Harper punched out without waiting for a reply.

Anna said, 'I don't know what I'm doing. If I had any brains, I'd bail out of this now. This whole thing is not right; we're running in the wrong direction.'

'We don't have any other direction,' Harper said. 'This is what we've got.' A few seconds later, he added, 'You're pretty smart, this phone thing. Thinking of it like that.'

The Marshall Hotel was one of the older buildings on Pico, a four-story hollow cube with a brick front and stucco sides, outdoor walkways on the inside of the cube, and windows that looked like holes in an IBM punch card. The bottom floor had a small diner, a check-in desk, and an open courtyard with an above-ground pool and a patio, with a scattering of tables on the patio.

Anna went in first, wearing her sunglasses and a scarf as a babushka, walked through to the courtyard and took an empty table where she could see the desk. A waiter came over and she said, 'A menu? And a white wine. Anything good.'

Harper followed a minute later, carrying a briefcase. He stopped at the desk, exchanged a few words with the deskman, shook his head and walked out to the patio and took a chair near the pool, on the other side of a clump of palm.

Maran came out a few seconds later, looked around, spotted Harper and his briefcase, and went that way. Anna watched him and dug into her memory: Maran was sandy-haired or blond, but the hair was cut so tightly to his head that she couldn't tell. His face was skeletal, his body wraith-like, his gestures tired, almost languid. He looked like one of the late, hard self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, and she thought: AIDS. Maybe. But he moved smoothly enough, he wasn't shaky, as she'd expect if he were dying.

She'd never seen him before, she was quite certain of that.

She took out her cell phone and called Tony's number, heard it ring thirty feet away. Harper answered, and she said, 'I don't know himI've never seen him.'

'Okay. Stay where you are. We'll be right back.'

'Where're you going?' she asked, alarmed.

But he'd rung off. A moment later, on the other side of the patio, Maran and Harper headed toward the hotel.

She had only a moment to think about it, but something in the way Harper moved brought her out of her chair. She took just a second to drop a twenty on the table, to keep the waiter off her back, and followed them. They stepped inside an elevator and as the doors closed, Anna stopped, watched the indicator light. The light stopped on three.

She turned the corner, started down toward a gift shop, swerved into a stairwell and started running. Ten seconds later, she stood at the door on the third floor, pushed carefully through, listened. and heard a door shut down the hallway.

But where, exactly? The doors on the hall were identical, the hallway carpet unexpectedly thick, sound-deadening. She walked slowly down the hall, listening: took a small notebook out of her purse, and a pen; if somebody came along, she'd stop and write in it, as though she were making a note.

But there was nobody in the hall, nothing but silence and the smell of old tobacco smoke.

And then an impact.

Not a sound, exactly, more of a feel; then a sound, muffled, anguished, and another impact. Up ahead, somewhere. she hurried down the hall now, but as quietly as she could, listening. Where was it coming from.

She passed a door. A possibility. Listened. Another impact, a groan: No. Somewhere ahead, the next room.

Another impact, an animal sound, a wounded animal. Across the hall now. Another. She pressed her ear to the door: and with the next impact, she could feel it.

She tried the knob: locked. Hit the door with her fist. 'Jake! Jake! Jaaake!' Her voice rising. She'd scream it, if she had to.

The knob turned under her hand, and Jake was there, on the other side, a dazed, crazy look in his eyes. He held what appeared to be a broken chair leg. One hand was covered with blood, and there were spatters of blood on his golf shirt.

'Ah.' she said, involuntarily. She put a hand on his chest and pushed, and he stepped back, and she went into the room.

Maran was on the floor, face up, bleeding from the nose: he was conscious, but just barely. There was no blood at all on his upper body, but his legs looked wrong. He looked like a paraplegic whose legs had withered.

Anna shut the door and said, 'What'd you do?'

'Hit him,' Harper said. He seemed confused, uncertain of where he was.

'Is he gonna die?' She looked toward the phone.

'No, I just.' he drifted away, and she caught his arm and squeezed.

'What? Jake?'

'Broke his legs,' he said. He looked at the chair leg in his hand. 'A lot.'

'So let's get out of here,' Anna said. Maran was trying to roll, but there was no leverage in his hips and legs, and he flailed weakly, futilely. He tried to turn himself with his arms, and he moaned again.

'Call an ambulance,' Harper said.

'We can do that outside,' she said, and she pushed Harper toward the door. Harper dropped the chair leg. Anna said, 'God, wait a minute,' carried the leg to the bathroom and quickly, carefully rubbed it down with a towel, then dropped it in the bathtub and turned the hot water on it.

'Now,' she said.

Harper followed her dumbly through the door, down the stairs, out past the gift shop. She stopped him at a bank of phones, dialled 911, and said, 'There's a man hurt really bad in room three-thirty-three at the Marshall Hotel on Pico. Hurt really bad. Better get an ambulance here fast.'

On the street, she could taste the bile at the back of her throat: 'That the guy?' she asked. She looked up at him, his eyes clearing a bit, and then at the blood splatters on his shirt.

'He sold the stuff to Jacob and his friends. He didn't know Jacob, but he described the whole bunch of them.'

'Jason?'

'He had no idea who Jason was.'

'Maybe he was lying,' Anna said.

'No. Christ, he was bragging about it. I asked him if he'd seen the kid who tried to fly off the Shamrock, and he was laughing about it in the elevator. You know what he told me? He sold to the kids because "That's my market". That's what he said, like he was some kind of toy-company executive.'

'Ah, God.'

'"That's my market", for Christ's sake. That was in his roomthat's when I hit him in the face. He was still smiling when he went down.'

'Jake.'

'I feel like I should have strangled the miserable little motherfucker,' Harper said bitterly, as they got to the car. He looked back up the street.

'I wish I'd killed him.'

'So why'd you want the ambulance?' He looked at her, shook his head: 'Because I'm fucked up.'

Chapter 15

Back on the street, moving quickly, Harper still shaky: 'You drive,' he said, tossing her the keys. 'I'm not functioning too well.'

'All right.' She opened the car, climbed in, adjusted the seat. As she pulled away from the curb, she heard the siren: There was usually a siren somewhere in the L. A. background, but this one was closing in. As they pulled away, she saw the flashing lights a few blocks down Pico, headed toward the hotel.

'Ambulance,' Anna said. She looked at Harper. 'If that makes you any happier.'

'I dunno.' They spent the next five minutes in a ragged silence, Harper staring out the passenger window, away from her. She took the time to think, working over the logic of a connection between Harper's son, a high-school kid from the southeast burbs, and Jason, a street kid from Hollywood and UCLA. Where was the connection? And it would have to be a massive coincidence.

The lightbulb went on.

'I've given you a hard time about this connection between your son and Jason,' she said. Harper turned toward her; he was still off track, almost uninterested. 'I couldn't see how there could be a connection. But I let you do all the thinking about it. I had too much other stuff to worry about.'