cold, dark place.
The woman asleep in his bed was another matter. She had come of her own free will, let herself in, and made herself at home.
Parker sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her, a little pleased, a little surprised, a little puzzled.
Diane blinked her eyes open and looked up at him.
“Surprise,” she said softly.
“I am surprised,” Parker said, touching her hair. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
She rubbed her hands over her face and scooted up against the pillows. “I needed to cleanse my palate of socialites. Decided I would find myself a hot metrosexual guy to hang out with.”
Parker smiled. “Well, baby, I am the prince of metrosexual chic. I have a closet full of Armani, a medicine cabinet full of skin-care products. I can whip up a dinner for four with no frozen ingredients, I can pick a good wine, and I’m not gay—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I knew I’d come to the right place.”
She sat up and stretched, not in the least self-conscious about or self-promoting of her naked state. That was part of Diane’s appeal, there was no coy bullshit. She was a strong, attractive woman, comfortable in her own body.
“Did you get called to something?” she asked.
“Yeah. Ruiz’s first homicide as lead.”
“God help you,” she said. “I don’t like her.”
“Nobody likes her.”
“She’s not a woman’s woman.”
“What does that mean?”
Diane rolled her eyes. “Men. You never get this. It means don’t turn your back on her. Don’t trust her, don’t rely on her. It means she’ll be your best friend if she thinks she can get something out of you, but if she can’t, she’ll turn on you like a snake.”
“I think we’ve already come to that point,” Parker said.
“Good. Then you won’t be surprised,” she said. “Did she get an easy one?”
Parker shook his head. “Not really. It might be tied to the Lowell homicide last night.”
“Really?” She frowned a little. “How so?”
“The vic is the dispatcher from the messenger service Lowell called at the end of the day. Somebody seems to be after something and is pretty damn pissed off not to be finding it.”
“Did RHD show up again?”
“No. Too busy off hobnobbing on your side of town, I guess,” Parker said. “How long did they stay at the party?”
“Just what I told you. They exchanged a few words with Giradello and left. What did that name mean to you?”
“Damon is the name of the bike messenger sent to Lowell’s office last night.”
“I thought Lowell was a robbery.”
“I don’t believe it,” Parker said. “Maybe the perp stole the money out of Lowell’s safe, but that wasn’t what he went there for. Apparently he thinks the bike messenger has whatever that is.”
“You don’t think the bike messenger did it?”
“No. That doesn’t track for me. I think the bike messenger is just the rabbit. I want the dog that’s chasing him.” His mood darkened again as he thought of Eta lying in that alley. “I
Neither of them spoke for a moment, as their respective wheels turned.
“Lowell called a messenger to pick something up,” Diane murmured. “The messenger left with the package —”
“We assume.”
“Someone killed Lowell, and now has killed someone connected to the bike messenger. The bike messenger still has the package. The killer is after the package.”
“Smells like blackmail,” Parker said.
“Hmmm” was all Diane said, lost in thoughts of her own.
Parker had always believed she would have made a hell of a detective. She was wasted poking at dead bodies for the coroner every day. But she liked the forensic side. She had been a criminalist with the Scientific Investigation Division for a long time before going to the coroner’s office. She talked about going back to school to get a degree in medical pathology.
She sighed then and reached out and settled her hand on the curve between his neck and shoulder.
“Come to bed,” she said quietly. “It’s late. You can be the world’s greatest detective again in the morning.”
He nodded. “I’m not going to be good for anything,” he said as he slipped beneath the covers.
“I’ll settle for having you close,” she said. “That’s all I’m up for myself.”
“I can manage that,” Parker said, already falling asleep as he spooned her and kissed her hair.
28
Morning was a soft, sweet dream on the horizon to the east of Los Angeles. Narrow stripes of indigo, tangerine, and rose waiting to come into bloom. The offshore weather system that had brought the rain had cleared out, leaving the air washed fresh and the promise of Technicolor blue skies.
On the rooftop of the converted warehouse, a man moved slowly through the elegant, focused steps of tai chi. White Crane Spreads Its Wings, Snake Creeps Down, Needle at Sea Bottom. His concentration was on breathing, moving, inner stillness. His breath escaped as delicate clouds that dissipated into the atmosphere.
On another rooftop to the west, an old man and a child moved in unison, side by side, their individual energies touching, their minds completely separate. Meditation in motion. Slowly reach, slowly step, shift weight back.
Under a freeway overpass at Fourth and Flower in downtown LA, Jace huddled inside a survival blanket, his army surplus coat arranged over the blanket to hide the silver stuff it was made of. The blanket looked like a big sheet of aluminum foil, but it held his body heat, and it folded down to the size of a sandwich.
He had dozed off and on for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t say he’d slept. Crouched into a ball to stay warm and to draw as little attention to himself as possible, he felt as if his body had frozen into that position. Slowly he started to rise. His joints felt as if they were being wrenched apart.
A block down, at Fifth and Flower, messengers would be showing up for coffee and fuel at Carl’s Jr. He would have sold his soul for a hot cup of coffee. The Midnight Mission at Fourth and Los Angeles served a full breakfast to anyone who wanted it.
Maybe he would go there later. He wanted to talk to Mojo, get the lowdown on what people were saying, what was going on at Speed, what Eta might have told the cops. Later the space under the bridge would fill with messengers hanging out, waiting for calls. They would park their motley assortment of bikes and perch themselves on the guardrail like a bunch of crows, and talk about everything from vegan diets to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Of all the messengers, Mojo was the one Jace most respected and came closest to trusting. He came off like a crazy Rasta man with his voodoo and superstitions, but Jace knew him to be more crazy like a fox than crazy like Preacher John. Mojo had survived as a messenger for a lot of years. No one managed that by dumb luck. And every once in a while he would pull the mask back and give a glimpse of who he was behind it—an intelligent man with an enviable sense of calm at his core.
Mojo would give him the lowdown. If he could catch Mojo alone.
Jace folded his survival blanket and put it in his backpack. He went behind a concrete piling and took a whiz, then strapped on his pack, climbed on The Beast, and started down the street toward Carl’s Jr. There was no traffic. The city was just waking up, stretching and yawning.
This was Jace’s favorite time of day, now, when he could take a deep breath of clean air, when his head was
