He's crying again.
"Why not?" Natalie asks.
"Ghosts."
"They're not ghosts, they're shadows."
But they are scary, Natalie admits. The branches of the big eucalyptus tree outside the window are blowing in the wind, making ghostlike arms and heads on the bedroom wall.
"I'm scared," Michael says.
"Of what?"
"Fire," Michael says. "Like burned up Mommy."
"This house won't catch on fire."
"How do you know?"
I don't know, Natalie thinks. She's scared, too.
She has bad dreams.
Where there's fire everywhere.
And Mommy's asleep and won't wake up.
"There won't be a fire," she says, "because I am the princess and that's my command."
"Who can I be?" Michael asks.
"The princess's little brother."
Michael whines, "Can't I be something else, too?"
"Like a wizard?"
"What's that?"
"Like a magician," Natalie says. "Only better."
"Can I make things disappear?"
"Yes."
"Like ghosts?"
"Yes," Natalie says. "Now go to sleep."
"Leave the light on."
She leaves the light on.
And lies awake and watches the shadows move.
115
Jack sits in the darkness.
All but invisible against the bluff, he's waiting for there to be just enough light for him to see without being seen.
So he sits down and just watches the ocean.
Like he used to do as a kid.
Just sits at Dana Strand and does nothing.
The waves are silver under the full moon.
They fall on the beach with a sound like shhhhhhhh.
A Pacific lullaby.
Jack waits for the sun to come up.
116
Letty wakes up with a start.
A sound outside.
Footsteps on the deck.
She picks up her weapon from the side table by the bed and holds it in her good hand as she eases along the wall to the door.
Settle down, girl, she tells herself. Her heart's racing and her hand's trembling.
She gets to the door and looks out through the glass panes.
Can't see a thing.
She lifts the slinged hand up and turns the doorknob. Then kicks the door open and bursts out onto the deck in the shooting position. Swings right – nothing. Swings left The raccoon scrambles down the steps.
"Shit," Letty says.
Puffs a long sigh and gets her breath back.
Then she laughs at herself and makes a note to get bungee cords for the garbage cans.
Shuts the door and starts to go back to bed.
But her arm's hurting so she goes into the bathroom, turns on the light, and takes a couple more Vikes.
Turns off the light and goes back to bed.
Lev's pressed against the corner of the house.
He watches the light come on and then go off again.
117
Nicky watches Paul Gordon walk out of the Starbucks with a cappuccino in his hand. Arrogantly oblivious to the possibility that the world might injure him.
The driver trails him across the almost empty parking lot toward the bank where Gordon walks up to the automatic teller, rests his cappuccino on the ledge, puts in his card, and taps his foot while the machine hums.
Nicky watches from the backseat as Dani lowers the front passenger window and rests the machine pistol on the edge.
Gordon gets his cash, grips his two hundred bucks in one hand and his coffee in the other, and turns into the spray of bullets that smash into his chest. The cappuccino splashes all over his bloodstained shirt as he falls to the hot asphalt.
"You're fired," Nicky says.
118
Teddy Kuhl's doing the smart thing.
He's running.
Since motherfucking Deputy Dawg's parting shot that Teddy sang like a bird, Teddy knows it's only a matter of time before one of his tightest buddies rats him out to the Russians.
Teddy knows that he is just cash on the hoof.
So, hurting as he is, he nuts it up, packs a few things, gets on his bike and heads east until this shit cools off. He's thinking maybe Arizona.
He is doing a very smart thing.
Then he does a very stupid thing.
He stops for a beer.
Stupider than that, he stops for a beer at a bikers bar called Cook's Corner, out by Modjeska Canyon. Teddy's thinking he needs a beer, maybe, and this is the last good beer spot for many dry and lonely miles.
The beer tastes so good to him he goes for another.
Gets laughing with some buddies and ends up having five.
Doesn't even notice one of his boys on the phone.
Beer number seven, he decides it's time to hit the road and get out of Dodge, but he needs to take a piss first. Beer bladder pressing down on him like a fifty-pound weight.
So he slides off the stool, pushes the metal door into the men's room, and steps up to the stainless-steel trough.
All by his lonesome in there.
George Thorogood song blaring from inside the bar – Teddy's kind of rocking to it as he unzips his fly and lets loose.
"Aaaaaahhhhh."
Hitter steps out from a stall, puts the pistol to the back of Teddy's head and pulls the trigger.
Teddy dies with what's left of his face in the urinal.
Right next to that little white sponge thing.
119
Judge John Bickford gets an anonymous phone call at home, informing him that his years of devoted service to the plaintiff's bar have been duly noted. That an informant has in fact duly noted it to the California Attorney General's office, and that a story will appear in tomorrow's Orange County Register linking him to a murdered Paul Gordon and Paul Gordon to the Russian Mafia.
Bickford says goodbye to his wife and drives to a motel in Oceanside where he tranquilizes himself with twelve-year-old scotch and Valium and, in the small hours of the morning, slashes his wrists.
The newspaper story never appears.
Retired Justice Dennis Mallon gets a similar phone call and catches a flight to Mexico with a connection to Grand Cayman. He has a home there.
Dr. Benton Howard steps off a curb into an oncoming car. His injuries are so real that he dies of them.
Word hits the street by morning that Howard was an informant working with the Anti-ROC Task Force.
120
Which is working like a mother.
In what will become known in law enforcement circles as the St. Petersburg Day Massacre, Young's troops roll up Tratchev's brigade like it's the freaking Republican Guard.
Tratchev's guys are caught flat-footed. They're grabbed in bars, they're grabbed in their homes, they're grabbed in bed with their girlfriends.
Viktor Tratchev is having a quiet evening at home watching Cops on the Fox network when the door comes crashing in and Special Agent Young comes through with a shotgun in his hands like he's Robert Stack. Tratchev is annoyed because he thought he had guards out there, but the guards now have their hands behind their backs and plastic ties around their wrists, so technically speaking they're not really guards anymore.
"Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do?"
Tratchev reaches for his glasses.
Which is a mistake, because one of Young's troops puts two rounds into his chest before Young can scream, "What the fuck are you doing?!" but the fact is that the agent knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.
He's getting in position for a big payday from Nicky Vale is what he's doing.
"What you gonna do when they come for you?"
Jimenez's boys are romping in L.A.
Up and down Fairfax, they're crashing in doors, they're jamming cars into curbs, they're blocking off alleys and side streets. They're scooping up car thieves, drive-down artists, extortionists, drug dealers – the whole first and second All-Star Team of Rubinsky's and Schaller's best moneymakers.