Later Hook would remember almost nothing about the girls except that neither of them, in an hour’s time, and after three or four drinks, had been able to muster a genuine smile or laugh. They were like pawnbrokers, patient in the knowledge that in the end, after all the fuss and furor, this transaction like so many before it would be resolved dully in their favor.

But it was not.

Into their second hour together, Douglas had left to go to the men’s room, and minutes later Hook saw him leave the restaurant altogether, lurching out the front door. Leaving money for the drinks, Hook excused himself and followed Douglas outside. He found him in his car, dozing in the front seat. Pushing him over, Hook got in.

“One more place,” Douglas mumbled. “Just one more place. Near the Mission. After that, you’re free.”

“I’m free now.”

Douglas raised his head to look at him. “As a favor. And no more booze. No girls. I promise.”

“Near the Mission?”

“Near the Mission.”

As Hook backed out and drove away, Douglas sagged against the car door and closed his eyes.

On the way back to Santa Barbara, this time via the freeway, Hook tried to think his way through the alcoholic mist in his mind to understand what was happening to him this night, why he was “painting the town” with this man who was nothing if not his enemy, even his quarry. There was the moth-to-flame explanation, of course. But he figured that probably described Douglas’s behavior more aptly than his own, for by the time the thing had run its course he did not doubt it would be Douglas and not himself who would be burned. Or perhaps the explanation lay in the old saw about the criminal’s fascination with the scene of his crime. Maybe deep down that was how he felt about what he was doing, that it was in some way a crime, and Douglas its victim, and thus his momentary fascination with the man, his inability to just drive away from him and let him sweat out his predicament. But Hook discounted that possibility too. He was not a sadist.

Whatever the reason, he went along. They drove past the floodlit courthouse and uphill toward the Mission, through the neighborhood where Icarus lived, and then west past State Street into a less affluent area with neat rows of old clapboard and stucco houses lining the dark street. Hook saw no bars anywhere.

“There,” Douglas said. “On the corner.”

It was an old three-story stucco house crumbling behind a scraggly row of pine trees. Hook parked and looked out. On every floor lights were burning. From one came the sound of Jesus rock, insistent and blaring. Douglas got out, on the street side, and came around the car. He leaned down and looked in at Hook.

“You just gonna leave me here?”

“Where?”

“Here, man. My home. My ancestral home.”

“I think it’s occupied.”

Douglas shrugged. “Well, hell yes. And by hippies, no less. It’s a commune, I hear. But they’ll welcome us, believe me. They don’t turn anyone away.”