LA Requiem

'You don't owe me anything, Frank.'

He squeezed my leg harder, so hard I thought the bone might break. 'Everything I have is yours. You don't have to understand that, or me. Just know that it's so.'

I thought about Rusty Swetaggen, and understood.

When they were leaving, Abbot Montoya stepped back through the door.

'Frank means it.'

'I know.'

'No. You don't know, but you will. I mean it, too. You are ours now, Mr. Cole. Forever and always. That is a blood oath. Perhaps we are not so far from the White Fence, even after all these years.'

When he left I stared at the ceiling.

'Latins.'

Later that afternoon, Charlie Bauman was filling my room with cigarette smoke when Branford, Krantz, and Stan Watts dropped by.

Krantz stood at the end of my bed with his hands in his pockets, saying, 'A couple of kids found Pike's car outside Twentynine Palms.' Twentynine Palms is a barren, rugged place northeast of Palm Springs where the Marines have their Ground Combat Center. They do live-fire exercises out there, bringing in the fast movers to napalm the sand.

Charlie sat up.

I said, 'Was Pike in it?'

Branford glanced at my cast. 'Nope. Just a lot of his blood. The whole front seat was soaked. We've got the States out there doing a sweep.'

They were staring at me like I had helped him park the car.

Bauman said, 'You're not still going to prosecute Pike for this Dersh thing, are you, Branford?'

Branford just looked at him.

'Oh, for chrissake.'

I said, 'Krantz, you know better. You saw how Sobek was dressed, just like Pike. He's who the old lady saw.'

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Krantz met my eyes. 'I don't know anything like that, Cole. Mrs. Kimmel saw arrow tattoos. Sobek didn't have tattoos.'

'So he painted them on, then washed them off.'

'I heard you ask Sobek if he did Dersh. I heard Sobek deny it.'

Charlie waved his cigarette, annoyed. 'You want a signed confession? What are we talking about here?'

'I want facts. We haven't been sitting on our asses with this, Bauman. We ran everything Pike said about his alibi through the system, and it came back just the way I thought it would: bullshit. No hits on a black minivan, Trudy, or Matt. We flashed Sobek's picture in a six-pack for Amanda Kimmel, but she still puts the finger on Pike.'

Branford said, 'We've got the murder weapon, the GSR, and the motive; that gives us Pike.'

Charlie said, 'Pike's statement wasn't a secret. Sobek could've tossed the gun off the pier to match with Pike's story. If Sobek didn't kill Dersh, why was Jesus Lorenzo killed just a few hours later? You writing that off as a coincidence?'

'I'm writing it off as something I can't ask Sobek because Sobek is dead. Look, Pike saved Krantz's life, and those two women's, but I can't just forget about Dersh because we owe him one. You give me some proof that he didn't do it, or that Sobek did, I'll think it over.'

Charlie Bauman waved his cigarette like he didn't believe Branford for a second, then considered Krantz. 'Tell me something, Lieutenant? You really draw down on Pike after Pike saved you?'

'Yes, I really did that.'

'Even after he saved your life?'

'He murdered Eugene Dersh, and he's going to answer for it. What I feel doesn't matter.'

'Well, at least you feel something.'

No one said much after that, and pretty soon everybody left but Watts.

He said, 'We buried Samantha this morning. Had over a thousand officers in the ranks. It was nice.'

372 ROBERT CRAIS

'I'll bet it was.'

'We get any word on Pike, I'll let you know.'

'Thanks, Stan. I appreciate it.'

Thinking back, I'm sure the only reason Stan Watts tagged along withKrantz and Branford that day was to share Samantha Dolan's final moment with me, and to tell me that a thousand officers had seen her off.

I don't think he would've come for any other reason.

I wish I could have been there to see her off with them.

I left the hospital the next day.

The doctors raised hell, but I couldn't take lying in bed with Joe still missing. I hoped that Joe was alive, and thought that if anyone could survive it would be him, but I also knew that if Pike had found his way into the ravines and arroyos of the desert, his body might not be discovered for years.

I took too many painkillers, but still couldn't drive with the

cast, so I hired a cab to take me out to the desert. I went back

to Paulette's house, then up to Twentynine Palms, and tried to

imagine what Joe might've been thinking, and where he

might 've gone, but couldn 't.

I checked all the nearby motels and service stations, and ate so many Percocet that I threw up twice.

I went back to the desert the next day, and the next, but never found a trace. The cab fares totaled eight hundred dollars.

Perhaps if I were a better detective I could have gotten a line on him, or found his body, though not if Joe was alive and covering his tracks.

Telling myself that was better than thinking him dead.

When I wasn't at the desert I haunted Santa Monica, walking Joe's route both during the day and at night, talking to clerks and surfers and gang-bangers and bodybuilders and maintenance people and food vendors and the limitless armies of street people. I walked the night route so often that the hookers who worked Ocean Avenue brought home-baked pie

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for me and Starbucks coffee. Maybe it was the cast. They all wanted to sign it.

My friends at the FBI and the DMV ran still more searches for black minivans, and people named Trudy and Matt, and I even got them to badger their friends in other states to do the same. Nothing turned up, and after a while my friends stopped returning my calls. I guess our friendship had its limits.

Eight days after I left the hospital I phoned Stan Watts. 'Is there anything on Joe?'

'Not yet.'

'Has SID finished with Sobek's garage?'

He sighed. 'Man, you don't give up, do you?'

'Not even after I'm dead.'

'They finished, but you're not going to like it much. They got this sharp kid over there named Chen. He tied Sobek to