“Shut up!” Cosmo said. “We are not in the trap. We have the money. It is dark now.”

“How do we go home, Cosmo? How?”

“Maybe the car will start now.”

“I shall not put myself in that car!” Ilya said. “Every cop looks for that car. Every cop in Hollywood! Every cop in all Los Angeles!”

“The car must stay here,” he agreed. “We put the money in shopping bags. There are paper bags in the kitchen.”

“I understand,” Ilya said. “We walk away from this house because we do not dare to call the taxi to come here? And then we call from my cell phone and taxi is going to meet us out on the street someplace where we hide in shadows? And we get taxi to leave us a few streets from our apartment?”

“Yes. That is exactly correct.”

“And then Farley and Olive come home to find a car in garage and pretty soon when they turn on TV they see about robbery and the death of the guard and how the killer looks like and you don’t think they know who done it? And you think they do not call police and say, Is there reward for the name of killers? The car is here. You do not think this shall happen, Cosmo?”

Cosmo sat down then and put his head in his hands. He had been thinking for three hours, and there was no alternative. He had planned to kill Farley and Olive at the junkyard just before getting the money for the diamonds, but now? He had to kill them when they walked in this house. Yet he could not risk gunfire.

He went over to Ilya and knelt on the floor beside her and said, “Ilya, the two addicts must die when they come home. We got no choice. We got to kill them. Maybe with knife from the kitchen. You must help me, Ilya.”

She sat up and said, “I will not kill nobody else with you, Cosmo. Nobody.”

“But what must we do?” he pleaded.

“Tell them what we done. Make them partner. Give them half of money. Make them help us to push that goddamn car away from here and leave it or set fire on it. Then they drive us home. And while all this happens, we just got to hope the cops do not see us. That is what we do, Cosmo. We do not kill nobody else.”

“Please, Ilya! Think!”

“If you try to kill Farley and Olive, you shall have to kill me. You cannot stab us all, Cosmo. I shall shoot you if I can.”

And with that, she drew the pistol from her purse, got up, and walked across the room to the sagging TV viewing chair, where she sat down with the gun in her lap.

“Please do not make fool talk,” Cosmo said. “I must call Dmitri. But not now. Not today. I do not talk to Dmitri yet. We must see what is what before I call him.”

“We shall get caught,” she said. “Or killed.”

“Ilya,” he said, looking at her. “Let us make love, Ilya. You shall feel much better if we make love.”

“Do not come close to me or it shall end here with guns, and you cannot let guns shoot on this quiet street, Cosmo. Or maybe you also wish to stab every neighbor too?”

Budgie and Fausto were back on patrol looking for something to do, when Budgie said, “Let’s go by Pablo’s Tacos and jam up a tweaker or two. Maybe we’ll shake loose some crystal. We could use an observation arrest on our recap.”

“Okay,” Fausto said, turning east on the boulevard. “But whatever you do, don’t order a taco in that joint. You heard about the tweaker at Pablo’s that shoved bindles of crystal up his bung and tried to say his partner made him do it? Well, sometimes he cooks there.”

Farley was absolutely livid by now, and Olive was getting an upset stomach from the stress. For the tenth time, he cried out, “Ain’t there a goddamn teener or two left in this fucking town?”

“Please, Farley,” Olive said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I need some ice!” he said. “Goddamnit, Olive, we been fucking around for hours!”

“Maybe we should try the doughnut shop again.”

“We tried it twice!” Farley said. “We tried every goddamn place I can think of. Can you think of a place we ain’t tried?”

“No, Farley,” she said. “I can’t.”

Farley raised himself up and looked to his right and saw 6-X-76 parking in the lot. A tall blond female cop got out, along with an old rhino who Farley figured must be a Mexican, or these days a Salvadoran, and that was even worse.

Farley turned his face away and said, “Olive, tell me these two cops ain’t gonna jack us up. Not twice in one night, for chrissake!”

“They’re looking at us,” Olive said. Then Farley heard her say cheerfully, “Good evening, officers.”

Farley put both hands on the steering wheel so they wouldn’t get goosey and blow his fucking head off, and the female cop said, “Evening. Waiting for someone?”

Farley pointed to Olive and said, “Yeah, she’s an actress. Waiting to get discovered.”

That did it. Fausto said, “Step outta the car.”

Since this had happened to Farley dozens of times in his life, he kept his hands in plain view when Fausto pulled open the driver’s door. Farley got out, shaking his head and wondering why oh why did everything happen to him?

Fausto patted him down and said, “Let’s see some ID.”

When Olive got out, Budgie looked at Olive’s scrawny torso covered only by a short T-shirt, revealing a sunken belly and bony hips. Her jeans were child size, and Budgie perfunctorily patted the pockets to see if she felt any bindles of crystal. Then Budgie shined her flashlight beam on Olive’s inner forearms, but since Olive had seldom skin-popped, there weren’t any tracks.

Farley said, “Gimme a break, amigo. Some of your compadres already rousted us tonight. They ran a make on us and on the car and then gave me a fucking ticket. Can I reach in my glove box and prove it to you?”

“No, stay here, amigo,” Fausto said, painting it with sarcasm. To Budgie he said, “Partner, take a look in the glove compartment. See if there’s a citation in there.”

She opened the glove compartment and retrieved the traffic ticket, saying, “B.M. Driscoll wrote it right after roll call. Near the cybercafé.”

“I’ll bet it never occurred to you, amigo,” Fausto said, “that maybe the reason you get stopped by so many cops is because you hang out where tweakers score their crystal. Did that ever flash on your computer screen?”

Farley thought he better lose the Spanish words because they didn’t work with this fucking greaseball, so he tried a different tack. “Officer, please help yourself. You don’t even have to ask. Search my car.”

And Budgie said, “Okay,” and she did.

While she was searching, Farley said, “Yes, I got a minor record for petty theft and possession of crystal meth. No, I don’t have drugs on me. If you want, I’ll take off my shoes. If we weren’t standing out here, I’d take off my fucking pants. I’m too tired to reason with you guys anymore. Just do what you gotta do and let me go home.”

“We even told the other officers they could come home with us,” Olive said helpfully. “We don’t care if you search our house. You can do a fishing exposition, we don’t care.”

“Olive,” Farley said, “I’m begging you. Shut the fuck up.”

“Is that right?” Budgie said. “You’re so clean you’d take us home right now and let us search your house, no problem?” To Fausto, “Whadda you think of that, partner?”

“Is that what you’d do?” Fausto asked Farley, as he wrote a quick FI card. “Take us to your crib? You’re that clean?”

“Man, at this point I’m just tempted to say yes. If you’d let me go lay in bed, you could turn the fucking place upside down, inside and out. And if you find any dope in that house, it would mean that Olive here must have a secret boyfriend who’s supplying her. And if Olive could find a boyfriend, then there really are miracles and maybe I’ll win the California lottery. And if I do, I’ll move clear outta this fucking town and away from you people, because you’re killing me, man, you’re killing me!”

Fausto looked at the anguished clammy face of Farley Ramsdale, handed him his driver’s license, and said, “Dude, you better get into rehab ASAP. The trolley you’re riding is at the last stop. Nothing left ahead but the end of the line.”