He took a blister pack of Ibuprofen from the bathroom, went along to the kitchen and started opening drawers. The whiskey stock was a couple of Johnnie Walkers, and a bottle of something that sounded Scottish. The Johnnie would do. He used a paper towel to handle the bottle, poured two inches into a glass and levelled it up with tap water. The Ibuprofen was in those little capsules, and he split each one with a thumbnail and tipped the powder in the drink. Then he stirred the mix with a finger and wiped down the glass, carried it in the paper towel to Lou’s room and set it on the bedside table. Lou hadn’t moved. Still with his eyes closed, arm across his brow. Like a parody of someone deeply offended.

‘Doctor said wait another hour and see how it’s going. I made you some whiskey and water. Apparently the alcohol brings your blood pressure down, helps the pain.’

Probably a load of bullshit, but he had to tell him something.

‘All right. I thought … You can’t mix them with booze, right? The pills, I mean.’

‘He said it’s okay, long as you don’t have too much.’

‘Right … Man, I feel like shit.’

He couldn’t help but stand there a moment longer, three feet from the bed, wondering if Lou would open his eyes. Like standing at the cliff edge and leaning out. For one or the other of them.

‘What?’ Sensing him still there.

‘Nothing. I’m going.’

He stepped out, and then waited for a moment in the hallway. He wondered if this was the most surreal moment of his life. Naked in a dead man’s house. He went into Sly’s room and sat on the edge of the bed and used the phone again.

The dull ringing in his ear.

‘Yes?’

In the next room, he heard a glass settle with a wobble on a hard surface.

Andre said, ‘Sly figured out we got a thirty-million-dollar side deal. I had to make an executive decision.’

The funeral booklet was for a woman: Susan Crow. Sly’s sister, maybe. He wondered if she’d been a Susie. He figured it’d sound like ‘sushi’ if you screamed it underwater.

EIGHTEEN

EIGHTEEN

Vincent had told her twice now that it wasn’t a good idea, staying at a hotel. If someone was short thirty million dollars, then it was reasonable to expect they would try to recover the funds. If they knew she was alive, then why not? That was Vincent’s theory anyway, spoken to the windshield as he drove south on the Pacific Coast Highway, Erin in the back watching the white lights slip past in the other lane, source-less and unending in the dark.

She said, ‘It’s not like I’m carrying it around with me. And you can’t cash it out at an ATM.’

Vincent said, ‘They’d probably think of something.’