Orange County Noir

Crazy for You by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Costa Mesa

When I moved into Levi’s apartment in the converted motel on Placentia Avenue, the blue neon “i” of the Placent_a Arms sign was burned out. I worried it was an omen, a feng shui gaffe. It made me think too damn much of placenta, birthing, that whole entire mess — not a good thing when the sight of blood makes you faint. I’ve grown used to most things, and I figured I’d grow used to the sign, if I didn’t leave Levi or go crazy first. But I hadn’t grown used to it, and I was still here. It was going on three months and my feeling of foreboding had only increased.

The Arms, a chipping aqua U-shaped construction, was clean enough, but Levi’s apartment above the fray on the second story, right-hand corner, was growing smaller and duller by the day. So was Westside Costa Mesa, once idyllic cattle grazing land, then an agricultural haven. Now, about the only things that grew wildly were the illegal immigrant population, low-income housing, and Latino gangs. So different from where I was from. If I spoke the language it might be different, or if I was brunette. But I was blond, the only gringa in our apartment complex.

I pulled a folding chair onto the balcony and lit a hand-rolled cigarette, the only tobacco I could afford these days. In the Arms’ courtyard just below sat a square swimming pool that had seen better days. Sorry little children with loser parents — why else would they be living at the Placent_a Arms? — splashed in its murky depths. Even the mourning doves inhabiting the adjacent kumquat tree seemed weary of the pool, but then Southern California was mired in a ubiquitous drought and the pool must’ve been better than nothing, I suppose. Although you can make yourself believe pretty much anything if your life depends on it.

At night, after a drink or two, as you watched the lights beneath the water, all blue and tropical, it was easy to trick yourself into thinking you were at some lush Orange County resort and were one of the beautiful people. The reverie never lasted long, though, because one drunk resident or another would start singing off-key — Barry Manilow, Aerosmith, pop Latino — reminding you that you were not in posh Newport Beach, the next city over, or in Laguna Beach, just down the coast, but in lovely Costa Misery. My sister Leonora, a nurse, left home back east to work for a plastic surgeon — the perks included discounted enhancements — and I followed when I quit my teaching job, all because of Levi.

Levi was sixteen when we met, seventeen when we started spending time together — backstage, on the football field, in cars. I was Levi’s drama teacher, thirty-three years old, but young-looking for my age. My friends called him jailbait, this sleek pretty boy with sea-foam green eyes and abs to die for. I lusted after the kid, but when my soon-to-be-ex husband caught us in my car in the parking lot outside Bob’s Big Boy and threatened to have me fired, I decided I needed my job teaching more than I needed Levi, resigned, and moved here. I saw what happened to other teachers who crossed the line, who forgot they were teachers and not teenagers.

A year later, when Levi turned eighteen, he quit school and found me. He was of age, but still too young for me. I was still living with Leonora and her three dogs, substitute teaching in Costa Misery, along bus routes. The trip cross-country had killed my beater and I let my driver’s license expire. The better school districts never seemed to have an opening and I didn’t want a full-time gig at just any school. Levi had already rented the furnished apartment at the Arms and I planned on spending just a few days, thinking this would help to get him out of my system. But he guilt-tripped me into moving in, said he wouldn’t even be out here if not for me.

“Mimi, the guy’s a loser,” Leonora said. “You can do better.” But I was addicted to Levi’s body, his skin that felt like silk, and tired of being one of Leonora’s pack.

My stomach growled. I lit another cigarette and looked at my watch. Five o’clock. Levi would be home soon. I went inside to throw something together for dinner.

Levi worked as a handyman. Ten bucks an hour, sometimes more. Not what he thought he was worth, but it paid the rent, bought the beer. He told me stories about the rich people’s houses where he spent his days — brushing the walls of a nursery with designer paint or retiling a hot tub. He described how, at one home, the outdoor pool connected with the interior of the house through a manmade cave with faux boulders you had to swim through. So Orange County.

Another client owned two houses side by side — one of them they lived in and the other one was the kids’ playhouse. Playhouse! Homeless people lined up at church soup kitchens and lived in parks and alleys around the town. Life was indeed unfair. And I was a little envious. Some people in Orange County had too much, while others had so damn little.

On the west side, everyone — the Latinos, the working-class heroes, even the dogs — was, for the most part, lackluster. There were artists who added color, I suppose, but every day I read the police files in the Daily Pilot, and so much of the crime in coastal Orange County happened right around where I lived. Here were the factories, auto shops, taquerías, and lavanderias, and so many of us were scraping by, but on the east side that bordered Newport Beach, that’s where the real money was, that’s where the Orange County life that I had imagined and fantasized about resided. I’d been to Disneyland but never got why they called it the Happiest Place on Earth, not with all those screaming children and tourists with blue-white legs and lunky cameras strangling their necks. But a house on the east side, now that would make for a happy day, every day.

Levi came home from installing shelves in what he said looked like the kitchen of a TV cooking show: marble — not granite — countertops, Viking stovetop, a fridge the size of our bathroom. He rambled on about how the homeowner didn’t even have a wife. I was standing at the stove, stirring Arborio rice, adding vegetable broth every few minutes, to make risotto. What you pay for at a restaurant when you order risotto is not the ingredients, but the time it takes for some sadly underpaid restaurant worker to make the rice swell all plumplike. Biscuits, which I had flattened with my marble pastry roller — my most prized kitchen implement — and baked in the dollhouse-sized oven with a stovetop that only had three working burners, were cooling on the rack.

Levi could see I was down, so he kissed my cheek hard and wrapped his arms around me from behind. After a day among kids who treat substitute teachers like dog doo, Levi’s touch was heaven. He snaked his hand beneath my skirt and found my sweet spot. I wanted to shoo him away — you can’t leave risotto for one minute — but once Levi got on a certain track, there was no stopping him.

Levi liked to give me pleasure, or maybe he knew this was the main thing he had to offer, so he got on his knees and buried his face down there and I about went nuts, but kept stirring until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I let the spoon clatter to the counter and dropped to the aqua and white linoleum. I pulled Levi down with me. It didn’t take us long, which is another thing I liked about Levi — he wasn’t one of those guys who needed to linger and stretch it out.

We finished, and I washed my hands before returning to my risotto, but it was too late. The pot of rice was one sticky clod. I dumped it into the sink. Levi cracked two beers and ordered a pizza. While we waited, we went out onto the balcony. We drank our beers and watched the pool where a lone pink inner tube floated.

“Get this, Mimi,” he said. “The house I was at today, it also has a three-car garage. Three fucking cars! And there’s just one dude who lives there, with his kids.”

“Where’s the wife?” I asked, taking a swig.

He shook his head. “Died from cancer or something — and not long ago. There’s fucking art all over the place and expensive dishes are stacked in a monster cabinet the length of our living room wall. His brats have these little motorized cars they drive around the neighborhood. They live on this dead end — a cul de sac. Old money Costa Mesa, looks like. People have got serious funds over there. More than they need.”

“Some people have all the luck.”

“We deserve that kind of life,” he said.

“Everyone thinks they do.”

“But we really do. His fucking house-cleaner knows more about his stuff and what he has than he does. He has so much crap he wouldn’t miss a few things disappearing.”

“I hate it when you sound stupid,” I said. “You think you can just help yourself? Is that what you’re saying?”

Levi shrugged, took a long pull off the bottle, and slipped out of his red leather cowboy boots, setting them inside our apartment doorway. He pulled off his T-shirt. He was still that sleek boy, a beauty. His curly brown hair was streaked blond and he had just the right amount of growth on his face. His teeth were white-white and his bare feet were perfect. He could be a model, that’s how handsome he was. Feet and teeth, I always say, have got to be superior. His physique made me overlook the fact that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room.

“Shepard needs a nanny for his kids, pretty much right away,” Levi said. “Someone smart enough to tutor. He’s running an ad but says he can’t find the right person.”

“I’m a teacher,” I reminded him, “not a nanny.”

“But you could be a nanny... for a time. Then we’d both be working there.”

“You think he’d go for a fricken handyman and his older girlfriend both working for him? Please.”

“Don’t call me a handyman,” he snapped.

“That’s what you are, babe.”

He looked hurt. “I aspire to more.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “I just don’t like where you’re headed with this.” I stroked his chest and tickled his nipples, which always put him in a good mood.

“Shepard would like you, Mimi. I told him about you. He seems lonely. I mean, who wouldn’t be, your wife up and dies and leaves you with little kids? But once he sees a pretty young thing like you, his day’s suddenly gonna seem a lot brighter. Don’t you want to brighten up a widower’s day?”

“I’m not that young.”

“You’re the sexiest thing going,” he said, running his fingers along my collarbone. “We could both be working there.”

“And then?”

“Who knows? But you deserve better’n this,” he said, his hands describing an arc about him, his voice going low. “You think all the rich fucks in this town work for what they have? A lot of them got old money. Inheritances. Bank accounts handed down. Or they have great gigs, businesses that haul ass. We weren’t lucky that way. Shit, Shepard has an entire goddamn library! He’s old, Mimi, but he has money.”

“Levi, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be scared, baby. How about I just introduce you to him?” He put his hands on my shoulders and looked down at me with his seawater eyes. “C’mon, Mimi. As long as you don’t like him that way, and why would you? — he’s not me — it could be fun.”

“Ripping off your employer... fun, huh?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, it’d be better’n this.”

We turned our attention back to the pool and that pink inner tube bobbing about when a pizza boy came whistling into the courtyard, looking like a waiter holding a tray with that flat box poised on his fingers.

“We’d need a plan,” I said, as the pizza boy looked up, trilled the fingers of his other hand like we were in some Hollywood musical, and headed for the cement stairway.

“Mims, I’m all about planning,” Levi replied, pulling a twenty from his pocket.

The stinking economy, even here in glorious Orange County, had pushed substitute teaching gigs further and further apart, so the next day, around lunchtime, I was sitting on the balcony smoking a hand-rolled and scanning the classifieds. A cherry pie cooled on the counter. I had to do something fast to rescue my financial situation. Levi’s truck skidded in. He threw a veggie bologna sandwich together — white bread from Trader Joe’s, Dijon mustard, and four slices of fake lunchmeat — and said he was taking me with him to Shepard’s house, ten minutes away.

I climbed into his truck, a major gas hog, which you just about needed a ladder to get into. As we passed Latinas with long black braids that touched their waists who pushed strollers, and homeless guys wearing tattered backpacks, he said, “Um, by the way, Shepard thinks you’re my older sister, so just play it cool.”

“Excuse me?”

“I decided he wouldn’t like the idea of you being my girlfriend.”

“Sometimes you fucking make me wonder.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “I just thought of it. Brilliant, huh?”

“Yeah, right. Incredible genius you got goin’ in that head of yours.”

But as we crossed over Newport Boulevard, leaving the not-so-good side of town for the lush, moneyed side where tall eucalyptus swayed in the faint ocean breeze, Costa Misery segued to Piece of Heaven, California, with its cute cottages, palm trees, rosebushes, magenta bougainvillea, and Jaguars, BMWs, and hybrids.

We pulled into his boss’s driveway. A tall husky guy in khakis and a polo shirt, with short graying hair, futzed in the garage. He was a bit thick in the middle and wore conservative beige shoes.

“You owe me big time,” I said, pushing open the door as Mr. Orange County Republican approached us.

“That a promise?” he responded, as I jumped from the cab.

The guy had probably been a hottie once and was handsome in an almost-fifty way, but he was so not my type. He held out his hand. “You must be Levi’s sister,” he said, giving me a warm handshake. “He didn’t tell me you were so pretty.”

“He’s been forgetting to take his ginkgo biloba,” I countered, playing it off, but I was charmed. And it takes a lot to charm me.

Levi laughed as if I were the funniest older sister in the entire universe.

“You two get acquainted,” said Levi. “The back fence is calling me.”

Shepard gave him the thumbs-up sign and said, “Shall we go inside?” Shepard’s eyes were friendly as he gestured me in and hit the electric garage door button. “The kids are at school, but I’ll show you around so you can see where you’d be spending your days.”

I forced a smile, tried to look interested.

“School’s out tomorrow,” he said. “I need someone who can be a nanny and a teacher. Only occasional sleepovers, when I’m out of town.” He had a gap between his front teeth, which were white and even. I had a boyfriend once with a gap I loved to tongue.

“Your brother said you’re a teacher.”

Brother? Then I remembered.

“I was, back east,” I said. “Taught drama and English. I’ve been substitute teaching since I moved here. Not a lot of work these days for teachers without seniority.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, touching my shoulder to direct me into the living room. He must have noticed how my gaze fell on the baby grand because he said, “You play?”

“Used to.”

“Like riding a bicycle, don’t you think? You’re welcome to...” He nodded toward it.

“Ah, no, maybe another time.” Being able to play piano impressed people, but it didn’t impress me. You could learn anything if you wanted to.

“Your brother said you like to bake.”

“I’m obsessed with making pies.” When we have extra money, I almost added.

“You’re welcome to bake here, anytime. I can’t remember the last time a pie came out of that oven. Just give me a list; I’ll buy you what you need.”

If it were possible to fall in love with a house, I was falling — hard — especially for the kitchen. With that kitchen, I could bake a million pies and never grow bored.

“Like something? Coffee? A soda?” he asked, sticking a glass into the opening of the fridge’s front panel. He pushed a button. Ice dropped and chinked into the glass.

“Diet Coke?”

“Sure thing,” he said, taking one from the fridge. He moved toward the cabinet.

“No glass,” I said, so he tore a paper towel from the roll and wiped the top of the can clean before handing it to me. No one had ever done that before, and I swear, he looked different after that. Charming.

We talked about my background and his needs, and an hour later, when the kids were dropped off, he gave them big bear hugs and introduced us. “Bella and Dante, this is Mimi. She might be helping out. Want to show her your rooms?” The kids appraised me like I was a new piece of furniture, and then Bella took my hand.

“My room first,” she said. Her little brother led the way, running his Hot Wheels police car along the wall.

They showed me their rooms and I liked them. Levi stuck in his head and said he had to run off for a while, and when he returned at 5:00, he seemed hyper, strange, and rushed me to go.

As we pulled away from the curb and headed down the tree-lined street, Levi said: “He’s not bad, right?”

“He was fine,” I replied, almost adding, He was more than fine. “And you’re lowdown.” I had never felt so cold toward Levi. But he didn’t seem to notice.

“He tell you what he does for a living? I think he’s a developer or something.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Major bucks.”

“Construction’s taking a dive.”

“He tell you that? Don’t believe it,” he said, turning onto a street with houses behind high walls, pulling over and putting the truck in park. He scooched over to me, took me in his arms, and started kissing my neck. Melted me every time. Stupid guys who were cute made the best lovers. It was the truly smart ones you had to watch out for, who could fracture your heart with one skewered word.

“C’mon, baby, don’t be mad. It’s a way for us to get ahead.”

“But his kids weren’t brats. They were sweet.”

He pulled a blanket from under the seat, covered us as he pushed me down with kisses, and said, “After this, we’ll go eat. I’m starving.”

We sat across from each other at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, a popular haunt on Placentia, down the street from where we lived. The exterior was covered with chipping teal paint. Surf stickers smattered the windows. The menu offered Mexican entrees that weren’t gourmet, but were good enough, priced for artists and people on limited incomes, and for rich Orange Countians who wanted to feel they were getting away with something. As he talked about what we’d do with the money — a new truck for him, a kitchen for me — you’d think I was one hungry fish, the way I went for it. I must have been beyond bored. We’d go slow and easy, figure things out, and when we had all the pieces, we’d make our play, he said. But I had a bad feeling.

Levi started staying up late, figuring out where we’d escape to once we had a few of Shepard’s more high-end belongings that Levi would give to a friend of a friend who would split the proceeds. I did a bit of research and learned that Shepard had paintings and antiques worth thousands. He had one Chagall lithograph, The Artist with a Goat, #1026, that was worth thirty grand. Even inane simple drawings of dolphins that lined the hallway by that overrated Laguna Beach artist, Wyland, sold for three grand apiece. Levi’s idea was we’d leave Costa Misery for Mexico. No one can find you down there, he said.

A week into my new nannyhood, as Levi and I were wrapping it up for the day and I was saying goodbye to the children, Shepard said, “The kids are going to their aunt’s. Why don’t I take you out to dinner, my thanks for coming to our rescue.”

Levi didn’t miss a beat. “Go ahead, sis,” he said. “It’d be fun for you.”

Sis?

I scanned what I was wearing — jeans, a purple pullover, lowtop red Converse. “I’m not exactly dressed up.”

“You’d look gorgeous in a flour sack,” said Shepard. Levi winked at me. I shrugged. “Okay, then.”

Levi hurried off a little too quickly with a nonchalant wave.

“Let’s have a taste before we go,” said Shepard. “Pick anything you like from the wine cellar and I’ll meet you out by the pool.”

The cellar was a converted closet off the kitchen with a slate floor and thermostat that said fifty-three degrees. I chose a 1987 Tondonia because I liked the name. He carried our glasses to the back patio that overlooked the pool. This pool was a million times better than the one at the Arms.

“I could get used to this,” I said, after we clinked glasses.

“I hope you do,” he said, his voice all syrupy and warm, like the wine.

Soon Shepard and I were in his Jag cruising up Newport Boulevard to Habana, a Cuban restaurant in a funky open-air mall with an oil-drum waterfall and tattooed, pierced hipsters. Habana was dark, lit only with candles. You could barely see who was sitting next to you, but the waiter could see well enough to recognize Shepard and make a big deal, and it was different being with someone before whom people groveled.

Shepard ordered a bottle of Barolo red, which he explained was the king of wines. We toasted and he said to order whatever tickled my fancy. Those were his words. During dinner, a second bottle of wine arrived and for dessert we shared a Cuban flan. Our fingers brushed against one another.

“We’re delighted you came to us, Mimi. The children like you very much.”

“They’re sweethearts,” I said.

“Actually, to be honest, I’m the happiest.” He stroked my arm and focused on it as if it were a great treasure. “You’ve got great skin.”

“This light would make anyone look good,” I said, feeling guilty over how much I enjoyed his attention. Then I thought, What the hell. Levi got me into this, and I gave in. Right then and there I felt myself loosen and open to Shepard. When his hand found mine, I let it. And when he brought my hand to his lips, I let him. We left the restaurant and returned to his Jag, his arm laced around my shoulder. He opened the passenger door and I slid onto the butter-soft leather seats that reclined at the touch of a button. He got in and buzzed down the windows. He turned to kiss me and I kissed him back, tongued that gap in his front teeth. The wine was talking; I’ve always been an easy drunk. His hand found its way under my pullover and then he was in my jeans. I pressed against his fingers and before long I shuddered. Who cared if he was a conservative and a bit too husky — he had the touch of an angel and I liked how sweet and considerate he was. He was different from anyone I’d ever been with. Maybe older guys with money could afford to be patient, considerate.

“What about you?” I asked into his neck, rubbing him down there.

“There’s time for that,” he said, gently removing my hand and kissing it.

When I got home, Levi wanted to know where we went and what we did. He wasn’t so laid-back about it anymore. I didn’t tell him everything, and I distracted him with sex. It always worked. I had to keep my O.C. Republican a secret for now.

But things had changed and Levi knew it. Now when we arrived at work in the morning, there was no mistaking the glimmer in Shepard’s eyes. He’d hang around the house to have coffee with me before taking off. On occasion, when everyone was out of the house, we’d fool around.

“The dude fucking likes you,” Levi said a week later, his eyes flashing. We were in his truck, at a stop light.

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s been asking me all about you. He’s in love with you.”

“He can’t be,” I said, secretly wishing it were so.

“Hey, it could be good for us,” he scowled.

“What do you mean?”

“Shit, what could be better for us than if he wanted to marry you?”

“Excuse me?”

“It wouldn’t have to change things between us. No one’s as great for you as I am. You’d never go for someone that old. And if you did, I’d kill you.” He laughed, then added, “You’d just have to live with him for a time. It would help us pull off our plan.”

“You’re talking too crazy for me,” I said, as we crossed over Newport Boulevard and Piece of Heaven turned back into Costa Misery, with its pawnshops, its dive bars. But that night, after Levi went back out to do who knows what — he wouldn’t say — I stood on the balcony and smoked a hand-rolled. As the lit murky water below pulled my focus, the sounds of the compound drew close — TV, a neighbor singing off-key, kids screaming — and my own version of an old Animals song spun an endless loop in my brain: I gotta get outa this place, if it’s the last thing I ever do.

The next day, after Shepard’s sister picked up his kids for an overnight, he said, “Let me take you to the fair. You’ve been to the Orange County Fair, right?”

“Um, no,” I answered. I’d left Bumfuck where “hooptedoodle” was a favorite expression, and I had no desire to return.

“Then you got to let me take you.”

“Fairs are a Republican thing.”

“Pshaw!” he said, tucking in his turquoise polo shirt with a tiny alligator over the left breast.

“Shouldn’t you take your kids?”

“They’ve been, and I’ll take them again before it ends. Tonight it will be just you and me. How about it?”

I said yes. I said yes to everything — to Levi and his schemes, now to Shepard.

I went to freshen up.

Levi called from another job while I was in the bathroom; Shepard had run out of work for him. I told him I had to work late. I’d been spending more and more time at Shepard’s and less and less time at our sorry excuse for a home. It was getting to Levi. I knew because when he talked about Shepard, he no longer used his name.

“The motherfucker tell you anything interesting?” or “What’s up with the motherfucker?” I found a bindle with white powder in Levi’s things. His skin was becoming all mottled and he was losing weight. He denied using crank, said he had gotten it for a friend, but he was short-tempered and negative. Now I just wanted to escape with Shepard, go someplace where Levi couldn’t find me.

Shepard and I walked hand in hand to his dusty blue Jag and moments later were gliding down Broadway to Newport and up to Del Mar, his hand on my knee, my hand on his thigh, to where the dark sky was lit up all red from the lights on the rides and the midway. The Ferris wheel spun lazily around, its colorful, happy life temporary — like mine, I feared. This happiness wouldn’t last — it couldn’t; it hadn’t been a part of the plan for me to fall for an Orange County Republican. Levi would never let me have Shepard. I wanted to confess and tell him what Levi was planning, but I didn’t know how I could put it where he wouldn’t just fire me and tell me to be on my way.

We parked and walked toward the lights, toward the Tilt-a-Whirl and the rollercoaster with purple neon cutting the black sky, teenagers on all sides of us running amok, clutching cheap stuffed animals and stalks of cotton candy. Shepard bought us caramel apples, fried Twinkies, and roasted corn on the cob. We got wristbands and drank draft beer.

It was going on 11:00 and the fairgoers were pouring through the gates, probably to get a jump on the freeways. Shepard and I moved against the flow, heading toward the livestock area, past Hercules, the giant horse, llama stalls, and a corral where the pig races took place. He said he’d been coming here since he was a kid. Fair diehards moseyed about. My phone rang — Levi’s ringtone — but I ignored it, and I feared it. Levi said he could always find me. Something about the GPS positioning on my phone and how he’d rigged it. Cell phones didn’t make you freer — they made your whereabouts known, and I didn’t like it one bit, this hold Levi had on me.

Couples lingered in the shadows. Shadows scared me. I worried Levi might be hiding in them. Lately everything got on his nerves and he suspected everyone. He’d screamed at the next-door neighbor to quit his fool singing. He’d even pierced the pink inner tube in the pool because he no longer liked seeing it floating there.

Shepard directed me to the metal bleachers around the cattle arena. He picked me up, set me on one so our faces were level, and kissed me. “You make me so happy,” he said.

This tall bulky man had grown on me. He pulled a little robin’s egg — blue box from his pocket and flipped it open. A diamond solitaire.

He took the ring from the box and slid it on my finger. “You will, won’t you?” he said. “Marry me?”

Levi was leaning over the railing of the balcony, smoking with one of his lowlife loser buddies, when I arrived home at midnight. I’d taken off the ring and sequestered it at the bottom of my tampon holder.

The light from the water bounced off Levi and his buddy whose name I forgot. I gave them a half-hearted wave. Levi nodded and smiled his lizard-cold smile.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, flicking his cigarette butt down into the pool as his buddy took off.

“Had to stay with the kids until Shepard got home.” I took a cigarette from Levi’s pack on the cement floor.

“Fuck you did,” he said.

I gave him a long look. It was always better to say less than more.

“Where’s the ring?” he said.

“What ring?”

“Mimi, this’ll only work if you’re straight with me about the motherfucker.”

I went to go into the apartment, but he grabbed my arm. “I’m gonna tell him all about you, Mimi. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with the asshole. You love me, remember?”

I wrenched my arm away and hurried inside. I poured a glass of water, trying to think.

Levi hurried in behind me. “Don’t fucking walk away from me, Mimi.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“Fuck you will.” He pulled me to him, pressed his mouth against mine, hiked his hand up my top. “C’mon, baby, what happened to us?”

I pulled free. “Leave me alone, you asshole.”

“I own you,” he said. “I came all the way out here to find you and claim you and now you’re mine.”

“Whatever drug you’re doing, it’s making you crazy.”

“Crazy for you,” he said, grabbing me with one hand and undoing his belt buckle with the other.

I’d never given into a man forcing me and I wasn’t about to now. I tried pushing him away, but his grip on my arm only grew tighter.

“You always liked it with me before,” he said. “Mr. O.C. motherfucker better’n me now, Mimi?” His face looked strained, a Halloween mask. “He won’t want you when I tell him who you really are, when I tell him everything you planned. He’ll take his ring back and then where will you be?”

“What I planned?”

He jammed his hand down my pants and hurt me and that’s when something snapped. My prized marble roller sat on the counter behind me, where it always was. I felt for it with my free hand and almost had it, but it slipped away. My hand landed on Levi’s hammer. I brought it around and cracked it against his skull as hard as I could. His sea-foam green eyes went wide, as if he were seeing me for the first time. Then he crumpled to the linoleum. A trickle of blood issued from his ear.

“Levi!” I gasped. “Shit!”

The way his eyes gazed into the living room without blinking gave him a peaceful look I had never seen.

I tried to think. Should I pack up my things, including my pastry roller, and split? I considered cleaning my fingerprints off everything in the apartment, but I wouldn’t be able to get rid of every little hair, every little cell of mine that had flaked off. I knew about DNA. I could be easily tied to Levi, even without a car or California driver’s license. Even without my name on the month-to-month lease or on bills; I still received my mail at Leonora’s. To the mostly Latino transient residents, I must’ve looked like any other gringa. But I talked to Levi on my cell phone all the time. I could even be tied to him through Shepard. They would visit Levi’s former employer and find me there, loving my new life.

No, I couldn’t simply leave.

I pulled down the shades and locked the door. I wiped my fingerprints off the hammer after placing it near Levi. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand, peeled off my clothes, and stepped in. This would calm me and help me think.

As the scalding water poured down my face, it came to me, what I would say and do: I came home, Levi was here with a drug-dealing buddy, I took a shower and heard something. When I got out of the shower, I found my boyfriend on the floor.

I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and jumped into my role. I hurried out to the kitchen, as if I’d heard something bad and found Levi hurt on the kitchen floor. I bent down to see what was wrong. Water puddled about me and mixed with Levi’s blood. I ran screaming from the apartment onto the balcony. As I started down the steps, the towel slipped from my body, and I let it. I was a crazy naked lady. Residents — men in underwear and T-shirts and women in nightgowns — started emerging from their hovels.

“Call the police!” I made a good hysteric. Someone had done my poor boyfriend in.

Women called in Spanish to each other. More than once I heard the word “loco.” A short dark woman with gold front teeth wrapped me in a Mexican blanket, patted my wet hair, and cooed to me in Spanish. The sirens grew closer. A crowd had gathered around us and upstairs at the doorway to the apartment.

There would be an investigation, but after a while I would be cleared. No one ever saw us fight. There was no insurance settlement coming. Why would I kill my boyfriend? The authorities would search instead for the lowlife who did him — or not. Probably not. Who cared about one more druggie dude going bye-bye? My first chance I would call Shepard, tell him details about what happened that he would have heard about on the news. I would tell him how Levi made me say I was his sister, had threatened my life even, had never wanted me to fall for him. I would remind Shepard that I loved him, every inch of him. Shepard believed in me, would never think I could do something like this.

I knew how to be patient. Shepard and Piece of Heaven, California, would eventually be mine, and before long, the ring would be back on my finger.

The Toll by Dan Duling

Laguna Beach

Robbie froze as he felt a cold, metallic object press into the back of his neck. He realized what it was. The barrel of a handgun. This night was not turning out the way he’d hoped.

It had been the longest six months of Robbie’s life. Hiding out in a rented room in a crappy apartment building in the unincorporated part of East Orange County just off the 241 toll road, waiting for the heat to die down back in Laguna Beach, the town he’d grown up in, the town he could no longer afford to live in, the town he wanted to get back to as soon as possible. All he wanted was another chance.

When the call had come from Michele late that August afternoon, he was stoked. She wouldn’t elaborate on the phone, but she had a job for him. That was all he needed to know.

It was a little after 3 o’clock the next afternoon when he hopped in his two-tone — rust and primer — road-weary Corolla and headed toward Laguna. He didn’t like the sound the battered Toyota was making — bearing or ball joint? — as he pulled up alongside the 241 toll plaza and heaved a handful of coins at the bin. Car repairs were going to have to wait.

“Fuckin toll roads,” he muttered as a BMW with a FasTrak transponder raced by him. He grimaced. That’s what this place is all about now. They make you pay to get where you’re going and pay to come back. It’s all about the cash. He’d been around long enough to know the difference between the old money that seeded this area and the new, stupid money that was spoiling it for everybody.

Robbie had grown up in Laguna and graduated from Laguna Beach High back when their teams were still called the Artists, not the newly minted Breakers. After school, he’d been eager to get away from the domestic horror show at home, but he’d always assumed he’d stay local and figure out a way to coexist among the filthy rich and infamous who were determined to price him out of his hometown market. For somebody with no real sense of direction or ambition, Robbie quickly learned the score.

Influence, that’s what it was all about. And most of the locals didn’t really want to get their own hands dirty when it came to passing along “financial or psychological incentives” to make things work. Robbie was happy to do what he was told without leaving a trail. He thought of himself as smart enough to know better, pissed off enough to not give a shit, and savvy enough to get his assignments done without making the O.C. Register’s back pages.

Bottom line, between 2002 and 2007, if Michele and Jeff had a case in Laguna they didn’t want to go to trial, or a business dispute or vendetta that needed settling the old-fashioned way, Robbie had a hand in the “mediation.” And there were plenty of opportunities: planning commissioners trying to play both sides, hotshot developers eager to flip properties before the next landslide, mayors caught with their hands in the till, lawsuit-happy execs with a taste for the strange, or city council members laboring under the notion that they were appointed to think for themselves.

This was no longer the sleepy little coastal hideaway that had bored him to tears — not to mention various pharmaceutical diversions — during his teen years. No, now even a teardown shack a mile from the beach would run you a minimum of a million bucks. Face it, the only thing tennis pro Lindsay Davenport, the dude who played Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and the guy who made those Girls Gone Wild videos had in common was they all made the kind of “fuck you” money it now took to call Laguna Beach home.

Robbie had to laugh as he cruised past that BMW pulled over to the side of the 241 by a state trooper. Tickets on a toll road! He leaned back and shook his head. They know how to hit you where it hurts. In the fuckin’ wallet.

Next stop, the toll plaza for the 133 South. More coins in the basket for the privilege of heading west. Looking around, Robbie remembered when this area was all orange groves and strawberry fields, not corporate headquarters, industrial parks, and high-end playgrounds for shopaholics. What Robbie saw now was the reassurance of returning job security.

He’d learned his lesson: Don’t let it get personal. Never lose your cool. You’re a messenger, that’s all. He wasn’t about to forget these past six months of purgatory, going stir-crazy and watching his meager savings run out in the middle of nowhere. All because he got a little too rough and didn’t cover his tracks well enough after a job.

That wouldn’t happen again. And when Michele had finally called, Robbie knew he’d be on probation for a while, but that was okay. He wouldn’t let them down.

Just past the 405, the toll road portion of the 133 ended and he cruised into Laguna Canyon. After his “sabbatical,” it was like he was seeing the place with fresh eyes. When he was growing up, this was an eight-mile, funky two-lane road that twisted toward the Pacific like a sidewinder on peyote. Now there were four lanes most of the way and shuttles from the Act V parking lot a mile from downtown. But on an August day like this, it was still stop-and-go from El Toro Road on into town where finding a parking place for less than ten bucks still felt like winning the lottery.

So, the Corolla inched along that final mile, until, at last, he cruised past the grounds of the arts festivals — the Sawdust Festival and Art-A-Fair on the left, the Festival of Arts on the right — a mere six blocks from the “T” where the Pacific Coast Highway briefly parallels the Main Beach boardwalk and Laguna’s famous “window to the sea.” With its surf, sand, volleyball and basketball courts, and a relatively unobstructed view of the Pacific, Main Beach owed its existence to a movement to stop its development back in the 1960s. Its preservation was made possible by the Festival of Arts with funds skimmed off thirty years of ticket sales to the Pageant of the Masters. As always, money talked, and that only-in-Orange-County theatrical show with its “living pictures” still pulled in crowds from all over the world every summer. And as long as it did, the city made certain it got its cut.

Once, when he was nine, Robbie had volunteered as a cast member in the Pageant. As a porcelain figurine. As crazy as it sounded, that summer was just about his only decent childhood memory, a brief refuge from the endless fights, the drunken beatings and humiliations at home. Now, as he passed the front entrance of the Festival of Arts with its banners and gated grounds filled with artists’ displays, Robbie remembered how, back in high school, he’d thought about becoming an artist. Laguna certainly had enough of them. But even then he knew himself well enough to know it wasn’t in the cards. Instead, he’d just drifted after school, a loner with no real sense of direction.

Michele and her husband Jeff, lawyers and partners in their own two-person legal firm, had originally hired him to run errands and do odd jobs. They liked that Robbie didn’t ask too many questions and he paid attention to details. When had his work for them turned from just being a gofer to the more delicate tasks of money drops and eventually “enhanced mediation”? It had been a natural progression, with Robbie quickly developing a feel and taste for anonymous intimidation. Most of his targets were basically small-town cowards who were deathly afraid of having their dirty laundry aired in the pages of the Coastline Pilot. But Robbie didn’t really care why Jeff and Michele had him do what he did. As far as he was concerned, he got paid to turn “no” into “yes, of course, it’ll never happen again” by whatever means was necessary.

The Corolla angled into the left lane, and when the light changed, he turned onto Forest Avenue and cruised past the lumberyard parking lot, City Hall, and the fire station. There wasn’t much of a chance to build any momentum before climbing the steep “blind crest” hill up to Park Aveune, but he was pleased that the old Toyota managed it without much complaint. Turning left on Park, Robbie slowed just a bit as he drove past the high school. Was he kidding himself that his time there hadn’t been so bad after all? Is this what nostalgia feels like? If it is, it really sucks.

Park Avenue continued its winding ascent up through the canyons and steep turns that eventually led to Thurston Middle School and Top of the World, that elite enclave of homes with multimillion-dollar views overlooking Laguna Canyon. Everywhere he looked, Robbie saw new houses under construction. He’d watched most of the homes on these same hills burn to the ground in the Laguna Canyon fires in the fall of ’93, but you’d never know it now. Taking a left at the middle school, Robbie made his way through the maze of houses to Skyline Drive.

Parking on the street across from another mansion-in-progress construction site, Robbie walked to the front door of Michele and Jeff’s house, a California modern, split-level bunker of interlocking concrete and glass boxes. Checking his watch, Robbie rang the bell on the bronze and wood double doors. After a moment, a guy Robbie had never seen before, about six-two, 240, opened the door and peered down at him. Tan and ripped, the guy looked to be in his twenties. Robbie noted that he was barefoot and wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and shorts.

“Michele’s expecting me,” Robbie said, trying to cover his surprise.

“You Robbie?” the bodybuilder said. When Robbie nodded, the guy took a moment to size him up, then opened the door. “Michele’s in the living room.”

Robbie wracked his brain trying to think of a way to ask the guy who the hell he was. As he entered the hall, he gave up and simply muttered, “And who are you?” The guy turned and smiled. “I’m Terry.”

“You work for Michele and Jeff?”

“Michele.”

Terry stepped aside and Robbie stopped short as his eyes met Michele’s. She was sitting next to the wall of windows in the living room. In a wheelchair with a cast on her leg. She smiled.

“Terry’s my physical therapist.”

“What happened?” Robbie couldn’t hide his concern. He guessed Michele was probably in her late fifties by now, but she’d always kept herself in shape. She was attractive in her self-assurance, well built, solid, comfortable in her skin.

“Tennis. Leg one way, knee the other. Cast for another week. I figure three months rehab minimum.”

“Ouch.” Robbie felt completely tongue-tied.

“Want something to drink?”

“No thanks.”

“Terry, could you give us a few minutes?”

“Sure. If you need anything, just let me know.”

When Terry was gone, Michele gestured for Robbie to join her by the windows. As he sat down next to her, he suddenly felt like a kid in the principal’s office.

“It’s good to see you,” she said quietly. “You too,” he stammered. “How’s Jeff?”

“Jeff’s Jeff,” she offered flatly. “He’s down at the festival. Got juried in again for his watercolors.”

“No kidding,” Robbie said, nodding.

“He’s doing the meet-and-greet on the grounds today, always trying to drum up new business.”

There was a pause, then Robbie asked, “You guys are good?” God, that sounded even dumber than he’d feared.

“Robbie...” She looked at him, sighed, and smiled wanly. “Let’s just say we have a very spiritual relationship. Every day we learn to live with less...”

He looked at her, confused. “I don’t...”

“Nevermind.” She smiled. “It’s Jeff who needs your help. And we both agreed it was a safe way to ease you back into the swing of things.”

“I really appreciate that. I’ve been goin a bit stir-crazy.”

“Well, that’s all behind you now. And the guy you put in the hospital... well, let’s just say he’s got other things to worry about these days. Like a company in Chapter 11 and a palace in foreclosure.”

“Look, I...”

Michele smiled. “It’s okay, Robbie. Everybody gets a mulligan. And I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Yeah... yeah.”

She picked up a file and handed it to him. Opening it, he looked at a couple of grainy photos of a guy crossing a street. “Who’s this?”

“His name’s Madison. He’s going after Jeff. Wants to extort two hundred grand to keep quiet.”

“About what? What’s he got?”

“We’re not sure. But Jeff’s arranged a meet with him. Tonight on the fire road up above the festival. You know where I’m talking about?”

“That dirt road that goes up behind Tivoli Terrace with the great view of Main Beach and the police shooting range?”

She smiled. “Nice recall.”

“I used to hike up there to clear my head.”

Michele leaned forward. “They’re supposed to meet at midnight at the little turnout overlooking the shooting range. This file has all you’ll need to know about Madison to put the fear of God into him. His kids’ names and ages, where they go to school, what picture’s hanging on the wall in his bedroom. And if that doesn’t scare him off, you have my blessing to ruffle his feathers a bit. Just no easily visible bruising.”

“Jeff going to be there?”

“No. You’re going to get there early and surprise this arrogant little asshole. See, Madison’s a ceramics exhibitor at the festival. It seems he and Jeff have at least one thing in common. They like to pretend that art can save them from their fundamental boorishness. News flash: it can’t.”

Robbie studied the file to cover his nervousness. “So, I guess you and Jeff are—”

“Robbie... Jeff’s a lawyer; I’m a lawyer; we’re partners. If I took him to court, I could wipe him out, but we’d poison the well in the process...” She pointed to the file. “You know, there’s hardly any moon tonight and that fire road can be a bit treacherous and steep in places. I’d hate to think Madison might fall and hurt himself.”

“Right.” Robbie grinned. He was relieved she was changing the subject.

“Study his file. If you can reason with him, so much the better. If not...”

“Midnight,” said Robbie, savoring the thought.

“I recommend you park above the shooting range and cut across. And get there early.”

“Not to worry.” Robbie rose, holding the file.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“Your fee?”

Robbie almost blushed. “Right, right... Actually, I could use the cash, but I figure there’ll be more where this one came from. So let’s just call this one ‘pro bono.’ How’s that sound?”

She smiled. “Come here.” Robbie moved to her and bent down. With one hand, she pulled his face to hers and lightly kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back.”

Terry opened the door for Robbie as he headed to his car.

Robbie spent the afternoon getting ready for his midnight rendezvous with Madison. At the Ralph’s on Glenneyre, he bought a recycled canvas grocery bag, six bars of Zest soap, a Coke Zero, and a deli sandwich.

Back in town, he turned off Broadway and headed up the steep hill on Acacia, then a hard right on High Drive and another right onto Poplar. He followed it to Harold Drive at the turnaround next to the access road entrance leading down to the LBPD shooting range. Parking on Harold, Robbie walked over to the heavy chain hanging across the access road entrance and read the sign.

No Trespassing. Authorized Vehicles Only. Unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians subject to prosecution and fine: joggers, hikers, walkers, skateboarders, bicyclists. Laguna Beach Police Department. Do Not Enter.

He looked across the gulley and spotted the fire road and the overlook. Maybe a quarter of a mile down this side past the range and up the other side. Chaparral and scrub brush all around. Not much cover, but all he really needed was the dark later on.

Surveying the turnaround, he could see maybe a half-dozen houses. No signs of life. He could hear a blues band playing on the festival grounds below. And he knew there’d be another Pageant performance that night. Plenty of distractions. He went back and sat in the Corolla and read through the Madison file. He imagined the look on the guy’s face when a stranger wearing a ski mask got the drop on him. Sweet.

Robbie drank his soda, took a few bites of his sandwich, unwrapped five of the bars of Zest, and tied them into the canvas bag. It had a nice heft. Who needs a sap when you’ve got soap? You could break a rib and barely leave a bruise.

It was already starting to get dark. Robbie drove around the neighborhood, then back down to PCH. He was suddenly aware of how pathetic the Toyota looked as he cruised through town. For now, it was all he could afford, but as soon as he was flush again, he’d get something less conspicuous and a whole lot more reliable.

At a quarter to 9, he pulled back up to the turnaround near the entrance to the shooting range. In the canyon below, the Pageant was underway. The production shops next to the Irvine Bowl blocked his view of the theater, but Robbie could hear the orchestra and the audience applauding the tableaux vivants onstage.

The curtain fell on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the traditional Pageant finale, just before 10:30. Time to go. Grabbing the soap bag, he loped across the turnaround, stepped over the chain across the entrance to the access road, and disappeared. He crossed the dark, empty shooting range five minutes later, reached the bottom of the ravine five minutes after that, and began the slippery ascent up the shadowy hillside. Footing was surprisingly treacherous, but twenty minutes later, he stepped out onto the fire road. Accustomed to the darkness by now, he located the viewpoint and crouched nearby behind a large chaparral.

As he sat there, he went over in his mind the notes he’d been studying: Madison’s family and the little, intimate details that would let the jerk know just how vulnerable he was. Robbie’s adrenaline was pumping. He was out of practice. By now, Laguna Canyon Road was full of cars heading home. The festival was shutting down for the night, and the maintenance crew in the Irvine Bowl was almost through cleaning up after the Pageant.

Suddenly, Robbie tensed. He’d heard something. But what? He listened again, then laughed to himself at his nervousness. He checked his watch. Three minutes to midnight. He closed his eyes and strained to hear any activity below.

Five minutes later, he heard footsteps coming up the rutted dirt road. It had to be Madison... But wait. Something was wrong. He could make out more than one voice. Madison wasn’t alone. Michele hadn’t said anything about this. The voices were getting closer. In another minute, two shadowy figures came over the crest and meandered toward the overlook. Robbie adjusted his position to get a better view. They were walking arm in arm, whispering to one another. It was a man and a woman! The man seemed to have a parcel under one arm. As Robbie watched, the man shook the bag and flipped it out. It was a blanket. Spreading it in the darkened clearing, he turned to embrace the woman. Robbie strained to make out their hushed whispers. Could this just be a coincidence? A couple looking for a place to make out at the exact wrong place and time? Robbie cursed his luck. Obviously, they’d scare off Madison. But there was nothing he could do except wait them out.

As Robbie crouched there, helpless, he heard the couple start to undress one another. In the dark, they giggled at their clumsiness. No foreplay, no chit-chat. In another minute, they were groping each other while trying to find a comfortable position on the hard earth. Soon enough, however, discomfort gave way to passion. Amid sighs and gasps, he heard the woman emit a muted squeal.

Robbie sat up and peered down at the shadowy figures. Even in the dark, he was sure he recognized the guy. There was no mistaking his clumsy movements and his labored, rheumy breathing. Jeff.

In that same instant, he felt a cold, metallic object press into the back of his neck. He froze as he realized what it was. The barrel of a handgun. Jeff had always carried one, but Robbie refused to have anything to do with them. He wasn’t afraid of them. He just knew there was no hope for a successful negotiation once the guns come out.

Robbie tried ever so gingerly to turn his head in hopes of glimpsing who was behind him. He winced as the barrel jabbed into the base of his skull. The couple, now fully engaged, were oblivious.

Responding to the prodding of the barrel, Robbie slowly got to his feet. He felt the figure moving around to stand beside him. Then, in a single motion, the person lifted another pistol in his other hand. Robbie could make out the silhouette of an imposing silencer attached to the barrel of the other weapon. Before Robbie could react, the pistol emitted four dull bursts, and, after two labored gasps, the couple fell silent.

What the fuck was going on?! Robbie turned to look at the assassin, who now leveled the other pistol directly against his forehead. It was too dark to make out a face.

“Nice shooting,” said a strangely familiar voice. After a second, Robbie realized where he’d heard it before.

“Terry?” Silence. “What the—?”

His voice was flat and calm. “You shouldn’t have tried to blackmail Jeff about his thing with that cute little jewelry maker. You thought if you caught them in the act, they’d pay up. Too bad Jeff never goes anywhere without his piece.” Terry flicked the barrel of the smaller pistol as he centered it on Robbie’s chest. “And he managed to shoot you before you finished them off... Poor Michele.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Robbie could barely hear his voice over the pounding in his chest.

“I’m the new you, motherfucker...”

Robbie started to lean back, then swung the bag of soap bars with all his might toward Terry’s gun hand. In the blackness, the tinny explosions, like leftover fireworks — two quick bursts followed after about ten seconds by a third — echoed weakly across the canyon.

Michele opened the front door for Terry. She was barefoot, wearing a sheer silk nightshirt. In the hallway behind her, the removable cast was leaned up against the wheelchair. “Don’t tell me you forgot your key again,” she said as the door swung inward. In the next instant, she did her best to mask her surprise.

Robbie reached out an arm and leaned heavily against the door frame. In his other hand, he held Jeff’s pistol. “Terry’s not coming home.”

Michele’s mind was racing and all she could think to say was, “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live.” Robbie pointed the gun at her. As she backed away, he stepped through the door, gritting his teeth, willing himself through the pain. Backing her down the hall, Robbie glanced at the boot cast and wheelchair. “Your knee’s better.”

“Robbie—”

“Just shut up, Michele... I might have expected something like this from Jeff. But I always thought you—”

“You don’t know what it’s been like.”

“I guess not.”

“Look, Robbie, we can get through this. We can make this work for both of us. But we’ve got to get you to—”

“No, we don’t.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” They were in the living room now. Low lights. Through the panoramic windows, the faint glow of the town below. She tried to scan the room for possible weapons as Robbie moved closer, the gun still leveled at her.

“You had it all figured out. Get rid of Jeff and me... clean slate.”

“Robbie, it’s just you and me now. We could be in Mexico before dawn.”

“Right.” His attempt at sarcasm hurt like hell.

“I’m worried about you.”

“Wouldn’t want bloodstains on your furniture.”

“Robbie.”

“You taught me that it’s never personal. Well... let me tell you...” He lifted his blood-soaked hand from his abdomen and held it out toward her. “This feels personal.”

“Let me get something.”

“No. It ends here. But first I’m gonna need every cent you’ve got.”

“Of course. It’s in the safe.” She turned and pointed toward the bedroom hall. When he nodded, she moved in that direction.

“It’s in here,” Michele said, indicating a walk-in closet in the master bedroom. Pushing back clothes hanging on a rack, she revealed a wall safe. She flicked on an overhead light and punched at the safe’s keypad. “We’re going to get through this.” She looked back at Robbie, who watched her through heavy-lidded eyes, then opened the safe and reached in. “You won’t be sorry.”

Turning, she pulled out a .22 handgun and swung it toward Robbie. But he was ready, firing three quick bursts at pointblank range, hitting Michele twice in the chest and once in the neck. Her pistol fired wildly, the bullet lodging in a chest of drawers to Robbie’s right. She fell to the carpet in front of him. Robbie looked down at her for a moment, closed his eyes, and let out a deep sigh. He noticed blood from his abdomen was now staining his pants leg and overflowing from his sock down his shoe and onto the carpet. Turning, he walked slowly from the room.

At the toll plaza for the 133 North, Robbie turned on the dome light in the Corolla and fumbled in his pocket for the exact change. As he inspected a handful of coins, he looked down at his gut and let out a half-laugh, half-howl. You forget who you are, you forget what you believe in, but you still remember to pay your toll! Reaching up, he flicked off the dome light and sat there, breathing slowly, deliberately, trying to ignore the wet, hot black that used to be his midsection. Rolling down the window, he leaned out and flung the handful of change toward the collection bin. It was an awkward toss. The coins clattered to the pavement and his elbow banged against the windowsill. The effort was too much. Robbie leaned back. He wanted his eyes to work, to keep on working. But they were letting him down. The last thing he remembered was reaching over to turn off the Corolla’s ignition. The old car was grateful for the rest.

2:45 Out of Santa Ana by Mary Castillo

Santa Ana

Today, 11:45 a.m.

She could be anywhere by now. She could be standing at the next bus stop, or long gone out of my life.

I should listen to Nana and head back to work. But instead I drive around Santa Ana looking for a little girl in the rain. The few who are out in this weather are huddled under bus stops next to their mothers or grandmothers, looking like pink and purple marshmallows in their puffy rain jackets.

Go back to work. Even though I’ll put another month on these boots, I need every cent of my pathetic paycheck as a news assistant with the Orange County Tribune.

But I keep driving down East 1st Street toward the freeway as the rain and wind batter my car. Maybe the woman who took Pricila is her aunt and they’re on a grand adventure to visit relatives in Mexico. Or Pricila is locked in the cold terror that she’ll never see her own nana or mom again.

A few minutes later, I’m dripping water at the front desk of Santa Ana PD.

“How may I help you?” a clerk asks without getting up from her desk.

“I need to report a missing child.”

I’m taken behind the counter with Officer Darrin Kravetz into an interview room. His gray eyes are so kind that I can’t picture him cornering a suspect in an alley with his gun drawn.

We do fine until he asks for my name.

“Danielle Dawson.”

He looks up. “How are you related to the Pricila Ruiz?”

“I’m not. I’m a reporter, I mean news assistant, and Pricila and her grandmother—” I stop myself from saying hid with us. Clearing my throat, I say, “They stayed with us last night when ICE raided their home.”

“Why didn’t her grandmother come in with you?”

“She was arrested an hour ago. Pricila’s mother is in jail awaiting her arraignment.”

“How do you know Pricila isn’t with family or friends?”

“My na — My grandma saw her leave with a woman who was paid to take her away.”

He puts down his pen and gives me that look like I’m the kind of person who has left a shopping cart full of her worldly belongings out in front of the station.

“I’m not making this up,” I say. “I just want to help a little girl.”

“Why?”

Because even at thirty-two, I’ll never forget the helplessness of waiting for someone to pick me up from school or feed me dinner. Because my mother left me when the sheriffs came with her eviction notice and the court gave me to my nana and grandpa. Because I might have had a little girl Pricila’s age if things had been different.

Officer Kravetz leans back in his seat. “I’m having a hard time following you. Who’s the dad? You talk to him?”

“Not really.”

Officer Kravetz doesn’t like where this is going. “Got a name?”

“Jim Westfall. He’s with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.”

The cop’s eyebrows arch up and he shakes his head. “You really want me to call an ICE agent and ask about a little girl who an unauthorized immigrant claims is his?”

“He’s the dad. Says so on Pricila’s birth certificate.” Now I’m beginning to wish I’d gone back to work.

“All right.” Officer Kravetz says it like I’ve just sealed a very nasty fate. “Let me call this guy and get to the bottom of it, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Want anything to drink? Coffee or some water?”

“No thank you.”

“Be right back.”

He leaves me in the room with the buzzing fluorescent light.

I sit back in my chair. My feet ache with cold and I should’ve eaten something before I got myself into this. Six months ago, my biggest dilemma was which floor plan to pick for my new town home in Newport Beach. Now I’m sitting in a police station, my boss has been calling my cell nonstop, and I live with my grandmother.

I can’t hear anything outside these walls; it’s completely soundproof.

Last night, 8:30 p.m.

In Santa Ana there are two types of neighborhoods: the historically significant neighborhoods with names like French Park and Floral Park, and the other neighborhoods. My grandma lives in one of the others.

I turn off North Bristol onto West 3rd and then make a right on Hesperian. Except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter at Nana’s house, the farthest I’d head up on Bristol was the northernmost tip of Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza. Now this is home. Again.

Nana’s two-story bungalow stands on the corner. The skeleton of last spring’s sweet peas cling to her chain-link fence, and even though she has the space, she still grows her roses and calla lilies in buckets.

As a kid, I used to hide in the avocado tree from my cousins. When you’re the only blond, half-white kid in a family of small, brown Mexicans from Jalisco, you know you’re a grown-up the moment a white-person joke doesn’t punch your flight-or-fight button.

Nana walks out of the kitchen. She’s still dressed in her suit but she must have stopped for a pedicure after work. Her toenails are now purple. When she sees it’s me, she asks, “Where you been?”

I open my mouth to begin a litany of grievances against my boss when a sharp report shakes the floor. White light bursts through the windows — the kind you see in alien invasion movies — and where there was a quiet street of parked cars and dim porch lights, SUVs and cop cruisers now block us in.

“Did you hear that?” Chachi shouts. My cousins run out of the house to the yard.

Nana shouts at them to come back inside. “Do you want to get shot?”

As a reporter, I should dash out with my press pass, cell phone, and notepad. But the paper doesn’t pay me enough and the walls of Nana’s aren’t even half as thick as the last Harry Potter book. I follow my nose into the kitchen where a vat of posole simmers on the stove. I make myself a bowl, heavy on the hominy. The oily broth scalds my hand. I’ve been here almost a year and I’m still not accustomed to the almost nightly visits from law enforcement that remind us we live in the “bad” part of town.

Someone bangs on the back door. I turn, about to call Chachi an asshole for scaring me. But a woman stares back at me through the window. Her eyes are almost white with terror and then I see the little girl standing next to her.

I instinctively know to let them in. Without a word, I lead them out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room. The little girl asks in a voice thin with confusion where they’re going and the old lady shushes her. Then the little girl cries out, “Mommy! I want my mommy!”

“Niña, shush!” Her grandma covers her mouth as if the cops outside might hear them. “Está bien. Está bien.”

The flashing lights from the police cars dance on the walls and I hear their radios. A dog barks and I think of Jews hiding in attics. My body rocks from the force of my heartbeat.

As they move into my bedroom, I look down on the little girl’s head. I hold back from brushing my hand over her French braid because she’s not mine to do so.

“Mommy, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Pricila asked as her mother pulled her away from the kitchen sink.

“You have to go. Now!”

Nana’s hands were wet from washing the dishes. Pricila looked down at the drops they made on the floor.

Mommy pulled her close and held her tight. Then she pushed Pricila away. For a moment, her mother stared into her eyes. Her voice shook when she said, “Go, baby. Go with Nana, okay? I’ll catch up with you.”

And then that terrible bang happened and Nana pulled Pricila into the yard and they ran in the dark.

They made it to the house next door. Pricila sat at the table, pressed as tightly as she could against her nana. She tried not to look at anyone or wonder where her mommy had gone. She thought about Sleeping Beauty dancing with the animals dressed in the prince’s clothes. She thought about her friend Heaven, who brought blue glitter nail polish to school. She wondered if Mommy would still rent her a movie for getting 100s on her spelling tests last month.

“Señora Duran—”

“Por favor, señora, please call me Bettina,” Pricila’s nana said.

“Bettina,” the old lady continued, “are you sure you won’t have some posole?”

“No thank you. Coffee is fine.”

“Do you have anyplace to go?” the pretty blond lady asked.

Pricila peeked out. The blond lady didn’t talk like a princess but she looked like one with curly hair and big brown eyes. She had a deep, serious voice and when she caught Pricila looking at her, she smiled crookedly.

“He’ll find us,” Nana croaked. “He’s the one who did this. To get Pricila. He don’t want her. He want to punish my Gina.”

Pricila’s chest froze with fear as Nana started to cry. The old lady reached out and took her hand.

“Who will find you?” the pretty lady asked.

“El padre de la niña.”

The pretty lady frowned. The old lady, who Pricila guessed was her nana, then asked, “He called la migra on you?”

Pricila knew Nana was talking about her daddy. She hadn’t seen him in a long time. Mommy said she and Daddy were mad at each other. Even though she said Pricila hadn’t done anything, she knew they fought because of her.

“No, no,” Nana sniffled. “He is la migra.”

“Danielle, take Pricila to watch TV,” the old lady said.

Pricila held onto her nana tighter.

“We have some good movies,” the pretty lady said.

Pricila breathed in her nana’s smell but her nana started to push her away.

“Go, niña,” Nana said. “Let me talk to Señora Melendez, okay?”

Pricila shook her head, fighting to stay close to her nana. Her throat burned as she bit down to keep from crying. Another hand touched her back but then pulled away. Pricila could feel it hovering close.

The pretty lady named Danielle leaned in and whispered, “My nana doesn’t know this but...” She paused and Pricila couldn’t help but look into her brown eyes. “I have some chocolate ice cream hidden in the freezer. Would you like some?”

Mommy never let her have ice cream on a school night and only when they could afford it.

“Go on, niña,” Nana said. “I’ll be right here.”

Pressing her chin to her chest, Pricila slid off the chair. Danielle offered her hand and Pricila took it.

Today, 7:45 a.m.

My body tells me I’ve reached an age where I’ll be stiff after a night tossing and turning on my nana’s ancient couch. I kept thinking about nine-year-old Pricila Ruiz sleeping in my room.

Before I left for work, Nana gave me the rundown on the raid next door. Even though it was awkward — I’ve never really spent much time around kids — I was glad to have taken Pricila into the TV room last night so she didn’t have to relive the feds breaking down her front door.

My friend Jake, who got me this job, now sits next to me in Warren Ramsey’s office. I can see the empty lots that the city bought along Santa Ana Boulevard for a “gateway” to downtown. My Aunt Eloisa’s little craftsman bungalow was sold two years ago and then leveled, only to be fenced off. I see the ghost of that house when I drive by it and remember how she’d walk me to the depot to watch the trains.

Warren is the news editor and the one I have to convince to let me branch out from entering calendar items into the system and writing briefs published under my team leader’s byline. A story about last night’s raid might be a front-page clip and make this whole reporting thing worth it. I’ve never hustled so hard for so little money, but advertising got hit hard by the economy and this job is better than nothing.

ICE agents arrested Pricila Ruiz’s mother, Gina. The little girl’s nana, Bettina, claimed the arrest was set up by ICE agent Jim Westfall after Gina threatened to fax a copy of Pricila’s birth certificate to his wife’s office if he didn’t help her get a green card.

Gina had come to the U.S. on a student visa in 1996 to attend USC. Bettina came to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa to see Gina graduate magna cum laude and together they stayed. She was doing pretty well with an accounting job at Arthur Andersen that sponsored her work visa. But the company laid her off in 2001 and Gina couldn’t get another job with a company that would sponsor her green card. Pricila had just turned a year old.

Bettina said Westfall and his wife couldn’t have kids, but I didn’t tell Warren that. Westfall promised to marry Gina and streamline her citizenship process so they could be a family. But the divorce and the papers never came to pass and Gina ended it, making threats to force Westfall to at least fix her legal status. He disappeared from Pricila’s life and then Gina received a court order to leave the country. She texted Westfall his wife’s office fax number, as a reminder of what would happen if he didn’t help her. But then ICE agents busted down her door.

I try to catch my breath when I finish my pitch. Jake nods her head at me with approval. She says that my losing my advertising job is good for my karma. I think she likes it now that she makes more money than I do.

Warren sighs and then types something on his keyboard. “Don’t go toe-to-toe with this guy,” he says, and Jake’s knee starts bouncing. “Don’t go anywhere near him with this. Jim Westfall gets awards from anti-immigration groups — like the crazy kind — from all around the country.”

“But he set up the mother of his child to be deported. I sat with that little girl last night.”

Warren gears up to reply but then his phone rings.

“Hold on.” He answers his call and tells one of his reporters to stay on the street. Apparently, some guy has been driving around to elementary schools in Santa Ana, trying to get little girls into his car. Warren hangs up.

He leans forward to turn his monitor around. The desk leaves a temporary imprint against his belly. I’m staring at a file photo of Jim Westfall.

I scoot closer. Westfall wears a too-tight white shirt under a flak jacket with big white letters: ICE. Behind his sunglasses, I sense the condemning gaze of an inquisitor.

“Okay, so you want to go to this guy, an acknowledged elder-in-training in one of the biggest churches here in Orange County, and ask about how he set up his mistress to be deported?” Warren pauses to let this sink in. “What do you think he’ll say to you, if you have the proof?”

“We took on America’s Sheriff,” Jake chimes in. “We knew he was dirty.”

“When the feds had evidence of his wrongdoing,” Warren says as he turns his monitor back around. “Okay, here’s what we can do. Mario is following the ICE activities—”

“Raids,” Jake interrupts.

“Activities,” Warren insists. “Maybe Mario can make this part of a larger story.”

Mario Landrey is the reporter who covers immigration issues. They call him “Ice, Ice, Baby,” and he posts online pictures of himself with agents and their guns. According to Jake, Mario hasn’t written one word about the ICE vans parked outside Santa Ana’s elementary schools or the day-worker stops. But he’s spilled a lot of ink about the arrests of illegals with warrants for drug dealing, rape, and murder. Mario guards his territory like a pit bull.

“Dani should have this story,” Jake pleads.

“We have a good relationship with law enforcement and I want to keep it that way,” Warren says, standing up to dismiss us. “Even if it’s true, Dani’s not ready for this kind of story.”

I stay in my seat. “But I know the grandmother. She’ll talk to me.”

“Mario has a lot of connections in the Latino community. He’s got the expertise to handle guys like Westfall.” Warren grins at me. “Sorry, Dani. Westfall would eat you alive.”

My nana calls me. Gina phoned her mother’s cell from Central Jail in Santa Ana. She had been questioned and was offered the option of waiving her right to a court hearing, which would’ve put her on the first bus to Mexico. Gina told them no and now she’s waiting to be arraigned.

“Gina and her mother were fighting over the phone so I took the little girl outside to pick lemons.” Nana keeps her voice low and I strain to understand her.

“Do you think Gina will get deported?”

“You’re the one with the college degree, mi’ja. What do you think?”

“What about Pricila? If she was born here—”

“She’ll go with her mama. It’s the way things are. You know that.”

Anger gathers in my throat, like I’m being suffocated from the inside out. Westfall is a bastard for doing this. No, wait; under his commando posing, he’s a cowardly bastard for trying to hide his little girl. If people don’t want kids, they shouldn’t screw around.

It’s moments like this that I think I made the right decision when I was twenty-three and starting my advertising career. I’d be like Gina now, irrevocably shackled to a man who might hate me for having his kid. My mother got off easy. Her husband, whose last name I bear, kicked her out when he discovered she’d been sleeping with a fellow grad student. She thinks my real father is a guy from England.

“Is Pricila still there?”

“Yes,” Nana sighs. “Ay, Dani, you shouldn’t have gotten us involved in this. I had to take the day off and I have briefs to type up for Mr. Levine—”

“You think I should’ve shooed them from the back door?”

“No, but—”

“I’ll come home.”

“And do what?”

“Interview the grandmother. I’m a reporter. I’ll write a story to help them.”

“Don’t. You’ll only make it worse, mi’ja.”

My boss and team leader Jolene buzzes me right after I hang up. Checking the mirror taped to my monitor, affixed there so no one catches me checking job listings online, I see Jolene painting her nails with her phone pressed between her ear and shoulder.

I pull my purse strap over my shoulder and slip out before she hunts me down in the newsroom.

When I turn on Nana’s street, there’s an unmarked white Suburban parked facing the wrong way in front of her house. The shotgun mounted in the center console is a dead giveaway that it’s the cops.

As I get out of the car, I sense eyes watching from behind curtains. Even the dogs are quiet as everyone is on full alert that The Man has entered the forest.

Through the screen door, a man I instinctively know is Jim Westfall turns; my heart freezes when our eyes lock. Bettina is sitting on the couch, her hands behind her back. I make out Nana sitting in Grandpa’s chair.

“Wait outside!” Westfall barks.

His partner then walks out and approaches me with his hand hitched on his gun. “Which one works for you?” he asks.

“My grandmother lives here.” The wind blows hard against my back and a spray of water dripping off the eaves sprinkles my cheek.

He smiles instead of apologizing for assuming I’m a Newport mommy here to fetch my nanny. “Well, your grandma has been harboring an unauthorized immigrant.”

So that’s what they call them now, huh?

“We don’t card our neighbors when they’re afraid to sleep in their own homes.”

“You know Bettina Duran?”

“Yeah, she’s our neighbor.”

“You know where the little girl is?”

“In school, I guess.”

He surveys the street from behind his sunglasses. I want to flash my press badge and yell, Stop right there, bud, I demand you let my grandma go!

The screen door hits the front of the house as Westfall walks out with Bettina. She doesn’t look at me and I’m hoping Pricila is upstairs.

But she’s not. Nana pulls me inside and tells me that a woman with a baby came to the house less than twenty minutes before Westfall showed up. Bettina bundled Pricila in a white coat and her backpack and sent her out the door with her birth certificate and a hundred dollars cash.

“Where did she take her?”

Nana shrugs as she checks her briefcase. “Mexico.”

“By herself?”

“This is not our business. Let it go.”

“Does Gina know?”

“Yes. That’s why they were arguing.”

My cell phone buzzes angrily. It’s Jolene ordering me back, no doubt. I think about sitting with Pricila in the TV room last night, watching Justice League and explaining Wonder Woman to her. Girls these days, they don’t even know who Wonder Woman is. Then again, a girl like Pricila has more important things on her mind, like if her mom will be there when she comes home from school.

“Danielle, listen to me. We have no concern in this and we don’t want nothing to do with the police. Understand?”

“But they came to us for help! Where are they sending Pricila? What if something happens to her along the way?”

Nana sighs.

“I’m supposed to just let it go, huh?”

“Yes, mi’ja. Let it go.”

Today, 1 p.m.

Obviously I refuse, and that’s how I wind up in the Santa Ana Police Department.

When Officer Kravetz walks back in, he brings a female officer who looks like she should be running for ASB president.

“Stand up for us, Danielle,” he says quietly. All the gentleness is gone in his eyes.

I stand as my heart pounds in my throat.

“Did you find her?”

“Dani, this is Officer Lara. You’re under arrest for making a false police report—”

“But I’m not lying. You said you were going to check with her dad and—”

“Turn around, Danielle,” Officer Lara orders. When her hand moves to her pepper spray, I do what she says.

The cold handcuffs weigh my hands down and I have to lean forward so I don’t fall back. Officer Lara keeps me company while Officer Kravetz leaves the room.

“This is ridiculous. I wasn’t lying about Pricila being missing. She’s being sent out of this country against her will.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Dani,” Officer Lara snaps, like we’re circling each other on the playground. “Jim Westfall doesn’t have a daughter and the claims you made about him having a relationship with this woman are pretty underhanded. What are you hoping to gain from all this? A story for the paper?”

Yes. Well, not completely.

“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?”

Officer Lara stares at me.

“Do I have to wear an orange jumpsuit?”

Her lips twitch to keep from laughing.

“If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to leave you here,” Maya said when Pricila started getting scared again. “They’ll put you in jail and you won’t see your mom no more.”

Pricila flinched when the train’s horn shook the ground under her feet. The station was hot and crowded with people who carried boxes tied up with string. Maya told her that she had to hold her coat if she took it off, but she wouldn’t help Pricila with her heavy backpack. Her feet squished in her pink boots from a puddle Maya had dragged her through to get on the bus before it left Nana’s street.

Even though Maya had a baby, she didn’t seem like a mommy. She was mean. Maya pinched her arm through her coat sleeve. It didn’t hurt but Pricila felt the pressure all the same and now she was making little squeaking sounds as she tried to stop crying.

“I want to go home,” Pricila croaked.

“You can’t. Shut up.”

“I don’t like you.”

“I don’t like you either.”

Pricila almost fell when Maya let her go with a shove. Maya hefted up Baby Carmen and craned her neck to look over the heads of people waiting in line to buy bus tickets.

Pricila thought of all the bad words that Mommy and Nana told her never to say. She called Maya all those names in her head.

The line moved forward and then someone opened the door to the patio. Cold wind swept in and Pricila lifted her face to it, smelling the thick fumes from the train. Then a man smiled at her. She leaned to the right to hide behind Maya’s fat butt.

Baby Carmen started whimpering and Maya growled like a dog. She kneeled down and set her backpack on the floor.

“Help me,” she said to Pricila. “Open up the zipper.”

She did and the train’s horn hurt her ears. Maya swatted her hands out of the way.

“Zip it up,” Maya ordered impatiently, and then stuck the bottle in Baby Carmen’s mouth. But the baby twisted her head away as if Maya had stabbed her with the bottle. “Come on,” Maya said. “Just take the fucking thing.”

Why had Nana sent her away with Maya? Why hadn’t she let her stay with Danielle too? She hadn’t caused any trouble.

“Shut up,” Maya snapped at a lady in line who was telling her to calm down. “Wait here,” she then ordered Pricila.

“Where are you going?”

“I said wait here.” People stared at Maya and Pricila heard the lady in line make a comment about her.

Pricila started to follow Maya, afraid to be left alone. She was getting that hurt feeling in her throat again. She wanted her mommy and her nana.

“Are you okay?” The man who had smiled at her now stood next to her. He had big blue eyes and curly black hair. “I’ll stay with you until she comes back.”

They walk me out of the interview room, presumably to the booking area. My eyes fill with tears, and since I can’t bring my hands up to wipe them clear, they spill down my face.

They take me through the station and I burn with humiliation. It’s like I’m a prize fish, by the looks of the passing cops. We ride an elevator and it opens to a floor that smells like new carpet, paper, and ink. The men and a few women wear suits with their badges and guns displayed on their belts.

Officer Lara gives me a look that says, You asked for it. She opens an office door and two men are standing by a window streaked with rain.

One looks at the other and murmurs something. He gestures to the other officers, who back away and I’m left alone with the Mexican Terminator. His dark face betrays nothing as he walks straight at me. He never drops his stare, even when he moves right into my personal space and stands there with his arms crossed over his chest.

“You made some claims against one of my agents,” he says in a hushed voice that’s all street.

I fight the urge to step back. “Her grandmother claimed her daughter was set up by your agent. I’m worried about the little girl.”

“You have evidence that she’s my agent’s daughter?”

“I looked for it.”

“So you could write a news story that would damage his reputation and my department.”

“To help a woman who did nothing wrong but live here illegally and sleep with the wrong guy.”

The corner of his mouth tics like he’s used to hearing this sort of thing. “Would this kid know you if she saw you?”

I remember Pricila’s weight against me as we sat on the couch and ate ice cream. “Yes.”

He studies me and I remember why I haven’t dated a Latino since I was seventeen. They have a way of making you forget the vow you made in the eighth grade that you’d never be the kind of woman who washes her man’s underwear or makes him a plate at parties.

“I’m not going to add to your problems and have you arrested, Danielle. You’re a news assistant who’s two months behind on your car payment. A Mini Cooper. My sister wants one of those.”

“I got laid off,” I answer before I realize he has poked into my life. What else does he know?

He reaches for me and I flinch.

He grins as if he likes blondes in shackles. “I’m just going to take off the cuffs.”

“What about Pricila? And who are you?”

“Agent Mike Acacio, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Orange County bureau.” He takes my arm. His fingers are hot and then, with a twist and snap, my hands are free. “I think I know where Pricila is.”

Soon we’re in Agent Acacio’s car, for which he apologizes. The guys who had it last were doing a stakeout and didn’t toss out their soda cans and fast food bags. It smells like stale fried chicken.

We start driving. The rain has let up but the sky is dark and the trees bend in the wind.

“Where are we going?”

“Train depot. You said the little girl left with a woman and a hundred bucks.”

I nod.

“More than likely they’ve got tickets on the 2:45 bus to Los Angeles and then Mexicali.”

When I look at him like he’s psychic, he shakes his head. “I’ve been doing this for a while.”

“When did you know Jim Westfall was having an affair with an unauthorized immigrant?”

He glares at me. My stomach coils into a knot.

“This is off the record,” he says. “I received a faxed birth certificate with his name on it, and when I crossreferenced the list of arrestees, Gina Ruiz’s name was on it.”

Mike — Agent Acacio — goes on to explain that he had suspicions about Westfall’s arrests. I fight back a grin. Gina managed one last strike before Westfall got her. I bet we’d like each other if we ever met.

“Look, we don’t make up the laws,” Agent Acacio says. “If Miss Ruiz is here illegally, she has to return to Mexico. But I don’t let my agents get away with abusing their power.”

“So you’ll still deport Gina?”

“If the court decides to repatriate her, then she’ll be returned to Mexico.”

“Doesn’t Westfall want to look for his daughter?”

His grip tightens on the steering wheel. I finally notice a wedding ring. “For some people, their kids don’t figure into the equation.”

“Let’s get something to drink. You like strawberry soda?”

Pricila thought about it and nodded. He seemed nice. Even though Mommy and Nana told her never to talk to strangers, they’d let Danielle take her and now Maya. He smiled when he looked at Pricila and he wore Converse shoes like her teacher, Mr. Neil.

“This nice lady here will keep your place in line. We’ll come back before your mom does, okay?”

Pricila knew she shouldn’t go.

“Here, leave this.” He reached for her backpack and helped her arms out of the straps. “We’ll bring something back for your mom too. That way she won’t be mad at us, okay?”

She looked up at him and then at the café at the other end of the station. As long as they came back, it would be okay. He held out his hand and she took it.

We arrive at the station with an agreement: I’ll take Pricila home until the court decides what to do with Gina. Agent Acacio will deal with Westfall. We’ll all go on with our business.

When the SUV jerks to a stop, I turn to Agent Acacio. “I’m sorry, but you know I’m going to talk to my editor after this.”

He shrugs like that doesn’t mean anything and then jumps out to jog around the steaming hood, but he doesn’t open my door. A father carries his daughter to the parking lot and people hurry out to a bus with a sign reading Mexicali in the front window.

I reach into my purse, wondering if I have time to call Jake to send a photographer.

At first he held her hand. Pricila tripped when he pulled her toward the doors, away from the café.

“This way, sweetie.”

“But the sodas are there,” she said, pointing to the café in case he hadn’t seen it.

“No, baby, there’re better ones this way.”

The cold stung her face when he pushed the door open. What if Maya came back before they came back? What if the lady didn’t save their place in line? Would Maya slap her?

Pricila wrinkled her nose at the smell of the buses parked alongside the building. She wondered which one she would ride with Maya and Baby Carmen.

He walked faster and she nearly tripped over her own feet to keep up.

“Where are the—”

“Not now.” This time he didn’t smile. He swooped down and lifted Pricila up in the air. Then he held her against him, one hand under her butt and the other forcing her head down. Her nose bumped against his shoulder and she froze with terror. She wished she hadn’t left with him. She wished she had stayed where Maya told her to.

They walked past the big fountain and yellow taxis.

She could hear him breathing and white steam puffed out of his nose. He started running and she squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he wouldn’t drop her; hoping Mommy would appear out of nowhere.

He stopped running and she heard keys jangling. A car door opened and he swung her inside. With one glimpse up at him, Pricila realized he didn’t look very nice anymore. She opened her mouth to scream but he slammed the door.

Something tells me to look up again. I feel it like a hand grabbing the back of my neck.

I do, and then Pricila glances up over the man’s shoulder. Suddenly all these broken pieces pull together in my mind to form a picture. The man driving around Santa Ana, offering rides to little girls. Pricila’s white coat.

The doors close behind Agent Acacio as he moves into the train station.

I’m out of the car. Everything in my purse scatters on the sidewalk. My feet pound the asphalt and tires scream as a driver hits the brakes to keep from running me over.

I leap up onto the sidewalk and my wedge boots give out under me. I fall sideways into a puddle of oily water. But I look up when I hear a yelp and then the slamming of a door. He sees me and then ducks into the dented Subaru backed into a parking space. My knee burns and my ankle screams but I get up and hobble the distance to his car.

“Stop! Stop!” I scream so loud it hurts my throat. He starts the car and I slam both fists against the hood.

He revs the engine and the car lurches forward. I lever myself up and my shins crash into the bumper. I snatch my right foot up before it’s pulled under the car.

I don’t have time to pray. My fingers hook under the hood. I see the top of Pricila’s head over the backseat. He didn’t even buckle her in.

I then meet his eyes through the windshield. He grins at me as he guns the car forward, and my first thought as I swing off the hood is that this is going to hurt.

But Agent Acacio shouts for him to stop, and knowing he has a gun, I think that the pain will be worth it.

Old, Cold Hand by Lawrence Maddox

City of Orange

Jeannie is celebrating the rites of spring at Lake Mead this weekend,” Hudson proclaimed with a deep rumble, taking his eye off me long enough to pack his pipe. “Initiating the drunken mating rituals of the collegiate slut with like-minded male strangers, à la Girls Gone Wild, no doubt.”

I knew Jeannie. She wasn’t a good girl. She liked to spread rumors that she was bedding her professors. I guess in Hudson’s case, her immature bragging was true.

“The dickens of it is, Josh, I need to break into her room. Tonight.”

“I just don’t see you as the love-letter type, Hudson.”

“I’m not, damn you.” Hudson pawed his trim white beard. “The girl is crazy. She likes to play games that escalate. She sent me these.”

Hudson tossed a folder. I pulled out a sheet of paper with porno magazine pictures of a man and woman glued to it.

“Doggy style. Does that have importance?”

“No.”

The woman’s head had been replaced with the face of a teenage girl, the man’s with a gray-bearded geezer. “Hey, Wilford Brimley,” I said, recognizing the actor from the diabetes commercials. A voice bubble from the girl said, Do I get an “A” yet? Wilford Brimley replied, No talking in class!

It was signed, Studiously yours, Jeannie.

“That’s the first one,” Hudson explained. He didn’t seem embarrassed at all. I looked through the folder. There were a bunch more, each raunchier than the next.

“You replied in kind?”

“Yes, but mine were more sophisticated.”

“And she’s threatening you?”

“She’s making outrageous demands. She wants honors. A TA position. She wants to hold hands on campus. She says she’ll go public. I will not have my reputation tarnished, Josh. It means everything.”

I tossed the folder back. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Hudson stopped mid-puff. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Well, I mean, with your busy schedule, dating a younger woman who is also a serious head case could be a challenge.”

Hudson glared hard before responding. “We weren’t dating. We were screwing. Age wasn’t an issue.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said, though that’s exactly what I’d meant.

“I intend to have those letters back. Are you in?”

“Look, Hudson, there’s no way. It’s too crazy. I mean, c’mon. Plus, I’ve got somebody arriving into town tonight.” That was true. I was doing one last interview with Hank Watson for my documentary about former prisoners from the frightful penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virgina.

Hank Watson, charged with burglary, kidnapping, assault. And that’s just what got him into Texas’ infamous Gatesville reform school as a teen in the ’40s. He later graduated to much bigger, deadlier things. Hank needed special handling.

“Tenure reviews are next month,” Hudson said.

There it was. Implied, limped around, now it was out on the table.

“I’ve got to pick someone. Joan is just as qualified, and with those legs, nicer to have around. Frankly, I think I have a shot at her.”

“This is unfair. My film went to Sundance.”

“You know how many lousy docs play up there? Doesn’t mean squat. I was a judge at Sundance. Skied circles around Redford.” He waved a beefy, sun-splotched hand at the photos on the wall behind him.

A black-and-white of Hudson with Redford, the Sundance Kid himself, on skis. Hudson was clearly puffing out his chest. It was next to a photo of Hudson holding a big-mouth bass with David Jansen, next to a photo of Hudson karate-chopping James Coburn.

On his bookshelf, enclosed in glass, stood his Academy Award for Best Documentary, Nineteen Seventy-Something.

Hudson had the career and the life that had thus far eluded me.

“My point is, as department chair, I do the picking. It’s completely autocratic. There are candidates you don’t even know about. It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Don’t tell me I’m not good for Chapman. Freedom Kills is going to air on PBS. I’m an asset and you know it.”

“Chapman is your third university in less than a decade, Josh. You’re a newlywed. You don’t want to continue dragging that cute little wife of yours around like a bedouin. Orange is a nice little town. Does Sarah know that with tenure, Chapman helps finance the house?”

“We know.”

“In this market, you’ll clean up. Nothing makes one feel more like a man than buying one’s wife a nice house. Except banging twins in said house when wifey goes to spa.”

“I got the man thing covered, Hudson,” though his words carried weight. The house, like the career, seemed like a dream that was slipping away. “I just can’t help wondering why you’re asking me.”

“Because you want it bad. I’ve been in academia for forty years. I can smell you young guns coming a mile away.”

“I’m a young gun and I didn’t even know it.”

“And we both know the other reason.”

Now it was my turn to glare. “Other reason?”

“Word gets around, Josh. You and Jeannie?”

“Hold on right there. She’s a liar. According to her, she was banging half the faculty, and I don’t just mean the male half either.”

Hudson cracked a smile. “Of course. Jeannie loved to embellish. I just meant you’d understand my predicament.”

“Yeah, I get it. I just haven’t taken the plunge like you. So that’s why you’re asking me?”

Hudson tapped his pipe. “There was love in that little doc of yours. I’d put forth you became enamored of the darkness. Tracking down those ancient ex-cons, getting their nasty little tales, the horrors of the revolution during that prison uprising. You have an interest in things that are out of bounds, young man.”

I couldn’t deny it. The film, two and a half years in the making, had become an obsession. When nothing else seemed to be working out for me, the doc became my anchor.

I spent months interviewing former inmates of that West Virginia prison, delving into their criminal lives before jail, coaxing out their stories of what they did to survive in hell, and describing in pathetic detail their eked-out existences as old, broken, forgotten men. Three of my subjects had already died. Two by their own hand.

But not Hank Watson. There’s a brief montage of him doing his strenuous jail cell work out in the Bakersfield YMCA where he now resides. “Sixty push-ups, sixty seconds,” Hank said, looking into the camera. “Just for starters.”

I made sure to document my subjects’ participation in the bloody prison uprising of 1980 that left twenty guards dead. There had been torture, things done to others that could only have been dreamed up by minds on ice.

There’s a good chance Hank had been manning a blowtorch.

“Without tenure, Josh, it only makes sense for you to leave Chapman. Move on when the semester’s up.”

“Sarah and I were counting on this. You’re really sticking it to me, Hudson.”

My time spent on Freedom Kills had taken its toll on Sarah and me. She had called the engagement off, and she wouldn’t put the ring back on until I was done shooting. Hank especially creeped her out.

“Are you in, or are you out after the next semester?”

“Tonight’s tough, Hudson,” my mind grinding out the possibilities.

Hank Watson, convicted of murder in 1958, was coming over to our apartment. The old friendless relic had appreciated all the attention I’d paid to him. If I asked him to, he’d wait for me in one of those coffee shops in Old Towne spooking the college girls reading Derrida.

“Lifetime employment, Josh. These days, you have to schlep mail to find that.”

I could make this work. Sarah and I needed this. I could turn this for good. “It’s a deal, Hudson. You’re going to owe me.”

“Tenure.”

“Yeah. Who’s driving?”

Orange was unreal in the spring. It wasn’t just the surprise scent of blooming buttercup roses that came rolling into Hudson’s open car window as we drove through quaint Old Towne. It was the preserved Americana of it all. Most of the office buildings dated back to the Roaring Twenties. While neighboring Anaheim was a revolving door of strip malls and booty motels, Orange kept its history intact. I’d never seen more antique stores in my life, but they made sense in an antique, lost-in-time town like this.

You could count on things not changing here. Sarah and I loved it.

“Will you man-up and stop calling your wife?” Hudson commanded.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her I was about to break into a coed’s room to steal a batch of love letters.”

Sarah was working late at the hospital, and wasn’t due back home for hours. I left a message on her cell, hoping I’d be done with Hudson’s little B&E before Hank came calling.

The truth was, I didn’t want Sarah coming home and finding Hank hanging around. “That twisted old ghost loves you, Josh,” she’d said recently. He had become just as obsessed with me as I was about capturing his gruesome stories for the doc. He’d turn up at places I went. I chalked it up to old man loneliness, and he thankfully faded away when we moved to Orange County.

Hudson turned down a tree-lined street sporting a collection of some of Orange’s hundred-year-old Victorians. He rolled up to an imposing, unlit two-story with a receded garage tucked away on the side.

I was surprised to see Hudson pull out a key and unlock the garage door.

“I thought we were breaking in.”

“We are, you fool. Jeannie gave me a key to the garage so I wouldn’t have to park on the street.”

“You two were very hush-hush, eh?”

“I’m an old hand at this, Josh. At my age, you’ll jump through hoops of fire for a piece of tail a half century your junior.”

“I hope to grow up by then.”

“Your testicles need to drop first.”

The neighborhood was quiet. Operating under moonlight, we carried a ladder out of the garage and around to the back. The turn-of-the-century Victorian, surrounded by cedars, a chestnut, and the ubiquitous jacaranda, had been converted into student housing. “Jeannie said she was going away with all her housemates,” Hudson whispered. “I’m sure they’re drunk and naked by now.”

We placed the ladder against the beige wooden side. “I’ll go first,” Hudson growled. He spryly scampered to the second story and disappeared inside the bay window. If carrying a ladder and holding Hudson’s hand was all I’d have to do, I thought, then this was the right move. I followed him up.

Inside was dark and silent. I could smell patchouli mixed with stale beer. I treaded down the hardwood floor of a hallway, a staircase behind me and three closed doors in front.

“Hudson,” I whispered loudly.

No response. He’d only beat me by maybe half a minute, but he was nowhere in sight. He clearly wasn’t on the stairs, unless the old fart had fallen over the railing.

If someone appeared, my story would be that I was here to discuss a grade with Jeannie and I’d simply let myself in.

I tried the first door and peered inside. Nobody home. I quietly shut the door. Where the hell is Hudson? I went to the second door when my resolve left me. Something’s not right. I’m out of here.

The door opened before I could turn away.

“What took you so long?” Hudson reprimanded.

I entered the room. Filtered moonlight revealed a scattered mess. I bumped into a chair with jeans tossed over the back. A vanity stood near the door, which Hudson quietly closed behind us. Across the room, a lumpy bed with a full-length mirror at its head.

“How about some light?”

“As you wish.”

Jeannie’s pretty face was above the edge of the bedsheet, as were her hands, each tied to an opposite post. Her feet were bound similarly.

“Whoa,” I muttered, taking a step back. “Is she...?”

“I just want to say it wasn’t a rape.” His voice stunned me. I turned to face him. He was holding a gun. “I didn’t have to force myself, of course. She was willing as always. Things just got a little too rough, and I choked her out.” He looked down at his hands. “Didn’t know I still had it in me. That kind of power.” He shook his head. “The house was empty, except for the two of us, and then it was time for my appointment with you. When I left, my path was clear.”

“We better get those letters and take off, then,” I lamely offered.

“I don’t know where the damn letters are. Doubtless they will turn up. That’s why I need you.”

“Is this a joke, Hudson?”

“Strip down and get in bed with her.”

“Have you forgotten your senility pills?”

“I may be old, but I’ve lived more life than you. And I will continue to do so while you’re buried, unsung, and turning into compost.”

I didn’t move.

“I’m prepared for this, Josh. Hands on buttons.”

“Hudson, stop now. What you did here was clearly an accident. You were in the throes of passion with a woman half your age. A third or so, really, but it doesn’t matter. Can you imagine the press?” My mind was working quickly. “It was a crime of passion. They’ll paint you as this incredible stud.”

Hudson seemed to mull this over. His body sagged, as if someone let all the air out. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m through. I might as well go out à la Entertainment Tonight. They’ll no doubt unearth my Academy Award speech.”

“Without a doubt.”

“Just turn around and give me a head start. I have some business to clean up.”

“Of course, Hudson.”

I raised my hands and turned to face Jeannie. I always thought she was pretty, but on closer examination, I realized she was just kind of ordinary. Her youth was the main attraction.

I heard a soft pop and fell hard to my knees. It was like every nerve ending in my right foot had been blown apart.

“I have a silencer, Josh. And at the angle I shot you, it would appear as if you pulled the trigger yourself. By accident. A case of nerves, like anyone would have after murdering their unbalanced, immature mistress. And then you cuddled her corpse before blowing your brains out.”

I cradled my foot. I was afraid to take my shoe off in case the whole thing fell apart.

“Those rumors Jeannie spread, I guess they were true after all.”

“No, they weren’t. No one will believe it,” I said, shuddering.

“They’ll believe it.” Hudson stepped closer. “Are you crying, Josh? I always knew you were a pussy. You young Turks can never back up the talk.”

I had nothing to say. I was in the most horrible pain of my life, and he was gloating.

“Get undressed and get in bed and I’ll do the rest. I’ve considered having you write a suicide note, but I think things will be self-apparent.”

I felt my fingers work the buttons on my shirt. I stood up painfully, balanced on one foot.

“And don’t worry about Sarah. I’m a great consoler.”

“You won’t get away with this.” My voice was measured and soft.

“Trousers.”

It was hard to pull them over my sneaker. I was taking my time about everything. Slow seconds were all I had.

“Now into the arms of Morpheus,” Hudson said.

The bed was surprisingly warm. I got in one knee at a time. I didn’t want to touch her cold body. I didn’t want to see her dead naked flesh under the sheet.

I heard a crack, and the sound of metal hit the floor, followed by a groan.

I looked around.

Finally.

Hank, baseball bat in hand. He picked up the gun.

Hudson cradled his elbow where Hank had walloped him.

“Put your pants on, boy,” Hank said. He tossed the bat to me, kept the gun on Hudson. “Unless you three want your privacy.”

It had been a year, and he looked the same. Crew cut. Red neck. Same thick glasses taped in the middle, frames issued by Moundsville thirty years ago. Big ooglie eyes. Slight paunch. Pendleton, same one.

And the veins. They protruded like electrical wires on every visible inch of his creased skin.

“Looks like I done broke up a party.”

“Hank,” I said. “What took you?”

“It’s all right now. Just don’t lose your lunch. Already got to clean the blood residues from your leaking hoof.” He said residue slow, drawn out, like I suppose they did in the ’30s in West Texas, where he was from.

“I know you,” Hudson said, still painfully clutching his arm. “You’re from Josh’s documentary.”

Hank grinned. “Reckon I am.”

Hudson watched me, then looked back to Hank. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for my friend Josh. He left me a message.”

“Didn’t trust you, Hudson, about the tenure. Hank and I were going to keep the letters and you were going to keep your promise.” I took a gulp of air.

“You learned something from us old-timers,” Hank said appreciatively.

I nodded.

Hudson couldn’t take his eyes off Hank. “I’m a killer now too,” he said. It was his turn to have a soft, measured, shellshocked voice.

“Oh yeah? Who’d you kill?”

“Her.”

“Her?”

“That’s what I said—”

Hank backhanded him.

Hank has big, sharp rings on his fingers. He calls them his class rings, because they “educate others when they be needin’ it.”

Hank rubbed his hand. “No back talk, and it’s ‘yes sir’ here on out. Now who’d you say you killed?”

“The girl on the bed,” Hudson replied through his bloody lips. He pinched his face with effort as he grumbled the word “sir.”

I guffawed when I heard him say it.

Hudson shot me a look.

“You don’t say,” Hank retorted. He lifted up the bedsheet to take a long look.

Hudson shifted uneasily, as if a powerful stranger was checking out his girlfriend on a lonely street corner.

“I know dead, son,” Hank intoned. “And she ain’t it.” He felt her neck. “There’s a pulse. Strong too.” Hank slapped her lightly. “Wake up, pretty princess.”

Hudson turned gray. He fell back against the wall. “What is this?” he gasped. “What the hell is this?”

Hank examined her neck. “You bruised her, but you didn’t break the hyoidal bone. That’s what shows death by strangulation. Reckon you was too weak.” He felt the top of her blonde head. “Bump on her noggin too. That’s what knocked her out.”

Hank ran a finger down a crack on the mirror, just out of sight below the mattress. “For an old guy, you did a number on her.” His laugh was a series of wheezes.

Hudson took a faltering step toward her.

“Jeannie...”

“With the light brown hair,” Hank sang. He walked over to the minifridge and pocketed the salt shaker sitting on top. “This and some ammonia should wake our sleeping princess right up.” He turned to me. “Keep an eye on him. And keep him away from the girl. He’s done enough to her.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Don’t ’plex up, Josh. I’m coming right back.” Hank handed me the gun and stepped out of the room.

“We can still get out,” Hudson whispered. “You can’t trust him. He’s an ex-con, full of tricks.”

“I can trust you?”

“I made a mistake. Jeannie’s alive now. Can’t you see the ground’s shifted?”

I studied him. The man’s man took out his pipe.

“Our word against his, Josh. They’ll believe any story we agree to. He’s a nonbeing.”

“And Jeannie?”

“She’s alive. She doesn’t know anything except we got a little overzealous in the sack. There’s been no crime, you idiot. Can’t you see?” Hank puffed empty pipe air. “I guess I love her, Josh.”

My foot throbbed painfully, but not nearly as bad as when I was pulling my pants off. “You shot me,” I whispered. “That’s got to be a crime.”

“Right,” he said. “Right. I’ll fix everything, Josh.”

I looked at him, but I wasn’t seeing him anymore. I was seeing me, in that bed, and Sarah finding out.

And funny enough, I thought of my guys from the doc. My guys, and how they had made the cruel guards plead.

“I’m a legend in my field, Josh. Things will happen for you under my guidance. But we might have to shoot him.”

Guidance. I’d so needed it, someone to take an interest. Someone to help me get ahead.

“Don’t be buying his wolf ticket, Josh.”

Hank strode back in the room, holding a bottle of ammonia. He set it and the salt down on the fridge. “Smelling salts.”

Hudson looked sick.

Hank took the gun. “Unless you want to hold onto it.”

I considered it. “That’s okay.”

“Had to drain the weasel too,” he explained. “Happens every hour, these days. So what you wanna do, Josh?”

“I guess we call the police,” I said half-heartedly.

Hank took a deep breath.

“Josh,” Hudson pleaded. “I didn’t know what I was doing. Tenure, whatever you want, it’s yours. Please.” He was sniffling. Minutes ago, he’d called me a pussy.

“I don’t know what this ‘tender’ is he’s offering,” Hank said. “I found you naked. He was going to smoke your ass, boy. Who knows how this’ll all play out.” Hank put his hand on my shoulder. “Now, if you could do anything you wanted, anything, what would you do?”

Hudson would’ve killed me. He had wanted my Sarah. I was still shaking.

I realized someone had shown me the way.

They all had.

You dip into the dark place. You reach out and grab it.

“They should find him in women’s clothing,” I blurted.

There was a silence in the room.

“Done,” Hank said. “Some kind of kinky, left-wing sex-murder-suicide dilly. The reporters will love that.” He smirked. “Makes me wish I went to college myself.”

Hudson all but peed his pants.

I looked at Jeannie.

Hank nodded in her direction. “She’s the price of doing business.”

Hudson stepped forward. “You can’t touch her. I won’t let you.”

“I can do anything I want.”

“I, I won’t let you,” Hudson repeated weakly. This may have been his finest moment.

There was a pause, broken by Hank’s wheezed laughter. “I can’t keep it up no more. She’s dead. Was from the start. Cold as a rack of lamb.” He rubbed the back of his creased neck. “Just a little test, Josh. See if you’d turn on ol’ Hank.” He settled down, then turned to Hudson. “Go through her closet. Pick something pink.”

“And frilly,” I added.

Later, Hank and I drove his 1972 VW van to Hudson’s to retrieve my car. Hank had tended to my foot, but Sarah was going to have to clean it up. I’d have some explaining to do. Hank didn’t think I’d need to go to the hospital.

“I just hope I beat Sarah home,” I said.

“Sarah already came home.”

I looked at Hank. His eyes stared back, distorted and enlarged by his broken, prison-issue glasses.

“She was there when I knocked.”

I was clutching my seat.

Hank looked me over. “Look like you seen a ghost, boy.”

“You said Sarah...”

“Yeah, but she wouldn’t let me in. I don’t think that wife of yours trusts me.”

I exhaled, deeply relieved.

“Anyway,” Hank continued. “I know you always like seeing me when I turn up. So there I was, and here I am. You’re gonna have to have a talking to her, do something about her attitude.”

I was definitely going to have to do something.

The house is beautiful, a two-story Craftsman from 1912 with polished hardwood floors you can slide ten feet on in your socks. Sarah briefly tended her rose garden in the back, but the weeds have gained the upper hand since she moved in with her mother in Newport.

There’s a guest house in the back, with its own bathroom and even a little yard of its own.

That’s where Hank lives.

I couldn’t really explain to Sarah why I had allowed Hank to live in the back. Hank and I are like blood brothers now, he explained to me later. We’d both rescued each other, me from certain death, him from loneliness and obscurity. Maybe suicide. Now we got each other’s backs, he said.

Sarah thought it particularly bizarre how Hank would sit there cackling on his porch over that old copy of the Orange County Register. The one with the headline, Dress-Clad Prof and Coed in Murder Suicide.

Blood. The ammonia cleaned up mine.

Now I have something bigger to clean up.

Sarah’s four months pregnant, but she won’t even talk to me.

I have to fix this, but it’s like he’s always watching. Always ready.

Still doing his jail cell workout, right there in the middle of Sarah’s garden.

I guess that’s the beauty of Hank.

I’m going to have to leave the house tonight without Hank following me. I’m meeting an old prison acquaintance of his in Old Towne tonight for a cup of coffee. Benito Scalvo was locked up for over twenty years on a murder-for-hire beef. He’s in my doc too. He and Hank have a long-standing prison hate for each other. I want to talk to Benito about that. Benito has no family to speak of, no prospects. Nothing in the world to do.

He was so glad I looked him up.

The Movie Game by Dick Lochte

Laguna Niguel

Alfred Hitchcock was definitely some kind of gamesman. Weird, but a gamesman. He had it figured that people came to his films with an attitude, like they were on to his game and daring him to show them some moves they weren’t expecting. So he gave them really twisted stuff. Like Janet Leigh getting all cut up in the shower. Or the old dude with his eyes pecked out in The Birds. Or, later in his career, in Frenzy, when censorship loosened up, the killer breaking the fingers of a naked corpse to get at something she’d been clutching when he strangled her.

But the thing is, he didn’t take the game that seriously. As he once famously said to an actress who told him she was worried about how to play a scene: “Ingrid, it’s only a movie.”

I was slumped behind the wheel of my parked taxi, drowsing over a copy of François Truffaut’s conversations with Hitchcock, taking an easy trip through the great director’s head. It was a slow night. Lots of slow nights in Laguna Niguel, but there wasn’t anything left for me in L.A. and I was living more or less rent-free in my sister and brother-in-law’s converted garage in the Hills, making enough behind the wheel to pop for dinner for them every now and then.

I wasn’t fooling myself. I knew I was just treading water and I’d have to swim for shore sooner or later. But on nights like that, nice and balmy, with nothing pressing, treading seemed preferable to making waves and attracting sharks. Not that sharks don’t find you anyway.

I was in the middle of Hitchcock’s description of “Mary Rose,” a ghost story he’d considered filming, when the box started squawking and, between squawks, Manny, back at the garage, was repeating a familiar name. Mine. J.D. Marquette.

Manny has a cleft palate and his words have a slushy, lispy sound that I won’t try to duplicate in print. “Fare’s at a shopping center on La Paz Road, J.D.,” he said, adding the name of the center and the exact address. “He’ll be in front of Gregory’s. Too smashed to drive home.”

“Good job, Manny,” I said. “I love ferrying drunks.”

I turned off the battery-operated book light, a gift from sis, closed the cover on Hitchcock and Truffaut, and went back to work.

That section of La Paz Road is like Mall Town U.S.A. One shopping center right after the other. By light of day, with their too-new, seamless, pastel-colored plaster coats, the structures resemble not very creative film sets, populated by extra players. Those pastels turn circus sinister at night, especially after the shops have started to shutter and most of the extras have headed home.

A big guy staggering around with his collar open and his tie at half mast and four other males, somewhat more sober, were gathered near the entrance to the center, in front of Gregory’s Sports Grill. The drunk was the only one of them who looked as if he’d ever played a sport other than foosball. He was big enough to have been a linebacker in his younger days, before he gave it up to booze.

“Glad you made it so fast,” a thin guy with glasses said when I got out of the cab. He turned to the ex-linebacker. “Sonny, here’s the cab.”

“Fuck the cab,” the drunk, a.k.a. Sonny, said. “Don’t need no fuckin cab.”

The thin guy gave me Sonny’s address in Monarch Pointe and a pleading look.

I took a step toward the big man. “Come on, sir,” I said, taking his elbow. “Time to go home.”

He jerked back, face flushed, eyes red as Dracula’s. “Don’t you touch me. Who the fuck are you?”

“He’s the cabbie, Sonny,” one of the other guys said. “Gonna drive you home.”

Sonny glared at me for a second, then staggered to the side. “Goin home, myself,” he muttered. “Doan need help from this long-haired prick.”

He did his drunk dance toward the few cars remaining in the parking lot.

The thin guy with glasses ran after him, tried to stop him. Sonny shoved him away, then staggered to a beautiful cream-colored Lexus convertible. He paused, doubled up, and emptied the contents of his stomach over the rear of that lovely vehicle.

Better it than the interior of my cab.

He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket, then struggled with the car door, got it open, and squeezed behind the wheel.

“Jackass’s gonna kill himself,” one of the men said.

“Or somebody,” I said, as Sonny roared past us, trailing vomit and exhaust.

The thin guy with glasses apologized for wasting my time, gave me two twenties for my trouble. That seemed like a fair enough exchange, even including the long-haired prick comment.

I got back in the taxi, folded the twenties, stuck them in the pocket of my island shirt, and checked in with Manny. “Fare decided to drive himself home.”

“Anybody else there need a cab?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Shit, J.D. We oughta start chargin’ these bastards for cancelations,” Manny lisped.

“Absolutely,” I said. “You got anything else for me?”

“Price of gas, these fuckers should pay.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “You got another run for me?”

“Naw. It’s dead here, J.D.”

“Then I think I’ll call it a night.”

“Wish I could,” Manny said. “The fuckers.”

It wasn’t that late. Especially for somebody who gets up around noon. There were a couple of bars near the ocean that still might offer an hour or two of action, such as it was. Probably wouldn’t take me that long to blow the forty.

There was no traffic along La Paz. Just the darkness broken by my headlights, the occasional streetlight, and the even more occasional traffic light. I thought about Kelly. There’s a scene in Citizen Kane where this old guy played by Everett Sloane tells the reporter that when he was a kid he saw this little girl on a ferry, wearing a white dress and carrying a white parasol. He never met her, but as he says, “Not a month goes by when I don’t think of her.” That was kind of like me and Kelly Raye. Except that we did meet. And we lived together for a while, until I made a mistake and she discovered I wasn’t the kind of uncomplicated, dependable young man she thought I was. Funny thing, I was ready to be that guy. But hell, too little and too late. So she was in L.A. and I was in L.N. And not a day went by when I didn’t think of her.

I was recalling her birthday two years ago, when I’d just flown in from New York and... Christ! A blonde suddenly leaped out of the shadows on the left, hopped the neutral ground, and ran right in front of my goddamned cab.

I jammed my foot on the brakes and the cab skidded to a stop inches from her, my movie book and lamp sliding to the floor. The seat belt was digging into my shoulder. My hands were locked around the steering wheel.

The blonde was in my headlights. If I’d been going faster than the limit, I’d have hit her. She reached out a hand to touch the cab’s hood, maybe to convince herself that it had really stopped.

When I began breathing again, I pried my fingers from the wheel, rolled down the window, and shouted, “What the hell, lady?”

“You’re the best,” she said, walking around the cab. “I wasn’t sure you’d stop. I need a ride and here you are...”

She tried to open the rear door and was surprised to find it locked. She frowned, then figured it out. “Aw, crap. You’re off duty?”

She was in her late twenties, maybe three or four years younger than me. Dressed California casual, in aqua T-shirt and tight designer jeans. Not spectacular but pretty enough. Straight blond hair. Tanned skin. Good body. Carrying a big floppy purse, the size of a beach bag.

“Please,” she said. “I’m desperate. I really fucking need a ride... away from here. It’s worth fifty dollars.”

“Where to?”

She hesitated, then said, “Ritz-Carlton.”

Fifty bucks to drive five or six miles. I stared at her, thinking about it.

“A friend drove me here. He... didn’t want to leave the party. And he didn’t want me to leave, either. Understand?” She looked to our left. I looked there too, and couldn’t see anything but the vague shadowy outline of one of those residential complexes with cookie-cutter buildings, heavy on the redwood and stucco. “Please. I really need a lift.”

She seemed to be suffering from a lack of sincerity, but fifty bucks was fifty bucks, so I pushed the button that unlocked the doors and she hopped in.

Softened by the age-yellowed bandit barrier, her face looked better than pretty. A hometown beauty contest winner whom the movie cameras didn’t love quite enough. In some kind of trouble. She ran her fingers through her hair and let out a long sigh. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said. Looking to the left again, she added, “Let’s went, Cisco.”

I stepped on the gas but kept my eye on her in the rearview as she reached into her big bag. She didn’t look like carjacker material, but I stopped breathing until her hand reappeared with a cellular. She raised the thin slab to her ear. “You clear?” she asked somebody, leaning forward, tensing. “Great, baby. I’m in a cab,” she said. “Right. Amazing luck, huh, a fucking cab out here in the boonies... No. Just worry about yourself. I’m golden.” She listened for a few beats, then, “Shit. You think?”

She snapped the phone shut.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Linking eyes with me in the rearview, she said, “I’m not sure. Look, I, ah, didn’t mean to offend. The boonies comment.”

“Boonies works for me. This is where Republicans come to die.”

“You live here long?”

“About a year.”

“Before that?”

“L.A.”

“Ah. That makes more sense. The hair. I...” Her cellular must’ve vibrated again. “Excuse me,” she said and took the call. “Yeah?” Her head dropped and her face hardened. “Woohoo. I’m so scared, you dickless wonder. Eat shit and die.” She clicked off the phone. Then she lowered her window and threw the phone out into the night.

“Friend?” I said.

She leaned forward, closer to the plastic guard that separated us, and asked, “Want another fifty?”

“I’m listening.”

“Get off this street as soon as you can, stop, and cut the lights.”

She looked back to where I’d picked her up, doing a head turn that almost matched Linda Blair’s. There was nothing much to see behind us.

In front of us, the neutral ground on the left went on and on. There was a park to our right, separated from the sidewalk by a low white double-rail fence. I could see where the fence ended. I goosed the gas and made the turn into the park on two wheels. Then I made another turn into an empty parking area separated from the road by thick foliage. I braked, killed the engine, and turned off the lights. “This what you had in mind?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, baby,” she said. “Perfect. But I could use a Valium the size of a hockey puck.”

I turned to look at her. “That’s a Woody Allen line, right?”

“Broadway Danny Rose,” she said. She leaned forward and squinted at my license information in the moonlight. “J.D. Marquette. So you’re into movies, huh, J.D.?”

“I used to have a job that gave me a lot of free time.”

“Me too.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“You can call me Nora. Ah, J.D., we may be here a while.”

“Yeah?”

“I am paying you a hundred bucks.”

“Point made, Nora.” I reached down, picked my book and reading light from the floor, and put them into the cab’s glove compartment.

“You even read about movies, huh? Maybe we should play the movie game while we wait. It’s my favorite.”

“I’m not big on games, Nora.”

“Oh, come on. You’re good. The way you nailed that Woody Allen, maybe too good. I think we should stick to just one genre. All things considered, maybe crime movies.”

“I don’t play games,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on here?”

“Kind of a crazy story with a crazy twist to it.” She was grinning at me.

“That line’s from Double Indemnity,” I said. “Fred MacMurray. Now, stop with the bullshit and tell me why we’re sitting here in the dark.”

“I guess that’s not asking too much. My friend... his name is Tom Iverson... we live in the Florida Keys. Tom has this dumb charter boat thing going. But he does other odds and ends too. So he tells me he’s got business here and we’ll be spending a few days at the Ritz-Carlton, which sounded like a nice kinda getaway. Only when we arrive, he says the business is with this guy I don’t really care for, who’s like a freak and a half, you know. Anyway, we go to this... Hold on. Car coming.”

Nora and I sat silent as a black Escalade floated by, heading south.

When it was well passed, I said, “Okay for us to leave now?”

“No. Not okay. There’ll be more and they know I’m in a cab.”

“Who’s they?”

“Friends of the asshole.”

“So, tell me about the asshole.”

“His name is Joey Ziegler. A stunt man. You probably saw him in the last Batman, the one with the dead Joker guy. I’ve never exactly warmed to Joey, because he does stuff like grabbing a tit when Tom isn’t looking. Anyway, we’re bringing Joey a little something Tom picked up in Yucatan, a—”

“A piece of junk worth half a million,” I said, completing her sentence.

She smiled. “Oops. You do know movies.”

“You were feeding me a remake of Night Moves. Not a bad film. Gene Hackman as a private eye. Lousy ending. Tell me what really went on back there, Nora. Right now, or I’m tossing you out of the fucking cab.”

“Okay, this is the truth, J.D. Wait... another car.”

This one was a white Escalade. Moving at about fifteen miles per hour. Flashlight beams shot out of its open windows, scanning the foliage on both sides of the road. I didn’t think they could see any part of the cab.

“Maybe we should move further back in the park,” I suggested when they’d passed.

“Okay. But don’t turn on the lights.”

I started the engine, backed onto the lane, and began creeping deeper into the park guided by moon glow. We passed a golf course and, eventually, a building in darkness that I assumed was some sort of clubhouse. The lane made a fork, one section continuing on, the other circling the building to a small lot. I took the latter, moving the cab as close to the rear of the building as I could.

“Better,” she said. “Maybe we’ll make it through the night.”

“You were about to tell me the truth.”

“Right. My friend John and I have been collecting a few dead presidents selling heroin to Brentwood and Beverly Hills assholes who like to impress their party guests with a special after-dinner treat.”

“Where do you get the product?”

“John has a friend who’s an army sergeant in—”

She stopped talking because I was shaking my head. “Goddamnit. You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“What?” She pretended to be sincerely confused.

“Who’ll Stop the Rain? Michael Moriarty and Tuesday Weld, with Nick Nolte as the soldier. Not as good as the book. Get out of my cab. I’m finished.”

“No, baby,” she replied. “I’ll say when you’re finished.” I didn’t need much moonlight to see the huge gun she pulled from her bag. “I wouldn’t put too much faith in this cheap bandit shield.” She tapped the barrel of the gun against the plastic that separated us. “I mean, maybe it might stop a bullet, but... being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky?”

“Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry,” I said, my mouth suddenly as dry as Clint’s delivery. What Nora was holding was a Smith & Wesson Magnum, all right. But it was a 500, bigger and badder than the one in the movie. Enough to take out the bandit shield, me, and the front of the cab.

“Relax, J.D.,” she said. “I got no reason to shoot you, long as you behave. In fact, I’m doing you a favor. If you drove out of here right now, with or without me, you’d be a dead man. The difference is: if we’re together when they find us, they’ll probably just shoot us both. But if I’m not with you, they’ll beat you to death trying to find out where you left me.”

“Why do they want you? Be straight with me, Nora. No more Yucatán pottery or drugs, huh?”

“My partner Jed and I... got into a situation back there.”

“What kind of situation?”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she said. “It happened. We pissed off the wrong guys, the kind who get real biblical when it comes to payback.”

“What happened to your partner?”

“He’s dead. That call I got was from some zombie, telling me he’d just shot Jed in the face. Like that’s supposed to freak me out. Fuck them.”

If she wasn’t freaked, she was either delusional or suicidal.

Two Escalades full of homicidal assholes out for revenge. Not exactly an everyday occurrence in Orange County. I knew of only one local who might have that kind of entourage, a former Vegas “businessman” who’d retired to the peace and quiet of Laguna Niguel.

“What did you and Jed do to get on the bad side of Caesar Berlucci?” I asked.

“Bad side?” She gave me a nasty smile. “Jed blew that fat wop right out of his Guccis.”

“He killed Berlucci? Why would anybody do something that stupid?”

She stopped smiling and tensed. For a second, I thought she was going to use that giant gun. Then she slumped again and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“It’s what we were paid to do,” she said.

“Paid by whom?”

“Who the fuck knows? Or cares? The contract comes in. You do the job. Money is money.”

“It couldn’t have been easy, getting that close to the old man,” I said.

“Jed had a golden tongue. Talked us into the compound, won the old bastard over. We would’ve made it away clean, but Jed got greedy.” For a second her eyes sifted toward her big bag, then back at me.

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“Shit happens,” she said. “And now we got goombas on our ass.”

Yes we did. Two Escalades full, prowling around out there looking for a cab. They’d find out she hadn’t made it to the hotel. They would double back and go over the route again. Eventually they’d check out the park and find us.

When they did, Nora, with her ridiculous gigantic gun, which held only five rounds, assuming she hadn’t used one or two on Berlucci, would be of no real help. On the other hand, that ridiculous gigantic gun with its five or four or three bullets was more than enough to keep me trapped.

“Okay, what now?” I asked her, while trying to come up with my own answer.

“We wait until morning and people are going to work and there’ll be traffic and other cabs on the street. Then we head to L.A. And I pay you for your trouble. And we say goodbye, or...”

“Or what?”

“Or we keep going to Mexico and see how much fun we can get into. I’ve got... some money set aside back at the apartment.”

“We have a long night before we start thinking about fun,” I said.

“We could think about it a little.”

“Not with me up here and you back there.”

“Come on back. It’s nice and comfy.”

“What if we have to leave in a hurry?” I asked. “Be less dangerous to do our thinking up here.”

“Sometimes danger adds a little something, but I suppose you’re right.”

Nora had been so sloppy at her chosen profession that I hoped she might change her mind about the gun and put it away. But she kept it pointed in my direction while she got out of the car and joined me on the front seat.

She sat facing me, her back against the door.

She kicked off her sandals, drew her left leg up, and slid it forward until her toes found wiggle room between my back and the car seat. She rested her right leg across my thighs.

“Is the gun necessary?”

“For some reason, I think so,” she said. “But we can still fool around.”

“Not with a gun in my face. It’s much too distracting.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to play the movie game instead,” Nora said.

“Fun’s better than games.”

“The gun stays.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Games. It’s a nice day for murder.”

“Cute,” Nora said. “But easy. James Cagney. Angels with Dirty Faces. Here’s one for you: I guess I’ve done murder. I won’t think about that now.”

“It’s the next line that’s the giveaway,” I replied. “I’ll think about it tomorrow. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind.” I lowered my hand to her left leg and began rubbing it slowly. “Try this one. If you’re going to murder me... don’t make it look like something else.”

Nora frowned. Concentrating. I moved my hand another inch or so up her leg. She said, “I don’t know the quote.”

“The Naked Spur. Robert Ryan.”

“A Western? Shit, that’s not fair. I don’t know Westerns.” She was furious, aiming the weapon at my stomach with both hands. She was crazy enough to use it and, I had no doubt, she would eventually. Here. In L.A. or Mexico.

“I didn’t complain about Gone with the Wind,” I said softly.

“That’s cause you knew it,” she said, pouting. “Give me another and keep it on topic.”

I decided to ease the tension with something she was sure to recognize. “Have you ever done it in an elevator?”

She grinned. “Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.” Happy again, maybe picking up the sexy-psychotic vibe of that movie, she wiggled a little closer. She said, “Here’s one from the heart: It’s the first time I’ve tasted women. They’re rather good.”

I pretended to be puzzled, but in my mind I saw 007 after having just sucked a poisonous spine fish from the flesh of the beautiful Domino. “I give.”

She was as gleeful as a little girl. “Sean Connery in Thunder-ball. I can’t believe you didn’t know that one.”

I was leaning forward, my fingers brushing the inside of her thigh. “I didn’t see the movie. Where did he... taste her?” I asked.

Nora gave me a long look. But she didn’t lower the gun. “Your turn,” she said. “And this time, make it hard.”

“That sounds like a James Bond quote too.”

She laughed. “Silly. I meant the movie reference.”

“Okay,” I said, sliding a little closer. “But instead of a quote, I’ll give you a story. Our hero grows up in the country, leading a good, clean, healthy life, until it’s time for him to go to a state college. There, on a Marine ROTC firing range, he discovers that the hunting skills he took for granted back home are pretty damned remarkable. Enough for him to attract the attention of a government agency that dearly needs people who know how to use guns.”

“I think I know the movie,” she said, “but go on. And don’t stop this.” She lowered one hand to move mine further up her thigh.

“The agency frees him from his ROTC obligation and agrees to pay his tuition and give him spending money and a car and, in return, he agrees to work for them for four years after he graduates.”

“And he becomes a sniper in Vietnam?” Nora asked.

“Not exactly. Not in Vietnam. But his work is government-sanctioned.”

“Like James Bond.”

“Yes. But not James Bond,” I said.

“Got it. Charles Bronson in The Mechanic.”

“No. The hero of my story is younger than Bronson. And he’s based in Los Angeles, pretending to be an accountant for an independent film studio that the government actually owns. And the four years turn into eight. And, about then, he meets this beautiful, wonderful woman and—”

“The Specialist, with Sly Stallone and Sharon Stone.”

“Let me finish,” I said. “I’ll make it short. He falls in love. They move in together. He decides to quit the agency, but before he can, she discovers... that he’s been lying to her, that he’s a worthless, self-loathing, piece-of-shit, government-sanctioned, homicidal sociopath.”

“I’m still not sure what movie you’re talking about.” Staring at me, she asked. “Are you crying? Why the hell are you crying?”

“Because life is not a movie, you stupid bitch,” I said, bringing my palm up fast off her thigh and shoving her hands and the big heavy Magnum into her face before she could even consider pulling the trigger. Blood flowed from her broken nose. I had the gun by then and banged it against her head twice before she went to sleep.

“I’m in a situation, Henry.”

“Who’s... Jimmy D? Zat you?”

“It’s me,” I said into my cellular. “Sorry to wake you, but I wasn’t sure who else to call.”

“No. It’s okay.” He started hacking and coughing. I heard his wife mumbling something in the background, then him telling her to go back to sleep, that it was business. “Long time between calls, Jimmy. What’s the hap?”

I filled him in on everything that had taken place in the last hour or so. He replied by laughing.

“It’s not funny, Henry.”

“Depends on where you’re sitting. The image of you, out in your peaceful, laid-back little town, stuck in the middle of a park with an unconscious hit woman, waiting for morning or a bunch of spaghetti-head yo-yos with guns, whichever comes first... it is to laugh, amigo.”

“Can you do anything?” I asked. “If not, I’m going to try my luck driving out of here. I’ll unload the blonde somewhere along the road.”

“If they saw her get into your cab, Jimmy, they got the name and the plate and there’s nowhere you can run. Gimme your number and sit tight.”

Henry had been my handler. In his fifties, five-seven, balding, vaguely pear-shaped, totally without conscience, but a straight-shooter and a father figure for all of that. He called back in twenty minutes. “I just spoke with a cretin named Morelli. He says he knows all about you, but he’s the kind of braying asshole who, if he knew your name or even the cab company, would have told me just to prove how bright he is. In any case, he says he’s willing to forget about you as long as he gets the eighty grand taken from Berlucci’s safe. And he wants the woman, of course. You got the money, right?”

“Yeah.” I had already investigated Nora’s bag. It was loaded with banded fifties. “I imagine it’s the full eighty. I’m not going to count it.”

“Okay, here’s the play. As soon as we hang up, I call Morelli with your exact location. He wants you to leave the broad and the loot right where you are and drive away. Do not look back.”

“You sure they’ll let me just drive away?”

“You can never be sure, Jimmy. Not when you’re dealing with rabid dogs. My guess is they don’t want Uncle Sam on their ass. That’s the most assurance I can give you.”

“Thank you, Henry.”

“My pleasure.”

The blood from Nora’s broken nose had dried on her mouth and chin. She looked like she might be waking up soon. I’d have to hit her again.

“Henry, I’m ready to come back.”

“Miss the La Dolce Vita, huh?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I’ll be waiting with open arms, kid.”

I lifted the blonde out of the cab and placed her on the asphalt behind the clubhouse. I put the bag and the money right next to her.

Then I got back into the cab. With the blonde’s Magnum on the passenger seat, I left the park and turned right on La Paz. The only vehicle I saw in either direction was an old Chevy truck heading north. I passed it heading south.

But not too far south, maybe half a mile down La Paz to the first cross-street, Kings Road, where I turned right into a block full of middle-class homes. I maneuvered the cab between two sedans parked for the night.

The blonde’s Magnum didn’t smell as if it had been used, but it held only four shells. Better than bare hands. With the weapon dragging down my Levi’s under my shirt, I worked my way back through the park.

They were a noisy bunch. Slamming car doors. Cursing. I was careful moving up behind a tree, Magnum drawn, for a view of the scene at the rear of the golf club building. Six men had come in three cars. The Escalades and a sweet yellow Jaguar convertible with the top down.

I wanted a look at Morelli and his buddies. I figured it was worth the risk to be able to recognize the bozos if they really did have a line on me and decided to do something about it. I had my night vision by then and I studied them as well as I could while they dragged Nora’s dead partner, Jed, from the black Escalade.

The guy I picked as Morelli was poking through Nora’s bag. Apparently satisfied with its contents, he tossed it into the white Escalade. He was big, bald, almost Mongolian-looking, with a droopy mustache, wearing a black, longs-leeve shirt and pants, with some kind of jewelry around his neck that caught the moonlight. The others were in suits. I noted their hairstyles, facial structures, body movement, as they did the heavy lifting — the departed Jed went behind the wheel of the Jaguar, the unconscious Nora onto the passenger seat.

I wasn’t sure what the plan was, but I figured that last knockout blow I’d delivered to Nora had been a mercy.

The bald guy with the mustache was definitely Morelli. He said something that was almost too guttural to be Italian and, while the others grabbed what looked like short-barrel Beretta rifles from the rear of the black Escalade, he moved to Nora.

He rattled off something else in Italian and his boys laughed. He shook Nora until she awoke with a groan. Her hand went to her head wound. My bad.

Morelli took several steps back, away from the Jaguar.

Nora saw him. I heard her say, “Huh?”

He pointed to her dead partner. She looked at Jed, then turned back to Morelli. “You scum-sucking wop pig!” she screamed, changing the Brando insult from One-Eyed Jacks just a bit to fit the situation.

Morelli waited for her to throw open the Jaguar’s door and take a step toward him, her hands poised like claws. He shouted “Sparare!” And his men sparared, big time. Bullets ripped into Nora, the beautiful car, the corpse of her dead partner.

I’d thought they were noisy before. Now they were firing off a hundred rounds or so in the dead of night, in the sleepy little town of Laguna Niguel. Maybe they knew precisely how long it would take the Orange County Sheriff ’s Department to get somebody out there to investigate. More likely they simply didn’t give a shit who heard them. They wanted to call attention to the fact that it wasn’t a good idea to fuck with them.

Morelli didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d just forget about a cab driver who made the mistake of stopping to pick up a good-looking blonde. There wasn’t much I could do about that at the moment. Maybe if I’d had a simple old Springfield, the kind I grew up with, and enough ammo and time, I could have put the whole thing to bed that night. Though in all honesty I’d never tried to go six for six, even when I was at the top of my game.

So I just stood there and watched them pile into the Escalades and drive away.

I could hear sirens in the distance.

Time to run. But I took one last look at the bloody, bullet-ridden couple and said, not just to myself, “Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty. Bonnie and Clyde.”