“No,” I said. “I’m staying on it.”

I heard Carter clear his throat.

Costilla folded his arms across his chest. “An unfortunate decision,” he said, his eyes burning holes into me. “Ricardo will see you out. The back door.”

“I don’t think so,” Carter said.

Costilla glared at him. “Too bad.” He snapped his fingers. “Ricardo.”

Ricardo waved the gun, motioning for us to move.

Carter finally moved his eyes from Ricardo to Costilla. “An unfortunate decision.”

Costilla returned the stare but said nothing.

I felt a knot form in my stomach and followed Carter toward the door. I knew Carter wouldn’t be moving unless he had a plan. Now I just needed to get inside his head and figure out what it was before we both took bullets to the back of the head.

Ricardo got to the door and opened it with his right hand, holding the gun in his left.

Then Ricardo’s head exploded.

Bullets poured into the room, ricocheting off the walls like marbles in an ice cooler. I dove to the floor, Carter landing next to me. I heard some yelling in Spanish from the storefront. I rolled next to the wall and looked at Carter.

He grinned back at me.

I heard some more yelling in Spanish, the voices retreating from the room. The bullets finally settled down, the silence nearly louder than the violence. The stench of hot metal and smoke filled my nose and stung my eyes.

“Carter?” a voice asked above us.

“It’s clear,” another voice said.

We both sat up.

Timmy and Jimmy Tate stood in the doorway, each holding something that looked like an AK-47.

Jimmy nodded at me. “What’s up, Noah?”

The Tates were identical twins. They were buddies of Carter’s. Working buddies. Psychotic buddies. Painfully thin, with pale, white skin, they both stood about five foot eight. Sad eyes and monobrows made them look like forlorn raccoons. Each sported a tight Marine crew cut of jet-black hair. Timmy wore a white bandana around his forehead. Jimmy sported a green one. Camouflage pants and a couple of black T-shirts completed their renegade ensemble.

The only way to tell them apart was that Jimmy’s right eye was fake, the result of taking a pool cue in the face during a fight with his brother. He’d somehow obtained a glass eye that had a red stone in the middle of it, giving him the look of having stepped out of a photograph where the flash didn’t work correctly.

That’s how I knew it was Jimmy that was talking to me.

I looked around, scanning the room. “Where’s Costilla?”

“Beat it out the door,” Timmy said. “Think I got somebody in the shoulder, though.”

I turned back around to them. “What are you doing here?”

They nodded at Carter.

Carter stared at me like I was a moron. “You think we were gonna come in here naked?”

“Gotta go,” Jimmy said, backing out the door.

“Yep,” Timmy said, following him.

“Call you guys,” Carter said. “Thanks.”

They disappeared out the door.

“The twins have the right idea. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Carter said.

I stood and stepped over Ricardo’s bullet-ridden body, the blood pooling in splotches around what was left of his head.

I looked back at the door that Alejandro Costilla had escaped through, possibly wounded by someone he would associate with me.

I knew he wouldn’t wait long to track me down.

17

Carter’s car, if that’s what you’d call it, waited for us at the far end of the parking lot. He’d arranged for the Tate brothers to deliver the beast.

Carter owned a 1985 Dodge Ram Charger, a monstrosity of an automobile that sat high off the ground on tires the size of carousels. He had cut the top off because he decided it was easier to throw his surfboards in that way. The seats were torn in different spots, the yellow foam oozing out from beneath the duct tape he’d used to try to cover up the tears.

The 4x4 had originally been painted bright red, but Carter is anything but bright red. So he’d painted it all black, then added white stripes on the sides and back. Sort of a zebra hybrid look. Save for the giant skull and crossbones he’d stenciled on the hood.

Carter’s car.

We drove without talking, the wind slapping around us loudly and urgently as we made our way up the freeway, before exiting and taking the bridges over the southern edge of Mission Bay, past the Bahia Resort Hotel and onto the small isthmus of land between the bay and the ocean that was Mission Beach.

I wasn’t as worried as I should have been about Costilla. I wanted to be anxious, to be nervous, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Kate and where her life had taken her. I figured the panic would set in later. Like when I found Costilla waiting for me in my house or something.

Carter pulled to a halt in front of my place, but the motor under the skull kept humming.

“You could’ve told him you’d drop it,” he said.

I nodded. “Could’ve.”

“Didn’t figure you would, though.”

I opened the door and dropped to the ground, my chin barely over the seat cushion. “You are a think tank.”

He ran a hand through his bleached hair. “Want my thoughts?”

“No.”

He gave them to me anyway. “She was dealing or she was a mule. Why else would she have had contact with Costilla? You don’t buy just a weekend’s worth from him.”

I smoothed a piece of duct tape on the seat. The same thought had crossed my mind, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. I couldn’t picture any thirty-year-old woman from a filthy rich background operating in the heroin trade, and I couldn’t even begin to think that Kate could’ve been involved in something that dark.

Carter gripped the steering wheel. A giant in his giant car. “So she either had her own business going or she delivered for him.”

“Neither makes sense,” I told him.

“We’re not trying to make sense. We’re trying to make a connection.” He stepped on the accelerator, the engine revving like a jet plane. “Gotta go. Got some things to do.”

With Carter, it’s hard to tell. He could’ve meant grocery shopping or he could’ve meant hunting down Costilla.

I didn’t ask.

“Okay,” I said, stepping back and shutting the door. “The service for Kate is tomorrow.”

He nodded. “I never miss a party.”

“Not much of a party.”

He nodded again, stepped on the gas, and peeled out in the alley, smoke trailing behind him as he disappeared.

I went inside my house, more cautious than usual. After I checked in the closets, under the bed, and in the freezer, I settled out on the patio with a beer under the late afternoon sun, watching a few stragglers on the water try to make something of waves that were amounting to nothing.

In college, I had developed an affection for late afternoons on the water. Between my classes during the day and waiting tables at night, it was the one part of the day that I had free to surf. The waves were usually awful, but it never bothered me much. The professors and the restaurant customers couldn’t touch me out there, and I used that time to enjoy myself and keep my head clear.