I had just reached a row of Dumpsters at the rear of the building when the people door kicked open and the guy from the white van came out with three other men, the four of them laughing and yucking it up. One of the men I had never seen before, but the other two had leaned on me outside the Journal. Pike drifted up beside me, and we watched as the four men climbed into the van and drove away. 'The middle two guys fronted me yesterday at the newspaper.'

Pike didn't respond. Like it didn't matter to him one way or another.

I said, 'Anything on the other side?'

'Two doors, both locked. No windows.'

'I'm thinking Clark 's inside. There might be other people inside, too, but with four bodies out, now might be our best shot.'

Pike said, 'We could always just call the police.'

I frowned at him.

'Just kidding.' Then he looked at me. 'What if Clark won't come?'

I looked back at the door. ' Clark will come if I have to put a gun to his head. He will come and we'll sit down with those kids and we'll figure out what to do next.' I think I said it more for me than for Pike. 'But he will come.'

'Optimist.'

We drew our guns, and went through the side door into a long colorless hall that smelled of Clorox. The hall branched left and straight. Pike looked at me and I gestured straight.

We moved past a series of small empty offices to the door at the end of the hall, then stopped to listen. Still no sounds, but the Clorox smell was stronger. Pike whispered, 'Stinks.'

'Maybe they're dissolving bodies.'

Pike looked at me. 'Acid to cut litho plates.' I guess he just knows these things.

We eased open the door and stepped into a room that was wide and deep and two stories high, lit by fluorescent tubes that filled the space with silver light. A lithograph machine sat in the center of the floor, surrounded by long cafeteria tables that had been lined with boxes of indigo ink and acid wells and printers' supplies. A high-end Power Mac was up and running, anonymous screen-saver kittens slowly chasing each other. The scanner was still in its box, the box on the floor by the Macintosh. A color copier was set up on one side of the litho machine, and three front-loading dryers stood in a row against the far wall. The smell of oil-based ink was so strong it was like walking into a fog. I said, ' Clark 's going to print, all right.'

'Yeah, but what?'

Pike nodded toward a row of wooden crates stacked on pallets near the door. The crates were labeled, but the printing wasn't Arabic. Pike said, 'Russian.'

The top crate had been opened and you could see blocks of paper wrapped in white plastic. One of the blocks had been slit open to reveal the paper inside. The sheets were something like eighteen inches by twenty-four, and appeared to be a high-grade linen embedded with bright orange security fibers. The sheets also looked watermarked, though I couldn't make out the images. I said, 'Our money doesn't have orange security fibers.'

Pike drifted to one of the long tables.

'You think they're going to counterfeit Russian money?'

Pike reached the table. 'Not Russian, and not ours.'

Pike held up what looked like a photo negative of a series of dollar bills, only when I got closer I could see that they weren't dollars. The denomination was 50,000, and the portrait wasn't of Washington or Franklin or even Lenin. It was Ho Chi Minh. Pike's mouth twitched. 'They're going to print Vietnamese money.'

I put down the negative. 'We still have to find Clark.'

We went back along the hall toward the front of the warehouse, passing more empty offices. The hall reached a kind of lobby, then turned right to more offices, and as I passed the first office I saw a small camp cot against one wall, covered by a rumpled sleeping bag. 'In here.'

We went in. 'Guess he's supposed to stay here until the job's done.'

Clark had been here, but he wasn't here now. An overnight bag sat on the floor beside the cot, and a cheap card table with a single folding chair stood against the opposite wall. A little radio sat on the table, along with a few toiletry items and a couple of printers' magazines. Diet Coke cans were on the floor, along with crumpled bags from Burger King and In-n-out Burger and a large bottle of Maalox and a mostly used tube of cherry-flavored Tums. The room smelled of sweat and body odor and maybe something worse. A candle and a box of matches and a simple rubber tube waited on the table. Drug paraphernalia. I said, 'Goddamn. The sonofabitch is probably out scoring more dope.'

Pike said, 'Elvis.'

Pike was standing by the overnight bag, holding a rumpled envelope. I was hoping that it might be something that would lead us to Clark, but it wasn't. The envelope was addressed to Clark Haines in Tucson, and its return address was from the Tucson Physicians Exchange. It was dated almost three months ago, just before the Hewitts had left Tucson for Los Angeles.

I felt cold when I opened it, and colder still when I read it.

The letter was from one Dr. Barbara Stevenson, oncologist, to one Mr. Clark Haines, patient, confirming test results that showed Mr. Haines to be suffering from cancerous tumors spread throughout his large and small intestines. The letter outlined a course of treatment, and noted that Mr. Haines had not returned any of the doctor's phone calls about this matter. The doctor went on to state that she understood that people sometimes had trouble in dealing with news of this nature, but that it had been her experience that a properly supervised treatment program could enhance and maintain an acceptable quality of life, even in terminal cases such as Clark's.

The medical group had even been thoughtful enough to enclose a little pamphlet titled Living with Your Cancer.

I guess Jasper was right; Clark Hewitt was more than he seemed. I looked at Pike. ' Clark 's dying.'

Pike said, 'Yes.'

That's when a hard-looking man with an AK-47 stepped through the door and said, 'He's not the only one.'

CHAPTER 25

He was an older guy with a hard face that looked as if it had been chipped from amber. He waved the AK. 'Hands on heads, fingers laced.' The accent was thick, but we could understand him.

I said, 'The building is surrounded by the United States Secret Service. Put down the gun and we won't have to kill you.'

'Lace your fingers.' I guess he didn't think it was funny.

He took a half-step backward into the hall, and when he did Pike shuffled one step to the right. When Pike moved, the older guy dropped into a half-crouch, bringing the AK smoothly to his shoulder, right elbow up above ninety degrees, left elbow crooked straight down beneath the AK's magazine, the rifle's comb snug against his cheek in a perfect offhand shooting stance. Perfect and practiced, as if he had grown up with a gun like this and knew exactly what to do with it. I said, 'Joe.'

Pike stopped.

The older guy yelled down the hall without taking his eyes from us. A door crashed and Walter Tran, Junior, came running up, excited and sweating, expensive shoes slipping on the vinyl tiles. When he saw me, his eyes got big and he barked, 'Holy shit!' He clawed at his clothes until he came up with a little silver.380 that he promptly dropped.

I said, 'Relax, Walter. We're not going anywhere.'

He scooped up the.380, fumbling to get the safety off and pointing it at the older guy who snapped at him in Vietnamese and slapped it out of his hands. The old man shifted to English. 'You're going to shoot yourself.'

I said, 'Walter, take a breath.'

Walter Junior pointed at me. 'This one was the guy at the paper. I've never seen the other one.' Pike, reduced to 'other' status.

The older guy narrowed his eyes again. 'He said they were with the Secret Service.'