Parishioner

“The surfer’s dead and our guy’s got a day pass downtown on Thursday.”

“So it’s just Noland, this Lenny O kid, and that other business and we’re through.”

“I don’t know why we have to bother with Lenny,” Jocelyn said. “We know it’s not him.”

“If some bright-eyed cop catches wise then it won’t look like we picked and choosed. Keeps ’em off balance.”

“And what about the other thing?”

“No choice there either,” Martindale said. “Too bad.”

“Yeah.” Jerry Jocelyn seemed to have true lament.

“Not that.”

“No? Then what, Chick?”

“I used to really like Los Angeles. But you know, it’s got too crowded over the years. A man can’t make a living like he used to. And even when there’s money comin’ in, there’s no more pleasure. You know, I’ve done it all and now everything tastes like chicken.”

“So where you going after this?”

“If I told you then I’d have to kill you,” Martindale said, and Ecks didn’t think that it was a lie.

“I’m heading out to Maui,” Jocelyn said, unafraid.

“I guess that’s a good enough destination. But it’s a little gaudy for me. I want an old house in a white neighborhood where all the families can trace their roots back to Jefferson and Washington. Just give me that and I’ll live out the rest of my days in peace.”

Sipping his brandy, Ecks felt an odd kinship with the men on his screens. Each one of them had been born in the everyday world that provided the path that led from school to work to marriage to retirement and finally a sleepy death. At one point on this road they took a detour thinking that they’d get ahead of the herd somehow. And now they were outlaws with no way back. They still had family and friends, dreams and aspirations-but the pack that spawned them had moved on.

Ecks poured himself another brandy while the men settled into silence, waiting for victims that would never arrive.

“Jesse,” Chick Martindale called out at four fifty-seven. He was reading a newspaper while Jocelyn thumbed through a small tome he carried in his jacket pocket.

“Yes, boss?”

“You sure he said four o’clock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Today?”

“I asked him twice. Had to pay five hundred for it.”

Toy had said three hundred. And Toy wouldn’t lie-not to a fellow Parishioner. Working thugs like Link and Jesse were always hungry for a few bucks. It was no surprise that they would lie to their boss. They’d lie to their own mothers if that helped pay the rent.

Ecks was on his fifth drink. He wasn’t worried, because the cameras were recording every word and movement. He had no intention of facing four men who were as untamed as he had been in the old days back east.

Criminal time, Ecks remembered, was often indolent and sluggish: sitting guard at a front door or waiting for a victim who might not ever show. Between the inherent danger and boredom it was not a job for everybody.

But there were moments, times when you were so free that the rest of the world seemed as if it were born and would die in chains.

A few minutes shy of six Chick folded his newspaper and reached over, touching Jerry’s knee. The rogue lawyer looked up and a preagreed-upon high sign was passed between them.

Ecks had been drifting for a while, seeing but not really registering the safe house interlopers. But when Chick alerted Jerry the brandy seemed to evaporate in Ecks’s system.

Something was up. Something serious.

The lawyer and boss both produced weapons. Ancient farmers, they practiced the religion of scorched earth.

Jerry Jocelyn moved quietly into the range of camera thirteen while Chick appeared on monitor eleven.

The henchmen were gazing out of their windows, yawning now and then.

“Jesse!” Chick called out as he swung his pistol up.

Jerry was pointing his gun at Jesse’s slowly turning head. The muted gunshots went off at the same moment.

In that brief span, less than one second by Ecks’s reckoning, two men had perished.

After checking the bodies, Chick and Jerry hastily returned to monitor seven. Ecks was wondering whether the second double cross would happen then. But no. Saying nothing, the killers made sure that they hadn’t left any incriminating evidence. Then they hurried out the front door, past the watch of monitor five, and out to the street.

The inebriation that had dissipated now came back with its full weight on top of Ecks’s skull. It was to him as if he were watching himself and Swan on one of their misadventures. The letting of blood and the taking of life were such simple things for men like him and Chick and Jerry.

At that moment it seemed as if the whole world were rotten through and through. Every man, woman, and child was a part of the corruption. He was evil by virtue of his species and there was no deliverance, no way out.

The sound of Thelonius Monk came as no surprise. He answered the little cell phone automatically.

“Yeah?”

“You okay, Ecks?” George Ben asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“You sound funny.”

“What you got for me?”

“Lenny is up and kinda nervous. Those tattoos are a fright.”

“Put him on the line.”

The distraction of conversation fended off the darkness, pushing it back three or four inches. Ecks felt that the shadows of his victims were scurrying about the corners of the room, mumbling and muttering curses upon all things living. These curses, he felt, had damned all humanity ever since Cain slew his brother.

“Hey,” Lenny said through the phone.

“How you doin’, Len?”

“Did you drug me, man?”

“I gave you that joint. It was pretty strong, but I didn’t think it was gonna knock you out like that.”

“Why’d you leave me here?”

“You were out and I had business. I told you that I’d put you somewhere with a bed.”

“But you put me with this faggot.”

The shadows receded a bit farther when Ecks considered the fact that Lenny had offered to have sex with him only a day ago. What, the gangster wondered, was this young man’s convoluted understanding of sexual identity? But he didn’t ask.

“I’ve got a bead on your parents, Lenny,” Ecks said.

“You do?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know where they are exactly, but I’m close to it.”

“I don’t know, man,” Lenny said. “I don’t know if you should be doin’ that.”

“Why not?”

“You seen me. You know what I am. How’s some mother and father gonna call a piece’a shit like me son?”

“They were the ones who lost you when you couldn’t take care of yourself, Len. When they look at you they’ll see their own crime, not your failings.”

“Really? You think so?”

“I know it’s true,” Ecks said.

Maybe Lenny O was a piece of shit, but Ecks and Jerry and Chick were entire waste-disposal plants.

“Gimme two days there with George, Lenny,” Ecks said in a controlled tone. “Stay there and I will help you make a man out of yourself.”

“What if I say no?” the young man challenged.

“I only asked George to put you up, son. If you think that you’re better off on your own, just go.”

“Really?”

“Look, Len, it’s like I told you: I’m working for the woman who took you when you were a baby. She wants to make things right. And you already said that there’s people lookin’ for you. If you think you’re better on your own, though, I won’t stand in the way.”

“So I could leave?”

“Yeah.”

It was at that moment that Ecks lost heart. Whatever Benol or Frank wanted, he wouldn’t bully or lie to Lenny-not anymore. He’d tell the truth and go by where that led. There was no other choice when two dead men lay in the monitors-men who died while he watched and did nothing.

“You there, Mr. Noland?”

“Yeah, Lenny.”

“Okay, I’ll stay for two days. But you know, I could use another one’a those blue joints if you got ’em. I slept pretty good with that one you give me.”

“Hand the phone to George and I’ll make sure you get something.”

Driving down the hill at seven fifteen, Ecks called Frank on the minister’s private line.

“Are they both dead?” the pastor asked after Ecks made his report.

“Both shot in the head by men who were not new to the job. I didn’t go in, because someone might have heard the shots, and I couldn’t be connected to another murder so soon.”

“Don’t worry about them. Are the tapes still in the cameras?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get somebody to take care of it.”

“And what should I do?”

“Make sure the remaining boy is safe and find out what part Benol has played in these events.”

At seven thirty-one, driving down Sunset Boulevard, Ecks made a second call.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Benicia.”

“Mr. X,” she said playfully. “I wondered if you were the kind of man who’d call a girl the next day.”

“The old me might have forgotten, but he’s not in the driver’s seat no more.”

“How’s the new Egbert doing?”

“Struggling with the past.”

“How can I tell the difference?”

“Kiss me good night and see if I call the next day.”

“Do you want to come over and test that hypothesis?”

“Can’t tonight.”

“Oh? Church business?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

Ecks drove back to his apartment and set himself up at the window to gaze down on the alley and think.

We all carry our own loads, Frank had once preached. No one can help us bear the weight. No one will stop for us if we’re about to fail or stray. You can only take one step at a time with the knowledge that there is no way to pass the burden on. Be at peace with this solemn responsibility; do not hope for a time when you can lay this mortal duty aside, and you will find that the weight is not so heavy and that the time as it passes is filled with wonder and sometimes even brotherhood. Because you know brotherhood is not helping your fellow man-it is loving him.

The hours passed.

Now and then a homeless man or woman staggered down the alley with a rickety grocery store cart or a backpack. They moved between the few lights on the lane, fading into shadows now and then, only to reappear a few yards farther on. Cars drove through taking the shortcut, and a police cruiser had done three passes, looking for anything that might indicate a crime.

At four in the morning, life seemed to come to a halt. He hadn’t been thinking about the lost boys or Benol, Dodo or her aunt, but they roiled in the back of his mind.

Xavier Rule then took out his phone and called Swan’s number.

“Hello?” a woman said sadly, her tone echoing the emptiness inside Ecks.

“Is Swan there?”

“Um, no,” the voice said.

“Could you leave him a message for me then?”

“He died last night,” she murmured softly. “Passed away in his sleep.”

Ecks made the next call at seven in the morning. After a long and detailed discussion he asked, “So is that okay, Ms. Pride?”

“Are you sure you need me there?” Cylla asked. “You know it’s really not my case.”

“This is church business. We can’t have someone outside the circle running the room.”

“I’ll have to call Frank.”

“If he says no, tell him that I’m buying a ticket on a deep-sea fishing boat and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and that he shouldn’t look for me until at least the end of next week.”

Winter met Ecks in front of the Parishioner’s apartment building at eleven o’clock that morning.

“Hey, brother,” the driver greeted as his fare climbed into the front seat.

“How you sleepin’, son?”

“Like a baby,” he said, “up every hour or so with a whimper and scared of the dark.”

“I’m sorry about that, Win. I should’a sent you away when you asked to tag along.”

“No, man, no. I got this. I got it by the tail. Every night I sleep a little longer and I know a little more about how much I can bear.”

“Today will be no problem, man. I just need you to stay in your car somewhere around the courthouse. I’m lookin’ for somebody but don’t know who they are. When I see ’em I might need to move fast, so I’ll call you and you come and let me have the wheel.”

“You don’t want me to go with you?”

“Not unless you wanna end up like one’a them men in that house we broke into.”

There was a visitor’s pass left for him at the guard post of the state court building. He’d left his pistol and throwing knife in a locked briefcase in Winter’s car and so passed through the metal detector with confidence.

Cylla was waiting for him in conference room four-FB. She was sitting at the far end of a long table designed for many lawyers and plaintiffs in some corporate case. There was a window at that end of the room and sunlight flowed over the legal predator like heavenly grace on a crocodile’s back.

“I hope you’re right about this, Ecks,” she said as he took the seat next to her.

“Hope is all you can ask for in a building like this,” Ecks replied.

Cylla smiled and shook her head, denying and agreeing with the same gesture.

“When’s he get here?” Ecks asked.

“Three minutes.”

“Exactly?”

“They hop for me around here,” she said. “Money knows every language that’s ever been spoken.”

“So how does this work?”

“He’ll come in under heavy guard and we’ll confer. Then I’ll bring him to be released by an officer of the state’s attorney. That’s the charade.”

“And me?”

“You are my personal security, Mr. Noland.”

She handed him a paper ID in a plastic badge. This he attached to the lapel of his copper-colored suit.

“Tell me somethin’, Cylla.”

“What’s that, Ecks?”

“How can a stone-cold mass murderer like Lehman get a day pass from prison?”

“The police were too eager,” she said. “They came into his home without a warrant and made ninety percent of their discovery on that bust. It wouldn’t mean a thing except for a thirty-thousand-dollar retainer my firm got to overturn the verdict. He’ll go back in, but right now the law is on his side.

“The thing I don’t get is why you need to talk to him,” Cylla added. “I mean, he’s just a piece’a shit madman. When the partners offered me the case I turned them down flat. I mean, I’ll still work for them, but I won’t try to free a man like that.”

“I don’t know either, Cyll. I just wanna cover all my bases.”

“It won’t be pleasant.”

At that moment Ecks registered the heavy metal chair against the wall on the other side of the lawyer. There were leather manacles on the arms and front legs of the specially designed prisoner’s seat.

Thirty seconds later there came a knock. Cylla went to the door and opened it wide.

Four uniformed guards came in surrounding a manacled, gray-clad, crew-cut inmate: a young white man with smoldering blue eyes and a grimace that could have come only from painful and pain-giving experience.

His muscles were bulging from weight lifting and fear. His gaze rivaled many corpses that Ecks had seen.

Lester Lehman was silent while the guards maneuvered him into the chair and cinched tight the leather manacles. His scrutiny settled on Ecks. The stare, Rule thought, was like the invisible gaze of a predator bird ready to dive down from the heavens.

The head guard had Cylla sign a form attached to a clipboard and then led his friends outside to wait in the hall.

“Where’s Jonas?” Lester asked when the guards were gone. He was still staring death at Ecks.

“Mr. Nayman had a sudden health problem,” Cylla said. “He wanted me to stand in for him, seeing that you were already down from San Quentin.”

“Who’s the nigger?” Lester asked then.

Ecks smiled.

Cylla did not answer the question.

“What is this shit?” Lester said.

“You got three years in San Quentin,” Ecks uttered. “I got forty-six in the street. Let’s not play, son.”

“I’m no blood to you.”

“You’re not blood to anybody you know. When you were eighteen months old your parents left you at a day-care center, where you were kidnapped with two other boys. Your new parents, the Lehmans, bought you from a slaver. Probably thought they couldn’t have children.…”

All the prison-made hardness fell from the young killer’s face. He sat forward, leaning against his restraints.

“You probably felt like you didn’t belong,” Ecks continued. “And then, when your parents had a child of their own, they began to see the flaws in you. Maybe they even stopped loving you. That’s probably why you killed them. I mean, what else could you do?”

“No,” the child in Lester said.

“Oh, yeah,” Ecks said. “And then a man named Martindale had Jocelyn who’s calling himself Ansel Edwards hire Jonas Nayman to find a loophole and get your sentence temporarily overturned. They needed you outside the halls of justice, where you would be a sitting duck. The only thing I need to know, Les, is where you were meant to meet the man who contacted you.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, coon.”

“Come on now, Les,” Ecks said easily. “Name-callin’ is for the playground. We out here in real life now.”

Out of the corner of his eye Ecks could see Cylla watching him.

Lester was shivering ever so slightly. His whole life had been rendered before him like a puppet show.

“I wasn’t adopted,” he said.

“Oh, yes, you were. You talk about me bein’ a nigger, the child of slavery. But you, Les, you yourself were the real slave. You murdered your masters but that shit didn’t get you home.”

Ecks hoped, for Lester’s sake, that those leather restraints were strong and well tied. The youth was pulling against them with all his might and hate and anger.

“Think about it, Lester. You lost your inheritance when you killed the Lehmans. Why would somebody hire Cylla’s expensive law firm to help your sorry Aryan ass outta jail? Nobody does anything for nuthin’; you know that. So there’s got to be a payday somewhere. Got to.”

“You don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah, son. I do. I really do. I know that the state’s got a whole drawer full of evidence that will put you right back in. Somebody paid thirty thousand dollars for a clear shot-plain and simple.”

The Harlem gangster had hit the high notes of Lester’s young life. He hated his family, remembered in his veins the humiliation of his kidnapping, knew for a fact that he was being set up by the lawyers and whoever hired them. But what choice did he have? He was doing life times four for a crime he couldn’t deny. Even a day of freedom and a chance to run was worth whatever waited for him.

Ecks saw all this in the seemingly vacant blue eyes that had made Lester such a prize when he was a toddler.

“Why?” Lester asked after traveling the entire wrong-way path of his life up until that moment.

“Same as always,” Ecks opined. “What’s true for every soldier, cop, workingman, and thug-worth more dead than alive.”

“And so you come in here and wanna save me?”

“I don’t give a fuck about you, Les. Not one fart in a bean factory. Only reason I’m even tellin’ you what I know is that it’s the right thing to do. Like puttin’ a bullet in a stray dog’s head after a car accident-to end his sufferin’. I know you not gonna help me, man. But I had to be here and you asked why so I told you. After it’s over, Cylla here will give you the names of the three couples who might be your real parents. Maybe at least you’ll know why you did what you did. You couldn’t help yourself, brother. I mean, you just like some windup toy put on the tabletop and let go to run off the side.”

“Fuck you,” Lester said. It was almost a question.

“Naw, man. You the one got fucked in the ass by life. Messed you up so bad that you ain’t never at no time known where you was or why. I’m here to tell you about it. I’m the first person in your whole damn life told you the truth. Pay attention, young man. This ride will not go around for another pass.”

Lester Lehman sat back in his chair, easing up on the restraints that held him. He looked into his enemy’s eyes and saw the truth there. He wanted to ask a thousand questions that had been in his mind since he could remember. But he knew that the black man sitting in front of him didn’t care. The truth he shared was more like a bomb than a balm; like a hidden knife waiting on the prison yard-it was aimed at his heart.

“We’re going to take you down to the release room now, Mr. Lehman,” Cylla Pride said. “You’ve heard what my colleague had to say. Would you rather I stop this proceeding?”

“No … no. Let’s get on with it.”

The guards were summoned and Lester was released from his chair. His defiant demeanor was now more subdued, though he still glanced daggers at Ecks when he could. The seven of them traveled down a long wide corridor toward an elevator, which they took six floors down.

They got to a control room maintained by three uniformed sentries watching nine monitors and guarding a door that kept you a prisoner or set you free. A small group of business-suited officials had gathered near the metal door.

Ecks turned his head casually, studying the monitors. He just wanted to see who was out in the hall on the other side waiting for Lester. There might not be anyone there. Winter was in his car outside using his own video camera. It was a long shot, but this would be only the first in a series of attempts to find the man assigned to kill the lost children.

At his second pass Ecks saw the man who was responsible for at least two of the murders committed.

“Is the paperwork in order?” a smallish Hispanic man in a tan jacket asked Cylla.

“The papers have all been filed,” the deacon-lawyer replied.

She handed the little man an envelope, which he opened. He took out a folded sheet of paper and read it through-twice.

“This looks to be in order.”

“One moment,” a voice said from the elevator door.

This was a slender man with an exaggerated Adam’s apple. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a thin undertaker’s tie.

“There’s a holdback,” the emaciated man said. “Mr. Lehman attacked a man with a deadly weapon on prison grounds three months ago. The inquiry means that he must be held over in county jail until the courts here make a ruling.”

“What the fuck?” Lester said.

“Put him back,” the lean bureaucrat said. “He must be held over.”

Ecks didn’t talk to Cylla again that day. He made his way back up with the guards holding Lester and then quickly to the front of the courthouse. He was looking around for the killer but came up empty.

“Brother Ecks,” Winter called.

He was parked at the curb, waving from the window.

Ecks strolled over to his friend.

“I got the shots you wanted, man,” Winter said. “How’d you do?”

“All in all I can’t complain.”

“That’s good, right?”

“That girl you met,” Ecks said, “that Cindy Simpson.”

“What about her?”

“I met a girl too. Her name’s Benicia.”

“She fine?”

“You want to have a double date at Fisherman’s Grotto up there on the PCH?”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Your friend Winter is a delight,” Benicia Torres was saying on the ride back to her apartment on Venice Boulevard.

“What did you think of Cindy?”

“Every time she looked at you her nostrils flared.”

“I didn’t catch that.”

“Winter’s a good friend, isn’t he?” Benicia asked Ecks.

“My best friend died two days ago.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Cancer. That and hard livin’.”

“Are you going to the funeral?”

“No,” Ecks murmured, “I’m not.”

When Benicia heard the pain in that answer she said, “Do my nostrils flare when I look at you, Mr. Noland?”

“I don’t think so.”

“They should.”

“Your nose don’t even know me, girl.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve ever said that’s completely wrong.”

“Is this it?” Ecks asked as he pulled up next to a complex of little cottages. The brown bungalows were arranged in no particular order, like a child’s building blocks forgotten after a day of play.

“It wasn’t only him getting wounded that made my father decide to leave Rio.”

“No?” Ecks felt a quivering in his chest.

“I was young but I was wild too. I’d never stay in school. I would jump out of my window at bedtime and spend the night in the streets.”

“What your old man do?”

“He beat me with a strap until …”

“Until what?”

Benicia peered with her brilliant eyes at Ecks. “Until one night he beat me and the whole time I looked up at him like I’m looking at you. I didn’t cry or make a sound.”

“Damn, girl.”

“Do I frighten you, Egbert?” She laughed.

“So that’s why he put you in a trunk and brought you here?”

“He really was shot. When I heard about it I ran to the hospital and sat by his side for six days. I held his hand and talked to him. And when he woke up I was sitting there wearing a straw hat that he bought me on a Sunday after church. I asked him to stop being a cop and he said that he would if I went to school and made something of myself.”

Xavier took her hand and said, “Call me Ecks, all right?”

“Do I scare you, Ecks?”

“Like I told you before, scared is scared of me.”

“Do you want to come in?”

“Will I have to use my strap?”

“I promise not to cry.”

Ecks left Benicia sleeping in the morning. He turned on his cell phone on the freeway headed downtown.

“Hey, Brother Ecks,” Winter Johnson had said in the middle of the night. “I had a great time with you and your girl. That Bennie is really beautiful. Cindy just couldn’t stop talkin’ ’bout you. She said that you reminded her of this gangster uncle she used to have from back Baltimore. If I didn’t know better I’d be jealous.”

“Ecks,” said Guillermo Soto on the next message. “I received some pretty damning videos this morning. It shows two men being murdered by men known to the department. This evidence was delivered by a man named Adama. He’s a Syrian businessman who rented out a house in Coldwater Canyon to a film company that was doing some kind of Candid Camera show. The killers and their victims had made some kind of mistake and got themselves on tape. Just thought I’d give you the heads-up.”

Taking the freeway off-ramp at La Brea, Ecks made his way up to Olympic and parked in a nearby lot. He set himself down at a bus stop across the street from D-Right Drugstore and took out a book, a new biography of a man named Simon Weisenthal, known as the Nazi Hunter and feared by those who hoped to get away.

Ecks had read a book review on the life history and felt a kinship to the subject. Ecks was a man who lived at the border of civilized life, an exile who made his camp between two lands, neither of which could ever be his home. Ecks was the victim who bit back, the forgotten corpse that came alive and dug his way out of an unmarked grave.

Ecks was very interested in the daily life and the subterfuge of Weisenthal’s existence, but that day, with the book open in front of him, he didn’t read a word. Instead his eyes were glued to an inconspicuous doorway that had no lettering or even a number attached.

In the hours that passed, the displaced New Yorker thought about his old life and the new one, about Swan the smiling killer and Panther Rule the inescapable patriarch. Whenever his mind drifted by the memory of his father, Frank came up. He wondered what Frank had to do with Panther. They were nothing alike, the white-haired minister and the black tower of rage. And yet …

And yet there was something.

He felt as if he’d been battered and jumbled down a long stretch of whitewater and had just been vomited out onto a placid, extremely large lake. The water below him was smooth and reflective like a mirror, and the silence from the surrounding woodlands spoke of danger.

Xavier smiled and sat back on the fiberglass bench. And at just that moment his lumpy, gray-clad quarry came out of the nondescript door.

The man walked with purpose down Olympic across from where Ecks followed. He went into a fast-food joint called Chili’s Fries and Taquitos.

Ecks went to the crosswalk, waited on the light, and crossed the street leisurely. He leaned up against the wall outside the door, waiting patiently. Panther and Frank, Simon and the placid lake all faded away in the face of the job to be done.

Eight minutes later Lou Baer-Bond came out of the pink-and-yellow door of the restaurant with a bag in one hand and a quart cup of soda in the other. There was a lit cigarette between his lips.

“Lou.”

The private detective turned, opening his eyes wide. Ecks wondered whether the dick would drop his trove of fast food to grab for a gun or run.

“Hey,” Baer-Bond said, his cigarette quivering madly. “Egbert, right? What you doin’ here?”

“We need to talk, Lou.”

“Uh-huh, okay. Let’s go up to my office.”

“No, man. I’ve been comin’ down with this case of office-o-phobia. You know? The fear of a gun under the desk. I was thinkin’ maybe that bus stop bench across the street.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Just as sure as you were standing out in the receiving hall in the courthouse yesterday. Waiting for Lester.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Baer-Bond said. He swiveled his shoulders to point in a trajectory beyond Ecks and his accusations.

“Jocelyn and Martindale are on their way to jail, man.”

“What?”

“They jumped the gun and killed two guys name of Jesse and Link.”

“You seem to be very well informed for a second cousin.”

“They would have killed you too, Lou,” Ecks continued. “I guess there’s lots of money on the line.”

“Benol put you into this?”

“I drive my own car.”

“What do you want?”

“Ever since I was a young man I’ve been looking for my platinum parachute. Enough money all at once so that I could retire and take my ass down to where they have never seen even one solitary snowflake.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“You know why I didn’t want to go up to your place, Lou?”

“Scared?”

“Right on the first try. I’m scared’a gettin’ shot in the chest and in the eye.”

The private detective’s moods were subtle and deep. The look in his jaundiced eye was response to a mortal threat.

“Let’s go across the street,” he said.

“So what is it you want from me?” Lou Baer-Bond asked.

Ecks pondered the question honestly. Benol had asked, and Frank had asked for her, that Ecks find the three boys who had been kidnapped before they could form coherent sentences. He had accomplished that end. Not one child had gone unscathed, but the Parishioner had done what was asked of him. What was he doing at that bus stop with the killer? What did he care about the reasons why?

“I want the keys to the kingdom,” Ecks said without considering too closely the words he uttered.

“Chick and Jerry really out of this now?”

“They ain’t dead. So they still know what they know. But their knowledge is from the inside lookin’ out.” Ecks knew that the greatest poets were also the greatest criminals. Poetry was hatched in prisons and under the sway of a lifelong desire for revenge.

“Why should I listen to you?” Baer-Bond asked.

“One reason is that I already saved your life. Because you know you just about the only hook left that the cops could hang their hat on. And you the one with the blazin’ gun. You the one Jocelyn and Martindale will blame.”

The detective looked up and around the street, suddenly afraid what might be laying for him. His right eye tightened and he lit up another menthol. His left wrist bumped against the tip of his nose and he wondered, honestly, to himself.

“There’s money to be made,” Ecks said. It was more than just a suggestion. “Money can cross borders and grease the right palms. You got enough money and whatever Jerry and Chick say will be nuthin’ more than some words behind a locked door.”

“Problem is,” Lou said simply, “that they’re the ones that know how to make the connections. How tight is the jam they’re in?”

“Tight as a born-again virgin on her wedding night.”

“What exactly are we talking about, Mr. Noland?”

“Double homicide caught on tape with audio.”

“Legal tap?”

“We ain’t talkin’ about a millionaire’s son, Lou. These are lifetime criminals standin’ in front of a hole in the ground. So if you know somethin’ maybe we can pool our resources and both come out on top’a the shit.”

Again Baer-Bond wondered. He had been expecting to eat chili-cheese fries and fried tortillas swimming in watery guacamole sauce, but now he was facing a man of the wrong color whom he didn’t know and couldn’t trust.

“Why you think I’m in it with these dudes?” he asked.

“Not only are you in it,” Ecks said, “you killed twice as many as either one of them. A bullet through the eye and another in the chest. One at the surf shop down in Venice and the other on Marietta Circle three nights past.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I don’t have to. Between Chick and Jerry, the cops, and an anonymous phone call, the only thing you’ll need is a lawyer and a whole Sunday full of prayer.”

The quart cup of soda was sweating on the plastic bench while Lou Baer-Bond bit his lip and scowled, looking for a way back to his heart-attack brunch.

“You bein’ straight with me?” he asked, expecting a lie to decipher.

“What do you think, man?”

“How do you know all this shit?”

“I got eyes in my ears, brother. I got a nose in every finger.”

“How much money you think Chick and Jerry were after?”

“I didn’t stay in school too long, but I believe that the number takes up the high range of six places, maybe seven.”

“Damn. Thing is like this, man. I mean, is that Benol girl really your cousin?”

“No. And even if she was, this is money here, real money.”

“So how do you know her?”

“I’ve been known, in a past life, to handle rough trade. She come to a minister and he asked me to help her out. I came to see you. I looked here and there and came up with what I already told you. Either Benol was lyin’ to me or she’s just too stupid to know what she was sittin’ on. Either way she’s out of it now.”

Lou was looking at Ecks as if the Parishioner’s words carried weight and form. He studied each one like a production line manager looking for flaws in his assemblers’ work.

“You got to understand, man,” Lou said, “I don’t know what it’s all about. I got information but not nearly enough to make the right connections. And if what you say about Chick and Jerry is true, then I need to get out. I need to get paid.”

Ecks could see the desperate man’s point.

“How much you lookin’ for, Lou?”

“Two hundred thousand sounds about right. With that I could get out to Australia.”

“I cain’t argue with that,” Ecks said. “If I get up near a million or more you deserve your dram. But the truth is, I’m broke and you got no reason to trust me. How do we work that into this payday of yours?”

Lou had gotten into the habit of looking over toward the door to his office building every thirty seconds or so.

“We should get away from here,” he said. “If the police come it’ll be over for both of us.”

Half an hour later the unlikely pair were seated in a booth at Loud’s Coffee Shop on Wilshire. Lou ordered a mocha coffee with whipped cream while Ecks had a black American blend.

“Just tell me one thing,” Ecks said to the detective.

“What?”

“What did Benol ask you to do-exactly?”

“All she wanted was for me to find that Brayton Starmon, who she said was born Brayton Welch.”

“Nothing else?”

“She said something about three boys that went missing twenty years ago. She said that she heard Starmon had information that would lead her to them.”

The walk up La Brea had been under the hot sun, and even though the heat hadn’t bothered Ecks, Lou was sweating like the soda cup he’d left on the bus stop bench. The detective was visibly relieved by the coolness of the café. Even Ecks found the air-conditioning restorative.

“The way I figure it is that you came across Martindale in your search,” Xavier said. “He’s a high-end operator. If Brayton got something on one of his break-ins that might have had worth, he’d come to Chick and make a deal.”

Up until then Baer-Bond was nervous, motile. His hands and face were in motion. He looked up at any movement in the room. But when Ecks started reenacting the detective’s investigation Lou got still and serious.

Ecks didn’t mind the attention. There was, after all, a burgeoning partnership between the two men. He needed to nurse the relationship along until it brought him to the place he had yet to define.

“This here is tricky, Lou. We both have our little secrets. And you know that I believe that there’s a big payday with nobody to claim the check. If I give you my knowledge you could run away with it. Same is true with you for me. But we got to come up with something.”

“Yeah,” Lou said, “yeah.”

“So maybe we could ask each other some questions and see if the answers open up a possibility.”

“Like what?”

“Do you know what the people who have gotten killed and who might still die have in common?”

Baer-Bond knitted his eyes and shook his head.

Ecks believed this to be an expression of truth.

“The surfer and mass-murdering boy,” Ecks said, “and one other were kidnapped by the man who lived on Marietta Circle.”

The detective’s eyes became elusive.

“Don’t be hidin’ your eyes from me, Lou. If we gonna work together then you got to prove that you can share.”

“How’d you find out about Sprain?”

“Benol told me.”

“How’d she know?”

“Uh-uh, Lou. Your turn.”

“The third man is called Leonard Phillips. He’s a pervert. Works for the porn industry out in the Valley. Got a job at Zebra Films but he never leaves the set. Lives behind a trash can like a roach in the wall.”

“Lenny O,” Ecks said with a nod.

“You know that too?”

“What I don’t know is why Chick and Jerry would think that they could make money from killin’ people ain’t got two sticks between the four of ’em.”

“They sure didn’t tell me.”

“But maybe they did and you don’t know it.”

Ecks’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket just then. The sensation caused him to smile.

“What’s that mean?” Lou asked.

“Maybe they had you lookin’ for something,” Ecks suggested. “Maybe you saw or heard something that stuck in your head.”

The sweat on Baer-Bond’s brow had dried into a sheen of salt. His eyes had found their range on Ecks.

“Look, man,” Lou said. “All this could just be smoke and mirrors-like they had on that TV show, that … that … that Mission Impossible. I got to check some’a this out and think it over.”

Ecks’s phone throbbed again.

“Gimme a number and I will call you later on,” Lou added.

“When?”

“I’m not gonna say when exactly but it’ll be in less than a day. If I don’t call by then I won’t. So unless you plan to shoot me or arrest me I’m gonna walk out of here and do some looking and thinking of my own.”

It wasn’t the ideal resolution of the meeting, but Ecks appreciated the bind Lou was in. He didn’t know whether his employers were really in jail. He didn’t know Ecks at all.

The Parishioner shrugged and wrote down the number of a throwaway cell that he kept in his safe.

“I don’t have no two hundred thousand, Lou. If I did I wouldn’t be sittin’ here talkin’ to you. But I could sell one of my vehicles and raise some cash. If you do decide to call me, and I haven’t found out the answers I need from somewhere else, then I’d be willing to give you enough for a one-way ticket to someplace where you might could be a beach bum.”

“A minister sent you to me? Really?”

“You go and do your soul-searchin’, brother. Do that and call me-or don’t. If you do, and I still need what you got, we can play twenty questions again.”

Lou Baer-Bond considered the words, realized that he had no choice, gulped down the rest of his sweet drink, and rose to walk away.

Ecks wondered what kind of wild card Lou would turn out to be. He was a ruthless, very efficient murderer. He didn’t feel guilt or remorse. For probably not much money he had killed two men. Now he was desperate because the little he had made had gone to chili dogs and whores. He would cheat Ecks out of reflex and kill him if he could.

The old Xavier Rule felt right at home.

“I need to know what’s happening,” Benol said on the message from the first call.

“Brother Ecks,” Father Frank said on the second message. “Ms. Richards has been calling, worried that you might have abandoned her cause for some profit-making scheme. I assured her that such a thing is impossible but also promised that you would call her and make a report.”

“Hello?” she said halfway through the first ring.

“Hey, Bennie.”

“Where are you?”

“The Wilshire District. I’m having a coffee and wondering how a single decision by a teenaged girl can create a whole world of pain.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Where are you?”

“The reading room of the downtown Y.”

“There’s a restaurant ’bout six blocks from there called Pablo’s Tandoor. Meet me there in one hour.”

“Have you betrayed me, Mr. Noland?”

“That, my dear, would be impossible.”

Forty-five minutes past midday Benol Richards walked into the Mexican-Indian restaurant to find Ecks sitting at a two-person booth against the back wall. The walls and booths, furniture, floors, and ceiling were all decorated with Olmec, Aztec, and Hindi gods and goddesses, sacred animals and indecipherable texts.

Ecks rose up from his seat and actually kissed the young-looking woman on her cheek. She touched the place where his lips had brushed her and frowned.

“What’s going on?” she asked. If she were Jesus she might have added the appellation-Judas.

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“Order something anyway. They like it when people pay to sit at their tables.”

“I don’t care. You order for me.”

The waiter came and Ecks ordered.

“I need to know what’s going on,” the honey-colored possible penitent said when they were alone.

Xavier took a stiff piece of paper out of his inside breast pocket. This he placed before Benol.

She picked up the card, glanced at both sides, and put it back down on the table.

“So?”

“That was my question for you,” Ecks replied.

The two freckles under her eye seemed to be more pronounced. Ecks wondered whether this was some kind of physical show of embarrassment.

Before Benol could reply, the waiter returned with plates of tandoori chicken, chiles rellenos, vindaloo lamb, and basmati rice.

“We used to fuck, okay?” she said after the server left again.

“But why would you think that he would send you money so long after you’d run away? Full-grown man having sex with a child who is his brother’s daughter probably wouldn’t have guilt as a primary emotion.”

“My dad was his stepbrother,” Benol said. “Anyway, he wasn’t even my real father. When he married my mom, she already had me. Clay and I weren’t related by blood and we only met after I was in foster care.”

“You were still a teenager.”

“Yeah. But he kinda fell for me. I could lead him around by the nose.”

“Until Brayton.”

“Yeah. Clay got jealous.”

“And that’s why you sold those kids?”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“One boy’s dead, another’s in prison for life, and those are the two who got off easy.”

Actual tears formed in the woman’s eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“The detective you hired killed the surfer and Brayton too.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I … I … I …”

“Was your uncle part of the scam?”

“No. No, he wasn’t.”

“Then why would you expect him to send you money?”

“I had letters.”

“What kinda letters?”

“He was in love with me. I used to say I wanted him to do things, sex things, and he’d write me love letters telling me what he’d do. Signed them and everything.”

“He said he loved you?”

“He did love me. He did everything I wanted.”

When he ran women Ecks had heard this story in a hundred variations.

“Then why’d you help Brayton steal those boys?”

The look on her face was that of a lost child. She was searching for the answer in Ecks.

“I didn’t say that I loved the old pervert.”

“But it sounded like you were proud that he loved you.”

“What does any of this have to do with those boys?”

“Did Clay Berber know what you were going to do with Brayton? Did he profit from the money you got from Sedra?”

“Absolutely not. When he realized that I had a real boyfriend he tried to keep us apart. He wouldn’t let me go out; at least, he tried to stop me.”

“Okay, all right. Tell me about Jerry Jocelyn.”

“He called the night after I met you. He said that he heard I was looking for Brayton and three boys that went missing twenty years ago.”

“Why would he care about that?”

“He said that he knew about Brayton but he was wondering what my interest was.”

“And you told Jocelyn about Frank?”

“Not exactly. I just said that I had somebody else looking for the boys. That’s when he said that two of the parents were willing to pay for knowledge about all the boys. He was on some kind of time limit and wanted me to back off. When I told him that I didn’t know if the new people I’d engaged would agree to stop looking, he said that he’d pay me fifteen thousand dollars if I turned the information I got over to him before taking any other action. I didn’t see the harm. I wanted to find them anyway.”

“Which parents?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Why would any of the natural parents want the boys dead?”

“He said that they wanted them found but not until after their thirtieth birthday. It sounded like they wanted to get to the bottom of the kidnapping … and something else too.”

“So they hired a lawyer?”

“I don’t know.”

The Parishioner realized that he was leaning forward in a predatory fashion. He sat back and took a deep breath.

“How’s the Y treating you?” he asked.

“I’ve been in worse places.”

“What do you plan to do when all this is over?”

“Go back to Florida or maybe turn myself in. Maybe if they take me to court I can feel like I paid for my crime.”

“Did you give Jocelyn my name?”

“Uh …”

“But you weren’t gonna tell me.”

“I didn’t know that he was going to be killing the boys. Why would I think that?”

It was a good question.

“Why would they pay all kinds of money to keep quiet?” was another one.

“Waiting for the birthdays to pass like Jerry said,” Benol suggested weakly.

“Jerry’s in jail along with a man named Chick Martindale.”

“For what?”

“Murder.”

“Hank?”

“No. Two other guys.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I lied to you,” Ecks said. “The last guy I met, that Lenny, he was the third boy.”

“Really?”

“So I’ve completed my mission.”

Benol Richards seemed to age right there in front of Ecks. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes lost focus.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“The last kid is all fucked-up and you lied to me. I’ll give Frank the information and either he’ll tell you or he won’t. That’s up to the church.”

“I am not an evil woman, Mr. Noland.”

“If a chunk of rock fell off a building aimed right at my head it wouldn’t be evil either, but I’d sure the fuck try to get outta the way.”

“This was my last chance,” she whispered.

“No, baby. Your last chance comes in the middle, or maybe just a second before your last breath. This was just a practice run for you. From here on in you have to get more creative.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

Benol hadn’t touched the food set out in front of her. She stared for a moment and then rose. Ecks watched her, saying nothing. Saying nothing she walked from the restaurant lugging her golden purse as if it were a heavy weight, filled with the bodies of her victims.

“Hey, sailor,” the electric eye greeted.

It was six minutes past three and Lenny was up on a ladder hanging rakes between long wooden dowels jutting out and upward from the wall. The young man was wearing jeans that would have fallen off his skinny hips if not for a tightly cinched leather belt. His T-shirt read, Hardware Man.

Lenny was talking to George Ben, who was standing at the base of the mobile ladder. They were both smiling.

“Hey, Ecks,” George said, his attention still on Lenny.

“Eyes in the back of your head, George?” Ecks asked.

“Mirror on the back wall of the store.”

“I see you put Lenny to work.”

“Idle hands.”

“Can you give your new employee a coffee break?” Ecks asked.

After calling a young African man named Jack from the storeroom, George Ben led Ecks and Lenny O to his office. There he extracted three espressos from an elaborate brass contraption that sat on its own table against the wall.

“I need to talk to Lenny alone,” Ecks told his fellow parishioner.

“No,” George said as politely as the word allowed. “I promised him that I’d make sure he was okay.”

“And you think I mean to hurt him?”

“No offense, Brother Ecks, but all someone has to do is look at you and they can tell that you represent hurt from your fingers to your toes.”

Ecks weighed the options of the possible confrontation. Ben was, among other things, a killer. He was strong and brutal, though rehabilitated. He would always be a threat, even if he was a little too softhearted.

“Okay,” Ecks conceded. “Let’s sit down and powwow.”

“You go sit in my chair behind the desk,” George said to Lenny.

The store owner then gestured for Ecks to take one of the two visitors’ chairs, waited for him to be seated, and then followed suit.

Ecks decided to ignore the dynamic of the meeting and opened his line of inquiry. “Tommy Jester.”

“What about him?” Lenny asked, looking to George.

“How long ago did he tell you about the people after you?”

“One week, no, no, two, two weeks.”

“Did he tell you anything else about it?”

“Just that Ellie’s brother blamed me for what happened to her. He said that he was after me, that I should stay in the steel shed behind the kitchen. He gave me a padlock to use on the inside and told me not to come out unless it was daylight and the daytime security staff was on duty.”

“How long did he expect you to live like that?”

“He told me that he’d try and work it out, but if he couldn’t he’d make sure that I’d get out of town.”

“You trust him?”

“Oh, yeah. Tommy’s always been real nice to me. When he told me about the guy after me he had his doctor look me over and give me a blood test.”

“Why? Were you sick?”

“I think that that’s enough questions,” George said.

“Don’t press me, George,” Ecks said from a place that didn’t bargain.

“Um, it’s okay, Mr. Ben,” Lenny said, suddenly in the role of peacemaker. “No, no, I wasn’t sick. I thought that he was givin’ me the usual STD test. You know, the doc gives them to everybody.”

“Two weeks ago?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long’s the turnaround on that?”

“Usually it’s three days.”

“So what did he say?”

“He had to send it out to a new place for some reason and it hadn’t come back yet. He said that happens sometimes with a new lab.”

“Hm.”

“What?” Lenny and George both asked.

“Thank you very much, Len,” Ecks replied. “I think everything is gonna be all right for you, but I’d keep my head down for a while-at least until I give you the okay.”

“What is it, Ecks?” George asked.

“It is what it is.”

“Hello?” Benicia said. There were sounds of clinking and voices behind her.

“Just thought I’d call and say hi.”

“For such a tough guy you’re really very considerate … Ecks.”

“I had a nice time with you the other night.”

“You could have spanked me harder. I wouldn’t have cried.”

“I might be pretty busy for the next couple’a days.”

“Dinner? Three nights hence?”

“Hence?”

“I told you, I’m a graduate student. I know all kinds of words.”

“Yeah, I heard a few of them in your bed.”

“You talk in your sleep, you know.”

The cold fingers in Xavier’s chest did not reduce the heat of his ardor.

“Tell me about it when I see you next.”

“I can hardly wait.”

Walking up the stairs of his apartment building Ecks wondered whether there might be assassins waiting for him. Benol had told Jocelyn about him. Lou Baer-Bond might have very well visited the rogue lawyer in prison by then.

You never see it comin’, man, Swan was apt to say. The kill shot, the knife in the back, that one wrong step happens while you’re wonderin’ if your girl got underwear or if she’s too hot for you to put ’em on.

Ecks wondered if this was some prescient warning about “Dodo” Milne on the part of his deceased partner.

There was no one waiting at his door inside or out.

He went to his safe, retrieved the disposable cell phone, and left in four minutes flat.

At the Beach Motel south of Redondo, Ecks sat at a card table in an aqua lacquered chair waiting for enlightenment. He believed that he knew what had happened and what would. But knowledge, like perception, was elusive even when it was clear.

Frank called at nine thirty-one but Ecks didn’t answer. It was the first time that he had not hopped to the minister’s call. This made him uncomfortable, but that was nothing new. He was no longer following the edicts of the nameless church and the self-ordained minister. He was out there in the wilderness-a conqueror without an army, a missionary without his Bible or cross.

At two sixteen the next morning a call came in from an unknown number.

“Hello.”

“Egbert?”

“Hey, Lou. I must say I’m a little surprised to hear from you.”

“We have to meet.”

“Why?”

“To make a deal on that money.”

“I don’t know, Lou.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re the one came to me.”

“That’s true,” Ecks said. “But you left me hangin’ and I’ve had time to think that the payday might get me killed.”

“Well, if you don’t wanna get rich I can’t make you.”

“No,” Ecks said simply, “you can’t.”

“Well, I guess that’s it then.”

“Good luck to you, Lou.”

“Hold up, Egbert. What’s goin’ on?”

“Look, man. It dawned on me after you left the coffee shop that people were dyin’ over whatever money there was to be made. And you know I bleed too.”

“I went to see Jerry in lockup. He’s acting as his own lawyer and so told them that he was using me for part of his defense.”

“And what did Jerry tell you?”

“He gave me the names of the people payin’ him and Chick.”

“Really?”

“So we need to talk.”

“I don’t get it, Lou. Why we have to talk if you already got the missin’ piece?”

“I can’t pull this off alone, Noland.”

“You got Jerry.”

“He’s already killed two partners. And he could bring me down with what he’s got.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“We get together. We do what he wants me to do-only for ourselves. Take the money and run.”

For a moment Ecks fell into a familiar reverie. In that waking dream he had been born in a Strivers Row brownstone to professional parents who loved him and sent him to the best private schools. He was the star of the soccer team and graduated at the top of his class. He never fought for anything because he was too smart and well loved.

Ecks couldn’t remember when that fantasy became a part of his mind. He was young but already associated with Swan. Maybe it was the first time he tried cocaine that this unattainable ambition for a better life arose.

“How much money we talkin’ about?” Ecks asked.

“It’s more than even you imagined.”

“Where do you want to meet?”

“My office.”

“That place reminds me of a poor man’s tomb.”

“You afraid of me, Eggy?”

“Just careful.”

“Okay, fine. Where do you want to meet?”

“There’s a little restaurant in a hotel down where Pico hits the ocean. We could have coffee and croissants there at nine. Lots of people, public place make it safe for both of us.”

Ecks had only one more call to make before going to sleep. It took a while to get patched through, but by the time the conversation was over he had put together his schemes.

It was an overcast morning. Ecks arrived at nine fifty and had been preparing for the meet since before seven. He already checked to make sure that Benicia had that morning off. He was sitting at the same table where he had met Benicia reading The Stranger by Albert Camus for the tenth or eleventh time. The contemplative quality of the text calmed him while the danger of everyday life seemed to support a worldview that he’d known from birth.

Meursault, the Stranger, moved through life the way Xavier did, step by step, only there was no mistrust, no fear of repercussions. Neither of them felt guilt, and love was just another beautiful day in paradise.

There was some possibility that Lou would take the chance of shooting Ecks right out there in public. He might hire someone to do the job, but no … he’d handle it himself.

But he wasn’t overly afraid of an immediate assassination. There would most likely be an interrogation disguised as a plan-at first.

And Ecks had his own interview to perform.

He was wearing a dark blue suit, black shoes, a cranberry shirt, with a black-and-yellow tie. His socks were bright yellow.

“Hey, Egbert.”

Lou Baer-Bond was approaching from the maître d’s podium wearing cream-colored trousers and a gaudy blue-and-green Hawaiian shirt. Ecks smiled and waved the killer over.

The glass door that led down to the beach was open, letting in the strong smell of the ocean. Ecks was reminded of the car ride with Doris when she opened the window and the breath of the Pacific flooded his senses.

“Lou.”

The detective was looking around for traps or enemies. Ecks noticed that he was wearing leather sandals, making his feet look like pale dead fish pressed at the edge of a fisherman’s net.

He took a step toward the table for two, looked around a bit more, and then took a seat.

“I would have bet that you didn’t have a bright color in your closets or drawers,” Ecks said.

This observation elicited a dingy smile.

“Why don’t we go outside and take a walk down the beach?” Baer-Bond suggested.

“No offense, brother, but I like it that there’s people around and a long way for you to run if you slip up and shoot me instead of discussing.”

Ecks put just enough fear in his words to puff up the bent PI.

“You never can tell who might be listening in.”

Ecks smiled and said, “You been a dick too long, Lou. I’m not a cop and nobody around here is worried about us.”

“We got jobs to do,” Lou said.

“And what are those jobs?”

“Lester’s getting out of jail tomorrow afternoon. We have to kill him.”

“Why?”

“In order to get paid.”

“By whom?”

“Whom?”

“We been through this, man. Yes-I know how to read. Look, here’s a book I been studyin’. Now-who is willing to pay for this boy’s death?”

“Like they say in the movies,” Lou said, draping an arm on the back of the wooden chair, “need to know.”

“Okay. All right. I hear you. You need to keep some secrets so I don’t run away with the prize. But you got to tell me somethin’, Lou. You know this kid might just be some contract you got and you be settin’ me up for it. I don’t know.”

“What do you want to hear?”

“Without namin’ names, tell me what Jerry has to do with this.”

“Why?”

“Because if I believe in the story then I can have faith in the payday.”

Lou was looking at the crack beneath Ecks’s eye, trying see the secret that ancient wound held. The detective bit his lower lip.

“Jerry’s a lawyer but he doesn’t worry about what’s legal and what’s not. He got these clients that lost a son when he was a baby. This boy was named Brian after a grandfather on his mother’s side. The old boy was rich and he put in his will that all of his money would be split between the male heirs who bore his name at birth. If that heir was dead then his family would get the money after his thirtieth birthday had passed.”

“So Lester is the kidnapped baby?”

“It’s between him and the surfer.”

“What about the kid lives next to the garbage?”

“Jerry said we don’t have to worry about him. Something about a blood test.”

“What about Sprain?”

“What about him?”

“Look, Lou. I don’t need you to admit to anything or confess. Just tell me what I’m into here. People are dead over this money and these young men. I need to make sure that I’m on the survivors’ side.”

“Sprain was the guy Brayton that Benol Richards was lookin’ for. I found out that he used to do business with Chick Martindale and so I went to him to tell him about her. He told me to hold off for a little bit and then came back to me with Jerry. At that time all he told me was that he’d give me two thousand dollars to tell her that I couldn’t find out a thing about Brayton/Sprain. About three weeks later they came back with a few other jobs that we won’t discuss. But now that they’re both in jail Jerry needed me to do the work they planned. Only I know better than to get close to them after what they did to their own men.”

“Why did they kill their men?”

“I can’t say for sure, but I think that they knew more about the ins and outs of the situation than was safe, so either they had to get paid off or knocked off.”

“And how much can I ask for before I get a bullet in my eye?”

“You and me split fifty-fifty.”

“That’s mighty white of you, Lou. Why you wanna be so generous?”

“Because I need to work fast. Because I need to take care of this cocksucker and get out of the country.”

“Without me you get a hundred percent.”

“Two million each is enough for me.”

Ecks’s tongue went dry over the number. His breath got shallow and his mind honed down to just the money and its hypothetical proximity.

He wanted that money-all of it. He didn’t need it. He wasn’t thinking about what he could buy or afford with the wealth. But forty-six years up against every barrier imaginable made it so he had to have it-had to.

Lou smiled. He could see the hunger in the man he knew as Egbert Noland.

“So what do you say?”

“So it was all just dumb luck?”

“Chick had Jerry go to the parents of one of the missing boys with some bullshit story about somebody lookin’ for them. At first he was trying to find out what trouble they might be causing. That’s when Brian’s parents got all upset that he might be found before his thirtieth birthday. At first Martindale went to Brayton to see if he knew which boy went where. When he didn’t know they went to that crazy bitch Sedra. But she was sly. She could smell that there was money to be made and wanted her share. There were too many chefs by then and so Brayton had to go.

“Now, how did you get involved in all this?”

“My minister, like I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“My minister said that he knew a woman down south who had met another woman, Benol, who felt responsible for the kidnapping of three baby boys. She gave me the name of Brayton, who turned out to be Sprain. Benol told me about the woman named Sedra, but she got killed with a baseball bat. She also said that she’d been to see you. I just made up the shit about bein’ her cousin.”

“Jerry talked to a woman. He didn’t tell me her name but that’s where he found out about where two of the boys were. He didn’t know which one was which, but he knew where they went. He said all it took was some good dick and a hundred hundred-dollar bills.”

“Tell me somethin’, Lou.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are these people gonna believe you or Jocelyn or Martindale? I mean you can’t just walk in there and say it’s their kid and expect them to believe it.”

“DNA. They got the doctor for Zebra Film-Arts to process it in exchange for lettin’ that little shit Lenny take the test without consequences.”

“And then you take samples off the other two,” Ecks speculated.

Lou Baer-Bond’s grin was an ugly smear across his graying face.

“Yeah,” the detective said. “I bring the evidence and they check it out, fast. Then Jerry wants them to transfer the money into his account. He expects to use that for bail and to skip the country, leaving Chick to fend for himself. But we tell the kid’s family that if they want to see who the blood belongs to they pay us cash.”

“Jocelyn made bail?”

“He gave the judge serious money to set a cash bail that no one would expect him to make. Happens all the time.”

“And why trust you?”

“He’s desperate,” Lou explained. “I’m all he’s got. Maybe he thinks I’m stupid or somethin’.”

Xavier listened and considered. It was a solid chance with iffy odds. But there was a shot at four million. Idly the Parishioner wondered if one or more of his fellow deacons would come in to even out the likelihood of profit and survival.

“How’d Jerry find out about Zebra?”

“What do you care?”

“The more you know,” Ecks said simply. “The more you know.”

“Martindale was that broad Sedra’s connection to them. He didn’t work with regular sales to parents who wanted kids but he worked with sex slaves-the pervert.”

“I see,” Ecks said. “Okay, Lou, I just need to know one more thing.”

“I’m listening.”

“If we do this thing together how do we protect ourselves from each other?”

“I been thinkin’ about that, Eggy. We don’t know each other and there’s already nearly a half dozen dead. I think we should just write it down.”

“What?” Ecks was really surprised.

“Simple note sayin’ what we plan to do. We both sign each note and then put ’em somewhere where the authorities can find ’em if one of us gets killed.”

“That might work.”

Lou grinned while Ecks nodded.

“If either one of us turns the note in, the other one will be in trouble.” Ecks said this thought aloud.

“And we could tell whoever’s holding the letter to burn it in six months’ time,” Lou added. “By then we will be no threat to each other.”

“You surprise me, Lou. Damn, man, they must’ve put brain vitamins in your chili dogs.”

“I’ll write up the letter and we could sign it this afternoon.”

“In a public place,” Ecks added, “where we can take it away and make sure the right person gets it.”

“Let’s meet at the Beverly Palms Hotel lobby at five. I’ll have the letters and we can sign them in the bar. Jerry’s law partner says that he can get around the assault beef they got against Lehman and have him out the day after tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

Driving away from Santa Monica, Ecks realized that the detective was serious about making the deal. He’d meet Ecks later that afternoon and sign and switch letters.

Two million dollars for killing a man who slaughtered his own family.

What would Swan have to say about that?

He arrived at the church outside of Seabreeze City at five o’clock, the hour that he agreed to meet Lou Baer-Bond.

“Brother Ecks,” Sister Hope said in greeting in the outside court of white stone tables.

“Can you bring her to me, sister?”

“Yes,” Hope answered with a tremor of uncertainty.

“I’ll be right here.”

Ecks sat down on top of one of the tables and laced his hands together as in prayer.

The sun came down on his back. He luxuriated in the warmth and the safety of his church.

“Mr. Noland?”

She was wearing a simple white dress with a green ribbon in her blond hair.

“You look like an angel,” Ecks said, eliciting a smile.

Doris sat beside him on one of the benches while Sister Hope watched from the shadows of a nearby alcove.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked.

“I needed to know a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Why’d you lie to me about being able to read?”

“I … I didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, you did. You can read like a college graduate. You know other languages too. Secret languages that only crazy old ladies speak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t get me wrong, angel; I don’t think you’re all bad. You went to the surf shop to warn Henry. You maybe didn’t love him but you cared enough to go to him, to try to warn him. But you were too late.”

“I …”

“Those hundred-dollar bills in your bag. They came from a man who said his name was Ansel Edwards. Martindale got Sedra to sell you to Ansel and he paid you those bills for information on the boys.”

The denial in Doris’s eyes didn’t make it to her lips.

“I don’t doubt that Sedra was planning to kill you but you had been planning to kill her for a long time. And you probably thought that you could get away. Maybe Ansel gave you a phone number and promised to take care of you. Maybe you called him and realized that he was playing you.…”

Doris looked up and saw something coming from the doorway to the church.

Ecks knew what she saw. He understood the fear she registered.

Sister Hope came out of her alcove. She moved to block Guillermo Soto and the two uniformed cops behind him, but the wall of law enforcement pushed her aside.

“Gimme a minute, Guilly,” Ecks said.

“What’s happening?” Doris asked.

“The man who killed your young lover is being arrested at this moment in Beverly Hills. He has a confession neatly typed in duplicate in his pocket. He spoke a little too freely around a microphone hidden in a vase on a restaurant table. Guilly here is going to arrest you for the murder of Sedra. He assures me that the DA will make you a deal. You won’t spend more than five years behind bars-maybe not even that.”

“Why?”

“You were right about Ansel. His real name is Jerry Jocelyn. Him and that guy Martindale are in for killing and paying for hits. If you can give the names of the parents who wanted their kidnapped son killed, that will help you a lot.”

Sister Hope was running from the yard.

The uniforms flanked Doris and pulled her up by her arms.

“You didn’t have to do this to me,” she said to Ecks.

“Oh, yeah, baby, I really did.”

As she was being led away toward the front of the church, Guillermo Soto approached Xavier Rule.

“Why’d you give Baer-Bond to Tourneau?”

“That way he could feel that he was part of the case-that you and me weren’t in cahoots.”

“Frank won’t like it.”

“Fuck Frank.”

Three weeks passed.

Over the days the newspapers that Ecks and his kids delivered reported the half-told story of the criminals and their crimes. Foremost in the headlines was the murdered Sedra Landcombe, who had been dealing in stolen children for five decades from a peaceful-looking house in a quiet Culver City neighborhood.

Next to Sedra in villainy were Mortimer and Leslie Tarvo, who had hired gangsters to kill three kidnapped boys so that they would be certain to receive a twenty-million-dollar inheritance.

There was a bad-apple private detective who committed two murders and was planning more, and a young woman who had been so victimized by Sedra that she finally killed her and ran away.

All of those arrested made deals with the district attorney, avoiding trials and cutting down their possible sentences. Doris Milne actually got away with a suspended sentence and was reunited with her parents-Nancy and Roderick Calhoun. Doris walked into a ready-made family of two brothers and three sisters and was planning a memoir of her years of horror.

Every day during that period Frank called Ecks, but the onetime gangster from New York did not answer the calls.

He was interviewed by Andre Tourneau for fourteen hours one Tuesday.

“Tell me about this Benol Richards?” the cop asked, more than once.

“She had someone ask me to help her.”

“And did you meet this woman?” Tourneau asked at least seventeen times.

“No, sir. My minister asked me to talk to her on the phone.”

“And why didn’t you come to the police?”

“It was a very old case and she never gave me any facts. She wanted me to ask some questions and I did.”

“But Benol Richards was suspected of being the kidnapper.”

“I didn’t know that. Talk to Father Frank if you don’t believe me.”

“I could bring you up on charges, Mr. Noland.”

“I doubt that, Detective.”

On the twenty-second day the story broke that Clay Berber, the man whose house the three young boys were kidnapped from, was found strangled in his backyard with Rose, his demented wife, sitting next to the body-singing happily.

On that day Ecks got into his classic Edsel and drove up to Seabreeze City.

In the rectory he and Frank sat across from each other sipping tea.

“Is something troubling you, Brother Ecks?”

“Is something not?”

“You did a wonderful job with and for Benol.”

“Did she kill her uncle?”

“Brother Soto assures me that she did not.”

“It was the wife?”

“His skin and blood were under Rose Berber’s fingernails.”

“She waited a long time.”

“Justice doesn’t carry a watch.”

“How’s it goin’ with Lenny and George?”

“Lester is the heir to the Tarvo fortune so Lenny is broke. Mr. Ben has him going to school and working for the hardware store. George wants to bring him into the congregation, but we haven’t decided on that yet.”

“Why you been callin’ me, Frank?”

“The elders have decided it’s time for your baptism.”

“What’s that?”

“The final step in making you a part of our union. Once you are baptized you are truly one of us.”

“I thought I already was.”

“No.”

“Well … I got to go.”

“When shall we plan for the ceremony?”

“I don’t think I want to get in any deeper, Frank. I mean, I’m okay with the sermons and Expressions already. I don’t need any more.”

“No one has ever turned down the baptism.”

“Hey … what can I say? I’m an original.”

Ecks stood up and Frank gazed at him, at a rare loss for words.

“But …” the minister said.

“What?”

“You can’t just stop. You have to continue.”

“No, man. I don’t. If you’re tellin’ me that I have to get baptized or leave the church, I’ll accept that. If you wanna turn me in … well, that’s the chance I got to take.”

On the ride back down to Los Angeles, Xavier Rule felt the flush of freedom. He wasn’t afraid of death or prison, taxes or damnation. He was moving forward toward whatever was in his path.

At that moment the cell phone played Monk.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ecks.”

“Benicia.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“Really?”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Like the condemned man who just got his last-minute reprieve.”