The Best American Mystery Stories 2001

From Easy Street

1

In the summer of that year, Clay Canfield accepted a transfer from the Bureau’s Atlanta office to Orange County, California. He’d been working bank robberies, and he was good. He was thirty-two years old, dark haired, presentable, and had always lived his life on the square.

He left Atlanta with minor regrets: his small part in the arrest of the Olympic bomber suspect who turned out to be innocent, and his season tickets for the Braves at home.

On the plus side it was a convenient way to break off with the woman he was seeing. Marie. And there was southern California, where he’d grown up. His parents had long ago moved away but his little brother Sonny was still there. When Clay thought of Sonny he pictured him surfing big crunchers at Rockpile in Laguna Beach. It would be good to see Sonny again. That town, too.

Clay read the in-flight magazine out of Atlanta, ate the neat little lunch, looked down at the Texas desert. He thought about the years he’d spent in Atlanta, told himself it would be nice to miss something or someone. But he didn’t. Ditto Washington, Miami, and Dallas.

Sonny met him at the airport. He’d put a little weight on but it looked like muscle. Blond hair buzzed short for summer, beer on his breath. Flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt with palm trees on it, worn out to hide his hip rig. Sonny was an officer with the Laguna Beach PD, had a new girlfriend last Clay had heard.

Sonny snapped one of Clay’s suspenders, straightened his necktie, and grinned. “Fed-Man.”

“That’s me.”

“You look good.”

“So do you.”

Sonny took Clay by the arm and angled him into the terminal bar.

“Meet Laurel,” he said.

Laurel had blue eyes and freckles and smelled like suntan oil. Yellow dress, good legs. A small smile, straight dark hair, sunglasses propped up on her head. Sonny’s type, all the way.

“Sonny left me here to guard his drink,” she said. Her handshake was firm and dry. “So I drank it.”

“Can’t keep her out of anything,” said Sonny.

“Cuff me.”

“I’ll get us another one,” said Clay.

They sat on stools at a high table in the back of the bar. They each had two. Sonny told him how Orange County had grown in the ten years Clay had been gone: more roads, more houses, more people, and more on the way.

“And one pretty bold bank robber,” said Clay.

“He’s hit eight banks in eight weeks, all in north county,” said Sonny “Small takes, nobody hurt yet. The Bike Bandit.”

Laurel said, “Polite, soft-spoken. Long golden hair and a big gun. Just gets on his motorcycle and speeds away. I hope you don’t shoot him.”

“Laurel’s romantic,” said Sonny.

“He’s dashing,” she said. “Like Joaquin Murrietta or Robin Hood. Extremely handsome.”

“He’s still got his helmet on in all the pictures,” said Sonny. “Visor down. All they have to go on is his hair sticking out the back.”

“I can tell.”

“We can get his height with photogrammetry,” said Clay.

“He loses himself quick on the motorcycle,” said Sonny.

“He completely vanishes,” said Laurel. “The tellers watch him speed away, but after that nobody sees him. That’s dashing.”

“Maybe he’s got help,” said Clay.

“What kind of help?” asked Laurel.

“Some woman who thinks armed robbery is romantic.”

“Fed-Man just called me some woman, Sonny.”

“You are some woman.”

Laurel smiled at Clay then, a big smile this time, and her eyes laughed as she raised the plastic cocktail cup to her lips, tilting the liquid back into her mouth, middle finger extended.

Clay sat in the FBI conference room with his new partner in bank robbery and the agent-in-charge of the Orange County field office.

Salena Mendez was the partner. He’d met her once at Quantico, a few years back. Then, she’d been bright and compact and a little distracted. She still was. She showed him pictures of her children, then slipped them back into her wallet like he was going to make off with them. She tapped the tabletop with stout fingers, questioning Clay about Atlanta in a tone that confirmed how little she cared about his answers.

The agent-in-charge of the Orange County field office, Bob Tuvale, was slender and slow-moving, either subtle or colorless or both. He looked soft.

Close to retirement, Clay figured.

Tuvale ran down the county bank robbery stats for the year-to-date. There had been thirteen in all, eight attributable to the so-called Bike Bandit. Tuvale had printed out a run comparing the annual numbers going back ten years, warning Clay that if you adjusted this year’s rate to account for the active holiday season to come, bank robberies would be up a whopping 20 percent.

More robberies, of course, he said: more people, more banks, more bank robbers.

“But the Bike Bandit is single-handedly ruining our curve,” he said. “Violent crime down to a two-decade low nationwide, and this guy’s making it look like the James gang is back in Orange County.”

“Once a week for eight weeks,” said Mendez. “He can’t keep up that pace and not get himself caught.”

Tuvale nodded, unconvinced. “We don’t have a single eyewitness except for the bank employees and customers present at the time of the jobs,” he said. “He drives that motorcycle out of the immediate area and gets lost in the traffic.”

“He completely vanishes,” said Mendez.

Clay listened for some of the tone of pride that Laurel had had when speaking those identical words the afternoon before. But he didn’t hear pride. He heard exasperation.

Tuvale huffed up from the table, turned off the lights, and steadied the beam of an overhead projector onto the blank wall in front of them.

Clay listened to the fan. A Thomas Guide map of the county sharpened into focus. Tuvale had marked the Bike Bandit’s scores with angry red Xs. The light from the projector caught Tuvale’s face from the bottom and made him look like a craggy old man. Like a gravedigger bending over his lantern, thought Clay. Something he’d seen in a children’s book a thousand years ago.

“Clay, we put all the local PDs and the sheriffs on a direct alert status after the third job,” said Tuvale. “So we’re radioed along with the first response. Now, you and Sal can’t get to north county from here in time to do any good. Too much distance. Too much traffic. So it’s probably going to be a local takedown. That’s fine with us, right?”

“I don’t care who takes him down,” said Clay, although he did. You could swallow your pride for the record, for the press and the public and local enforcement, but you couldn’t swallow it with your heart. Nobody did.

“I’d like to see the sites,” he said.

“I’ve already done that,” said Mendez. “Freeway close, busy locations so the cash is there, less windows the better.”

Clay thought about this and wondered why some people, even Bureau people, were content doing a mediocre job.

“I’d still like to see them. And I’d like to have the photogrammetry done back in Washington. Any good stills from the surveillance videos?”

Mendez’s eyes flashed anger. “The stills suck. The bank videos are either old, broken, or turned off.”

Clay enjoyed other people’s anger, because it drew off his own and opened a big cold space inside. Marie had said the same about love.

“May I see the bad ones, then? Goodin in Image Enhancement can work with almost anything.”

He did all eight sites that day. The north county traffic was bad but it wasn’t anything like Miami or Washington. Californians still don’t know how good they have it, he thought.

After viewing the heist sites he found that the Bike Bandit was choosing wisely. Salena Mendez had culled the obvious: quick freeway access, busy branches, few windows.

But there was more: they were hit late morning or early afternoon when the customers were thin but the cash drawers were full. He wasn’t waiting around for safe money — just the cash drawers then out of there. Average time from initial demand to exit: fifty-eight seconds.

They were small, freestanding buildings on the borders of residential neighborhoods, thus easier to control and lacking armed security.

They were far away from local PD headquarters or Sheriff s substations.

They were all built with the parking areas to the side or back, offering the Bike Bandit anonymity until he was inside the building, and again until he had sped away.

They were all at least fifteen years old, increasing the chances of out-of-date or out-of-repair surveillance cameras.

And in every one the Bike Bandit had chosen a young woman teller, rather than an older one, or a male, both statistically more likely to offer resistance or the dye-pack bag, even though instructed by the robber not to.

Of course by the third heist, every teller in every bank was hitting the hot button the second the golden-haired, helmeted bandit strode into the branch.

Until the third heist, only two bank customers had even been aware that an armed robbery was going on right beside them.

On the fifth and seventh jobs he’d been offered dye-pack bags, but he knew one when he saw one and declined both deals. He’d told teller number five that the only ink he needed was already in his pen.

A man with a sense of humor.

Clay wondered about the exclusively north county locations. Was he working his own neighborhood, taking advantage of home turf? Or was he working from out-of-area, keeping his own litter box clean?

Clay guessed the latter because, for an armed robber, the Bike Bandit was careful. He was smart enough to hide his face. To obscure. To evade. Out-of-area, Clay thought.

Driving back toward Sonny’s place that evening he passed the soot-stained Disneyland Matterhorn on I-5, wondered if Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was still there. His favorite as a kid. Sonny, age eight, had slithered past his restraint bar, hopped out of the car, and run amok through the hallucinogenic ultraviolet landscape for twenty minutes, until security dragged him struggling from the exit. The brothers got lectured, got their parents called down to fetch them. As a ten-year-old, Clay had been responsible for Sonny as well as himself, and he received the bulk of his father’s wrath. On the long drive home, Clay told his mother and father he’d like to be security someday, help people in trouble, and he actually half meant it. The other half was BS to get himself off the hook. Sonny had skipped the BS, as always, and told them next time he’d like to jump ship inside the Pirates ride, help out looting the port.

He went back to the field office, chose a still photograph of the Bike Bandit and got it ready for Image Enhancement in Washington. They weren’t as bad as Mendez had made it sound, though the focus was too fuzzy for anything but photogrammetry. You weren’t going to read an arm tattoo from any of these, or a prison gang number, or get the name of a school off a ring.

He’d just need to stop by the robbed branch the next day and measure some of the key contents of the photograph: the height of the teller counter, the distance of the clock in the background from the floor, the distance from the camera to the clock, etc.

Goodin would draw the lines and make the extrapolations to tell them — within half an inch or so — how tall the Bike Bandit was.

Sonny and Laurel put up Clay in the garage apartment of their Laguna Canyon house until he found a place to live. The house was a semineglected rental, but Sonny seemed happy with it. It wasn’t easy for a Laguna Beach cop to live in Laguna because the town was so expensive. Sonny told Clay he liked the idea that Tim Leary’s Brotherhood had distributed LSD from a house just up the street. It gave the place character.

The apartment was small and drafty at night, but Clay had a view of the tree-shaded neighborhood, a couch that made into a bed, a bathroom, and a refrigerator. A pepper tree gave it shade. One of the windows was stained glass — a hummingbird dipping its beak into a hibiscus flower — which gave the room a muted glow when the sun was right.

On his first night there a huge raccoon looked through the window, stared at him, then lumbered away. Clay’s take-home Bureau Ford was covered with pink pepper hulls that first morning, but Sonny had his van in the little one-car garage. Clay liked the way the hulls blew off when he accelerated up Laguna Canyon Road, like he was driving through a pale pink storm.

Sonny worked night patrol, so he’d be gone before Clay got home. Laurel taught at a private elementary school so she’d be there when Clay was.

Second night, she made drinks and they sat in wooden patio chairs in the little front yard, in the shade of the pepper tree, watching the tourist cars creeping into town for the annual art festivals.

“You could find a place in Laguna,” she said. “It’s a good place to live.”

“I got the paper to check the rentals. Awful high.”

“It’s two grand a month for this dump.”

“I like it.”

“It’s small.”

“Could you get something better?”

“For twice the money. Things are tight. I don’t make much. Sonny’s place on Canyon Acres burned flat in the big fire of ’ninety-three. Way underinsured. He got a lump sum that would just about cover a new foundation and that was all. Split the lump with his ex.”

“He said it was a lot of money.”

“Not enough to rebuild a home in Laguna Beach. So he blew a lot of it, betting. The fire was bad, but the divorce was worse. He’s got a big heart, your brother. But his steering wheel goes out sometimes. That’s all over now. He quit. But we’re still digging out. There’s a shopping bag full of bills in there that barely get paid. Some of the credit cards it’s been months. We’ll get there. It’s under control.”

Clay said nothing. There was no divorce. It wasn’t his business what Sonny told his girlfriend, or what he didn’t.

But Clay had no idea that Sonny was gambling. “What, college basketball, football?”

“Everything. All legal, Fed-Man. We’d fly out to Vegas every other weekend, he’d play the sports book at Caesar’s. We’d drag our sorry asses home Sunday night, get up on Monday and start again. Fun. But it’s over now.”

Clay thought about this, said nothing. Sonny had called and written only sporadically. He’d made it sound like his divorce was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Like the insurance money was beyond his wildest dreams. Like life was just so damned good. Sonny had always obscured his troubles with bluff and optimism.

“It looks to me like he’s got it good here,” Clay said.

“Of course he does. He’s got a live-in girl he doesn’t have to marry, a job, and a bungalow in Laguna Beach.”

She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a sleeveless blouse. Blue eyes and freckles. As much as Clay wanted not to have noticed, he noticed she was without a bra. She still smelled like the suntan oil that made him think of California in the summer. It was some kind of perfume for all he knew.

“Why doesn’t he have to marry you?”

“Won’t marry.”

“How do you know that?”

“You get a sense of things. I’m twenty-four.”

“You want that?”

She looked at him, smiled, ran her fingers through her hair to get it away from her face.

“I grew up in a desert town so small it didn’t make the maps. Filthy and hopeless. What I want is to never go back.”

“Looks like you’ve got it pretty good here, too.”

“I want the best I can get. For now, this is it.”

She stood. “I’ll make us dinner.”

“I’m going to visit some of the old haunts tonight.”

“Then I’ll eat alone.”

She walked back toward the house with her drink in her hand. Clay saw where the chair slats had left straight red bars across her thighs.

Clay walked into town in the twilight. The hills were tan and crisp against the darkening July sky and the houses sat on the ridgeline with specific bearing, sun turning their windows bronze.

Tour buses lined the road. The visitors poured out and swirled like liquid toward the festival entrances, the crosswalk, the sidewalk, the street.

Clay fell in with a big group and headed down Broadway. Past the playhouse he could smell the eucalyptus and the ocean and the canyon sage and the tourist perfumes and the car exhaust all mixed together and it was a smell he’d never found anywhere else in the world.

He crossed Coast Highway and walked up to Heisler Park to look down on the Rockpile break where he and Sonny had learned to surf. The roses in the park made red and white marks on the Pacific behind them. He looked down at the water and the rocks.

You went a long way, Fed-Man, he thought, and then you came back. Thank you, Bike Bandit.

He had a beer at the Marine Room, dinner at what used to be the old Ivy House, another drink at the Saloon.

Night had fallen soft and damp and Clay was standing at the corner of Coast Highway and Forest when the white and blue LBPD cruiser pulled to a stop and Sonny smiled at him from behind the wheel. The window was down.

“Get in, creep.”

“Glad to.”

Clay slid onto the rigid bench and slammed the door. Sonny punched the car into the traffic and headed north.

“You gotta get rid of those white shirts and suspenders.”

“I know. My life’s in storage. By the way, I’ll get somewhere to stay the next day or two. I’m not going to flop in your apartment for the rest of my life.”

“Stay a year if you want. Two. I’ll charge you a third of the rent and make out good. See that old fart with the white hair right there? He’s one of Leary’s guys from the Brotherhood. Runs a leather shop now, you know, purses and sandals and belts and shit.”

Sonny pulled the cruiser over and leaned across Clay to the window. “Hey you old drug addict! What colors you seeing right now?”

“Sonny! I’m clean as ever. Go bust somebody with a leaf blower, man!”

“Stay clean, you depraved old lizard. We still got room in jail for you.”

“Praise the Lord!”

“You better, brother. You need Him.”

Sonny pulled back, checked his rearview and chirped the car back into the traffic.

“We got a city ordinance against leaf blowers now.”

“I gathered.”

“You can blow your buddies in the Boom-Boom bungalows, but you can’t blow leaves. Go figure. It’s small-town stuff, Clay, but I love it. See that apartment up there, the one with the plants on the balcony?”

“The girl. I remember that.”

“We finally got a conviction on the boyfriend. Fourteen years later, we finally got him. That’s where he did her.”

“I was a senior that year.”

“I was a sophomore. Remember how pissed off you were when I quit the baseball team to surf?”

“My whole point was you could have done both.”

“I didn’t want to goddamn do both. I wanted to surf, brother. Look, that son of a bitch in the Lexus is drunk.”

“Maybe he’s just old.”

“They ought to lower the driving age to sixty. You wouldn’t believe these old Elmers coming out from Dayton to see art in California. Scarier than the Nightstalker, if you ask me. How do you work in suspenders, anyway?”

“Jesus, Sonny, they just hold my pants up.”

Sonny cackled and gunned the car north toward Emerald Bay.

“No, really, I understand. You just operate on a higher level than me. You can be comfortable and stylish. Little gel in the hair. You don’t have to be a city cop wearing a blue uniform that’s half polyester all summer in the heat.”

“Get cotton.”

“Half poly doesn’t wrinkle. You even carry anymore?”

“I work bank robberies, Brother. I carry.”

“What?”

“A Smith nine.”

“Pussy gun. I still use the.45 for maximum stopping power.”

“Ever stopped anybody with it?”

“Hell no. I’ve never even drawn it. You know something? It’s good to have you back. Did you miss this place?”

Clay thought about that. “I didn’t think I did. But now that I’m back I’m not so sure.”

“You never were very decisive. But you have a disadvantage.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re a Libra. The scales. You can always see it one way, then see it another. So it takes you five years to decide something most people decide in a second.”

“Astrology — you’ve been in California too long.”

“Laurel make you something to eat?”

“She offered. But I wanted to come down here, maybe run into my little brother.”

“What do you think of her?”

“Well, she’s pretty. Bright. I think she loves you. You should marry her, make her happy.”

Sonny laughed. “I don’t know if I can afford her.”

“Expensive tastes?”

“Not so much that, but yeah, on what I make. She’s just hard to keep up with. She outdrinks me, outscrews me, outtalks me. Needs about four hours of sleep a night and I crawl out of bed after eight, still need a nap before the shift. You get a twenty-four-year-old woman who grew up poor, thinks she knows what she wants, better look out.”

“Maybe she’s just trying to make you happy.”

“Well, whatever, Clay. What about you? What about this Georgia peach you left heartbroken in Atlanta?”

“I left her the Braves tickets, too.”

“Why not bring her out here?”

“Clean break. Fresh start. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Who does?”

“Don’t start that again.”

The Bike Bandit hit a Wells Fargo branch in Fullerton the next morning at 11:25.

Salena Mendez had taken the morning off, so Clay flew down the steps of the field office building, hustled to his car, and drove fast the whole way there, got there twenty-one minutes later. He was sweating hard even with the air on high, hadn’t rolled on a live alarm in five weeks now. The closer he got the harder he scanned the streets around him for a sight of the golden-haired Bike Bandit snaking his way to an on-ramp.

The Bandit was gone. Fullerton PD was already on scene, six officers and a sergeant who accommodated Clay with feigned disinterest. Par for the course.

The bank employees were giddy and talked fast, relieved to be alive and to have been robbed of only impersonal money — par for the course, too. The Bandit was polite and soft-spoken. The Bandit was obscured by his helmet and visor. The bandit “seemed handsome and calm.” The Bandit had refused the dye-pack again. The Bandit had taken down $11,450, a little better than his average.

Clay collected the videotape, glad to see the recorder was a new one, hoping he could get something more revealing than what they’d gotten so far.

He listened in on the police interviews, then did his own. He used a tape recorder and a notepad so nothing would get past him. The target teller told him that the Bandit’s gun hand was shaking as he made his demand.

What were his exact words?

All your money real fast, hon. Don’t touch the button, don’t touch the dye. Quick! Quick! You gotta be quick!

Two hours later Clay stood in the bank parking lot. This one was behind the building, away from the entrance windows and foot traffic — like the others. An assistant branch manager had mustered enough foolish courage to follow the Bandit out of the building and watch him make his escape. She described the motorcycle as mostly black, some yellow maybe, with a high-pitched scream, “not very big.” She showed Clay the parking space.

Clay looked for a departure skid: no. He looked north up Pinehurst, the direction the Bandit had gone, checked where the street met the lot for skids — it was often a good place because gutter water helped tires to chirp. No.

He walked up Pinehurst five blocks just looking at the innocuous street, which turned from light commercial to residential in less than a quarter mile. Apartments, condos, some single residences.

He knocked on doors. Talked to some kids. Found a seniors complex where there were always plenty of people home. Nobody had seen a motorcycle except for a young boy eager to help. He’d have told Clay he’d seen a spaceship if that’s what Clay had asked. He wanted to hold Clay’s badge — against Bureau procedure — but Clay let him anyway.

Only one person noticed something out of the ordinary. Older woman, sharp, clear eyes, floral print dress, and support hose thick as a sweater.

What she saw on her morning walk was a ResCom Cable van parked along the street, half a block from her unit. It was 11:15 when she noticed it and it made her think of the bad picture she was getting on QVC. At 11:35 she was back home and saw it leave.

“What’s unusual about that?” Clay asked.

“The motorcycle driving into it’s unusual,” she snapped.

“Explain.”

“Just did. They rode a motorcycle into the back of it, up some kind of ramp. Then the ResCom Cable van drove away. What’s even more unusual, Mr. FBI, is that we’re all on Comcast Cable here, no reason for no ResCom.”

Clay smiled and said nothing for a moment. There it was: the break.

He spent another hour grilling the woman. Her name was Gladys Forbes.

She couldn’t describe the motorcycle driver, didn’t remember any long golden hair, couldn’t remember if he — or she, Ms. Forbes warned him with a stern finger — had on a backpack or not.

Couldn’t describe the motorcycle.

Couldn’t describe the van other than white with the ResCom Cable sign on the side.

Couldn’t figure out what ResCom Cable was doing in this part of the county anyway.

But she could show him exactly where it was parked. She led him there in her floral print dress, blinking in the hot sunshine. Clay examined the oil-stained asphalt for tire tracks. He checked the street from all four directions because the angle of the sun can obscure or expose the faint markings left by tires on hard surfaces.

Nothing.

“I swear it was there,” said Gladys.

“I believe you,” said Clay.

“No reason to be, but it was there.”

“You’ve been a terrific help.”

From the bank he called information for the ResCom number, figuring he’d start with their head of security. No such company in Fullerton, Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin, Santa Ana.

No such company anywhere in Orange County, the directory operator told him.

None in L.A., San Bernardino, or San Diego counties either.

Clay confirmed by checking the bank’s current collection of phone books: zip for ResCom.

Just a couple of cheap magnetic signs, he thought: check the local signmakers for the ResCom order.

He called Tuvale but had to talk to Salena instead. She seemed miffed that he’d been on the case for two days and made more progress than she’d made in eight weeks. She’d taken the morning off because her head was killing her. She told him she’d cover the sign makers, suggested he double-check the street because track indentations can be invisible when the light is wrong. Clay told her to check DMV for what they had on handicapped persons’ vehicles equipped with ramps — not lifts — for getting wheelchairs in and out. He figured the Bank Bandit had probably rigged the thing himself, but the DMV was worth a try. Salena said she’d see what she could do.

Clay hung up and knocked on doors for two more hours, took more notes, learned nothing that seemed useful.

Then he drove to the bank that was hit last week and measured off the photographic elements for Image Enhancement. Next, to the post office in Irvine to make the overnight mail to D.C.

Oddly happy and a little giddy and for some reason thinking of Marie, Clay stopped by the Law Enforcement Firing Range in Anaheim and burned off some clips of wadcutters from his nine. One hundred and twenty rounds. Gray residue on his cuffs. Pussy gun or not, his right wrist was tender and both ears were ringing faintly and his nostrils were scented with gunsmoke on his drive back down to Laguna.

Always liked that smell.

2

Sonny had gotten up early that morning, just after he heard Clay’s Ford crunch down the drive. While Laurel was in the shower he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He scrubbed the night’s breath away, looking at her through the glass shower door. Her head was tilted back into the spray, arms raised, her pale underarms glistening almost white with the water. She moved her head level and peeked at him.

“Ambush?”

He nodded and smiled around the toothbrush.

“Oh, goodie.”

He lay in bed and thought about her. She came out with a towel still wrapped around her head. He took that and her robe off and pulled the sheet over them against the canyon chill.

“You’re up early this morning,” she said, running her hand down him. “In more ways than one.”

“Busy day.”

“Don’t hurry through the good things.”

“Nope, nope.”

He got on top of her and in. Skin on cool skin but inside heat on heat. A low voltage shook up through him and he felt the sheet on his gooseflesh. He pushed himself up and looked down. Her eyes were gray on gray mornings, blue on blue. Blue today. He could smell her soap and shampoo and see the furrows the big pink comb had left in her hair. She ran her fingers up and down the low of his back.

Sometimes when she looked at him her face was relaxed and her eyes clear and Sonny had no idea what she was thinking. He never asked because he believed that privacy was the nest for secrets and that secrets were the center of the soul.

But they had made a habit of carrying on conversations like this, and so they did:

“What’s your day today, police guy?”

“Clean out the garage, drive the van around the block to keep the battery good… oh, my… things like that.”

She laughed, trailed her nails down his skin. He pushed hard and she pushed back.

“Go to the bank, pick out that new holster. Ummm. You?”

“We got a field trip to that new kids’ museum up in Santa Ana. They got a bed of nails they can lay on. Some laser stuff. Let me turn over.”

She rolled over and got her knees under her. She gasped lightly when Sonny pushed in and set a rhythm.

“I’ll get some groceries,” he said. “We’re low.”

He reached forward and cupped her breasts, then kneaded her fanny with his hands. She groaned as he dug his thumbs into the big muscles. With her face sideways on the pillow he could see her in profile and she could look at him with one astonishingly clear blue eye. Like a playing card, he thought: queen of something.

Sonny leaped back and let his middle do the work. Arms out like wings, fingers spread like endfeathers.

The body electric.

“Goddamn that feels good.”

She groaned in time with the sharp slap of their bodies.

“I love you,” he said.

“Well sure you do now.”

“But when we’re done I will too.”

“Oh… oh… oh. Hey… when you get to Lucky’s pick up some… oh… make sure you pick up some…”

“Eggs?”

“Got those. Oh.”

“Wine?”

“Got… oh… that.”

“What?”

“Cash back. Ohhh… yesss. We need cash.”

When she started shaking he spread his hands on her hips and pulled her in, let her out, pulled her in, let her out. He gently pushed her down and covered her with all his weight, all of it forward on that one thing. A riot of nerves in her then, a series of detonations big and small like fireworks and he wondered why his was a rhythm and hers more like chaos.

Her quivers had just started to slow when his stomach felt like he’d stepped over a cliff.

Then the long sweet fall.

“Hey sweetie,” she whispered in profile. His face was right up against hers. “I’m gonna be late.”

When she was gone Sonny dressed and ate a big breakfast, drank a shot of Cuervo gold to take off the edge. His stomach had gone from the long freefall with Laurel to the tight, slightly aching tension he always felt on a workday.

He read the paper, did the breakfast dishes, had another drink. He got the key from the bottom dresser drawer and went outside.

The morning was warming now, with the sun well over the eastern ridgeline. Sometimes the way the sun came up so bright over the hills made Sonny feel like it was looking for him. Buzzards circled in a canyon updraft. He smelled the sage and pines as he unlocked the padlock on the garage and lifted the door.

He backed out the big panel van, made sure there was plenty of gas, then slid off the old vinyl seat and locked the garage door shut again. He checked the oil and coolant and tire pressure, and got the control pad from the console, underneath a half-empty bottle of Cuervo.

Then he walked ten steps behind the vehicle, hit the control pad and watched the back doors open. A ramp lifted, then slid from the cargo floor. It was two feet wide and eight feet long. It groaned into position on the driveway. When it came to a rest against the asphalt he could heard the hard-working little motor stop, its servo-gear disengage.

Sonny had bought the entire rig at a police auction believing it would become handy someday, no idea how. It was once property of a middle-management cocaine distributor with a penchant for Harley Davidsons, a guy Sonny’d taken down on a bust right here in Laguna Canyon. The police band scanner was already in.

He’d reworked the motor and gearing so it was fast. It took seven seconds for the doors to open and the ramp to come out, seven seconds to get them back in place.

He’d bought it with money from a good weekend at the sports book — one of the few things he had left from those days, besides the debts.

It was just after ten when he left to do his errands.

He stopped off at the storage rental in Santa Ana and walked the little 200cc street bike up the ramp and into the back of the van. Turning it around was always kind of a pain.

He was sweating good by the time he had it aimed right, fastened the straps tight so it wouldn’t tip over when the van made a turn.

It was already ninety degrees according to the bank sign he passed back on 17th Street. He got the helmet and the bag of gear and the magnetic signs for the vehicle, the Velcro strap to fasten the control module to the handlebars of the bike. A nip from the Cuervo in the console.

Then on to Fullerton, his nerves jacked tight and everything around him so clear and acute it seemed to Sonny like the kind of vision a hawk would have, or a big predatory cat. The adrenaline made you see things you never knew were there: the sparrow lost in the sparrow-sized leaves of a cottonwood, the old man with the wrinkled neck watching you from the dark of his garage.

Now to park. Critical that he have twelve feet of clearance behind the van — eight for the ramp and at least four feet to turn onto it. Best was a straight shot, park the van at a corner where nobody could park behind him. And critical, too, that he park in a place where there wouldn’t be people lined up to see him: an industrial zone where workers punched the clock, a moribund parking lot for an out-of-session school or failing business, upscale neighborhoods where people had views of something better than the street. You needed some privacy, but enough activity around so a van wouldn’t seem out of place. Sometimes it took him fifteen minutes just to find the right spot.

Today was a tough one. Nothing looked right. Crowded side-streets, apartments, and houses too close to the road. The further you got from the site, the more risk you’d get seen.

He circled outward from the bank, further and further, finally settling five blocks from the branch, northbound on Pinehurst. A nice stretch of open curb, then a fire hydrant behind it, which left him a guaranteed thirty extra feel. Looked like an old-folks complex up the street half a block, but at least he wasn’t right in front of someone’s window. That was fine with Sonny because he liked old people, thought they deserved respect, and had been convinced early in life that he himself would never become one. What happened to his wife seemed to confirm this idea.

He put on the backpack and unfastened the straps that held the bike. It was uncomfortable because he couldn’t stand up all the way. It felt good to sit on the little motorcycle and take the handlebars in his gloved hands, feel the beautiful balance of his weight over the tires. He reached down to the console and took the Cuervo.

He could feel his heart slamming against his shirt and the dry roar of blood in his ears. And that funny taste far back in the throat, like steel. And everything so clear, so bright and actual.

He started the bike and let the engine scream inside the sheet-metal cave of the van, then pushed the control pad dangling on the right handlebar. On with the helmet, first shaking back the blond wig he’d Superglued to the inside.

Brightness. Daylight. Noxious exhaust rolling out the opening doors. Visor down. Ramp extending, touching the asphalt seven seconds later. Like a bridge that would lead him away.

Down the ramp and onto the street. Out of himself and into the world. Sonny pushed the control pad again. But he didn’t look backward and he didn’t check the side mirror because he knew it would work, because all of his focus was in front of him, all his resources aimed only at the here and the now.

He was bulletproof.

The next thing Sonny knew he was coming in for his landing. Time had just begun to pass again, the world starting to turn after a long pause.

This was his favorite part of the whole thing. He hit the control module. He lined up the front tire of his screaming motorcycle with the back of the van. He downshifted and braked a little, paid out the seven seconds in second gear, felt the heft of the backpack behind him, felt his awareness of things begin to return. Saw the ramp settle into place on the street.

Parked OK.

Cute teller.

All your money real fast, hon. Don’t touch the button, don’t touch the dye. Quick! Quick! You gotta be quick!

Hands shaking, revolver heavy, this roar like the roar of an Amtrak train going through his head…

Sonny hit the ramp just after it touched down. The little bike climbed the steep angle and as soon as it leveled off inside he hit the control pad again, then the kill switch by his left thumb. Strapped the bike fast. The ramp settled into place and the door swung inward.

He took the helmet off, hooked it to the handlebar and climbed across the console and into the driver’s seat. Less than ten seconds later he was moving north on Pinehurst, the bike behind him jiggling tautly against the ties, the backpack with gun and cash on the floor, the bottle of Gold clamped between his thighs.

Sonny hit the air conditioner, then the police band scanner, picked up Dispatch sending units to the Wells Fargo branch in east Fullerton.

He took a deep breath and headed toward the freeway. He could already feel the first numbing warmth of exhaustion starting to spread inside him.

He took a sip of Gold and wondered how long it would take Clay to arrive on scene. Terrible luck to have things work out like that, he thought, but what could you do? You couldn’t very well turn out your brother because you had a business conflict with him.

But Clay would be out of the apartment soon. Everything would be back to normal. And before long he’d have the bills paid off and enough for a down on a dream home somewhere, on the beach, plenty of square feet, a wall around it.

It seemed to Sonny like he deserved a little time on Easy Street.

When Sonny got out of bed late that afternoon Clay was already home, talking with Laurel in the kitchen. He hadn’t even heard them come in. But the postjob exhaustion and the tequila always put him down hard for a few hours.

He’d dreamed that he was a flying squirrel, gliding from treetop to treetop on nifty gray wings.

“Hi, kids,” he said. He was still woozy from everything, still in his boxers.

Laurel was ironing one of his uniform shirts, her cocktail glass wobbling on the board with each stroke she made.

“The Bike Bandit’s using a van to get away in,” she said.

Sonny watched Clay raise his eyebrows: that was what you got for bringing your work home.

“Hope it’s not mine,” Sonny muttered. He headed for the coffee pot.

“He robbed a bank in north county today,” said Laurel. “Clay didn’t see him but he found out about the van. From this old lady.”

Sonny poured some coffee. “He’s got a getaway driver?”

“I don’t think so,” said Clay. “I think he’s working alone.”

Sonny pondered this, sipped the black, hot coffee, looked through the steam at his brother. “Plates?”

“I wish.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Just the FDIC. Eleven grand, plus.”

“You Feds can afford it. Just a little less money for suspenders.”

Laurel snapped one of Clay’s suspenders. “I like ‘em.”

“You would,” said Sonny. He didn’t like leaving them now. Not that he didn’t trust them, nothing like that at all, but he wished Clay was working nights and he could be alone with his girl. The jobs always made him tired and horny.

Sonny spent the first hour of his shift helping one of the cadets direct the festival traffic. The poor girl looked frantic, standing in the crosswalk while the pedestrians scurried by and the irate drivers ignored her whistle chirps and hand commands.

Rough town, he thought.

After that he talked down a furious husband on a domestic dispute call, sat around with the couple and shot the breeze about Laguna in the old days for a while before telling them they’d both go to jail if he ever had to come back here.

Okay, Sonny, we’re sorry man, this’ll never happen again…

Quiet night, overall. When the tourists were gone the streets were mostly empty. The ocean air made the car windows slick with mist and he could see the damp air swirling around the street-lamps. He got a drunk and disorderly call to the Sandpiper nightclub, booked the shitbird.

Then a peeper reported up on Cliff, couldn’t find him but with his flashlight saw footprints in the flower bed outside the window, right where she said he was standing. The right shoe looked normal. The left was oversized, like a prosthetic device or a cast. Gave Sonny the creeps. The girl was a pretty college student, June. He told her he’d have a detective call in the morning, maybe make a cast, set up a way to catch the perv.

Up to Newport. Newport was way out of jurisdiction, of course, but bills weren’t the only thing Sonny was having trouble with these days. While running up losses at Caesar’s in Las Vegas he’d been trying to cover them on the side with a bookie named Bobby up here in Newport. That kind of worked and kind of didn’t. Two months ago he was into Bobby for about thirteen large, and since then he’d paid that off but run up another sixteen on some incredible bad luck with Women’s World Cup Soccer. He hadn’t seen any way on Earth that our girls could beat the Communists.

Sonny guided the cruiser up Coast Highway. To his left the Pacific glittered black in the moonlight. The trailer park at El Morro swept by, then the cottages at Crystal Cove.

He found Attila at Snug Harbor bar. Attila was a huge, unflabby man given to wild aloha shirts and expensive cigars. He was on the collection side of Bobby’s business. Attila struck Sonny as a reasonable enough guy, but you didn’t want to make a promise you couldn’t keep.

Sonny hated him on principle but most of his principles were gone. Gambling did that. And Bobby had tangled him up with phone recordings and a clandestine videotape, as insurance against Sonny’s law enforcement position. Sonny had it in his mind that he could claim a sting operation if they ratted him, though it probably wouldn’t work.

And he also figured that if the banks were giving him marked bills, it would be quite a surprise to Attila and Bobby when they got popped with them. With so much cash going through their hands, it would be tough to trace them back to him.

Attila didn’t acknowledge Sonny when he walked into Snug Harbor, but ten minutes later the big man came out, heaving himself along the sidestreet toward his Jaguar. His shirt was blue with tigers all over it.

Like a whole goddamned jungle coming at you, thought Sonny, starting up the car.

He pulled up parallel with the Jag, no lights, no way he wanted to get caught out of jurisdiction, try to explain shaking down some big hood for not signaling a lane change.

Attila opened the Jaguar trunk. Sonny tossed in the shopping bag sealed with masking tape and Attila used one fat finger to press down the lid, the convenience motor kicking in with a hum and latching it into place.

“That’s nine. The rest next week.”

“That would be seven, plus one more for the time.”

“I know the goddamned formula.”

“You should. Bobby says hello.”

“Tell Bobby to go fuck himself. While you’re at it, fuck yourself, too. Maybe you’ll have a heart attack and I won’t have to look at your shirts anymore.”

“Sonny, you’re a funny guy.”

“I’ll see you next time.”

Sonny held the cruiser to sixty, heading back down Coast Highway. Felt better. Relieved. Relaxed.

It was good to know that the two grand he’d held back would go toward the household bills bag, and the down payment bag. He was up to almost fifteen thousand for the dream house. Still a little way to go, he thought. Could double that in one bet on the All Star Game. The American League had the pitching, Martinez would get the start. No. Money was money, but that was a different kind of money. When he had, say… fifty or a hundred grand, then he’d lay it on Laurel and they could start looking.

He felt tired then, and it was getting close to midnight. But it was a good tired, an earned one, knowing that you’d worked hard to provide for your girl, your future.

3

On Sunday they celebrated Clay moving out. He’d found a good rental right there in Laguna and he could move in next week. Then he’d have time to look inland for something to buy if he wanted to.

But today, the beach. After a brief argument between Sonny and Laurel, they decided it made sense to take the van. Clay thought Sonny was a little more on edge every day: probably just sick of the intrusion. Didn’t blame him. They piled in with three of Sonny’s old boards and a cooler, towels, and beach chairs. Headed for Rockpile. Since there were only two seats in the thing, Laurel volunteered to ride back with the cargo.

“Hang on, kids!” said Sonny, starting his right turn on PCH.

Clay turned and offered a hand as Sonny took the corner fast. Laurel grabbed it and hung on, and the cooler slid out from under her and left her sitting midair, still holding Clay’s hand, until she plopped to the floor.

Her legs spread into an awkward position and it was just her bathing suit black under the cover-up but Clay saw the blush come to Laurel’s face and he was glad that she felt that way.

“Watch it, man,” she screamed, more for humor than alarm. “I just flashed your brother.”

“Sorry, kids.”

Clay watched her get the cooler back under her, then brace herself against the van body, arms extended.

“Not going anywhere now,” she announced, smiling at Clay. “So slow down, jerk-wad.”

Clay saw that the cooler bottom wouldn’t grip the smooth piece of metal on the floor.

“Sonny, what’s all that machinery back there?” Clay asked.

“A wheelchair ramp and a motor to run it. I got this thing cheap at the auction. I didn’t need the ramp, but the van was clean.”

“It gets about two hundred yards per gallon,” said Laurel. “Besides being the ugliest thing on wheels.”

“It comes in handy for stuff like this, though. That’s why I bought it.”

Clay looked back at Laurel again, then at the ramp. He thought of the white ResCom van in which the Bike Bandit had made his escape.

“It’s like the setup the Bike Bandit uses.”

“You’d have to rob banks to pay the gas for it,” said Laurel.

“Hope he doesn’t use his in a high-speed chase,” said Sonny. “Past fifty, these things’ll turn over in a breeze.”

“That corner felt like fifty back here,” said Laurel.

Clay turned and smiled at her and she spread her legs and lifted the cover-up, smiling back.

“I just flashed Fed-Man again. This time because I wanted to.”

“Slut,” said Sonny.

“You sweet-talker, you.”

It was early enough that they had the break to themselves. A little south had pushed up from Mexico and the waves were building on the rocks and breaking off in steep walls.

Clay could hardly get himself up and balanced before getting knocked off. He remembered being a lot faster in the water when he was a kid. He’d lifted some weights since then, and gained some muscle, but he felt heavy and dopey in the water. Feds don’t surf. It didn’t matter. Just being out was enough, with the sun warm on his skin and the water cold around him. There was just something about this: the hiss of a board on the sea, the smooth velocity.

But Sonny seemed to have retained his talent: Clay watched him carving up and down the wave faces, then crouching low to power through the tubes. Then he’d exit with an exaggerated kick-out, board and body twisting skyward, connected by the leash, ending with a scream and a splash.

Clay looked back at Laurel on the beach, upright in a portable chair, reading a magazine, the cooler beside her. She waved and he waved back. He tried to get a big wave, maybe show off a little, but he slipped on the takeoff, got pitched headfirst and thoroughly pummeled.

A few minutes later he looked back again and she was pinned beneath Sonny, struggling to get away. Clay could hear her screams. He watched her slip past him, run for the water. A minute later they both came splashing out and capsized him, then a fight for the board broke out. It ended with them three across like puppies, breathing hard, and eyeing a silent five-footer suddenly rolling toward them from the horizon. They abandoned ship and dove for the bottom.

Later Clay bought wine and beer and ice cream. Sonny sprung for three enormous live Maine lobsters, which Laurel named Spike, Mike, and Ike. They got the pots and barbecue going in the little front yard and cracked some beers.

They ate early and drank a lot. Clay was a little surprised how fast Sonny could drink a six-pack, most of a bottle of wine, and three very stiff margaritas. Caught him downing a shot of Cuervo in the kitchen when he thought nobody would see.

Clay got a little shellacked himself. He was sitting in the shade of the pepper tree when Sonny wobbled into the house and didn’t come back out. Then Laurel followed him and she didn’t come back out either. A few minutes later Clay heard them in the bedroom. Ten, fifteen minutes after that they were still at it.

He gathered up two handfuls of pink pepper hulls, wondering how much they weighed. Not much. He thought of Marie, dialed her on his cell phone and told her answering machine he’d arrived OK, hoped she was fine.

What a putz, he thought.

When Laurel came back her hair was brushed out neat and she smelled like a fresh dose of suntan oil. She was barefoot, walking with just enough hesitancy that he knew she was drunk. She sat down on a patio chair.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s OK.”

“He gets that way sometimes. Just shitfaced. Then he gets weepy and wants to do things.”

“He loves you.”

“He’s fucked up, Clay. I know it.”

“I guess I don’t see him that way.”

She pushed herself up, went into the house, came back a minute later. She set a big twine-handled paper shopping bag on his lap.

“What way do you see this?”

Clay set the bag between his feet, leaned over and pulled out of the envelopes. A quick check: bills, bills, and more bills. All overdue, canceled this and that, referred to collections, blah, blah, blah.

“What’s the total?”

“Thirty, forty grand. I don’t know. He had fifteen credit cards going at one point. I do know the interest piles up about as fast as our paychecks. Those are the ones we’re waiting on. The ones were paying on, that’s a whole other bag.”

“No toys. Where’d it all go?”

“Where do you think?”

“You said he quit.”

“Robbed Peter to pay Paul. That’s Peter between your feet, patron saint of the cash advance.”

Clay dropped the handful of bills back into the bag.

“I don’t know if it started with Suzanne. You know about that.”

“Yeah.”

“I do too, but he never told me. I wondered if you would. One of his partners thought I deserved to know, since I was sharing a bed with him by then.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, well, if I’d been married a year and my husband died in a car crash, I might spin out, too.”

Clay thought of the long coma, the days he’d spent with Sonny and the parents and Suzanne’s brothers in the IC ward, then the critical care ward, then the regular ward, then the cemetery. The diminishing gradients of hope. It was so hard, just to look at her.

He’d understood what Sonny was going through, feeling so much of it himself. Then the fire destroying his house. And nowhere near enough insurance. Like God Himself had put the black hand on Sonny, some kind of test or curse or payback. Clay had lost his easy faith in a good and righteous God then, never gotten it back. He wondered if Sonny was trying to get it back when he bet on something, giving Him a chance to change His mind. But he knew that Sonny was trying to get Suzanne back, because Laurel looked a lot like her, right down to the freckles, the dark straight hair and blue eyes. Same age as Suzanne was when Sonny married her. Same sweet, fuck-the-world attitude.

“Or I might try to find somebody else like her,” said Laurel. “Look, I’m drunk. I’m going to go lay down for a while.”

She picked up the unpaid bills bag, looking down at him from close.

“We’re different, you and me,” she said. “But a couple of times the last week I’ve wondered what it would have been like to meet you first. That’s not a come-on. It’s just me talking to you. You wonder that?”

Clay felt a great desire to stand and hold her, to take her. He didn’t want to feel it, but he couldn’t control it any more than he could make himself miss Marie or Atlanta or Dallas.

“There’s some things you don’t allow yourself to think.”

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one.”

“Well, yes. And yes.”

“What did you come up with?”

“I wish we had. I wish I could take you in that bedroom right now and not come out for about five years. That’s not a come-on. It’s just me talking to you.”

She smiled down at him. “Fed-Man has feelings.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“I’m actually embarrassed to say. But I won’t try to tell you I didn’t allow myself to think it.”

“Cough it up.”

“No.”

“You’re not playing fair.”

“You just got suckered is all.”

She reached down and touched his cheek. It felt to Clay like a matter-of-fact touch, a way of making sure he was what she thought he was. “I’ll see you later, Clay. I’m going to go be with Sonny.”

In the bird-chirping twilight Clay cracked another beer while he studied the back of his brother’s van. It was locked up and he didn’t want to bother them for the keys, but he wanted to get a feel for how the Bike Bandit was making his getaways.

The method made sense: it was quick and it changed his appearance, like a disguise. Once inside he was almost safe. Speed was the key, so there must be some motorization involved. It would take too much time to park the bike, open the van doors and pull out the ramp, then drive up it, retract the ramp, etc.

But it was easy enough to motorize a ramp and a set of vehicle doors — handicapped vans like Sonny’s were retrofitted that way all the time.

Yes, the right rig would keep the Bike Bandit out of sight after just a few critical seconds for loading. That was why no witnesses had seen the bike further than a block or two away from the banks. A good parking place was essential. The downside was that someone would finally see him make the entry or the exit, and Gladys Forbes, out for her morning walk, had done just that.

He sipped his beer, looked through the driver’s side window. There wasn’t much to see in the dim light. When he looked at the ramp he saw Laurel sitting midair before she collapsed onto it, then that look on her face.

Clear your head of her, he thought. Fun is fun but poison is still poison.

Tuesday Goodin called from Washington, said Clay’s work on the photograph was perfect. The suspect in the picture was between five-nine and five-ten, approximate weight 185. His backpack was a No Fear brand now popular with young people on both coasts. The helmet was a Bell, common and probably impossible to trace.

“Get me a clear picture of his shoes,” said Goodin. “I do good things with shoes.”

“I’ll try.”

On Wednesday Salena Mendez told him that she’d found the maker of the ResCom vehicle sign: Signs of the Times in Santa Ana. They were a mom and pop shop but they remembered the ResCom order. It was placed on May 10 of this year, filled May 18. The customer’s name was Ed Presley, and Mr. Presley left an address and phone number that Salena determined to be fictitious. No state or Federal jacket on an Edward or Ed Presley living in California. He paid $38.88 cash for two signs that read ResCom Cable Services, followed by a phone number that turned out to be that of a funeral home in San Clemente.

“White male, medium height, medium weight, short hair,” said Mendez, staring past Clay’s shoulder at God knew what. “Thirty to early thirties. Wore a shirt with palm trees on it when he placed the order. The owner remembered because he’s got the same shirt. Alone both times. Never saw his vehicle.”

Clay collated the data while his heart fluttered, then steadied. Presley was Sonny’s age, height, and weight, had short hair and a shirt with palm trees on it. Sonny had a white van with a motorized ramp in it. Sonny owed money but bought sixty dollars’ worth of lobster for dinner.

On the flip side, there was no motorcycle, and the fact that Sonny was a brother and a cop, and a good one. More on the flip side was common sense, and, if it came down to it, the simple truths revealed by faith in a brother, which was faith in yourself.

“A pretty common shirt, then,” he said, hearing the relief in his voice.

“Common enough the owner had the same one.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixty, heavy, short. Forget him. He’s not being cute.”

And that was when the hot line rang and Placentia PD reported a robbery in progress, B of A branch off Kraemer Blvd.

They were rolling in less than a minute, Clay burning rubber out of the parking lot and Salena choosing this steady moment to check the clip in her.357.

Nine minutes of high-speed blur, Main to I-5 to the 55 and off on Kraemer, the traffic sparse and Clay flying, the police radio squawking backup to the branch.

Salena knew this part of the county and guided him in without a map. They sped up Kraemer northbound, and Clay saw the light bars flashing up ahead, the black-and-whites scattered along the boulevard, the dart of uniforms through the halted traffic.

He screeched to a stop and bailed out, badged the PD commander. The commander said a patrolman had been one block away when the teller hit the button, and the bank bandit had grabbed a customer hostage when the cruiser rolled up. The Bike Bandit was still inside, they didn’t want to rush the door with all the people, hostage team on the way, but nobody was coming out and that didn’t look good, get the fuck down will you he’s armed!

Clay assessed: police cars clustered, guns braced on car hoods and open doors, a SWAT sniper leaning against the hood of a cruiser with the tripod of his scoped M-16 steady on the paint and his face tight to the butt, horns blaring from far back in the stalled traffic but around the cop units a brittle silence in the clear, hot morning.

“Here he comes. He’s coming out!”

Clay saw him, hands up, helmet and visor still on, long blond hair and a slow, short stride. He feinted left then dodged right and hopped a low wall into the parking lot.

The guns roared and dust popped off the wall and Clay could see him weaving between the cars, down low, then springing in one mad leap over a grape-stake fence and into someone’s yard.

The commander screamed cease fire.

Clay said, “Let’s go.”

He went left and wide, through an alley behind a liquor store, then along the sidewalk. He figured the Bike Bandit would stick to the backyards as long as he could, heading away from the boulevard, then try something desperate like grab a motorist out of his car at a stop sign, maybe take a hostage.

Clay saw him jump another fence, heard the dog bark, then snarl. He crossed the street, gun drawn now and Salena behind him, crouching low through the front yards, guessing himself parallel with the bandit on the other side of the neat suburban homes.

The last yard ended at a wide sidewalk and a street corner. A streetlight. A high curb. Clay rounded it just as the Bike Bandit dropped to the sidewalk thirty feet away.

Clay braced his nine, spread his legs, and aimed at the chest. “FREEZE, FBI!”

The helmet turned. The blond hair swung back. A turn of the bandit’s hand and a flash of metal.

“Sonny, NO!”

Then an explosion behind him. Three more, quick. The smack of bullets in meat and bone. The Bandit grunted then dropped out of Clay’s sight picture.

Fuck, she killed him, he thought, glancing once behind at Salena still in her kneeling stance, breathing hard and loud, the magnum auto aimed down at her crumpled target.

Motherofgod, she was whispering, motherofgod.

They approached him slowly, guns extended, but Clay lowered his when he saw the bad upward angle of the helmet, the blood pouring onto the sidewalk, the stainless frame revolver three feet from the Bike Bandit’s right hand. He could smell the cordite and the metallic scent of the blood.

Salena kicked the revolver away and Clay knelt down to pull off the helmet.

He knew it wasn’t. He knew it couldn’t be. You don’t do that to brothers, no matter who you are.

When he pulled off the helmet the hair went with it and Clay looked into Sonny’s clear and sightless eyes.

“Sonofabitch,” said Salena. “Motherofgod. You all right?”

4

Clay sat in the shade of the pepper tree and called his parents. He felt no emotions inside except hopelessness. No matter what he looked at in the world around him all he saw was something else.

He heard Laurel’s old car pull in, the parking break ratcheting up, the engine dieseling. The door slam. Footsteps.

He looked at her as she came through the little gate. She stopped and studied his face and said nothing.

She brought out a beer for him and one for her. When she was seated in the patio chair across from him he told her.

She sat very still, not drinking, for almost an hour. Clay registered sounds but not sights. His eyes saw what they saw but his brain wasn’t interested in them. Objects passed his vision like words in an unknown language.

But he heard every birdsong in the neighborhood and every car engine on Laguna Canyon Road, and he could hear the sound of blood in his ears and the sound of Laurel breathing.

She got up and went into the house. When she didn’t come back he got worried and went in to check on her. He heard the shower, made a strong drink of tequila and water, and took it outside.

By then it was dark. When Laurel came out she had a heavy robe on, even though the night was warm. Hair combed back and shiny, eyes dead in her face.

“I’ll do what needs to be done,” she said. “You can go if you want.”

“All right.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll do what needs to be done also.”

She got up without another word and went back inside. She was gone another long time. He looked at his watch and saw the numbers but couldn’t know the time.

He found her in the bedroom, sitting on the floor against the bed, the lamp on the nightstand giving her a faint orange glow.

“Talk to me, Clay.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Just sit and be quiet then.”

He sat on the floor across from her, mostly in the dark, with his back against the wall. His glass made a round pool on the old hardwood floor.

She slid a bottle of tequila across to him. He didn’t know she had it. He took a long drink, screwed the cap on, and slid it back.

She drank, shuddered quickly, then reached up and turned off the lamp. There was the neighbors’ lights and moonlight.

“Stay until you’re ready to sleep. Then sleep with me in this bed.”

He looked at her in the dark and saw her clearly.

“I know it’s not right, Clay. But I believe it could be made to be right. That it’s possible.”

Clay wasn’t sure that the concepts of right or possible applied here. There was a chance you had to make those things yourself, out of thin air, and this gave him no comfort. He had never aspired to do that. He had become a tool of the law to not have to make those kinds of things for himself. But he understood what he had to do, even if he didn’t know where the understanding came from.

“First I’m going to sit in the yard and finish the bottle,” he said.

“I’m going, too. Leave the lights off. Every one. The dark’s light enough for tonight.”