At last Wesley said, “I had to mention Trombone Teddy at roll call.”

“I know you did,” Nate said. “The real mistake I made was I shoulda told you to take Teddy’s license number and at least write the info on the FI card.”

“I shoulda done that on my own,” Wesley said.

“You’re barely off probation,” Nate said. “You’re still in the yessir boot-mode. It was my fault.”

“We’ll find Teddy,” Wesley said.

“I hope he still has the card,” Nate said. Then, “Hey, it was a business card, right? What was the business?”

“A Chinese restaurant. Ching or Chan, something like that.”

“House of Chang?”

“Yeah, that was it!”

“Okay, let’s pay them a visit.”

The tow truck was parked in front of Farley Ramsdale’s house and the Mexican driver was knocking on the door when Cosmo Betrossian came squealing down the street in his old Cadillac. The traffic had disrupted everything.

He got out and ran toward the porch, saying to the driver, “I am friend of Gregori. I am the one.”

“Nobody home here,” the Mexican said.

“Is not important,” Cosmo said. “Come. Let us get the car.”

He ran to the garage, opened the termite-eaten door, and was relieved to see that the garage was just as he’d left it.

“Let us push it out to the street,” Cosmo said. “We must work fast. I have important business.”

The Mexican and Cosmo easily pushed the car back down the driveway, Cosmo jumping in to steer after they got it going. The driver knew his job and in a few minutes had the Mazda hooked up and winched. It was all that Cosmo could do to keep from running back up the driveway and snatching the big can full of money from under the house.

Before he got in the truck to drive away, the driver said to Cosmo, “I call you in thirty minute?”

“No, I need more time. Call me in one hour. Traffic very bad tonight. I give you time to get to the yard of Gregori. Then you call, okay?”

“Okay,” the Mexican said, waiting for the promised bonus.

Cosmo opened his wallet and gave the driver fifty dollars and said, “Put it back where junk cars go. Okay?”

As soon as the truck was halfway down the block, Cosmo went to the trunk of the Cadillac and removed the bag of killing tools. He was going to wait at least an hour for them to show up.

He walked quickly back up the driveway to the rear yard of the house and was shocked to see the little access panel hanging open. He dropped the bag and threw himself onto the dirt, crawling under the house. The can of money was gone!

Cosmo screamed an Armenian curse, got up, took the gun from the bag, and ran to the back porch. He didn’t even bother slipping the lock with his credit card like last time. He kicked the flimsy door open and ran inside, prepared to kill anybody in the house after he tortured the truth out of them.

There was no one. He saw a note on the kitchen table in a childish scrawl. It said, “Gone to eat with Mabel. Will bring delishus supper for you.”

His alternate plan to lure them to Gregori’s junkyard, where they could easily be killed, was finished. They had his money. They would never go near him now except to collect the blackmail money from the diamond robbery. They would ask for even more now that they knew about the ATM robbery and the murder of the guard. They must have discovered the Mazda too. Farley had stolen their money, and he would want more money to keep his mouth shut about everything.

Maybe all he could do was give the diamonds to Farley. Give him everything and tell him to do the deal with Dmitri himself. Then beg Dmitri to kill both addicts after they were forced to tell where the money was, and beg Dmitri to be fair with the money split even though so many things had gone wrong. After all, if Dmitri’s Georgian bartender hadn’t given him a stolen car that could barely run, this would not have happened.

Or maybe he should just go home and get Ilya and the diamonds and head for the airport. It was too much for him to work out. He needed Ilya. She was a very smart Russian and he was far out of his depth. He would do whatever she wanted him to do.

Cosmo took his killing bag and went out to his car. He had never been so demoralized in his life. If the Cadillac failed to start, he would just take the pistol from the bag and shoot himself. But it started and he drove home to Ilya. When he was only two blocks from their apartment his cell rang.

He answered and the driver’s voice said, “Mister, I am at Gregori’s with the car. No problem. Everything okay.”

The stolen car was okay, but of course everything else was far from okay.

At 7:15 P.M. Farley was released from the holding tank and told that he was free to go.

Bad cop said to him, “We know you’re connected to those computers, but right now we’re gonna let you walk. I suspect you’ll see us again.”

“Speaking of walk,” Farley said. “My car’s there where you grabbed me. How about a ride back up there?”

“You got a lotta ’tude, dude,” bad cop said. “We’re not running a taxi service.”

“Man, you hassle me, you keep me here for hours when I ain’t done nothing wrong. The least you can do is take me back to my car.”

The Oracle heard the bitching and came out of the sergeant’s office, saying to Farley, “Where do you need to go?”

Farley looked at the old sergeant and said, “Fairfax, just north of Hollywood Boulevard.”

The Oracle said, “I’m going out now. I’ll give you a lift.”

Fifteen minutes later, when the Oracle dropped him at his car, Farley said, “Thanks a lot, Sergeant. You’re okay.”

The Oracle offered the Hollywood mantra: “Stay real, Farley. Stay real.” But he knew that this tweaker would not. Who in Hollywood ever did?

“Teddy?” Mrs. Chang said when Hollywood Nate had a Latino busboy call her from the kitchen. “He eat here?”

“He’s a bum,” Nate said.

“Bum?” she said, grappling with the English meaning.

“Homeless,” Wesley said. “Street person.”

“Oh, street person,” she said. “Him I know. Teddy. Yes.”

“Does he come here?”

“Sometime he come to back door,” Mrs. Chang said. “Come at maybe seven o’clock, sometime later. And we give him food we got to throw away. Teddy. Yes. He sit in kitchen and eat. Nice man. Quiet. We feel sorry.”

“When did you last see him?” Wesley asked.

“Tuesday night maybe. Hard to remember.”

Nate began writing in his notebook and said, “When he comes again, I want you to call this number. Ask that Six-X-Seventy-two come right away. I’ve written it down for you. We don’t want to arrest him. We just have to talk to him. Understand?”

“Yes, I call.”

The house was dark when Farley got home, and the garage door was open. Why would Olive go in the garage? There was nothing in there but junk.

He unlocked the front door and entered, yelling, “Olive! You here?”

She was not, and he went into the kitchen to see if there was any orange juice left and found the back door kicked open!

“Son of a bitch!” he said.

This was the first time that burglars had struck his house, although several houses on the block had been hit by daytime thieves in the past two years. But the TV was still there. He went into the bedroom and saw that the radio-CD player was still there. Nobody had ransacked the bedroom drawers. This wasn’t like house breakers. It wasn’t the way he worked when he himself was a daytime burglar fifteen years ago.

Then he saw the note on the kitchen table. Mabel. He should have known. The fucking old ghost probably was reading tarot cards for Olive and time had gotten away from the skinny moron. He went into the bedroom to strip down and take a shower and then he saw that something was different. The closet was half empty. All of Olive’s clothes were missing, including the jacket he’d shoplifted for her Christmas present. He opened the drawer and saw that her underwear and socks were gone too. She’d bailed on him!