North of Montana

basin. On those days you understand why eighty years ago they could shoot movies here all year round — because every morning they woke up to a world already lit with desert clarity. The natural light was so pure and abundant it could reveal every orange tree in a distant grove or every close-up nuance in an actor’s face.

Today is one of those seven days. I leave the government car and take the Barracuda so I can hit the freeway with the top down. Looking inland you can see snow-capped peaks sixty miles away; sailing west every discrete fold in the Santa Monica Mountains is visible, every window in the towers of Century City shines. The sky is filled with the rare sight of white and charcoal clouds thick enough to cast rippling shadows across a sparkling metropolis newly born.

I am exhilarated also by the news from Wild Bill Walker that he has finally “gotten past a tangle of red tape” and gained access to the prescriptions that Randall Eberhardt wrote for the accident victim Claudia Van Hoven. He had to subpoena the records, but he said the pharmacy was going through their computer files right now and promised to fax me copies immediately. I am pleasantly inflated by the image of myself laying hard evidence on Galloway’s desk before his deadline of the end of the week. Another faultless performance by Ana Grey.

I could sit in the office and stare at the fax machine or get out into the air, so I decide to spring myself on Warren Speca, who has not been returning my phone messages, to see if he has inside knowledge of the activities of his old high school girlfriend and her doctor husband. If not, I’ll take a walk on Venice beach and look at the ocean.

Speca Electrical operates out of a bungalow on one of the canal streets. Nurse Kathy back in Savin Hill, Massachusetts, would be amazed to see that there really are canals in Venice, California. There used to be bridges and gondolas as well and an opera house that was meant to bring culture to the wild Pacific edge of America, part of Abbot Kinney’s sweetly literal idea that if you built a town that looked like the Italian Renaissance, a Renaissance would occur.

God knows dreams die hard every day out here on the frontier but Venice was one of our saddest losses; although The Pike amusement park in Long Beach went down to shorefront developers, Venice was a much grander idea. But the canals were poorly engineered, either from ignorance or greed (it didn’t say in The History of Our State of California, which I had to read in Poly), and almost immediately the sea began to reclaim them. Abbot Kinney’s waterways to culture filled steadily with silt until they became standing pools of stagnant waste and were declared a health hazard in the twenties and covered over with asphalt.

Warren Speca’s tiny yellow house is perched at the edge of one of the remaining canals. Today the water is filmed with a rainbow slick of oil and the banks are swarming with ducks, the grass bleached white from their droppings. Across the way is a spate of expensive condominiums, but on the canal side a row of bungalows that must have been built in Abbot Kinney’s day has resisted development. Judging from the deteriorating wood and peeling paint and oddball toys and rusty garden equipment scattered across the backyards, they must be rentals owned by one stubborn or crazy landlord. Like Speca’s cottage, they all have security bars covering the windows and doors, which detracts considerably from the vintage charm.

I follow the sounds of an easy-listening radio station to the driveway, where a Toyota 4?4 is humming and a man in worn jeans and cowboy boots is loading up the last of his toolboxes and slamming the door.

“Mr. Speca? Could I talk with you a minute? My name is Ana Grey, I’m with the FBI.” I show him my identification.

He turns the engine off. As he’s climbing out of the cab, he looks beyond my shoulder at something behind me that has suddenly caught his eye. I spin reflexively, expecting a gang-banger from the Shoreline Crips.

“Is that a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda?” he says, walking right past me.

“Actually it’s a 1970.” We are standing in the street as he inspects the car.

“Nice paint job. Is it yours?”

“Yes, it’s mine.”

He doesn’t seem surprised or make anything out of it. “What’ve you got there, a 440 four barrel?”

“I looked for a six-pack but I couldn’t get air conditioning. Tell me you’re into ‘cudas.”

Warren Speca goes to his truck and comes back with the latest issue of Hemmings Motor News. I can’t help it. My heart jumps.

“My favorite bedside reading.” He thumbs it so I can see all the turned-down pages.

“Mine, too.”

“Think of all we’d have to talk about in bed.” He runs a gaze across my chest and meets my eyes with an amused and frankly randy look. “What do you get for mileage?”

“Thirteen. But that’s not why you own one of these cars.”

“I dig it.” He digs it all right. He has prematurely gray hair in a military buzz cut and soft full lips with a sensual curve to them. Weathered cheeks, eyes buried in sun creases. It’s those lips, like Paul Newman’s in Sweet Bird of Youth, that have allowed him to get away with what he’s been getting away with since high school; lips that whisper an insistent invitation to meet with them and break all the rules.

“Pretty good maintenance?”

“Not too much goes wrong. The alternator failed during the rain. The battery dies on you, things like that.”

“But I bet it’ll do the quarter mile in the fourteen-second bracket.”

“I’ve had it up to a hundred on the freeway at night.”

Warren Speca is fingering the red leather on the driver’s seat. “Naughty girl.”

“It was a high-speed chase through five counties ending in a four-way shoot-out, you know how it is.”

He smiles. “Like that TV cop — what was his name — drove a car like this?”

“Mannix.”

“Was it exactly like yours?”

“Exactly.”

Warren Speca looks at me and then at the car, nodding slowly. “I am truly impressed.”

“Well, I’m impressed,” I chatter on, believing that I’ve got him heading down that garden path. “You’re the only one I’ve ever met who knew that Mannix drove a Barracuda.”

“I used to watch a lot of television in the sixties. Used to do a lot of other things, too.”

“You and Claire Eberhardt?”

His eyes stay steady. “What about Claire?”

“When you guys went to high school together, I can see you two drinking beer, smoking whatever, spacing out watching TV.…”

His hands go into his front pockets. “All right. What the fuck is going on?”

I knew he’d come on like this sooner or later, so I just stay smooth.

“We have no interest in what went on before. We want to know if you’re in contact with her now.”

“Why?”

“Routine background check on the Eberhardts.”

He waits a moment, looking for something in my face. Apparently I give it to him because he says, “I don’t think so,” and walks down the driveway back to his truck.

“What’s the problem?” I find myself going after him.

“No problem. I don’t have to talk to you, so have a nice day.”

He backs the Toyota out.

“By the way”—he leans from the window—“Mannix drove a Hemi ’cuda.”

“I knew that,” I say, cheeks burning.

He ticks a finger back and forth reproachfully and heads off down the street.

• • •

I know I will get Warren Speca. He can’t just challenge me and drive away.

I go back over the notes I took with Nurse Kathy in the submarine shop. She said Speca was “into some stuff she wouldn’t tell me about. I swivel up to the computer and run the criminal checks. Before I can take another sip of foul end-of-the-day coffee all the information I need comes up neatly on the screen.

I wait until nine o’clock that night to catch him at home. He picks up the phone with a dull, unguarded