“I hear that U4 is really good. Better than Ecstasy.”

“Yes, Rico says it is more mellow. So the teeth do not clench and things like this.”

“Did you meet any of the others he worked with? His boss?”

“This is not a boss. Rico is to be full partner, he is to arrange it on the weekend and then we are to be rich. Only now he is disappeared.”

A partner? Did this mean Rico was Little Fish? Or a partner of Little Fish? “Did he tell you who the partner is?” I asked.

“No, he does not talk in real names. It is always pretend name, I forget how you call this.”

Something occurred to me. “Britta, when you didn’t take the U4, when he thought you did-do you still have it?”

“Yes, in my room.”

“Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“It’s something detectives do. You never know what’s important until you see it.”

She looked unconvinced. I imagined it was the only thing he’d ever given her. “It could help find Rico,” I said, then mentally crossed my fingers behind my back. “I’ll return it. And I won’t mention it to the police.”

She turned to the pool. “Joshua! Jeremy! Time to come in. If you hurry, I will give you M &M’s. But you must come right now. And leave the frog.” She looked at me. “To help Rico, of course I will do anything.”

Part of me wanted to tell her how misguided that was, how misplaced her devotion. But she’d learn that soon enough without me.

And anyway, I wanted that Euphoria.

I drove through the Valley with the Euphoria in a Tylenol bottle.

It was a twin of the pill Maizie had found under Annika’s bed. Bigger than an aspirin, round, and with a logo that was both strange and strangely familiar. Stopped at a red light just before the entrance ramp to the 210, I took it out of the plastic bottle and held it between my thumb and forefinger, gazing at it. A squiggle set into its surface, a piece of calligraphy.

This was the third time I’d come across it, and it gnawed at me like a song lyric gone astray: where had I seen it before? But it didn’t matter. What I’d just learned connected Rico to Little Fish. Rico had asked Annika to transport drugs. According to Simon, Little Fish had also tried to recruit her. It had to be the same operation. How many drug dealers were out there signing up au pairs? And this connection might not be news to the FBI, but it might be to the police, who were on a high-profile search for Rico. If I showed them this pill, pointed out Rico’s wall, and told them what Britta had told me, wouldn’t they expand their search to include Annika?

Should I tell Simon I was doing this? Wouldn’t he tell me to leave it to him? Yes.

My cell phone rang, startling me. I felt around on the passenger seat for it while making a left turn onto the freeway entrance ramp. In the process I dropped the pill. Damn.

Statistics on cell-phone use and traffic accidents jumped into my head. Ring! The car behind me honked. The entrance-ramp traffic was slow, which made people testy. I inched forward, closing the three-foot gap between me and the car in front of me. Ring! My hand located the phone in the Bermuda Triangle of my backpack; I found the answer button and said hello. When no one responded, I yelled, “Hello!”

“Wollie. Simon.”

“H-hello.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. The car behind me honked again, nearly sending me through the roof. Again I closed the three-foot gap between me and the car ahead. “Annika’s alive,” I said. “She e-mailed me. And also, Rico Rodriguez-”

“Did she say where she is?”

“No. She-” I’d had all day to plan this and still, I hesitated. Tell no one. Annika hadn’t said, Tell no one but the FBI. But what counted more: whom she trusted or whom I trusted?

Whom did I trust?

“Wollie? What did she say?”

The danger is so great and if you die too it will be so bad. I had it memorized. But this was not informative, only theatrical. “The gist of it was,” I said, “situation’s urgent. Time’s running out. Clock’s ticking. But listen to this: Rico Rodriguez asked Annika and another au pair to act as couriers for him, smuggling a drug called Euphoria into Germany. Rico was working with Little Fish, he could’ve met Little Fish through Annika.” I was now first in line to enter the freeway, waiting for the red light to turn green.

“You found out all this today, hungover?”

“Okay, I should explain that martinis-well, gin. Gin acts on me in ways that-tequila too-” The car behind me blared its horn. “Okay, it’s green, I see it, I’m going!” I shouted.

“Bad time to talk?”

“No, not at all. So what do you make of all this?”

“What? You trying to pin it on the martinis?”

“Pin what on the martinis?”

“The damage to my shirt.”

I searched my memory. Buttons. I remembered buttons. And cuff links. And a watch. An amazing silver- “What kind of watch do you wear?” I asked.

“A Vacheron Constantine. You liked it.”

“Did we discuss why a civil servant is wearing a Vacheron Constantine?”

“Yes, I’m on the take. You really don’t remember a lot, do you?”

I made a note not to take so much as a decongestant in front of this man. I was so easily disoriented by things-this freeway, for instance. Where was Lake Avenue or Orange-oh. Because I was on the 210 East, not west. Heading to Arcadia, Azusa, Nebraska. “Oh, hell,” I said.

“It’s okay, we left a few things in the planning stages.”

I hoped he was referring to sex. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m talking to myself. I’m one of those people who shouldn’t drive and talk, drive and read, drive and trim my hair-”

“You’re scaring me. Good-bye.”

“No, wait. I need to ask you-”

“Call me when you get home.”

I hung up and found my way off the 210 East and onto the 210 West, fighting a sensation of well-being. How could I feel this way, with the day I’d had and all that had happened? Yet the sound of his voice made investigations, drugs, blondes, veal, plumbers, frogs, math, guns, e-mails, and mothers fade into the dust, like the city of San Marino.

It wasn’t until the 210 had become the 134 and then the 101 that I started to worry about what had happened to the pill.

I walked into my apartment to find Joey, Fredreeq, and my mother sitting in the kitchen. Joey was eating Sara Lee cheesecake. Prana, in a peach caftan, was laying out Tarot cards.

“Wollie,” Fredreeq said, “you never told us Prana is a regressionist. She says I was a courtesan in the Manchu dynasty, and Anne Boleyn.”

“Congratulations,” I said, going to the window. “I raised pigs in ancient Greece. Prana, any plumbers show up today?”

“No, dear.”

“Because if anyone tries to get in, if anything suspicious happens-”

“I won’t be here for it. Theo and I are attending the Dances of Universal Peace.”

“And we should hit the road,” Joey said. “Have fun, Prana. Thanks for the reading.”

“Joey, may you find peace in San Pedro.” Prana looked up and removed her glasses. “Wollie,” she said, “what on earth are you wearing?”

Twenty minutes later I was in black jeans, black sneakers, and a black hooded sweatshirt, in the passenger seat of Joey’s husband’s BMW, heading south. Fredreeq followed in her own car.

On the subject of Annika’s e-mail, Joey was unequivocal. “We can’t stop looking. Unless we find her, you’ll never stop wondering, and you won’t feel safe. If you don’t know the source of the danger, you’ll be paranoid around people you should trust, and trust people you shouldn’t.”

“Even if the FBI promised to look for her?”

Joey glanced at me, then back at the road. “Wollie, I don’t know any Feds besides my cousin Stewart in New York, but I’ve known my share of cops. They don’t have a high opinion of informants. That’s you. They pretend to care, if that’s what it takes, because what works for them is surveillance, torture, and informants, and torture’s frowned upon. I’m just saying a promise from them is not the same as a promise from you. If Annika’s vital to their case, they’ll find her. If she’s not…” She changed lanes. “The good news is, cousin Stewart’s heard of Simon Alexander. At least your guy’s the real deal.”