“Yes, OK. I said I cared about you, Savannah. Can I go now?”

She smiled. “I care about you, too, Logan.”

“If he has anything relevant to say, I’ll come and get you.”

“Just call me. We do live in the Digital Age, you know. Most of us, anyway. Some of us still live in the Pleistocene Era.”

“Was that an insult?”

“Scientific observation.”

I grinned and started walking.

Richard Smith’s doorbell chimed like Big Ben. No one responded. I pushed the button again and pounded my fist on the door because nothing says “You have a visitor” like pounding and impatiently ringing at the same time. I tried the doorknob. Locked. No one appeared to be home.

There was an attached two-car garage. I stood on tiptoes and peeked in through a narrow transom window at the top of the door. No vehicles inside. No newspapers piled up on the short driveway. Two large terracotta clay pots planted with pink geraniums flanked the front door. I checked the soil in the pots. Damp. I looked in the mailbox out front. Empty. The postal carrier would’ve already come and gone, this late in the day. Somebody had to have picked up the mail.

I called directory assistance. The operator said she could find no listing for a Richard Smith on Sea View Lane. I took out a business card from my wallet, jotted “I need to speak with you,” and slipped the card under the front door.

My work was done.

I was on my way back to Savannah’s Jaguar when a two-door white Honda Accord with black-tinted windows and a spoiler on the back cruised past me. Smith’s garage door opened electronically. The Honda pulled into the driveway and rolled into the garage. A squat, middle-aged man in a brown UPS uniform got out of the car and retrieved two paper bags bulging with groceries from the trunk.

“Mr. Smith?”

He turned toward me, startled.

“Can I help you?”

“My name’s Logan. I’m looking into a murder that occurred up in the Valley a few weeks ago. A witness said he saw your car leaving the scene. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“A murder? There must be a mistake.”

“That’s possible, though the witness was pretty adamant he’d seen your car. This is your car, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s my car. But I just can’t understand who would ever possibly say something like that. I mean—” he laughed nervously— “I’m no murderer.”

“The witness is a former police officer.”

“Really?” Smith was beginning to breathe hard. His upper lip glistened with sweat. “You a cop, too?”

I knew he’d be more willing to talk if he assumed that I was.

“What do you think?”

“Well, I really don’t know what more I can tell you. I don’t know anything about any of this, OK? So, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go in now. I’m not feeling too good. Must’ve been something I had for lunch.”

“Do you ever loan your car to anyone, Mr. Smith?”

“Loan my car? Umm, lemme think.”

He set his grocery bags down on a woodworking bench inside the garage and licked his lips, running the back of his left hand across his mouth. Hand tools hung from a pegboard behind the bench, with various power tools stored on shelves below.

Among the tools was a Sawzall.

“It’s possible I may have let my daughter’s boyfriend borrow it when his car was in the shop, something like that but, you know, no big deal. That’s his car, right there.” Smith pointed to the black Lexus parked in front of the house. His hand was trembling. “He lives outta town, visits quite a bit.”

“Mr. Smith, did you report your American Express card stolen recently?”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Why are you asking me all these questions? I told you, there’s been a mistake. I don’t know anything about any shooting.”

“I said someone was murdered, Mr. Smith. I didn’t say anything about anybody getting shot.”

“Oh my God.” He slumped to the concrete floor, clutching his chest.

“Are you OK?”

“He told me it wouldn’t come to this,” Smith cried. “The Russian, he made him do it. Either he did what the Russian wanted, or they were gonna turn him in.”

“Turn who in?”

“My daughter, her boyfriend. He said if we told anybody, they’d kill us, too. Jesus. I think I need an ambulance. Oh my God.”

“Just breathe, Mr. Smith, try to relax. I’m calling 911 right now.”

I was punching in the number when the door connecting the garage to the house opened, revealing a young woman in pink dental scrubs and the shadow of a tall, angular young man standing behind her. I heard her scream, “Don’t!” as the man shoved her aside. All I saw was the nickel-plated semi-automatic he was raising up to fire at me. His right arm was straight, his hand flat, palm down, the pistol horizontal to the floor, the way gangsta rappers like to shoot.

Had it been Hollywood, I would’ve rolled to throw off his aim, bullets whizzing in slow-mo’ inches from my face. But this was no movie. I held steady and reached for the little revolver tucked in the small of my back. Instinct shooting is about smoothness, not speed. I could hear Laz Kizlyak, my old firearms trainer from Alpha, talking like he was standing there beside me. Grasp butt of weapon firmly, hand high on grip panels, and draw, not jerk, in single fluid motion. Trigger finger extends parallel to barrel, falling alongside frame above trigger as weapon is withdrawn.

Something hot smacked me in the shoulder. I ignored it, elevating the muzzle of my gun as I extended my shooting hand, swinging my other hand up and locking both hands together just as the revolver entered my peripheral vision. Wrap support hand around middle, ring and small fingers of gun hand, overlapping thumbs on backstrap of weapon. Do not clutch weapon. Clutching makes weapon shake. Face target squarely as weapon rises. Spread legs shoulder-width, assuming solid and braced firing platform. Bend slightly forward from torso and flex knees. Thrust hands out from the midline of your chest. Lock wrists, lock elbows, lock shoulders. Level muzzle just below eye level sliding index finger on shooting hand from frame of weapon onto trigger.

Even without a stopwatch, I knew that no more than a second had elapsed from the moment I first glimpsed the gun in the man’s hand to the moment I double-tapped my trigger.

Only after he was down and I had kicked his pistol away from his body did I realize that the man I’d killed was Lamont Royale.

TWENTY-FIVE

Everyone complains about hospital accommodations, like hospitals are supposed to be the Four Seasons or something. My stay at Cedars-Sinai couldn’t have been more luxurious. Dinner the first night was a Caesar salad with pan-seared ahi, whole grain muffins, and chocolate pudding with real whipped cream. I had a private room with a thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV and a view of the Hollywood Hills, a fine bed that adjusted about a hundred different ways, and sponge baths administered by certified nursing assistants who, if I closed my eyes and imagined hard enough, resembled the kind of scantily clad Nubian princesses one would expect to perform such services. I would’ve stayed a month had they let me — especially considering Gil Carlisle was footing the bill.

“Almost makes getting shot worthwhile,” I said to my menopausal battle-axe of a nurse as she changed the dressing on my wound.

“Almost,” she said, ripping a strip of surgical tape off my skin.

The bullet had shattered my left collarbone and lodged in my shoulder. A fraction of an inch lower, the surgeon had told me almost breathlessly, and it would’ve severed my subclavian artery. I probably would have bled out in the ambulance. As it was, I could expect a full recovery after a few weeks’ rest. The same could not be said for Lamont Royale. Two .357 slugs to the forehead have a tendency to do that to a man.