Cosmo began speaking to the dog in Armenian then, trying to win him over with the language the animal was used to hearing. He began issuing gentle commands in his mother tongue.

Farley, who was not as badly injured as Cosmo but every bit as exhausted, also tried persuading the dog, but when Farley tried to speak, he was blubbering and hysterical and tears ran down into his mouth as he cried, “Don’t listen to him, Odar! You’re like me! I’m an odar, too! Kill him! Kill the fucking Armo!”

Odar started for Farley then and Farley screamed like a woman. The scream of terror triggered something in the attack animal. The dog whirled, hurtled from deck lid to hood to roof, flying at Cosmo like a missile, driving Cosmo off the car onto the ground. The dog’s momentum took him with Cosmo and he landed on the ground at a twisting angle, yelped in pain, and came up limping badly. Within seconds he was unable to walk at all on his left rear leg, and hardly at all on his right.

By then Farley was running for his car, and he made it and jumped in but was unable to start it. Weeping, he flooded the engine, then turned off the ignition and locked the door as Cosmo limped to the scrap heap where he’d lost the pistol. But Cosmo’s flashlight was gone too, and he could only dig his hands into the twisted metal until he found the gun, cutting a finger to the bone in the process.

Farley tried the ignition again and the car started! He dropped it into low and stomped the accelerator at the same instant that Cosmo appeared at the passenger window and fired five rounds through the glass, missing with the first four. The fifth and last round entered through Farley’s right armpit as his hand was cranking the wheel left and the car was digging out and burning rubber.

Out of the fight, the dog sat on his right hip, snarling and howling at Cosmo, who limped to his Cadillac which had been concealed behind the office building, started it up, and tried to drive after Farley. But Cosmo hadn’t driven a quarter of a mile before he had to pull off the road, rip off his T-shirt, and use it to stem the blood that was flowing from a nasty head gash and running into his eyes and blinding him.

Farley is a quarter of a mile down that junkyard road before he knows he’s been shot. He reaches down with his left hand, feels the warm wetness, and begins bawling. Still, he keeps driving, one headlight lighting the road in front, smashed fenders scraping both front tires.

Farley loses track of time but just follows his instincts onto east Sunset Boulevard, where it begins near downtown Los Angeles. Sometimes Farley stops for traffic lights, sometimes not, and he never sees the police car that spots him cruising through a red light at Alvarado as several motorists slam on brakes and blow horns and yell at him.

He is driving leisurely now through all those ethnic neighborhoods where people speak the languages of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Far East as well as Russian and Armenian and Arabic and a dozen other languages he hates. Heading west, heading toward Hollywood, heading home.

Farley Ramsdale does not hear the police siren either and of course has no knowledge that a Rampart Division unit has broadcast a pursuit of a white Corolla along with his license number and his location and direction, causing Hollywood Division cars to start heading for Sunset Boulevard, everyone convinced that this incredibly reckless drunk will blow at least a.25 on the Breathalyser because he’s weaving along Sunset at only thirty miles an hour, causing oncoming traffic to veer right and stop, and is apparently oblivious to the sirens and the queue of black-and-whites that have joined in behind the pursuit car.

At Normandie Avenue Farley crosses into Hollywood Division, still heading west. But he’s not in a car any longer. Farley Ramsdale is fifteen years younger and is in the gymnasium at Hollywood High School shooting hoops in an intramural game, and they are all three-pointers that find only net. Swoosh! And that cheerleader who always disses him is now giving him the big eye. He’ll be boning her tonight, that’s for sure.

At the corner of Gower Street his foot slips from the accelerator and the car drifts slowly into the rear of a parked Land Rover and the engine dies. Farley never sees the officers of Hollywood Division midwatch who know him-Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb and B.M. Driscoll and Benny Brewster and Budgie Polk and Fausto Gamboa-and those who don’t.

All out of their cars, guns drawn, the cops run very warily toward the Corolla now that Nate’s broadcast has alerted all units that the pursued car is wanted in connection with a robbery investigation. They are yelling things, but Farley doesn’t hear that either.

Hollywood Nate was the first to reach the car, and he smashed the rear driver’s side window open and unlocked the driver’s door. When Nate jerked open the door and saw all the blood, he holstered his nine and yelled for someone to call an RA.

Farley Ramsdale’s eyes were rolled back showing white, his eyelids fluttering like wings as he went into shock and died long before the rescue ambulance reached Sunset Boulevard.

COSMO COULD NOT stop cursing as he drove west toward Hollywood. He kept looking at his watch without knowing why. He kept thinking of Ilya, of what she would say, of what they would do. He kept wondering how long it would take that miserable addict Farley to phone the police and tell them about the jewelry store robbery. At least Farley couldn’t tell them about the ATM robbery and the killing of the guard. Ilya was correct. Farley did not know about that or he would not have come to Gregori’s tonight. But that was very little consolation now.

His finger was throbbing and so was his head. He had a laceration just inside the hairline and it was still oozing blood. His finger would need suturing and maybe his head would as well. Almost every bone and muscle ached. He wondered if his hip was broken. Should he go home? Would the police be waiting for him there?

Tonight he had used the Beretta 9-millimeter pistol that he’d taken from the guard. He thought it would be much more accurate than the cheap street gun he had used in the robberies. And what good did it do him? But at least he still had rounds left in the magazine. He had no intention of living his life in prison like an animal. Not Cosmo Betrossian.

He opened his cell and phoned Ilya. If she did not answer, it meant that the police were already there.

“Yes?” Ilya said.

“Ilya! You are okay?”

“Yes, I am okay. Are you okay, Cosmo?”

“Not okay, Ilya. Nothing is correct.”

“Shit.”

“I am bleeding on my hand and head. I need bandage on my wounds and I need a new shirt and I need a cap to hide blood. Not the cap from that day.”

“I threw the baseball cap away, Cosmo. I am not so stupid.”

“I shall be home soon. I must be putting gas in my car. I think there is more safety if we drive to San Francisco.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, Farley may be calling police now. Make all things ready to travel. I shall see you soon.”

Before she began packing their clothes Ilya went to the closet shelf and removed the bag of rings and earrings and loose diamonds. She left a sufficient sampling of each for Cosmo to show to Dmitri. Then she put the rest in a very safe place.

The intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street was a very busy place, completely blocked off by police. Viktor Chernenko was there, having left the stakeout at Farley Ramsdale’s house. The house would now be the object of a hastily written search warrant as soon as Viktor got back to the office. After Hollywood Nate told him that the homicide victim was definitely his person of interest, Farley Ramsdale, Viktor began to think of Farley as having been much more ambitious than a petty mail thief. Whatever his connection to the Russian robbers it had gotten him killed.