My service revolver was pointed at Dolphine’s midsection; I wondered how long I’d been holding the bead. “No. Have you got tools?”

Dolphine swallowed. “Gardening stuff. Listen—”

“No. You take me to the spot the kid told you about, and we dig.”

Dolphine got out of the car, walked around and popped open the trunk. I followed, watching him remove a large earth spade. Flame glow illuminated the PI’s old Dodge coupe; I noticed a pile of fence pickets and rags next to the spare tire. Tucking the .38 into my waistband, I fashioned two torches out of them, wrapping the rags around the ends of the posts, then igniting them in the cross. Handing one to Dolphine, I said, “Walk ahead of me.”

We strode into the sand pit, outlaws holding fireballs on a stick. The softness made the going slow; torchlight let me pick out grave offerings—little bouquets and religious statues placed atop dunes here and there. Dolphine kept muttering how gringos got dumped on the far side; I felt bones cracking beneath my feet. We reached an especially high drift, and Dolphine waved his torch at a tattered American flag spread out on the sand. “Here. The punk said by el bannero.”

I kicked the flag away; a swarm of insects buzzed up. Dolphine screeched, “Cocksuckers,” and swatted them with his torch.

A putrid smell rose from a big crater at our feet. “Dig,” I said. Dolphine went at it; I thought of ghosts—Betty Short and Laurie Blanchard—waiting for the shovel to hit bones. The first time it did I recited a psalm the old man had force-fed me; the second time, it was the “Our Fathers” that Danny Boylan used to chant before our sparring sessions. When Dolphine said, “Sailor. I can see his jumper,” I didn’t know if I wanted Lee alive and in grief or dead and nowhere—so I pushed Dolphine aside and shoveled myself.

My first blow sheared off the sailor’s skull, my second tore into the front of his tunic, pulling the torso free from the rest of the skeleton. The legs were in crumbled pieces; I shoveled past them into plain sand glinting with mica. Then it was maggot nests and entrails and a blood-mattted crinoline dress and sand and odd bones and nothing—and then it was sunburned pink skin and blond eyebrows covered with stitch scars that looked familiar. Then Lee was smiling like the Dahlia, with worms creeping out of his mouth and the holes where his eyes used to be.

I dropped the shovel and ran. Dolphine shouted, “The money!” behind me; I tore for the burning cross thinking that I put those scars on Lee, I did it to him. Reaching the car, I got in, gunned it in reverse, plowed the crucifix into the sand, then gnashed through the gears one-two-three going forward. I heard, “My car! The money!” as I fishtailed onto the coast road northbound, reaching for the siren switch, slamming the dashboard when it hit me that civilian vehicles didn’t have them.

I made it to Ensenada, highballing at double the speed limit. I ditched the Dodge on the street by the hotel, then ran for my car—slowing when I saw three men approaching me in a flanking movement, their hands inside their jackets.

My Chevy ten yards away; the middle man coming into focus as Captain Vasquez, the other two fanning out to close me in from the sides. The only shelter a phone booth near the first door on the left U of the courtyard. Bucky Bleichert about to be DOA in a Mexican sand pit, his best friend along for the ride. I decided to let Vasquez get right up next to me and blow his brains out point-blank. Then a white woman walked out the left-hand door, and I saw my ticket home.

I ran over and grabbed her by the throat. She started to scream. I stifled the sound by moving my left hand to her mouth. The woman flailed with her arms, then clenched herself rigid. I pulled my .38 and pointed it at her head.

The Rurales advanced cautiously, hand cannons pressed to their sides. I shoved the woman into the phone booth, whispering, “Scream and you’re dead. Scream and you’re dead.” Inside, I pinned her to the wall with my knees and removed my hand; the screams she put out were silent. I aimed my gun at her mouth to keep them that way, grabbed the receiver, fed the slot a nickel and dialed “0.” Vasquez was standing in front of the booth now, livid, reeking of cheap American cologne. The operator came on the line with “Que?” I blurted, “Habla ingles?”

“Yes, sir.”

I held the receiver chin to shoulder and fumbled all the coins in my pocket into the slot; I kept my .38 glued to the woman’s face. When a shitload of pesos were swallowed up, I said, “Ferderal Bureau of Investigation, San Diego field office. It’s an emergency.”

The operator muttered, “Yes, sir.” I heard the call going through. The woman’s teeth chattered against my gun barrel. Vasquez tried bribery: “Blanchard was very rich, my friend. We could find his money. You could live very well here. You—”

“FBI, Special Agent Rice.”

I stared daggers at Vasquez. “This is Officer Dwight Bleichert, Los Angeles Police Department. I’m in Ensenada, and I screwed up with some Rurales. They’re getting ready to kill me for nothing, and I thought you could talk Captain Vasquez here out of it.”

“What the “

“Sir, I’m a legit LA policemen and you had better do this fast.”

“You jerking my chain, son?”

“Goddamn it, you want proof? I worked Central Homicide with Russ Millard and Harry Sears. I worked DA’s Warrants, I worked—”

“Put the spic fellow on, son.”

I handed the receiver to Vasquez. He took it and leveled his automatic at me; I kept my .38 on the woman. Seconds ticked; the standoff held as the Rurale boss listened to the fed, getting paler and paler. Finally he dropped the phone and lowered his piece. “Go home, puta. Get out of my city and get out of my country.”

I holstered my gun and squeezed out of the booth; the woman shrieked. Vasquez stood back and waved his men away. I got in my car and peeled out of Ensenada on fear overdrive. It was only when I was back in America that I started obeying speed laws—and that was when it got bad with Lee.

Dawn was pushing up over the Hollywood Hills when I knocked on Kay’s door. I stood on the porch shivering, storm clouds and streaks of sunlight looming as strange things I didn’t want to see. I heard “Dwight?” inside, followed by the sound of bolts being unlatched. Then the other remaining partner in the Blanchard/Bleichert/Lake triad was there, saying, “And all that.”

It was an epitaph I didn’t want to hear.

I walked inside, stunned at how strange and pretty the living room was. Kay said, “Lee’s dead?”

I sat down in his favorite chair for the first time. “The Rurales or some Mexican woman or her friends killed him. Oh, babe, I—”

Using Lee’s endearment jarred me. I looked at Kay, standing by the door, backlighted by the weird sunstreaks. “He hired the Rurales to kill DeWitt, but that doesn’t mean shit. We’ve got to get Russ Millard and some decent Mexican cops on it . .

I stopped, noticing the phone on the coffee table. I started dialing the padre’s home number. Kay’s hand halted me. “No. I want to talk to you first.”

I moved from the chair to the couch; Kay sat beside me. She said, “You’ll hurt Lee if you go crazy with this.”

That was when I knew she’d been expecting it; that was when I knew she knew more than I did. “You can’t hurt something dead.”

“Oh, yes you can, babe.”

“Don’t call me that! That’s his!”

Kay moved closer and touched my cheek. “You can hurt him and you can hurt us.”

I pulled away from the caress. “You tell me why, babe.”

Kay cinched the belt on her robe and fixed me with a cold look. “I didn’t meet Lee at Bobby’s trial,” she said. “I met him before. We became friends, and I lied about where I was staying so Lee wouldn’t know about Bobby. Then he found out on his own, and I told him how bad it was, and he told me about a business opportunity he had coming up. He wouldn’t tell me the details, and then Bobby was arrested for bank robbery and everything was chaos.