He toweled down and changed into dry clothes. The chill lingered; it followed him all the way down the coast to the marina. He had to wonder if it was more from his brush with death than simply the effect of the cold water. But he counted his blessings. He had come out of the low-lying clouds—his worse fear—directly over his boat and he had not broken his back.

He reached the marina at one in the morning, his disguise in place. He had told the rental firm that he intended to bring the boat back the following afternoon, but with his injured leg he wanted to get off the water and into a hospital. Yet even with the pressure of his injury, he knew he could not go to a clinic in the L.A. area.

There was a fresh water hose at the dock. He washed off the blood as best he could. Fortunately, there was no one around. The harbor guards seemed to be hanging in the coffee shop. Unfortunately, the pain in his leg escalated rapidly. He had a hard time transferring his beacon lights into the trunk of Simon Schiller’s car. He suspected he had lost two or three pints of blood. As he worked, dizziness swept over him and there was a ringing in his ears that reminded him of a high school fire alarm.

He got on the freeway and tried to drive using his left leg. He longed for a doctor with a kind bedside manner and a syringe filled with morphine, but had to wonder if he was already too late for stitches. He remembered reading that they were only effective in the first six hours, and it had been longer than that since he had cut himself.

He drove north for a few minutes, then got off the freeway and swung by a 7-Eleven and bought a bottle of Tylenol. He decided to swallow a dozen pills with the help of a tall coffee and try to make it all the way to Modesto without stopping. The idea was patently foolish but he wanted out of L.A. so bad he didn’t care.

The sun rose as he reached his trailer in Modesto. He went inside and took off his clothes and plopped down on the bed and slept like a child. Even the pain in his leg did not wake him. He was a dead man. He could sleep forever and no one would care.