Instead, Sly Boy adopted a cautious posture, his eyes peeled to full circles. “What the fuck, Johan?” he said, and uttered a nervous laugh. Even Ruben appeared reluctant to venture too far forward. He looked like a scared two-hundred-and-sixty-pound boy.

“Kris,” Johan said calmly. “It’s been a while. You look good.”

“Yeah, it’s been . . .” He shook his head, getting back on track. “What the fuck, man?”

Johan—the Viking—gave his beard another twist, then pointed at Kitty. “Her.” He offered his disarming smile. “I want just a moment with her.”

All eyes on Kitty. She stood in the yellow light, her legs trembling. “I didn’t do shit.” She looked from Sly Boy to Johan, then back to Sly Boy. “I’ve never seen this guy before. He just started following me.”

“Scouting,” Johan corrected her. “This is Los Angeles, after all, where fortune favors the ruthless.”

An uncharacteristic hush descended on the club, broken only by creaking chairs and Cal’s tuneless wheezing. Some of the patrons had vacated, but most were old jazz guys. They’d seen this—and worse—before. They looked put out, if anything, that their evening’s entertainment had been interrupted.

Sly Boy nodded at Kitty—more with his eyes than with his head. Kitty frowned, not certain she understood the gesture. He clarified.

“Go,” he said.

“Go?”

“With him.”

“No.” A coldness washed through her. It had the paradoxical effect of increasing her jitters, yet making her firmer inside. “I don’t want to.”

Sly Boy turned his lips down. He swallowed hard, straightened his sleeves—impeccably arranged, as always. The eight-hundred-dollar haircut. The suit from the House of Bijan. It was all about outward appearance with Sly Boy, but was there anything inside?

“It’s easier for everyone,” he whispered, “if you go willingly.”

He had educated Kitty about not talking to the customers, distancing herself from trouble, maintaining the degrees of separation that would keep her out of prison. She had thought him savagely smart, but maybe he was just gutless. Either way, Kitty no longer felt protected by Sly Boy, or by Ruben “take my number” Osterfeld.

She left the club with the Viking, feeling suddenly and overwhelmingly alone.

Johan Fly exuded strength and confidence, and Kitty, to her surprise, felt safe in the short time they were together. They walked down to Sunset, then slowly east. Johan talked about how his father had crossed the ocean in 1977, from Denmark, and was now one of the wealthiest men in the city. He said that it had been that way with his people, his bloodline, for hundreds of years. They traveled to foreign lands. They took what they wanted. They prospered.

“What about you, Kitty?”

“What about me?”