“The police gave me a copy of the tape. On the tape your father’s watch is seen. I have had it enhanced. If your mother has not reset the watch since… she started wearing it, then there is a way I can get the time I need.”

“You don’t need the watch. The time is on the tape. You said you had the tape.”

“The police say the time on the tape is wrong. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Will you call your mother for me?”

The girls came over to the counter then. The man didn’t answer McCaleb as he silently took their money and gave them change. He watched them walk out before looking back at McCaleb.

“I don’t understand this. It makes no sense to me what you want.”

McCaleb blew out his breath.

“I am trying to help you. Do you want the man who killed your father to be caught?”

“Of course. But this watch business… what does it have to do with anything?”

“I could explain it all to you if you had about a half hour but-”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

McCaleb looked at him a moment and decided that it was going to be the only way to go. He nodded and told him to wait while he got a photo out of the car.

The young man’s name was Steve Kang. Riding in the front passenger seat, he directed Buddy Lockridge into a neighborhood just a few blocks from where Graciela Rivers and Raymond Torres lived.

McCaleb had convinced him with his long version. The young man had then thought enough of McCaleb’s theory to put a Be Back Soon sign on the door and lock up. He normally walked to and from the store, but Lockridge’s car would save them time.

When they got to his home, Steve Kang led McCaleb inside while Lockridge waited in the car. The house was virtually identical in design to Graciela’s and had probably been built in the early fifties by the same developer. Kang told McCaleb to sit in the living room and he then disappeared down a hallway leading to the bedrooms. McCaleb heard muffled talking from the hallway. After a few seconds he realized the conversation was in Korean.

While he waited, he thought about the similarities in the houses and envisioned the two different families grieving on the night of the shooting and the days after.

Steve Kang came back then. He handed McCaleb a remote phone and the watch his father had worn.

“She did not change anything,” he said. “It’s just the way it was that night.”

McCaleb nodded. From the corner of his eye he noticed movement. He looked to his left and saw Steve Kang’s mother standing in the hallway, just watching him. He nodded to her but she didn’t respond in any way.

McCaleb had brought the hard copy of the enhanced video frame in with him along with his notebook and phone book. He had told Sieve Kang what he planned to do but was still uncomfortable carrying it out in front of him. He was about to impersonate a police officer, which was a crime, even if that officer was Eddie Arrango.

From his phone book he got the number for the Central Communications Center in downtown L.A. He’d had the number since his days with the L.A. field office, when he would at times need to coordinate intra-agency activities. The CCC was the dark, cavernous dispatch center four floors below City Hall from which all police and fire department radio communications were transmitted. It was also where the clock was from which the official time of the murders of Gloria Torres and Chan Ho Kang had been set.

On the drive from Hollywood to the market McCaleb had pulled out the Torres file and gotten Arrango’s badge number from the homicide report. He now placed the watch Steve Kang had given him on the arm of the couch and dialed the nonemergency number of the CCC. An operator answered in four rings.

“This is Arrango, West Valley homicide,” McCaleb said. “That’s serial one four one one. I’m not on the radio. I just need a ten-twenty for a surveillance commencement. And could you give me the seconds with that, too?”

“Seconds? Why, you’re a precise man, Detective Arrango.”

“Precisely.”

“Hold one.”

McCaleb looked down at the watch. As the operator spoke, he noted the watch time was 5:14:42P.M.

“That’s seventeen fourteen thirty-eight.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “Thanks.”

He hung up and looked at Steve Kang.

“Your father’s watch is running four seconds ahead of the CCC clock.”

Kang narrowed his eyes and he came around the side of the couch to look over McCaleb as he wrote numbers down in his notebook, referred back to specific times listed on the timeline he had put together earlier, and then did the math.

They both arrived at the same conclusion at the same time.

“That means…”

Steve Kang didn’t finish. McCaleb noticed that he glanced over at his mother in the hallway and then back at the time McCaleb had underlined in the notebook.

“That bastard!” he said in a hateful whisper.

“He’s more than that,” McCaleb said.

Outside, Buddy Lockridge started the Taurus as soon as he saw McCaleb leave the house. McCaleb jumped in.

“Let’s go.”

“We giving the kid a ride back?”

“No, he’s got to talk to his mother. Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay. Where to?”

“Back to the boat.”

“The boat? You can’t go there, Terry. Those people might still be there. Or they might be watching it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have no choice.”

35

LOCKRIDGE DROPPED McCALEB off at the curb on Cabrillo Way, about half a mile from the marina. He walked in the rest of the way, keeping to the shadows cast by the small shops that lined the boulevard. The plan was for Buddy to leave his keys in the Taurus and then go to his boat as if everything about his life was routine and normal. If he saw anything unusual, anyone hanging around the marina who wasn’t recognizable, he was to flick on the mast light on the Double-Down. McCaleb would be able to see the light from a good distance away and he would keep clear.

When the marina came into sight, McCaleb’s eyes scanned the points of the dozens of masts. It was dark now and he saw no lights. Things looked good. He glanced around and spotted a pay phone outside a mini-market and went to it to call Lockridge anyway. It also gave him a chance to put the heavy leather bag down for a spell. Buddy picked up the phone right away.

“Is it safe?” McCaleb asked, remembering the line from a movie he had enjoyed some years before.

“Think so,” Buddy said. “I don’t see anyone and nobody grabbed me on the way in. I didn’t see anything that looked like an unmarked cop car out in the lot, either.”

“What’s my boat look like?”

There was a silence while Buddy took a look.

“It’s still there. Looks like they got yellow tape strung between the piers, like you’re not supposed to go on it or something.”

“Okay, Bud, I’m coming in. I’m going to go into the laundry first and stick my bag in one of the dryers. If I go to the boat and get jumped by them, you come get the bag and sit on it until I get out. You okay with that?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, listen. If everything goes okay on the boat, I won’t be staying long, so I’m going to say this now, thanks for everything, Buddy, you’ve been a big help.”

“No sweat, man. I don’t care about what these bastards are trying to do to you. I know you’re cool.”

McCaleb thanked him again and hung up, then picked up his bag and started carrying it under his arm as he headed toward the marina. He first ducked into the laundry and found an empty dryer in which to stow the bag. He then made it all the way to the boat without problem. Before unlocking the slider he took one last look around the marina and saw nothing amiss, nothing that raised an alarm. He noticed the dark form of Buddy Lockridge sitting in the cockpit of the Double-Down. He heard a wah-wah tremolo from a harmonica and he nodded toward the shadow figure. He then slid open the door.