9.

A LITTLE WHILE LATER, I left the bar by the back exit.

It was dark out and raining pretty hard, and I hovered a moment beneath the overhang of the roof. I was building up the courage to make the dash across the lot to the Mercury, but then I noticed a car, parked parallel to the back door, that looked just like the Impala. But I knew that it couldn’t be.

Except it was, because then I sensed something or someone behind me, and I turned around and the two DEA agents were oozing out of the shadows, their guns pointed at me in the rain. The agent who had chased me into Gelson’s said, “Get in the car. The back seat. We want to talk to you.”

“Talk about what? How much Calderon pays you?”

He thrust his gun at me. “Shut up. Turn around and keep your hands out of your pockets. Walk to the car.”

“Are you Xavier?”

The way the other guy looked at him, I knew I was right. But Xavier didn’t give anything away, just waved his gun and said, like a threat, “Turn around and walk to the car.”

I faced forward like he told me, and Xavier was behind me on my right, and the other one was behind me on my left, both of them about two feet back. I took a few steps toward the car, getting rained on, and I wondered how I could play this. If I reached for the baton, they might be trigger-happy and shoot me. So I figured I’d make my move in the Impala, in close quarters, and the one on my left, a real gentleman, opened the back door of the car for me.

I was to slide in, followed by Xavier, his gun on me the whole time, but just before I lowered myself into the vehicle, a car pulled into the lot and put all three of us in its headlights.

I sensed the two agents stiffen, caught off guard, and I swung my right hand back in a chopping motion and got Xavier in the throat.

He immediately dropped his gun, his hands going to his neck, and I slammed the door shut and turned to face the other one. His gun was on me, but we were still in the headlights, and the driver of the car, witnessing the violence and seeing the guns, began to honk, repeatedly, hysterically.

Lucky for me, the agent had the good sense not to shoot me in front of a witness, and I took out my baton and chopped him on the side of the head. He went down, and I turned back around, and Xavier was choking, lying on the ground now, still holding his neck, but I didn’t think he would die.

The person behind the wheel stopped honking, but I couldn’t see them—their headlights were in my eyes—and I gave them a blind wave of thanks.

Then I stabbed the back left tire of the Impala with the paring knife and ran over to the Mercury. I fumbled with the keys—it didn’t have a modern fob, and my hands were shaking from adrenaline and nerves—but, eventually, I managed to get in the machine, drove it around the car of the Good Samaritan, and floored it out of there.

A few miles away, at the Arco on Hillhurst and Los Feliz, I parked next to the air pump. Lying on my back, in the rain, using my cell phone as a flashlight, I found the small GPS tracker on the inside lip of the rear bumper. I stood up and smashed it under my foot. I flashed to the guy cleaning my license plate back at the parking lot in front of Tang’s. That must have been when he planted it.

Since I was at the Arco, I filled the tank, and in the mini-mart, which had a number of diverse items, I got a package of disposable white latex gloves, a carryover from the pandemic, and I also got a new umbrella since I had left my other one at the strip club. Then I was back in the car, heading for the Downtowner, so I could walk George in the rain. On the way there, I called Rick Alvarez: I needed his help again. For years, Rick has paid for high-quality search engines that tell him what he needs to know about potential real estate clients—their arrests, bankruptcies, addresses, shoe sizes, you name it—and what I wanted him to find out was where Sebastian Calderon, son of Vincente Calderon, lived. I just hoped it wasn’t with his father on Mount Olympus, because I didn’t think I could get into that fortress-like mansion a second time.

Rick picked up after a few rings, and I gave him Sebastian’s full name and asked him to find his address. He said he’d call back with the information in fifteen minutes: he was just finishing up an early dinner with his wife. I thanked him and hung up. At a stoplight, I turned on Poole’s phone but there was nothing from Kunian. I almost felt like I was neglecting him.

I put the radio on and the DJ on 88.5 said the rain should stop around three a.m. and that there had been half a dozen deaths so far due to flooding, mudslides, and general chaos. But it wasn’t so bad that we were being told to stay home. We were free to drive around and possibly get ourselves killed, which was already on my agenda, as it were, so no change in plans was necessary.

I parked the car in the Downtowner lot, and as I walked through the door of the motel room, with George jumping all over me, Rick called back. He had found what I wanted. Sebastian Calderon lived in Penthouse B of the El Royale apartment building, over on the edge of Hancock Park. “Another nice address,” said Rick. “Almost as nice as Mount Olympus. Clark Gable lived at the El Royale.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, a lot of stars lived there. So what’s this all about?”

“I’ll tell you later.”