When The Bough Breaks

26

Something bothered me the next morning. The troubled feeling persisted during the ride to Sea-Tac and up the ramp to the plane. I couldn't get a handle on what is was that lurked in a bottom drawer of my mind, that lingered through the serving of the plastic food, the forced smiles of the flight attendants, the copilot's bad jokes. The harder I tried to bring it to the forefront of my consciousness the further back it sank. I felt the impatience and frustration of a child encountering a Chinese finger puzzle for the first time. So I decided to just ride with it, sit back and wait and see if it came to me on its own.

It wasn't until shortly before landing that it did. What had stuck in my head was last night's conversation with Robin. She'd asked me about the dangers of hypnosis and I'd given her a speech about it being harmless unless the experience stirred up latent conflicts. Dredged up primal memories had been my exact words. Dredge up primal memories and the reaction is often terror… I was stuffed with tension as the landing wheels touched down. Once free, I jogged through and out of the airport, picked up the Seville in the overnight lot, paid a considerable ransom to get it out the gate and headed east on Century Boulevard. Caltrans, in its in finite wisdom, had chosen to set up construction in the middle of the road during the morning rush in and out of LAX and, caught in a jam, I cooked in the Cadillac for the mile to the San Diego Freeway on-ramp. I took the freeway north, connected to Santa Monica West, and exited just before Pacific Coast Highway. A drive down Ocean and a few turns brought me to the Palisades and the place where Morton Handler and Elena Gutierrez had lost their lives.

The door to Bonita Quinn's apartment was open. I heard cursing from within and entered. A man was standing in the front room kicking the floral sofa and muttering under his breath. He was in his forties, curly-haired, flabby and putty-colored with discouraged eyes and a steel-wool goatee separating his first chin from his second. He wore black slacks and a light blue nylon shirt that clung to every tuck and roll of his gelatinous torso. One hand held a cigarette and flicked ashes onto the carpet. The other groped for treasure behind a meaty ear. He kicked the couch again, looked up, saw me and waved the smoking hand around the tiny room.

"Okay, you can get to work."

"Doing what?"

"Loading this shit outta here — aren't you the mover—" he looked at me again, this time with sharpened eyes. "No, you don't look like a mover. Excuse me." He threw back his shoulders. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for Bonita Quinn and her daughter."

"You and me both."

"She's gone?"

"Three friggin' days. With who knows how many rent checks. I've got tenants complaining their calls weren't answered, repairs that haven't been done. I call her, no answer. So I come down here myself and find she's been gone for three days, left all this junk, hightailed it. I never had a good feeling about her. You do someone a favor, you get shafted. Happens every time."

He inhaled his cigarette, coughed and sucked again. There was yellow around the irises of his eyes; gray, unhealthy flesh pouched the wary orbs. He looked like a man recuperating from a coronary or just about to have one.

"What are you, collection agency?"

"I'm one of her daughter's doctors."

"Oh yeah? Don't tell me about doctors. It's one of you that got me into this in the first place."

"Towle?"

His eyebrows rose. "Yeah? You from his office? 'Cause if you are, I got plenty—"

"No. I just know him."

"Then you know he's a nag. Gets into stuff he has no business getting into. My wife hears me say this, she'll kill me. She loves the guy. Says he's terrific with the kids, so who am I to argue, right? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?"

"Psychologist."

"The kid had problems, huh? Wouldn't surprise me. She looked a little iffy, if you know what I mean." He held out his hand, tilted it like the wing of a glider.

"You said Dr. Towle got you into the mess with Bonita Quinn?"

"That's right. I met the guy once or twice, maybe. I don't know him from Adam. One day he calls me out of the clear blue and asks me if I could give a job to a patient of his. He heard there was an opening for a manager in this place, and could I help this lady out. I say does this person have experience — we're talking multiple units here, not some duplex. He says no, but she can learn, she's got a kid, needs the money. I say, listen, Doc, this particular building is singles-oriented, the job's not right for someone with a kid. The manager's place is too small." He looked at me scowling. "Would you stick a kid in a hole like this?"

"No."

"Me neither. You don't have to be a doctor to see it's not fit. I tell Towle this. I explain it to him. I say, Doc, this job is meant for a single person. Usually I get a student from UCLA to do it — they don't need a lot of space. I've got other buildings, I tell him. In Van Nuys, a couple in Canoga Park, more family-oriented. Let me call my man in the Valley, have him check it out, I'll see if I can help this person.

"Towle says, no, it has to be this building. The kid's already enrolled in school in this neighborhood, to move her would be traumatic, he's a doctor, he knows this to be a fact. I say, but Doc, you can't have kids making noise in a place like this. The tenants are mostly singles, some like to sleep late. He says I guarantee you this kid is well-behaved, she makes no noise. I think to myself this kid makes no noise, there's gotta be something wrong with her — now you show up and it make sense.

"I try to put him off, but he presses me. He's a nag. My wife loves him, she'll kill me if I get him pissed off, so I say okay. He makes an appointment for me to meet this lady, shows up with the Quinn broad and the kid. I was surprised. I gave it a little thought the night before, figured he was humping this broad, that's why the Albert Schweitzer routine. I expected something classy, with curves. One of those aspiring actress types, you know what I mean? He's older, but he's a classy-looking guy, right? So in he walks with her and the kid and they look like a pair outta the Dust Bowl, real hicks. The mother is scared outta her skull, she's smoking more than me, which is a feat the kid's, like I told you, a little iffy, just stares into space, though I'll grant you she's quiet. Didn't make a sound. I had my doubts she could handle the job, but what could I do, I already committed myself. I hired her. She did okay. She was a hard worker, but she learned very slowly. No complaints about the kid, though. Anyway, she stays for a few months, then she flies the coop leaving me with this junk and she's probably got five grand worth of rent checks, I have to go back and trace 'em and have the tenants put stops on 'em and write new ones. I gotta clean this place, hire someone new. Let me tell you, no more Mister Nice Guy for Marty. For doctors or anyone else."

He folded his arms over his chest.

"You have no idea where she went?" I asked.

"I did, would I be standing here jawing with you?"

He went into the bedroom. It was as bleak as I remembered it.

"Look at this. How can people raise kids like this? I got three, each has his own room, they got TVs, bookshelves, Pac Mans, all that stuff. How can a kid's mind grow in a place like this?"

"If you hear from her or find out where she is, would you please call me?" I took out an old business card, crossed out the number and wrote my home phone number on it.

He glanced at it, and put it in his pocket. Running one finger along the top of the dresser he came up with a digit cloaked with dust kittys. He flung the dust away. "Yecch. I hate dirt. I like things to be clean, know what I mean? My apartments are always clean — I pay extra for the best cleaning service. It's important tenants should feel healthy in a place."

"You'll call me?"

"Sure, sure. You do the same for me, too, okay? I wouldn't mind finding Miss Bonita, get my checks back, give her a piece of my mind." He fished in his pocket, pulled out an alligator billfold and from it produced a pearl-gray business card that said M and M Properties, Commercial and Residential, Marduk I. Minassian, President, followed by a Century City address.

"Thanks, Mr. Minassian."

"Marty."

He continued probing and inspecting, opening drawers and shaking his head, bending to look under the bed Bonita Quinn had shared with her daughter. He found something under there, stood up, looked at it and tossed it in a metal wastebasket where it landed with a clang.

"What a mess."

I looked in the basket, saw what he had discarded, and pulled it out.

It was the shrunken head Melody had shown me the day we'd spent together at the beach. I held it in my palm and the rhinestone eyes glared back, glossy and evil. Most of the synthetic hair had come loose but a few black strands stuck out of the top of the snarling face.

"That's junk," said Minassian. "It's dirty. Throw it away."

I closed my hand over the child's keepsake, more sure than ever that the hypothesis I'd developed on the plane was right. And that I had to move fast. I put the shrunken head in my pocket, smiled at Minassian, and left.

"Hey!" he called after me. And then he muttered something that sounded like "Crazy doctors!"

I retraced my route, got back on the freeway and headed east, driving like a demon and hoping the Highway Patrol wouldn't spot me. I had my L.A.P.D. consultant badge in my pocket but I doubted it would help. Even police consultants aren't supposed to weave in and out of traffic going eighty miles an hour.

I was lucky. Traffic was light, the guardians of the asphalt were nowhere to be seen, and I made it to the Silver Lake exit just before one. Five minutes later I was walking up the steps to the Gutierrez home. The orange and yellow poppies drooped, thirsty. The porch was empty. It creaked as I stepped onto it.

I knocked on the door. Cruz Gutierrez answered, knitting needles and bright pink yarn in her hands. She didn't seem surprised to see me.

"Si, senor?"

"I need your help, senora."

"No hablo ingles."

"Please. I know you understand enough to help."

The dark, round face was impassive."

"Senora, the life of a child is at stake." That was optimism speaking. "Una nina. Seven years old — siete anos. She's in danger. She could be killed. Muerta — like Elena."

I let that sink in. Liver spotted hands tightened around the blue needles. She looked away.

"Like the other child — the Nemeth boy. Elena's student. He didn't die in an accident, did he? Elena knew that. She died because of that knowledge."

She put her hand on the door and started to close it. I blocked it with the heel of my palm.

"I feel for your loss, senora, but if Elena's death is to take on meaning, it can be through preventing more killing. Through stopping the deaths of others. Please."

Her hands started shaking. The needles rattled like chopsticks in the grasp of a spastic. She dropped them and the ball of yarn. I bent and retrieved them.

"Here."

She took them, held them to her bosom.

"Come in, please," she said, in English that was barely accented. I was too edgy to want to sit but when she motioned me to the green velvet sofa I settled in it. She sat across from me as if awaiting sentence.

"First," I said, "you must understand that darkening Elena's memory is the last thing I want to do. If other lives were not at stake I wouldn't be here at all."

"I understand," she said.

"The money — is it here?"

She nodded, got up, left the room and came back minutes later with a cigar box.

"Take." She gave me the box as if it held something alive and dangerous.

The bills were in large denominations — twenties, fifties, hundreds — neatly rolled and held together by thick rubber bands. I made a cursory count. There was at least fifty thousand dollars in the box, probably a good deal more.

"Take it," I said.

"No, no. I don't want. Black money."

"Just keep it here, until I come back for it. Does anyone else know about it — either of your sons?"

"No." She shook her head adamantly. "Rafael know he take it and buy the dope. No. Only me."

"How long have you had it here?"

"Elena, she bring it over the day before she was killed." The mother's eyes filled with tears. "I say, what is this, where you get this. She say, can't tell you, Mama. Jus' keep it for me. I come back for it. She never come back." She pulled a lace — trimmed handkerchief from up her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

"Please. Take it back. Hide it again."

"Only a little while, senor, okay? Black money. Bad eye. Mal ojo."

"I'll come back for it if that's what you want."

She took the box, disappeared again, and returned shortly.

"You're sure Rafael didn't know?"

"I sure. He know, it would all be gone."

That made sense. Junkies weren't known for being able to hold on to their nickels and dimes, let alone a small fortune.

"Another question, senora. Raquel told me that Elena had in her possession certain tapes — recorded tapes. Of music, and of relaxation exercises given to her by Dr. Handler. When I went through her things I found no such tapes. Do you know anything about that?"

"I don' know. This is the truth."

"Has anyone been through those boxes before I got here?"

"No. Only Rafael an' Antonio, they look for books, things to read. The policia take boxes first. Nothin' else."

"Where are your sons, now?"

She stood up, suddenly agitated.

"Don' hurt. They good boys. They don' know nothin'."

"I won't. I just want to talk to them."

She looked to one side, at the wall covered with family portraits. At her three children, young, innocent and smiling; the boys with short hair, slicked and parted, and open-necked white shirts; the girl in a frilly blouse between them. At the graduation picture: Elena in mortarboard and gown, wearing a look of eagerness and confidence, ready to take on the world with her brains and her charm and her looks. At the somber tinted photo of her long-dead husband, stiff and solemn in starched collar and gray serge suit, a workingman unaccustomed to the fuss and fiddling that went with having one's countenance recorded for posterity.

She looked at the pictures and her lips moved, almost imperceptibly. Like a general surveying a smoldering battlefield, she conducted a silent body count.

"Andy working," she said, and gave me the address of a garage on Figueroa.

"And Rafael?"

"Rafael I don' know. He say he go look for work."

She and I both knew where he was. But I'd opened enough wounds for one day, so I kept my mouth shut, except to thank her.

I found him after a half-hour's cruising up and down Sunset and in and out of several side streets. He was walking south on Alvarado, if you could call the stumbling, self-absorbed lurch that propelled him headfirst, feet following, a walk. He stayed close to buildings, veering toward the street when people or objects got in his way, quickly returning to the shadow of awnings. It was close to eighty but he wore a long sleeved flannel shirt hanging loose over khakis and buttoned to the neck. On his feet were high-topped sneakers; the laces on one of them had come loose. He looked even thinner than I remembered.

I drove slowly, staying in the right lane, out of his field of vision, and keeping pace with him. Once he passed a group of middle-aged men, merchants. They pointed at him behind his back, shook their heads and frowned. He was oblivious to them, cut off from the external world. He pointed with his face, like a setter homing in on a scent. His nose ran continuously and he wiped it with his sleeve. His eyes shifted from side to side as his body kept moving. He ran his tongue over his lips, slapped his thin thighs in a steady tattoo, pursed his lips as if in song, bobbed his head up and down. He was making a concentrated effort at looking cool but he fooled no one. Like a drunk working hard at coming across sober his mannerisms were exaggerated, unnatural and lacking spontaneity. They produced the opposite effect. He appeared to be a hungry jackal on the prowl, desperate, gnawed upon from within and hurting all over. His skin was glossy with sweat, pale and ghostly. People got out of his way as he boogied toward them.

I sped up and down two blocks before pulling to the curb and parking near an alley behind a three-story building that housed a Latin grocery on the ground floor and apartments on the upper two.

A quick look shot backward confirmed that he was still coming.

I got out of the car and ducked into the alley, which stunk of rotting produce and urine. Empty and broken wine bottles littered the pavement. A hundred feet away was a loading dock, unattended, its steel doors closed and bolted. A dozen vehicles were illegally parked on both sides; exit from the alley was blocked by a half-ton pickup left perpendicular to the walls. Somewhere off in the distance a mariachi band played "Cielito Lindo." A cat screeched. Horns honked out on the boulevard. A baby cried.

I peeked my head out and retracted it. He was half a block away. I got ready for him. When he began crossing the alley I said in a stage whisper: "Hey, man. I got what you need."

That stopped him. He looked at me with great love, thinking he'd found salvation. It threw him off when I grabbed him by his scrawny arm and pulled him into the alley. I dragged him several feet until we'd found cover behind an old Chevy with peeling paint and two flat tires. I slammed him against the wall. His hands went up protectively. I pushed them down and pinioned both of them with one of my own. He struggled but he had no strength. It was like tussling with a toddler.

"Whadyou want, man?"

"Answers, Rafael. Remember me? I visited you a few days ago. With Raquel."

"Hey, yeah, sure," he said, but there was only confusion in the watery hazel eyes. Snot ran down one nostril and into his mouth. He let it sit there a while before reaching up with his tongue and trying to flick it away. "Yeah, I remember, man. With Raquel, sure, man." He looked up and down the alley.

"You remember, then, that I'm investigating your sister's murder."

"Oh, yeah, sure. Elena. Bad stuff, man." He said it without feeling. His sister had been sliced up and all he could think of was that he needed a packet of white powder that could be transformed into his own special type of milk. I'd read dozens of tomes on addiction, but it was there, in that alley, that the true power of the needle became clear to me.

"She had tapes, Rafael. Where are they?",

"Hey, man, I don' know shit about tapes." He struggled to break loose. I slammed him against the wall again. "Oh, man, I'm hurting, just let me go fix myself up and then I talk to you about tapes. Okay, man?"

"No. I want to know now, Rafael. Where are the tapes?"

"I don' know, man, I told you that!" He was whining like a three-year-old, snot faced and growing more frantic with each passing second.

"I think you do and I want to know."

He bounced in my grasp, clattering like a sack of loose bones.

"Lemme go, motherfucker!" he gasped.

"Your sister was murdered, Rafael. Turned into hamburger. I saw pictures of what she looked like. Whoever did it to her took their time. It hurt her. And you're willing to deal with them."

"I don' know what you're talkin' about, man."

More struggling, another slam against the wall. He sagged this time, closed his eyes and for a moment I thought I'd knocked him out. But he opened them, licked his lips and gave a dry, hacking cough.

"You were off the stuff, Rafael. Then you started shooting up again. Right after Elena's death. Where'd you get the dough? How much did you sell her out for?"

"I don' know nothin'." He shook spastically. "Lemme go. I don' know nothin'."

"Your own sister," I said. "And you sold out to her murderers for the price of a fix."

"Puleeze, mister. Lemme go."

"Not until you talk. I don't have time to waste time with you. I want to know where those tapes are. You don't tell me soon I'll take you home with me, tie you up and let you go cold turkey in the corner. Imagine that — think how bad you hurt now, Rafael. Think how much worse it's going to get."

He crumpled.

"I gave them to some dude," he stuttered.

"For how much?"

"Not money, man. Stuff. He gave me stuff. Enough for a week's fixing. Good stuff. Now lemme go. I gotta appointment."

"Who was the guy?"

"Just some dude. Anglo. Like you."

"What did he look like?"

"I don' know, man, I can't think straight."

"The corner, Rafael. Tied up."

"Twenny-five, six. Short. Built good, solid. Real straight-lookin'. Light hair, over the forehead, okay?"

He'd described Tim Kruger.

"Why did he say he wanted the tapes?"

"He dint say, man, I dint ask. He had good stuff, you unnerstand?"

"Didn't you wonder? Your sister was dead and you didn't wonder why some stranger would give you smack for her tapes?"

"Hey, man, I dint wonder, I don' wonder. I don' think. I just go flyin'. I gotta go flyin' now. I'm hurtin', man. Lemme go."

"Did your brother know about this?"

"No! He kill me, man. You hurt me, but he kill me, you unnerstand? Don' tell him!"

"What was on the tapes, Rafael?"

"I dunno. I don' listen, man!"

On principle I refused to believe him.

"The corner. Tied up. Bone dry."

"Jus' some kid talkin', man, I swear that's it. I dint hear the whole thing, but when he offered me the stuff for them I took a listen before I gave them to the dude. Some kid talkin' to my sister. She's listenin' and sayin' tell me more and he's talkin'."

"About what?"

"I don' know man. It started to get heavy, the kid's cryin', Elena's cryin', I switched it off. I don' wanna know."

"What were they crying about, Rafael?"

"I don' know, man, something about how somebody hurt the kid, Elena's asking' him if they hurt him, he's sayin' yes, she's cryin', then the kid's cryin', too."

"What else?"

"That's it."

I throttled him just hard enough to rattle his teeth.

"You wan' me to make something' up, I can do it, man, but that's all I know!"

He cried out, snuffling and sucking for air.

I held him at arm's length, then let go. He looked at me unbelievingly, slithered against the wall, found a space between the Chevy and a rusted Dodge van. Staring at me, he wiped his nose, passed between the two cars and made a run for freedom.

I drove to a gas station at Virgil and Sunset, filled up, and used the pay phone to call La Casa de los Nifios. The receptionist with the upbeat voice answered. Slipping into a drawl I asked her for Kruger.

"Mr. Kruger isn't in, today, sir. He'll be in tomorrow."

"Oh yeah, that's right! He told me he'd be off the day I got in."

"Would you care to leave a message, sir?"

"Heck no. I'm an old friend from school. Tim and I go way back. I just blew in on a business trip — I'm selling tool and die, Becker Machine Works, San Antonio, Texas — and I was supposed to look old Tim up. He gave me his number at home but I must have lost it. Do you have it?"

"I'm sorry, sir, we're not supposed to give out personal information."

"I can dig that. But like I say, Tim and me are tight. Why don't you call him at home, tell him old Jeff Saxon's on the line, ready to drop in but stuck without the address."

A clatter of ringing phones sounded in the background.

"One moment, sir."

When she returned I asked her:

"You call him yet, ma'am?"

"No — I — it's rather busy right now, Mr…"

"Saxon, Jeff Saxon. You call old Tim and tell him old Jeff Saxon's in town to see him, I guarantee you he'll be—"

"Why don't I just give you the number?" She recited seven digits, the first two of which signified a beach cities location.

"Thank you much, I believe Tim told me he lived near the beach — that far from the airport?"

"Mr. Kruger lives in Santa Monica. It's about a twenty-minute ride."

"Hey, that's not bad — maybe I'll just drop in on him, kind of a surprise, what do you think?"

"Sir, I have to—"

"You wouldn't happen to have the address? I tell you, it's been one hell of a day, what with the airline losing my sample case and I've got two meetings tomorrow. I think I packed the address book in the suitcase, but now I can't be sure and—"

"Here's the address, sir."

"Thank you much, ma'am. You've been very helpful. And you have a nice voice."

"Thank you, sir."

"You free tonight?"

"I'm sorry, sir, no."

"Fellow's gotta try, right?"

"Yes, sir. Good-bye, sir."

I'd been driving north for a good five minutes before I heard the buzzing. I realized, then, that the sound had been with me since I'd pulled out of the gas station. The rearview mirror revealed a motorcycle several lengths back, bouncing in the distance like a fly on a hot windshield. The driver twisted the handle accelerator and the fly grew like a monster in a Japanese horror flick.

He was two lengths behind, and gaining. As he approached I got a look at him, jeans, boots, black leather jacket, black helmet with full-face tinted sun visor that completely masked his features.

He rode my tail for several blocks. I changed lanes. Instead of passing, he hung back, allowing a Ford full of nuns to come between us. A half mile past Lexington the nuns turned off. I steered sharply toward the curb and came to a sudden stop in front of a Pup 'n Taco. The motorcycle sped by. I waited until he'd disappeared, told myself I was being paranoid, and got out of the Seville. I looked for him, didn't see him, bought a Coke, got behind the wheel and reentered the boulevard.

I'd turned east on Temple headed for the Hollywood Freeway when I heard him again. Verifying his presence in the mirror caused me to miss the onramp, and I stayed on Temple, dipping under the bridge created by the overpass. The motorcycle stayed with me. I gave the Seville gas and ran a red light. He maintained his position, buzzing and spitting. The next intersection was filled with pedestrians and I had to stop.

I kept a watch on him through the side mirror. He rolled toward me, three feet away, now two, approaching on the driver's side. One hand went inside the leather jacket. A young mother wheeled a small child in a stroller, passing directly in front of my bumper. The child wailed, the mother chewed gum, heavy legged, moving oh so slowly. Something metallic came into the hand in the mirror. The motorcycle was just behind me, almost flush with the driver's window. I saw the gun now, an ugly little snub-nosed affair, easy to conceal in a large palm. I raced my engine. The gum-chewing young matron wasn't impressed. She seemed to move in slow motion, indolently working her jaws, the child now screaming at the top of his lungs. The light remained red but its cater cornered cousin had turned amber. The longest light in the history of traffic engineering… how long could an amber light last?

The snout of the revolver pressed against the glass, directly in line with my left temple. A black hole miles long wrapped in a concentric halo of silver. The mother still dragged her heavy body lazily across the intersection, her heel in line with my right front tire, unaware that the man in the green Cadillac was going to be blown away any second. The finger on the trigger blanched. The mother stepped clear by an inch. I twisted the steering wheel to the left, pressed down hard on the accelerator and shot diagonally across the intersection into the path of the ongoing traffic. I gunned the engine, laid a long patch of rubber, heard a Delphic chorus of curses, shouts, honking horns and squealing brakes, and shot up the first side street, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a Water and Power van coming from the opposite direction.

The street was narrow and winding, and pocked with potholes. The Seville was no sports car and I had to fight its slack steering system to maintain speed and control around the turns. I climbed, bounced down hard, and swooped steeply down a hill. A boulevard stop at the bottom was clear. I sped through. Three blocks of level turf at seventy miles an hour and the buzz was back, growing louder. The motorcycle, so much easier to maneuver, was catching up fast.

The road came to an end at a cracked masonry wall. Left or right? Decisions, decisions, with the adrenaline shooting through every corpuscle, the buzz now a roar, my hands sweaty, slipping off the wheel. I looked in the mirror, saw one hand come off the bars and aim the gun at my tires. I chose left and floored the Seville, putting my body into it. The road rose, scaling empty streets, higher, spiraling into the smog, a roller coaster of a street planned by a berserk engineer. The motorcyclist kept riding up on my rear, raking his gun hand off the bars whenever he could, striving for steady aim…

I swerved continuously, dancing out of his sights, but the narrowness of the street gave me little leeway. I knew I had to avoid slipping unconsciously into a regular rhythm — back and forth, back and forth, a gasoline — fueled metronome — for to do so would be to offer an easy target. I drove erratically, crazily, jerking the wheel, slowing down, speeding up, careening against the curb, losing a hubcap that spun off like a chromium Frisbee. It was a direct assault on my axle and I didn't know how long it could last.

We continued to climb. A view of Sunset below appeared around a corner. We were back in Echo Park, on the south side of the boulevard. The road hit its peak. A shot whizzed by so close that the Seville's windows vibrated. I swerved and a second shot went far afield.

The terrain changed as the altitude rose, thinning from residential blocks of frame houses to progressively emptier stretches of dusty lots, with here and there a decrepit shack. No more telephone poles, no cars, no signs of human habitation… perfect for an afternoon killing.

We began to race downhill and I saw with horror that I was heading full-speed into a dead end, mere yards from slamming into a pile of dirt at the mouth of an empty construction site. There was no escape — the road terminated at the site and was additionally blocked by piles of cinder block, stacks of drywall, lumber and more mounds of excavated dirt. A goddam box canyon. If the impact of smashing nose-first into the dirt didn't kill me, I'd be imbedded, tires spinning hopelessly, as immobile as parsley in aspic, a perfect, passive target…

The man on the motorcycle must have harbored similar thoughts in that same instant, for he engaged in a quick series of confident actions. He removed his gun hand from the bars, slowed, and came around to the left, ready to be at my side when my escape came to an end.

I made the only move left for me: I jammed on the brakes. The Seville convulsed, skidded violently, spun and rocked on its bearings, threatening to capsize. I needed the skid to continue, so I steered away from it. The car spun like a rotor blade.

Then a sudden impact threw me across the seat.

My front end had gone out of control and collided with the cycle as it came out of a spin with full torque behind it. The lighter vehicle bounced off the car, caromed and sailed through the air in a wide arc over the hill of earth. I watched as man and machine parted ways, the cycle climbing, stunt like falling, its rider thrown loose, flying higher, a scarecrow cut free from its stake, then falling too, landing unseen.

The Seville stopped spinning and its engine died. I pulled myself up. My sore arm had been knocked against the passenger door panel and it hummed with pain. No sign of movement came from the site. I got out quietly, crouched behind the car and waited there as my head cleared and my breathing slowed. Still nothing. I spied a two-by-four several feet away, snatched it, hefted it like a stave and circled the mound of dirt, staying low to the ground. Creeping onto the site I saw that a partial foundation had been laid — a right angle of concrete from which corrugated steel rods protruded like flowerless stalks. The remains of the motorcycle were visible immediately, a rubbish heap of seared metal and shattered windshield.

It took several more minutes of poking amid the rubble to find the body. It had landed in a ditch at the junction of the two cement arms, a spot where the earth was etched with caterpillar tread marks, next to a broken fiberglass shower stall and half-concealed by molding sheets of insulation.

The opaque helmet was still in place but it had offered no protection from the steel rod that stuck out through a large, jagged hole in the rider's throat. The shaft extended just below the Adam's apple; it had created a good-sized exit wound coming through. Blood seeped from the hole, turning muddy in the dirt. The trachea was visible, still pink, but deflated, leaking fluid. A fleck of gore tipped the rod.

I knelt and undid the helmet strap, and tried to pull off the headpiece. The neck had bent unnaturally upon being pierced and it proved a difficult task. As I struggled I felt steel scrape against vertebrae, cartilage and gristle. My belly quaked with nausea. I heaved and turned away to vomit in the dirt.

With a bitter taste in my mouth and eyes brimming with tears, breathing hard and loud, I returned to the grisly chore. The helmet finally came loose and the bare skull flopped to the ground. I stared down into the lifeless, bearded face of Jim Halstead, the coach at La Casa de los Ninos. His lips were drawn back in death, cast in a permanent sneer. The force of landing after his final free fall had snapped his jaws down upon his tongue, and the severed tip rested on the hairy chin like some fleshy, parasitic grub. His eyes were open and rolled backward, the whites flooded with blood. He cried crimson tears.

I looked away from him and saw the sun hit something shiny several feet to the right. I walked to it, found the gun and examined it — a chrome-plated .38. I took it and tucked it in the waistband of my trousers.

The ground at my feet radiated heat and the stench of something burning. Congealed tar. Toxic waste. Bio-undegradable garbage. Polyvinyl vegetation. A bluejay had landed on Halstead's face. It pecked at his eyes.

I found a dusty drop cloth peppered with specks of dried cement. The bird fled at my approach. I covered the body with the cloth, weighted down the corners with large stones and left him that way.