“Help me and we can split the money,” she offered, a dying soul trying to make a deal with the devil.

“Like you did with Kirk?” Thick black blood seeped through my fingers.

“Please,” she said, and then she died.

There I was on my knees trying to save another enemy combatant on a very different field of battle. I wondered what happened to the German soldier I didn’t kill. I wondered if I would survive this operation.

That same afternoon Rufus Tyler, aka Charcoal Joe, set up a meeting between me and Mr. Jericho at an Italian bar on Angeles Street downtown. We sat at a small round table while Orrin Cause watched us intently from a stool at the bar.

“You have something for me?” were Jericho’s first words.

I told him the truth: ten minutes earlier I had called Brock and told him where the treasure tomb was located.

“I gave him the long way round,” I said. Then I dictated the driving directions.

“And the money?” Jericho asked.

“It’s in four green metal footlockers in the storage unit.”

“All of it?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“How much more do you want for this?”

“Breath will do me just fine.”

Jericho smiled.

I winced and said, “And there’s a couple of other things.”

“What?” he asked.

“First there’s a guy named Oliver Shellbourne, a real estate developer downtown.”

“What about him?”

“He’s been trying to bully a friend of mine to give up on a property. Her name is Jewelle Blue and I’d like you or one of your associates to ask Mr. Shellbourne to stand down.”

“Done. What else?”

“The woman stole your money and her fool got themselves killed up there. I didn’t sign up for grave-digging duty.”

Jericho peered at me. It felt as if he was looking into my soul; like some hell-spawn angel deciding whether or not I could be turned.

Finally he said, “You didn’t ask for this, Mr. Rawlins. Go on home. The details will sort themselves out.”

Details.

The next morning Brock Oldstein was found shot in the temple, sitting behind the steering wheel of a tan Volkswagen Bug on El Molino Avenue in Pasadena. The afternoon edition of the LA Herald Examiner reported that Dennis Plennery was arrested in a jail cell for the San Bernardino armored car job. He was being charged with the murder of the three guards and suspected in the deaths of his two partners—Reynolds Ketch and Alonzo Griggs, both of Los Angeles.

Craig Kilian’s death had already been reported as a criminal death perpetrated by an unidentified assailant.

Forty-eight hours after the shootout at Blood Grove I got a phone call at my office.

“Hello,” I said carelessly, putting down an article about the intelligence of octopuses.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

I hesitated and then said, “Miss Kilian.”

“Hi, Easy, um . . . did you go up to that storage place?”

“I did.”