“I think we can handle it,” said Lobdell.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said Gant. “You thinking you can handle it because you’re a big tough dude from homicide. You don’t know piss about narco.”

Nick nodded.

Gant’s eyes bore into Nick again. Silver fish leaping out of them, landing on the desk. Gant held up one finger and ran it up close across Nick’s field of vision.

“With all respect, Investigator Becker, what the hell are you tripping on?” asked Gant.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I was. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on. Del Gado’s face melted and now there’s fish all over the desk. And the tools at Sears-”

“Here.”

Gant took him by one arm-surprisingly strong for a little guy-and walked Nick back outside. Down the hall and into a bathroom. Ran some water in the sink, got Nick’s face down close to it and splashed him good. Soaked some paper towels. Got his neck and hair. Walked Nick over to a stall and sat him down.

“What’d you take, Sarge?” he asked quietly.

“Eggs and-”

“Not food. Not breakfast. Something else.”

“Coffee in the cafeteria.”

“Something else. You smoke something funny, maybe?”

“I pretty much quit cigarettes two years ago.”

Nick tried to think of everything he’d put in his mouth since getting up.

“Tell me what you did this morning,” said Troy Gant.

Nick went through it. Detail by detail. Amazing to him that he could remember it. He was trying to explain the almost-orange-blossom smell of Janelle Vonn’s air freshener when Gant sighed. He put a hand on Nick’s shoulder.

Sitting on the toilet with a weird narc touching him sent a shiver of panic up Nick’s backbone. Never claustrophobic but he felt that way now. Suffocating. Ugly thoughts and smells. He almost jumped up to run for it but the sinks behind Gant were breathing in and out, enlarging, then decreasing. Enlarging, then decreasing.

“You took a dose of Orange Sunshine LSD,” Troy said. “Janelle got it from Tim Leary. Leary got it from Ronnie Joe Fowler. Fowler gets it from a lab up near San Francisco that nobody can find. What you got through your skin pores is pure LSD dissolved in distilled water. Instead of pills, the acid gurus are taking it orally. One spray in your mouth, you’re flying in twenty minutes. On your hands, like happened to you-forty minutes. The air freshener label is their idea of being clever and funny. It actually fooled us for about a month because the label was so good.”

“Goddamn,” said Nick. “I can’t believe this stuff was legal until a couple of years ago.”

“Strong shit,” said Gant.

“He’s been acting like a complete nutcase,” said Lobdell.

Gant helped Nick off the toilet. “Get him downstairs and drive him home. Nick, don’t stop and rap with your buddies or the whole department’s going to know. I’m going to give you Ronnie Joe Fowler’s numbers. And a couple more people in Janelle’s group. And some of the reports I wrote up, based on her information. But besides that I’m not going to tell you a single thing. I’m done. I don’t exist for you. See me on the street, man-any street in the world-and just walk the other way.”

“Yes,” said Nick.

“I’ll call you in a couple of hours,” said Gant.

“How long’s this going to last?”

“One spray on your fingers about ten o’clock? And a whiff of another? You’ll start coming down about five or six tonight. You’ll still be high when you fall asleep, if you do.”

“Whopping hangover?”

“You’ll feel fine,” said Gant. “You’ll remember all the cool stuff. You’ll want to try it again sometime.”

“Wow. Not so sure about that.”

“See? That’s what I mean. You may think homicide is tough, but narco is just plain scary. By the way, eat plenty. A couple of strong cocktails will help you come down. And one more thing-get the creep who killed her. She was a sweet girl.”

“DAD’S HOME EARLY!”

“GIVE ME MY BATMOBILE!”

“QUIET! Honey, is everything okay?”

Nick stood blinking in the doorway. The orange wool carpet Katy had recently bought for the living room undulated like a field of windblown barley, stretching before him, out the sliding glass doors, across the backyard, over the flood control channel that ran behind their house, all the way to the horizon. Nick thought that he’d like to see the precise line where the orange carpet met the sky.

He turned and waved away Lobdell.

“Is everything okay, Nick?”

“Is everything okay, Dad?”

“Yes,” he said, stepping into the entryway. He knelt down and hugged Katherine and Stevie, both home with colds. Willie was at school.

“Do you feel okay, honey?” asked Katy.

He rose and smiled at her. She was huge and beautiful to him. Life rippled off her in visible vibrations, waves of shimmering purple and yellow.

“I see your beauty in a whole new way, Katy,” he said. She smiled guardedly. “I’d started to think you were beautiful like a new truck or one of those big airliners they fly to New York. But you’re not that at all. It’s more to do with grace and blood. Not function, but…form.”

Katy’s mouth fell open. He saw the hardness come to her eyes. The sudden worry.

“Katherine, Steven-go to your rooms.”

“But-”

“But-”

“NOW!”

“God, that’s loud,” Nick said. Felt the sound waves pulverizing his eardrums.

“Come with me,” said Katy. She took his arm where Gant had taken it and led him back to the bedroom.

She closed the door and asked for his explanation.

After he told her she went out to check the children, came back in, locked the door, and stripped off his clothes. She made love to him three times that afternoon, in between lunch, laundry, getting Katherine and Steven down for naps, and picking up Willie at the bus stop.

By evening Nick felt like he’d been blasted through an entire universe of sex. Then pulled back through it to earth and his bed. Spent and empty. Whole body limp. Katy brought him dinner. And six fingers of scotch and ice with a little water in a giant red plastic tumbler.

Bloated with sensation, Nick curled up under the sheets naked and watched squadrons of identical purple tulips scroll down his inner vision. Then red Ford Country Squire station wagons with wood-look siding and 428s in them. Then blue fire hydrants. Then Janelle Vonn’s disembodied head. She was alive and speaking but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. A thousand Janelles. He tried to say something back but he couldn’t move his mouth.

He slept for eleven hours. Woke up at six in time to pour Willie a bowl of Sugar Spangled Rice Krinkles.

Felt great.

19

HE WAS ON HIS WAY to headquarters by seven. A warm wind blew from the east off the desert, swaying the traffic lights on their cables and shivering the trees.

Nick thought about the things that had gone through his head the day before, frankly amazed that they could arrive so clear and strong, then vanish so completely. Like a Santa Ana wind had blown them into his brain and back out again.

And Katy. Incredible. It had been twenty-four days since they’d made love. And over seven years since they’d done anything like that when the sun was up. What had gotten into her?

The homicide room was empty. He made coffee and set the copies of Troy Gant’s dossiers on his desk. There were four of them, all profiles of drug culture suspects apparently prepared from debriefings of Janelle. And from conversations, some covertly recorded by Janelle and others caught by telephone intercepts. Key excerpts had been transcribed and included in the files.

Timothy Leary.

Ronnie Joe Fowler.

Price Herald.

Cory Bonnett.

Nick read the synopsis that began each file:

TIMOTHY LEARY, 48, has been living in Laguna Beach since early April. He is “spokesman” for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a “church” recently founded there by approximately thirty members (see add’l file for RONNIE JOE FOWLER). LEARY is a charismatic former Harvard researcher who espouses widespread use of mind-altering drugs. He is very influential over young people and those uncertain in their beliefs and convictions. Because of his academic experience and notoriety he is accepted by the artistic and university community in Laguna Beach.