I shook my head. 'No.'

Charles finished eyeing Joe and skulked out from behind Winona. 'Lemme see your gun.'

Pike picked up the serrated knife, flipped it into the air, then caught it by the blade. He looked at Charles, and Charles ducked behind Winona. Pike walked over and held out the knife. Handle first. 'Put this away before someone gets hurt.'

Charles took the knife and disappeared into the kitchen.

Pike turned to Teresa. 'It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Haines. My name is Joe.' He held out his hand and she took it. I think she blushed.

Winona smiled. 'My name's Winona.'

Pike glanced over at me and said, 'Go ahead and leave. We'll be fine.'

That Joe. To know him is to love him.

I left them like that in the deepening purple of twilight, and went home.

I approached my house with a suspicion I do not often feel and let myself in. The three drops of blood were still by the cat's door, and the quiet house still held an air of alienness that I resented. The cat slipped in through his cat door, sniffed the three drops, then snicked across the floor and sat by his bowl. Guess he had moved past it.

I gave him a can of Star Kist tuna, then opened the sliding glass doors that lead to my deck. The twilight air was cool and scented with wild sage. I put Jimmy Buffett on the CD player, then poured a glass of Cuervo Gold, had some, then went out to the side of my house and selected a fat green lime from the tree I planted two years ago. It went well with the Cuervo. My home had been invaded, and I could either let my feelings for the place be changed by that event or not, but either way would be my choice. The event is what you make of it.

I spent the next two hours cleaning both bathrooms and the kitchen and the floors. I threw out my toothbrush and opened a new one, and I washed the sheets and pillowcases and towels. I pulled the plates and the silver from the cupboards and drawers and loaded them into the dishwasher, and vacuumed the couch and the chairs and the carpets. I scrubbed the floors hard, and spent the remains of the day cleaning and drinking until, very early the next morning, I had once more made peace with my home.

I packed, then fell into a fitful sleep as Jimmy Buffett sang about Caribbean sunsets, over-the-hill pirates, and a world where fifteen-year-old girls didn't have to carry the emotional weight of their families.

Later that morning I went to Seattle.

CHAPTER 7

Seattle is one of my favorite cities, and I often think that if I did not live in LA, I might live there. Where the sky over Los Angeles is more often dimensionless and ill-defined, Seattle is capped by a continually redefined skyscape of clouds that makes the sky there a visibly living thing, breathing as it moves, cooling the city and its people with a protective cloak, and washing the air and the land with frequent rains that come and go in a way that freshens the place and its people. You can get the best coffee in America in Seattle, and browse in some of the best bookstores, and fish for silver and blackmouth salmon, and, until recently, the real estate prices were so low compared to those in Southern California that herds of Californians moved there. A friend of mine from Orange County sold her house and used the equity to buy a beautiful home on the water at Bainbridge Island. Cash. She used the balance of her equity to invest in mutual funds, and now she spends the bulk of each day painting in watercolors and digging for butter clams. So many Californians did this that property values in the Seattle area went through the roof and many native Seattleites could no longer afford to live in their own town. Whenever I visit I say I'm from Oregon.

I picked up a Ford Mustang and a street map from the Sea-Tac rental people, then followed Highway 509 north toward Elliot Bay and a seafood house I know that lies in the shadow of the Space Needle. I had a crab cake sandwich and fried new potatoes and mango iced tea for lunch, then asked a parking meter cop for directions to Wilson Brownell's address. With any luck, Brownell and Clark might be sitting around Brownell's place right now. With any luck, I might be on the next flight back to LA and not even have to spend the night. It happens.

Brownell lived across the Duwamish Waterway in an older, working-class part of West Seattle called White Center. It is a community of narrow streets and old apartments and wood-framed homes surrounding a steel mill. Young guys with lean, angry faces hung around near the mill, looking like they wished they could get work there. The ground floor of Brownell's building fronted the street with a secondhand clothing store, a place that refinished maritime metalwork, and a video rental place called Extreme Video. The video place was papered with posters of Jackie Chan and young Asian women tied to chairs with thousands of ropes. Extreme.

I missed Brownell's building twice because I couldn't find the building numbers, then found it but couldn't find a place to park. I finally left the car by a hydrant six blocks away. Flexibility in the art of detection.

Three young guys in T-shirts were hanging outside the video place when I got back, drinking Snapple. One of them was wearing a Seattle Mariners cap, and all of them were sporting black Gorilla boots and rolled-cuff jeans. A stairwell protected by an unlocked wire door had been carved from the corner of the building just past the metalwork place. There was a directory on the wall, and a row of mailboxes with little masking-tape tags for names and apartment numbers, only Brownell wasn't one of the names on the directory and the names on the masking tape had faded to oblivion. I said, 'Any of you guys know Wilson Brownell?'

The one with the cap said, 'Sure. He comes in all the time.'

'You know which apartment he's in?'

'I'm pretty sure it's apartment B. On the second floor.' You see how friendly it is in Seattle?

I took the stairs two at a time, then went along the hall looking for B. I found it, but the apartment across the hall was open and an older woman with frizzy hair was perched inside on an overstuffed chair, squinting out at me. She was clutching a TV remote the size of a cop's baton and watching C-Span. I gave her a smile. 'Hi.'

She squinted harder.

I couldn't hear anything inside Brownell's apartment. No radio, no TV, no voices making furtive plans, just the C-Span and street noises. It was an older building without air-conditioning, so there would be open windows. I knocked, and then I rang his bell.

The woman said, 'He's at work, ya dope.' Just like that, ya dope. 'Middle'a the day, any worthwhile man finds himself at work.' Eyeing me like that's where I should be.

She was maybe seventy, but she might've been eighty, with leathery ochre skin and salt and pepper hair that went straight up and back like the Bride of Frankenstein. She was wearing a thin cotton housecoat and floppy slippers and she was pointing the remote at me. Maybe trying to make me disappear.

'Sorry if I disturbed you.' I gave her my relaxed smile, the one that says I'm just a regular guy going about a regular guy's business, then made a big deal out of checking my watch. 'I could've sworn he said to come by at two.' It was six minutes before two. 'Do you know what time he's due back?' The World's Greatest Detective swings into full detection mode to fake out the Housebound Old Lady.

The squint softened, and she waved the remote. Inside, congressional voices disappeared. 'Not till five-thirty, quarter to six, something like that.'

'Wow, that's a lot later than I planned.' I shook my head and tried for a concerned disappointment. 'An old buddy of ours is in town and we're supposed to get together. I wonder if he's been around.' For all I knew Clark was inside asleep on the couch. You cast a line, you hope for a bite.