“He’ll never forgive me.”

“All right, then, suppose he doesn’t. He’s not God, Lisa. There are other people who’ve cared about you, too. Maybe later you might feel as if you did something for someone other than yourself. Maybe your mother might come to believe she had some influence on you, that you didn’t turn out to be just like Andre.”

“I’m not like him!”

“God help Marcy when she hears what you’ve done.”

She started crying. “Leave my mother out of this.”

“That’s what you’ve done. You should have gone to her a long time ago. Maybe Lucas wouldn’t have ended up on the streets if you had told her what you suspected. Maybe none of this would have been necessary.”

She cried louder now. I thought of June Monroe and didn’t care how hard Lisa cried.

“Are these your dogs?” Two Toes asked, apparently equally unmoved. He was going through my wallet.

“Yes,” I said, wondering if I’d ever get it back. “Do you like dogs?”

“Do they bite?”

“No.”

“I like them. What are their names?” he asked.

“Deke and Dunk.”

This was apparently very funny to a guardian angel.

“Be careful, you don’t want that wound to bleed too much,” I warned.

I looked out at Las Piernas. I angled myself for the slim view of the water. The Pacific usually soothes my soul, but it was too dark to see much of it now. I could see the lights of an oil island. I thought back to days when, on a student budget, I took Lisa to the beach or to parks or any place that offered student discounts-the zoo or the local skating rink. The beach was always a favorite with both of us, though. We both loved the ocean. Did she still love it, or had that changed, too? We talked of sailing away from Las Piernas. I remembered going out on the pier and feeding a quarter to the telescopes to look out at Catalina Island and the ships leaving the breakwater.

Ships and islands.Two sets of three numbers. Longitude and latitude.

“Say that prayer again,” Two Toes said. When I finished, he said, “Amen.” We were quiet for a time.

“ROLAND HILL WAS THERE,” Lisa said into the silence.

I glanced back at her. “Who else?”

“Just Roland and my father. But Allan knew about it. He took the others away. Booter Hodges gave some sort of signal to them, but he didn’t know what was going on. Not really. They wrapped a chain around her and threw her overboard. I don’t know much more. Allan bought the chain. Roland was angry with him, because he paid by credit card. That’s how I know. I heard my dad laughing about it when Roland told him.”

“Andre, Allan, and Roland knew for a certainty that she was killed.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll tell the police?”

“Yes, I promise,” she said, then added quickly, “That probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“You might be surprised,” I said.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, I saw the security guard cruiser coming up the far side of the street.

I didn’t have a chance to get his attention before another car sped from the other direction. Keene Dage’s Mercedes. He wasn’t at the curb before Frank got out of the passenger side, frantic. He was looking up at the building. I flashed the flashlight. He spotted it, pointed. The security guard was fumbling with the gate. I could hear sirens. I had to let Frank know that we were okay.

“Can I have this?” Two Toes was saying behind me.

“Have what?” I asked, trying to get the window open.

“This thing that beeps.”

“It’s all yours,” I said, using the butt end of the flashlight to strike the pane.

I was going to owe Keene for another window. If I got my wallet back, I’d pay him for it.

38

TWOTOES KEPT MY PAGER.The policy at the paper changed by the next afternoon, so I didn’t order a new one. It had gone off because Frank had tried to get in touch with me again and again, finally contacting one of Keene Dage’s kids. Keene had just left, heading back to Fallbrook after a family dinner, but his son had reached him on the car phone. When Keene heard that I hadn’t come home yet, he doubled back and picked up Frank. They called in reinforcements on the way.

Lisa left with the police. I used Keene’s cell phone to call Marcy and told her that Lisa had just been arrested, and that she might want to be at the police station when they brought her in. I told her that I thought it best that someone else give her the details. She wasn’t happy with me about it, but I told her I had to go, I needed to take someone to the hospital.

Two Toes was afraid of the ambulance, so Keene took him to St. Anne’s in the Mercedes. Frank and I rode with them. On the way, I got all of my belongings back, with the exception of the pager and the picture of the dogs. Once there, I introduced him to a favorite nun of mine, and she convinced him that St. Anne’s would never mistreat a guardian angel. When we left, he was trying to trade my pager for her rosary.

ROBERTA CAME OUTof her coma. She was having trouble speaking and couldn’t walk. But no one was giving up yet, least of all Roberta. Time would tell. I was only one of many friends who were determined to help her out in any way we could.

Some of those women, Marcy included, would probably never speak to me again. They blamed me for Lisa’s being in jail, and there wasn’t any point in trying to get them to see it any other way. Alicia Penderson-Duggin, of all people, was my biggest defender.

Lucas had a big funeral. A dead hero of the common man has a lot of political appeal, I found. There was lots of media coverage, and politicians and college administrators were anxious to be associated with his memory. TheExpress had taken my story and turned it into something that I probably should have been happy with, but wasn’t-a big front-page tribute to him. Maybe it bothered me because they couldn’t spare two lines for him a week before, and now he was selling their papers.

During the funeral, I stayed off in a corner of the cemetery, sitting on a fence with Blue, Rooster, Decker, and Beans. I don’t know what was said at his graveside, and I don’t really care. Like just about everybody else at that funeral-except Lucas’s mother and his brother-the preacher didn’t know him. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him. I’m not sure, even now.

Charles Monroe stayed at the grave long after everyone else had gone. He saw me sitting on the fence and nodded. I nodded back. I left after that.

I didn’t see his mother until the next day. She was in Joshua Burrows’ room at Las Piernas General. They must have been talking about Lucas, because she was smiling. When she saw me, the smile got bigger.

“Hello, June,” I said.

“Good to see you,” she said. “Corky-I’m sorry, I should call you by your right name.”

“Corky’s fine,” he said. He looked very different from the last time I had seen him. He was clean, the bruises were fading, and although he wasn’t the picture of health, the antibiotics were obviously doing some good.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“Just taking it a day at a time,” he said.

“Good for you,” June said. “That’s the way to recover fromanything.”

He smiled. “She’s subtle, isn’t she?”

“Oh, I didn’t come in here to lecture you, and you know it,” she said. She looked over to me. “I’ve about worn him out talking about Lucas.”

“I wish I could have been at the funeral,” Joshua said.

“Your father was there for you,” June said. “Lucas would understand. Besides, it doesn’t matter so much what you do for a person after they’re dead. You were his friend when he was alive.”

It hit me like a slap, although I knew she wasn’t aiming the remark at me. “She’s right,” I said. “Excuse me. I’ll be back later.”