Nightlife: A Novel

1

Tanya stood in front of the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall and brushed her hair. She watched the other girl, in another room, wearing the same new blue skirt and tank top, using her left hand instead of her right to brush the long blond hair to a shine. Tanya had always secretly relished the existence of the other pretty girl who lived in the other room beyond the glass, like a fish in an aquarium. She loved the whole idea of a second girl who lived a second life.

In Wheatfield when she was little she had sometimes turned her mother’s dresser so the mirror would be directly across from the full-length one on the closet door. She could make a whole long line of other girls, then kick her legs and look like the Rockettes, the nearest ones as big as she was, and the others smaller and smaller as their line stretched off into infinity.

She had dressed up in her mother’s clothes sometimes, so she could change the girl in the mirror. She would be someone who had a good life, someone who was loved and cared for, someone who was beautiful and had everything she wanted.

She could invent things that the girl in the mirror could say, and practice them, whispering so the girl in the mirror would not be overheard. She would assume faces that were distant and just a little disapproving, and know that seeing them would make people frantic, trying to find ways to please her. She tried expressions designed to reward too, opening her eyes and mouth wide in a grateful smile that admitted no possibility of darker thoughts, nothing held back or hidden. Sometimes when she did that she would add a laugh at the end—not a small, forced sound, but a delighted laugh that made her eyes glisten and her white teeth show to their best advantage.

The alarm system’s cool male electronic voice announced, Kitchen . . . door: Dennis was finally home. This was it. Tanya stopped brushing her hair, slipped the brush into her purse, felt for the other handle and gripped it once, then released it.

She could hear Dennis’s hard leather soles on the slate floor of the kitchen. There was no sound of his dropping his briefcase on the kitchen floor, so he had set it down gently: he had brought his laptop home again. He was planning to spend the evening working. Tanya? He was in the living room now.

She put her purse on the floor beside the dresser. Up here.

She spent the next fifteen seconds considering him—turning him around and around in her mind and evaluating him. Women always said men had a hard outer shell but were soft and sweet and vulnerable inside, but she had found the opposite. They had a layer outside that was yielding and squeezable, but when you squeezed you began to feel the hardness beneath, like bone. She had squeezed him a lot in a short time, and she was already beginning to reach the hardness. He was getting ready to say no to her, to deny her things. Maybe he would even criticize her when the bills came and he could see everything added up. It was time.

Dennis’s heavy shoes thumped on the carpeted stairway, coming closer. She already saw each step of the stairway in her mind, even though she had only been with Dennis Poole for a month, and all but a week of that had been spent in hotels. As he climbed step by step, she began to enumerate his unpleasant qualities. She didn’t like his laugh. It was a quick staccato that made his voice go one octave higher, like a jackass’s bray. A few times she had gotten up from her chaise next to him and gone into the hotel pool to cool her sun-warmed skin, come up from underwater, and seen him looking at other women in their bathing suits. He tipped waiters exactly fifteen percent and never a penny more, and was proud of it because it showed he could do the arithmetic in his head. He was not a sincerely appreciative lover. He pretended to care and be solicitous of her, but there was a practical quality about it. His concern was to please her, but it wasn’t the right kind of concern. He wasn’t a man unable to stop himself because he was enthralled. He was merely thinking about whether he was pleasing her enough to keep her.

Dennis had reached the top of the stairs. As she turned to look at him, her detachment was complete. He was a forty-two-year-old man with a soft belly and thinning hair who spent his days selling computer equipment to other men like himself. He was nothing. She smiled beautifully, stepped into his embrace, and kissed him slowly, languorously. Hello, cowboy, she whispered.

He laughed as she had expected. I could get used to coming home like this and finding you waiting for me. He looked more serious. You know, I’m glad you were here for another reason. I think we need to talk about some things.

Sure. We can talk, but first, don’t you want to get comfortable? I should think you’d be tired after sitting in that office all day. She knew that tone of voice. Anyone could tell he was getting ready to be cheap with her, to start complaining about money. She pulled back and said, I’ll bet you’re sick of wearing that suit. Why don’t you get out of it, relax, and soak in the tub? She looked down at his tie as she loosened it, not into his eyes. Maybe I’ll join you.

Good idea. He took his suit coat off and his tie, while Tanya went into the bathroom and turned on the water. The oversized Jacuzzi tub had jets that bubbled, so she turned them on too.

Dennis Poole was naked now, and he put his arms around her. She tolerated his embrace for a few seconds, then wriggled away and whispered seductively, Wait.

She went back out to the bedroom and walked to the dresser, where she had left her purse. She waited until she heard him turn off the water faucet, so the only sound was the steady burble of the jets. She quietly walked into the bathroom.

He was lying in the tub with his head cushioned by a folded towel, looking self-absorbed and distant as the bubbles massaged his skin. Tanya reached into her purse, took out the pistol, held it about a foot from his head, and squeezed. The report was a bright, sharp bang that echoed against the tile walls and made her ears ring. She turned away from the sight of his corpse, the red blood draining into the bath, and stopped being Tanya Starling.

2

Hugo Poole’s rubber-soled shoes made almost no sound as he walked along the sidewalk outside the CBS Studio Center’s iron railings, past the soundstages on his way up Radford Street from Ventura Boulevard. He never would have set up a night meeting in the Valley, so far from the old downtown movie theater he used for an office, but he had often found that it was worth making small concessions just to learn what the other side wanted to do. There was no single precaution that would always work, and the least effective was never taking a risk. As soon as caution turned predictable, it became the biggest risk of all.

Still, he wished he could stay right here. He liked being near a television studio, because these complexes were usually on the itineraries of the people who heard voices telling them that God wanted them to punish a few actors. That ensured that there would always be plenty of jumpy security guards. He would have preferred to meet Steve Rao right here outside the gate, under the tall security lights.

Hugo Poole walked on beside the railing, now moving into the dimly lighted eucalyptus-lined blocks beside the big parking structure, and then he stopped at Valleyheart Street. He crossed the street to the city’s chain-link fence and looked through it to the place where the concrete bed of the Tujunga Wash met the concrete bed of the Los Angeles River. On this hot midsummer night, the only water was the runoff from automatic lawn sprinklers, a steady trickle confined to a foot-deep groove a man could step across that ran down the center of each bed. In the rainy season this place became the confluence of two turbulent brown floods crashing together at thirty miles an hour and rushing south toward the Pacific.

Hugo Poole looked to his left, up the scenic walkway above the river toward the iron gate at Laurel Canyon that was designed to look like a big toad. At this hour nobody wanted to go for a walk above a concrete riverbed. He waited for the minute hand of his watch to reach the hour. Then he took out the key he had received in the mail. He unlocked the padlock on the gate above the wash, and slipped inside. Steve Rao’s people had knocked off the city padlock and put on their own, then sent him the key to open it. Hugo Poole took a moment to close the gate. He reached into his pocket, took out his own lock, and placed it on the gate. He stuck Rao’s key into Rao’s lock, tossed them both down the hill into the bushes, and walked on.

He descended the sloping gravel driveway that the city had cut so its maintenance people could come down once a year to remove the tangle of dried brush and shopping carts from the concrete waterway before the rains. He reached the bottom, took a few steps onto the pavement of the river, and stopped to look around him. He could hear the distant whisper of cars flashing along the Ventura Freeway a few blocks away, and a constant dribble of water dripping out of a storm drain and running down the wall a few feet from him.

Hugo Poole’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and picked out four silhouettes in the deeper shadow across the wash. They floated toward him, and Poole tried to pick out Steve Rao’s short, strutting body, but couldn’t.

The one who separated from the others was too tall to be Steve Rao. What are you doing here? the voice said. It was young, with a trace of Spanglish inflection.

It was the wrong question. Somebody Steve Rao had sent would know why Hugo was here.

Hugo Poole said, I’m not here to hurt you. That’s all you need to know about me.

The heads of the four shapes turned to one another in quiet consultation, and Hugo Poole prepared himself, waiting for them to spread out. There was a sudden, sharp blow to his skull that made a red flare explode in his vision and knocked his head to the side. He spun to see the two new shapes just as they threw their shoulders into him. His head snapped back and his spine was strained as they dug in and brought him down on the concrete.

They seemed to have expected him to give up, but he began to bring his knees into play as he grappled with them. They tried to hold him down on the pavement, but Hugo Poole fought silently and patiently, first separating them, then twisting his torso to jab a heavy elbow into a face. He heard a crack, a howl of pain, and felt his opponent fall away. He rolled to the other side to clutch the second assailant, and delivered a palm strike that bounced the back of the man’s head off the pavement. The man lay still.

Hugo Poole was up on his feet again, sidestepping away from the two motionless bodies. The other four had made it only halfway across the riverbed toward him, and now they stopped with the shallow trench full of water separating them from Hugo Poole.

Poole put his head down and charged at the one who had spoken earlier. The young man hesitated, then looked at his companions, who showed no inclination to help him. They backed away, not from Hugo Poole but from their companion, as though if they could dissociate themselves from his fate, they would not share it. As Hugo Poole leapt the trench, the young man spun on his heel and ran about a hundred feet before he turned to see if he was safe.

The other three interpreted his flight as permission to run too. They dashed to the far wall where the shadows were deepest, and then moved off into the darkness down the riverbed. Hugo Poole turned to see that the two who had been on the ground were rapidly recovering. One was helping the other to his feet, and then they hobbled off together up the inclined driveway toward the street.

Hugo Poole stood in the dim concrete riverbed and caught his breath. The right knee of his pants had a small tear in it; the elbow of his suit coat felt damp, so he looked at that too. It had a dark splash of blood on it from the first man’s nose. He sighed: this was turning into an irritating evening, and it was still early.

Then Hugo Poole saw a new light. It began as a vague impression in his mind that there must be clouds moving away from the moon. Then the light brightened and the impression changed. The light was coming from somewhere down the channel. The wall opposite him began to glow, and then the light separated into two smaller, more focused circles.

A set of headlights appeared around an elbow bend in the channel and came toward him. He was aware that it might be a police patrol car, or the animal control people checking on the coyotes that used the concrete riverbeds to travel across the city at night. Either way, it would be best to stay still. It was especially important not to move if it was Steve Rao.

Hugo Poole stood and watched as the ghostly vehicle drew nearer, its headlights brightening until it pulled up beside him and stopped. Now that the headlights were shining past him, he saw that it was a black Hummer with tinted windows. Someone in the passenger seat used a powerful flashlight to sweep the walls of the channel and the bushes and hiding places up above at street level.

The flashlight went out, the passenger door opened, and a large man with wavy dark hair got out. He wore a lightweight black sport coat and pants of a color that looked gray in the near darkness. The driver got out, and Hugo Poole could see that he was wearing a sport coat too. Almost certainly the coats were intended to hide the bulges of firearms. The driver stood with his back against the door of the Hummer and kept guard while the other man approached Hugo Poole.

The man said, Sir, are you Mr. Poole?

Yes.

Can you put your arms out from your sides for me, please?

Hugo Poole complied, and stood with his feet apart so his legs could be checked next. He waited, staring into the distance as the man patted him down expertly, then stepped back. Thank you very much, sir.

Hugo Poole said, You’re an off-duty cop, aren’t you?

He didn’t deny it. I’m a friend of Steve’s.

Hugo nodded and watched the driver open the back door of the Hummer. Steve Rao was perched on the edge of the high seat when the door opened. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with a dark windbreaker, as though he were out to commit a burglary. His shoes were half light and half dark, like bowling shoes. He slid to the end of the Hummer’s back seat and then jumped down, smiling.

He looked proud of himself, his eyes and teeth reflecting the distant light from above. Hugo, my man. Thanks for coming. I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.

You saw?

Steve Rao looked very serious. I didn’t have anything to do with them, I swear to God.

I didn’t think you did, said Hugo Poole.

It’s terrible, said Steve Rao. This isn’t even gang territory. The city really has to do something.

"I’ll write a letter to the Times."

Steve Rao’s grin returned. You’re still pretty mean, though, aren’t you? You can handle yourself against these young kids even now.

Hugo Poole did not smile.

Steve Rao gestured toward the two men beside his black Hummer. These two guys are my solution to that foolishness. You won’t see me rolling around on dirty cement beating the shit out of no gang of kids. I learned that much.

I’ll be honest with you, Steve. This night is beginning to wear on my patience. Why did you want to meet me in a place like this?

It’s safe and secure.

It’s safe and secure up there on the corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon, and you can get a cup of coffee in Du Par’s, said Hugo. What is it you want?

Steve Rao began to walk. Hugo followed for about two hundred feet, and stopped. Steve Rao noticed, so he stopped too, and spoke. I’ve been around for a while now. You know that?

I’ve noticed you for about five years, said Hugo Poole.

I haven’t been lying around all that time.

I’ve noticed that too.

I’ve been busy. I’ve been talking to people, making deals, making friends.

No flies on you, said Hugo Poole.

It’s worked out. I’ve gotten big. It was a strange thing for a man Hugo Poole judged was about five feet five to say. It’s time to make a deal with you too. He glared at Hugo Poole. I’ve put it off for longer than I should have.

I’m listening.

I want ten thousand a month from you.

In exchange for what?

For being able to do whatever you want. For not having to worry. You can go on forever, just like you have been, and nobody will bother you.

Nobody bothers me now.

Steve Rao stopped and pointed back at the Hummer, where the two off-duty cops were sitting. See those guys?

Hugo Poole gave his second sigh of the evening. Steve, how old are you?

Twenty-four.

When you’re a young guy, just starting out, you have to consider the possibility that the people who were here before you were born aren’t all dumb.

What do you mean?

You should look around and say, ‘What are people already doing that works? What are people not doing, even though it’s an obvious thing to do? And why aren’t they?’

Steve Rao glared at him again, then resumed walking. A lot of people are doing this. People have sold protection for a hundred years.

Street gangs. They shake down a few Korean grocery stores, a couple of small liquor stores. They ask for just enough so the payoff is cheaper than buying a new front window. The game lasts a few months, until all the gang boys are in jail for something else or dead. Grown-ups don’t do this in L.A. And they don’t use off-duty cops for bodyguards.

Why are you saying this shit? Steve was quickly beginning to feel the heat around his neck cooking into anger. It’s all shit! Half the rock stars in town have hired cops with them wherever they go.

I’m telling you this because I want to do you a big favor, said Hugo Poole. That works great for musicians. Cops have to carry guns off-duty, so nobody has to make any guesses.

That’s right, said Steve Rao. So don’t even think about trying to get out of this. I might as well be made out of steel. Anybody opens up anywhere near me, my cops will drill his ass for him. They got my back. Nobody can do anything to me.

That’s probably true, said Hugo Poole. But what can you do to anybody else?

Anything, said Steve Rao, but he sounded uncertain.

Hugo Poole said, Off-duty cops will keep people from killing you if they can, just like they do for rock stars. But they won’t let even the biggest rock stars grease somebody else.

We have an understanding.

They understand you better than you understand them.

They’re mine. I bought them.

You’re paying cops money to stay a few feet from you. They can see you make deals, they can hear what you say. When they’ve seen and heard enough, they’re going to arrest you and all of the people who do business with you.

You’re full of shit.

Steve, these guys know the system. They know that if they get in trouble, you won’t be able to do them any good. The only people who can help them are other cops. He paused. You aren’t going to collect any money from anybody, Steve, because you can’t hurt anybody in front of two cops. You just put yourself out of business.

Hugo, I always heard you were supposed to be the smartest man in L.A. But this is pitiful, said Steve Rao. He took a small semiautomatic pistol from his jacket. He didn’t point it at Hugo, just shifted it to his belt. I want your ten grand tomorrow by five, and then once a month. Be on time.

Ask me how I knew they were cops.

All right. How did you know?

They’re wearing microphones, said Hugo Poole. See you, Steve. Hugo Poole walked down the concrete riverbed, away from Steve Rao.

You don’t walk away from me, said Steve Rao. You wait until I walk away from you. His voice sounded strained and thin, as though his throat were dry.

Hugo Poole walked on, his pace the same smart stride he always used on the street that kept his head up and his eyes on the world in front of him and let him scan the sights beside him. He had decided that it would be best not to return to the street by the same path he had used to come down here, so he walked on for what he judged to be an extra two blocks before he came to the next ramp built for the flood maintenance people. At the top of the path he had to climb an eight-foot chain-link fence, something he hated to do, but since his suit was beyond repair, he supposed he could hardly ruin it twice.

He swung himself over, dropped to the ground, then walked back up to Radford. Just as he was coming out of the dimly lighted, quiet street toward Ventura Boulevard, he heard the distant pops of four shots in rapid succession, then seven more. They seemed to echo from the direction of the river. As he walked along, he considered the eleven shots. Eleven was a bad number for Steve Rao. The magazines for pistols like Steve Rao’s held no more than ten in a single stack.

3

Hugo Poole parked in front of the Hundred Proof Bar and slipped a twenty-dollar bill to the bouncer outside the door in exchange for protecting his car from the tow trucks. The frightening late-night clientele of the Hundred Proof would keep the hot-wire artists away. As he walked along Sheldrake Avenue toward the Empire Theater he looked respectable but tired, like the bartender of an intermittently violent nightclub. He wanted to get this suit off. He would get a shower, put on a clean shirt and a new suit, and feel right again. Hugo Poole never wore a tie, because during his formative years he had watched a fight in which a man had been choked out with his Windsor knot.

He walked under the big, ornate marquee that announced EMPIRE THEATER CLOSED FOR RENOVATION. He stepped into the alcove across the terrazzo inlay of 1920s bathing beauties and stopped beside the ticket booth in front. He stared up and down Sheldrake Avenue. Hugo Poole did not simply glance: he took his time, his eyes narrowed to impart sharpness and definition to distant shapes. When he decided he had outlasted any possible duckers-behind-corners or walkers-the-other-way, he took a full turn and stopped with his back against the door to be absolutely sure he had not been followed. He had not. Hugo Poole unlocked the door to the movie theater, opened it, slipped inside, closed it, and tugged it once to be sure it had locked behind him.

He turned. The dim pink glow of the light inside the candy display case let him see the gilded plaster-cast sconces and the ancient painted murals of women who seemed half nymph and half movie star getting out of long antique limousines. Behind them, aimed upward in the sky, were beams from big spotlights. He heard a noise and turned to the carpeted stairway across the lobby that led up toward the balcony.

Evening, Hugo. Otto Collins and Mike Garcia came into the lobby from upstairs. They had been waking up the building, doing the evening walk-around, turning on lights and unlocking the inner doors.

Hello, guys, Hugo Poole said. He was not about to forget that the easiest way for somebody to kill him was to pay these two to do it here in the theater, but he had already studied them and acquitted them for tonight. Every night he looked at them for signs that they were going to betray him.

Hugo Poole was not watching for nervous twitches and smiling, sweaty upper lips. These were men. They worked for Hugo Poole, and they could be expected to behave with a certain amount of self-possession. What he was looking for was the opposite: excessive self-control. He had seen it come upon serious men when they were contemplating risky behavior. He knew that on the day when he was going to die Mike and Otto would grow cold and distant.

Hugo Poole knew that he was reputed to be a deep thinker, and it was a useful myth to cultivate. He was only premeditative, but to many people that made him seem clairvoyant. He made his way upstairs to the carpeted upper hallway, past the door marked PROJECTION ROOM, opened a wooden door that seemed to be a part of the paneled wall, and went inside.

Hugo walked to his desk and sat down, then glanced at his watch. It had taken him forty-five minutes to get back here from the Valley, and he judged that to be enough time. He consulted the telephone book on the corner of his desk, picked up his telephone, and called the police precinct station in North Hollywood.

He said, This is G. David Hunter. I’m an attorney under retainer for Steven Rao, R-A-O. He hasn’t shown up where he was expected this evening. Could you please check to see whether he has been taken into custody tonight? He listened for a moment, then said, Shot dead? You did say ‘dead’? I’m shocked. When did this happen? He listened for a few more seconds, then said, Thank you. No doubt you’ll be hearing from me in the future. The body? I’m not sure. Let me talk to the family. I’ll have to get back to you. Good night.

He sat back, stared at the wall, and thought about this evening. He supposed he might have to anticipate some sort of retaliation from the two cops who’d had to shoot Steve Rao. They were certainly smart enough to know why Rao had turned on them. Hugo would have to postpone a few of the schemes he had been prospering on—removing small numbers of items from cargo containers at the harbor and replacing them with stones to keep the weights constant, having women pose as hookers so Otto and Mike could be the vice squad who burst in to confiscate wallets—and substitute a few that seemed a bit less flagrant.

He searched his memory for ideas that were safer. He had recently seen a television program in which a crowd of middle-class people stood in line carrying old possessions so that a team of antique dealers could appraise them. He had noticed that some not particularly prepossessing articles were assigned very high prices.

He had also noticed that in almost every case, the more scarred and damaged an item was, the more likely the experts were to revere it. He had become fascinated by the way the antique dealers talked. No matter what obsolete and arcane castoff the expert was appraising, he could always talk about the collectors of that very item.

There was no doubt in Hugo Poole’s mind that there were ways to make money from his discovery. How could he not make money off people who were willing to haul a five-hundred-pound sideboard to a television studio and then stand in line for hours to have some guy with a fake accent look at it?

There was a rap on the door. Hugo Poole automatically crouched low and moved to the left, where the steel filing cabinets full of books and papers would stop a bullet. He eyed the Colt Commander .45 that he kept duct-taped to the back of the cabinet against his day of doom. It was just possible that Steve Rao’s untimely death was not being taken well by somebody. Hugo Poole waited a moment, but nobody kicked in the door.

Who is it? he called.

Just me. Otto.

Come in.

Otto said, There’s a call for you on the house phone down there, Hugo. It’s a woman who says she’s your aunt.

Hugo squinted at Otto for a second, then stood up and hurried past him to the stairwell. It was unusual for anyone to call in on the Empire Theater’s telephone number, and during the daytime there was usually nobody here to answer it. When Hugo, Otto, and Mike were here, they were usually asleep.

He went to the small office off the lobby near the candy counter and picked up the telephone. Hugo Poole here. He listened. Hi, Aunt Ellen. How are you? What? Dennis? Oh, my God. He closed his eyes and listened for a few seconds. Then he rubbed his forehead. I’m so sorry, Aunt Ellen. I never imagined that anything like this could happen to Dennis.

4

Joe Pitt looked up at the chandelier. There were a few hundred tear-shaped crystal pieces like diamond earrings hanging above him, the light that came off them bright white with glints of rainbows. It was like heaven up there.

He looked down again at the green felt surface of the table, gathered his cards, and glanced at them. It was not heaven down here. Three of clubs, six of diamonds, four of spades, ten of diamonds, nine of hearts.

Joe Pitt watched his four opponents pick up their cards. Jerry Whang’s tell was that he always blinked once when he picked up a really good hand. It was as though he were closing the shutters of his mind, because when he opened his eyes again, he revealed nothing more. There was the blink.

Stella Korb picked up her cards and looked sick. She’d had a Botox injection today to deaden the muscles under her facial skin, but it didn’t change her eyes. The new guy that Pitt thought of as the Kid, who had the repulsive habit of wearing a baseball cap indoors, retained the same dumb look after seeing his cards.

Delores Harkness squeezed her cards open with her thumb, closed them again to look around, then thumbed them open once more to be sure she had seen what she had seen.

She opened with a single twenty-five-dollar chip, patiently trying to keep all of the others in as long as she could before she started murdering the last optimists. She succeeded, each of them tossing in a chip until it came to Joe Pitt. He set his cards down. Have a good evening, everyone. I’m out.

Billy the dealer swept Pitt’s cards away. See you, Joe. Pitt stepped off, heading past the crowds of gamblers toward the front door of the card club. He walked outside, sniffed the night air, looked around himself, and listened. Just beyond the far side of the parking lot he could see headlights flashing past on the freeway and he could hear the constant swish of tires on the pavement. For once he had managed to lose all of the money he had allowed himself for the evening and not go to the cashier’s window with a credit card. He supposed that was a kind of half victory, like getting into a crash and having the car still run well enough to get him home. Then why didn’t he feel better?

He stared at the aisle of the big parking lot where he had left his car and sensed that something was not right. His right hand moved reflexively to pat his left side once, a gesture that was so habitual that most observers would have missed it. He was still permitted to carry his pistol in a shoulder rig under his sport coat: for the rest of his life there would be the chance that someone who had gotten to know him during his twenty years as an investigator for the D.A.’s office would finally get around to killing him.

He opened his coat and stepped forward, away from the lighted front of the casino. Joe Pitt had a willingness to pay attention to vague sensations, and when he sensed that something was threatening he went toward it.

He had built his reputation by solving murders, and he had done it by moving toward whatever didn’t feel right. Offices closed on weekends, but every day on the calendar the killer was a killer, and Joe Pitt was working his way toward him. Any suspect who had not understood it that way had found himself at a severe disadvantage. It wasn’t some theoretical entity called the State of California that was after him; it was Joe Pitt.

He selected a row of cars three spaces to the left of his car, and began to walk up the aisle. It took a moment before he saw the heads in the car parked beside his. As he walked his angle changed, and he could see more: there was a male driver in front, and a second man sitting in the back seat. Maybe it was a rich guy with a chauffeur, and maybe it was an easy way of putting two shooters into position to fire at him.

Joe Pitt stopped beside a car, pretended to unlock it, then went low, as though he had gotten into the driver’s seat. He stayed low and scurried along the spaces between parked cars until he was beside the car where the two men waited. He stood up slightly behind the passenger, with his gun in his hand close to the open window.

The passenger looked at him. Hello, Joe.

Joe Pitt’s hand tightened on the gun. Hello, Hugo.

You know my friend Otto?

Of course. How are you, Otto? Congratulations on your early release.

Thanks, said Otto. It’s nice to be out. And yourself?

I’m fine, thanks. What’s up, Hugo?

Hugo Poole looked up at him. I need to talk to you. If you feel safer doing it inside the casino, I’ll send Otto in to arrange for a private space.

I’m not afraid of you. I’m just not interested. He put his gun away.

It’s worth money to you.

I have money, thanks, said Joe Pitt.

You have a weakness for women and a gambling problem, and nobody’s got enough money for those. Three different guys have come to me in the past year or so to sell me that information. I only paid the first one, but I remembered it. We don’t have time to bullshit each other. Tonight when I found out I needed you I knew where you would be.

The gambling isn’t a problem. It’s the losing. What do you think you need me for?

Will you get in so we can talk? You’re safe with us. Hugo Poole pushed open the door and then slid to the other side. Joe Pitt hesitated, then got in beside him. Otto Collins drove the car up the aisle and out to the street.

Pitt said, I know that a few times when I needed information, you arranged for somebody to miraculously turn up to give it to me. I got the solution to something that was puzzling me, and you got—whatever it was that you got. That may have made me forget to add your name to a list of menaces to the public welfare. But life isn’t the same now.

You’re the same, I’m the same. What’s different?

I’m retired from the district attorney’s office. I’m out. I can’t affect the outcome of some investigation. Whatever it is that you want, I’m not in the position to give it to you.

You’re a private detective now. You’re getting famous.

Everybody’s got to do something. But I don’t do anything for money that can send me to jail.

I assumed that. You wouldn’t last long enough to get to the front of the chow line. If it were anything illegal, I wouldn’t waste your time with it, said Hugo Poole.

So what do you want?

Yesterday my cousin Dennis got shot to death in Portland.

What for? Was he working for you?

No. He’s never worked for me. I haven’t even seen him in about four or five years.

So what was he into?

Hugo Poole frowned. Nothing. Dennis wasn’t into anything. He was a computer salesman.

Pitt’s face was expressionless.

Dennis was a straight businessman. He had a store up in Portland and a warehouse, and he sold computer stuff wholesale and over the Internet. He was good at it. He made money. I want to know what gets a guy like that killed.

That’s what you want? You want me to find out what happened?

Hugo Poole held up his hands. I can’t just leave this to a bunch of shitkicker cops in Oregon. I need somebody on this who knows what’s what.

Portland isn’t a small town, Hugo. They have homicide detectives who can handle an investigation, said Pitt. And I don’t think an outsider has much chance of finding anything they won’t. It’s their city.

It’s not just their city I’m worried about. I need someone who will be able to make the connections between what went on there and what goes on here.

Pitt’s eyes settled on Hugo’s face. You think your cousin’s killing had something to do with you?

Dennis may have had some enemies of his own. He may even have been into something that I don’t know about. But until somebody proves that, the only reason anybody had to shoot Dennis was that he was related to me.

What do you think I can do for you?

Fly up there. Cops all over the country know who you are, and the cases you solved when you were the D.A.’s investigator. They’ll hear your name and think you can help them find out who killed Dennis. So I want you to do it. I’ll pay you a lot of money.

Pitt stared at him, unblinking. Then what if it is about you? I’m not interested in being paid to go up there and steer a police investigation away from you.

You wouldn’t. I can keep myself out of trouble without any help from you. If the investigation starts pointing back in the direction of L.A., you’ll be able to tell them where to look. Even if it’s toward me.

Pitt said, Then you’ll need time to clean up your act, won’t you? Or have you already started phasing down your operations?

Tonight I’m clearing up loose ends so you can go after this guy without tripping over my feet. I’m pulling my feet out of the way.

If I get into this, I’m not going to point the finger at some guy so you can kill him.

I want you to help the cops find the killer—the real one, not some poor bastard they decide to pin it on. If you do that much for me, then you did your job.

How much are you offering?

A hundred thousand plus expenses if you agree to make a serious effort. Another hundred when they get the guy.

You must really feel guilty.

If you won’t take the job because it’s my money, then say it.

No, I’m like a doctor, said Joe Pitt. If you’ve got a heartbeat, I’ll work on you until it stops or your bank account runs dry.

5

Joe Pitt followed Sergeant Catherine Hobbes up the driveway of what had been Dennis Poole’s house. He couldn’t help letting his eyes spend more time looking at her than was practical. He estimated that she was about thirty, but it was hard to be sure. She had a rounded athletic little body, but she had tried to blur the contours with a masculine gray pantsuit, and she had tried to harden her pretty face by pulling her strawberry-blond hair into a bun and wearing little makeup. Joe Pitt watched her step over the POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape, climb the steps to the door, where she ignored the big sticker that said CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER, and unlock the door.

Nice place, he said.

I hate this kind of house. It’s pretentious—way too big for the lot it’s on, and everything inside it was made to be looked at, not used.

He said, I wasn’t asking you to move in with me. I just meant it looks expensive.

It’s that, all right. She stared past him as she swung the door open, and stepped inside to hold it so he had to go in ahead of her.

Catherine Hobbes had been surprised to see how fine Pitt’s features were, and how alert and intelligent his eyes looked. But for her there wasn’t anything endearing about his attractiveness. He talked with the kind of easy familiarity that meant he was aware that he had an advantage with women.

She was irritated at Joe Pitt already, but she was determined to be polite to him. She had orders, and she was not about to get in trouble just because he was arrogant. If she could tolerate him long enough, she could learn something. He was a well-known investigator who had, in his prime, solved a number of murders. If