I pushed closer into his face. “Then why’d you follow me this afternoon?”

“To make you tell me who killed her.”

Lupe sneered at him. “What do you care?”

“I did love her,” he said angrily to her. “I did.”

“¡Hijo de puta!” screamed Emma, throwing herself at him. “That’s what you used to tell me.” She swung her hands wildly, clawing at his face.

“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anybody!” he shouted back at her. “When you and Raul came back from downtown with her body, I thought you’d killed Cathy. More of your fucking Trotsky politics.” Then he was screaming at her in Spanish.

“Stop it. Stop it.” Lupe tried to push in between them. Emma scratched her across the face, making it bleed, but Lupe managed to pull her off Guerrero. Emma was sobbing.

“Why’d you care what I thought?” I asked the panting Guerrero. “You must have had some ideas of your own. You knew she knew other men. You could see she’d been killed by a man. Didn’t Emma tell you Cathy had been raped?”

Emma shook her head, trying to deny what I had said.

“Yes, of course, Emma would tell you that.” I glanced over at her. She’d stopped crying, but she was shaking slightly and her eyes were still wet.

Tony Guerrero tried to straighten his shoulders and look tall. “I knew there were other guys. She knew Tommy. She was with him before she knew me. I knew about the junkie who lived in East LA and wouldn’t leave her alone.”

“The acting coach,” added Lupe.

Tony Guerrero looked defeated.

It was all so small. The fallen ideals of revolutionaries and law students.

I looked over to where the black car was waiting. He wouldn’t wait long. “Get out of here,” I barked at Guerrero and Emma Garcia. “Get out of here right now and I won’t tell the police about you. Cathy’s mine now. I knew her better than any of you. Go. Try to remember what you once believed in. Serve the people.” I didn’t mean to sound bitter, but I’m sure I did.

They looked questioningly at me, then at Lupe and finally at each other. A moment passed, but no questions came to their lips.

“Vamos,” Emma Garcia said at last, and they walked separately and awkwardly toward Emma’s car. They got in and slowly the car drove past us in a hot cloud of dust back into Hollywood.

I looked back to the black car. It was empty. The man in the car was gone. I knew Armando Diaz had killed Cathy. He had followed me through Griffith Park, where he killed Monica.

Now he wanted me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE