phone for a message from Serena. But I’d had the phone on me this whole time, switched on since I’d called her from Mulholland Drive. I would have heard it ring. Face it, she hasn’t called.
I began walking, past darkened storefronts, in and out of pools of apricot streetlight. A homeless woman pushed a rattling shopping cart across the street and disappeared down a narrow side lane. The breeze rustled the dried flowers of a sidewalk descanso, a memorial for a slain neighborhood teenager, maybe a gangbanger, maybe the random victim of stray gunfire.
I’d covered about half the distance to Thirteenth Street and Diana’s building when a police car rounded a corner and turned in my direction, facing me head-on. There was nothing I could have done to protect myself. The sight of it had been blocked by the bulk of a large apartment complex, and it had been moving so slowly that there was barely any engine noise to hear. It was crawling, in that quiet, crocodile-predatory way police do when they’re looking for trouble.
I jammed my hands into my pockets protectively but kept walking. To abruptly change direction would have been a sign of guilt that would have immediately piqued their interest. Just ten yards ahead of me was an alley opening. I only had to make that. I walked a little faster, the squad car still crawling toward me. Five yards, three, two … I turned sharply right and headed down the alley.
Behind me I heard the siren make a single whoop, the sign that they wanted a pedestrian’s attention.
I ducked behind a garbage Dumpster and quickly pulled the gun from under my jacket. This could be an innocent lecture about how dangerous it was for me to be walking here after midnight. But if it wasn’t, if they tried to search me, I didn’t need to be caught with a gun.
With the safety on, I dropped the Browning to the pavement and kicked it under the Dumpster. From the alley’s opening, I heard the slamming of a car door, and cherry-colored lights flickered off the building walls. My hands visible in front of me, I stepped out to face the officer standing at the alley’s mouth. He was young, Hispanic, very short-haired, rigid-postured. I raised a hand to above my eyes as though facing a bright light and said, “Is there a problem, sir?”
He lifted his chin, as if about to address me, and stepped forward. Then his dark eyes grew fractionally wider and his hand went to his holster, unsnapping it. He said, “Stay right there. Put your hands up. Do not move.”
He’d recognized me. Double zero. Nobody wins.
I turned and bolted for the chain-link fence that cut off the end of the alley.
“I said, don’t move!”
I hit the fence at a run, hands grabbing for the top rail. My feet were much too big to get a hold in the links of the fencing, so I was mostly hoping to grab-and-vault, using momentum. With my left foot braced on the post, I swung my right leg up to the top.
Behind me the cop fired. Sparks flew off the fence where the slug struck it.
He’s actually using deadly force. Holy shit, I have gone platinum in the worst possible way.
I jumped from the fence down into the vacant brown-field beyond it, hearing a second gunshot behind me. I started running. His partner might be out of the car by now and coming around to intercept me, and I had no way of knowing which way he’d go—around the block from the north or the south. Choosing at random, I veered south, toward a line of thin trees at the lot’s edge, the best cover available to me. But I didn’t stop once I was there. I kept running, across the next street and down a side street after that. Over the sound of my own feet slapping the pavement and my own rapid breathing, I couldn’t hear the sound of anyone running behind me, if there was anyone.
I halted and looked around. Parked at the curb was a lunch truck, advertising TACOS BURRITOS HORCHATAS, and I ducked behind it, positioning myself by one of the wheels so even my feet wouldn’t show.
Then I heard the purr of an engine, so low it was obviously the engine of a slowly cruising car.
I dropped to the sidewalk and, making myself as small and flat as possible on my stomach, eased over the curb’s edge and under the