Ryder was in the pool, floating on an air mattress, wearing a Little Mermaid bikini. Crissy was reclined on a padded chaise lounge in a white, one-piece tank suit, sipping what looked like a Bloody Mary, and perusing a copy of Millionaire magazine. Hub still wasn’t home, she said. He and Castle had gone to cocktails and dinner after golf. “Boys’ night out,” Crissy said with an irritated smirk.
“I’m a girl,” Ryder said.
“Yes, you are, Ryder,” Crissy said. “And you know what? You’re lucky, because you’ll be a woman someday, but men will always be boys. Silly little boys who have no idea what they’re doing half the time. Isn’t that right, Cordell?”
There was an edge to her words, a definite bitterness, as if in the interim between her having made a pass at me and my having rejecting it, she’d concluded I was a ball-less jerk.
“That’s right, Ryder,” I said. “All men are boys. And the trick for us boys is to always remember to think with our big heads, not our little ones.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means Mr. Logan thinks he’s being funny, but he’s not.”
I gazed up at the night sky and tried to change the subject.
“See the Big Dipper up there, Ryder?”
Ryder floated on her back with her twig-like arms outstretched and said nothing, rotating her wrists and making circular splashing movements as if her hands were pectoral fins.
“Well, anyway, if you follow those two stars,” I said, pointing, “they’ll take you straight to Polaris, the North Star. That way, you’ll always know which direction to go.”
“Ryder has eye problems,” Crissy said curtly. “Congenital stationary night blindness. She was born with it. Everything looks blurry to her in low light.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it. Must be a rare condition.”
“Only one out of every two hundred thousand people gets it.”
Many of life’s greatest gifts can only be enjoyed in the dark. The aurora borealis. The lights of Paris. The saliva-inducing way roasted pig looks in the glow of Hawaiian tiki torches. I felt sorry for Hub Walker’s granddaughter, all she would miss in her life.
“One more reason Ryder’s so special,” I said.
Ryder said nothing.
My stomach was making noises. I checked my watch: half-past suppertime. Crissy seemed in no mood to offer me dinner, and even I am not so presumptuous as to go foraging through other people’s refrigerators without an invitation. I told her I was heading out to grab some chow, and would be back afterward. Hopefully Hub would be home by then.
She sullenly sipped her drink, read her magazine, and said nothing.
The village of La Jolla at night is no cheap eats central. Unless your hankering is for coq au vin or wild mushroom raviolis in port wine sauce with a sautéed side of pomposity, you’re pretty much out of luck.
Where’s a taco shack when you need it?
El Indio still had to be open at that hour. It was fifteen minutes away, but definitely worth the drive. I wheeled the Escalade south onto Coast Boulevard and accelerated to something under Mach.
Bent as I was on my craving for something refried and wrapped in a tortilla, I didn’t notice the headlights at first, creeping up on my tail. I switched lanes. The lights did, too, so close behind me that they disappeared from view altogether, leaving only an ominous, dark presence in my wake. The Escalade’s illuminated speedometer registered close to fifty in what I assumed was a thirty mile-an-hour zone. The guy behind me had to be Johnny Law. My second traffic stop in three days. Damn.
A real Buddhist is supposed to be kind and considerate, even to traffic cops. I decided I’d save him the trouble of firing up his lights and siren; I pulled over without being prompted. He followed, aiming a high-intensity beam at my side-view mirror, blinding me to his approach, just as his fellow officer had done two nights earlier when Savannah and I were still on speaking terms. I turned on my dome light and put my hands on the top of the steering wheel to assure him that I posed no threat to him. But in heeding the Buddha and the Golden Rule, I forgot Rule Number One of the Official Special Operators Handbook, highlighted in boldface and printed all in caps on page one: NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN OR YOU’LL HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME WHEN THEY FIND YOUR SORRY ASS IN A DITCH.
The passenger door was flung open and into the Escalade climbed Bunny the Human Doberman with his .50-caliber Desert Eagle, the muzzle of which he jammed in my right ear.
“Drive,” he said, slamming the door behind him.
“You mind if we stop at El Indio? I’m seriously jonesing for a burrito.”
The blinding, high-intensity beam reflected in my side-view mirror had come from an LED flashlight like the kind police officers carry. Only in this case, the flashlight belonged to Daniel ‘Li’l Sinister’ Zuniga, Bunny’s cousin, who came hustling up to the driver’s side of the Escalade with the flashlight in his left hand and a Mac-10 submachine pistol in his right, which he proceeded to level at my head.
“You got him?” Li’l Sinister said, panting, sweat pouring off his pudgy face.
“Get back in your car!” Bunny yelled at his cousin.
I watched out of the corner of my eye in the side mirror as Li’l Sinister hustled back to his ride.
“I’m not gonna tell you again,” Bunny said, pressing the barrel of his gun into me even harder. “Drive.”
Twelve
“Turn left here,” Bunny said.
I turned left.
“Make a right at the next corner.”
I made a right, kicking myself at having left my revolver back in Rancho Bonita.
“Turn left at the stop sign.”
We were meandering through the hills of residential La Jolla with Bunny’s pistol aimed at my head. He glanced back every few seconds to make sure the only vehicle following us was the one driven by his cousin, Li’l Sinister. I thought about making a move, but I was worried Enterprise might charge extra if I returned the rented Escalade bloodstained. Any heroics would have to wait.
“You obviously have no idea the kind of gas mileage these things get,” I said, “because if you did, we wouldn’t be driving around in circles, expanding our carbon footprint. We’d be driving directly to wherever it is we’re going and protecting the earth’s delicate environment.”
“I don’t give two shits about the environment.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Go left here.”
La Jolla Scenic Drive South became Soledad Park Road. To the south, the skyline of downtown San Diego shimmered like a jewel in the night. We drove uphill, past a sign that said “Mt. Soledad Memorial Park” and into a cul-de-sac at the center of which stood a concrete Latin cross nearly forty feet tall, flanked by two small parking lots north and south. A red Honda Civic was parked in the southern lot, its windows fogged. Probably a high school kid and his date, enjoying more than the view.
“Over there,” Bunny said, directing me to the unoccupied lot on the park’s north side.
I maneuvered the Escalade as ordered into a parking space and switched off the ignition. Li’l Sinister pulled up on my left, driving a primer gray Chevy Caprice with low-profile tires and shiny, gangsta-style rims.
“Caught you on the news,” Bunny said contemptuously. “You must be a pretty shitty pilot, you know that?”
“We all have our bad days.”
“You’re gonna fly us to Mexico.”