front of me. I raised it to my lips, and saw the Dwarfs lift their glasses in a toast.
“Here’s to Jack getting our things back,” one of them proclaimed.
“Here’s to Jack,” the others chorused.
I drove to Hollywood, and took Sonny with me. There was a pawnshop on the main drag whose owner was doing five years in the state pen for fencing stolen goods. Not long after his arrest, the owner’s son had gone down for the same crime. A second son had taken over the business, and was cut from the same cloth. I went there first.
A bell rang as we entered. The shop was jammed with electronic equipment and wide-screen TVs. Electric guitars hung from the ceiling that looked like throwbacks to the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Behind a glass-topped counter filled with Rolex watches and glittering diamond rings sat son #2. His name was Burton, and he was eating a big wet sandwich wrapped in wax paper. His sleeveless shirt was unbuttoned to his naval, and was dotted with mustard and bits of cabbage.
“What can I do for you gents?” Burton asked.
“We’re looking for some jewelry,” I replied.
Burton spread his arms to indicate the assortment of items for sale. Sonny stuck his face to the glass in search of his father’s dog tags. Burton couldn’t watch us at the same time, and I turned around, and stared at the surveillance camera above the door.
“Something wrong?” Burton asked.
“Your surveillance camera is unplugged.” I turned back around.
“Learn that trick from your old man? Or did your brother teach you?”
Burton put his hand under the counter. “You want trouble? I’ll give you trouble.”
“Your father used to keep a Smith and Wesson back there. Ever have it cleaned?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I drew my Colt and aimed it at his chest. He quickly brought his hand up.
“Please don’t shoot me,” Burton said.
I put my Colt away. “A junkie came in here and pawned some jewelry he stole from my friends. By law, you’re supposed to record all sales on a video camera. You get around the law by unplugging the camera whenever you want to fence something.”
“You want the stuff back?” Burton asked.
“Yes. Then we can all go back to being friends.”
Burton opened the store safe. From it, a black felt bag was produced, its contents poured on the counter. “That’s all of it,” he said. I took out the napkin, and checked off the stolen items. Everything that had been stolen from the Sunset was accounted for, except Sonny’s father’s dog tags.
“Where are the dog tags?” I asked.
“I threw them out. They were garbage.”
Sonny leapt over the counter and laid a punch on Burton’s chin.
“I want my fucking tags,” Sonny said.
Burton pulled himself off the floor and led us outside. Four garbage pails sat by the back door. Burton said, “I threw the tags into one of these pails.”
Sonny kicked him in the ass and lifted him off the ground. “Find them.”
Burton pulled off the lids and started looking. It took awhile, but he eventually found the tags stuffed inside a wad of receipts. He wiped the tags on his shirt, and gave them to Sonny, then tried to shake Sonny’s hand to show there were no hard feelings. Sonny growled at him, and Burton lowered his arm.
“See you around,” I said.
CHAPTER 39
I awoke the next morning feeling like I’d stepped back twenty years. My rented room above the Sunset looked like my old college dorm room. A few sickly pieces of furniture, and a mattress on the floor. Buster lay beside me, head resting on my chest.
I hit the beach and took my dog for a long run, followed by a hard twenty-minute swim. I was sucking down my second cup of java when my cell phone rang. Sonny moved down the bar, and I took the call.
“I thought we were having dinner last night,” Burrell said, sounding pissed.
“I’m sorry. I had to help a friend recover some stolen goods.”
“How many times did you hit the guy?”
“I didn’t lay a hand on him, Your Honor.”
“I’ve heard that line out of you before.”
An elderly couple came into the bar and inquired about breakfast. Seven in the morning and they were both dressed like they were going to church. I was soaking wet from my swim, and saw them stare at me. I headed outside.
I stood in the building’s cool shade. The tide was up, the crash of waves as loud as a passing train. I lifted the phone to my face. “Sorry about that. How did your search for the file on Daybreak go?”
“Not good,” Burrell said.
My spirits sagged. If I couldn’t identify Lonnie and Mouse outside of their first names, I’d never find Sara. “What happened?”
“I went to the police stockade like you suggested. The Daybreak file was stored in a box from 1990. It’s pretty thick-maybe a hundred pages long. I took it home, and read through it over cold Chinese.”
I made a mental footnote to take Burrell out to dinner someday soon. Otherwise, she’d probably never speak a civil word to me again.
“What did the file say?” I asked.
“I couldn’t read half of it. The pages were blacked out with Magic Marker. There was a memo in the front of the file that said the information had been censored from the file to protect the rights of the patients.”
“Was there a roster of patients’ names?”
“Yes. It had been blacked out as well. I took the page to the lab, and had a tech scan it with ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, the Magic Marker had wiped out the writing. The tech said it was hopeless.”
I leaned against the building. Hopeless. It was a word that rarely slipped into my vocabulary, yet it was exactly how I felt right now.
“I scanned the pages that were legible into my computer, and e-mailed them to you,” Burrell said. “Maybe there’s a clue hidden somewhere in those pages.”
“How many pages did you send?”
“All of them.”
That had probably taken Burrell a few hours. I felt like a real heel.
“I’ll go look at them right now,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I owe you dinner.”
“Yes, you do,” Burrell said.
She was gone before I could say good-bye.
Dogs do not know failure, at least not any I’d been around. They treated each day like a new adventure, their spirits never wavering. This was especially true for Buster. He rode to my office with his tail wagging, ready for whatever challenges the day held. I wanted to share his enthusiasm, but it was hard. I was running out of road.
I parked by Tugboat Louie’s front door. Thirty seconds later, I was in my office, booting up my computer. I went into e-mail, and opened Burrell’s missive. The pages she’d sent to me were hard to read, but that didn’t stop me. I was determined to read every line on every page, no matter how long it took.
Several hours later my cell phone rang. I had a splitting headache from staring at the computer screen, and I pulled myself away and looked at the face of my phone. It was Jessie, the light of my life. I turned away from the computer to speak with her.
“Hey honey, how’s it going?” I answered.
“I’m okay. How are you? I hadn’t talked to you in awhile, and wanted to see how things were going. Mom
