing she heard was that he changed his name to Robert Welcher and bought part interest in a restaurant-bar called Temple Pie. It’s down in Venice.”

“Like apple pie?”

“Yes. I looked up the address and wrote it down.” She took a slip of paper from her purse and placed it on the table.

“Did you go there?”

“No. I mean, I thought about it, but since you said you’d help I thought it would be better if a man went to talk with him.”

“Temple Pie?”

“Yes.”

“I went to see that woman you told me about-Sedra.” It was Ecks’s turn to be provocative.

“What did she tell you? Did you find out where the boys went?”

“She tried to kill me.”

“She must be near eighty. How could she even fire a gun?”

“Poisoned drink and a baseball bat.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see the bump on your head. Obviously she didn’t succeed. Did you find the boys?”

“No.”

“We should go talk to her again. She knows what she did with them.”

“Why?” Xavier asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you need to know?”

Benol shifted in her chair. There was heat to the movement.

“Two decades late and a million dollars short but I have to do what’s right,” she said. “I ripped those boys from their families. I have to try to bring them back together.”

Her sincerity was as perfect as her dress.

Xavier was back in the stairwell of his mind, reeling as if there were a hundred floors above him … and a thousand below.

“She’s dead,” he said.

“What? How?”

“She got me close enough to Death so I could tell you what his breath smells like. I barely got away from her, and by the time I got back there she was dead.”

Real grief showed itself in Benol’s face.

“Dead?” she said.

“Completely.”

“That’s terrible. It wasn’t because of you, was it?”

“She was an evil woman and got what she gave, that’s all.”

“I’m so sorry for her,” Benol said, turning her head as she spoke. She was looking out of the window into the alley. “I feel like all of it is my fault.”

There it was, the chance for him to comfort her. He could have spoken kind words or even knelt down next to her chair, putting an arm around her shoulder. Then maybe a kiss and a hug, a heartfelt murmur of, It’s okay.

“If they knock you down,” he said instead, “you just got to pick yourself up or get kicked in the head.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she murmured with just the right amount of reserve.

“Got to,” Xavier said as he rose from his chair. “You drivin’?”

Benol shook her head and looked up at him, confusion blending in with the sorrow.

“You better go home, girl. You want me to call you a car?”

“I don’t know if I can be alone,” she said.

“Do you know anybody? Someone you can stay with?”

“Can’t I stay here for a while?”

“I have to look for your lost boys, Ms. Richards. No time to hold hands or rest.”

Benol took in a deep breath and then exhaled. She did this again and smiled.

“I understand,” she said. “Do you have a driver you use?”

“A service. They’re right down the block. If you go downstairs they’ll be there in just a bit.”

She stood too and held out a hand.

When he took this offering she said, “You’re very kind, Mr. Noland. Very kind.”

Another opportunity for a kiss … missed.

When Benol was out the door Ecks called Winter and explained the situation.

“Take her where she wants,” Rule told his friend. “Don’t let on that you know me.”

“Okay, Ecks.”

“I don’t think that there’ll be any trouble, but don’t get out of the car. I mean, if she asks you to come in or anything you tell her that you got another pickup.”

“Got it.”

“You sure now?”

“Oh, yeah, man. Dead sure.”

“Hello?” she said, answering the phone after the third ring.

“Benicia?”

“Yes?”

“This is Egbert Noland, the man you gave your number to at the restaurant this morning.”

“Oh. You called.”

“You surprised?”

“Kind of. You know I … I never really do things like that. I mean … give my number to men I don’t know.”

“Well,” he said softly, “I’m glad you broke the rule this time. I wanted to ask you for your number but it didn’t seem right. I try not to make people feel uncomfortable.”

“You were sweet. People usually look right through those that serve them.”

“Anyway,” he said, wondering a little at the structure of her sentence, “I know this is a little awkward, but I’m going to this restaurant, Temple Pie, over in Venice this evening and I thought you might want to get a drink or maybe something to eat. I mean … we could meet down there so it wouldn’t have to seem like it was a date or anything.”

In the silence of her thought Xavier wondered about his motives.

He’s an intelligent child but he doesn’t use his mind with purpose, Miss Logan had said to his mother at the sixth-grade parent-teacher conference. He does things by sense or instinct. And even though he’s right often enough, he’ll never progress unless he begins to wonder why.

“It’s the place over on Lincoln?” Benicia asked. She was using her phone or a computer to look it up.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s it.”

“I guess we could meet,” she said. “I haven’t planned dinner yet. What time?”

“Seven thirty?”

“Um …” She hummed, one last chance to say no … “Okay.”

“That’s great. I’ll see you then, Miss Torres,” he said.

“See you then, Mr. Noland.”

Xavier Rule sat down at his yellow table, exhausted as if he had actually been walking up stairs for hours on end. He didn’t trust Benol, but Frank was the one who asked him to do this job. He was no closer to finding the lost boys than he had been sitting in the pews and seeing Benol for the first time-at a distance. His notion of manhood had been put into question by the shy and skittish Winter Johnson.

And he had killed a man without hesitation.

Killed a man.

For the first time in his life Ecks felt the world of his mind and body come to a halt, a complete stop. The light brown man he slaughtered was like a wall suddenly erected in an aimless path. Xavier didn’t even know the corpse’s name or origins. He had no feeling toward him or satisfaction at his passing.

This, he knew, was what was wrong. No one should be able to kill without feeling. And so he looked into himself for the emotion that allowed him to take the life of the nameless gunsel and so many others. But his memories and even emotions were just like old dry pages in a book written in a foreign tongue. There were no illustrations, no familiar lettering. Like Sedra’s obsessive red journal, his life was gibberish.

But even this thought failed to raise passion in Xavier’s breast. It was as if his soul were captured in a feline’s body, imbued with instincts that had no reference to guilt.

He was guilty. He knew this and it tormented him, but not from the inside, not where it counted.

His cell phone played Monk.

Xavier slapped his hands together and then slapped his own face.

The phone kept playing.

He took the little receiver from his jacket pocket and saw that it was one of the phones that Clyde Pewtersworth used.

“Hello.”

“You sound odd, Brother Ecks.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I got the journal decoded.”

“The whole thing?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Even for you that’s a stretch, man.”

“Not really. I used the key you gave me and then the characters she wrote. I took a dozen variations of each character and read them into Charlie Mothers’s decoding program. Then I scanned the journal into the system with Sister Hope’s help and now the whole thing is translated into English.”

“How many pages?”

“Eighty-two.”

“Dates?”

“That’s what separates the entries.”

“Put it in an attachment and send it to me.”

“You got it, Brother Ecks. Be there in less than two minutes.”

“And, Clyde,” Ecks said quickly, before the church operator could hang up.

“What?”

“Thank you, man.”

“Oh. Sure. You’re welcome.”

Xavier looked up Robert Welcher in his online directory but found nothing. He also looked up Beatrix Darvonia under various spellings. To his surprise he found the number.

“Hello?” a woman’s pleasant voice answered.

“Ms. Darvonia?”

“Yes?”

“This is Randolph Drake from Winston, Naybob, and Goines. We’re representing the estate of Laura Simmons, born Laura Welch.”

“Does this have to do with Brayton’s inheritance …?”

Ecks went through with the charade of the interview. He got the name Welcher, as Benol had done. He was surprised that Benol had not lied to him. In his experience, at least up until the time he met Father Frank, almost everybody lied as a matter of course.

The text attachment that Clyde sent was a dense block of lettering with no spaces at all. Ecks scrolled through the document until he finally came upon the right month and year. From there he scrutinized the lines more carefully until coming to April 27, 1988. On that date Sedra Landcombe had penned a solitary entry:

Three baby boys. All blond. All blue eyed. The chubby one goes to the Marcuses for $31,500. The happy one discounted to the Lehmans for $28,000. And the one with the dimples to Verify for $35,000. Adoption papers acquired for the legitimate adoptions.

Xavier felt a cramp in his left cheek and realized that he was grimacing. While rubbing the muscles at the hinge of his jaw with one hand he used the thumb of the other to dial a number. He pressed send and waited. There was no ring, no sound at all. After maybe twelve seconds the silent call was answered.

“Brother Ecks?”

“Frank.”

“Something wrong?”

“I need to use church resources and we haven’t talked about that. I mean, I asked Clyde to put Cylla on notice in case I get popped, but now I’m going to need real labor.”

“Whatever you need, brother,” Frank said. “How’s my car?”

“In a parking garage. It’s the structure on the east side of the street three blocks north of my apartment. In the Jiffy parking lot. Ticket is in the driver’s-side sun visor, keys under the passenger’s-side carpet.”

“What do you need, Brother Ecks?”

The Parishioner gave his requests and then repeated them. Frank said he’d see to their execution.

“I’ll send someone for the car,” the minister said. “Call me if you want anything else-anytime.”

Temple Pie was a small bar that served food as an afterthought. It had six tables and eighteen bar stools, most of the clientele was either on a stool or standing near enough to place their drinks on the broad mahogany bar.

Ecks arrived exactly on time but Benicia was already sitting at a table. She wore an orange sundress and black-and-yellow zebra-striped pumps. There was a glass goblet of white wine, set down without a coaster, in front of her.

Benicia was the only person sitting in the dining area of the establishment. Ecks figured that a chair meant you had to buy food. And the young crowd was in too much of a hurry to waste time with menus, knives, and forks.

“Hi,” he said, pulling up the dark walnut chair opposite the off-duty waitress.

“Hi.” She smiled, expressing only a hint of uncertainty.

They shared a moment of silence.

“Kind of like a one-eyed date,” he said.

The wall behind the woman had a couple dozen photographs in thin black frames, behind real glass. There were pictures of movie stars and others enjoying the ambience of the dive.

“One-eyed?” she asked.

“Well,” Ecks offered, “it’s not really a blind date because we set it up ourselves. But it’s not like we know anything about each other either.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t a date?” she said half-playfully.

“Are you going to eat?” a man asked. It was their waiter. He wore black slacks and a red shirt open at the throat and begging for a tie.

“I am,” Ecks said. “Can I see the menu?”

“It’s on the chalkboard on the wall,” the thirty-something, taciturn white man said. His hair was thinning and with it his patience for service.

Xavier turned his attention to the wall again. He perused the photographs while pretending to read the menu. One particular shot held his attention.

But instead of commenting he turned to his date. “You see anything you like?”

“The Caesar salad looks good,” Benicia said. “Can I have that without the anchovies?”

Ecks glanced at the waiter. The man in red and black grimaced and moved his head to show he understood.

“Isn’t that Robert Welcher?” Ecks asked then.

“Who?”

“That man,” Ecks said, gesturing toward a frame with only one subject: a man wearing a white jacket with salt-and-pepper hair, except for the forelock-which was all white, just the way Benol had said it was.

“No. That’s, um, I think it’s Sam Sprain. He’s one of the owners. At least, he was.”

“He sold out?”

“Something like that. He comes in now and again. Lives around here, I think.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. What would you like to eat, sir?”

“Cheeseburger looks good. You say that’s Sprain like an ankle sprain?”

“I never had to write it down. You want fries or salad?”

“Both.”

“It only comes with one.”

“So charge me extra.”

The waiter showed his irritation with an unconscious twitch of his nose and then went away to place their order. A man at the bar was trying to balance a beer stein on his bald head.

“I bet this place gets loud later on,” Ecks said to Benicia.

“That was very smooth,” she said.

“You like the way I order food?”

“Are you a policeman?”

“Why would you ask that?” Xavier said.

“My father was a cop in Rio,” she said. “A detective. He used to take me with him sometimes, to talk to people. It was against the rules, but he wasn’t much for rules.”

“I thought that’s what separated policemen from crooks, the rules.”

“No.”

“No? How’s that?”

“It’s the same reason that God made snakes the way they are.”

“Which is?” Ecks found himself having unexpected fun.

“When the rat goes down into his hole the snake is designed to go after. He makes his body into the crooked road the rat travels.”

“Sounds worse than the rat.”

“It is-if you’re a rat.”

“Your father still a cop?”

“He got shot,” she said, shaking her head solemnly.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

“Does that have something to do with snakes too?”

“He was involved in a shoot-out. He killed four bank robbers and got shot four times. He’s a superstitious man and thought the parity meant something. So he retired and came up here to live with his sister’s family.”

“And your mother?”

“She died when my brother and I were very small.”

The food came and the bar got rowdy, as predicted. Ecks and Benicia ate and laughed and had to raise their voices to be heard above the din but didn’t seem to care.

At one point he asked her, “How does an immigrant from Brazil know the word parity?”

“If she studies chemistry at UCLA she has to.”

Two men started shouting at each other a little after nine. It seemed as if they were about to come to blows. The bouncer, a big black man, took them by their arms and shoved them out the door.

“You didn’t seem bothered about the fight,” Ecks said to Benicia after the tableau was over.

“They were just posturing,” she said.

“You know, I’m having a really nice time with you, girl.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am. I mean, you’re nice and everything, but I’m not the kind of guy that usually has a nice time.”

“Why not?”

“Where I come from there’s not a lot of leeway. You’re always looking up ahead to see what’s coming next.”

“Hard life,” she said. Xavier couldn’t tell whether there was sympathy or a sneer behind the words.

“Just life.”

“And what’s different tonight?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I think maybe … maybe it’s just that time.”

“Time for what?”

“I’m gonna go up to the bar and settle our bill,” Xavier said. He stood up.

“Does that mean you’re not going to answer my question?” Benicia’s eyes actually glittered with mirth.

“Oh, no, no. I’m going to answer it, all right. But not tonight. Tonight I’m going to walk you to your car and see you off safely. Then, in a day or two, I’m going to call you and ask you on a full date with two eyes and everything. Then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know-mostly.”

“Mostly?”

They kissed with moderate heat next to her red Saab. She touched his chest and looked into his eyes, saying silently that he was welcome to follow her home if he wanted.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said.

She smiled and got into her car.

He watched her taillights until they had blended in with the traffic around them and then turned his attention to his cell phone.

Information had Sam Sprain living on 6 Marietta Circle. MapQuest told him that the address was walking distance from the restaurant-bar. After finding the quarry, Ecks turned his phone off.

Number six was a small house hemmed in by two nonresidential buildings. In the dim light, colors were not able to reach their full potential. It stood high behind a wire fence and had white and possibly red flowers cascading from the elevated porch. The house was either yellow or white and definitely looked like a woman’s domicile. There was a light on, on the second floor of the two-story structure, and also weak porch light glittering above the front door. The only access to the circle was through Marietta Alley. Xavier stood in the shadows of the mouth of the alley watching and waiting-for what he was not sure.

There was no life in the cul-de-sac. No music playing or dutiful husbands taking out the trash. There were seven houses and the two buildings that flanked Sprain’s place. It wasn’t like New York, where life was always spilling out of doors and windows into the street.

But Xavier didn’t mind. He was wondering about the answer to Benicia’s question. Why did he suddenly feel something about someone? It wasn’t love or lust, sex or the desire to make babies. It wasn’t even a deep connection. No. He had come to an understanding about himself and the blockade of his emotional life had fallen unexpectedly without fanfare, like an explosion in outer space. When he looked up that morning Benicia was standing there. Kismet.

He waited in shadow for long minutes, thinking about his heartbeat and the last time he remembered feeling that physical palpitation-that is, when he wasn’t running for his life. It was indicative of a transition from invulnerability to something mortal and frail: like Superman under the spell of one of the more exotic Kryptonites-but with weakness also came the unexpected feeling of euphoria.

When he pulled open the gate to the wire fence it gave off a weak metallic whine. A dog in one of the houses started barking angrily. Xavier thought that the canine waited all day to hear that particular sound. It was the squeak of danger and he would warn the world.

The front door was ajar.

Xavier pressed the doorbell with the knuckle joint of his index finger; it sounded and the dog doubled the ferocity of its warning.

No answer but the dog.

He pressed the bell again. There were three chimes: short, long, short. Almost a tune.

Xavier waited a moment more, donned a thin pair of the medical gloves he’d appropriated at the hospital, and pushed the door inward. Even then Ecks remained cautious. He realized that the man standing at the door was not the new man in his mind. He was still the tough-minded gangster from the old neighborhood when it came to breaking and entering, smashing and beating, shooting and stabbing, wounding and killing. The new Ecks was something cradled in his mind: an infant who was not yet ready to come out into the world.

He closed the door and turned on a light. There was a jumbled living room on his right, a staircase to the left, and a small utility kitchen straight ahead. The rooms were so small that Ecks had the feeling of entering the cabin of a harbor tugboat.

The brocaded cushions of the pink-and-red sofa had been thrown to the floor. The matching chair had been turned over; it lay there with its gauze bottom torn out. China had shattered and the carpet was rolled up and now slumped into a corner, bent over and teetering like an unconscious drunk.

And there was still the light up above.

Ecks took a moment to consider leaving. He imagined himself walking down the stairs and into the circle, through the alley and back to his Edsel. Oddly the pink-green-and-chrome classic made him wonder whether Frank’s car was still in the lot. This tangent told the Parishioner that it was not yet time to leave.

The second floor was divided into two rooms. On the right was a bedroom and to the left a bathroom that seemed too large for the place.

The mattress of the bed had been thrown off so that it teetered over the side of the box spring. All the drawers of the walnut bureau had been pulled out and dumped on the pine floor. The freestanding closet door was ripped off its hinges. Clothes were scattered everywhere. A bone shoe lay on its side at the edge of the slumped-over mattress, the sole was worn and pitted.

The large bathroom didn’t even have a medicine cabinet. Nothing was out of place, because there was nothing to move. Ecks sat on the edge of the iron tub, waiting for inspiration.

The dog had stopped its barking. The only sound now was the steady drip from the bathtub spigot onto the greenish, corroded copper-collared drain.

Ecks considered calling Benicia. Her kiss had been soft and promising, the look in her eye and her hand on his chest undeniable. She would ask him over if called right now.

He knew that this thought was somehow inappropriate, that New Ecks should not be thinking about a woman he was interested in while searching through the wreck of a man’s life.

Where was the other shoe?

Lifting the mattress Ecks revealed the corpse. Brayton Richard Starmon Welch Welcher Robert Samuel Sprain lay on his side, a bullet through the right eye and another in his chest. He was wearing a charcoal suit and a light gray shirt. The orange-and-brown tie was knotted perfectly, even in death. There wasn’t much blood; no time to bleed.

Death had been kind to the kidnapper and thief. It had taken him quickly.

Half an hour later Ecks was ready to leave. There was no wallet left behind, not even any lint from the new suit pockets. The Parishioner almost left it at that when he decided to take off the man’s shoes. This revealed nothing, but once Ecks had gone that far he couldn’t turn back and so peeled off the corpse’s argyle socks. The right sock was empty and the left one too.

He left the shoeless, sockless cadaver with its pockets turned out. On the way back to his car he threw the gloves in a public trash can. Driving back to his home he tuned the radio to an oldies station that was playing an uninterrupted hour of comic songs from the fifties and sixties. He listened to “Alley Oop,” “Mr. Custer,” “Monster Mash,” “Tie Me Kangaroo Down,” “Lost in the Jungle,” and many others.

Back at home he turned the cell phone back on. There were four messages.

“Hey, Ecks,” Winter said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I took her to a hotel on Vine not too far from Hollywood Boulevard. It’s called the Regency Arms. Kind of run-down but not a dive or nuthin’. I charged her the company rate, thirty dollars, and she asked me if I had change for a hundred. I did and she gave me a dollar tip. A dollar tip. Can you believe that? Anyway, the only other thing was she got on her phone and called somebody. She said that she didn’t have anything for them yet but she was sure to know something in a few days.”

“Yo, Brother Ecks, Charlie Mothers here. Frank said that you need something and I got it. But you know I don’t trust the body electric as far as I can throw it. So come on down to the marina and we’ll talk.”

“It’s me,” the cop Soto said on the third message. “I took myself off the case for obvious reasons. You must know that by now. But I still got a finger in the pie. If you need me or I can do anything I guess that’s okay. I talked to Frank after we met at the church and he set me straight about what you’re up to. Sorry if I got carried away there. You know I’m trying to be here now like we always talk about. Sometimes I guess I get a little crazy.”

“Hi,” Benicia Torres said. “Um, I, I thought I might get you. I hope it isn’t too late. I had a really nice time and I wanted you to know that you should call. I want you to answer my question. Anyway … good-bye.”

There were two lovers walking down the alley, arm in arm. He stopped to kiss her. She wanted to keep moving but lingered long enough to keep his interest piqued. Then she pulled his encircling arm making him stagger on.

Xavier Rule watched them amble off. They were too far away for him even to know what race they were. All he knew was that there were two of them just like there were two of him sitting at that table.

He slept until eight in the morning, luxuriously late for the newspaper delivery profession. The sun didn’t actually shine in his window but there was a powerful solar radiance emanating through the glass from the urban desert outside.

Xavier felt the new man inside him surge up through his body. This made him smile.

While urinating he heard the Monk tune play on his cell phone. The fragment ended before he was through.

When he was finished he washed his hands in the sink, toweled them off, and then picked up the phone. He called the number that had called him.

There was a double-clicking sound and then, “That you, Ecks?”

“Yes, sir,” he said to George Ben, the hardware man.

“She left last night while I was asleep.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know exactly. I took her to the Pasta Place at seven and we talked and talked like BFFs. She told me all about the men her aunt made her whore for. I thought we were making a connection but then I started getting tired. I think the little minx might have drugged me. We walked home. I was leaning against her shoulder. I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t even know how I got into the bed. I must have really been out of it.”

“She take anything?”

“Not that I can tell. But you know I can hardly get up. I’m just calling to let you know.”

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No, no. I don’t need a doctor. I know the symptoms. They’ll pass in thirty-six hours. I figure you got to pay your dues sometimes.”

“I hear that, Mr. Ben. I hear that.”

There were many paths set out in front of Xavier Rule that morning: Benol at her hotel and Charlie Mothers on his yacht, the murderer of Brayton Starmon. And then there was the new man inside him: the man who felt unsure, who thought about life in a different way and had feelings about his actions, inactions, and the things that he thought.

The day was clear and Benicia’s kiss still a physical sensation on Ecks’s lips.

Xavier was smiling and disturbed, glad to be alive and afraid that his happiness might shorten the life he was just beginning to enjoy.

He picked up the cell phone and entered a number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Winter. What’s up, man?”

“Ecks. What time is it?”

“Not eight thirty yet.”

“Wow. Hey. I’m just wakin’ up, brother. What can I do you for?”

“Breakfast at the IHOP on Olympic in half an hour?”

“Add fifteen minutes to that and I’ll be there.”

Winter ordered chocolate-chip pancakes with caramel syrup and hot chocolate. Xavier asked for steak and eggs.

“How you doin’, Win?” Ecks asked when the waitress went off to give their order to the cooks.

“Every time the phone rings or there’s a sound anywhere near my door I start shakin’. I been eatin’ antacids like they was my mom’s famous pralines.”

“Sorry I brought you into it, man.”

“No need to be sorry, Ecks. No need. Because, you know, when everything is quiet and I’m not worried I realize over and over that this is what I always wanted.”

“What is?”

“I’m supposed to be livin’,” the chauffeur said, “not just drivin’ a car and payin’ the bills, hopin’ that some young girl will wanna take off her clothes with me. The things we do got to be important. I mean, standin’ on line and waitin’ your turn ain’t a life. Shit. You opened a door for me, man. And even though I’m scared one outta every three minutes, the rest of the time I feel like a man.”

When Winter nodded his entire torso bobbed. Ecks smiled at his friend.

“What?” Winter asked.

“I don’t know, Win. I been in houses like the one I took you to a hundred times. That’s the line I been standin’ on. I mugged my first crack dealer when I was twelve years old-busted that motherfucker’s head open like it was a pumpkin. I did terrible things, brother, and I never followed rule one.”

Winter sat back on his side of the red plastic booth, and the sixty-something waitress put their plates down in front of them.

“That shit is fucked-up, Ecks. I hear that. But you know, in a way you were doin’ all you could.”

“Maybe,” the dark gangster admitted. “But what I’m sayin’ is that it’s not manhood if there’s no man there.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I just do things, Win. Knife some dude get me mad, fuck a woman in her husband’s bed and then dare him to say somethin’ to me. But when I did shit like that I was an animal, not a man. It wasn’t brave. No, it wasn’t brave; I just couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t a man, because I wasn’t standin’ up for nuthin’.”

Winter squinted and stared at his friend. He took a bite of the sweet meal and shifted his head for a better look, not at what Ecks was saying, but at what he meant. He wanted to speak but could not find the words.

“It’s like this, Win,” Ecks said to ease this tension of silence. “When I’m scared I run. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t get scared too often. But I don’t think about my manhood when something big and scary shows up. You, on the other hand, see somethin’ scare you half to death and face it. And when it’s ovah and you might go to jail, you stand up and try to do what you think is right, even if what’s right might be dangerous.”

“So I’m the man?” Winter asked.

“Hallelujah.”

From IHOP Ecks got in his car and headed for the beach.

Charlie Mothers’s yacht was in the wealthiest part of the marina. It stood as high as a three-story building in the water and had tiers and windows like a house. A powerfully built, bald Asian man with an orange-and-yellow tattoo like a sun around his left eye guarded the gangplank. He looked dangerous but Xavier wasn’t worried. Death, he knew, would come up on him like an unwanted surprise party. He’d probably be smiling just before the knife went in.

“Yes, sir?” the guardian said softly.

“Egbert Noland for the man who lives here.”

The security man made eye contact with the Parishioner. He was trying to see whether he could stare Ecks down. When this failed his eyes searched Ecks’s hands and clothes, looking for weapons. He accepted that the visitor was dangerous and didn’t want to use the walkie-talkie if that meant he would be vulnerable to attack.

Xavier saw all this and shouted, “Hey, Mothers, I’m down here!”

The exhortation bothered the protector, but before he could express this dissatisfaction a man said, “Hey, Soon, send Brother Ecks up!”

There were two skinny women with huge breasts and in impossibly small bikinis sunning themselves in beach chairs on the upper deck of Charlie Mothers’s yacht; white girls with blond hair, red lips, and skinny legs that looked like they could crush walnuts the size of pillows.

“Ecks!” a man shouted.

He was at least a demigod. Six-six with bronze skin and yellow hair. His eyes were the color of the ocean, and the muscles beneath the skin of his bare chest and arms undulated like huge snakes under a satin sheet. This deified man strode easily from the pilot’s dais onto the upper deck.

He wore dark blue sweatpants cinched tight to his thirty-inch waist, and his smile belonged to a presidential hopeful: white and contagious.

They shook hands and Ecks allowed himself a mild smirk.

The women sat up, aware that their host-provider wasn’t always so friendly and inviting.

“Nerd boy,” Ecks said in greeting.

Charlie Mothers laughed loudly.

“Can’t fool you,” the blond titan said.

“You got what I need, man?”

“I have things that you don’t know you need yet,” Mothers said. “I have things you couldn’t even imagine.”

“I can imagine a razor across the naked eye.”

“Come on downstairs, Ecks. Let us see what we shall see before we’re blinded by an Andalusian dog.”

Two floors down in the floating mansion Mothers brought Ecks to a large, nearly refrigerated room filled with computers, screens, and keyboards. Charlie took a zippered sweatshirt from a wall hook and wrapped it around his naked torso.

“There’s a coat hanging on the door behind you,” the taller man offered.

“No, thanks,” Ecks said. He was never really bothered by intense cold or heat. For that matter he was generally unfazed by any kind of pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel these sensations: it was that they intruded only as nuisances in his mind.

Charlie pulled two rolling chairs up to an eighty-inch LCD screen, pressed a few buttons on a red keyboard that had no wires. This keyboard he placed on his lap.

Ecks sat down and the screen came to life. There appeared the photograph of a man, woman, and teenage boy. They were standing together in front of a big Victorian, under an ancient, dark green pine. It was a driveway built for many cars. The man and woman were both short and dumpy, clad in leisure wear. His gray hair was receding and her black tresses came out of a bottle applied in an upscale salon.

The boy was blue eyed, blond, and taciturn. He didn’t want to be in that photograph, under that tree, next to his parents, or on the same planet where any of those things existed. He was carrying a multicolored skateboard, wearing artfully torn jeans, and had on a pale blue dress shirt that was soiled with all the buttons undone.

The woman was sneering at her son’s appearance.

The man was smiling forcefully at the camera.

“Balford and Jeannine Marcus with their son, Henry,” Mothers said. “This picture was taken nine years ago. Since then Hank went to college, dropped out, opened a surf shop, and developed a taste for various white powders. Jeannine died of a congenital heart problem, and Balford moved to Maui with a girl who graduated from high school the year after his son.

“The boy is in AA and falls off the wagon each year in July. Smokes too much and according to his Facebook account finds a new girlfriend every August.”

Mothers hit a pink key and two new photographs took the place of the one. On the left side of the screen stood a tall and slender man next to a buxom woman who looked like she should be grinning but instead forced a frown. Both in their forties, they had the old-fashioned aesthetic to look dour for portraits. It was an older photograph, fifteen years or so, Xavier thought. On the other side was a newer picture of a young blue-eyed, crew-cut blond man in an orange jumpsuit. He was sitting on the other side of a bulletproof glass window. A California prison. San Quentin, if Xavier wasn’t mistaken.

“Lester Lehman murdered his parents for no apparent reason on an April afternoon at their home in Oxnard,” Charlie Mothers said. “He used a shotgun. Killed his sister and the housekeeper too. He’s about to get a second trial because certain facts brought up in the original hearing were illegally obtained. Cylla Pride’s firm is representing him.”

“No shit.”

“The law is the law,” Mothers intoned.

“You think these two are my boys?”

“They were both adopted in April ’eighty-eight. The same witness signed both papers-Sedra Landcombe.”

Ecks frowned and sat back in the office chair.

Mothers went on. “But that’s not the kicker.”

“No?”

“Not nearly,” the bronze man said with an unconscious goofy grin plastered across his face. “This Verify thing was a real poser. I finally found a data trail of false identity papers for underage children that led to a legal adoption agency named Libertas, Unitum, Veritas Incorporated, called LUV. This nonprofit corporation is one of many subgroups belonging to Wicker Enterprises. The legal major revenue stream for Wicker is a company that makes commercials for third-world television companies. But if you look closely you can see that there’s another business buried beneath the commercial company.”

Mothers hit a key and a group of photographs organized themselves into the general form of Picasso’s Guérnica. The images in this collage were even more disturbing than the antiwar original: young boys being buggered by fat tattooed men, girl children suffering triple penetration by men wearing dresses, a naked child praying while a man ejaculated over his face and hands. There were two dozen images, each more unsettling than the last.

“Verify’s films cost at least a thousand dollars per copy,” Mothers said. “They’re sold all around the world. Even I can’t locate the IP where the offers originate and the money is collected. It’s probably in some country that has an absolute monarch or dictator. They make double-digit millions.”

“What does this have to do with the third boy?” Ecks asked.

Mothers switched off the image and turned to his fellow congregant.

“On May third, 1988, LUV gave Leonard Oscar Phillips to Loretta and Manly Hopkins for adoption. Again, Sedra Landcombe signed the adoption papers. Over the years the Hopkinses have adopted nine children-every one of them a moneymaker for Wicker Enterprises.”

“That, um, that poster,” Ecks said. “Was it Wicker’s?”

“No.… What I mean to say is that I got the images from a secret Wicker website but I used an image system that uses various surrealist paintings for templates to present collections of images. Like it?”

“Where do the Hopkinses live?”

“In the hills of Santa Monica. They’ve made a lot of money over the years.”

Xavier considered the information presented by the computer geek in the demigod’s body.

“How many hours?” Ecks asked Charlie.

“How many hours what?”

“Do you work with your trainer?”

“I’m down to five a day, three days a week.”

“Does it help?”

“I haven’t used a computer to blow up a Chinese robot factory or kill some guy in an ICU for a long time.” Mothers’s smile was sickly hopeful.

“What do they call that?” Xavier asked. “What you do.”

“Techno-anarcho-terrorism. Tat-a-tat, tat-tat-tat, the ultimate virtual machine gun of the modern world. The battle cry of the downtrodden and disenfranchised. Man-machine against machine-men.”

“But now you funnel these desires into bodybuilding?”

Charlie nodded, looking much less like a deity.

“Pretty much,” the pumped-up hacker agreed.

“Not completely?”

“I want to get into the guts of systems and strip them bare. A hunger like that doesn’t go away. Sometimes I want it so bad that I start sweating.”

“But the exercise stops you,” Ecks said, “that and the bikini girls upstairs.”

“That and the fact that I know Frank would have me killed if I crossed the line.”

“Killed?”

“After the baptism your soul belongs to the church.”

“My soul?”

“Didn’t Frank ever tell you his theory that Earth is Eden for animals but hell for humanity?”

“Just the other day.”

“Didn’t he add that it’s a proving ground and we are here to prove it wrong?”

“He didn’t say that exactly.”

“Frank, as far as I can tell, is the devil,” Mothers said. “Not some evil being but the last chance for evil souls like you and me. He’s there either to usher you into redemption or to bury you underfoot.”

“Nobody ever told me about a baptism,” Ecks said.

“It’s a secret ceremony. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

“Then why are you?”

“Because, Ecks,” Mothers said, “because you’re special. All the anointed know it. Frank is … Frank is grooming you for something. He brings people into the fold now and then, but rarely does he go out recruiting, not for years now. When he brought you in we all knew to expect greatness.”

“Has Frank ever told you that he’d have you killed if you turned back to your old ways?”

“No. He didn’t have to.”

“You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you, nerd boy?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe it’s crazy to have faith in a higher power. I don’t know. All I can tell you is this-I was planning to put out a virus that would jam the controls of a hundred jumbo jets all at once, all over the world. Every one of them would have crashed in an urban setting. I had it planned down to the microsecond.

“I was nearing the end of the data distribution design when one Sunday morning I was grabbed in my own home and taken to Seabreeze City. I was brought to a sermon and I listened. I was made an initiate, as you are now, and then after three years I was given my first mission. After that I was baptized and now my life belongs to the church.”

Ecks wondered whether the new man in his heart had anything to do with the church of Father Frank. Did he feel the faith that Mothers did, or Iridia, or Captain Soto?

“Do you have all this information printed out for me?” Ecks asked Charlie.

“About the baptism?”

“About the boys.”

“Yeah … yeah.”

Charlie got up from his chair and went to a small shelf under a bank of computers somewhat larger than the regular desktops. There he retrieved a thick black folder and a thinner orange one. These he handed to Xavier.

“The orange one has the names of the kids and the people who bought them,” he said. “The black one has as much as I could get about Verify. It’s international and really, really corrupt. About twelve years ago there was a shakeup in the organization. After that it got much more difficult to define.”

“But it’s still child pornography?”

“Like a tobacco company,” Charlie said. “They stick to what they know.”

On the way back home Ecks found himself wondering about something he’d not considered before. It wasn’t an existentialist dilemma as he had studied in his Survey of Philosophy course online. He wasn’t searching for his identity but rather his purpose-what he was doing, not why. In church on Sundays he concentrated on what the words meant to him. Frank preached and people confessed in Expressions. They all hung together, trying to rid themselves of long lives filled with sharp knives and evil deeds.

But what happened after the end of the movie, when the bad man dropped his pistol and walked away from the intended victim? Where did he go? What was to become of him? Who was he then?

The Kokoran Building on Temple in La Puente was chrome and glass, overlooking a broad green park. There were no guards or even video cameras evident. The man sitting behind the reception desk in the broad, air-conditioned lobby looked to be a retiree who had taken this do-nothing job to supplement the rising cost of health insurance.

In essence it was the most banal, nonthreatening space Xavier had seen in a very long time. He sat in his car across the street from the boxlike nine-story structure and closed his eyes, trying to locate the reason his pulse had jumped and his forearms ached.

Finally he gave up this internal divination, reached under his seat, and pulled out a.38 pistol that was an exact duplicate of the gun that he’d discarded after killing the nameless Hispanic at Sedra Landcombe’s home. Pocketing the pistol, Xavier walked with slow steps across Temple and into the vast lobby guarded by the old man behind the oval green-glass reception desk.

“Can I help you, son?” the grizzled and graying white man said.

Xavier’s mind flashed back more than forty years. His mother had brought him to the Brownsville precinct to visit his father, who was awaiting arraignment. Xavier had been brought along with his younger brother and cousin because there was no one to take care of them, and Panther Rule was in jail for something called assault. Xavier’s mother, Pearl, brought them there to confer with his father about when the lawyer would come and what he would say.

Xavier was five and it was hard for him to bear the idea of his father in chains, his face bloodied, bruised, and swollen from the terrible beating the police had given him. He didn’t understand all the words that had been said, but he gleaned that Panther had attacked a white man in a grocery store who asked the question, “How can I help you, son?”

Xavier went to bed wondering about a simple sentence causing so much pain. The grocer was in the hospital and his father set to stand trial on charges that might send him to prison for years. All because of a question that Xavier had heard many times.

Standing there in that air-conditioned lobby, Xavier remembered the year that he spent silent because he thought that any innocent word he might say could call down a bloody beating.

Language is the great edifice of humanity, Father Frank had once lectured. Our words have thousands of meanings and histories longer than any nation, people, or tongue. Some of our utterances have come down from our animal ancestors and are older than the human race itself. Languages die and are reborn. They create our minds and transmit our thoughts down the long corridors of history. And so every word spoken is blessed and greater than the speaker and those who listen. Language is an avalanche of meaning and we, our minds, are tumbling stones babbling and muttering into existence the entire epoch of the divine.

“I’m looking for a man named Calvin Leigh,” Ecks said to the aged receptionist. “He works for Wicker Enterprises.”

“Do you know his extension?”

“Not really. I got his name from a friend. She needed me to ask him a question.”

“Why not call?” the old man asked.

“I’ll be happy to talk to him on the phone if you dial the number,” Xavier said, still wondering what his father might have done if the old man had called him son.

The semiretired receptionist stared at Xavier through watery brown eyes, weighing his next question.

“Who should I say is calling?” he said.

“Egbert Noland for Doris Milne, concerning Loretta and Manly Hopkins and their adopted children.”

“Say again?”

“I can write it down if you want.…”

The call was made and the introduction given. The old man waited a beat and then repeated the words that Ecks had written down for him. He waited a bit longer this time and then looked up at the man calling himself Egbert Noland.

“Mr. Leigh says to go right on up. He’s in nine-oh-nine on the ninth floor.”

If Ecks had been a superstitious man he might have consulted a numerology handbook before taking the elevator. Four-oh-four followed by nine-oh-nine might have meant something. But he just took the old man’s direction, walked to the lift, and pressed its rectangular chrome-coated button.

It was at the end of a long and wide hallway. The suite was behind double doors made from solid planks of white wood. The handles were brass and the ringer was an emerald glass button.

Ecks pressed the button, a click sounded, and he pushed the doors inward.

He walked in consciously keeping his hand away from the pistol in his pocket.

Behind a waist-high barrier of the same white wood the door was made from a big oak table stood in for a proper desk. Behind this table sat a voluptuous woman who was in her forties but had not yet given up the struggle for eternal youth. The dress she wore was tight and on a theme of peacock feathers. The fabric was silken and shimmery. From her earlobes hung fans made from strips of pink coral.

She had brown hair, brown eyes, and skin that gleamed from makeup that cost more than most receptionists made.

“May I help you?” she asked out of insincere courtesy.

“Calvin Leigh,” Ecks said.

“And what is your business with Mr. Leigh?”

“Private.”

The furrow of her eyes told Ecks that she wasn’t used to flippancy.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

The woman squared her shoulders. They were impressive shoulders, wide and with some muscle. Xavier smiled, wondering whether the woman might try to remove him physically.

He might enjoy that.

“Mr. Noland?” a man’s voice said.

He was Eck’s height and suggestive of the desert. He wore a sand-colored suit to go with his tan hair and sun-burnished skin. His eyes were faded amber orbs. The silk T-shirt he wore was sweatpants gray. He might have been a Western desert in a previous incarnation.

“Mr. Leigh?”

“It’s okay, Fannie,” the sandman said. “Mr. Noland called.”

Fannie’s contempt might have been for either man, possibly both. She turned her head in a dismissive gesture, lifting a single sheet of peacock blue paper from the table-desk.

“Come with me, Mr. Noland,” Leigh said.

Ecks followed the man, who was somewhere in his thirties, down a long aisle that ran at an angle bisecting a pen of desks separated by waist-high, movable walls.

There were people moving around the cubicles in this area: office workers in dress uniform, men and women going about repetitive tasks like bees or starlings, grass growing, or zombies in one of George Romero’s films.

They came to a dark green metal door. This portal seemed out of place. Everything else was lightly colored, with vapid personality and air-conditioned breath. But this metal door was almost medieval, unashamed of its darkness and opaque nature. Xavier thought that if he were a night watchman and alone on this floor he would set his chair next to that door for company and solace (though solace was not the word he imagined).

Calvin pushed the door open and ushered Ecks in.

If the door was an anomaly the office was completely unexpected. The walls of two sides, north and west, were all glass looking out over the unmanicured park. The workspace was wider than it was deep-but it was very deep. The ceiling was also transparent with the exception of three steel girders holding up the roof. The furniture was all plastic, mostly colorless, and transparent.

Leigh lowered into a glasslike chair behind what should have been a classic walnut desk that was instead made from see-through plastic. Ecks could see the files and papers, paper clips and condoms, even the half-pint of amber-colored liquor in the bottom drawer. There was nothing on top of the desk: no computer or desk lamp, blotter or pencil jar.

The emptiness of the desktop reminded Ecks of the clutter on Lou Baer-Bond’s desk. The thought of the detective set off a concatenation of suspicions that had been brewing in the back of the gangster’s mind.

“Have a seat, Mr. Noland.”

The guest chairs were festive: green, blue, and red plastic-see-through like almost everything else in the room.

Ecks chose a red chair to sit in.

“How can I help you?” the young businessman in the see-through office asked.

“Pops downstairs asked you my question.”

“Something about adopted children,” Leigh said with a bewildered look on his face. “I didn’t understand.”

“You the president here?” Ecks asked.

“Executive vice president in charge of operations.”

“And you let just any old fool talking gibberish up in your office?”

“I …” Leigh’s pale amber eyes examined Ecks closely. Then he asked, “Are you in the business?”

“How do you mean?”

“You seem to be … a very physical man. You come in here talking about Manly … just a natural leap.”

Ecks laced his fingers and put both hands on his lap.

“Leonard Oscar Phillips,” he said.

“Who’s that?”

“A child that Wicker Enterprises bought from Sedra Landcombe.”

If Leigh was an expressionless desert, there was a storm brewing somewhere in the atmosphere above his head.

“This is America, Mr. Noland. As an African-American you should know better than anyone that slavery was outlawed here.”

Ecks tried to think of some urbane reply that would keep the conversation going in order to stave off the thunderstorm. But banter did not come easily when he remembered the photographs revealed by Charlie Mothers’s reinterpretation of Guérnica.

“I have the time but not the patience to dance with you, Calvin,” Ecks said. “You understand?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“That would be a grievous mistake, sir.”

“Your mistake, Mr. Leigh, not mine. I have been engaged to find three of Ms. Landcombe’s human transactions. I don’t care about your buggering and molestations. But I will destroy you and bring this glass house down around you and your bosses’ ears. I’m not alone and I’m not green.”

Ecks got to his feet.

“And one more thing, Mr. Leigh … I don’t mind a little pain-yours or mine.” Ecks took a special card from his wallet. “Call this number and leave a message where I can find Lenny. Do that or call your lawyer and make sure that your will is up-to-date.”

Ecks tossed the card on the transparent desk and turned toward the metal door. He pushed it open and was met by a large ruddy man dressed in a gray suit that was more of an afterthought than actual business wear.

The man put up an arresting hand. There was strength in the gesture and a gun in Xavier’s pocket. The Parishioner quickly went through the options open to him:

The strongman intended to push Xavier back into the glass room. There he felt that he could subdue the smaller, older black man with a few well-placed blows. He might have been wrong but there was Calvin to consider. Leigh could have brass knuckles concealed in his pocket, or maybe even a pistol.

Ecks had a gun himself. He could have drawn it and ended the possibility of a contest-maybe. But guns had the sometimes unwanted tendency to increase the stakes. When faced with death some men surged forward instead of making the sensible decision. Men were made for war, and war was defined by both stupidity and casualty.

The last choice, a microsecond into Xavier’s arc of thought, was to make it a struggle right there, along the slanted aisle of cubicles. There was still a whole fight left in him from the aborted confrontation with Soto at the Seabreeze City church.

Time was up. The battering ram of a hand was six inches from Ecks’s chest.

He decided on a straight left, jerked his right shoulder back (hitting Calvin, who had sneaked up behind), and striking the beefy pink man square on the tip of his chin. Calvin fell to the floor behind Ecks. The big man dropped on his derriere like a child’s teddy bear. Ecks was able to take three steps before the big guy was up. Xavier couldn’t avoid the punch he felt coming up from behind, but he moved to the side, making it a glancing blow and putting him in position to return the favor.

The big man was four inches taller with a longer reach, so Ecks moved in close, hitting his opponent on the chin with his skull, and dug two vicious uppercuts to the gut. The response was the man pushing hard against both Ecks’s arms and throwing him two yards. Xavier was surprised to find himself on his back.

“Stomp him, Lon!” Calvin shouted, and suddenly a hard heel was bouncing off of Xavier’s forehead.

He had a hard head; that’s what his mother, father, teachers, girlfriends, wife, and friends had always said.

Ecks rolled to his left.

A woman office drone screamed and he imagined a zombie suddenly conscious of her fate.

Xavier was on his feet. He blocked three fast punches and then hit Lon three times-hard.

That was when the men fell at each other, throwing caution to the wind and fists into flesh.

There came more shouting and screams too. Ecks tasted blood and felt the impact of Lon’s fists. He didn’t mind the attack. Actually he enjoyed it.

Men and women stood at the periphery of the battle behind the false safety of waist-high walls. There was nothing short of a fire hose that could stop the fight-nothing but a three-punch combination that first stunned Lon and then laid him low.

The big white man went down on one knee, tried to rise, and then fell on his side. From there he rolled on his back and then rocked from side to side, trying to remember how to get up.

The bastionlike door to Calvin Leigh’s office was closed. The sandy man was nowhere in sight.

Xavier wiped the blood from his forehead and turned toward the exit.

Fannie was gone from her desk.

Nine floors below, the man who had called Xavier son was also missing from his post.

Xavier crossed the street and unlocked his car door. He got inside, returned the Afghani pistol to its hiding place under the seat; then, after some fumbling, he found the slot for the ignition key.

He was three blocks away, almost to the freeway entrance, when red lights flashed in the rearview mirror.

Xavier knew then that Lon’s punches had had an effect, because he didn’t know what to do. Should he stop or drive on? Were the red lights for him? Maybe there was someone up ahead who had been speeding.

Lon could hit.

Thinking hard, Ecks came up with a plan. He would pull to the curb and if the police passed him he’d know that they were after someone else. He nodded to himself and flicked on the blinker, pulled to the side of the road, and was only mildly surprised when the unmarked black sedan pulled up behind him.

Was the pistol still in his pocket? No? Yes?

There was something familiar about the trench coat-wearing man who came up to the driver’s side and rapped on the glass.

Ecks rolled down his window and said, “Hello.”

“You’re bleeding,” Detective Andre Tourneau replied.

In the interrogation room, holding a cold pack to his forehead, Ecks wondered what the weather was like in New York. It was spring, so there would be plenty of light, though it probably wasn’t very warm yet. Swan would be gone. They had both been involved in the shoot-out with the East Harlem thugs.

Ecks wondered whether even Rikers could protect him from retribution.

His thoughts drifted awhile after that.

He remembered the first day he got to Los Angeles: He went down to the beach and walked for miles in bare feet and a light gold suit. He’d met a chubby white woman sunning herself on a striped blanket.…

Light from the doorway caused his head to ache and the vision of sex darted away.

Detective Andre Tourneau seated himself across from Ecks.

“What time is it?” Xavier asked.

“A little after eight.”

“I wasn’t in your jurisdiction when you grabbed me, was I?”

“How did your lawyer know you were here?”

“It’s still the same day, right?”

Tourneau smiled.

Ecks sat back and peered into the policeman’s green eyes.

“The lawyer is Cylla Pride,” Tourneau said. “She is very expensive.”

Xavier had the sudden urge to confess. It wasn’t the feeling of guilt but a kinship with the displaced policeman. He liked the man. He needed a friend.

As hard as Lon hit he couldn’t knock the New Xavier out.

But change was neither here nor there when the Old Xavier’s fingerprints were now being checked in the system.

“Why you warn me about a lawyer, Detective Tourneau? And how did you find me outside your jurisdiction?”

“Ipio.”

“Say what?”

“I-P-I-O. The Interpolice Information Organization.”

“Like the FBI?”

“Southern California is made up of dozens of unconnected municipalities.” The Frenchman managed the mouthful of syllables almost perfectly. “Lately most of the police departments have joined a local computer system where we can monitor active cases across city lines.”

“And you’re monitoring me?”

“Just so.”

“Why?”

“What were you doing at Wicker Enterprises?”

The question was like a pail of cold water dumped on his head. Suddenly Ecks was alert and conscious. His recovery from the heavy blows absorbed in the fight with Lon was, for all intents and purposes, complete. It was after eight. He’d been in custody for hours. Cylla Pride was nearby trying to get him out. Some computer in New York was comparing Xavier Rule’s fingerprints to Egbert Noland’s.

Or was it? There was no mention of extradition. Was there a computer down somewhere back east?

“How’s the other guy?” Ecks asked.

Tourneau frowned. “He’s in the hospital but not bad.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“What were you doing at Wicker Enterprises?”

Ecks put down the cold pack. It was tepid by then anyway. He looked past the Frenchman’s eyes into the question. He had an answer but it was possibly the wrong one.

“Listen, Andre,” Ecks said. “I’d really like to tell you, but I can’t right now.”

“Why not?”

“Let me talk to Cylla.”

“There were the bones of nine bodies in Sedra Landcombe’s cellar,” the cop said. “Six of them were infants. Wicker Enterprises is suspected of trafficking in child pornography.”

“My lawyer.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Let me talk to Cylla and I’ll get back to you.”

Two blocks from the downtown precinct Cylla Pride, a broad and blunt-faced white woman, sat across a coffee shop booth from Ecks. Her features were at odds with the cut of her elegant, dark maroon pantsuit.

“Why’d they let me go?”

“No one pressed charges. They really had no reason to bring you in.”

“But they took my fingerprints.”

“Charlie Mothers.”

It took a moment for this utterance to make sense. Charlie Mothers the self-styled and rehabilitated computer supervillain.

“You kiddin’ me.”

“Computers are law enforcement’s greatest strength,” she said. “It stands to reason that they would also be its greatest weakness.”

“He could do all that?”

“He’s probably the most dangerous man in our congregation.”

“Not the most dangerous person?”

“Maybe next to me.”

Cylla had her nose broken somewhere along the way. That wasn’t so surprising. People of the nameless church had lived hard lives. What did amaze Ecks was that she hadn’t had corrective surgery. She had big hands and small feet, flat brown eyes and hair that had not yet decided to be gray. Her skin was white and lusterless. In different clothes she could have been mistaken for a nineteenth-century French laundress.

“So I don’t have to run?” Ecks asked.

“They sent out the request and got no answers. So unless you’ve been moonlighting there’s nothing to worry about.”

Xavier Rule nodded and wondered about questions he couldn’t articulate.

“Do you need a ride back to your car?” Pride asked.

“No. Thank you, though. How did you know I was in there?”

“Brother Soto called Frank,” she said. “Can I do anything else for you?”

“Charlie told me that your firm is representing Lester Lehman.”

“Yes, we are. It’s not my case. I wouldn’t represent a mad dog like that.”

“Who’s paying for it?”

“A man named Edwards. He’s done everything by mail, so no one knows him. In the letter he said something about justice being done. Do you need to know more?”

“No. Probably not. But you could tell me something.”

“What’s that?”

“Do we belong to a cult?”

Xavier’s question caught the lawyer by surprise.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I seem to be acting on pure faith. I mean, I really don’t know what I’m doing, or why.”

Cylla dropped her professional attitude and sat back in the red metal chair. She draped her right arm over the backrest like a cross-country trucker who’d just hit her stride on the highway.

She smiled in a parental way.

“I got ten years on you, Ecks,” she said. “I did pretty good on my own. Got an Ivy League degree and ran a string of girls up and down the East Coast. I thought I had seen it all and figured it out by the time I was forty. Then one day I woke up thinking about all the things I’d done. People and crimes crowded in around me and I knew all of a sudden that I was just a tool, like a shotgun or a butcher’s knife.

“All that was before I met Frank. When I came to the church I was already drifting. They just took me in.”

“So you’re saying, ‘Yes, it is a cult,’ ” Xavier said.

“I’m saying that you won’t find a more like-minded congregation on the face of this earth.”

Xavier realized that he was nodding, not exactly in agreement but with understanding. He liked Cylla and knew that she spoke her own truth.

Ecks stayed after Cylla had gone. When he went to the toilet he saw the battered face in the mirror. The image reminded him of Panther Rule when he was in the police station for beating a man over a word.

Thirty-seven minutes later Winter showed up at the coffee shop.

“Ecks.”

“Have a seat, Win. You hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, that’s because I drive up to sixteen hours a day but don’t ever eat in the car. That’s my rule.”

“Why’s that?”

“I knew this dude once would eat them fancy bagged cookies in his ride. He et ’em day and night-and then one day he got roaches.”

“In his car?”

“Oh, yeah. Client was sittin’ in the back seat lookin’ over some business papers and one’a them light brown ones skittered right across the page.”

“Damn. What happened?”

“They fired the driver. But you know that’s not why I don’t eat in the car. Naw, man. I just don’t even wanna think that something I do attracts vermin.”

A single piano note sounded.

Ecks remembered the bugs that he’d seen on dead men and women all over the city of New York. This thought reminded him of Cylla’s words. Maybe she was right. Maybe he belonged in a primal tribe of ex-cannibals that had learned to control their appetites.

“… as it is I have my car fumigated every six months,” Winter was saying.

Ecks was surprised that he’d drifted off. He’d need a good night’s sleep before the swelling inside his head went down.

“What you need, brother?” Winter asked.

“A ride to my car.”

On the drive over Winter and Ecks talked about ice hockey. Winter loved the game.

“There’s not two black players to rub together on any ice hockey team,” Ecks said when Winter made his claim.

The single piano note chimed for the fifth time.

“Don’t matter to me, man. I’m not no racist. I just love the ice.”

A mile from the office building that housed Wicker Enterprises, driving his beloved Edsel, Ecks finally called the automated answering service on his phone.

“You’re looking for Lenny O,” Fannie, the broad-shouldered receptionist from Wicker Enterprises, said on the answering service. “He works for Zebra Film-Arts. They do business in a warehouse in Burbank.”

“Thank you,” Ecks said to the lifeless recording.

Then he drove home to sleep for fourteen hours.

He woke up in the early afternoon to the barely audible thrum of traffic coming in through the windowpane, walls, ceiling, and floor. This monotonous hum cocooned the battered gangster. Under this protective shield of sound Ecks felt safe enough to ponder. He was thinking that he’d accomplished the task given him by the patriarch of the church.

The Old Ecks was finished but the new man came to awareness on the path the old him had been traveling.

He made French-press coffee and beat two eggs together with two tablespoons of whole-wheat flour and some milk. He cooked the fat crepe in a griddle on his hot plate, thinking all the while about Benol and Dodo Milne, about dead children who had certainly attracted insects as they decomposed.

The swelling on his face had gone down except for a slight protuberance on the left temple where Lon had stomped the knot made by Doris Milne and her bat. The cut would leave a barely noticeable scar.

New Ecks decided that there was nothing to do but wait. So he called Bud White to see how his paper delivery service was going.

“It’s really good,” the ex-wrestler told his colleague. “That Damien, Carlo, and Angelique could run the whole thing by themselves. It’s like I’m just along for the ride.”

There was an essay he had to write for his American history course. He decided to compose a thousand words on the accommodation democracies had to make for the practice of slavery.

Democracy, he wrote, is not a static system. It is indefinable except at the present moment where it exists to one degree or another. The Athenians had democracy and slavery.…

That was when the cell phone played its little riff.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Noland?”

“Doris, Doris,” he sang. “Where are you, Doris?”

“That sounds like the beginning of a nursery rhyme.”

“But instead it’s X-rated. George said that you drugged his drink and put him to bed.”

“That’s about the only way I could get him to bed,” she said lightly.

“You nearly killed me doing the same thing.”

“I’m sorry about that. I really am. Aunt Sedra made me do it.”

“What do you need, Doris?”

“Can you come get me? I have this, um, uh, problem.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the only person I know.”

The address was a block east of the promenade of Venice Beach. It was a surf shop, and there was a Closed sign in the window. Upon seeing this placard both Eckses, old and new, girded themselves for bad news.

He knocked on the glass door and someone peeked out through the blinds. A moment later the door opened onto a large, shadowy room.

Hand on his pistol, Ecks went in as Doris closed the door behind him and then turned on a light. She was wearing a frilly pink dress with red trim around the high collar. The New Yorker was surprised by his burgeoning erection. There was no other symptom of physical attraction, but neither was there any question about his erotic state of mind.

Doris stared into Ecks’s eyes a moment, long enough for the rest of his systems to begin to respond. Her solemn gaze and soft skin slipped past his defenses. If he were a day younger he might have thought he was falling in love.

“I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Ben,” she said. “I only needed to get him to fall asleep. I had to get away.”

“Why? What did you need to do?”

She looked down and to the side.

“Doris,” Ecks said. “Answer me.”

“He’s in there.”

She pointed down a long aisle of brightly colored surfboards standing like dominoes waiting to be knocked down. These fiberglass fins, held in place by rough wooden slots, led to a small doorway covered by a dark blue blanket in place of a door.

When Ecks put his hand on the bare flesh of her upper arm Doris flinched. She moved toward him but he was already pushing her away, toward the back of the shop.

She allowed herself to be guided until they reached the blanket-there she dug her heels in.

“What’s wrong?” Ecks asked, his voice thick with both ephemeral trepidation and deep-seated lust.

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

Doris pushed aside the makeshift curtain that had been rudely nailed to the unpainted plywood above the entryway. This led to a workshop where injured surfboards went to be patched, smoothed, and waxed. There was a high workbench surrounded by several boards in need of work held by padded vises, leaning against the walls, or just lying on the granite floor.

The young blond man with the bullet through his right eye lay on his back over a sky-blue-and-cranberry board. His mouth was open slightly, as if he had been saying something just before being shot.

The sight of the body only increased Ecks’s sexual distress. His hand closed around the young woman’s biceps.

“Hank Marcus,” Ecks said.

This jerked Doris’s head around. “You know him?”

“I know that he was one of those three boys Sedra sold back in ’eighty-eight.”

“I got here yesterday,” Doris said. “I called Henry from George’s phone and he gave me directions.”

“And you killed him?”

“No … no. He was already dead when I got here.”

“I don’t understand,” Ecks said. “How did you two know each other?”

“Aunt Sedra would go out in the afternoon ever since I was little. She’d go shopping or maybe to a movie. Sometimes I went with her, but more often she wanted to go alone. When I was younger I wasn’t supposed to go out or even answer the door when she was gone. But I got so lonely that sometimes if someone rang the bell I’d go answer. I mean, I would just send whoever it was away, but at least I got to talk to them for a minute or two. Aunt Sedra would have been mad but I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t just tell somebody that she wasn’t in.”

“You were telling me about Hank,” Ecks reminded her.

“Oh. Yes. One day this fifteen-year-old boy came to the door. Henry. Hank.”

“Out of the blue?”

“Huh?” Doris, said crinkling her nose in confusion.

“How did he know to come to your door?”

“His mother had a diary, and after she died Hank found it. It said that he was adopted and that Sedra was the one who they got him from. The entry was very specific. It had our address and everything.

“I knew right away it was him because of the little freckle on his ear. I remembered that from when I took care of them. I used to kiss that freckle and make him laugh.”

Xavier was trying to control his breathing by taking air in slowly, through his nose.

“He started asking questions,” Doris continued. “I knew what it was like to want to know who your parents were. I told him that I thought he was stolen and that Sedra had sold him to his parents. He wanted to go to the police but I said that all of us-his adopted parents, me, and Sedra-would go to jail. He still wanted to go but I begged him to wait for a week and then come back. I told him that I’d try to find out who his real parents were.”

“Did you?”

“No. Aunt Sedra would never tell me anything like that.”

“Then why didn’t he go to the cops?”

Doris moved to the stool and climbed up on it. Xavier tried not to think of what they could do with her in that position.

“I seduced him,” she said, almost as if in sympathy with the gangster’s thoughts. “He was a virgin and I taught him the things I knew. For three years he thought he was in love with me. Maybe he really was.”

“And Sedra never knew?”

Doris shook her head. “I had this big blue candle that I’d put in the upstairs hall window if she was home or coming back soon. If I put the candle up he’d try again the next day-if he could.”

Their eyes locked again. Doris sat up straighter, and Ecks’s erection grew taut.

He felt a muscle twitching in his right shoulder. This shudder traveled through his body, transforming into emotion. New Ecks was suddenly there in his head. It was like an overlay, a template that altered him and his desire. His breathing slowed of its own accord and the sexual tension ebbed.

“Why didn’t you come straight here from Sedra’s?” he asked.

“I didn’t know where he was and … and … We broke up a while ago. He found a girl his own age and wanted to get away from me. We hadn’t talked in a long time.”

Ecks glanced at the body. It was as if he were seeing it for the first time.

“You know how this looks, right?”

“What?”

“You tried to kill me, you killed Sedra, drugged George Ben, and now this boy Hank is dead and you’re the only one here.”

Doris’s brows furrowed but her eyes opened wider.

“But … but … but …”

“Look,” Ecks said. “I’m not the cops and I don’t work for them. All I’m sayin’ is everywhere there’s a body or there might be a body, there you are too.”

“I killed Aunt Sedra but that was because she was going to kill me.”

“Where’s your purse?”

“Why?”

“Just where is it?”

“I’ll go get it.” She hopped off the stool and moved toward the doorway.

“I’ll go with you.”

At the front of the store, beneath the cash register, was the big blue bag she’d carried into the coffee shop at their first rendezvous.

“Here it is,” she said, reaching for the purse.

But Xavier was faster. He stooped down quickly and picked up the blue sack.

“What are you doing?” Doris asked. “That’s supposed to be private.”

Ignoring her, he pulled out a dingy orange wallet and a chrome-plated pistol. He also noted that there was a lot of change tinkling around the bottom of the bag-that and a stack of hundred-dollar bills held together by a slender rubber band.

He sniffed the barrel of the pistol, checked the clip, and pocketed it. Then he flipped through the stack of money. Ten thousand dollars, more or less.

“This money come out of the register?” he asked. “That and the change?”

“He would have wanted me to have it.”

“A lot of money to be lying around a low-rent shop like this.”

“I found the hundred-dollar bills in a drawer in the back. The small bills and change came out of the register.”

“This little pistol hasn’t been fired,” he said. “You got another gun?”

“No. I took that one from George’s dresser drawer.”

“Why?”

“Because maybe I’ll have to kill myself.”

Ecks stopped to ponder these words. They seemed plain and straightforward, the kind of statement that only a young woman kept from society for an entire lifetime could make.

“Who killed Henry?” Ecks asked.

“I don’t know. Can I have my gun back?”

“No. It belongs to George.”

“I have to be able to protect myself.”

“I thought you needed the gun for suicide.”

“Hank was in trouble,” she said. “He … A man came to him asking about his parents. He seemed to know that Hank was adopted. At least, he suspected it.”

“And when did you find all this out?”

“When I called him. He asked me if I ever heard of Mr. Jocelyn.”

“Did you?”

“Not that name, but a man who looked a lot like Hank described him had come around Aunt Sedra’s a few weeks ago. They talked privately but he definitely wanted information.”

“What was that man’s name?”

“Ansel Edwards. He said he was a lawyer.”

Xavier was a crook but not the kind who made complex plans or took on difficult heists. Now and then a mastermind would hire him as muscle on a big job where four or more men executed a military-like operation. It was usually good money but he never bothered himself with the finer details. A soldier does what he’s told and puts his trust in the commander.

He never planned a big job, but he did know what it was like to be in the middle of one.

“Was Sedra an independent agent?” Ecks asked Dodo.

“What do you mean?”

“Did somebody pull her strings?”

“Like a puppet?”

“Somebody who would give her orders, who when they called she always did what they said.”

“Mr. Martindale,” Doris said in a kind of reverie. “He only came by the house twice. Once when I was eight. I think that someone wanted to buy me. Aunt Sedra said that she needed me to help her. She was really serious, but I got the feeling that if he said I had to go, Sedra would have sent me.”

“What was the second time?”

Doris, for the first time, blushed.

“Hank back there was your friend, right?” Ecks said.

She nodded.

“Don’t you want the one who killed him to pay for it?”

She looked up with a confused expression on her face. It was as if she had never considered the concept of revenge.

Life for her, Ecks realized then, was a simple matter of survival.

“The second time was just after my fourteenth birthday. He brought a man to the house who didn’t speak English and smelled like onions. The man took me downstairs next to the vault and tied me up. He beat me for a long time with a strap and then he cut my clothes off with a knife and fucked my butt while I was still tied up. He didn’t use a condom or anything.

“After that I hated Mr. Martindale but he never came back again. Aunt Sedra put cream on the welts and that weekend she took me to Disneyland. I’d never seen anything like it. It was wonderful.”

“What was this Martindale like?”

It took a moment for Doris to abandon the spectacle of the theme park, but finally she said, “He was tall and handsome. His face was very nice except for his eyes looked like an animal’s eyes, you know-wild.”

“White guy?” Ecks asked.

Doris nodded.

“But he wasn’t the one who talked to Sedra and Henry?” Ecks added.

“No. I told you. His name was Ansel Edwards and maybe Mr. Jocelyn. He was tall and white too, but not so good-looking. His eyes were a funny color.”

“Did Sedra call Martindale after the lawyer was there?”

“I don’t know. She had the phone locked up in her room.”

Xavier hopped up on the counter to sit and think. The quick gesture startled Doris, but after a moment she settled down again.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“The real question is, what am I going to do with you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You, young lady, are the perfect definition of what they call a loose cannon. At any minute you might explode or crash through some wall. Everywhere you go somebody dies or almost dies. I need you in one place just to be sure.”

“I don’t want to be locked away in somebody’s house again,” she said with sudden conviction.

“No, you don’t. But, baby, if the cops get you you’ll be locked away in a cell for the rest of your life. You murdered Sedra. There’s no other way to look at that. Your fingerprints are all over that house. Probably on the murder weapon. And it might be, if I don’t find different, that I will be the one to turn you over. But right now I’m tryin’ to help. I could take you back to the church. You don’t have to stay inside. You can pitch a tent and sleep in the courtyard for all I care. I just need to know how to get to you.”

“For how long?”

“Things are happening pretty quickly. Couple’a weeks should tell me what I need.”

“What about that Father Frank?” Doris asked.

“What about him?”

“He scares me.”

“Wow. I never heard anybody say that they were scared of Frank. Nobody. But you don’t have to worry, girl. Sister Hope will take care of you. You like her, right?”

Doris nodded but Xavier hardly noticed.

Billy Palmerri had been a getaway driver in his previous life. Driving was his passion. As a pimply-faced strawberry-blond kid in Tennessee he competed in back-road races for a living. He was the best until he lost control one day and plowed into a crowd of hillbilly spectators. Seven people died and Billy was sought by both the police and angry, revenge-fueled relatives of the victims.

He made his way to Reno and joined a crew that executed heists all over the United States. Robbery, mayhem, and murder were facts of life for Billy. He had three wives in as many states and somewhere around eighteen children-counting those born out of wedlock.

He was a midlevel bad man-completely unrepentant. He didn’t think one way or the other about his acts.

Billy’s mother, Barbara Palmerri, had moved to Selma to live with Charlene, the sister of her third husband, Israel Lundberg. Barbara had developed congestive heart disease and was soon to die.

Billy had a job to do and so was a week late coming to see his mother. She was pale and weak in a chiffon pink bed. Her entire life she’d been a plump woman, but that day she was waiflike, child-size upon the huge mattress.

“Baby, I never did right by you,” Barbara whispered. Through a force of will she rose up and kissed her son’s temple. “I never taught you to be a good man, but I want you to promise me that you will learn how to do that on your own after I’m gone.”

“How do I do that, Mama?” the son asked.

“Just get in that old jalopy of yours and drive until you find the right spot.”

Billy’s mother died without uttering another word. He sat by her side until the sun had gone down, as he had developed the habit of waiting for dark to make a move.

When he walked out of Charlene Lundberg’s front door gunfire erupted from at least three sources. Billy was hit in the arm, leg, and chest. Though sorely wounded, he was still able to move. He went through the house, across the backyard, and over a fence into an alley. There he had secreted a second car, the perfect wheelman’s backup.

He made it out of Alabama into Mississippi, where he happened upon a good-hearted store owner who knew a colored nurse who looked after men of her own race whom white doctors would not see. Out of charity, and the promise of two thousand dollars from Billy, the nurse took him in.

It was the fever that changed the wheelman. In his hallucinatory state he remembered every crime he’d committed. Through it all his mother was at his side shaking her head, blaming herself for her son’s selfish deeds.

The colored nurse, whose name was Samantha Smith, brought a white man to Billy’s side. That was Father Frank, fifteen years before he’d relocated to the California coast.

“You been going the wrong way on the autobahn, William,” Frank had said. “What you need to do is make a U-turn and head for the hills.”

That was thirty-two years before Billy pulled up to the closed surf shop at around eight that evening. He still had a full head of strawberry-blond hair and the frame of a twenty-year-old racer. But Billy had traveled a million miles from that day on what he thought was his deathbed with Frank holding his hand.

“I need me a map,” he had said in Expressions, “ ’cause I got no sense of direction. But once you tell me my destination I’ll get there through hell or high water.”

“This is Doris, Billy,” Xavier said to the fifty-seven-year-old driver. “Frank wants her to take up residence at the church for a week or two.”

“Pleased to meet ya, ma’am,” Billy said.

“Hi,” she replied nervously.

“Billy will get you there safe and sound. You can try every trick in the book, but the only thing he will do is deliver you to Sister Hope. Ain’t that right, Billy?”

“Frank as my witness,” the racer vowed.

The Regency Arms was a smallish hotel with a café that had seven round tables across the way from the registration desk. Ecks picked a seat that was partially hidden by a decorative pillar and ordered country pâté garnished with gherkins and pickled pearl onions, and a cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso. He took out his book and started reading about the decline of Rome.

No one bothered him. As long as he was quiet and ordered something every forty-five minutes or so they were happy to have his patronage.

“Hey, mister,” a young voice said.

Ecks looked up to see a slender young white girl, no older than nineteen, wearing a fake white fur, bright blue hair, and little else except stiltlike high heels. Her youth made her pretty, but Ecks could see by the lines in her face that aging would change that fact.

“Yeah?” Ecks said. He was tired of reading.

“You want a date?”

“No. You want a cup of coffee?”

“I’m on the job, mister.”

“Even a working stiff takes a coffee break now and then. Tell you what-I’ll buy you a drink and give you twenty to sit here and tell me what’s what up on Hollywood.”

“My feet are tired,” she said.

“My feet would break in shoes like that.”

The girl sniggered and lowered into the chair across from the Parishioner.

A waiter Ecks hadn’t seen before hurried over to the table.

“Excuse me,” he began. It was obvious that he was going to object to the girl putting her bottom on his chair.

“Bella here wants a caffe latte and a ham sandwich with the fixings on the side.”

The strength behind Ecks’s words contained a warning that the host heard clearly.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“My name’s not Bella,” she said when the waiter had gone.

“Bella means ‘very pretty’ in Italian, I’m told,” Ecks said. “And so even if that’s not your name I could call you that anyway.”

“You a pimp?” she asked easily, probing professionally, looking, as all prostitutes do, for an exit sign.

“Used to be. A long time ago and many miles from here.”

“You quit?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?” Her eyes were almost saffron in color.

“I realized that I like women too much.”

“You let ’em lead you around by the nose?”

“No, baby,” Ecks said with emphasis in lieu of a longer explanation.

“You look like you could take care’a yourself and a whole string of women too.”

“Oh, yeah. But you don’t have to do everything you can. Matter of fact, I’ve found that it’s best to hone yourself down to the one or two things you like most.”

The waiter returned with the coffee in a glass mug and a sandwich on an oval platter.

“We’re going to need this table soon,” he said to Xavier.

“Listen here, brother,” the black man said to the white one. “I’m gonna sit here and eat and drink and talk to my friend until I’m finished. And you can call the cops or maybe some bouncer you got in the back room somewhere. But if you do you’ll regret it; I can promise you that.”

Before the waiter could back away the young woman was eating her sandwich. She ate hungrily, tearing at the bread and meat with her small sharp teeth.

“You’re hungry,” he said.

She nodded and he noticed Benol Richards walking in with a tall white man in a black overcoat. She was wearing a golden dress that was a little too short and had an odd contrast with her caramel-colored skin. They were intent on their conversation and so did not notice Ecks and his date at the table behind the pillar. They walked to the elevator and she pushed the button.

“They never feed me,” the young woman said.

“Who doesn’t?” Ecks asked, still watching his quarry.

“My dates,” she said. “They always want me to drink with them. Sometimes they want me to take drugs. But you know I’d rather have a chili burger than drop Ecstasy with some fat pervert.”

The elevator doors opened. Six or seven young people came out. Benol and her middle-aged man-friend stood aside and then entered the lift. They got in and disappeared from sight. The digital counter above the doors said that they went to the sixth floor.

“Hey,” Ecks’s impromptu date said.

“Yeah?”

“Are you listening?”

“I don’t think they have chili burgers here.”

She grinned.

“My name is Pretty,” she said.

“So I was right.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Egbert but everybody calls me Ecks.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ecks,” Pretty said, holding out a hand.

They shook and smiled at each other.

“You want a date now?” she asked.

“No.”

Pretty pouted appealingly, but it was obvious to Xavier that she didn’t mean it.

“You don’t like me?” she asked.

“It’s not that. You see, Bella, I’m a kind of investigator and I’m on the job.”

“You followin’ that woman in the gold dress and Jerry?”

“You know him?”

“This hotel has twelve floors. Nine are for people who rent rooms on business or vacation. The other three are split up between Roger Dees, Terra Hauk, and Jerry-the man you was watchin’. They got girls up there do just about anything. It’s cause’a the women upstairs that us outside girls cruise through the café once a night or so. There’s always guys who want another flavor after they get it on upstairs.”

“What’s Jerry’s last name?”

“What’s it worth?”

“A ham sandwich and twenty bucks.”

The young whore liked Ecks’s sense of humor. She grinned.

“Jocelyn,” she said. “Jerry Jocelyn.”

If somebody tells you that what you’re searching for is like looking for a needle in a haystack, Father Frank was fond of saying, then tell them that you will put on magnetized gloves and set aside an afternoon to move a great pile of hay one handful at a time.

Ecks reached into his pocket and took out a folded hundred-dollar bill-this he handed to his makeshift date.

“There’s something else,” he said as she took the money, looking around nervously for plainclothes vice cops.

“What?”

“You ever heard of Malcolm X?”

“No. He related to you?”

“He once gave a speech saying that there were two kinds of slaves,” Ecks said. “There was the house slave and the ones that worked out in the fields. The field nigger knew that he was a slave, nothing more than a piece of property to be worked to death out under a hot sun. But the house slave thought that he was better, a part of the family. If the white master got sick the house nigger would say, ‘Boss, is we sick?’ ”

Pretty laughed out loud. She had a big laugh, a healthy laugh. For a moment Ecks missed his previous life in New York.

“Malcolm X?” she said.

Ecks nodded.

“And he was black?”

“The best book about him was the one he wrote. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

“I should read that.”

“Yes, you should.”

“Because you know the girls upstairs think they’re better’n us, but the minute their clients drop they will be askin’ me for tips on how to keep from gettin’ cut and beat up right out there on Hollywood Boulevard.”

She looked at her hand under the table and then at Ecks. She hesitated, almost said something and then didn’t.

“Um,” she finally uttered.

“What?”

“You give me a hundred-dollar bill, not a twenty.”

“I know.”

“I have to go,” she said.

“I know that too.”

Pretty stood up, pushed her pale little hand into the pocket of the fake fur. She produced a turquoise business card and placed it on the table.

“In case you ever change your mind,” she said.

Pretty turned and walked away.

Ecks studied the card. All that was on it was the prostitute’s first name, certainly an alias, and an e-mail address. He put it in his wallet and imagined the earth moving through space, spinning on its axis, and revolving around the sun.

It’s always impossible, Frank would say after explaining how one searched for the proverbial needle. Everything is. The red ball, the bolt of lightning, that feeling in your heart when someone says your name. Impossibility is our business-our only business.

Half an hour later Jerry Jocelyn walked out of the elevator doors. He strode forward like a man of action and certainty. Ecks wondered as Jerry passed whether he should follow him, maybe even brace him. But he was in a philosophical mood and had no desire to enter another altercation unless that action had a definite purpose. And so he satisfied himself watching the upscale pimp leave the hotel.

“Can I use the house phone?” Ecks asked the dumpy guy standing behind a small podium upon which hung a sign that read, Concierge. He had waited twenty-three minutes to see whether Benol would reemerge from the elevator.

“Guests only,” he said with a trace of disdain on his lips.

“I need to speak to one of your guests.”

“Name?”

“Benol Richards.”

“Ben-what?”

“B-E-N-O-L, Benol.”

The hotel man had small shoulders on top of a big stomach. He obviously wasn’t paid enough to hire a tailor, and so the suit was ill fitting, and even though it was dark blue in color Ecks could still make out various stains. The name tag over his left breast read, Ricardo, but he was pale skinned with light brown hair, maybe forty.

Ricardo sighed. There was a notebook computer bolted to the podium. This he jabbed at with three fingers.

“I can try her room.”

“Please,” Ecks said.

Ricardo picked up the receiver and entered a few digits. He waited while looking Ecks in the eye.

“Hello? Hold a moment. What’s your name?” he asked Ecks.

“Father Frank’s friend, Egbert.”

“Egbert,” the man said into the line. He listened a moment and then hung up.

“She said that she’ll be right down.”

Someone had taken his seat and so Ecks went to a large round sofa that was placed maybe eight feet away from the elevator doors.

As he waited Ecks wondered why he didn’t see many prostitutes and johns in the lobby. He finally decided that there was a special entrance for these patrons either somewhere on that block or maybe on the next street over.

Benol had come through the front door, so she wasn’t working in the hotel.

In the middle of that thought the chrome-and-green doors of the center elevator slid open. Benol, wearing a close-fitting black muslin dress and white pumps, walked out.

She had made herself beautiful.

She strode right up to Ecks and looked down on him.

“It was the driver, right?” she asked.

“How are you, Bennie?”

“So now we’re friends?”

“I found two of the boys you’re looking for.”

The woman’s eyes became like a feline predator’s orbs, dazzled by the bait he dangled. She moved to sit next to him, her round bottom pressed up against his hard thigh.

“Which ones?” she whispered.

Only the suggestion of a scent rose from her-a fragrance applied so lightly that it might not have been there at all. It was as if a perfumed woman had passed this way hours before and all that was left was this hint of an essence unknown.

“I don’t know the real names,” Ecks said. “I mean, I don’t know which is which, but I do know that one of them is Henry Marcus. He owns a surfboard shop down near the boardwalk in Venice. His adopted mother died and the father moved to Hawaii.”

Ecks was looking into Benol’s brown eyes, trying his best to subdue his suspicions.

She was good, but he could see clearly the impatience twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“Um,” she said. “What’s the address of the shop?”

He rattled it off. It wasn’t until he finished that she remembered to take a yellow pencil and a small blue pad from her red clutch purse.

He repeated the address and then waited.

“What’s the other?” she asked.

“Lester Lehman,” he said. “He’s in San Quentin.”

He had to hold back the whisper of a smile that wanted to flit across his lips. The glitter of anticipation in Benol’s eyes dimmed as she tried to maintain the equilibrium of interest.

“Lehman,” she said, reaching for the name. “Wasn’t he the one who murdered his parents?”

“Yeah. Maybe your crime saved his blood family from slaughter.”

“That’s not funny, Mr. Noland. It could have just as well driven him crazy.”

“Glass half-empty,” Ecks opined.

“Is that all?” Benol said when it seemed as if Ecks had finished.

“Two in just a few days,” he replied. “After twenty-three years I’d say that was pretty damn good.”

“Of course it is,” Benol said, looking away as she spoke. “Of course. It’s just that I was hoping to have all three.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why do you have to find these young men? I know I keep on asking you that, but they’re grown now. What good can you do by dredging up the pain you caused? Who knows? The other two boys might have had happy lives.”

“It’s just the right thing to do, that’s all. It’s time for me to make up for what I’ve done.”

“Join the Peace Corps then,” the Parishioner said. “Adopt three young boys and make sure they have every opportunity. Do something positive.”

“This is what I’ve decided to do.” She was still very close to him. “Do you … do you have any clue to where the third boy is?”

Ecks smiled. “I got a P.O. box in the Beverly Hills branch. I sent him a note asking him to meet me tomorrow at four. We’ll see if he shows up.”

“So you have found him?” Benol’s tone was accusatory.

“I found a name. Oscar Phillips. The person I sent the note to might very well not be him.”

“Where are you supposed to meet?”

“Just be patient, Bennie. I’ll tell you if he’s our boy.”

“I’d like to come with you,” she said, laying a hand on his knee.

“It’s best if I go alone. I mean, this is the job Frank asked me to do.”

Benol realized that she was pressing too hard. Removing her hand from his knee, she took a deep breath and considered a moment, or maybe, Ecks thought, she was pretending to consider.

“It seems as if you’re spending more time investigating me than looking for the boys,” she said.

“Not at all. I just found out where the car service let you off. Then I came here to report to you. Nothing sinister in that.”

“I’m not pulling a fast one,” Benol offered. “I’m just trying to help out.”

“I believe you,” Ecks said, trying hard not to be influenced by her proximity. “I mean, why else would Frank put us together?”

Benol had no answer for this. Ecks was not asking for one.

“Where are you meeting this Oscar?”

Xavier wondered about the woman. Did she have a habit of shooting her victims in the eye? Was she merely trying to do what was right? Or was it something in between those two unlikely poles? She was pressing very hard for someone contemplating murder. But maybe her desire to kill outweighed any notion of self-preservation.

“I need to go there alone,” he repeated.

“Fine.”

“But if you agree not to go, why do you need to know where I’m meeting him?”

“This is very important to me,” she said, “extremely so. I feel that finding the boys will make up for so much that I’ve done wrong.”

She sounded sincere. But Ecks had learned at an early age that actions were all that mattered.

“You ever hear of the Nut Hut?” he said.

Benol shook her head, watching him intently.

“It’s in the old Farmers’ Market up on Third and Fairfax. It’s this place that sells every kind of nut in the world almost. Run by this bald-headed dude name of Toy.”

“Troy?”

“No. Like a child’s plaything.”

“That’s strange.”

“If you face the counter of the Nut Hut,” Ecks continued, “there’s three round tables over to the right. Those are Toy’s tables and only his customers are allowed to sit there. I told Oscar to buy some African groundnuts and sit down there at four tomorrow.”

The look on Benol’s face was one of breathless anticipation.

“I don’t want you going there, girl,” Ecks said.

“I won’t.”

“It don’t look like that.”

“You’ll call me when you find out?”

“Oh, yeah. I will most definitely call. But you know, the chances are slim that I’d get three aces in three days.”

“I believe you will.”

On the ride back to Flower Street, Xavier wondered again what he was doing. He didn’t care about pornographers or kidnapped children, murdered ex-addict surfers or a repentant kidnapper. He owed Frank something … of that he was quite certain. The man had taught him that he could see the world differently. Frank had shown Ecks a whole new way of thinking and then he asked this favor.…

“Hello,” Benicia Torres said, answering her phone at ten seventeen that evening.

“I’m sorry to be calling you so late,” Ecks said.

“What time …? Oh, that’s okay. I was studying.”

“I wanted to call earlier but I had these people to meet.”

“About newspapers?”

“What? No. I belong to a church and they do outreach, kind of like local missionary work. I’m helping this woman find some people she lost touch with. That’s why I was asking that waiter those questions at Temple Pie.”

“Church?”

“You sound like you don’t believe me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Noland, but you don’t seem like you go to church, or deliver newspapers, or even that you’re named Egbert.” There was humor in her tone-but with an edge.

“I can show you my driver’s license, and I even have my deacon’s card. I could take you out on my route if you want.”

“What time do you make deliveries?”

“I pick up my kids at around four in the morning.”

“Hm,” she speculated.

“But before you make that commitment why don’t we have dinner tomorrow. I know this great Chinese place downtown. It’s called Yellow River … on Grand.”

“That sounds nice,” she said with very little, if any, hesitation.

“Eight?”

“Okay.”

“Should I pick you up?”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Great,” Ecks said, and he meant it.

Ecks went to bed soon after calling Benicia but sleep was nowhere at hand. He lay there in his single bed and listened to the uneven rumble of traffic that ebbed and flowed with no predictability. For the first time in the three years that he’d lived there, these erratic waves of sound distracted him from rest.

His gums ached and an old wound pricked at his ribs. He remembered killing a man from across the hall who had beaten his wife every other week for two years. She cried at his funeral, wailed.

At three twenty-seven he climbed out of bed and took out one of three throwaway cell phones given him by Clyde Pewtersworth. Ecks entered a number he’d written down two years earlier. This number had been placed in a personal ad in a weekly Jewish newspaper from Hoboken, New Jersey.

The ad read, Red Slatkin Needs to See Chaim Berman, and left a phone number with the Utah area code 801.

The phone rang three times before the answer.

“Yeah?”

“Swan?”

“Ecks?”

“How’s it goin’, brother?”

“You still alive, huh, niggah?”

“I’ll be around when there’s only rats and cockroaches left.”

Swan performed his deep laugh. This was punctuated by a rolling, wet cough.

“You sure to outlive me, man.”

“You okay?”

“If lung cancer and two bum legs is okay then I’m in the catbird’s seat.”

“Damn. Can I do anything?”

“You wanna gimme a lung?”

Ecks hesitated and Swan said, “Don’t worry, brother; I got so much metasizing goin’ on that I’d need a whole family of donors to make my shit right. What’s up wit’ you? You stayin’ outta jail?”

“Been goin’ to church lately.”

“Found religion?”

“More like religion found me.”

“That must be some serious shit-Ecks Rule up in God’s house. I bet they ain’t seen nuthin’ like that since Lucifer stormed the walls of heaven.”

“You know the Bible, Swan?”

“Lady takin’ care’a me push my wheelchair to church once a week or so. I listen to them the way we used to hear our lawyers.…” Swan stopped for a long, deeply troubling cough. “You keep thinkin’ that maybe they got some special circumstances or might would cut a deal. But you know, man, I’m glad you called. You my only friend, Ecks. Only one … I got a daughter up in the Bronx name of Susan Karl. That’s Karl with a K. She nineteen and alone in the world now. Wild child like her need to be looked after. I’d really appreciate it if you do what you could for her.”

“Sure I will,” Ecks said quickly and certainly as he had in the old days.

“Yeah.” Swan let the word drag out over many bars. “That’s good, man. You know I could die now, because everybody from Harlem to Brownsville know that Ecks Rule’s word is his bond.”

They talked for a while longer-about the old days and the few people they knew who had turned up in the news. Many were dead, the rest wounded or imprisoned-or both. Neither one asked where the other was living.

Ecks realized somewhere in the middle of the twenty-minute conversation that this was a new-and a last-phase of their friendship: that soon Swan would die and a part of Ecks would pass on with him.

Toward the end of their exchange Swan’s speech slurred and his sentences wandered one into the other, like sleepwalkers making their way down a common corridor. “I better be goin’,” Swan said at last, “before I stop makin’ sense altogether.”

There was an office building that had once been a warehouse on Aire Drive on the eastern fringe of Burbank. Ecks got there at ten o’clock. He was wearing his gangster suit: thin black wool with an ebony silk shirt sporting oblong and yellowing ivory buttons. The hat was a short-brimmed Stetson banded with coal gray silk, sporting no feather. On his right pinkie finger he wore a thick platinum band with a two-carat ruby anchored in it.

The ring was the only thing he inherited from his father, who died when Ecks was fourteen, not from the gunshot wound he deserved but from tuberculosis and other, never defined complications.

Ecks brought along his Afghani pistol, tucked in the belt at the back of his pants, and had slipped a Japanese throwing knife in the sheath on his left ankle.

Entering the large reception area he walked to the desk and asked the young woman to call Lenny O for him.

“Lenny’s working,” the brown-haired, plain-faced young woman said.

“Tell him that I got news about Manly and Loretta,” Ecks replied.

“I’m not supposed to-” she began. Her skin was uneven because of bad acne in her adolescence. Her irises were bifurcated-watery brown and off-yellow. Her lipstick was chalky pink and she was maybe seventeen pounds above sexy.

“Listen,” Ecks said, cutting her off. “If you don’t call him then call your boss and tell him that you got a man out here on a short fuse.”

“A short what?”

“Fuse.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You just say that I said those words and he’ll get the message.”

“Please have a seat.”

“You got three minutes,” Ecks said, and the young woman learned the meaning of the phrase.

It wasn’t until he went to stand next to the benches set out for those waiting to be called that the Parishioner actually looked at the people waiting for interviews at Zebra Film-Arts. The assembly was broken up into roughly two groups: One was young men and women, most of them attractive-some were even beautiful. Mixed in with the bevy of porn-film hopefuls were older, much less attractive agents, shills, and spouses. The atmosphere was heavy with colognes, perfumes, and sweat. Silver jewelry predominated.

Many of the smaller fish in that pond recognized the sudden appearance of a shark. Some moved off; others drifted closer, safety and proximity among this crew being mainly a matter of species.

Ecks looked at his watch. It read ten-oh-nine. He ground his molars together. He wondered why he had chosen that morning to go armed with gun, knife, and gangster garb. His heart rate had been up ever since he’d awakened from his two-hour night’s sleep. His forearms ached and he couldn’t remember where he said he would go to meet Benicia for dinner that night. He couldn’t even remember what Benicia looked like.

And then, in a sudden flash of realization, he knew that this was the way he was grieving for Swan. They had been friends since their teens. Naturally violent but never in direct competition, they were always on the same side, in it until the last bell-win or lose. Ecks would have given his life for Swan, nearly did once or twice. Swan had taken a bullet, meant for Ecks, in his own shoulder.

There was no saving him. There was no going to his side. And so Xavier Rule was dressed to kill.

His watch read ten twelve.

Looking up, Ecks saw two large men coming out of the swinging door behind the reception desk. One man was black and the other white, but they were almost indistinguishable in their dark cotton suits and light-colored dress shirts. The black man, whose skin color was actually raspberry brown, wore a monocolor blue tie.

Ecks walked toward the desk, hopped over the waist-high door with pantherish dexterity, and moved swiftly toward the security team.

“Hey …” the receptionist said.

The white thug stepped ahead and put out a hand. Ecks grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled him to the side while making eye contact with the man in the tie. He could have broken the white man’s wrist but instead he just bruised it. The thug was a big guy and tough-looking, but he squealed when he felt the strength of the shorter man through the pain up his arm.

“Hold up,” the black guard said. “We just workin’ here, man. Keepin’ the peace.”

“The best road to a peaceful resolution is lettin’ me see Lenny O for five minutes,” Ecks said. “I don’t wanna cause no trouble, man.”

It wasn’t true. In his heart Ecks wanted to kill somebody, to make someone pay for the coming death of his friend.

The black guard could read the passion in Ecks’s eyes, and so when his humiliated partner roared and jumped he put out both hands and pushed the man back-hard. The white guard hit the receptionist’s desk and tumbled over it, disappearing off the other side.

He was up immediately, rage and confusion smeared across his face.

The pale receptionist screamed, stood up, and backed away from her post.

The fuck-film hopefuls were all astir, jabbering meaninglessly.

“Hit the showers, Simmons,” the black guard said.

For a moment the minion felt the pulse of rebellion in his veins. Had he been Ecks or Swan the revolution would have started right then and there. But this was a workingman. He swallowed the rage, turned away, and exited through a door that Ecks had not noticed before.

The hubbub of the assembly began to die down.

Ecks took in a deep breath through his nostrils. This had a singular effect on him. He felt as if this were the first breath that he had ever taken, like Adam inhaling the fragrance of the garden, the second breath that ever existed, counting the one his Maker had used to inspire him. This innocent puff of air brought a deep calm and new insight.

“Burt Tyler,” the black guard said, holding out a hand.

It took Ecks a moment to remember how to shake hands but he managed it.

“Egbert Noland, Mr. Tyler.”

“Sure you are,” Tyler said. “Follow me, Eggy. I’ll show you where the little rat bastard’s at.”

Through the swinging door Burt Tyler led Ecks across a vast soundstage where, in various corners and jury-rigged rooms, people were having sex under bright lights, being scrutinized by film crews and high definition digital cameras.

There were men on women and the other way around, women together and men too; there was a foursome of men and women on a raised dais where they were all being penetrated at the same time, one way or another.

The smells and sweaty humidity brought to mind the whorehouse he and Swan ran in the Bronx in the old days before drugs superseded their business. This reminded Ecks of Swan again, but now the memory of his old friend conjured up that first breath of calmness.

“You plan to put the hurt to Lenny?” Burt Tyler asked.

“No.”

“You could say yes,” the burly security man said. “Nobody likes him. If you had waited a week we’d’a probably fired his ass. Way I hear it the boss is getting ready to cut him loose.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Lenny is a rat, a cockroach, a maggot, and a pile’a shit all rolled up into one.”

They arrived at a professional-looking door heralded by a blinking red electric sign that said, Quiet-Filming in Progress. Despite the message Burt pressed a yellow button on the side of the extra-wide door. A moment later a man with earphones around his neck came out.

“Yeah, Burt?”

“Tell Lenny I got a man here looking for him. We’ll come in when this scene is over.”

The tan-skinned crew member nodded and ducked back into the room.

“Follow me,” Burt said to Ecks.

“I thought we were going to wait to see Lenny.”

“We’re going to see him, all right.”

Burt moved at a brisk pace around the big, closed soundstage until coming to a small exit door. From the distance could be heard the moans and shouts of half-real sexual encounters-scenes, Ecks thought, that would last as digitally coded memories for centuries, maybe millennia.

The exit door swung open and a skinny young man in a violet shirt and copper felt pants ran out. He made it one and a half steps before Burt grabbed him by the arm.

The young man kept on moving, like a lizard expecting to separate from the ensnared limb. When this didn’t work he turned-the look on his face was wide-eyed, desperate, and contradictorily cunning.

“Burt,” he said, and pulled against the grip.

“Burt,” he said a bit louder, tugging twice as hard.

“Burt!” he yelled, yanking with both arms to free himself from the powerful hand.

Burt slapped the boy pretty hard.

“There’s no need for that, Mr. Tyler,” Ecks said. His voice carried authority.

“You don’t understand, Eggy. Lenny here needs a good slap now and then. He gets carried away-afraid of authority figures, my boss said.”

“Who are you?” Lenny cried. The words made sense but he pronounced them as if taking them from disparate sentences. The emphasis was all off. He spoke like a foreigner who had mastered the English language under the template of a different diction. This was the effect of lifelong abject fear. But what caught Ecks’s attention were the two dimples so incongruously cute on the desperate young man’s cheeks.

“I’m a friend, Lenny,” Ecks said. “I only need to talk to you for a few minutes.”

It was then that Ecks saw, maybe forty feet away, the white thug, Simmons, with three other muscular men in similar suits.

“Your man over there is making a mistake, Mr. Tyler.”

Tyler looked up and saw what Ecks saw.

“I’ll go talk to them.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ecks said. “ ’Cause you know if this was the Wild West they’d already be dead.”

The guard with the blue tie nodded. He walked toward the irate security staff holding out his arms like a shepherd warding his flock away from a snake-infested hollow.

Ecks wasn’t afraid. One way or the other he knew that he had come to the end of his search. A few angry men couldn’t deter him.

He turned to get a better look at Lenny O.

He was an inch taller than Ecks and twenty pounds lighter. Head shaved, he was festooned with clashing tattoos placed by impulse, not design. The most prominent tat was in the form of a choker necklace around his throat. This was a series of erect penises linked together by fraying rope made from what was meant to be black hair. Wherever the ropes pierced the dicks there was a red spot where the blood was let.

“That’s a crazy tattoo, man.”

Lenny O smiled for the first time. He actually grinned.

“How long you have that?” Ecks asked.

“Ten, twelve years.”

“Since you were a kid?”

The smile faded.

“Let’s go sit someplace and have coffee or something,” Ecks offered. “It could be where everybody else is. I don’t mean you any harm.”

Lenny started breathing hard. For a moment Ecks feared that the kid might hyperventilate.

But then the young man said, “Okay. Okay. Okay. It’s over here. On the other side of the barricade.”

The ceiling of the warehouse was at least sixty feet above their heads, and so the hallway they walked down was more like a supermarket aisle. Lenny led them to a big freestanding wall that seemed to be made from papier-mâché. At the center of the wall was an orange door. Lenny opened the door and went through.

This led to an enclosed courtyard where men and women in various states of undress were sitting at tables eating or standing in line at a food counter where their meals were being prepared and served.

Ecks and Lenny got in line behind a deeply tanned, muscular man who was naked and maintaining an upstanding erection that was at least a foot long.

“Hey, Lenny,” the muscular white man said. “How’s it hangin’?”

“Not like you, Lark.”

“Got me doin’ double today. Had to take an extra dose.”

“Doc Henry’s shit?” Lenny was watching the erection with both fear and awe in his gaze.

“Yeah. Why?”

“That shit’ll fuck you up. That’s what Momo says.”

“You think I give a shit about that faggot bastard?” Lark roared, moving toward Lenny.

Ecks stood between the big man and the slender one. He figured he was fourteen inches from Lark.

“Pardon any insult,” Ecks said pleasantly. “My friend misspoke.”

If asked, Ecks felt, Lark would have called himself a lover and not a fighter. He turned his big dick around and pulled a tray from a shelf in the counter.

When he found out that Ecks was paying, Lenny ordered fried chicken, meat loaf, corn on the cob, snap peas, corn bread, apple pie, and peach pie too.

Ecks ordered a pastrami sandwich and followed Lenny to an empty round table.

Lenny started eating ravenously. As he ate he spoke.

“Thanks for standin’ up for me, brother. Thanks. You know, I try to talk to people; I try to talk to them but I always say the wrong thing, the wrong thing. I mean, I don’t mean nuthin’ but when I get talkin’ it’s like my brain stops workin’. You know what I mean? I mean, especially when somebody’s big and strong like that. And you know I couldn’t take my eyes off that big dick. I mean, girls like a dick like that. Shit. It was harder than mine ever gets even when I take Doc Henry’s-”

“I’m here to ask you about Loretta and Manly,” Ecks said, cutting off the stream-of-consciousness babbling.

Lenny’s face froze with his mouth open and filled with meat loaf. His head jerked to the side.

“If you try I’ll just run you down,” Ecks said.

Lenny looked back, his eyes quivering in his head like a child’s toy doll.

“What?” he said.

“I’m pretty sure that they aren’t your real parents.”

Lenny sniggered and wiped his nose with a violet sleeve. He gave Ecks a glancing look in the eye and put his plastic fork down.

“Prob’ly not,” he said after going through this obsessive routine. “Prob’ly not.”

“Definitely not,” Ecks said.

Lenny looked up again and then away. He shook his head as if he were a third person feeling sorry for the young man scarred with a necklace of bloody erections.

“You were kidnapped before your second birthday and sold to an underground child pornography film organization. They farmed you out to Manly and his wife.”

Lenny winced and slapped his hand down on the table.

“They made you do things for the camera, didn’t they?” Ecks asked.

Lenny made a yowling sound that he had inherited from a distant ancestor of humanity. People from other tables stared at the first true cry of passion heard in the sex warehouse that day.

Tears sprouted from Lenny’s eyes. His shoulders and arms began shaking. Ecks put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, not to calm him but to keep him from running off.

Lenny let his head loll to the right, gripping the killer’s hand between his cheek and shoulder.

“I met the people who stole you,” Ecks said. “It was a young woman and a man. The woman who did it wanted me find you. Maybe get you back in touch with your real parents.”

“And the man?” Lenny asked through the heaves of a sob-racked chest.

“He’s dead.”

This fact made Lenny cry harder. With both hands he grabbed Xavier’s forearm. He was stronger than he looked.

Ecks wanted to pull his arm away from the kid. Tyler’s description of him was accurate. He had been made into a sewer rat.

But Ecks allowed the tears to run their course. He had to-for Frank.

After a time the sobbing waned and Lenny let go of Ecks.

“I never went to school,” he said, and Ecks was forced to think about Dodo and her journey through Sedra’s business. The Parishioner thought, once again, that he might have sought revenge against the octogenarian slave trader had she survived her own karma.

“They did all kindsa shit to me,” Lenny continued with hate in his voice. “Loretta held the camera while Manly fucked my ass. He tore me apart on the inside. They had a special doctor to sew me up when he was through.

“They’d lock me in a closet and leave a milk bottle for me to piss in. I’d have to shit-”

“I’m not interested in the story, Len,” Ecks said when he realized that pity was part of the young victim’s game. “That was before and this is now. I was asked to find three lost boys and you’re the last one.”

Lenny sat up and cocked his head back.

“Why?” he asked.

“The woman responsible was a teenager when she stole you. She wants to make amends.”

“Make what?”

“She wants to make up for what she did wrong.”

“Money?”

“I don’t think so, no,” Ecks said, but the word resonated in his mind.

“Then what good is it? What good is it? You know they kicked me outta the room I was in. I sleep in a steel box outside the kitchen next to the garbage cans.”

“I don’t care about any of that, Lenny. You know, where I come from there’s so much suffering that it doesn’t bother me anymore. Even with people like you-I just don’t care. What I was supposed to do is find you. Now that I have I need to ask you some questions and you need to answer me.”

Lenny O said that he didn’t know how to make normal conversation, and Ecks saw this to be true. The boy knew how to run and lie, how to be miserable and evoke pity, but he didn’t have the slightest notion of human communication.

Ecks had known men and women like this all through his pimping and drug-dealing days. Many of the players had been the same. His immediate reaction was one of cold distance. If you worried about your clientele and employees you were bound for disaster.

Lenny’s lower lip began to quiver again.

“Start crying and I will slap your face just like Burt did,” Ecks said.

“What do you want?” Lenny said petulantly.

“I could take you home to your real parents,” Ecks offered.

This proposition transformed the fuck-film gofer. He was amazed. Ecks could tell that there was a time that he’d wished for home and love, mother and father. He went to sleep praying for deliverance. Then he was thrown under a bright light and raped for even daring to hope. After many long years of wanting and being punished he’d given up on his dream; then, after a time, he had forgotten his desires entirely.

But right then, at that sky blue concrete table, his memory had been ignited and true sorrow welled up in his eyes.

“What?” he pleaded.

“You heard me.”

“Look at me, man,” Lenny said, almost making himself an equal. “Look at me. How’s a piece’a shit like me gonna go back to a nice couple in a nice home on a quiet street? How can I go out on the lawn of their house and walk the dog?”

“I see you’ve given it a lot of thought.”

This observation stopped Lenny. He wondered whether maybe it was true. Maybe he still wished for deliverance.

“I don’t even know how to think about a real mother and father,” Lenny argued, maybe with himself. “I told you … I don’t even know how to talk to people. That’s why I get high. That’s why I do the things I do.”

“What things?” Ecks asked.

Lenny looked up with abject fear dawning in his visage.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Nuthin’ don’t sound like that,” Ecks said, quoting the long-ago words and even the tone of his dying friend, Swan.

“I can’t help it, man. I don’t even know what I’m doin’ half the time.”

Completely objectively, with no moral weight at all, Xavier considered killing the tattooed youngster. He might have done it if it hadn’t been for Frank’s sermons and the one hundred and fifty-nine Expressions meetings he’d attended.

“We’re all reprobate,” Ecks said, “from the presidents and popes and prime ministers on down. And if you’re going along the wrong path, that just means you have to turn it around.”

“Wha … what?”

“It’s my job to find you, Len,” Ecks said. “It’s your job to figure out what you want to do.”

The kidnap victim sat up straight and took in a deep breath. He coughed slightly and then cleared his throat.

“It’s too late,” he said.

Ecks took seriously the young man’s declaration. It was too late for Swan. It was too late for the copper-skinned man he shot dead in Sedra’s home. Time wasn’t a promise even if it was forever.

Not everyone can be saved, Father Frank said at least once a month. Some dogs are rabid. Some men are no better than rabid dogs-worse. But even then vengeance is not the reason for punishment, imprisonment, or execution. If there is vengeance in your heart you have no right to seek balance.

“It might be,” Ecks agreed. “It might be that you can’t be saved. But that’s not up to you. You don’t know what your parents might think. And even if they hated you, that doesn’t mean that you did wrong.”

“Are you some kind of preacher?” Lenny asked.

“Parishioner,” Ecks corrected.

“What’s that?”

“Like you, Len, I’m part of a greater whole. A family, a history, and a future that is never set.”

Awe mixed with fear crept into Lenny’s face.

“What are you gonna do to me, man?”

“I’m going to take you out of here,” Ecks said. “I’m going to take you to a place where you will be judged.”

“Jail?”

“No.”

“Court? I got … I got a record.…”

“You will be your own judge, son. There is no power above you.”

Ecks had heard these words many times but had not uttered them himself. The nameless church was a safe harbor where a sinner was free to brand himself. Rich men and even royalty resided inside Father Frank’s walls. But there, on the hillside of Seabreeze City, all congregants were equal under the sun and moon. They didn’t mention God because just the word was a weapon in the mouths of men.

“You want me to go with you?” Lenny asked.

“I do.”

“But what if you find out that I can’t be saved?”

“That’s not my call, boy. Not at all.”

“Can I have a bed to sleep in?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Lenny asked.

“The woman who stole you says that she wants to make up for what she’s done. I don’t know if that’s true … I have my doubts. But there is no doubt that you are here and you were ripped from a family and a life. It’s my job, my mission to …” Ecks paused, gauging his words. “To try and help you recover from what happened to you twenty-three years ago.”

“I don’t understand half the words you’re sayin’,” Lenny whined. “And the ones I do understand don’t make any sense.”

Ecks smiled. “I will give you a bed to sleep in and food to eat. I will not judge you and I will help you to think about what you might want.”

“Do I have to fuck you?”

“No. There will be no sex involved.”

“What if I want to do it?”

“No.”

“How long do I have to make up my mind?”

“When you finish your lunches we’ll be leaving this place.”

“What about my final paycheck?”

“That life is done.”

Simmons and two of his friends were waiting for Ecks and Lenny in the parking lot. This was a possibility that Ecks hadn’t considered. It didn’t matter that they were there.

“Gentlemen,” the Parishioner said while still walking toward them.

“I’m gon-” Simmons managed to utter before Ecks hit him with a straight left. The sound was like a thick branch cracking under the weight of an ice storm. The big man lurched backward into one of his friends and slumped down. The friend, a blue-eyed redhead, didn’t know whether to hold up his fallen comrade, drop him and attack-or run.

Ecks put up his hands in a gesture of false surrender.

“I don’t want any trouble with you men,” he said. “Your friend has a broken jaw and a concussion. It could have been worse. It will be worse if you push this shit.”

The third thug looked to be a foreigner, East European, maybe even Russian. His small, dark eyes surveyed the situation with logic that had a whole different alphabet, like Sedra’s log.

“Let’s go,” the Russian said to the redhead.

Before they could move Ecks put a hand on Lenny’s elbow, urging the quaking youth toward his car.

“What if they tell somebody about what you did to Simmons?” Lenny asked as they drove past the guard post of the parking lot.

“What’re they gonna say?” Ecks asked. He was feeling good about the resolution of the face-off. All things considered, he got what he wanted with the least damage done.

“The security staff at Zebra is some crazy motherfuckers,” Lenny said. “They will put a niggah down.”

Ecks smiled at the young white man’s choice of words-and identity. They understood each other in a world that made no sense.

“They don’t know who I am,” Ecks assured his passenger.

“They … they got cameras that take pictures of every license plate come in there. They got a dude at motor vehicles too. He prob’ly already give ’em your address.”

“Not from those plates they won’t,” Ecks promised.

“They know who I am. They know my friends.”

“Those aren’t your friends anymore, Len. Everything you knew is over … over. Those men might as well be looking for a brown-tailed jackrabbit named Lenny up in the Hollywood Hills.”

The man with the penises on his throat giggled, showing yellowed teeth and red gums.

“But there’s people out there after me, man,” he said, losing his tentative hold on mirth. “When they find out I’m gone they gonna be lookin’ hard.”

“Elmer Fudd,” Ecks said.

“What?”

“Huntin’ wabbits.”

Lenny’s hands and legs were in motion, almost as if he were moving through a dense forest rather than sitting in a classic Ford.

“You got the shakes?”

“I could use a drink or something,” Lenny said. “I keep thinking that somethin’s gonna happen. There’s this one dude named Locke that’s mad at me ’cause his sister died. Ellie and me, that’s Locke’s sister, were together for a while and Locke didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t give her the H she OD’d on. That’s the reason I been sleepin’ next to the kitchen. Old Joey let me stay because Locke blames me, but they won’t let him on the premises. Only I’m tired’a sleepin’ next to the garbage and roaches.”

Ecks was ready for this development. He had prepared various methods to quiet down a disturbed mind. He’d brought along a bottle of specially prepared water, and then there was the glove compartment.

“You smoke reefer?” Ecks asked.

“I certainly do. Yes, indeed.”

“Look in the glove box. There’s a blue joint in there.”

The bald youth pulled open the box and came out with a bright blue hand-rolled cigarette. There was a box of matches too. He licked the spliff and then put it between his chapped lips.

“It’s sweet,” he said.

“Flavored paper.”

Lenny lit up and took a deep hit off the joint. Then he held it over toward Ecks.

“I can’t drive when I’m high,” the gangster said. “Just don’t finish it all.”

“This some good shit, brother,” Lenny said.

“Half flowers and the rest gold,” Ecks opined, remembering days that were over and almost gone.

Lenny took another deep hit and said, “Wow, I feel it right over my eyes. Like there was a cloud up in there and now it’s just bright sun.”

The young man laughed, sat back, and put his foot up on the dashboard.

At least he’d taken off his suede shoes.

At another time Ecks would have complained, but right then he was too deep into the details of his mission.

“How come they didn’t fire you from Zebra?” he asked.

“Tommy Jester,” Lenny said easily. He sank back further into the vinyl.

“Who’s that?”

“VP at Zebra.”

“Why he care about you?”

“Does the sky look pink to you?” Lenny asked.

It didn’t but Ecks said, “A little bit. I think sometimes the air pollution puts colors up there.”

“Yeah. Wow. It’s beautiful.”

“Why does a big man like Tommy care about you?”

Lenny was staring out the window, the joint turning to blue-gray ash between his fingers. Ecks rolled down his window and sniffed the fresh air.

“This shit is strong,” Lenny said. “It’s like I’m lookin’ out at the hills but I’m seein’ across time; it feels like there should be dinosaurs stompin’ around out there.”

“What about Tommy?” Ecks asked again.

“He used to come over to Manly and Loretta’s and fuck me in the garage,” the dreamer murmured. “But he wasn’t like everybody else. He brought me little trinkets and sweets. He always kissed me on the forehead when he’d go. And then, even when I was too old, he’d call now and then to see how I was doin’. When I was eighteen he made Manly let me go. Tommy’s all right. I …”

At that moment Lenny O drifted off into unconsciousness. The marijuana in the cigarette wasn’t really that strong, but the concentrated synthetic opiate the paper was doused in had an especially powerful kick.

Ecks pulled to the curb, plucked the dead roach from between Lenny’s fingers, and let the boy’s seat all the way back. Then he headed for the Farmers’ Market on the other side of the hill.

Before he’d made it over the canyon his phone sounded. He didn’t expect to answer but when he saw who it was he changed his mind.

“Yeah, Bennie?” he said.

“Don’t meet that guy at the Farmers’ Market,” she said, almost shouting. “Call him and tell him to meet you someplace else.”

“I don’t have his number.”

“Then send somebody else from Frank’s to help you. Send ten people.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“No.”

“You have to.”

“Again, Bennie-why?”

“I went to Henry Marcus’s surf shop.”

“And?”

“The police were there. He’s dead.”

“Dead how?”

“Killed. Murdered.”

“And does that have something to do with you, Benol?”

“I honestly don’t know. I mean, I didn’t tell him about where Henry was until after the murder. But maybe he did it anyway.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Noland.”

“We need to meet, girl.”

“You need to make sure that the boy is safe.”

“Tomorrow morning around ten at the Waffle House on La Brea down near Venice. You meet me and I’ll take care of this problem here.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“What are you up to, Bennie?”

“I’ll meet you tomorrow at ten,” she said and then hung up.

Theodore “Toy” Meacham hailed from the Midwest but for most of his life he worked as a clandestine agent in major cities and important towns around the world. It was his job to identify and eliminate threats to the American people. For decades he believed that he was a patriot protecting the shores of the United States from those who detested freedom and liberty.

Technically, he worked for a covert subdivision of an independent mercenary operation, but he was aware that the orders he took came from the highest echelons of the United States armed services, the Pentagon, and even, from time to time, the White House itself.

Toy was well versed in firearms and explosives, poisons, bloodletting, and threats of all kinds. He tried to keep collateral damage down to a minimum but understood that sometimes a few innocent lives might have to be shattered or lost for the well-being of the American body politic and therefore the people.

As a rule Toy worked alone. He’d receive a three-line mission statement from an envelope or the lips of some envoy who knew the right cryptogram; then he’d use money that appeared magically and employ his wiles to obtain the results requested.

Toy was a genius at creating catastrophe. Complex designs appeared in his mind while he stalked his victims. Over breakfast he’d deduce the clearest path to nullifying persons, installations, networks, even whole institutions.

He once identified the local director of a clandestine government operation in Mumbai that posed a threat to certain business interests that were essential to American security in Pakistan. He then murdered the daughter of a regional crime family boss, throwing the blame on the targeted director.

Staying in a small French hotel, reading in the daily papers how his plan was developing, Toy unconsciously began to use his genius to decipher what he was doing and what he’d done.

Ahmed al-Bira, one article read, father of three, was gunned down at the New Town Marketplace while holding a melon and asking the price.

Something about that sentence tipped over an intricately curving concatenation of dominoes that, it seemed, Toy had been setting up for more than forty years.

The price of a melon, Toy remembered whispering. The whisper echoed until it was like a scream.

Instantly, miraculously Toy understood that he’d become a mad bomber, an anarchist bent only on destruction-or maybe a smart bomb that had drifted off course while his distracted masters profited and laughed.

Meacham knew about Father Frank. He’d come across the name while following Lester Stein, a professor who, as he researched Russian literature, had begun to pass along data that could have been seen as a danger to national security.

Lester had been a member of a nameless congregation on the coast a hundred miles north of LA.

Unexpectedly, to everyone but Toy, the professor died of a heart attack. The clandestine agent hadn’t reported the existence of Frank or his church mainly because there was no system set up for him to report anything. He was a tool, not intelligence. He existed to serve-or rather, mete out.

Toy showed up at the nameless white stone church at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon. He was met at the door by Sister Hope, who greeted him by name. She ushered the assassin into Frank’s rectory.

“How did she know my name?” Theodore Meacham asked Father Frank.

“We’ve known about you for a long time, Toy,” Frank said. “There have been three members of the congregation who were complicit in your crimes.”

“I was following orders given by elected and appointed officials.” Meacham said the words even if he no longer believed in them.

“We recognize no government above common law,” Frank replied.

Theodore never knew whether it was the equation of the notion of common law placed next to the idea of government that swayed him or if it was just the tone of Frank’s voice. But after a three-hour conference with Frank, Toy knew that he had to retire. He quit the mercenary corporation, collected his back pay from diplomatic services, and bought the Nut Hut from Myra Salud, a widow who wanted to go live with her daughter in Minneapolis.

Theodore was taller than he seemed and stronger than his slight frame might have indicated. His skin was sallow-allowing him to pretend to be from any continent, racial group, or religion. His brow was heavy with the number of souls he’d terminated without the slightest heat or satisfaction.

He was the butcher and they the various cuts of meat.

“Hello,” Xavier Rule said to Ted Meacham.

The taupe eyes registered the gangster. The pallid bald head barely nodded.

“Hey.” Toy looked around to see what else had drifted into his environment.

Ecks knew how clear and yet vacant that vision was.

“I’m gonna drop by here at around three thirty,” Ecks said. “Somebody, maybe more than one, will be looking after me. They might even come up and talk to you to ask about me.”

“And what did you say?”

“You still run the safe house in Coldwater Canyon?”

“You got clearance from Frank?”

“Call him.”

“I will.”

“Send whoever it is asking about me up there. Tell ’em that I’m an old friend and that you play poker up there sometimes.”

“If I get the high sign do you need backup?”

“Probably not. Let ’em know that you already told a young man to meet me up there tomorrow at four, that I was asking if you passed on the message. Maybe you could mistake them for the guy I left the message for.”

“Should I turn a profit?”

“That would be best.”

“Want some nuts?”

“Got some,” Ecks said, and Toy smiled.

“Goddamn, that was some strong shit,” Lenny O said at a few minutes past three.

They were in the Farmers’ Market parking lot.

“You must’a been tired,” Ecks said. “That shit never knock me out like that.”

Lenny sat up and pressed his palms against his eyes.

“Damn,” he said. “Where are we?”

“Parking lot.”

“Why?”

“You fell asleep. I couldn’t carry you, so I thought we’d wait awhile … until you got up.”

“How long?”

“Three, four hours. You thirsty?”

Ecks handed over a sealed bottle of water. He had dipped the top into the same drug that had already rendered the film crewman unconscious. The liquid narcotic would have seeped in.

Lenny studied the cap, broke the serrated seal, and took a swig.

“You ready to go?” Ecks asked.

“Where to?”

“That house I promised … with the bed.”

Lenny nodded and Ecks turned over the engine. He drove off the lot onto Third. By the time he’d made it around the block Lenny was out again.

“Hello?”

“You still feel all excited?” Ecks asked Winter.

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to get a car not registered to you and pull it up to Beverly and Fairfax, southwest corner at ten minutes to four exactly.”

“You got it.”

“Wear a hat that hides your face a little. Put on some sunglasses too.”

“Why?”

“Come on, Win, don’t start askin’ questions when you already know the answers.”

Ecks walked up to Toy Meacham at the Nut Hut at three thirty.

“African groundnuts, please,” he requested from the state-certified anarchist.

“Frank said that I should help you if you need it.”

“If I needed it I shouldn’t be doin’ what I’m doin’.”

“A guy came up at three-oh-six and asked for some sugared cashews. He scoped out the place and now he’s sitting at the Mexican food court with another guy looking right at you.”

“That’s good to know.”

Toy offered over a quarter-pound bag of toasted macadamias and Ecks gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

“My cell phone number is written across the top,” Ecks told Toy. “Call me if I need to know anything.”

The elder killer nodded, handing Ecks his change.

Twelve minutes later, on Fairfax walking north, Ecks felt the cell phone throb in his pocket. He touched his ear as if scratching, turning on the micro-Bluetooth as he did so.

“Yeah?” he muttered.

“Soon as you left,” Toy said, “one of the guys got up and followed. You won’t be able to miss him. He’s wearing this green suit. The other one came up and got all tough. I acted like I was scared and he felt real good about himself. For three hundred dollars I told him what you said. I acted like I thought he wanted into a poker game. You want me to send you the cash?”

“Put it on my tab. That way I can have nuts all year.”

Toy disconnected the call and Ecks stopped to look in a real estate office window, pretending to check out apartments. The broad-shouldered man following him was garbed in a hideous green suit with Brazil nut-brown shoes and a black T-shirt. He wasn’t afraid of being noticed, even seemed a bit bothered at having to wait while Ecks studied the little three-by-five cards taped to an easel in the showcase.

Ecks looked down at his watch, saw that Win was supposed to be at the rendezvous in two minutes, and started making his way north once more.

He reached the southwest corner of Fairfax and Beverly at ten to four exactly. A black Lincoln sedan swooped down at the corner, the door swung open, and Ecks stepped in. As he closed the door Winter pulled away and the man in the green suit started to run. But it was too late. Ecks studied his frustrated pursuer in the side mirror and smiled to himself.

“You’d make a good wheelman,” Ecks said to Winter Johnson.

“Ain’t they the first ones to get iced in all the heist movies?”

“I guess so. You know I don’t own a TV and I haven’t been to a movie in years.”

“What do you do when you up in the crib alone?” Win asked.

“Read my books,” Ecks said. “Think.”

“That sounds kinda boring.”

“I guess. My ride’s down at the parking garage across Third from the Farmers’ Market.”

It was a short drive to the loading dock behind George Ben’s hardware store in West Hollywood. Ecks called ahead and was met by the reformed killer at the big double doors.

“Anybody around?” Ecks asked Ben.

“Just us brothers,” Ben said. He was wearing a pink apron over a violet jumpsuit.

“I got a kid in the backseat,” the Parishioner said, “all sedated. I’d like you to look after him for a few days or so.”

“And if he wants to leave?”

“Try to talk him out of it. Tell him that I brought him here, that I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“Okay,” George said. “I’ll do what I can. What if he asks me what’s going on?”

“Tell him that I’m talking to the woman who hired me and I’m trying to get him some cash.”

“Uh-huh. Is this one like Charlotte?”

“Sorry about that, George. And yeah … this one’s just as bad.”

Ecks reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol-the one he took from Doris Milne.

“This yours?” the Parishioner asked.

“That little bitch.”

“Thanks for the help, man.”

Ben smiled and, after taking the handgun, said, “I love you too, Ecks.”

Yellow River was a simple restaurant: no silk hangings or fancy woodwork, just a big blue linoleum floor with seven beat-up black lacquered tables, each set with four chairs that had skinny legs. The waiter wore broad-legged black trousers and a short white jacket that buttoned up to the throat.

When Ecks walked in at seven thirty, three of the seven tables had people sitting at them. Two had been pushed together to accommodate a party of six.

Everyone else in the room was Chinese, all of them speaking at once-shouting without anger.

“Mister Ecks,” the ageless olive-skinned waiter said. He guided Xavier to a table toward the back of the room.

“Thank you, Wu,” Ecks said.

“Whiskey?”

“No.”

“You eat now?”

“I have a guest coming.”

Surprise showed only in the man’s brows. He nodded and backed away.

Putting his elbows on the rickety, dented table, Ecks laced his fingers and pressed his lips against his right thumb. He wondered, while the room resonated with loud conversations of the displaced Asian population. He was thinking about the room not as a stopping place but more like a passageway. And he was not a human being but a chameleon changing his spots to fit the world around him.

He’d been changing with the days since Benol had walked into the nameless house of worship. He shouldn’t have been meeting the Brazilian student/waitress. He shouldn’t have been doing Frank’s bidding without more information and explanation.

Thinking these things, Ecks smiled. He’d never done one thing in his life that he should have done. Why start now? he thought with a smile.

It was seven forty-three on the round numbered clock hanging from the wall when Ecks grinned and Benicia Torres walked into the blue room.

She took the smile for her and returned it.

Ecks’s expression intensified. He liked her white dress and the leopard skin-patterned scarf that mostly covered her blond-and-blue hair. The cream hem came down to the middle of her copper knees.

He stood up and pulled out a chair.

Two Chinese men in business suits turned their heads to get a better look.

Ecks couldn’t remember the last time he stood up for a woman or pulled out her chair.

“You’re early,” he said.

“You’re earlier.” She took the seat, giving him a slight nod of approval.

Ecks felt like laughing. He was almost giddy.

“It’s not a fancy place, but the food is really good,” he said. “Anything you don’t eat?”

“I don’t really like squash,” she said.

“Okay, they don’t have menus except for tourists. Wu-that’s the waiter-he just asks if you’re ready to eat and if you want something to drink.”

“That’s odd.”

“It’s family-style. I see a lot of the same people coming in and out of here.”

The Brazilian’s Mardi Gras eyes glittered. When she smiled Ecks could see that her teeth were a little crooked. This flaw made his heart skip, and once again he wondered about the man he had been and was no longer.

“You want a drink?” Wu asked, appearing at Benicia’s elbow.

“Red wine?”

He smiled and nodded. “Whiskey?” he said to Ecks.

“Not tonight.”

The waiter went away. A family of five came in and he waved them toward the two empty tables.

“I like this place,” Benicia said.

“Me too.”

“So?” she asked.

If you find yourself laughin’ a lot an’ thinkin’ that you havin’ a good time, Panther Rule had told his preadolescent son more than once, then there’s prob’ly somebody sneakin’ up behind you with a baseball bat.

“What?” Benicia said.

“Huh?”

“You just frowned like something hurt you.”

“Red wine for the lady,” Wu said, placing a juice glass three-quarters filled with dark burgundy. “You eat now?”

“What’s for dinner?” Ecks asked.

“Some soup,” the waiter recited, “duck, pork, green bean, and shrimp bun.”

“Squash in any of that?”

“Not season.”

Ecks looked to his date. She shrugged.

“Bring it on, Wu.”

Benicia waited for the nearly expressionless waiter to walk away before asking, “And are you having a good time again, Mr. Noland?”

The baseball bat his father had warned of made Ecks think about Doris.

“I like this place because it doesn’t judge me,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“A lot of places, when you walk in, they size you up. Got money, got a knife, big tipper, or just a cheapskate. No matter what, they know you before you got the chance to be whatever you are-or to change.”

“My father always says that people never change,” Benicia said in a tone implying that she hadn’t made up her mind yet.

“My whole life people been sizin’ me up. On the street, in the schoolyard-anywhere I go. But the first night I came here Wu just asked me how many. I told him that it was just me and he asked what I wanted to drink. I told him whiskey and he never forgot it.”

“I don’t understand,” Benicia said.

“When I came into your restaurant I said some words that you liked and you wrote down your number. When we got together you talked to me like I was just somebody sitting across from you. If I said something you found hard to believe you said so.”

“All that sounds pretty normal,” she said, smiling.

“I have never been normal-hardly ever saw it before. Where I come from normal packed its bags and moved without leaving a forwarding address.”

“Are you maybe romanticizing your life?”

“No,” Ecks said in a tone that caught the young woman up short.

She frowned long enough for Wu to bring a platter of some delicacies from the yellow kitchen on the other side of two blue swinging doors.

“Not so fast,” she said, and then, “Oh … oh, yes, yes. That’s right. Just … just like that.”

“Oh, shit,” Ecks said, and then he came. “Damn.”

He was hovering over her, his stomach muscles contracted so as to make his abdomen concave and taut.

“You haven’t been with a woman for a while,” she said, smiling up at him, her ankles caressing his neck.

“The man I am might not have ever been with one.” Ecks slumped down on his side, trying to stifle his hard breathing.

“I don’t understand,” she said, turning on her side to face him.

When he didn’t respond she put her palm against his cheek.

“This is kinda … kinda new for me,” he admitted.

“Being with a woman?” Surprise showed on her face.

“No. No, not that. I been with women, hundreds of ’em. But all that was different. There was this one girl once, but …” Ecks was remembering Dorothy and his son. He had loved her, but there was cocaine in the mix, at least at the beginning. By the time his son was born he felt like his father at the police station: a panther in chains.

“What?” she asked, pulling away.

With shocking speed Ecks grabbed her wrist, keeping her hand in place.

“I never been gentle,” he said. “Never. It makes me feel too much, you know?”

Benicia was stunned by the quick movement but then she smiled.

“So you’re telling me that you’re the man version of a virgin?” she said.

For a moment Xavier’s vision blurred and his neck muscles went taut. Then that breath, that inhalation like the first cigarette after a few days in lockdown.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling an unaccustomed grin spread across his mouth.

“Then let’s practice sleeping next to each other,” she said.

“Wake up,” Ecks said.

“Huh?”

“You said you wanted to go on my paper route, right?”

“Really?” Benicia sat straight up. “You weren’t kidding?”

“I already called the guy been covering for me. I can go and you sleep if you want.” He wasn’t worried about anything incriminating. All that stuff was in a flat, watertight safe that he kept under the bed.

“No,” Benicia said, standing up naked and unashamed.

Her breasts were slightly lighter than the rest of her skin, as was her pubis. The pubic hair had been trimmed to a razor line to accommodate the bikinis she obviously wore often.

“I wouldn’t miss this.”

She threw on the white dress that she’d folded earlier and laid across the back of a kitchen chair.

They trundled down to the alley and climbed through the driver’s side into the cab of the ancient, wood-paneled truck.

“Aren’t you scared coming down this alley by yourself in the dark?” Benicia asked when he turned the key in the ignition.

“Scared?” he said. “No, baby. Scared is scared of me.”

Benicia frowned and Ecks wondered whether he had said too much. He worked the gas pedal to keep the engine turning over as she looked out of the passenger’s window at the plaster wall that had blocked the passenger door from opening.

When they took off she pressed her right palm against the glass.

“You need the heat?” he asked.

“Maybe a little.”

Ecks fooled around with the knobs.

“Music?” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“Sorry about what?” She swiveled her shoulders to face him.

“I’m not no Romeo.”

“I always thought that Juliet made bad choices.”

“That and the condom breakin’ like that.”

“Do you have any diseases?”

“Church gave me a clean bill of health.”

“The church?”

“They look after their members.”

Carlo was a Panamanian who lived with his sister and grandmother on Hauser near Wilshire. At fifteen he was short and dusky, with odd light brown eyes that seemed to have a language of their own. He ran out from the doorway of the dark apartment building at five minutes to four.

“Hey, Mr. Noland.” Carlo waved before climbing into the canvas-covered back of the truck.

Damien lived off Fairfax and Wilshire. He was blond and Jewish, lanky, with a good throwing arm. He climbed in next to Benicia, pushing her closer to Xavier.

“Good to see you, Mr. Noland,” the dark-eyed sandy-haired kid said.

Seeing Damien reminded Ecks of Lenny O lying unconscious somewhere in the back rooms of the West Hollywood hardware store.

“This is Miss Torres,” Ecks said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Damien said with a smile.

“Me too,” Carlo added, sticking his head in through the window connecting the cab to the back of the truck.

Angelique was waiting on the sidewalk in blue jeans and a blue hoodie. Those work clothes could not hide her tall, elegant form. Her black skin and white eyes were in stark, beautiful relief.

She climbed into the back with Carlo and the truck drove to the distribution hut on Sepulveda.

At the big aluminum shelter, Benicia followed as Ecks and the kids grabbed hundred-issue bundles from the floor. After they’d loaded a dozen bundles into the truck, Carlo and Angelique climbed into the back and started folding papers to quarter size and wrapped them with blue rubber bands from a big plastic bag.

In the meanwhile Ecks and Damien moved thirty-five more bundles, throwing them into the back of the truck. Carlo and Angelique were hidden by stacks of bound newspapers.

“Ain’t seen you in a while, Ecks,” a big red-faced man said just as the Parishioner was about to climb into the driver’s seat.

“Been busy with church business, Elmo.”

“Oh,” the rotund newspaper distributor said, unconvinced. “I thought you sold out to Bud.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Ecks slammed the door and drove off toward the thin band of orange light the sun made as the earth turned.

They worked delivering newspapers from four forty-six until seven forty-eight. On long stretches where there were lots of customers, all three kids jumped out and ran down the street after the truck, throwing their little missiles onto porches and lawns. At large apartment buildings they scrambled up stairs-moving fast.

“How do they remember them all?” Benicia asked when Ecks had parked at the end of a long block of apartment buildings.

“They got a program in their smartphones that gives ’em a checklist. They mark ’em off as they go.”

“You pay for their phones?”

“Just the data plan and limited text so we stay in touch. They pay for calls and anything extra.”

On blocks where there were only one or two drops, Damien, with his unerring eye, threw papers from the window. He never missed.

“Dad says that I’m like Sandy Koufax,” he said when Benicia complimented his throw.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

Ecks dropped the kids off at Fairfax High at seven fifty-eight. Then he drove back downtown to Benicia’s car. When they stopped at the curb in front of the parking garage, it was she who leaned over to kiss him.

“I had a really great time,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ecks said, feeling unaccustomed nervousness. “Me too.”

“I could have said no,” she said again.

“Why didn’t you? I would have listened.”

“It was the right time,” she said with a smile.

Ecks kissed her and then walked her into the garage, waited while she started the engine of her Saab, and watched as she drove off.

He got to the Waffle House by nine thirty-five and asked for a booth away from the broad window that looked out on La Brea. There he had time to drink a cup of black coffee and take inventory of his situation.

Benol had started the ball rolling. It was she who hired the detective, and then went to Frank asking for help locating Brayton and the children she kidnapped.

Brayton was dead.

One of the boys was dead.

Doris killed her kidnapper and only confidante, her pimp and sometimes aunt-Sedra. Doris also tried to kill Ecks, drugged George, and was at the scene of Hank’s murder-toting a gun.

Swan was dying. Father Frank’s church had secret baptisms. And Ecks felt like a chrysalis about to vomit forth a new man into the world.

The world? Ecks pressed both thumbs on the bone just above where his eyes met.

Not the world, this world. This world where people were getting murdered and children were not taught to read; where a woman could set up shop on the corner in a peaceful neighborhood dealing in slavery and murder.

“Hello, Mr. Noland.”

Looking up, Ecks saw Benol standing next to the booth.

It was as if he had conjured her with his mind. This feeling was so strong that he felt no compunction to greet her.

“Can I sit down?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Did you go to the Farmers’ Market?” she asked.

Xavier Rule maintained his silence. His eyes tightened as he scrutinized his client.

“Are you going to speak?” she demanded.

“Tell me how you came to know Jerry Jocelyn.”

She flinched in response to the verbal slap.

“How did you?” she said, and then, “The hotel, of course. You were waiting for me to come in. You saw him with me.”

“That’s the answer to your question. Now how about mine?”

Benol was wearing a gray dress with a cobalt collar. Ecks wore black cotton pants and a dark blue T-shirt, his work uniform.

“He called me,” she said, looking down at the red tabletop.

At that moment a waitress, whose name tag read Yolanda, came up to the table.

“What can I get you children?” the big woman asked.

She was both older and darker than the Parishioner. Yolanda called everybody child. Her fat cheeks and crafty eyes made for pleasant banter on days when a bad mood hit Ecks.

“Chicken and waffles,” the Parishioner said. “And more coffee for me.”

“I’ll take coffee, black,” Benol uttered, and Yolanda went away.

“How did he get your number?” Ecks asked, sounding like a jealous boyfriend needing to know all the steps taken to infidelity.

“I asked him but he didn’t say. I figured that he spoke to the detective or someone the detective had spoken to. He knew what I was looking for. He said that he was trying to find the boys too. He promised me a payday of fifteen thousand dollars if, when I found the boys, I turned the names over to him first.”

“And here you were already looking for them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“That really doesn’t make too much sense.”

“Jerry said that he knew certain parties that were interested in finding out what happened to the boys. They were willing to pay good money for the information. I figured it must have been some relative. I didn’t see anything wrong with helping out the boys’ families.”

“If he was willing to pay you fifteen thousand then there must have been a lot more somewhere.”

“Yes. I don’t know the sum exactly, but Jerry, I bet, is getting ten times what I am.”

“More’n a hundred thousand dollars,” Xavier Rule said. “That really doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Maybe it does,” Benol said with questionable certainty. “Jerry said that it has something to do with an inheritance, that the family can only collect if their son survives. And he also indicated that they had a certain amount of concern for the other lost boys.”

“That why Hank is dead?”

“He was a drug addict. Maybe his death didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping?”

“You believe that?”

“I told Jerry about Henry after he was killed.”

“But you didn’t tell Frank about Jerry.”

“He came to me after I went to Frank.”

“But you were still using the church,” Ecks countered.

“No. I always wanted to find those boys. Ask Theodora. So what if I could make a little money on the side? I’d been let go from my temp job. If Jerry wasn’t putting me up in that hotel I’d be homeless. My savings ran out a week ago.”

The waitress came with the food and drinks.

“You children play nice now,” she said before swinging her big hips back toward the kitchen service window.

“So what do you think happened, Bennie?”

“Henry was murdered.”

“And who do you suppose did that?”

Benol just stared at the question and the questioner.

Ecks went to work on the waffle and three pieces of deep-fried chicken. Whenever he was faced with difficult problems his appetite kicked in. The waffles were served with margarine and imitation maple syrup but he wasn’t particular.

“I don’t know,” Benol said at least three minutes after Ecks had asked the last question.

“Did you tell Jerry about the boy’s death?” Ecks asked through a mouthful of waffle.

“I can’t find him. He’s not answering his phone and his receptionist says that he’s on vacation. I don’t know-maybe it’s just a coincidence that Henry is dead.”

“Uh-huh,” Xavier said, putting down his fork. “You shouldn’t go back to that hotel.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re telling the truth then you just might be expendable.”

Benol closed her eyes and opened them, trying hard to see something that was hidden.

“What did I do?”

“Kidnapping, accomplice to murder, conspiracy,” Ecks said. “There are all kinds of things that the law could throw at you.…”

Ecks trailed off midsentence because he was about to say that maybe all three boys were the target of murder. It was his turn to close his eyes. There were so many suspects and players.

“I was able to keep the guy I communicated with away from the Nut Hut.”

“Was he the third child?”

“No, he wasn’t.”

They sat quietly long enough for Yolanda to come take the dishes and leave a flimsy yellow bill.

“I found Brayton,” Ecks said at last.

“Where?”

“At his house.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“He didn’t know anything that I hadn’t already figured out.”

“I’d … I’d like to talk to him.”

“He was leaving town when we spoke. Sounded like he was planning a long trip.”

“Did he say anything about me?” the child in Benol asked.

“No. Not one word.”

This final rejection seemed to break Benol. She hung her head and exhaled, a solitary foot soldier ordered by a higher power to capitulate.

“Where should I go?” Benol asked. “Jerry was paying the rent at the hotel.”

Ecks reached into the pocket on his left hip and pulled out a roll of twenty twenty-dollar bills. This he handed to his minister’s client.

“Four hundred dollars,” he said. “Take it and get a bed at the downtown YWCA. I’ll call you the minute I know something.”

“What about the fifteen thousand?”

“Did you ever really think that that lawyer was gonna pay you, girl?”

Again Benol temporarily lost the power of speech. Xavier had put into words the question that she was unwilling to ask herself-there was nothing else to say.

“Will you call me tomorrow? Please,” she asked.

“Before the sun goes down.”

Frank was serious about the privacy and protection of his parishioners. There were two houses in Coldwater Canyon that belonged to the church, through unaffiliated individuals. The safe house was on Mill Valley Way. It was a pleasant little flattop bungalow with a deck that looked out over Los Angeles.

If any member of the congregation or other friend of Frank’s got in trouble, they were often brought to the safe house to wait for plane tickets or news.

Xavier was once asked to bring the church’s youngest member, Juan Margoles, there after the fifteen-year-old had killed his father. Even though the boy had shot the elder Margoles in the back of the head, Frank and his cabinet of six judges had deemed the act self-defense and agreed to get the young man to safety.

The Parishioner didn’t question the verdict. He’d never relied on the law for any kind of justice, and so he drove the boy to the house in the dead of night. No one had told him what had happened after that drop-off, and he never asked.

The safe house was on Mill Valley Way, but the guardhouse was where Ecks was headed that noon. The guardhouse was located on Pleasant Circle. The route there was different from Mill Valley Way, but the guardhouse’s small backyard was less than one hundred and fifty yards away from the safe house.

Ecks could see the safe house from the window in the kitchen. There were also sixteen hidden cameras that, when turned on, revealed every corner of the hideout.

Ecks turned on the four-by-four block of video monitors and sat back with a snifter of cognac. He rarely drank brandy, but that had been Swan’s favorite drink. He would toast his friend and see what might happen in the safe house on the hill.

At one thirty-three the thug in the ugly green suit approached the front door of the house on Mill Valley Way. The entrance was hidden from view by a hundred kinds of vegetation, but Ecks saw the man clearly on monitor five. Green Suit pushed the buzzer and Ecks heard it over the audio connection. Then came the knock. Buzzer again. Knock. There was a two-second delay between the action and sounds.

Then the man in green jiggled the doorknob. When he found that it was locked he turned and walked away.

Fourteen minutes passed and the man returned with three friends-one of whom Ecks recognized.

“Hm.”

A short, fancy little man in a well-cut buff-colored suit knelt in front of the door and had it open in under three minutes.

Ecks watched the crew from monitor to monitor as they went through the house. Green and Buff did a very professional search. This didn’t bother Ecks, because the safe house would be clean of any evidence or clues that might lead to the church.

Accompanying the gunsels was a tall, good-looking man in an elegantly cut cream-colored suit, and Jerry Jocelyn in dark blue business attire.

“Nobody here and nuthin’ else either,” said the man in green to the stylish boss.

“That’s right, Mr. Martindale,” the shorter lock-pick man added.

“Okay,” Martindale said. “Let’s just sit. Jesse?”

“Yes, boss?” the man in the buff suit said.

“Is there a window that looks down on the path up here?”

“Yep.”

“Keep a lookout.”

Ecks watched as Jesse moved from monitor seven to thirteen.

“Link,” Martindale said.

“Yes, Mr. Martindale?” Hideous Green answered.

“You find a place to keep a lookout for somebody coming from behind.”

“Why would they do that?” Link asked.

The images on the black-and-white screens were a little blurry, but Ecks could see clearly the hard look Martindale had for the minion Link.

“But I’ll go look,” Link said hastily. Then he walked into monitor eleven, pulled up a straight-backed chair, and gazed out a window that gave a view of the side and back of the house.

If Ecks looked out of his window he would have been able to stare Link in the face.

“Have a seat,” Martindale said to Jocelyn when the other men had gone to their posts.

The lawyer/pimp took a wood-frame chair with a bulging striped cushion.

Martindale approached the yellow couch, inspected it first with his eyes and then with his hands. Finally, when he was satisfied that there was no danger to his clothes, he sat down and sighed.

“So how’s it going, Jer?”