“The Seville car got tagged, and I got hold of the tagger.”

“Tagged?”

“Satellite locating device.”

“One of Coury’s car gadgets?”

His hand on my shoulder was eloquent: We’ll talk later.

Stevie drove to Highway 150 and pulled over just short of the 33 intersection, into a tree-shaded turnaround where three vehicles sat. Toward the rear, half-hidden by the night, was the pickup truck, front end facing the road, still loaded with fertilizer. A few feet away was a dark Lexus sedan. Another black SUV—a Chevy Tahoe—blocked both other vehicles.

Stevie dimmed his lights, and two men stepped from behind the Tahoe. A muscular, shaved-head Hispanic wearing a black muscle T-shirt, baggy black cargo pants and a big, leather chest holster, and Georgie Nemerov in a sport coat, open-necked white shirt, rumpled slacks.

The muscular man’s T-shirt read: BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in big white letters. He and Nemerov approached the Suburban. Milo lowered his window, and Nemerov peered in, saw me, raised an eyebrow.

“Where’s Coury?”

Milo said, “With his ancestors.”

Nemerov tongued the inside of his cheek. “You couldn’t save him for me?”

“It was over by the time we got there, Georgie.”

Nemerov’s eyebrow arched higher as he turned to me. “I’m impressed, Doc. Want a job? The hours are long and the pay sucks.”

“Yeah,” said Yaakov, “but de people you got to meet are deezgusting.”

Stevie laughed. Nemerov’s smile widened reluctantly. “I guess results are what counts.”

“Was there anyone else?” I said. “Besides Coury?”

“Sure,” said Nemerov. “Two other party animals.”

“Brad Larner,” said Milo. “That Lexus is his. He and Coury arrived in it, Larner was driving. He was parked near the house, waiting for Coury, when we spotted him behind the truck. Dr. Harrison and Caroline were tied up in the truck bed. Another guy was at the wheel.”

“Who?”

Nemerov said, “Paragon of virtue named Emmet Cortez, I wrote a few tickets for him before he went away on manslaughter. Worked in the auto industry.”

“Painting hot rods,” I said.

“Chroming wheels.” Nemerov’s grin was sudden, mirthless, icy. “Now he’s in that big garage in the sky.”

“Rendered inorganic,” said Stevie.

“Steel organic,” said Yaakov. “Long as deyr someting left, he steel organic, right, Georgie.”

“You’re being technical,” said Stevie.

“Let’s change the subject,” said Nemerov.

CHAPTER

46

“Pancakes,” said Milo.

It was 10 A.M., the next morning, and we were at a coffee shop on Wilshire near Crescent Heights, a place where old people and gaunt young men pretending to write screenplays congregated. One half mile west of the Cossack brothers’ offices, but that hadn’t been what drew us there.

We’d both been up all night, had returned to L.A. at 6 A.M., stopped at my house to shower and shave.

“Don’t wanna wake Rick,” he’d explained.

“Isn’t Rick up by now?”

“Why complicate things?”