I found that I stepped aside as she started again for the door. I have never seen eyes as black and angry as hers. Was she right about me? I followed her down the hall to the stairs, feeling uncertain. Everything I had ever learned was about how to stay in control. Before I knew it, she was halfway down the stairs without looking back.

I took a deep breath and let it all go as though I were diving under an enormous wave. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry. It’s safe. And I’ll drive.”

Without another word passing between us we got into Lupe’s old Fiat and she threw it into first so it sounded like a hair dryer breaking apart. She drove south down Van Ness past all the pink and green Central American businesses and apartment buildings. When she got to Santa Monica Boulevard, she turned west, then left at a street near a Mexican restaurant.

On the left side of the street in the middle of a high adobe wall was a huge black wrought-iron gate that was open. She drove into the driveway created by the gate and onto a dirt road shaded by tall trees.

“Where are we?” I wondered aloud.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“The resting place of some of the greats. Hollywood Cemetery.”

A clump of tombstones popped into view as we made the first curve of the road. They were bleached white, buffed by smog and the relentless sun. The grass surrounding them was dry, the few intermittent flowers scattered on graves wilted and desiccated.

“Nice place,” I said, staring unhappily at what looked like a marble replica of a rocket ship marking one of the graves.

“Yes,” Lupe agreed, slowing the car to a crawl. “Very mellow.”

Mellow? Mellow was a word I had certainly never expected to hear Lupe use. I thought the streets were her element and that she liked the fast pace. The cemetery was creepy. I didn’t like it. “How did you pick this place?”

“It’s quiet. No one can hassle us here. I know all the ways out. I been here a lot of times.”

Been here a lot of times? With tricks? I glanced with disgust at the brown grass.

“I come to visit the graves of some of the stars and actresses I love. Rudolph Valentino. Virginia Rappe. Tyrone Power. Norma Talmadge,” she said, laughing at what I had been thinking.

Embarrassed, I turned away. “Where are we supposed to meet?”

“The far east end. Called the lake section. By that group of trees.” She pointed ahead. Visible through the trees were the tops of several of the tall bank buildings in the center of Hollywood.

A limo with tinted glass passed us in the opposite direction and pulled to the side of the road. An old man and woman climbed slowly and painfully out of the backseat.