CHAPTER FORTY ONE

October moved into November, and three weeks later, on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, I was on my deck grilling salmon steaks and Japanese eggplant for Cindy, the beauty supply distributor, and Joe Pike and another woman named Ellen Lang. Ellen Lang had been a client once, several years ago, and since then she and Joe Pike have seen each other, time to time. She had a deep tan, and when she laughed there were dimples high on her cheeks. Laughter came easier to her now than in that earlier time.

Joe Pike and Cindy and Ellen Lang were inside, making salad and garlic bread and mint tea, when the phone rang. Someone inside answered it, and Ellen Lang came out and said, "There's a call for you. It's Peter Alan Nelsen. The director."

I said, "Wow. Maybe this is my big break."

She said, "Oh, you."

Ellen stayed with the salmon and I went inside and took it in the kitchen. On the counter next to the sink, Pike sliced the long French bread and put it on a tray while Cindy watched him. Cindy had soft auburn hair and expressive brown eyes. I liked watching her watch Pike's precise moves.

Peter said, "They're coming out to visit."

"Karen and Toby?"

"Yeah. He's got a week off for Thanksgiving and I asked'm to come out."

"Great." I already knew, because Karen had called and told me.

"She doesn't want him traveling alone, so she's coming, too."

"Even better."

"She's not coming by herself. She's bringing some guy." She had also told me that.

"She's got a life, Peter. That's a good thing. Why don't you get a date and the four of you can go out one night. Leave Toby with me."

"I know. I know." He didn't say anything for a little bit. "Listen, when they're out, I'm gonna bring Toby to the set, take'm to Disneyland, that kind of thing. You think you could sorta be around some of the time? At first."

Pike finished cutting the garlic bread and Cindy took it outside. She wriggled her eyebrows as she passed and gave me a yum-yum smile. She smelled of daisies. Yum, all right. "Sure, Peter. Not the whole time. But if you need me around at first, sure."

"Hey, thanks. I really appreciate that. I really do."

He sounded relieved. "I'm out at the Malibu house. You wanna come out?"

"I've got company."

"Another time, okay? You ever wanna come out, you don't even have to call. Just come."

"Sure." Elvis Cole, detective to the stars.

I hung up and Pike said, "What's up?"

"Karen and Toby are coming out and he's scared. Growing up is a scary time."

"He asks you a lot. Maybe he should try growing up without you."

"He calls me less now than he once did. He'll call me less still. He's getting there."

Pike nodded. "Yeah. I guess he is. Karen getting any chaff from the DeLucas?"

"Vito's been good at his word. All of the DeLuca accounts through the First Chelam Bank have been collapsed and the funds in the Barbados accounts have mysteriously vanished."

"So she's free."

"Yes. She's as free as you can be when you've got the memories she has, but, like Peter, she's getting there, too."

Outside, Ellen Lang moved the fish to the side so it wouldn't overcook and Cindy put the garlic bread in the center of the grill. Pike washed off a yellow pepper, cored it in the sink, then sliced it into thin rings. Each ring was uniform, no thicker or thinner than any other ring. When the pepper was cut, he added the rings to the large salad that had already been built and we took it out to the deck.

Ellen Lang says that if you stand on my deck and close your eyes, with a breeze coming up the canyon to blow across your face, it's easy to imagine that you're flying free through the sky, over the city with Tinkerbell and Mark and Wendy, off to Never Land to find the lost boys.

I haven't told her, but I've always thought that, too.

Robert Crais

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels: A native of Louisiana, he grew up in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers, and was trained as a mechanical engineer before pursuing his dream of becoming a writer. After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976, where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major network television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney amp; Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice, and L.A. Law, as well as scripting numerous series pilots and movies-of-the-week for all four major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which The New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan's rise to national prominence in the '20s."

In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the rigid working requirements of Hollywood, Crais created Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in order to deal with themes he could not readily explore on television. His major literary influences were Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Robert B. Parker, among others.

Currently, Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his family, three cats, and many thousands of books. Of his novel, L. A. REQUIEM, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer-Ross Macdonald-always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base," and Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience." High praise indeed.

When not writing, Robert Crais is an active aerobatic pilot, gourmet cook, and backpacker.