. .”

Before Jimmy got to him, the boy knelt in the broken glass to look into the backseat where there was a third body, another face covered in blood.

Jimmy yanked him to his feet.

“What’s your name?”

“I was—”

“What’s your name?” Jimmy said again.

“Drew.”

Jimmy started walking him away from the wreck.

“We were just—” the kid began.

“The driver is dead,” Jimmy said. “The other guy is hurt. An ambulance is coming.”

He wrapped his arms around the teenager as if he was nine years old.

“I’m messed up . . .” the kid said. He stared at the half sphere of the moon through the trees, looking like the blade of a Gothic ax.

“I . . .”

Jimmy now put a tender hand to the side of the boy’s head and spoke into his ear. Anyone close enough to hear would have understood even less by knowing more, would have said later that the words sounded like Latin, like a liturgy from another country or another century. And then that person would have shrugged.

Jean came closer, stopped a few feet away.

“They’re coming,” she said. “There’s a fire station at the top of the hill.”

Jimmy spoke a last line to Drew and then turned him and walked him past Jean, toward the car.

“They’re coming,” Jean said again.

“I know,” Jimmy said to her. “Get in the car.”

Jimmy opened the passenger door, put Drew in the backseat. The siren could be heard now, coming down from Mulholland, howling as it passed through the tunnel.

Jean said, “I don’t understand—”

“They’ll take care of the others,” Jimmy said. “I have to take care of him.”

“Were they—”

“One’s dead, one’s hurt. Get in the car.” Jimmy got behind the wheel and the engine roared up.

Jean got in. She looked at Drew in the seat behind her.

“My head is messed up,” Drew said.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Jimmy said, just eyes in the rearview mirror.

“No, I want the ambulance,” Drew said. “This is wack. I’m not—”

Jimmy turned and fixed him with a look.

“I’ll get you to a doctor.”

There was something in the look or in the words or in Jimmy’s voice that made the kid relent, lean back against the seat. With balled fists, like a little boy, he wiped the blood out of his eyes. He looked at it on his hands as if embarrassed by it.

“I’m messed up,” he said.

Jimmy steered around the wreckage, the Challenger’s tires cracking on the glass frags, and drove on down the hill as the red lights of the ambulance pulsed through the trees above them, behind them.

Jean looked straight ahead through the windshield.

They were in the kitchen. Jimmy stood at the sink drinking a glass of water. Behind him, a pair of hands looped the last two stitches in the cut at the kid’s hairline. Drew, now dressed in a clean shirt and pants, had his eyes open but wasn’t looking at anything.

The doctor daubed at her handiwork, then sorted through her bag for a bandage.

She was Krisha. She had dark brown hair, pulled back, a serious look like a poet in college. She wore a running suit. She’d been running the loop around the Hollywood Reservoir when Jimmy called.

She smiled at Drew.

“All right?”

Drew wouldn’t look at her. Maybe he was imagining her, imagining all of this.

Jimmy had taken Jean home, left her standing in the street with a look on her face that was hard to read, more confusing than confused. She hadn’t asked any questions on the drive back from the scene of the accident, hadn’t said much of anything. Maybe she had put together an explanation for herself that was sufficient for now. Or maybe there wasn’t one, ever, and she knew it. She had stood watching as Jimmy backed down the hill to the next intersection, turned around, drove away.

Jimmy walked the doctor to the door.

“He’s OK,” she said to Jimmy. “I’ll come back in a few days. If his ribs keep hurting, you can bring him in to the clinic after hours. We’ll X-ray.”

“All right.”

“What did he see?” she said.

“I don’t know. Not everything.”

“Are you OK?”

“I wasn’t in it,” Jimmy said. “I was just driving by.”

“I mean, are you OK?” she said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “How about you?”

“I’m keeping busy.”

It was a line they used. They said good-night and Jimmy thanked her. He watched from the open door until she got into her car and drove away down the long driveway.

Jimmy turned.

Drew was standing in the doorway to the dining room.

“You people are messed up,” he said. “This is some weird