saxophone piece started, so sentimental and blue the few people in the place turned to look, wondering if it was meant to be a joke.

“I was thinking about you all day,” Jimmy said to Jean. The way he said it didn’t have all that much romance in it.

She nodded in a way that meant she’d been thinking about him, too, and maybe the other way.

“I called,” she said. “Then I thought you might be here.”

“I came by a few times,” Jimmy said. He came by once.

“I’ve been staying in a hotel. I found myself leaving all the lights on at home,” she said.

“Come stay with me.”

He didn’t say anything else.

She nodded.

He was still standing. He looked over at Connor.

“We have to go see about a friend of ours,” Jimmy said. “We’ll come back for you here.”

“Can I come with you?”

Maybe it was time.

They left Angel’s truck and Connor’s red Corvette in the lot behind Ike’s and the four of them took the Mustang, Jean and Connor in the tight backseat. The traffic was light, even down the Strip. Angel’s friends followed closely in a low-slung Chevy for a block or two then flashed their lights and peeled off.

Scott’s apartment was on Doheny Drive at the corner of Elevado three or four short blocks up from Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, a cool white tower ten stories tall, lights in the landscaping shining on its face.

Jimmy stayed behind the wheel while Angel and Connor got out. Connor rang the bell downstairs and waited. Angel looked over at Jimmy, then got out a ring of keys and unlocked the outer door and went in. They all had each other’s keys.

Jean took this in, put it with the other things she’d learned that deepened the mystery.

“Scott is the bartender at Ike’s. He didn’t come in today.” Jimmy didn’t turn around when he spoke to her, didn’t even look at her in the mirror. “Nobody’s seen him since he left work last night. A neighbor said he’d looked a little shaky the last few days.”

Jean just looked at the back of Jimmy’s head.

Angel and Connor came out. Connor stepped into the backseat again, Angel got in front.

Angel shook his head.

“Maybe we’d better—”

“Yeah, I know,” Jimmy said and put it in gear.

He made a U-turn on Doheny and then a left on Santa Monica Boulevard, drove past The Troubadour, then across West Hollywood into Hollywood.

To the foot of the Roosevelt Hotel.

And the Walkers.

This time there were dozens of them in clusters in the alleyways in the three blocks around the hotel, the men (and a few women) Boney M had wanted Jimmy to be reminded of from that perch up on the roof.

They never stopped moving, Sailors ashore forever. They wore whatever they wanted, whatever they had. They lived on the street or in a few hotels the other Sailors kept open in an act of kindness. And fear, fear that any Sailor could end up with the same dead look in his eyes, the same lack of purpose—either for good or for bad—that was in their shuffling movements. This was the worst the worst Sailors could wish on you, what they could threaten you with, what they could hold you out over a precipice and make you see, what they could drive you toward, what they could hand you instead of death. It was a mystery how it happened but some Sailors saw something that made them fold, made them shuffle like this, made them walk. Death would be a step up.

Jimmy drove slowly past one knot of men.

“Did the kid come back?” Angel said to Jimmy.

“No,” Jimmy said, knowing Angel was thinking maybe Drew was down here, too.

“Stop,” Connor said. “There.”

“Scott’s not here,” Jimmy said.

There was a man apart from the others who was probably Scott’s age, who at least looked up at the Mustang. He was dark with filth. He didn’t look like anybody anyone could recognize anymore.

“That’s not him,” Jimmy said.

“Let me check,” Connor said.

Jimmy stopped and they let him out and the cop walked over to the blackened man.

“He couldn’t have fallen that far in a day,” Jimmy said.

Then he remembered Jean in the backseat.

Jimmy turned to look her in the face. She had that world-hurt face again, but brave, taking her medicine. He felt ashamed of himself for not having the courage to tell her a better, easier version of the truth of who he was.

Connor came back. He got into the backseat beside Jean. She could smell