The address she was seeking was one-half of a duplex on a cul-de-sacnot a reassuring location, since it afforded no easy escape route. Bungalows and small apartment buildings curved around an oval patch of dead grass that had been a small park. The park's swing set was broken, its seesaw overgrown with weeds. No kids played there. Liquor bottles and cigarette packs lined the sandy verge of the play area.

Robin studied the duplex, two stories high, the ground-floor windows barred, the upper-story windows mostly boarded up. An air conditioner chugged in one window, dripping condensation. Cars were parked around the cul-de-sac, taking up most of the curb space, and more cars rested on the narrow front and side lawns of the duplex. Something was going on inside. She heard no music or voices, but the cars told her of a large gathering of people.

"This is crazy," she whispered as she sat behind the wheel of the Saab, double-parked on the street, staring at the house.

The smart thing was to drive off, hit the freeway, and keep calling Brand's cell phone until he answered. If he never did, she could report him to his superiors.

But then Brand would be even more hostile to her for having squealed on him, and the LAPD brass would have cause to reconsider greenlighting the treatment program. She could hear Deputy Chief Wagner now: "If you can't handle the challenge of establishing a rapport with one of our officers, Dr. Cameron, maybe we'd better reevaluate the whole idea."

She wouldn't let that happen. If Brand was in this house, she would find him.

She got out of the Saab and locked it, activating the alarm, which might offer some protection even with a busted window. Quickly she approached the house, checking her purse to confirm that her cell phone was inside and turned on. It would probably be her only lifeline once she was inside.

The two front doors of the duplex were closed. A hand-scrawled, misspelled sign on one of them read GO ARROND BACK, the same message repeated underneath in Spanish.

She threaded her way between the parked cars on the side lawn and came to a small, fenced backyard, empty except for two preschoolers squatting in the grass and examining a crowd of ants. Neither child looked up as she found the open rear door.

Inside, there was a great deal of noise, all of it electronic in originTV sets blaring different channels in different rooms, a radio competing with the din. She saw a man with a shaved head and a bodybuilder's physique lounging on a sofa with a dazed look on his face. He was no more interested in her than the children had been.

Moving into the kitchen, she heard voiceslive voices, not TV and radio chatter. She found an open door to a stairway leading down into a cellar. People were down there, a lot of them. She stepped onto the staircase.

"Who the fuck are you?"

She turned. The bodybuilder had come out of his daze. He stood at the other end of the kitchen, staring her down. She noticed something strapped to his left arm and was dismayed to see that it was a knife.

"I'm looking for someone," she said over the noise of a TV on the kitchen counter, tuned to a game show.

"The fuck you are. You don't know nobody here. You ain't never been here before."

There was only one way to play this, and that was to bluff.

"You're right," she snapped. "I've never been to this shithole, and you can bet I'm not coming back. I just came to find Brand. He down there?"

"Fuck, I don't gotta tell you nothing."

"Is he down there?"

She knew there were several possible outcomes to this conversation. She could be ejected from this house, or she could be beaten up or raped, or she could be allowed to proceed. An odd feeling of calm came over her as she understood that the decision was out of her hands. She could only wait and see what the man with the knife would do.

"Yeah," he said after a long moment. "Brand's here. You his woman?"

"I'm his friend."

"Friend." The man smiled, showing a gold tooth. "Yeah, right."

He left the kitchen. Robin took a breath and went down the stairs into a large cellar, the ceiling overlaid with plumbing pipes, bare lightbulbs shining down amid the meshwork of conduits, illuminating a noisy, jostling crowd. Most of the cellar's occupants were men, a mixture of ages and races, nearly all of them wearing dirty overalls or ragged jeans, a few in business suits. The scattered women were young or trying to look young, with big hair and silicone breasts and collagen lips.

Robin wished she had worn different clothes. Her blue skirt and white blouse were all wrong for this place. In jeans and a sweatshirt she might have looked less conspicuous. As it was, she had to hope she didn't draw too much attention in the dim light and the pressing crowd.

She moved through the room, still not sure what was going on. She heard two men arguing, their voices raised.

"He's a fuckin' land shark, gonna have that pussy piece of shit for lunch."

"Bullshit. He ain't got game enough for Driver."

"Driver's fucked up. Last time took too much out of him. He's meat."

"C-note says he pulls an upset."

"You're on, asshole."

Had to be a fight coming up. Like that movie, the one with Brad Pitt, Fight Club. But where was the boxing ring? There ought to be a raised platform, but she saw nothing but a crush of people pressing everywhere.

Most of the heads were turned away from her. She sidestepped along the back of the crowd, her back against the cellar wall. She saw nobody who looked like Brand. To really scope out the crowd, she would have to move forward into the thick of it, where she could see the men's faces.

She took a breath and pushed into the mass of bodies.

The first thing she noticed was the reek of sweat all around her, the smell of men jammed together in a hot, airless place. Then there was the heightened volume of noise, a hundred voices yelling at once in an unintelligible roar. An elbow jabbed her shoulder. A careless hand brushed the nape of her neck. She heard someone shouting that the last bets were being taken. Somebody else was calling Rambo a motherfuckin' coward while the man next to him protested, "Rambo ain't no coward; Rambo got cojones; you better believe he's one badass hombre." Two other men yelled at each other in Spanish, waving fistfuls of cash. A woman with peroxide blond hair that clashed with her dark complexion caught Robin's eye and gave her a wink, as if they were girlfriends sharing a joke.

Still no Brand. Maybe Wolper and the bodybuilder were both wrong, and he wasn't here.

She had maneuvered her way near the front of the crowd now. A curved metal railing came into view. Men were leaning against it, gazing down, while others craned their necks for a better view.

It was some kind of recessed arena, about twelve feet in diameter, probably too small for two men to fight in. A cock-fighting ring, perhaps. Were Rambo and Driver two roosters? She'd never heard a chicken described as a badass hombre. Then again, this was LA. Any form of insanity was possible.

Officer Brand, she wondered, where are you?

She was jostled from behind by a crew of guys straining to get closer to the arena. The impact pushed her sideways into a narrow gap between two men at the railing. "Hey, sister," one of them said. His face was shiny with perspiration, and there was a long scar stitched like a seam down the side of his neck.

She was saved from deciding how to reply by a stentorian voice that broke through the babble. "No more wagers taken."

Robin looked down into the arena. It was a circular depression in the cellar floor, four feet deep, possibly the remains of an artesian well. Sawdust, strewn over the floor of the pit, was dark with dried blood and a few blotches of fresh blood, glossy and vivid.