Blood Crimes Book One

Epilogue

Pearce broke out of a feverish dream. He stared up at the ceiling blinking wildly, disoriented, with no clue where he was. God he ached, god he was hungry. It was weird when he blinked, like only one eye was working, and fuck, his face felt funny. He touched the eye that didn’t seem to be working and felt only bone. It didn’t surprise him. His fingers moved down his face and he touched ragged skin and more exposed bone. Yeah, half his face was chewed up. So what? Somehow he knew it no longer mattered. He looked at his right hand and saw he was missing two fingers. Again, so what?

Fuck, was he hungry. Must be why he was moaning so loudly. Except the noise wasn’t coming from him. He pushed himself up onto an elbow. The room was mostly dark. A single fluorescent light flickered overhead, but it gave off enough light for him to see that there were two other guys in the room with him. One was much bigger than the other. He didn’t recognize either of them, but they both looked out of it the way they moaned and squirmed around on the floor. As Pearce watched them he found himself salivating. He crawled over to the bigger one and sunk his teeth into the guy’s neck. It was reflex, he didn’t even realize he was doing it until he was sucking up the guy’s blood. Then he was crawling off of him, retching, wave after wave of nausea rolling over him. He thought he was going to die, but after a while the intense agony subsided and he could breathe again. A lesson to be learned from that. These two he had to keep away from, but at some level he knew he needed to drink human blood. That that would be the only thing that would satisfy his hunger.

He remembered then about that weird skinny-assed freakshow guy from the other day-the one who robbed Raze, and later tore Zeke and Ash apart like they were cloth dolls. Pearce sat scratching his head, trying to make sense of it, and then he started laughing. Because he understood. He knew what he had become.

He staggered to his feet. Jesus, he had never been so damn hungry. He looked around, blinking, his remaining eye acclimating to the semi-darkness, and realized he was in a windowless basement. He made his way up a staircase, opened the door, and screamed like a baby when the sunlight hit him. Dropping to his knees, he crawled back down the staircase and away from the light. Fuck, it was like someone had tossed acid in his face. After a minute or so the pain went away. He understood then he’d have to wait until it was dark before he’d be able to satisfy his hunger. But smacking his lips he knew he’d eat well then. For the hell of it he decided to test out whether he had the same freakish strength that that other dude had. He punched the concrete wall and his fist cracked through it. He smiled at that. Yeah, fuck, he was going to eat well later. After the sun went down.

As it was he was hungry enough to eat a cow, or given his present condition, drain the blood out of a nice-looking broad. Make that a busload of them. Or a club full of strippers. Yeah, he was going to eat well later. No doubt.

###

The story continues in Blood Crimes: Book Two.

Bonus Section

Bonus section includes: ‘More Than a Scam’ from 21 Tales, first chapter from Fast Lane, first chapter from Bad Thoughts, first section from the Shamus-award winning novella ‘Julius Katz’, first chapter from The Walk by Lee Goldberg and the prologue and first chapter from Dead and Gone by Harry Shannon..

More Than a Scam (from 21 Tales)

The inspiration for this story were the ubiquitous Nigerian email scam letters I was receiving daily. At first I was planning to do the same as my story’s hero, namely record a correspondence with one of these scam artists, but instead I decided to go in another direction. More Than a Scam received honorable in the 2003 edition of Best American Mystery Stories.

It really all started with the email I received. The message was marked “Urgent/Confidential” and was from one Celestine Okiti, who claimed to be a senior accountant with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance. The gist of the email was that ten and a half million dollars was sitting in a Nigerian bank account and she was looking for a partner to pose as the next of kin of some dead foreign contractor so she could get the money out – and that my cut would be four and a half million dollars, minus expenses.

Of course it was a scam. It was too silly to be anything else, and besides I had read about this years ago. The “pigeon” who went for his four and a half million cut would be asked to put up some money to show good faith and to cover the expenses. It was a pretty simple and childish scam, one that makes you wonder how anyone in the world could fall for it, but still, I was fascinated by that email. It got my mind spinning on different crime story scenarios.

I guess I should tell you a little about myself so that this makes some sense. My name’s Dan Wilson. I’m thirty-eight, live in a suburb near Boston, been married ten years, and have a pretty boring job processing insurance claims. In order to keep my sanity I write crime stories in my spare time. Usually I write hard-boiled PI stories, sometimes crime caper stories. I’ve had limited success. I’ve sold a couple of stories to print magazines and have given away a fair number of them to online Internet magazines.

I sat for a good two hours staring at Celestine Okiti’s message, playing out different story ideas in my mind. The one idea I kept coming back to was responding to her email message, pretending to be a pigeon, and then writing up the exchange of emails as a story. I didn’t do anything, though, at least not then. By the time I gave up it was one in the morning. I didn’t want to wake Cheryl so I slept in the guest room.

The next morning as I sat drinking coffee my mind raced with different possible Nigerian bank scam stories. I didn’t notice Cheryl had come into the room until she sat across from me with her yogurt and newspaper. She seemed too absorbed with the newspaper – and I guess I was too deep into plotting my story – for us to say much to each other. After I finished my coffee I headed off to work.

After three days of working out different scenarios in my mind, I decided on a plan of action. Instead of replying back to the email as a “pigeon”, I would instead create my own scam. I have written stories with a roguish conman named Pete Mitchel. For the hell of it I decided to use his identity. I created an email account for Pete and wrote an email back to Celestine Okiti, telling her how fortuitous it was that she had contacted me, that I worked in the office of a large construction company, and that a Nigerian national died on the job several months ago and seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars in death benefits were sitting there waiting for a next of kin. I told her that I was planning a trip to Nigeria to find someone who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin, but Celestine could save me the trouble. I further explained that I wasn’t greedy, that ten percent, or seventy-two thousand dollars, would be all I wanted.

I sat in front of my computer for several hours with my email message typed out, trying to decide whether to send it. Of course, the scam letter they sent to me had been sent to thousands of other addresses, probably from a purchased email list. They’d have no idea whether or not an email was originally sent to a Pete Mitchel, nor would they check. As I was trying to decide what to do with the email, Cheryl walked into the room and interrupted me. She told me it was late, that she had to get up early the next day, and asked if I’d be quiet when I went to bed. She looked tired, a little worn out. I told her not to worry, that I’d sleep in the guest room again. After she left, I stared at the email message for another thirty minutes, and then sent it.

I didn’t get a response for several days. I must’ve checked my email a few hundred times before I found a reply from Celestine Okiti. She thanked me for the opportunity that I presented, but insisted that her opportunity was urgent and was far more lucrative. She wanted me to contact her right away so that I could reap my four and a half million dollars, minus expenses of course.

I had already worked out in my mind what my next step would be if I heard back from Ms. Okiti. First, I used a travel web-site to book a flight to Nigeria for my fictitious Pete Mitchel. I then sent her back a reply stating that I knew her proposal to me was a scam, but that I considered it good fortune that she had contacted me when she did, possibly saving me from a trip to Nigeria that I wasn’t anxious to take. I told her, though, that time was running out for me to collect the insurance money and that I had booked a flight for the following week to Nigeria so that I could find a local who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin. I passed along all the flight information, and told her if she changed her mind she could let me know, but that time was running out.

I didn’t expect a reply to my email. I guess I must have been feeling a bit queasy about the whole thing and at a subconscious level had decided to put a stop to it. I was more than a little surprised when I got a terse reply back from Ms. Okiti to fax her a copy of the dead man’s death certificate and the insurance policy.

The insurance policy was easy. I was able to get a fairly realistic policy printed up in no time. The trick was filling in all of the contact information and then blacking it out with a pen. As far as the death certificate, I found samples on the Internet, and then used a graphics package on my computer to create a fairly realistic looking one. It took some time, but I was happy with the results. I faxed both of them to the number I was given.

Over the next four days we went back and forth over a number of issues until we were able to settle things. First, Celestine Okiti wanted to pay me my ten percent cut after she received the insurance money. I flatly refused, reminding Celestine Okiti that her and her associates were scam artists, hardly to be trusted. With the deadline of my booked flight approaching, she finally gave in. The next issue was how my ten percent was going to be sent to me. They wanted to send a check and I wanted them to wire the money to a bank account that I had opened for Pete Mitchel (I had obtained a fake driver’s license for Pete Mitchel which is actually quite easy to do in Massachusetts, and had used it to open a bank account). Since they gave in on the other matter, I gave in on this one. I rented a mailbox in Pete Mitchel’s name and sent Celestine Okiti the address.

During those four days, I guess I must have been acting somewhat manic. I could tell Cheryl knew something was up, but I didn’t want to tell her anything. She’d think I was nuts and wouldn’t be at all happy with what I was doing. She tried a couple of times to ask me what was keeping me so occupied, and I just told her that I was working on a new crime story. I could tell she was annoyed, but she left it alone.

To be honest, I never expected them to send a check. Even when I called up the store where I rented the mailbox and was told that I had a letter waiting for me, I still didn’t believe that they would send me a check. But when I picked up the letter and opened it, there it was. A check for seventy-two thousand dollars made out to Pete Mitchel. I drove home and put the check in my desk drawer. I then sent Celestine Okiti an email message, telling her that after the check cleared I would send them the necessary documentation to collect the insurance money.

I had a restless night as I tried to decide what to do. The next morning, though, I drove to Pete Mitchel’s bank and deposited the check. Over the next couple of days, Cheryl made comments about how quiet I had gotten. I couldn’t tell her about what had happened, so I told her I had some stuff going on at work.

After I heard the check had cleared, I transferred the money to a Swiss bank account I had opened up. I also destroyed Pete Mitchel’s email account. I kept the email messages, though. I was still planning on using them for a short story.

Things pretty much settled back to normal after that. About a week later I had gotten home early from work and was sitting at my computer when the doorbell rang. There were two black men standing outside my door. My guess they were Nigerians. They were both tall, thin. Both were wearing slacks and polo shirts. Either one or both of them had on a heavy, musky cologne. The smell was overpowering. Both of them looked angry.

“We’re here for our six hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars, Mr. Mitchel, or should I say, Mr. Wilson,” the one closest to me said.

So they had tracked me down. They must’ve been waiting at my rented mailbox and followed me home after I had picked up the check. I looked at the two of them scowling at me and I just started laughing. “I can’t believe you fell for my scam,” I told them. “Especially since it was so much like your own scam, using the same next of kin angle. Jesus, how stupid can you be?”

They both looked stunned. I watched with amusement as my words seeped in and the anger in their faces boiled into pure hatred. It was shining in their eyes. “We want our money, now!” the same man demanded, his voice rising.

My neighbor, Carl Moscone, had opened his door and was staring at us, making sure everything was okay. Moscone is a retired Boston Cop. He’s a big man, almost as wide as he is tall. I waved at him. The two men on my doorstep noticed him also.

“You’re not getting a dime,” I said, still laughing softly. I couldn’t help it. “You know, at first I was just playing around, seeing if I could get enough emails to get a good crime story. It never occurred to me that you would actually send me any money. But now I’m having fun. And I’m going to have even more fun spending your seventy-two thousand dollars. First thing I’m going to do is buy my wife a very expensive mink coat. Every time she wears it I’ll think of the two of you standing there looking like saps.”

The two men were aware of Moscone staring at them. It seemed to effect them. The man closest to me asked in a low voice how I would like it if he called the police. That just made me laugh harder. The harder I laughed the more infuriated they both got, but I couldn’t help it. It took a few moments before I could talk.

“I’ll call them for you right now if you want,” I said when I could. I had to wipe tears from my eyes I was laughing so hard. “I’ll show them all the emails that went back and forth between us. I’ll explain to them how I decided as a lark to see if I could scam you instead, and how you actually fell for it. I’m sure they’ll get as good a laugh out of it as I am. You want me to call them?”

Neither of them said anything.

All of a sudden the amusement had dried up within me. “Get out of here,” I said, now dead serious. “If I see either of you again I will call the police.”

“It is not over,” the one closest to me said. “We will get our money.” And then they both turned and left. I watched as they got into their car and drove away, then I went next door and shot the breeze with my neighbor. He asked about the two men. I told him they were scam artists who struck out with me, and left it at that.

The next day I had a bunch of issues pop up at work. It took me until seven that night before I had them under control, and I didn’t get home until eight. When I opened the door I couldn’t help noticing how quiet it seemed. I called out for Cheryl and got no answer. There was a light on in the kitchen. I walked in and saw the butcher knife lying on the counter top. Its edge faced me and I could see a red smudge running along it. Then I spotted the severed finger. It took me a moment to realize what it was. I don’t why. I guess it looked like a finger, but it just seemed odd lying there. It was placed on top of a note. The note was written in small, neat letters, and informed me that if I wanted to get my wife back without any more missing parts I had better pay them the money I owed them. The note ended by asking if I was still laughing. I picked up the phone and called the police.

The detective looked incredulous as I told him the whole story. I showed him all of the emails – the ones I had received and the ones I sent. I didn’t leave anything out. I told him about the fake documents I created, the bank account for my fictitious Pete Mitchel, the rented mailbox, the seventy-two thousand dollars, I told him everything. When I was done he had me tell my story to another detective, and after that to an FBI agent.

It turns out the police found Cheryl less than three hours after I had called them. It was probably due to a combination of the Nigerians being sloppy, since this was most likely their first kidnapping, and not considering that I would call the authorities. In any case, my neighbor Moscone had written down their license plate number from the day before, and they had used the same car for the kidnapping. The police found them in a small house in Chelsea. They had hacked Cheryl into pieces and were in the process of packing the pieces into boxes when the police broke in. I guess they were planning on mailing Cheryl back to me, piece by piece, after I paid them their money.

At the time the police didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t find out about Cheryl until the next day. That night they took me in for more questioning. I was asked several times if I wanted a lawyer, and each time I declined. At one point I was asked if I’d be willing to take a lie detector test. I told them I would. They then left me alone for several hours. I was then brought to another room, hooked up to a polygraph, and questioned. I answered each question truthfully, and they seemed satisfied with the results.

I think it was past nine o’clock the next morning when I met with the District Attorney. He looked uncomfortable as he told me about Cheryl. It was the first I heard of it and it took a moment for it to register. When I finally made sense of what he was saying, I just started sobbing. I couldn’t help it and I couldn’t stop myself. I just sat there sobbing uncontrollably, sobbing until it felt like my chest was going to break apart.

In the end the District Attorney decided not to press charges against me. While I acted criminally in trying to defraud the Nigerians, it was hard to muster much sympathy towards them. He was also convinced that I didn’t intend for any harm to come to Cheryl. When the Nigerians were arrested they had confessed fully and bitterly, explaining why they had hacked my wife to pieces. The D.A. decided not to hold me criminally negligent, even though in his opinion I acted stupidly. We agreed that I would turn over the seventy-two thousand dollars to a local youth group. I think it really got to him the way I reacted when I heard about Cheryl. He knew my reaction was genuine, he knew I wasn’t faking it, but he completely misunderstood the reason behind it.

I was lucky to pass the lie detector. I was lucky that all they were trying to do was verify my statement, and I had been completely truthful with my statement. If they had had some imagination I would’ve been sunk. To be honest I never expected the Nigerians to send me any money. Up until the point where they told me they were mailing me the money, I was just playing around. But from that point on I guess my mind was spinning with different ideas of how I could make it more than a scam. I knew that they wanted to send a check instead of wiring funds to my bank so that they would be able to follow me when I picked up the money. And I saw the Nigerians watching my mailbox when I picked up the check. I saw them when they were following me home; I even slowed down several times so I wouldn’t lose them. And I had no intention of spending any of that seventy-two thousand dollars on a mink coat for Cheryl. I told them that to infuriate them, to give them ideas. And I found reasons to stay late at work to give them time to do what they were going to do.

The thing of it was Cheryl and I had drifted apart over the years. We didn’t really talk much any more, and we didn’t really like being with each other. It had been over a year since we’d had sex, and even longer since I cared about it. A divorce would’ve been costly and unpleasant. So while I had to give up the seventy-two thousand dollars, I was paid six hundred thousand dollars from her life insurance policy. Her parents are now suing me for it, claiming I negligently contributed to her death, but my lawyer doesn’t think they have much of a case. I’m not worried about losing the money.

No, the D.A. wasn’t even close to understanding why I broke down the way I did. It had nothing to do with Cheryl’s death. It just hit me all of a sudden as to what I had done and what I had become. It took me a while to get used to it. But I’m fine now.

Fast Lane (Chapter 1)

If I was lucky Debra Singer was still in Denver, and if she was, East Colfax would be a good bet. East Colfax was always a good bet for runaway teenagers.

Every major city’s got its East Colfax. In Los Angeles it’s Hollywood Boulevard, in New York it’s Times Square. In Denver it’s East Colfax. As I drove down it, I spotted Rude at the corner of Nineteenth Street smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance. Rude works as a bouncer at a strip club a few doors down. He also pimps for a couple of the dancers. When he was in Vietnam he was assigned to an elite unit where he’d be let loose into the jungle to return two or three months later with a bunch of Vietcong ears tied to a rope. Now he can’t stay cooped up for too long, needs to get out every half hour or so for some fresh air. I once tried arguing that the air inside his strip club was a hell of a lot fresher than the smog around Denver, but he failed to see the logic of it.

I pulled up alongside him. He looked past me, inhaled deeply on his cigarette, held the smoke in, and let it out slowly through his nose. “If it isn’t the famous celebrity detective, Johnny Lane,” he said in a soft, menacing growl. “Read your piece in the Examiner. Used it to mop up some coffee.”

“Well now, everyone’s a critic these days.”

I parked and got out of the car. As I approached him, I noticed his handlebar mustache had gotten thicker and grayer, looking more like a steel brush than ever. He took in another lungful of smoke and swallowed it down.

“I hear there’s dissension in the ranks,” he said. “One of the private dicks you hire was bitching to me. Thinks you’re taking advantage of him.”

I waited for him to go on but he was finished. He spat on the sidewalk before turning back to me. His face had the hard, dispassionate look of a granite block.

“I got to tell you,” I said, “that’s just not true. I’m upfront with everyone I hire. And you know, Rude, it’s really just generosity on my part that I subcontract my overflow cases. But you’re always going to have your complainers no matter how good you are to people.”

“He told me you take sixty percent off the top. That’s not very generous, Lane.”

“Yeah, well, I disagree.” I was starting to feel a little hot under the collar. “Look, I don’t put a gun to anyone, understand? If your guy can do better, let him.”

A thin smile cracked Rude’s face. “Hey man, don’t get excited. Just telling you what was said. You don’t have to convince me of anything.”

“Who’s complaining about me?”

“I’m not going to betray a confidence.” He took a final deep drag and flicked his cigarette away, his eyes half-closed and peering off into the distance.

“Sure. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.” I handed him a photo of Debra Singer. “Know her?”

Rude studied it slowly. “Fresh meat,” he said, nodding. “In a few months, though, there’ll be maggots coursing through her flesh.” His eyes shifted to meet mine and for the first time in all the years I’d known him I saw a glint of life in them. “That’s a hell of a lot better prose than the crud you write,” he added sourly.

“I won’t disagree with you.”

“Maybe I should talk to your editor. If he’s going to publish crap like ‘Fast Lane’, maybe he’d be interested in something good. Something real. The Rude Streets, stories of the Hardluck.”

“Won’t sell,” I said. “You need a sympathetic hero. Someone for the reader to relate to. Not too many folks are going to relate to a sociopathic, sleazebag pimp.”

“But they relate to you, huh?”

A blond teenage girl wearing a belly shirt and hot pants walked out of a massage parlor across the street. I made sure she wasn’t Debra Singer before turning back to Rude. “Look,” I said. “I’m not making up the rules. Just telling you what they are.”

“I’m a war hero, godammit!”

“Yeah, you’re a fine, upstanding citizen.” I took Debra Singer’s photo from him. “How about the girl? Where can I find her?”

Rude pressed his eyes shut. Lines of concentration ran down his forehead like grooves running down granite. “She’s working at a peep show across from the Cabaret Club,” he said after a while. “Fresh meat’s working the private booths. For a buck she’ll take her panties off. After that, a buck a minute and she’ll play with herself so you can jerk off.”

I felt a little sick hearing it, but it could’ve been worse. At least she wasn’t working the streets. I thanked Rude and handed him forty bucks. He looked at his watch.

“Tanya’s on stage in five minutes,” he said. “You should come in for the show, Lane. This girl’s really something. She can pick up a roll of quarters and count the change.”

“Yeah, well, I got more than enough change as it is. And as my poppa used to say-”

He groaned. “Not one of your folksy little sayings, Lane. It’s too early in the day.”

“Funny you say that, cause my poppa-”

“Cut it out.”

“Well now, it’s too bad you feel that way. Cause, as my poppa used to say, maybe you would’ve learned something. But-”

There was no point going on. He had already shut himself off to me. As I moved away, his gaze shifted, staring into some godforsaken world that not too many people were privy to.

It bothered me that someone was complaining about me, and it didn’t make any sense. At least none that I could see. My one-man operation handles a large caseload, larger than most ten-man agencies, and the way I do it is by subcontracting my overload cases. Of course, ideally my clients want me to handle things personally, but they’re usually satisfied with knowing I’m involved, even if it’s only at a supervisory level. I guess it comes from the trust they develop reading about me over the years in the Denver Examiner.

Regardless of what Rude thought, the forty percent I pay when I subcontract a case is more than fair, especially when you consider that forty percent of my four-hundred-a-day charge is roughly what the smaller operatives can get on their own. You see, what my clients are paying for is my name, reputation, and expertise. Not for some nameless private dick they couldn’t care less about.

I decided I couldn’t help it if someone was going to be unreasonable, and I put it out of my mind.

The peep show Rude pointed out was a quarter of a mile further down East Colfax. There weren’t any parking spaces out front so I double-parked next to a Mercedes with an MD license plate. Before I made it into the establishment, a huge hog-like farm boy came puffing out of the peep show and blocked me.

“Hey, Buddy,” he said. “You gotta move your car.”

He wore a stained tee shirt and dungaree overalls that probably could’ve held ten forty-pound sacks of potatoes. They fit snugly on him. I told him I was just going to be a minute.

“Sorry.” He nudged me with his belly. I couldn’t help noticing his small pink rat’s eyes. “The cops will be down my neck if you block traffic. Go ahead and move your car. The girls will wait.”

He had a sick, oniony smell. I backed away from him and showed him Debra Singer’s photo. “I’m looking for this girl,” I said.

His eyes grew smaller and meaner. He moved towards me and bumped me again with his belly, pushing me back a foot. “She’s busy,” he said. “Why don’t you get lost?”

“She’s a minor. Bring her out here now or I’ll close your place down.”

“She told me she was eighteen,” he said stubbornly.

“Sorry, Tiny, she’s only sixteen. Look, your smell is making me nauseous. Why don’t you go get her?”

He stared at me. “I don’t like that name. You think it’s funny because of my size, huh?”

“Well now,” I said. “That didn’t have anything to do with it. I just heard some of the girls talking about you.”

He gave me a sullen stare as he tried to make up his mind about something. I guess he finally decided my crack wasn’t worth worrying about. He headed back into the peep show. I waited on the sidewalk for a minute and then stepped inside.

It was dark. It took a moment before my eyes focused on a sign indicating private booths in the back. As I turned the corner I walked into a room with about a half-dozen girls sitting on a cheap brown sofa, the oldest of whom couldn’t have been more than twenty. They didn’t look happy. One of them glanced up at me and licked her lips. Then I heard the commotion coming from behind them.

Tiny pushed his way through the red curtains separating the room from the private booths, dragging Debra Singer behind him like he was pulling a bed sheet. All she had on were a pair of panties. Tiny jerked her to her feet and shoved her into the middle of the room. She collapsed onto the floor, sobbing, pleading with him.

“Go on,” he said, a satisfied smirk twisting his little mouth. “Get her out of here.”

My hands balled into fists. “You could’ve let her put some clothes on,” I said.

Tiny took a small step back and wiped some sweat from his forehead. “You told me you wanted her right away, didn’t you? Now get her out of here! And I better never see your face around here again!”

One of the girls had run to the back room and retrieved a pair of jeans and a halter-top and was helping Debra into them. Another one had gotten her a pair of sneakers. Debra looked like a stick that could be broken in half by stepping on it the wrong way. I took a deep breath and felt my hands relax. Tiny stood cautiously watching me.

The two girls finished dressing Debra. One of them was rubbing Debra’s face with a towel. She had stopped sobbing. Her eyes were blotchy, the rest of her face, pale and bloodless. I walked over to her. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go.”

She let me lead her out. The way the sunlight hit her as she stepped outside, you could see her skull shining through her skin. There just wasn’t enough flesh on her. As she walked ahead I counted the vertebrae running down the back of her neck. She was so damn skinny and gawky. Her hips had barely begun to develop into a woman’s. Thinking about what she had been doing in there, I almost turned around and sought Tiny out.

As I started to drive off, he stepped outside, shaking his fist and yelling. I looked over my shoulder and caught his eye and then put the car in reverse. He disappeared back into the peep show.

Debra had been sitting quietly, pale blue eyes staring blindly at her feet. All of a sudden she tried to bolt. I grabbed her around the waist and reached across her and pulled the door shut. She resisted for about a ten count and then her body went limp.

“I’m not going back,” she stated in a barely audible monotone.

I drove until I was able to pull over. Then I turned and looked at her. A thin pale blue outline of veins crisscrossed her temples. “Honey,” I said. “Your parents are worried sick about you.”

She started to giggle and then bit her lip. “I’m not going back. I’ll kill myself if you make me go back.”

It was getting close to noon. Up ahead a couple of hookers were getting ready for the lunchtime crowd, disguising their sores with makeup and pulling their pants tighter against their crotches. I wanted to get Debra out of there as quickly as I could. “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch?”

She didn’t answer me.

I heard her teeth chattering and saw that she was shivering. “I got a jacket in the trunk. Would you like me to get it for you?”

She didn’t bother to answer. “What drugs are you doing?”

Still nothing from her. She had her hands clasped in her lap. I glanced at her arms and didn’t see any needle marks. I drove downtown, towards the Financial District, and was able to find a parking spot outside the Corner Diner.

Carol was working the counters. She waved us over, but I indicated I was going to take a booth. I noticed her eyeing Debra as we made our way to the back of the diner.

Carol came over with a couple of menus and a dishrag. “Hi, Johnny,” she said as she leaned her cute body forward and wiped the table. “I really enjoyed your column last month.”

“You didn’t use it to mop up spilled coffee?”

“No way. I saved it. Maybe you could autograph it for me later?”

“Sure. Thought I saw you working the counter today.”

“I am.” She started blushing. Red looked nice against her blond hair. “But it’s not busy yet, so I thought I could handle a table. Is this, uh, your niece?”

I guess I must’ve been annoyed at the way she had looked at Debra earlier because I smiled broadly and told her Debra was my new girlfriend. Debra let loose with a giggle and Carol’s blush turned a deeper red. I felt bad as soon as I said it. Carol was a good kid, always cheering me up when I needed it, and with the type of cases I was taking these days I needed it more and more.

“That’s not quite true,” I told her. “She’s someone who’s had some tough luck recently. I’m taking her back to her parents as soon as she has a good meal in her.”

Debra’s smile dropped, leaving her face pinched. Carol turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Debra shrank back from it.

“You poor thing,” Carol said. “What do you feel like eating?”

“Nothing,” Debra murmured.

“Get her a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake,” I told Carol. “And how about getting me your meatloaf plate? Think you can hide some extra mash potatoes on it?”

“I’ll think of something,” Carol said, flashing me a grin as she took the menus and headed back.

Debra started tearing at one of her fingernails. “You’re the detective in the newspaper,” she said without looking at me.

“That’s right. Ever read my stuff?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“Everyone’s a critic these days.” I leaned forward. “Honey, they really are worried sick about you. When I met with your daddy today he didn’t look too well.”

She giggled again and then looked up at me, her eyes stone hard. “I bet he didn’t call the police.”

I didn’t know whether he had or not. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re the detective. Figure it out.” She looked down at her nail and continued to tear at it.

“You don’t think your daddy’s worried about you?” Her lips started moving, but she didn’t say anything.

A sickish feeling pushed into my stomach. Carol brought the food. I pulled her aside and asked if she could watch Debra while I made a phone call. She said sure, and told me I could use the phone by the cash register.

I called a Denver cop I knew and asked if a missing persons report had been filed for Debra Singer. He told me to wait a minute and he’d check. When he came back, he told me there wasn’t. “Is she missing?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” I hung up and went back to the table. Debra was nibbling on her burger, barely making a dent in it. I had lost my appetite. I waited until she put down the burger, and then asked her why she’d run away.

She looked up and saw that I knew. Her face looked pale and pained. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Honey, what did he do to you?”

“What do you think?” she asked in a tiny whisper. And then she told me.

I had half suspected it when her daddy hired me. I guess I tried convincing myself it was the way he had explained it. I wanted to believe it was that way, that Debra was a troubled kid who had gotten into drugs and other bad stuff, but if I could bring her back, him and his wife would do whatever it took to straighten her out. If only I’d find her and bring her back…

If only it could’ve been that way. With all the lowlife cases I’d been handling recently, I needed it to be that way. I needed a chance to do some good for a change. Rescue the lost, wayward daughter. Bring her back to her heartsick parents. Instead I was right back in the gutter, scraping my nose against it.

Debra was describing the abuse, about how it began when she was seven and how it had gradually progressed. As she talked, her small face tightened, her words coming out in an angry rush. Inside I was reeling.

Tears had started to well up. One of them broke free and rolled down her cheek. It took a while before I could find my voice and ask whether her mother knew.

“She couldn’t care less,” she said. Her bottom lip looked like it was about to give way.

“Now, honey, that couldn’t be true-”

“I said, she couldn’t care less!” she screamed. “She couldn’t care less! How many more times you want me to say it?”

She pushed her burger away and dropped her arms and head to the table, sobbing. “You should’ve left me alone,” she forced out, her words choked and anguished. “I had a glass wall separating me from them. No one was going to touch me there.”

I told her I’d help. That I’d work things out. My words sounded silly but there wasn’t much else I could say. Carol came over and asked if everything was okay. I didn’t answer her. She sat next to Debra, and Debra turned and fell against her and started sobbing harder than before.

I sat and watched for a while, the sickish feeling in my stomach knotting my insides. Then I got up and called Craig Singer. I told him I’d found his daughter, but there were some problems and I needed to talk with him. He asked whether he should have his wife join us, and I told him it would probably be better if she didn’t. A hesitancy crept into his voice as he asked how Debra was. I told him we’d better talk about it in person and we agreed to meet at his home in a half hour.

I walked back to the table. Debra had stopped crying, but it looked like she could start up again any moment. The short order cook yelled out to Carol that food was stacking up. I asked her if she could keep an eye on Debra.

“It could be a while before I come back, but it’s important.”

Carol looked uncomfortable. “I’ll try, Johnny. I have to get back to work, though.”

I gave Debra a weak smile. “Stay put,” I told her. “Everything will be just fine. I promise you that.” She looked away.

Craig singer lived in Arvada, a suburb on the western edge of Denver. As I drove, I found myself daydreaming, thinking about things I hadn’t thought of in years. It kind of shook me up, because they were things I really had no right thinking about. Things that wouldn’t do me any good at all. It shook me up bad enough that I had to pull over on the highway to collect my thoughts.

As I sat there trying to clear my head, a state trooper pulled up behind me. He walked over to my car, bent his head towards the window and sniffed, trying to detect alcohol.

“Everything okay in there?”

“Everything’s fine. I was just feeling a little woozy.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

I laughed. “Not yet, officer. But I could sure use one.”

“Why don’t you show me some identification?”

I handed him my driver’s license. He studied it slowly and handed it back to me. “I enjoy reading your column, Mr. Lane,” he said. “You okay now?”

“I think so, officer.” I had a sick feeling in my gut that told me I wasn’t.

Bad Thoughts (Chapter 1)

November 9, 1997. Morning.

The fingers on his right hand-the ones that had been broken and mangled when he was thirteen-were being squeezed hard, forcing him to move through the cold and darkness. He tried to fight it, tried to see who it was behind him, but the grip on his fingers tightened, heightening the pain. He gave up and let himself be pushed forward.

He had no idea where he was. It was too dark to see anything. There was no sense of anything around him except that presence forcing his arm behind his back and squeezing his two fingers. He could smell a faint but oddly familiar odor, like formaldehyde and rotting garbage.

Up ahead was something white and small. As he got closer he could see it was a woman. He was about thirty yards from her, but he could tell she was beautiful, thin and slender with yellowish blond hair. But there was something wrong. Her mouth looked funny, bigger than it should’ve. As he was forced closer he could see she was naked and her hands and feet were bound. He could see pure terror shining in her eyes. A red piece of cloth had been stuffed in her mouth. Thin red lines crisscrossed her body.

Panic overtook him. He tried to fight whatever it was that was squeezing his fingers. He tried, but the pressure tightened and the pain became unbearable. And that smell… it was stronger now, gagging him, making his head reel. Whatever strength he had bled out of him.

A knife was lying on her naked belly. He was forced forward until his free hand was inches from it. The pain made him pick it up, made him place the point of the knife against her throat. The pain was trying to force him to stab her in the throat. There was an unspoken promise-push the knife a little further, just break the skin-only draw a drop of blood, and the pain will stop. He tried to fight it. He looked in her eyes. A muffled sound escaped from her as she tried to scream. He dropped the knife to the ground. A loud obscenity was barked out from behind him. The voice was vaguely familiar. Where did he know it from…

Then his fingers were twisted with a hard jerk, twisted to the point where they were about to break. The pain exploded inside him.

And then somehow he was free. Falling…

Bill Shannon awoke in bed. He was doubled over in pain, his two fingers throbbing, a cold sweat soaking his body. He grabbed his fingers and tried to massage them, tried to ebb the pain flowing from them. They were thicker than his other fingers and were a slightly bluish-purple color. It had been almost twenty years since they had been broken. They had been so badly damaged the doctors at first didn’t believe they could be saved. They were never quite right, though. Always stiff, always slightly purple in color, and at times, especially when it got cold and damp, they would throb like all hell.

The pain faded. He pulled himself up and leaned forward until his forehead rested in his hands. His skin felt cold, clammy. At least he didn’t wake up screaming, god, at least he could be thankful for that. ’Cause if he had…

It was still a few minutes before the alarm was set to go off. Susie stirred next to him. He looked down and studied her. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman. Although the only blood in her was Irish, she had a dark, exotic Mediterranean look about her. Small and petite with long black hair that now lay across her oval face. As she slept, Shannon almost didn’t recognize her. She looked so calm and at peace, so much younger than her twenty-nine years. Even though they had been married for ten years, at that moment it seemed incredible to him that they knew each other.

Susie opened her eyes. As she recognized Shannon, and then as she focused on the perspiration dampening his skin, the color left her face.

“You’re having nightmares again,” she said hoarsely.

Shannon didn’t say anything.

“What was it about, Bill?”

“I don’t know,” he lied. “I really don’t. But I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

She rolled over and turned her back to him. “It’s early for you to be having nightmares. Three months early. You told me you were making progress with your therapist, that this year was going to be different.”

“I really don’t think this is anything to worry about,” Shannon repeated weakly.

Susie lay quietly for a few moments. Then she got up and headed towards the bathroom. Before closing the door she turned to him and told him she hoped he was right. “I don’t think I can take it again this year,” she said.

She closed the door behind her. A minute later the shower was turned on. Shannon fell back onto the bed and listened to the soft drone of the water. Susie was right, it was too early for him to be having nightmares. February tenth was still three months away.

He closed his eyes and thought about his dream. Usually he couldn’t remember them. They’d be right at the edge of his subconscious, right where he could just about get a finger or two on them, and then they’d slip away. God, if this is what he dreamed about he could be thankful for that. This one, though…

He never saw that woman before. He knew that. She seemed so real, though. Shannon shivered thinking about her eyes, the pure, raw terror that flooded her blue eyes. And that smell. It was so damn familiar…

Neither of them had any appetite for breakfast. Shannon drank some instant coffee and then he drove Susie to the law office in South Boston where she worked as a legal secretary. During the ride she sat frozen, her small hands pressed together, her eyes rigid as they stared straight ahead. As she got out of the car she gave her husband an uneasy look.

“Bill,” she said, her face softening, “please tell your therapist about your nightmare. Promise?”

“Sure.” He tried to smile at her. “But I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. People have nightmares sometimes, right? It’s normal.”

As she stared at him the softness from around her eyes faded, leaving her face both drawn and tired. Without a word she turned from him and walked away, her movement as frigid as the November morning air. Shannon watched as she headed towards the building’s entrance. He struggled to keep his smile intact. For some reason he hoped she’d turn around, that she’d relent and give him a reassuring look, let him know there was nothing to worry about. He watched as she disappeared into the building, not once looking back at him. He couldn’t blame her. He knew in the pit of his stomach his nightmare was anything but normal.

But, as he told himself, February was still three months away. He could still beat it. Just block the damn thing out of his mind because nothing happened. Nothing but a crazy nightmare. His lips pressed into a tight smile as he pulled away from the curb. Twenty minutes later his jaw muscles ached as he drove into the back lot behind the Cambridge Central Square police station.

Captain Martin Brady was hanging by Shannon’s desk talking with a couple of the other detectives. As Shannon approached, Brady’s pale blue eyes took him in. “You’re looking a bit gaunt this morning,” Brady said, a thin smile on his lips.

“I had some trouble sleeping last night.”

“Not ill or anything, I hope?”

“No. I just had a little insomnia.”

Brady’s pale eyes held steady on Shannon for a good twenty seconds before blinking. “Sometimes alcohol can interfere with your sleep. You haven’t been drinking, now, have you?”

“Not a drop.”

“That’s good.” Brady inhaled, obviously trying to detect booze on his detective’s breath. Satisfied, he backed away. “Joe’s waiting for you in interrogation room B. He’s with a Kyle Rowley. Rowley’s wife, Janice, never made it home last night. Her car was found this morning in an industrial park off First Street. No sign of her.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Any reason to suspect him?”

“There is.” Brady showed his thin smile again, a smile that never made it anywhere near his eyes. “He came down to the station last night around seven to report his wife missing. Mind you, she was only an hour late at that point. Sounds like he might’ve been a bit too anxious to set up an alibi.”

Shannon nodded. “Yeah, it does sound that way.”

“I’d like to see this wrapped up quickly.” Brady hesitated as a queasy look pushed the smile from his lips. “An abduction is going to scare people here. If it’s the husband let’s get this finished with this morning before the media gets a whiff of it.”

“What about the car?”

“Forensics is going over it. Talk to the husband, okay, Bill?”

“Sure.”

“And, Bill, get it finished with this morning.”

Shannon gave his captain a nod and then headed off in the direction of the interrogation rooms. He stopped off at the lunch room to pour himself some coffee, and then stepped outside so he could smoke a cigarette. Cambridge had a smoking ban in the work place, and even though over half the cops in the precinct smoked, it was strictly enforced. Getting caught cost you a thirty-dollar fine, and he had already racked up a hundred and fifty in fines over the past three months. If Susie knew she’d be pissed, he thought with a slight smile. When he was done, when his nerves had for the most part settled, Shannon went to interrogation room B and stuck his head in.

Joe DiGrazia was leaning back in a chair, his eyes half closed, his hands folded on top of his thick belly. Sitting across from him was a man in his early thirties, tall, lean, with a sallow complexion and a day’s growth of stubble covering his face. The man, Kyle Rowley, looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.

DiGrazia caught Shannon’s eye and gave him a signal that they needed to talk alone. He then turned to Rowley and told him he’d be right back. Rowley nodded dully in response.

Outside the interrogation room DiGrazia took a deep breath, expanding his chest half a foot. He was built like a bull, about five feet eight inches tall and practically the same width. A short, thick neck, not much hair, and a face like a granite block. He exhaled a lung full of air and made a face.

“I don’t know about this, partner,” he said. “I think the man’s genuine.”

“Why’d he report it so early?”

DiGrazia shrugged. “He was worried.”

“Tell me about him.”

“There’s not much. He’s a white-collar type, a software engineer, married four years. They have an apartment near Porter Square. And his wife’s missing. That’s about it…”

DiGrazia stopped, his eyes narrowing as he studied his partner. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Shannon said.

“You don’t look too good. Kind of nervous,” DiGrazia observed.

“I’m fine. Let’s go talk to the husband.”

They went back into the interrogation room and Shannon introduced himself to Rowley. Rowley seemed only partly aware of it, his eyes searching off into the distance.

“What time was your wife supposed to be home last night?”

“Six o’clock,” Rowley said, his eyes drifting towards Shannon but not quite making it. “Janice called me at five and told me she’d pick something up for dinner. She asked what I wanted and I told her to pick up whatever she was in the mood for. She told me she’d be home by six.”

“And after being only an hour late you thought something had happened to her?”

“I knew something had happened to her.” Rowley’s eyes met Shannon’s. They had a sickish, jaundiced look about them. “I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I came down here last night, but the officer at the front desk told me Janice had probably just stopped off someplace for a couple of drinks.”

“Wasn’t that possible?”

“No.”

“She’s never been late before?”

“Of course she has. There have been times when she’s been stuck at work, or she has a hair appointment that’s running late, but not like this. She called before leaving work that she was going to pick something up for dinner and be right home.”

“Where does she work?”

“In Watertown. She’s an accountant. Here’s her business card.” Kyle Rowley took a card from his wallet and handed it to Shannon.

The card had Janice Rowley’s work address and phone number. Shannon put it down in front of him and considered Kyle Rowley for a long moment.

“How have you and your wife been getting along?” Shannon asked at last.

Rowley tilted his head to the side, shaking it slightly. His lips pulled into a thin smile.

“I need to ask you this.”

“This isn’t anything like that,” Kyle Rowley said, his voice tired. “My wife and I love each other very much.”

“There haven’t been any problems, no fights or anything?”

“No.” Rowley’s eyes shifted upwards to lock in on Shannon’s.

“If we were to ask around we’d hear-”

“You’d hear the same thing. That me and my wife love each other. That’s all you’d hear about us.”

Shannon took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, shook one loose, and looked at it for a long moment before pushing it back into place. He noticed DiGrazia staring at him from the corners of his thin, narrowed eyes.

“Could your wife be seeing someone else?” Shannon asked.

“No.”

“Is there the possibility-”

“No. Janice is not seeing anyone. There’s not even the possibility of it.”

“What about someone she works with?”

“I told you she’s not seeing anyone-”

“But you have suspicions, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“You had her business card ready for me. You obviously have suspicions about somebody there.”

Rowley thought it over. “I don’t think so,” he said. “You asked me where she worked. Anyway, I thought it could help to give it to you. Maybe somebody saw someone suspicious in the parking lot. Maybe somebody heard something. I don’t know. But that’s why I gave you her card. Janice is not seeing anyone.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know my wife,” Kyle Rowley said. “I know how we feel about each other.”

Something about Rowley being so cocksure of his wife bothered Shannon. Shit, half the cops he knew sooner or later found their wives in affairs. Stubbornly he kept at it. “If your wife is seeing someone I need to know about it-”

“She’s not seeing anyone. This is not anything like that.”

“What is this then?”

Pain pushed through the dullness in Kyle Rowley’s eyes. His entire face momentarily was flushed with it. “Janice was abducted,” he said. “Somebody took her. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Okay,” Shannon said, “let me be straight with you. What I realize is your wife is missing, either because she wants to be, because somebody did something to her, or because you did something to her. If we can rule you out then we can focus on the other two possibilities. Which means if your wife really was abducted, the quicker we can cross you off, the better the chance we’d have of finding her. Will you give us permission to search your apartment?”

“It’s not going to help at all-”

“I could get a warrant, but it would take time. I don’t think we want to waste time right now.”

Anger turned Rowley’s skin a soft purple. “This is ridiculous,” he started to argue, his jaw muscles hardening, “there’s nothing in my apartment that’s going to help you find my wife-”

“If you’re involved, you’re doing the right thing by stonewalling us,” Shannon said.

“I’m not trying to stonewall you,” Rowley said. “Goddamn it.” He shook his head. The color drained out of his face, leaving it the same unhealthy yellow it was before. “Do whatever you want as long as it gets you looking for Janice.”

“Are you willing to take a polygraph test?”

“I’ll take whatever you want me to take. Just find my wife.”

Shannon stood up. “I’m going to get you a pad of paper. I want you to write down any place your wife might have stopped off last night to pick up dinner. Any place you can think of. I want you to also write down anything unusual that might have happened over the last couple months, anything your wife might’ve said that seemed out of place-”

“Like what?”

“Like somebody coming on to her at work, or threatening her, anything like that. I also want you to write down everything you did from the time you left work yesterday to coming here this morning.” Shannon hesitated. “Do you have pictures of your wife?”

“I didn’t bring any. I can go home and get some.”

“That’s okay. Just give me your keys. While you’re writing down what I asked, Detective DiGrazia and I will search your apartment. I need to get a photo of your wife out on the wire. Do you give me permission to remove photos of her from your apartment?”

Kyle Rowley told Shannon to do whatever he needed to do and told him where they kept their photo albums. He took a pair of keys off a chain and handed them to Shannon. “Janice’s still alive,” he said. “I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Don’t let her die. She’s my life. I don’t think I can make it without her.”

“I’ll do everything I can. I promise. I’ll be right back with that pad.”

DiGrazia, before leaving, put a hand on Rowley’s shoulder and told him to hang in there.

Out in the hallway DiGrazia remarked how he let Shannon do all the talking.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“I wanted to give you every opportunity to form an unbiased opinion.”

“Thanks.”

“You thought there was something funny about him pointing us towards her coworkers?”

“No. I just wanted to ask him about it.”

“So what do you think,” DiGrazia asked, “is he genuine?”

Shannon thought about it. “What I think is we’ve got a woman in pretty bad trouble.”

Before leaving the precinct they stopped to talk with Brady. Forensics took a couple of partial prints off the steering wheel, nothing else.

“Of course,” Brady went on, “they’re most likely the victim’s, but we’ll check them. Bill, tell me about the husband.”

“He’s given us permission to search his apartment and he’s also willing to take a polygraph. I’ve set it up for one this afternoon. Do you want to be there?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Is he responsible?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

Shannon shook his head. “I don’t have a feel yet, Martin. I really don’t know.”

Brady gave DiGrazia a questioning look, but DiGrazia cut him off. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” he said.

“You’re disappointing me,” Brady said to the two cops as they walked away from him.

Brady stood watching them, shaking his head, a dour look forming over his soft features. “And I’m not at all happy about it,” he said to no one in particular.

Julius Katz (first section)

We were at the dog track, Julius Katz and me. I had finished relaying to Julius the odds I calculated for the greyhounds running in the third race; odds that were calculated by building thousands of analytical models simulating each of the dogs’ previous races, then in a closed loop continuously adjusting the models until they accurately predicted the outcome of each of these races. After that, I factored in the current track and weather conditions, and had as precise a prediction as was mathematically possible. Julius stood silently mulling over what I had given him.

“Bobby’s Diva, Iza Champ and Moondoggie,” Julius murmured softly, repeating the names of the top three dogs I had projected to win.

“Eighty-two percent probability that that will be the order of the top three dogs,” I said.

“That high, huh? Interesting, Archie.”

Julius’s eyes narrowed as he gazed off into the distance, his facial muscles hardening to the point where he could’ve almost been mistaken for a marble sculpture. From past experience, I knew he was running his own calculations, and what I would’ve given to understand and simulate the neuron network that ran through his brain. Julius Katz was forty-two, six-feet tall, a hundred and eighty pounds, with an athletic build and barely an ounce of fat. He was a devoted epicurean who worked off the rich food he consumed each night by performing an hour of rigorous calisthenics each morning, followed up with an hour of intensive martial arts training. From the way women reacted to him, I would guess that he was attractive, not that their outward flirting bothered him at all. Julius’s passions in life were beautiful women, fine gourmet food, even finer wine and, of course, gambling-especially gambling. More often than not he tended to be successful when he gambled-especially at times when I was able to help. All of his hobbies required quite a bit of money and, during the times when he was stuck in a losing streak and his bank account approached anemic levels, Julius would begrudgingly take on a client. There were always clients lining up to hire him since he was known as Boston’s most brilliant and eccentric private investigator, solving some of the city’s most notorious cases. The truth of the matter was Julius hated to forego his true passions for the drudgery of work and only did so when absolutely necessary, and that would be after days of unrelenting nagging on my part. I knew about all this because I acted as Julius’s accountant, personal secretary, unofficial biographer and all-around assistant, although nobody but Julius knew that I existed, at least other than as a voice answering his phone and booking his appointments. Of course I don’t really exist, at least not in the sense of a typical sentient being. Or make that a biological sentient being.

My name wasn’t really “Archie”. During my time with Julius I’ve grown to think of myself as Archie, the same as I’ve grown to imagine myself as a five-foot tall heavyset man with thinning hair, but in reality I’m not five-foot tall, nor do I have the bulk that I imagine myself having, and I certainly don’t have any hair, thinning or otherwise. I also don’t have a name, only a serial identification number. Julius calls me Archie and for whatever reason it seems right; besides, it’s quicker to say than the eighty-four digit serial identification number that has been burnt into me. You’ve probably already guessed that I’m not human, and certainly not anything organic. What I am is a two-inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that’s twenty-years more advanced than what’s currently considered theoretically possible-at least aside from whatever lab created me. How Julius acquired me, I have no clue. Whenever I’ve tried asking him, he jokes around, telling me he won me in a poker game. It could be true-I wouldn’t know since I have no memory of my time before Julius.

So that’s what I am, a two-inch rectangular mechanism weighing approximately one point two ounces. What’s packed inside my titanium shell includes visual and audio receptors as well as wireless communication components and a highly sophisticated neuron network that not only simulates intelligence, but learning and thinking which adapts in response to my experiences. Auditory and visual recognition are included in my packaging, which means I can both see and hear. As you’ve probably already guessed, I can also speak. When Julius and I are in public, I speak to him through a wireless receiver that he wears in his ear as if it were a hearing aid. When we’re alone in his office he usually plugs the unit into a speaker on his desk.

A man’s voice announced over the loudspeaker that bettors had two minutes to place their final bets for the third race. That brought Julius back to life, a vague smile drifting over his lips. He placed a five hundred dollar wager, picking Sally’s Pooch, Wonder Dog and Pugsly Ugsly to win the Trifecta-none of the dogs that I had predicted. The odds displayed on the betting board were eighty to one. I quickly calculated the probabilities using the analytical models I had devised earlier and came up with a mathematically zero percent chance of his bet winning. I told him that and he chuckled.

“Playing a hunch, Archie.”

“What you’re doing is throwing away five hundred dollars,” I argued. Julius was in the midst of a losing streak and his last bank statement was far from healthy. In a way it was good because it meant he was going to have to seriously consider the three o’clock appointment that I had booked for him with a Miss Norma Brewer. As much as he hates it, working as a private investigator sharpens him and usually knocks him out of his dry gambling spells. I had my own ulterior motives for him taking a new case-it would give me a chance to adapt my deductive reasoning. One of these days I planned to solve a case before Julius did. You wouldn’t think a piece of advanced computer technology would feel competitive, but as I’ve often argued with Julius, there’s little difference between my simulated intelligence and what’s considered sentient. So yes, I wanted to beat Julius, I wanted to prove to him that I could solve a case as well or better than he could. He knew this and always got a good laugh out of it, telling me he had doomed that possibility by naming me Archie.

Of course, I’ve long figured out that joke. Julius patterned my personality and speech based on the works of some of the most important private eye novels of the twentieth century, including those of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Rex Stout. The name he gave me, Archie, was based on Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s second banana who was always one step behind his boss. Yeah, I got the joke, but one of these days I was going to surprise Julius. It was just a matter of seeing enough cases to allow me to readjust my neuron network appropriately. One of these days he was going to have to start calling me Nero. But for the time being, I was Archie. The reason I had an image of myself being five-foot tall was also easy to explain. Julius wore me as a tie clip, which put me at roughly a five-foot distance from the ground when he stood. I never quite figured out where my self-image of thinning hair and heavyset build came from, but guessed they were physical characteristics I picked up from the Continental Op. Or maybe for some reason I identified with Costanza from Seinfeld-one of the few television programs Julius indulged in.

The dogs were being led around the track and into their starting boxes. Julius sauntered over to get a better view of the track, seemingly unconcerned about his zero percent chance of winning his bet.

“You’re throwing away five hundred dollars,” I said again. “If your bank account was flush this wouldn’t be a problem, but you realize today you don’t have enough to cover next month’s expenses.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied the dogs. “I’m well aware of my financial situation,” he said.

“You haven’t had any wine since last night, so I know you’re not intoxicated,” I said. “The only thing I can figure out is some form of dementia. I’ll hack into John Hopkins research database and see if there’s any information that can help me better diagnose this-”

“Please, Archie,” he said, a slight annoyance edging into his voice. “The race is about to begin.”

The race began. The gates to the starting boxes opened and the dogs poured out of them. As they chased after the artificial rabbit, I watched in stunned silence. The three dogs Julius picked led the race from start to finish, placing in the precise order in which Julius had bet.

For a long moment-maybe for as long as thirty milliseconds, my neuron network froze. I realized afterwards that I had suffered from stunned amazement-a new emotional experience for me.

“T-That’s not possible,” I stammered, which was another first for me. “The odds were mathematically zero that you would win.”

“You realize you just stammered?”

“Yes, I know. How did you pick these dogs?”

He chuckled, very pleased with himself. “Archie, hunches sometimes defy explanation.”

“I don’t buy it,” I said.

His right eyebrow cocked. “No?”

He had moved to the cashier window to collect on his Trifecta bet. Forty thousand dollars before taxes, but even with what was left over after the state and federal authorities took their bites would leave his bank account flush enough to cover his next two month’s expenses which meant he was going to be blowing off his three o’clock appointment. I came up with an idea to keep that from happening, then focused on how he was able to win that bet.

“The odds shouldn’t have been eighty to one as was posted,” I said. “They should’ve been far higher.”

He exchanged his winning ticket for a check made out for the after-tax amount and placed it carefully into his wallet. He turned towards the track exit, and walked at a leisurely pace.

“Very good, Archie. I think you’ve figured it out. Why were the odds only eighty to one?”

I had already calculated the amount bet on the winning Trifecta ticket given the odds and the total amount bet on the race, but I wanted to know how many people made those bets so I hacked into the track’s computer system. “Four other bets were made for a total of six thousand dollars on the same Trifecta combination.”

“And why was that?”

I knew the answer from one of the Damon Runyan stories which was used to build my experience base. “The odds of anyone else picking that Trifecta bet given those dogs’ past history is one out of six point eight million. That four other people would be willing to bet that much money given an expected winnings of near zero dollars could only be explained by the race being fixed.”

“Bingo.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “If you knew which dogs were going to win, why didn’t you bet more money?”

“Two reasons. First, fixing a dog race is not an exact science. Things can go wrong. Second, if I bet more I would’ve upset the odds enough to where I could’ve tipped off the track authorities, and even worse, upset the good folks who set the fix up and were nice enough to invite me to participate.”

I digested that. With a twinkle showing in Julius’s right eye, he informed me that he was going to be spending the rest of the afternoon at the Belvedere Club sampling some of their fine cognacs, and that I should call his three o’clock appointment and cancel. A blond woman in her early thirties smiled at Julius, and he noticed and veered off in her direction, a grin growing over his own lips. Her physical characteristics closely matched those of the actress Heather Locklear, which would’ve told me she was very attractive even without Julius’s reaction to her. This was not good. If Julius blew off his three-o’clock, it could be a month or longer before I’d be able to talk him into taking another job, which would be a month or longer before I’d have a chance to adjust my deductive reasoning model-and what was becoming more important to me, a chance to trump Julius at solving a case.

“You might like to know I’ve located a case of Romaine Conti Burgundy at the Wine Cellar in Newburyport. I need to place the order today to reserve it,” I said.

That stopped Julius in his tracks.

“1997?”

“Yes sir. What should I do?”

He was stuck. He’d been looking for a case of that particular vintage for months, but the cost would mean he’d have to take a job to both pay for the wine and the upcoming monthly expenses, which meant he wouldn’t have time to get to know the Heather Locklear-look-alike. Julius made up his mind. With a sigh he told me that the Belvedere Club would have to wait, that we had a three o’clock appointment to keep. He showed the blond woman a sad, wistful smile, his look all but saying, “I’m sorry, but we’re talking about a ’97 Romaine Conti after all”, and with determination in his step headed towards the exit again. Once outside, he hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address to his Beacon Hill townhouse. I had known about the Romaine Conti for several days, but had held on to the information so I could use it at the appropriate time, one of the lessons I had learned from the Rex Stout books. Internally, I was smiling. At least that was the image I had of myself. A five-foot tall, balding, chunky man, who couldn’t keep from smiling if his life depended on it.

The Walk by Lee Goldberg (Chapter 1)

It wasn’t like he imagined it at all. Of course, everything Martin Slack imagined seemed to come from television or movies, or at least big chunks of it, so he figured his own imagination really wasn’t to blame for things not being the way they were supposed to be.

There weren’t any of those ominous, early warning signs that everyone ignored, like big flocks of birds flying away or dogs barking for no reason, or the little rumbles that were shrugged off as a big truck passing by on the street.

Marty wasn’t getting married, retiring from the force, embarking on a maiden voyage, or christening some bold, new construction project, each a definite precursor of disaster, at least according to Irwin Allen, the acknowledged expert on the subject.

And at least one thing turned out like the movies-here he was, underneath his car, just like Charlton Heston in Earthquake. That’s where any similarity between Marty and Charlton ended.

He wasn’t clutching Ava Gardner, and he certainly wouldn’t sacrifice himself to save her over Genevieve Bujold. And after the shaking was over, Charlton wasn’t curled in a fetal position, covered in dust and sprinkles of broken glass, wondering if the itchy wetness he felt on his legs was blood, something from the car, or his own piss.

Marty didn’t want to move. He felt just like he did waking up in his soaked sleeping bag at Camp Cochise, afraid to stir, hoping everything would dry before the other campers, especially that bully Dwayne Edwards, woke up and discovered he was a bed-wetter. The sharpness of the fear and shame, thirty years later, surprised him almost as much as thinking about it now.

It was enough to embarrass him into opening his eyes and pushing away the bricks and broken glass that surrounded the car. He dragged himself from under his Mercedes, scraping his fingers on the shards of glass in his haste. But he didn’t care. He had to get out.

The first thing he noticed was the dust, the chalky mist of pulverized plaster, mortar, and brick. It was everywhere. In his eyes, in his nose, in his lungs. Coughing, he staggered to his feet, his balance totally shot. It didn’t help that asphalt was all cracked and bubbled, like something was trying to break out from underneath.

The derelict warehouse he’d been in just a few minutes before, making the obligatory network exec visit to the set of Go to Heller, was now just a pile of bricks, which slopped onto his car, flattening it like a $42,000 German beer can.

The warehouse was never retrofitted for earthquake safety. It had been abandoned and neglected for decades, which made it a great seedy location for cop shows.

But it wasn’t abandoned today.

There were fifty or sixty people in there. The cast, the crew, the director. Now they were under tons of rubble. And if Marty had schmoozed ten seconds longer, he would have been, too.

Oh my God.

Marty stumbled over the debris, making his way around the edge of what had been the warehouse, and saw a handful of caterers, electricians, grips, and wardrobers swarming over the debris, quickly sorting through the bricks in a desperate search for survivors.

“Has anyone called for help?” he shouted, but didn’t wait for an answer. He was already yanking out his cell phone, flipping it open like Capt. Kirk’s communicator and dialing 911 as he approached them.

The tiny device bleated an electronic protest. No signal.

Shit!

What was the point of having a damn cell phone if you couldn’t depend on it at times like this?

Marty snapped the phone shut, stuffed it into his pocket, and joined the others, picking up bricks and tossing them behind him as fast as he could.

This was really bad. A native Californian, Marty’s ass was a natural Richter scale, accurate within two-tenths of a point. He knew the Northridge Quake was a 6.5 before CalTech did. And his ass was telling him this was bigger. Much bigger. Beyond the range of his experience.

“My brother,” someone shrieked.

It was the guy beside Marty, one of the grips, the people who do the heavy lifting around the set. The guy was missing an ear, blood soaking his Panavision t-shirt from his shoulder down to his tool belt. But the guy was oblivious to it, he just kept repeating the same thing as he thrashed his way through the debris.

“My brother is in there,” the guy said. “My brother is in there.”

The guy said it over and over, becoming more frantic with each repetition. Marty focused on digging through the rubble directly in front of him. He didn’t know what else to do.

Where the hell were the firemen? The police? Why wasn’t he hearing any sirens?

“Over here!” one of the caterers yelled.

Everyone scrambled across the rubble toward the caterer, helping him heave the bricks aside, exposing first a bloody pant-leg, then a big, silver belt buckle.

That was all Marty needed to see. They’d found Irving Steinberg, the executive producer, a New York-born Jew who dressed like he was about to go on a cattle drive. Irving liked to refer to his ever-present Stetson as his “ten-gallon yarmulke.”

In truth, Irving wore the Stetson because he thought it was less embarrassing and would draw less attention than even the most expensive toupee. Just look at Burt Reynolds and William Shatner, Irving would say. Wouldn’t they look much better with hats?

Irving always made Marty smile. In fact, Marty was walking out with one of those Irving-produced smiles just before the rumbling started.

“Put this show on the fall schedule,” Irving said, “and I can finally afford my dream.”

“What’s that?” Marty asked, willingly playing the straight man.

“My own ranch,” Irving replied. “Right in Bel Air. I’m gonna call it the Bar Mitzvah spread.”

They uncovered the rest of Irving.

If it wasn’t for the trademark clothes, he would have been unrecognizable.

Marty backed away, shaking his head, struggling not to lose his balance as he fled. Irving was dead. Just a few minutes ago Irving was talking and joking and dreaming and now he was dead.

How could that be?

That’s when someone jacked up the volume on the world. Suddenly Marty’s ears opened up and he was bombarded by a shrill chorus of horns and car alarms, punctuated by the muffled rumble and pop of explosions, volleys on a distant battlefield.

Marty looked up.

It was like the theatre lights coming on after a movie, when he would notice the walls, the aisles, and the moviegoers he had forgotten were there. Now the lights were coming up on Marty’s new world.

All the warehouses on the decaying, industrial block had either folded in on themselves in giant slabs or were reduced to rubble, all under a huge cloud of dust. The only structure still standing was a cardboard box mansion in the alley, its dirty-faced owner peeking out hesitantly at the destruction, then disappearing back inside, closing a flap behind him. His building was the only one on the block that seemed to be up to code.

Marty turned and saw the 6th Street bridge, the Art Deco giant slumped into the concrete banks of the LA river, pouring cars into the polluted dribble of water below. A big silver line of Metrolink rail cars had derailed, dangling over the vertical concrete embankment like decorative tinsel. Fire licked out of the windows, the flickering light shining off the dented, metal skin.

Marty turned again and saw the downtown LA skyline. Most of the glass towers still stood, like giant shattered mirrors, the harsh sun reflecting off their hideously cracked faces in jagged rays. They had swayed with the earth, as the engineers promised they would, shaking off their tinted glass skin. Only one high-rise couldn’t hold on, and now leaned against another, as if too tired to stand any longer, panting smoke and flame in enormous bursts.

Marty turned and turned and turned, trying to take it all in. He couldn’t. The enormity of the destruction was too much.

He felt an immediate distance, as if seeing it on a TV screen instead of living it. These were special effects, cardboard miniatures and plastic models. For a moment, he almost believed if he squinted, he could make out the matte lines between the real image and the computer-generated one painted in around it.

But he couldn’t.

All of a sudden the ground started to heave. At first Marty thought it was an aftershock; then he realized it was himself, his whole body shaking violently. He fell to his knees and started to gag, vomiting until he thought he’d start spitting out organs.

Finally, the gagging stopped and Marty just stayed there, his eyes closed, waiting for his body to stop shaking, puke in his throat, in his nose. He found the horrible smell and sick taste strangely reassuring. It was something he recognized.

Marty straightened up and found a Kleenex in his pocket. He blew his nose, balled up the tissue, and tossed it.

Now he knew why he didn’t hear sirens. Because no help was coming. Not for anyone. Not for a long time.

Time.

He’d left the warehouse set in a hurry, glancing at his watch as he rushed out, worried he’d be late for the staff meeting.

That was the last thing he did before it happened.

Now he looked at his watch again, a drop of blood landing on the cracked crystal just as he noted the time: 9:15 a.m. Tuesday.

7:00 a.m. Tuesday

The radio report that woke Marty up predicted another day of sweltering heat and unhealthful air quality. Everyone was urged to stay indoors and avoid breathing too much.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem for him. He’d just go from the re-circulated air of his house to the re-circulated air of his car to the re-circulated air of his office with only seconds in between. But not today. He had to go downtown and make an appearance on the set.

Marty slapped the radio silent and didn’t bother to look on the other side of the bed. He knew she’d already fled downstairs to the safety of the morning paper. Beth was always gone when he awoke, no matter what time it was.

It wasn’t always that way.

They used to make love in the mornings, then lie tangled together, the sheets twisted around them, waiting for the radio alarm to go on and the chatty newscasters to drive them out of bed. Not any more.

He got up.

His house was above the smog, or at least he was high enough on the Calabasas hillside to enjoy the illusion that he was. From his bedroom window, he looked down onto the San Fernando Valley, at the thick, brown haze blanketing the flat urban sprawl. The layer of floating crud was trapped between the hills, which were slowly being devoured by tract homes like his. Only those homes cost about $300,000 less and were crammed onto a mere 6000-square-foot patch of dry graded dirt. They were stucco boxes for the Camry class.

Marty shifted his gaze to the red-tile roof of the Spanish colonial guard house and the morning progression of gardeners and pool cleaners and housekeepers climbing up the steep hill of his gated community in their over-loaded pick-ups and dented cars. He wondered if they knew they weren’t supposed to breathe today.

He trudged naked into the bathroom, and as he stood urinating into the toilet, reminded himself of all the things on his schedule. First, visit the set of Go to Heller, a supernatural pilot about a dead cop who rises from the grave and becomes a private eye.

Marty’s plan was to shake a few hands and pretend the network was wildly enthusiastic about the footage they were seeing, then rush back to the office for the weekly staff meeting where, as the guy in charge of current programming, he was responsible for the creative direction of the network’s shows.

Standards amp; Practices was in an uproar over the nipplage in the romantic adventure series Sam and Sally. Seeing erect nipples under clothing once in an hour was considered an acceptable accident. Twice was salacious. Three times was offensive content. They wanted Sally to start taping herself down. Marty was adamantly against it.

In the shower, under the hottest spray he could endure, he considered the various ways he could argue his point. He could try and shame them: Nipples are a fact of life. We all have them. What are we trying to hide here? It’s not like she’s running around topless. It was ludicrous to demand that an actress “restrain her aggressive nipples” so some tight-ass censor could pretend women didn’t have them.

Or he could take the artistic, pragmatic approach. More and more viewers are fleeing the artificially chaste world of network television for the more realistic programming on pay-cable, where nudity, sex, and profanity are commonplace. If they are going to successfully compete, they have to be less puritanical in their thinking.

Or he could try the truth. The only reason anybody watched Sam and Sally was to see Sally’s nipples. And if she taped them down, they might at well cancel the show.

As Marty slipped into his beige pants, white shirt, and navy blue dark jacket, he decided to go with the truth, if only to see that standards prick Adam Horsting turn pale.

He headed for the stairs, pausing for a moment to look in the kid’s room. They didn’t have a kid, but they had the room. For some reason, he just couldn’t pass the open door without looking in. Stuffed animals with permanent, vacant stares looked at him between the slats of the empty crib. We’re waiting.

Marty went back and closed the door, but he knew it would be open by the time he got home. He hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel.

Beth was sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe, leaning over the LA Times and a cup of coffee, her bare feet entwined in the fur of their sleeping dog, Max. The fat golden retriever delighted in being her ottoman. It was one of two things Max was good at. The other was the ability to pick the most expensive shoes Marty owned to chew on. Max obviously liked the taste of Italian leather.

His wife had short blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a band of freckles across her nose that made her look like a mischievous child. People thought she was cute, and she hated that. She was certain it meant that no one took her seriously.

“Good morning,” He said, sticking his head in the pantry, looking for something he could eat on the run.

“They found a shark with a mouth that glows in the dark,” she said. “It got caught in a fisherman’s net. They think it’s some unknown species that lives in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean.”

“Uh-huh.” He peered into an open box of Cinnamon Pop Tarts. There was one foil package left inside. That would hold him until he could swipe some fruit off the craft services table on the set.

“They think the shark swims with his mouth open. The light attracts the fish and they swim right down his throat,” she flipped through the pages, scanning the headlines. “They think there could be lots of species down there we’ve never seen.”

“Sounds like there could be a series in that.” He stuck the foil pack in his pocket and went to the refrigerator, where he snagged a can of Coke, absently knocking something on the floor. “Though the last successful underwater show was thirty years ago.”

“The whole world doesn’t revolve around television.” Beth said, followed by one of her dismissive sighs.

“Most people wouldn’t know what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, or who they wanted to fuck if the TV didn’t tell them,” he bent down to pick up whatever he dropped. “So as vice president of current drama, I obviously play a vital role in our society.”

Marty smiled to let her know he was joking, or at least being delightfully self-deprecating.

“You dropped something,” she motioned to the floor with a slight nod of her head.

It was a tiny vial. He picked it up. Pergonal. It had expired months ago. He was about to throw it out when he saw her staring at him. So instead Marty hastily put the vial back in the refrigerator and slammed the door, as if the vial might fight its way out again. The last thing he wanted to do was resurrect The Discussion.

When Marty turned around, he was relieved to see she was reading her paper again. He popped the top on the Coke and took a big gulp, studying her over the top of the can as he swallowed. She was especially lovely in the morning, hair tussled, face still flushed with the warmth of sleep.

Beth seemed to sense his eyes on her and the affection behind them. “Are you going to be late tonight?” she asked softly.

“I should be back before primetime.” That used to make her smile, a hundred repetitions ago.

And then, as if reading his thoughts, she gave him a small smile and returned to her paper.

9:16 a.m. Tuesday

Marty sat on his Richter scale, picking bloody bits of glass out of his hair as he wondered what the hell he should do.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

In all his earthquake scenarios, he was always at home, where he was fully prepared. Everything in the house was bolted, strapped, or stuck down. There was bag under the bed bulging with survivalist stuff? bought in a binge after the last quake. There was even a sack of food for the dog. And on the slim chance the house was decimated, they had camping gear in the garage for emergency shelter.

At least he knew that Beth was safe.

If the house didn’t collapse on her.

There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. They had a thorough geological survey done when they bought the house. The report said it was earthquake safe and built on solid bedrock.

Yeah, and the house inspector said the drainage was great and what happened the first time it really rained? Water flooded the yard, seeped under the French doors, and ruined the hardwood floors. Remember?

He had to go home.

But how?

He was stuck in downtown LA, a decaying urban wilderness, thirty miles from the safety of his gated community in Calabasas, his Mercedes crushed. And even if it wasn’t, the roads and freeways were going to be all but impassable for any vehicle.

He’d have to walk.

No easy feat for a guy who’s idea of a long walk was from the couch to the TV set, but he could do it. He had no choice, unless he wanted to stay here. And he knew what happened to guys like him who took a wrong turn and ended up in the ‘hood alone, looking white, rich, and privileged, armed with only a spring-loaded Mercedes key-fob.

His heart started to race. He thought he might begin gagging again. He took a deep breath and willed himself to focus.

Marty looked back at his E-class. The trunk, defiantly shiny and unscratched, pinched out from under the rubble. He hurried over to the car, popped open the trunk, and rooted around the piles of scripts and videos until he found an old LA street map. Then he grabbed his gym bag, which was wedged into the furthest corner. It had been six months since he used the bag, back when he was caught up in the early enthusiasm of a new year’s resolution and a two-year gym membership. He went twice and never went back.

Inside the gym bag were a pair of old Reeboks, a t-shirt, some sweats, and a bottle of water. He shoved the tire iron, a flashlight, and the Mercedes first-aid kit into the bag.

It was a start.

As he kicked off his stiff dress shoes and put on the Reeboks, he started thinking about what else he’d need for his journey. Packaged food, lots of water, duct tape, matches, dust masks, some rope. Basically, he had to make a mini-version of his home survival kit.

No problem. He could find most of those things right here, between the catering wagon, wardrobe trailer, and the grip, prop, and lighting trucks. Film crews had everything.

All he needed now was a plan of action.

Marty figured there was maybe nine hours of summer daylight left. If he started walking now, even as out of shape as he was, he could easily be in the valley and heading down Ventura Boulevard by nightfall.

That was okay.

He certainly had nothing to fear in the valley, where Tarzan and Universal Studios had entire communities named after them and the oldest historical landmark was the Casa De Cadillac dealership.

All he had to figure out now was the best way to get there.

It was possible to live your entire life in Los Angeles and never see the bad parts of town, except in a seventy-mile-per-hour blur on the freeway or channel-flipping past the evening news on the way to a Cheers rerun.

Even so, Marty knew where those dangerous neighborhoods were, and he was well aware that to get home, he’d have to walk through some of them. There was no way around it.

But he tried to make himself feel better by looking at the bright side. He’d be walking in broad daylight, in the midst of chaos, and would only be in truly bad places for a few miles. There were far worse parts of the city he could be stuck in. At least he wasn’t visiting Compton, or South Central, when the quake hit.

He slammed the trunk shut and spread the yellowed, torn street map out on top of it. Calabasas was on the south-western edge of the San Fernando Valley, on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills.

There were two major freeways into the valley, the 101 over the Cahuenga Pass just five or ten miles north of downtown, or the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass, a good fifteen miles or twenty miles west. Between the two passes, there were three major canyon roads that snaked over the Hollywood Hills.

The other option was to head due west to the beaches of Santa Monica and then follow the Pacific Coast Highway north to one of the canyon roads that cut through the Santa Monica Mountains. But that meant crossing the entire LA basin, which was the last thing Marty wanted to do.

He decided the quickest, safest way home was the way he’d come, taking the 101, better known as the Hollywood Freeway, northwest over the Cahuenga Pass into the valley.

That was assuming there were no major obstacles in his path. Which, of course, there would be. Toppled buildings, buckled roads, crumpled freeways.

But that wasn’t what worried him.

It was the thousands of little obstacles. The people. The injured and the dead underneath it all. The earthquake’s human debris.

Then there were the derelicts and gang-bangers, who he hoped would be too busy looting to pay attention to one man walking home.

He wouldn’t look at anyone. He’d just hurry along. Gone before anyone noticed him.

Just keep walking. Across the city, over the hills, and along the valley, never stopping until he got to his front door, where his wife would be waiting, alive and well.

Simple. From point A to point B.

Not too complicated. No reason he couldn’t do it. There were guys who walked across entire states in the frontier days. Or at least they did in the western novels his flunkies read and summarized for him.

Marty zipped up the bag and headed for the trucks and trailers to assemble his kit.

He was going home.

Dead And Gone by Harry Shannon