Traffic was light on the freeway except for cars slowing to gawk at a Jeep Cherokee that had hit the center divider sometime earlier in the morning. A new Fela Anikulapo Kuti record came on the radio. Jamming high life. I turned up the volume and fiddled with the bass. At Venice Boulevard I got off the freeway and headed west toward Lorimar Studios, the biggest building in Culver City. On Allison Street I saw the same old lady on her knees working in the yard that I had seen on my first trip to Monica Fullbright’s apartment. I snapped off the radio, cut the engine and parked several houses away. I put on my suit jacket and took my briefcase off the backseat of the car so I would look like I had a legitimate purpose. Maybe I only looked like an Amway saleswoman with a bruise on her jaw. The old lady was bent over a sick-looking purple plant, poking at it with a trowel, and I was able to hurry down the driveway to the back duplex.

I knocked and waited a second. Then I took a credit card out of my wallet and tried to slip the lock. This is much harder than it looks. I bent the card in two trying to push it through the door. I got my Neiman-Marcus card out and sawed away at the door. Eventually I heard it click open.

The beige couch was turned over in the middle of the room. A stereo had been thrown on the floor; jazz records were scattered about. Two potted plants had been knocked over on the carpeting and there were piles of dirt. A bookshelf had been pulled down, and a trail of Danielle Steele books led to the next room. The place had been turned upside down by someone in a hurry and without a strong respect for private property. I didn’t hear anything, so I went in, closing the door behind me. Scrawled on the far wall in big dripping red letters was the same word that had been written on the Guatemalan fliers and placards: PATRIA. I picked my way across the room and used the credit card to touch one of the letters. It was only red paint. Thank God.

Immediately to the side of the small living room was the bedroom. The closet doors were flung open, and clothes were torn and thrown across the room. The bed hadn’t been slept in. PATRIA was scrawled on the wall above the bed, and whoever had painted it there had dribbled red paint and made part of a footprint on the bedspread.

The Guatemalans had found Monica Fullbright before I did!