“Cops have already been asking,” Vivien said. Vivien was the longtime manager of Uncle Lizard’s. Throat tattoos, pierced areola, a sheepdog’s mustache. Her claim to fame was putting Evel Knievel on his ass during a bar brawl in Palm Desert. “They spoke to all the staff . . . had one of those, whaddya call ’em, compost sketches.”

“Facial composite,” Luke said. He’d spent two hours with the artist, trying to get the close-set eyes just right.

“Yeah, that.” Vivien set her hands on her broad hips. “Didn’t help, in any case. Nobody remembered him. Not for sure. It was just too busy that night, and the celebrities outshone everybody else.”

Luke wondered how hard Montecino and Kraemer had pushed, when it was clear they didn’t believe the bat-faced man even existed. Montecino had even referred to him as Señor Smokescreen at one point. Any follow-up—facial composite or not—had been more to cross him off the list than move him up it.

Luke couldn’t discount him, though. Maybe the bat-faced man didn’t know where Lisa was, but he might have information, and judging by the way Lisa had cozied up to him, Luke believed that was a good possibility.

The investigation continued. Detective Montecino vowed to find Lisa, dead or alive, and bring any guilty party to justice. Five weeks after Lisa went missing, a fire swept across the southwestern region of the Los Padres Forest, leading many to wonder if critical evidence (meaning Lisa’s body) had been destroyed. At this point, ironically, things cooled off, but Montecino wasn’t ready to let Luke off the hook. She started to follow and harass him—anything she could do to make his life hell. One time she pulled him over for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign. She had him exit the car and threw him over the hood to “frisk” him, applying excessive force, leaving bruises on his ribs that didn’t fade for weeks.

Luke hadn’t seen Montecino for several months—he figured she’d found some other shmuck to persecute—but now here she was, not a detective but a private investigator, with nothing but time on her hands and a cold, bitter box for a heart.

“I checked your IMDb page,” she said, shifting her weight across the hood so that his old Caliber creaked on its springs. “Your last credited work was for a video game, Back Yard Wilderness. You provided the voice for Wriggles the Caterpillar. Inspiring.”

A 737 thundered low, approaching LAX. Luke was grateful for the disruption. He wished that it could hover in place, the roar of its jets melting Montecino’s voice into obscurity.

“I must admit,” she continued a moment later, when she only had to contend with the hum of the traffic, “it’s been immensely gratifying to watch your career implode. It’s not justice, but it’s something.”