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  “This isn’t about Homeland Security,” Cisneros said. “Or the prez. That’s what most people think of when they think of the Service. You know, Clint Eastwood running alongside the president’s coach. But that’s not all we do.”

  “Yeah, you threaten people with knives, too.”

  He smiled. “Just needed to get you a message. Sorry I couldn’t fill you in at the time.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because you’re a target.”

  “I gathered that. But why?”

  “Counterfeiting.”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s why the Service started, by the way,” he said. “Back in 1865. To protect the integrity of the currency.”

  “You think I’m passing bogus money or something?”

  “No, but you know somebody who is.”

  “You mind telling me?”

  “Rudy Barocas.”

  “Barocas?”

  “That’s who you got yourself tangled up with, isn’t it?”

  “Where you getting your information?”

  He sat back a little. “I’m the Secret Service, my man. You don’t think we got sources?”

  “Okay, since you got sources, why don’t you stop asking me questions and just lay it all out? I’m tired and my house just burned down and I want to know why you know all about me.”

  The unsmiling waitress plopped a couple of coffees in thick white mugs in front of us. She pulled some creamers out of her blue apron and dropped them in the middle of the table, where they scattered. She put down a bill on receipt tape and left without ever showing a tooth. Cisneros slid the bill to his side of the table.

  “You deserve to know,” he said. “All right. It started with a lap dance a year ago. In Hollywood. A small-time op named Gabriel López got the action from a stripper at a club on Ivar. Two hours worth. Then she sees him reach into his sock and come out with a wad, and he peels off a couple of yards.”

  “Pretty expensive lap dance.”

  “She wasn’t complaining. Then she goes backstage and smells something funny. Like vinegar. It’s the bills. She tells the manager who goes out to ask the guy what’s up and they fight. A bouncer the size of Montana steps on López while they call the cops.”

  “The bills were counterfeit?”

  “He had another eleven bennies in his wad. Vinegar laced. That’s to keep the dogs off ’em.”

  “Sniffers?”

  “Right. At the border, smelling for contraband. Naturally, that interested us. What we got out of Mr. López was confirmation of something we were already working on, a counterfeiting ring down in Mexico, we think in Guadalajara. They have the same offset printing equipment as our boys in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And they’re moving the bills up here using the same routes as the drug mules.”

  “There’s drugs involved, too?”

  “There’s a guy, Carlos Ayarza-Moreno, runs a cartel that controls most of the drugs on the Mexican Pacific coast. He’s partnering with the head of the counterfeit ring, a guy named Chapo Guzmán. You with me so far?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  “Now both these guys use the same mules. One month a mule will be transporting drugs to Los Angeles or Miami, the next he’s hauling counterfeit notes. Or she is.”

  “She?”

  “Guzmán likes to use women. Less conspicuous. We caught one a few months ago walking pretty as you please across the border at San Ysidro. Let’s just say she looked a little too well endowed. Turns out she had $200,000 of fake bills in her bra and underwear.”

  “I still don’t get how this is supposed to relate to me.”

  “I’m getting there. We figure about eight million in fake Benjamins has come in over the last couple of months alone. So where do all these bills go, you might ask.”

  “I ask.”

  “Distribution is through street gangs. Here in L.A. and Orange County, as far north as Spokane and as far south as New Orleans. New Orleans has been hot since Katrina. That’s where Barocas comes in.”

  “He works with Latino gangs.”

  “Depends what you mean by work. He’s got an operation going on that looks good on the surface. We think he does a little special training on the side. But he’s got himself in with the powers that be, so to speak. There’s a hands-off policy at City Hall. No one wants to tee off the brown vote.”

  “But you guys don’t care about teeing off anybody.”

  “All I care about is nailing him. He’s the big fish. And that, in short, is what you’ve stumbled into.”

  “I didn’t stumble,” I said. “I wanted to find something out.”

  “Having to do with your fiancée?”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, I shook my head. “That’s scary.”

  “We have actual computers, Mr. Buchanan. We’re hooked up to the Internet and everything.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “Your story wasn’t hard to trace. You went to Mrs. Salazar’s to find out what you could about Ernesto Bonilla.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  “Squat.”

  “I’ll unsquat you, if you want.” He took a sip of coffee. I noticed what looked like burn marks on the back of his fingers.

  I said, “Tell me.”

  “Bonilla had some tattoos on his neck.”

  “Let me guess. Three dots? Mi vida loca?”

  “Impressive. There was another one that interested me. A 666 on the right side of his neck.”

  “Isn’t that some sort of religious thing?”

  “In Latino gang culture, it’s another way to designate eighteen, for the Eighteenth Street Gang. Located in the Rampart Division of L.A.”

  Rampart was a name well known to me, as it was to many in Los Angeles. The big LAPD scandal out of that division’s gang unit in the nineties made national news and resulted in so-called Rampart Rules that many say hamstrung the police. It wasn’t a coincidence that gang activity went up after the rules went into effect. Best laid plans.

  “The Eighteenth is into a lot of things, from carjacking to meth, and in the nineties some sections got in with the Mexican Mafia and drug cartels. Bonilla was arrested in that connection three years ago. He plead out to a lesser and got diverted to an honor ranch.”

  “Run by Rudy Barocas?”

  “You got it. You thought maybe you’d go looking into Bonilla, the guy who fell on your fiancée’s car, and instead you almost got yourself killed. And a firebombed house. That’s why I want you to stay out of this thing. I want you to go somewhere for a while and forget about this. There’s nothing more you can do.”

  I looked over toward the front window, where an Asian man sat alone. He had a cup in front of him but didn’t hold it. Then he looked out the window at the night. That was L.A., I thought. You could be alone in a lot of well-lighted places.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

  “Jacqueline may have been alive after Bonilla hit her car.”

  Cisneros held his cup at mouth level, unmoving.

  “The guy who hit me at Mrs. Salazar’s, I’d seen him before. He came to Jacqueline’s funeral. He came up to me after and told me he’d seen a guy go down to the accident, and this guy found Jacqueline alive. And then killed her.”

  For a long time Cisneros said nothing. The Asian man was still looking out the window. The city seemed to be stopped on its crazy axis.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said.

  “Tell me why.”

  He looked down at the table. “I have to think about that.”

  “Think about what?”

  “What I can say.”

  I put both my hands, palms down, on the table. “Why don’t you just tell me? It’s really simple. I’m sitting right here.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yeah you can. You just won’t.”

  “All right t
hen, I won’t.”

  “Sure. You’re just another company man.”

  “Look—”

  I stood up.

  “Where you going?” he said.

  “I’ll walk back.”

  “Buchanan, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “My whole life is based on stupid now. I’m on a roll.”

  He grabbed my wrist and put a card in my hand. “Listen to me. Anything else happens I want you to call that number and ask for Phil.”

  “Phil?”

  “That’s it. Phil. You’ll be directed from there.”

  I put the card in my back pocket. “Thanks for the coffee.” I walked past the man who was still watching the world. When I got outside and walked past the window, I saw his face. It was a blank, as if he was waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  This town pulsates with two kinds of desperation. There’s the lust for the juice, the buzz, the thing —most of the time unknown and unnamed —that will keep you from looking in at the inner abyss.

  Then there are those who have given up the fight, and the other kind of people who swirl around them like a human dust storm. These people sit, watch, not caring, not hoping for a jolt anymore because for some reason they don’t believe it exists.

  The question I had, and couldn’t answer, was which kind was I?

  I walked back to what remained of my house. People were still milling around—fire and sheriff’s deputies, a cop, some neighbors. I spoke to no one, just got in my car, where I’d left the box with Jacqueline’s things, and drove away. I called Al and asked if I could have the sofa for the night.

  He seemed real happy about that. I could hear his wife yelling at him in the background.

  55

  AL’S HOUSE WAS still dark when I woke up.

  I was on his sofa, under a blanket that Adrienne had reluctantly given me. Clearly, she was not a Benedictine.

  But neither Adrienne nor Al was on my mind at the moment. I kept thinking about Cisneros and what he’d said.

  Barocas. Counterfeiting. Bonilla.

  Why would Bonilla shoot his wife and then himself? Maybe it had something to do with Triunfo. Maybe some kind of net was closing in around him and his wife. Or his wife had something to say and he didn’t want her to say it.

  Or maybe he was just a nut loaf.

  But somebody had followed him. Somebody who wanted to make sure he was dead.

  Somebody from Triunfo maybe? Watching him. Because Bonilla and his wife weren’t being good little tchotchkes, dangling from Barocas’s chain.

  And the guy following slid down the hill and saw Jacqueline alive. Saw her staring at him. Maybe pleading for help with her eyes. Eyes that could identify him. He snapped her neck.

  I sat up, sweating, tight breath.

  Al and I breakfasted on Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts and coffee. Nothing better for you at seven A.M.

  “Man, I am so bummed about your house,” Al said. “You got insurance?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Where you going to stay?”

  “I’ll stay with Fran, Jacqueline’s mom. She’s alone in this little house in Reseda.”

  “What started it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Arson?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Why not?”

  My cell went off. I looked at the screen. Channing Westerbrook was up early.

  “You didn’t get back to me,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “When can we meet?”

  “How about I call you next week?”

  “I won’t be put off, Ty.” Her voice was a mix of play and threat. For some reason I thought of that line Glenn Close says in Fatal Attraction: “I will not be ignored!” Wonderful.

  “Hey, look, I’ve got—”

  “No, Ty. We have a deal and things are happening.”

  “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me about things happening. Let’s make it next week.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll check—”

  “Tuesday?”

  She wasn’t going to go away. “Wednesday,” I said. “After work.”

  “I’ll give you an address. You have something to write with?”

  I grabbed a pad and pencil from an end table and wrote down the address she gave me.

  “Eight o’clock,” she said and clicked off.

  “Trouble?” Al said.

  “Westerbrook.”

  Al pointed at me, like a preacher making a point. “Babes, my friend. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.”

  “You know what the word ‘misogyny’ means?”

  “It’s a Swedish thing, right? Deep tissue?”

  “No, it’s Greek. Mis meaning you and gyny meaning jerk.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Greek.”

  “Lend me some clothes, will you?”

  “Will they fit?”

  “You mean because you’re a pathetic physical specimen? Close enough.”

  I ate the last of my Pop-Tart and washed it down with coffee. “And cover for me with McDonough. Tell him I’m—”

  “That your house burned down.”

  “No, I’ll break that news to him myself.”

  56

  BUT NOT RIGHT away.

  I took the box and drove over to Fran’s. She wasn’t home, so I got the key out of the snail statuette she kept in the garden and let myself in. Then I called her at work. She was an assistant in the library at Cal State Northridge.

  She said she’d love to have me stay with her for a while. She actually sounded happy about it.

  When I hung up I went into Jacqueline’s old room. Just smelling it.

  In my mind, I thought I heard a voice telling me to open Jacqueline’s journal.

  Then thought, just my imagination. . . .

  I took the journal to the big front window and sat on the window bench with it. I opened up to the first page, and heard Jacqueline again at age sixteen.

  Mr. St. John was out of control in class today. He kept talking about how there was no soul in animals or humans. We were all part of the same basic group. Different limbs on the same tree.

  Of course there’s a soul! You can feel it when you listen to music (except Grunge, of course).

  And besides, Mr. St. John, if there is no soul life is meaningless.

  Sarah and Paige brought over an old Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, last Friday. They didn’t like it, but I thought it was hilarious. I loved the part where the little Woody Allen character is sitting in the doctor’s office with his mother and she says to the doctor he isn’t doing his homework!

  The doctor asks him why, and the little Woody says the universe is expanding. Someday it will blow up. So what’s the point?

  The doctor says that won’t happen for billions of years! So let’s just enjoy ourselves while we can!

  That doctor could have been Mr. St. John!

  A soul. Jacqueline did believe in it. We’d had one long talk about souls once. She had some sort of intuition about these matters that I didn’t.

  “Just give it time,” she’d say. “You’ll see it, too.”

  I closed the journal, still hearing her voice.

  57

  TRAFFIC TO WESTWOOD was a snarl the next morning, Friday. The Sepulveda Pass was a parking lot. KNX News said some guy had been changing a tire on the shoulder near the Skirball Center and got rammed by a pickup. That was death to the guy and death to the commuter traffic.

  So I breathed steadily and tried to figure out how I was going to get through this day.

  On the one hand, I had my head on the chopping block at the firm. If I didn’t keep up on the Blumberg litigation, I was gone.

  As far as my house, there’d be all sorts of little plates I’d have to spin, from insurance, to the arson guys, to wondering who did that to me and why.

  I put in a full morning’s work in one of Al’s suits. At lunch I hit my favorite
men’s store and put a couple grand on my American Express.

  I even managed some office time on Saturday and Sunday. Monday was Martin Luther King’s birthday, the post office was closed, and there was an unspoken understanding at the firm that it could be a light day. So I gave myself permission to go to the beach. Alone, with a couple of Coronas and a Subway. But it was cloudy again and cold, so I ended up eating my lunch in the parking lot at Zuma, rain spattering my car.

  By Tuesday I was starting to feel like maybe I could get back into the professional swing of things, even with all the hell of the last few weeks. I was feeling strong about it, too. This would show McDonough, show them all.

  Yeah, right. All they were about to find out was how far a guy can fall.

  58

  LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON I decided to get a closer look at our client in action. If Lea Edwards ever had to testify as a respondent, it would be a much different dynamic for her than easy interviews in my office. So I arranged to sit in on a seminar she was conducting for a group of criminal defense attorneys. If you can keep your cool in shark-filled waters, maybe you’ll do okay on the stand.

  It was in a ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel downtown. This was one of L.A.’s classic hotels, located across from Pershing Square. It’s the place where they used to hold the Oscars back when it was a big banquet. I sat in the back so Lea wouldn’t see me. Didn’t want her performing for her legal counsel.

  As if it would have made any difference. She filled the room like a diva. She was dressed to kill in a sleek, form-fitting black suit, like something Katharine Hepburn might have worn. She walked back and forth on the stage and spoke without notes. Her voice was head miked so she was free to gesture with her hands. And gesture she did.

  “The line of attack on any eyewitness starts before you get to the memory,” she said. “You start with the character because everything we think is funneled through the interior of our deepest beliefs. Our core. That’s what interprets all stimuli, instantly, before it settles in to become what we recall.”

  The criminal defense lawyers were taking notes. They were an eclectic bunch—young, old, hairy, bald, a couple of gray ponytails, and lots of T-shirts and jeans.

  “Let me give you an example. Do you think if George Bush witnessed a man shooting a gun, the picture would lodge in his brain the same way it would if Hillary Clinton saw it?”