“LAPD, you get powdered eggs,” Bad said.

“That’s cruel and unusual punishment, right there, Dawg,” Mad said.

“No, Dawg. Cruel and unusual are them mystery meat sandwiches LAPD feeds you for lunch.”

For habitual recidivists who looked like charter members of the ZZ Top fan club, the Dawg brothers could not have been more hospitable. That I’d been booked into their cell on suspicion of assaulting a peace officer only upped my personal stock as far as they were concerned.

I asked them what they were in for. Their tag-team explanation took nearly an hour to tell, a rambling tale about an abusive father and a drug-addled mother, dirt-bag running buddies, cheating women, evil cops, crooked attorneys, corrupt judges, and how never to rob a Wells Fargo bank located across the street from an FBI field office.

“Especially on FBI payday,” Bad added.

“Good to know,” I said.

We spent the night debating why Johnny Cash always wore black and dozed on stainless-steel cots under fluorescent lights, while some guy two cells down kept screaming that Dick Cheney was trying to kill him. Shortly after breakfast, one of our jailers appeared and informed me that I was to be released forthwith without bail. The Dawgs called me a lucky sumbitch and told me to keep in touch. I promised them I wouldn’t.

The jailer escorted me to the booking cage just inside the rear door of the sheriff ’s station where I signed for my belt, cell phone, keys and wallet. I was made to count my money to make sure it equaled the amount I’d been booked in with, and then escorted to the station’s main entrance.

Savannah was waiting for me in the lobby. She was with Detective Czarnek.

“I called him,” Savannah said, “like you asked.”

I thanked them both for coming.

“You lucked out,” Czarnek said, chewing nicotine gum. “My captain and the under-sheriff played basketball together in high school. Got him to drop your case as a favor. That lounge lizard you decked? He had a warrant outstanding out of Long Beach. Failure to appear on a moving violation. Long as we make that go away, he never saw you.”

“And the deputy who took a tumble, she’s cool with that?”

“Aside from you fucking up her love life. The guy she was out with didn’t know she was a cop.”

“What did he think she was — a Romanian weightlifter?”

Czarnek grinned. “Tell you what, I certainly wouldn’t mess with that chick. She could kick my ass in a heartbeat.”

“You guys are awful,” Savannah said.

We walked out of the sheriff ’s station and onto San Vicente Boulevard. The morning air felt heavy and smelled of rain. A rare treat in Los Angeles. Czarnek’s plain-wrap Crown Vic was parked in a red zone at the curb. He’d looped the microphone cord of his police radio over the rearview mirror to let the meter maid know the car belonged to a detective, but either the meter maid didn’t see it or didn’t care. A parking ticket was wedged under the left wiper blade.

“Fuck.”

Czarnek snatched the ticket off the windshield and stuffed it in his sport coat. He was wearing a different coat than when I saw him last. This one was brown.

I asked him why he was so willing to help me get out of jail.

“Quid pro quo,” Czarnek said. “I need you to take a ride with me.” He got in his car and cranked the ignition.

I told Savannah I was sorry for my behavior the night before. She made a remark about me not being a very good Buddhist. I agreed.

A city bus roared past, racing to make the light at Santa Monica Boulevard. The slipstream mussed her hair a little. I reached out impulsively and tamed a wild strand. She didn’t stop me.

Czarnek lowered the passenger window and said, “Take your time. What the hell. I got nothing else to do.”

Savannah was looking at me. She was too beautiful and I was a damn fool for feeling what I was feeling at that moment. I told her to go home and lock her doors. I’d be there when I could.

She said, “Is that a promise or a threat?”

I smiled.

We turned at the light and drove east on Santa Monica Boulevard. It started raining. Big, greasy drops smeared the windshield, just enough to leave a blurry film whenever Czarnek worked his wipers.

“That’s the problem with Los Angeles,” Czarnek said. “Either it rains too much or not enough.”

“LA can be accused of many things,” I said, “but moderation is not one of them.”

We passed a bus stop where two elderly African-American women sat with plastic grocery bags over their heads. Impromptu foul weather gear. I asked Czarnek if he’d seen the poem Micah Echevarria had posted on YouTube about his father. Czarnek hadn’t. He said he’d check it out when he got a chance.

“Maybe it’s just me,” I said, “but who drives 400 miles on their motorcycle to shoot their father, then turns around, drives back and waxes poetic in cyberspace about how much they’ll miss not having the chance to know him better?”

“People do all kinds of crazy shit,” Czarnek said. “I had a lady once stabbed her husband twenty-two times with a steak knife — I mean, sliced and diced this guy — then rents a billboard on San Vicente with their wedding picture on it that says, ‘Beloved Marvin, the best of the best.’ ”

The detective reached into the ashtray without taking his eyes off the road and pried a fresh square of nicotine-laced gum from its plastic wrapper. I asked him where we were going.

“Coroner’s office,” he said, popping the gum in his mouth. “There’s a body I’m hoping you can help us ID.”

“Who’s the lucky stiff?”

“That Russian friend of yours you went to go see. At least we think it’s him.”

“How’d you know I was going to see Bondarenko?”

“Your ex. She told me when she called to say you’d been taken into custody. Said you’d gone to this club in West Hollywood looking for some guy named Baskin Robbins who possibly had information on Echevarria.”

“Bondarenko, you mean.”

“Close enough.”

Czarnek said he’d never heard of Bondarenko — not that he necessarily would’ve, working garden-variety homicides in the Valley. He ran the name through the LAPD’s Detective Case Tracking System as well as the California Department of Justice’s missing persons database. He found that Bondarenko showed up not only on a recently filed missing persons report, but was also the focus of long-standing interest among members of the LAPD’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau. On a hunch, Czarnek said he called the coroner’s office to see if anyone fitting Bondarenko’s description had been brought in. Among the seven unclaimed John Does in the medical examiner’s current inventory, one matched Bondarenko in approximate weight, height and age.

“There was other identifying evidence,” Czarnek said.

“What kind of other evidence?”

“That’s what I’m hoping you can tell us.”

He sprayed the windshield, smearing raindrops across the glass.

“Fucking LA,” he said.

FIFTEEN

The Winnebago was stolen out of West Covina, set ablaze, then rolled down into an arroyo less than a mile from the Rose Bowl. By the time the trucks got there, it was burning like a funeral pyre. Firefighters quickly foamed down the motor home and checked inside for possible victims. The charred corpse of a man was found, its hands missing. Marks on the wrists suggested that a power saw with a serrated, reciprocating blade had been used to remove them.

“They wanted to hide the decedent’s identity,” pathologist Doug Roth said as he led Czarnek and me into the elevator at the LA County Coroner’s Office. “No fingerprints. A total CSI. I love my work.”

Czarnek looked down at his rubber-soled oxfords and tried not to roll his eyes. Dr. Roth was in his late thirties, autopsy-ready in turquoise scrubs. His sideburns flared below his earlobes. A bushy cookie duster flourished below his lower lip. He punched the down button.