After a while, Pike went upstairs to bed. The mattress was hard, but he liked it that way. He was asleep almost at once. Pike fell asleep easily. Staying asleep was difficult.

His eyes opened two hours later, and Joe Pike was awake. He blinked at the darkness, and knew sleep was done. He remembered no dreams, but his T-shirt was damp with sweat.

Pike rolled out of bed, dressed, got together his things, then drove south to Compton across a landscape brilliant with unwavering lights.

9

PIKE KNEW RAHMI was home the first and only time he drove past in his Jeep because the shiny black Malibu was wedged to the curb. Three in the morning on a weeknight, traffic was nonexistent and the streets were dead. Pike pulled his jacket collar high, his cap low, and slumped behind the wheel. Everyone else in the world might be sleeping, but SIS would be watching. One pass, they would ignore him. Two passes, they would wonder. A third pass, they would likely call in a radio car to see what was going on.

Pike drove to a well-lit, twenty-four-hour Mobil station by the freeway, parked, then called a cab service. While he waited for the cab, he went inside. The attendant was a middle-aged Latin guy with a weak chin who looked scared even though he was behind an inch and a half of bulletproof glass. As soon as Pike walked in, the attendant’s right hand went under the counter.

“Engine trouble. I’m going to leave my Jeep here for a while. Okay?”

Pike held up a twenty-dollar bill, then slipped it under the glass. The attendant didn’t touch it.

“Ain’t nothin’ bad in there, is it?”

“Bad?”

“Like… bad?”

Dope or a body.

Pike said, “Engine trouble. I’ll be back.”

The attendant took the twenty with his left hand. He never revealed his right. Pike wondered how many times he had been held up.

Pike went outside and stood in the vapor light breathing cold mist until a lime green cab showed up. It appeared lavender in the silky light.

The cab driver was a young African-American with suspicious eyes, who did a double take when he saw his fare was a white man.

He said, “Car trouble?”

“I have a friend nearby. You can take me to her place.”

“Ah.”

Her. A woman made everything better.

Pike gave the nearest major intersection, but not Rahmi’s address. Pike didn’t want the cabbie to know it if he was later questioned. When they reached Rahmi’s street, Pike told him to cruise the block.

Pike said, “Go slow. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“I thought you knew this girl.”

“It’s been a while.”

The SIS spotters would be watching the cab. This time of morning, they didn’t have anything else to watch. Pike slumped in the shadows of the backseat as they passed Rahmi’s building. The SIS spotters would be on alert now, but Pike wanted to see how Rahmi’s apartment was lit. The lighting was crucial in helping Pike determine where the spotters were hiding, and in planning how to defeat them.

Pike said, “Slower.”

The cab slowed even more. The watch officer was likely keying his radio or kicking his partner, saying they might have something here.

The entry side of Rahmi’s building was lit by six yellow bulbs, one outside each of the three doors on the ground level, but only one outside a door on the second floor. The others appeared to be out. Pike was more interested in the back of the building than the front. The Google images showed the back of Rahmi’s building was very close to the neighboring home, and now Pike saw the area caught only a small amount of reflected glow from the neighbor’s porch. This was good for Pike. The heavy shadows, along with the distance from the street and the narrow separation between the two buildings, meant the area behind Rahmi’s apartment was a tunnel of darkness. Pike would be able to disappear into the tunnel.

The cabbie said, “Which one?”

“Don’t see it. Let’s try the next block.”

Pike had the cabbie slow in front of two more buildings to throw off the spotters, then headed back to his Jeep. During his days as a combat Marine, the helicopter pilots used the same technique when inserting troops into enemy territory. They didn’t just fly in, drop off Marines, and leave. Instead, the pilots made three or four false inserts along with the real drop to mask the true drop point. If it worked in hostile jungles, it would work in South Central Los Angeles.

Pike took another cab past the apartment just before dawn to check the lighting again from the opposite direction, and made six more cab rides before noon, different cabs each time, twice having the cabs stop nearby so he could study the street. One of the cabbies asked if he was looking for a woman, another stared at him in the rearview with marble eyes, finally saying, “You down here to kill a man?”

They were parked outside a different apartment house on the next block. Pike now believed the primary SIS spotter was located in one of two commercial buildings directly across from Rahmi’s building. The only other building with a view of Rahmi’s door was the house it faced, but Pike had seen a tall, thin woman herd three children out of the house for school. The two commercial buildings were the only remaining possibilities. SIS wanted to see Rahmi’s door. They would want to see who entered, and who left, and with the bad angles this meant they had to be directly across the street in one of two places. Pike hadn’t found their exact location, but he now believed it wasn’t necessary.

The cabbie said, “I don’t want no shootin’ in this cab. Don’t you be gettin’ me involved in some crime.”

“I’m cool.”

“You don’t look cool. You look so hot a man could fry just bein’ next to you.”

Pike said, “Sh.”

“Just sayin’, is all.”

Pike pushed a twenty-dollar bill onto the man’s shoulder. The cabbie grunted like he was the world’s biggest fool, but the bill disappeared.

Rahmi’s Malibu was parked outside his building almost directly in front of the chain-link gate. Tuxedo black with double-chrome dubs covering the wheels that probably retailed at two thousand dollars each. Every time Rahmi drove away, SIS would follow. They would have placed a GPS locator on the car, and they would use at least three vehicles to maintain contact. Their cars would be nearby and ready to roll.

The Malibu was Pike’s key. SIS had to watch Rahmi’s apartment, but Pike only needed to watch the Malibu, and a place to hide without being seen.

The driver made a loud sigh.

“Ain’t you seen enough?”

Pike said, “Let’s go.”

Pike picked up his Jeep, then drove north into East L.A. A friend of his had a parking lot there, where he kept vehicles he rented to film companies. Vintage cars, mostly, but also specialty vehicles like dune buggies, decommissioned police cruisers, and customized hot rods. Pike rented a taco truck with faded paint, a heavy skin of dust, and a cracked window. A flowing blue legend was emblazoned along the side: ANTONIO’S MOTORIZED RESTAURANT-HOME OF THE BBQ TACO! The legend was faded, too.

Pike put it on his credit card, left his Jeep, then drove the taco truck back to Compton. He parked three blocks from Rahmi’s on the opposite side of the street in front of what appeared to be a tow yard and a row of abandoned storefronts.

Pike shut the engine, cracked open the windows for air, then moved back into the kitchen bay where he would be hidden from people on the street. Three blocks away, the SIS spotters would ignore him. They were too busy watching Rahmi’s apartment.

Pike couldn’t see the apartment, but he had a good view of the Malibu, and the Malibu was all he needed.

Pike settled in. He breathed. He waited for something to happen.