5

THIRTY-TWO HOURS earlier, on the morning it began, Ocean Avenue was lit with smoky gold light from the street lamps and apartment buildings that lined Santa Monica at the edge of the sea. Joe Pike ran along the center of the street with a coyote pacing him in the shadows bunched on the bluff. It was three fifty-two A. M. That early, the Pacific was hidden by night and the earth ended at the crumbling edge of the bluff, swallowed by a black emptiness. Pike enjoyed the peace during that quiet time, running on the crown of the empty street in a way he could not when light stole the darkness.

Pike glanced again into the shadows and saw the coyote pacing him without effort, sometimes visible, other times not as it loped between the palms. It was an old male, its mask white and scarred, come down from the canyons to forage. Every time Pike glanced over, the coyote was watching him, full-on staring even as it ran. The coyote probably found him curious. Coyotes had rules for living among men, which was how they flourished in Los Angeles. One of their rules was that they only came out at night. Coyotes probably believed the night belonged to wild things. This coyote probably thought Pike was breaking the rules.

Pike hitched up his backpack and pushed himself faster. A second coyote joined with the first.

Joe Pike ran this route often: west on Washington from his condo, north on Ocean to San Vicente, then east to Fourth Street, where steep concrete steps dropped down the bluff like jagged teeth. One hundred eighty-nine steps, stacked up the bluff, interrupted four times by small pads built to catch the people who fell. Without the pads, anyone who stumbled could be killed. One hundred eighty-nine steps is as tall as a nine-story building. Running the steps was like running up nine flights of stairs.

This morning, Pike was wearing a surplus rucksack loaded with four ten-pound bags of Gold Medal flour. Pike would run the steps twenty times, down and up, before turning for home. Around his waist, he wore a fanny pack with his cell phone, his ID, his keys, and a.25-caliber Beretta pocket gun.

Pike was not expecting the call that morning. He had known it would come, eventually, but that morning he was lost in the safe ready feel of sweat and effort when his cell phone vibrated. He had a nice rhythm going, but the people who had his unlisted number were few, so Pike heeled to a stop and answered.

The man said, “Bet you don’t know who this is.”

Pike let his breathing slow as he shifted the ruck. The weight only grew heavy when he stopped running.

The man, confused because Pike had not answered, said, “Is this Joe Pike?”

Pike had not heard the man’s voice since an eight-year-old boy named Ben Chenier was kidnapped. Pike and his friend Elvis Cole had searched for the boy, but they had needed help from the man on the phone to find the kidnapper. The man’s price was simple-one day, the man would call with a job for Pike and Pike would have to say yes. The job might be anything and might be the kind of job Pike no longer wanted or did, but the choice would not be his. Pike would have to say yes. That was the price for helping to save Ben Chenier, so Pike had paid it. That word. Yes. One day the man would call and now he had.

Pike said, “Jon Stone.”

Stone laughed.

“Well. You remember. Now we find out if you’re good at your word. I told you I would call and this is the call. You owe me a job.”

Pike glanced at his watch, noting the time. A third coyote had joined the first two, staring at him from the shadows.

Pike said, “It’s four A. M.”

“I’ve been trying to get your number since last night, my man. If I woke you, I’m sorry, but if you stiff me I have to find somebody else. Hence, the uncomfortable hour.”

“What is it?”

“A package needs looking after, and it’s already hot.”

Package meant person. The heat meant attempts had already been made on the target’s life.

“Why is the package at risk?”

“I don’t know and all I care about is you keeping your word. You agreed to let me book you a job, and this is it. I gotta tell these people whether you’re in or not.”

Grey shapes floated between the palms like ghosts. Two more coyotes joined with the first three. Their heads hung low, but their eyes caught the gold light. Pike wondered how it would be to run with them through the night streets, moving as well as they, as quietly and quickly, hearing and seeing what they heard and saw, both here in the city and up in the canyons.

Stone was talking, his voice growing strained.

“This guy who called, he said he knew you. Bud Flynn?”

Pike came back from the canyons.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, Flynn’s the guy. He has some kinda bodyguard thing with people who have so much dough they shit green. I want some of that green, Pike. You owe me. Are you going to do this thing or not?”

Pike said, “Yes.”

“That’s my boy. I’ll call back later with the meet.”

Pike closed his phone. Brake lights flared a quarter mile away where San Vicente joined with Ocean. Pike watched the red lights until they disappeared, then hitched his ruck again. Eight or ten coyotes now waited at the edge of light. Three more appeared in an alley between two restaurants. Another now stood in the street a block away and Pike had not even seen it approach. Pike breathed deep and smelled the sage and earth in their fur.

The older coyote did not turn for the canyon. It circled wide of Pike, then crossed Ocean Avenue and continued up Santa Monica Boulevard. The other coyotes followed. The city was theirs until sunrise. They would hold it as long as they could.

Pike unslung the ruck and let it drop. He took a deep breath, then lifted his hands high overhead, stretching. His muscles were warm and his weak shoulder-the shoulder that had almost been destroyed when he was shot-felt strong. The scars that laced his deltoid stretched, but held. Pike bent forward from the hips until he easily placed his palms on the street. He let his hands take his weight, then lifted his feet until he was standing on his hands in the middle of Ocean Avenue.

Pike felt peaceful, and held his balance with a perfect center.

He lowered himself straight down until his forehead touched the street, then pushed upright again, doing a vertical pushup, not for the effort but to feel his body working. His shoulder tingled where the nerves were damaged and would always be damaged, but Pike lifted himself without strain.

He lowered his feet and stood, and saw that the coyotes were back, watching, street dogs at home in the city.

Pike shouldered the ruck and continued with his run. In fourteen hours, he would be driving north to pick up the girl and see Bud Flynn for the first time in twenty years, a man he had deeply and truly loved.

Fifteen hours later, Pike arrived at the remains of a church in the high desert.

The church had no doors or windows and now was broken stucco walls with empty eyes and a gaping mouth a mile off the Pearblossom Highway thirty miles north of Los Angeles. Years of brittle winds, sun, and the absence of human care had left it the color of dust. Graffiti marked its walls, but even that was old; as much a faded part of the place as the brush and sage sprouting from the walls. It was a lonely place, all the more desolate with the lowering sun at the end of the day.

A black limousine with dark windows and an equally black Hummer were parked nearby, as out of place as gleaming black jewels. They had been unseeable when Pike turned off the highway, here at the edge of the desert.