"It doesn't make any difference what I believe," I said. "I'm trying to find out what's true. So far it's all speculation."

He shook his head. "I know I don't have any concrete proof, but I felt like I had to tell someone. It's been bugging the shit out of me."

"I'll tell you what's bugging me," I said. "How can you live with someone you suspect of murder?"

He stared down at the table for a moment and the smile when it came was tainted with the old arrogance. I thought he was going to answer me, but the silence stretched and finally he simply lit another cigarette and signaled for the check.

I called Jonah in the middle of the afternoon. The encounter with Aubrey Danziger had depressed me, and the two martinis at lunch had left me with a nagging pain between the eyes. I needed air and sunshine and activity.

"You want to go up to the firing range and shoot?" I said when Jonah got on the line.

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the office, but I'm on my way home to pick up some ammo."

"Swing by and pick me up too," he said.

I smiled when I hung up the phone. Good.

The clouds hung above the mountains like puffs of white smoke left in the wake of a giant old-fashioned choo-choo train. We took the old road up through the pass, my VW making high-pitched complaints until I shifted from third gear to second and finally into first. The road twisted up through sage and mountain lilac. As we approached, the dark green of the distant vegetation separated into discreet shrubs clinging obstinately to the slopes. There were very few trees. Steep expanses of California buckwheat were visible on the right, interspersed with the bright little orange faces of monkey flower and the hot pink of prickly phlox. The poison oak was thriving, its lush growth almost overwhelming the silvery leaves of the mugwort which grew alongside it and is its antidote.