bristling with thousands of untamed, questing trailers. His soft-soled
shoes made no sound on the sidewalk, and his shadow alternately
stretched ahead of him and then behind, as he approached and then passed
one lamppost after another.
Cars, mostly older models, some rusted and battered, were parked at
curbs and in driveways; keys might have dangled from the ignitions of
some of them, and he could have jump started any he chose. However, he
noted that the cinder block walls between the properties-as well as the
walls of a decrepit and abandoned house-shimmered with the
spray-painted, ghostly, semi-phosphorescent graffiti of Latino gangs,
and didn’t want to tinker with a set of wheels that might belong to one
of their members. Those guys didn’t bother rushing to a phone to call
the police if they caught you trying to steal one of their cars; they
just blew your head off or put a knife in your neck. Frank had enough
trouble already, even with his head intact and his throat unpunctured,
so he kept walking.
Twelve blocks later, in a neighborhood of well-kept houses and better
cars, he began searching for a set of wheels that would be easy to
boost. The tenth vehicle he tried was a one year-old green Chevy,
parked near a street lamp, the doors unlocked, the keys tucked under the
driver’s seat.
Intent on putting a lot of distance between himself and the deserted
apartment complex where he had last encountered his unknown pursuer,
Frank switched on the Chevy’s heater and drove from Anaheim to Santa
Ana, then south on Bristol Avenue toward Costa Mesa, surprised by his
familiarity with the streets. He seemed to know the area well. He
recognized buildings, shopping centers, parks, and neighborhoods past
while he drove, though the sight of them did nothing to rekindle his
burnt-out memory. He still could not recall who he was, where he lived,
what he did for a living, what he was running from or how he had come to
wake up in an alleyway in the middle of the night.
Even at that dead hour-the car clock indicated it2:48-he figured his
chances of encountering a traffic cop was greater on a freeway, so he
stayed on the surface street through Costa Mesa and the eastern and
southern fringes of Newport Beach. At Corona Del Mar he picked up the
Pacific Coast Highway and followed it all the way to Laguna Beach
encountering a thin fog that gradually thickened as he progressed
southward.
Laguna, a picturesque resort town and artists’ colon shelved down a
series of steep hillsides and canyon walls toward the sea, most of it
cloaked now in the thick fog. Only an occasional car passed him, and
the mist rolling in from the Pacific became sufficiently dense to force
him to reduce his speed to fifteen miles an hour.
Yawning and gritty-eyed, he turned onto a side street east of the
highway and parked at the curb in front of a dark, two story, gabled,
Cape Cod house that looked out of place on these Western slopes. He
wanted to get a motel room, but before he tried to check in somewhere,
he needed to know if he had any money or credit cards. For the first
time all night, he had a chance to look for ID, as well. He searched
the pockets of his jeans, but to no avail.
He switched on the overhead light, pulled the leather flight bag onto
his lap and opened it. The satchel was filled with tightly banded
stacks of twenty- and hundred-dollar bills.
THE THIN soup of gray mist was gradually stirring itself into a thicker
stew. A couple of miles closer to the ocean the night probably was
clotted with fog so dense that it would almost have lumps.
Coatless, protected from the night only by a sweater, but warmed by the
fact that he had narrowly avoided almost certain death, Bobby leaned
against one of the patrol cars in front of Decodyne and watched Julie as
she paced back and forth with her hands in the pockets of her brown
leather jacket. He never got tired of looking at her. They had been