‘Something like that. I hope you’re not paying for your room?’

‘Nah.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘Bluesmoke’s treat.’

‘Did the perimeter look okay?’

Beauden nodded. ‘Went around the block a couple of times.’ Tipping the bottle at him. ‘You want extra back-up, I got a twelve-gauge in the car.’

Vincent said, ‘I thought you were advocating restraint.’

‘No, I’m advocating talking to the police. But you can have a phone in one hand and a gun in the other.’

Vincent tossed fifty dollars on the table, but Beauden slid the money back to him. ‘No, no, I got it. You didn’t drink your fair share anyway.’

‘All right. Thanks for the suit.’

‘Forget it.’ He was draining his bottle as Vincent walked away from the table.

Standing at the elevators, watching the numbers tick backward, that image stayed with him: Beauden with the bottle raised. He thought about it a minute and then texted Erin: I’ll be up in ten minutes.

He went out through the lobby to the drop-off area. Even the hotel’s turning circle looked like LA: both lanes jammed with cabs—horns and exhaust and gleaming corporate metal. A few cabs were parked kerbside off on his right. He walked along to the first in line and tapped on the window. The glass came down.

Vincent said, ‘Hey. This might sound weird—I’m thinking of buying one of these.’

The driver was a guy of about fifty. He grinned, spread his hands. ‘Man, that doesn’t sound weird at all. What can I say? I completely understand.’

Vincent showed him a twenty. ‘Think you could take me around the block? Call it ten bucks?’

The guy winked. ‘I got a minimum twenty-dollar exhibition fee. How do I know you’re not going into business, using me for insider knowledge?’

Vincent thought briefly about taking an Uber. Then he remembered the last time he took an Uber was that morning, from Cabrillo up to Lamar’s, and that hadn’t ended well. So he handed over the twenty and got in the back, and the guy pulled off the kerb. Vincent told him he literally wanted a ride around the block—east on Wilshire and then back along Santa Monica Boulevard. In defence of the guy’s twenty-dollar exhibition policy, he did make an effort to be informative. He was telling Vincent all about the trade-offs he would face if he did ultimately buy one: it’s a Continental, right, so you’re looking at unsurpassed comfort and very good reliability on the one hand, but the service costs if something does go wrong? Man—new transmission? Don’t even go there. Vincent made receptive noises while he scanned the street. They made the turn onto Wilshire, eastbound, the hotel on their right, plush suburbia on their left across the boulevard, and at the bottom of Trenton Drive he saw an SUV parked on the red kerb.

A Lincoln Navigator.