Lonnie grinned. "Aren't you going to stop by the hospital on your way home?"

"Hospital? No. Why?"

Lonnie fired up the Harley. "No reason." He laughed and coaxed the big bike around in the driveway.

As he gunned the engine and pulled into the street Cheryl shouted, "Don't worry, bitch, we'll put a dollar on black for you."

Over the roar of the Harley, Calliope could hear the woman grunt as Lonnie elbowed her in the ribs.

Calliope saw Grubb looking at her as they rounded the corner. Panic tore at her chest as what the woman had said sunk in. She turned and ran back up the steps.

By late afternoon the contractors had replaced Sam's sliding glass door and patched the bullet holes in the walls. Sam canceled the week's appointments, which gave him time alone with his thoughts. He soon found, however, that his thoughts, like monkeys in church, were bad company.

He tried reading to distract himself, but he found that he was simply looking at the pages. He tried napping, but as soon as he closed his eyes, images of Coyote and the police filled his head. When the worry became too much for him he thought of Calliope, which set off a whole new set of worries. What had Coyote meant, "The girl is gone"? Did it matter?

She was trouble. Too young, too goofy, probably too attractive. And the kid — he didn't need a kid in his life either. Trouble. If she had gone somewhere he probably was better off. He didn't need the hassles. That thought still bouncing through his mind, he grabbed the phone and dialed her number. No answer. He called information and got the number for the Tangerine Tree Cafe. She hadn't shown up for work today.

Where in the hell is she? Where in the hell is Coyote? The fucker knew where she went and he wouldn't tell. What had started as a niggling irritation turned to dread. Why in the hell does it matter? he thought.

Terrifying and black, a word rose in his mind that matched his feeling. He recoiled from it, but it struck him again and again like an angry viper. Love: the sickest of Irony's sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die. Then again, maybe not. It was only bad if you were hiding, pretending to be something that you were not. Maybe the hiding could end.

Sam got up and headed out the door in what he knew was a ridiculous effort to find Calliope. He drove to the cafe and confirmed what they had told him on the phone. Then he drove to Calliope's house and found Yiffer and Nina getting out of the van as he pulled up.

Nina said, "I don't know where she is, Sam. She left a note saying that Lonnie had taken Grubb and she was going after him."

"Nothing about where she was going?"

"Any note at all is a big step for her. She used to disappear for days at a time with no note at all."

"Fuck." Sam started to get back in the car.

"Sam," Nina called. He paused. "The note said to tell you she was sorry."

"For what?"

"That's all it said."

"Thanks, Nina. Call me if she shows up." Sam gunned the Mercedes out of the driveway, having no idea where he was going.

He needed help. All his machines and access to information wouldn't help. He needed a place to start. Twenty-four hours ago he would have given anything to get rid of Coyote. Now he would welcome the trickster's cryptic, smart-assed answers — at least they were answers.

He drove around town, looking for Calliope's Z, feeling hope rise each time he spotted an orange car, and feeling it fall when it turned out not to be Calliope's. After an hour he returned home, where he sat on his sofa, smoking and thinking. Everything had changed and nothing had changed. His life was back to normal, and normal wasn't enough anymore. He wanted real.

At the Guild's clubhouse Tinker was digging at a flea bite on his leg, trying to pull his grimy jeans up over heavy boots to get at the tiny invader. "Fucking fleas," he said.

The Guild's president, Bonner Newton, let out a raucous snort. "You know what they say, bro," Newton said. "Lie down with dogs…" A din of harsh laughter rose in the room from the other Guild members.

"Fuck you guys," Tinker said, feigning anger while enjoying the attention. It wasn't that he liked ugly chicks, but who else would have him?

Nineteen of the twenty full members of the Guild were draped over furniture and sprawled on the floor, smoking joints and cigarettes, drinking beers and feeling at the few old ladies present. Outside, two strikers, members who had not earned their full colors, sat on the front porch watching for the law.

The house was a ramshackle stucco bungalow that had been built in the 1930s as part of a housing tract, before the term housing tract was part of the language. The walls were stained with blood, beer, and vomit. The carpet was matted with motor oil; the furniture was minimal and distressed. Only Tinker actually lived at the clubhouse. The rest of the club used it for meeting and partying.

The Guild had paid a hundred thousand dollars in cash for the house. The deed was registered under Newton's married sister's name, as was the ranch house the Guild owned in the Santa Lucia Mountains above Santa Barbara, which housed the lab that provided their income. Ironically, the ranch's nearest neighbor was a wobbly-headed ex-president who had declared a war on drugs, and who, from time to time, would stand on the veranda of his palatial ranch house sniffing the odor of cooking crank and calling, "Mommy, there's a funny smell trickling down out here."

The lab produced enough income to support all of the Guild's members and ensure that none of them had to work except to man the counter of the Harley-Davidson shop that Bonner Newton used to launder drug money.

Newton held an M.B.A. from Stanford. In an earlier time, before he fell from grace for smuggling cocaine, he had stalked the glass-cube buildings of Silicon Valley, wearing Italian suits and commanding crews of brilliant computer designers who could define the universe in terms of two digits, explain the chaos theory in twenty-five words or less, and build machines that emulated human intelligence — but who thought a vulva was a Swedish automobile. Newton's experience in coddling these genius misfits served him well as president of the Guild, for the members of the Guild were nothing more than nerds without brains: fat, ugly, or awkward men who found no acceptance in the outside world and so escaped into the security and belonging of an outlaw biker club. A Harley-Davidson and blind loyalty were the only requirements for membership.

"Listen up, you fucks," Newton said, calling the meeting to order. "Bitches outside." He paused and lit a cigarette while the women filed out the door, glaring at him over their shoulders. He was not a large or imposing man compared to the other members, but his authority was not to be questioned.

"Lonnie's not here yet," Tinker said.

"Lonnie's running an errand for us," Newton said. "We're going to take an impromptu road trip. A little business and a little pleasure."

"Fuckin' A," someone yelled. Newton gestured for quiet.

"Seems like someone forgot to tell me that we were running low on ether up at the facility." Newton always referred to the crank lab as "the facility." Tinker stopped scratching his leg and hung his head.

"Tink, you fucking idiot," someone said.

"Anyway," Newton continued, "I wasn't able to arrange a delivery, so we have to go get it. There's a rally in South Dakota in a couple of days. At Sturgis. The Chicago chapter is going to meet us there with a couple of barrels. I want three fifty-five-gallon drums rigged with false tops so if we get stopped by the law it looks like we're hauling motor oil. Tinker, you'll drive the pickup."

"Aw, come on, Newt," Tinker whined.