you?” Angel said. For Angel, the whole thing had more than enough drama on its own, he didn’t go seeking more in language.

Lucy could be down here, Lucy as a Sailor. A lot of them were suicides, successful suicides. The murdered were another contingent, especially among the darkest of the Sailors, the ones who liked the shadows. The rest had died in accidents. But a loose definition of the term. More than a few had been the ill “misdiagnosed” into this state. Before their time.

Everybody had their own unfinished business, even if none of them knew exactly what it was.

Jimmy had only glanced at her picture in the Chron, Lucy’s picture. A portrait from a few years after high school. From Sears? Kmart? Old enough and fuzzy enough almost to be someone else. (He wondered where they’d gotten it. From family in Paso Robles?) He didn’t look at it long because in the picture Lucy looked a little like Mary. Not the hair, but . . . Why hadn’t he seen it before? (Or had he? He’d flashed on something in the café down in Saugus.) More likely, it was some trippy side effect brought on by the acid of his guilt. He was supposed to save Lucy, and Lucy wasn’t saved.

“Did you see the pictures of all of them? In the paper?” Jimmy said. “They had a picture of Lucy.”

Angel shook his head. “I got my own pictures of her.”

The Sailors were blocking the way now. Jimmy thought about a tap on the horn. Maybe in San Francisco they wouldn’t kill you for it.

Then he saw the Sailor right in front of him, across the hood. This one was very tall. He was black, but light-skinned. He had spotted skin, looked particularly African.

And he carried a staff, a wooden rod taller than he was.

Jimmy and Angel looked at each other.

“Let my people go,” Angel said.

But this Moses wasn’t there to part anything, not yet anyway. He just stared at Jimmy and Angel. The other Sailors seemed to press in closer, surround the car. Moses stayed where he was, in front of the hood, one of the Porsche’s chrome sissy bar bumpers against his leg. Against his calf. That was how tall he was.

“I guess this is the valet parking,” Jimmy said, and turned off the engine.

They both opened their doors at the same time, pushing back the men on the side, and got out.

There didn’t seem to be any women Sailors down here. It was a rough-looking crowd.

“They’re going to mess with the car,” Angel said.

“Maybe not,” Jimmy said. “Maybe they’ll cut a couple of out-of-towners some slack.”

“It’s not going to be here when we get back,” Angel said.

The man with the staff had started away. Jimmy and Angel set out after him, figuring that was the plan. Somebody’s plan.

There were hundreds of them down there. Something about the gathering, the whole scene, felt ceremonial. The general agitation in the air, in the San Francisco night, seemed to have found a focal point.

But they were all silent. Like obedient spectators for a play.

“Maybe we should do this tomorrow,” Angel said.

“This isn’t something we’re doing,” Jimmy said. Now the San Francisco Sailors were moving the two outsiders along. Jimmy and Angel were just going with the flow. There wasn’t any resisting, no use. It felt inevitable, whatever it was.

Jimmy lost sight of the tall African.

One of the grimmest-looking Sailors got right in Jimmy’s face. “We fell away,” he hissed at Jimmy. Or at least that’s what Jimmy thought he said.

Jimmy tried to get past him. The man said his line again.

This time Jimmy heard it right. “We follow Wayne,” the man was saying.

The others around him joined in. “We follow Wayne . . .”

“Good for you,” Angel said. “I follow Jesus.”

A brutish Sailor shoved him. Angel shoved back. “Step off.”

“We serve the Russian!” one of the few women said defiantly.

“Look,” Jimmy said.

Just in time. The tall black man with the staff was waiting next to a door in the front of one of the waterfront warehouses. Jimmy and Angel and their escorts had crossed two hundred yards of pavement. The Sailors had closed in behind them. Wherever the Porsche was, it was swallowed up.

The door on the front of the warehouse was closed.

Jimmy walked to it. He expected it to open. It didn’t.

“Knock,” Moses said.

Jimmy went along with the gag.

Even before the door opened, Jimmy and Angel heard it. Wailing, spacey guitar. Live. They’d found Les Paul.

He played real good.

TWENTY-TWO

Through