Pepe looked up.

“You’ve got a permit for this?”

No response.

“Didn’t think so. We’re going to borrow it.”

Knowing I was more familiar with the standard police issue Beretta, Decker and I exchanged weapons. He said, “You ever fire this thing, Renaldes? Because I’m going to take this into the lab and it could give you problems if it was used in a crime.”

“I fin’ it,” Pepe told him.

“Yeah, like you found these pharmaceuticals?” I held up the bag of pills.

Renaldes regarded me with tired eyes.

“Hey,” I said. “You play nice, we place nice.”

Decker took one of Renaldes’s belts, pulled the small man’s hands behind his back, and secured the wrists together. “Don’t take it personally.” He held one arm, I took the other, and together we spirited him to the door.

“Wha’ ’bout my dog?”

“If it doesn’t take too long, he should be fine,” Decker answered. “Let’s go.”

The Porsche had a micromini backseat. I squeezed in as best I could lengthwise; then Dad placed Pepe in the passenger’s bucket. We undid Renaldes’s hands, then retied them around the seat back. I had a gun, so did Dad. The Loo started the car and we were off.

In frank talk, we were kidnapping Pepe and that didn’t sit well with my inner child. It also gave me insight—just how easy it was to justify jumping the line. My father wasn’t crooked—I was sure of that—but he seemed to have no problem disregarding due process when it served his purposes.

So where did that leave me?

I stood loyal to my father, and to justify my uneasiness, I convinced myself that I was his imaginary angel sitting on his right shoulder, telling him when to rein it in.

I was holding a gun, prepared to use it if I had to, but the guy wasn’t giving us a lick of problems—just the opposite. He was a passive kind of guy who had lived in the same unit for almost three years. I was beginning to doubt that this wimpy guy was really involved in raping Sarah Sanders. I wondered if maybe Germando El Paso had reversed it for his convenience. Maybe Renaldes had been the lookout while Fedek and El Paso did the nasty. I kept that filed in the back of my head, should we ever make progress on the case.

“You getting hungry, Pepe?” I asked him.

“A leetle.”

“You be good and I’ll buy you some food after it’s over.”

He nodded, his fingers constantly wiggling against the binds that tied his wrists.

Decker was silent, driving deep into the industrial part of L.A. County, going east on the freeway to the address given to us by Renaldes. We passed a skyline of old buildings, some of them abandoned with shot-out or boarded-up windows. The sky was dull and smoggy and I had to fight to stay awake. I closed my eyes for just a second, then yanked open the lids when I realized I’d fallen asleep. Pepe apparently had the same idea. He was snoring, chin to his chest. I hadn’t noticed it before but he had a pencil mustache as well as a little swatch of beard under his lower lip.