At twenty-two minutes before noon, a black stretch limo turned in off Los Feliz Boulevard, cruised the length of the park road, and parked under an elm tree by the mouth of the tunnel. Kato was driving. Ellen Lang dug her fingers into my shoulder like pliers’ jaws and made a noise in her throat.
Pike sighted down through the Weatherby’s scope, then lowered the gun and shook his head. “Can’t see. Back in ten.”
Pike left the Cherokee with the Weatherby, easing the door shut with a soft click, then disappeared down the hill. Ellen said, “Where’s he going?”
“To see if Perry’s in the limo.”
She edged sideways in the seat. “Of course he’s down there. He has to be, doesn’t he? They want to trade for the drugs, don’t they?”
I didn’t say anything. With the artillery they’d deployed it was clear that Duran’s plan was what I thought it would be: let us in, but not out. The only question was whether they would do the boy here, with us, or later, after we were gone. If the boy wasn’t here we’d have to find him.
I ate a ham hock sandwich. I ate more sweet gherkins. I drank most of an RC 100. Halfway through the RC, Pike opened the door and climbed in, wet and muddy. He got a Kleenex from the glove box, took off his sunglasses, and cleaned them. It was the first time in weeks that I had seen Pike’s eyes, and I’d forgotten how blue they were, so clear and rich and deep that they looked artificial. When the glasses were clean and dry again, he refitted them. “No kid,” he said. “Gook behind the wheel, a couple of bruisers in back. One looks like he could be your Eskimo.”
Ellen began to shake. Her face tightened and turned red and her lips came away from her teeth and her eyes filled. Not pain this time. Anger. I squeezed her arm hard and said, “He’s alive. They have to keep him alive in case this fails. If he were dead and they blew this, they’d have nothing. So they’ll keep him alive. See?”
She nodded, neck rigid.
Pike said, “Any ideas?”
I said, “Yeah. The guy who owns the blue Nova, Sanchez, he’s in the trees behind the john.”
Pike nodded. “I’m better in the bush than you. I’m also better at getting people to talk.”
“Woods, Joe. Here in America it’s called the woods, not the bush.”
Pike put the Weatherby back by the HK, then left the car again. I dug up under my rain shell, took out the Dan Wesson, and gave it to Ellen. “We’re not going to be long,” I said. “If we’re not back in twenty minutes or if you see something bad happen, drive out of here, back the way we came. Use the gun if you have to. Go to the North Hollywood P.D. and see Poitras.”
She stared at the gun in her hands.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, then said, “Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”
The rain had eroded deep grooves into the hillside and made the earth slick and the footing treacherous. I slipped more than Pike, but the rain splattering on leaves and grass and rocks and road masked our sounds. Dry leaves were wet and spongy and no longer crackled. Whip grass gave way easily, heavy with water. Twigs bent without breaking. We moved down off of our ridge onto a low rise that bottomed out behind the picnic tables and the restrooms, staying low under scrub oak and olive and the occasional elm, Pike moving like something from another age, like part of a medieval mist, slewing down over the ground and between the trees with no apparent effort and without apparent effect. The jabberwock. When we were most of the way down the prowl car came back, driving smoothly back toward the tunnel, oblivious, then turning up the mountain to cruise the observatory.
When we saw Sanchez, sitting on a paper bag beside an olive tree sixty yards down the slope, he was not alone. Pike, out front, held up a hand, pointed at them. I nodded. The man with Sanchez was short and squat with a beaked nose and a pockmarked face. He was picking a Styrofoam cup to pieces and murmuring to Sanchez, who grunted every once in a while. There was a 12-gauge Ithaca pump gun across the squat man’s legs.
I caught Pike’s eye and made a fist. He nodded. We waited. After a few minutes, the prowl car came back down off the mountain, continued on through the park and back out into the Hollywood traffic. Pike looked at me. I eased out the 9mm, then nodded.
We separated and worked our way through the trees until we were on opposite sides of them. Then I stood up, walked out from behind a tree that was to their left, and showed them the gun.
Sanchez gasped, eyes bulging, but stayed where he was. The other guy rolled sideways, scrambling to come up with the Ithaca and saying “?Hueta! ” quite loud. Pike grabbed his face from behind, twisted it hard to the side, and jammed his Marine Corps knife into the base of his skull, angling up and twisting. It sounded like empty peanut shells when you step on them at the ball park. The man collapsed, his body jerking and trembling, but no longer trying to yell or trying to shoot us. Pike eased the body down, and put a knee on its back to keep the jerking from getting too wild. His bowels and his bladder went at the same time. On TV, a guy gets knifed or shot and he’s dead. In the world, dying takes a while and it smells bad. Sanchez stared at his friend. Pike stared at Sanchez, the reflective lenses blank. I touched Sanchez with the pistol, and when he looked at me, put a finger to my lips. His face was the color of wheat. He nodded.
When Pike pulled out the knife it made a wet sound.
I said, “If you lie to me, he’ll do that to you. Do you speak English?”
Sanchez answered without taking his eyes off Pike. “Si. Yes.”
“Is Duran sending the boy here for the trade?” Sanchez shook his head, watching Pike wipe his knife on the dead man’s shirt.
“Where do they have the boy?”
“I don’t know.”
I put the barrel of the 9mm under his eye. He jerked, then looked away from Pike to me. “I don’t know. They been keeping him at a place in Silverlake but they moved him this morning. I don’t know where.”
Pike gestured at the surrounding area. “Would any of these guys know?”
“If one of them drove. If one of them heard. I don’t know.”
“The Eskimo would know,” I said.
Sanchez nodded. “Luca,” he said.
“Yeah, Luca.”
Pike said, “He in the limo?”
Sanchez nodded again. Pike looked at me. “You want Luca, it’s going to be loud and messy. We’re going to have to go through a few of these guys.”
“Duran would know,” I said.
Pike’s mouth twitched.
I touched Sanchez gently with the gun barrel. “Is Duran at home?”
He nodded.
I looked back at Pike. “All his soldiers are here.”
Pike squinted out through the misted trees. “It’s ten of, now. Pretty soon these clucks are going to figure out they’ve been stood up. Then they’re going to go back home. Not much time.”
I slid the muzzle of the 9mm down the length of Sanchez’s nose and rested it at the tip. “How many are left at the house?”
Sanchez shook his head. “The patron has guests. Important people.” Sweat on his forehead mixed with the drizzle.
“If he’s got guests,” I said, “he won’t want a bunch of pugs standing around his living room. There’s twelve here. How many soldiers can he have?”
Pike’s mouth twitched again. “Didn’t somebody say that about the Viet Cong?”
The three of us started back up the hill. By the time we made the Jeep, the drizzle had evolved back into rain-heavy, gravid drops that beat at you, and thudded into your head with a sound I imagined to be like that of the hooves of bulls, pounding damp earth, earth damp with blood.