Back again across the lobby of Immigration through the ever-swelling crowd, back to the far end of the lobby where the telephones were located. El Centro was busy for a long time. As I waited on hold, I imagined the joy and gratitude Carmen Luzano would feel when I sprung her from wherever they had her. She could reassemble her American dream, use remote controls and get pedicures from Vietnamese refugees on her days off. Leaning against the narrow simulated-wood partition that separated me from a man who was shouting something indistinct but angry into the phone, I wondered if I would be able to get the job done in the amount of time I had been paid for. The man bumped against the partition, hitting me in the shoulder. Phone booths are out. The corporate big boys have told us we can’t be trusted. We carve up the walls, we etch dirty words on the coin-return box, we spill sticky drinks on the telephone directory and rip out the pages. Increasingly, I was annoyed with Monica Fullbright’s petty and bourgeois needs. I wanted to get back to the office and do some real law work. She was going to pay for this. All of it. The phone calls, the standing in lines. While they kept me on hold, I wrestled my map book out of my briefcase and studied the freeways that lead south out of the city. Glancing at my watch, I saw I could drive to El Centro, bill for expenses and be back by five. It all turned out to be unnecessary. El Centro didn’t have her either.

What if I did find her? I wondered. What then? I headed for the law library up on First between Broadway and Hill, where all the city’s efforts at landscaping end and there’s only concrete and gum wrappers. As usual, I tried to avoid the panhandler with the gray hair and the military cap. In my mind I call him the Captain. He’s there every day by the entrance to the library, his feet wrapped in rags and stuffed into filthy tennis shoes. He waves. In the cheery booming voice of Santa Claus, he says, “Have a nice day. God bless you”—unless you are a woman. Then he adds after you’ve passed, in a voice so low you think maybe you’re imagining it, “Suck your pussy.”