Where’s a taco shack when you need it?

El Indio still had to be open at that hour. It was fifteen minutes away, but definitely worth the drive. I wheeled the Escalade south onto Coast Boulevard and accelerated to something under Mach.

Bent as I was on my craving for something refried and wrapped in a tortilla, I didn’t notice the headlights at first, creeping up on my tail. I switched lanes. The lights did, too, so close behind me that they disappeared from view altogether, leaving only an ominous, dark presence in my wake. The Escalade’s illuminated speedometer registered close to fifty in what I assumed was a thirty mile-an-hour zone. The guy behind me had to be Johnny Law. My second traffic stop in three days. Damn.

A real Buddhist is supposed to be kind and considerate, even to traffic cops. I decided I’d save him the trouble of firing up his lights and siren; I pulled over without being prompted. He followed, aiming a high-intensity beam at my side-view mirror, blinding me to his approach, just as his fellow officer had done two nights earlier when Savannah and I were still on speaking terms. I turned on my dome light and put my hands on the top of the steering wheel to assure him that I posed no threat to him. But in heeding the Buddha and the Golden Rule, I forgot Rule Number One of the Official Special Operators Handbook, highlighted in boldface and printed all in caps on page one: NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN OR YOU’LL HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME WHEN THEY FIND YOUR SORRY ASS IN A DITCH.

The passenger door was flung open and into the Escalade climbed Bunny the Human Doberman with his .50-caliber Desert Eagle, the muzzle of which he jammed in my right ear.

“Drive,” he said, slamming the door behind him.

“You mind if we stop at El Indio? I’m seriously jonesing for a burrito.”

The blinding, high-intensity beam reflected in my side-view mirror had come from an LED flashlight like the kind police officers carry. Only in this case, the flashlight belonged to Daniel ‘Li’l Sinister’ Zuniga, Bunny’s cousin, who came hustling up to the driver’s side of the Escalade with the flashlight in his left hand and a Mac-10 submachine pistol in his right, which he proceeded to level at my head.

“You got him?” Li’l Sinister said, panting, sweat pouring off his pudgy face.

“Get back in your car!” Bunny yelled at his cousin.

I watched out of the corner of my eye in the side mirror as Li’l Sinister hustled back to his ride.

“I’m not gonna tell you again,” Bunny said, pressing the barrel of his gun into me even harder. “Drive.”

“Turn left here,” Bunny said.

I turned left.

“Make a right at the next corner.”

I made a right, kicking myself at having left my revolver back in Rancho Bonita.

“Turn left at the stop sign.”

We were meandering through the hills of residential La Jolla with Bunny’s pistol aimed at my head. He glanced back every few seconds to make sure the only vehicle following us was the one driven by his cousin, Li’l Sinister. I thought about making a move, but I was worried Enterprise might charge extra if I returned the rented Escalade bloodstained. Any heroics would have to wait.

“You obviously have no idea the kind of gas mileage these things get,” I said, “because if you did, we wouldn’t be driving around in circles, expanding our carbon footprint. We’d be driving directly to wherever it is we’re going and protecting the earth’s delicate environment.”

“I don’t give two shits about the environment.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Go left here.”

La Jolla Scenic Drive South became Soledad Park Road. To the south, the skyline of downtown San Diego shimmered like a jewel in the night. We drove uphill, past a sign that said “Mt. Soledad Memorial Park” and into a cul-de-sac at the center of which stood a concrete Latin cross nearly forty feet tall, flanked by two small parking lots north and south. A red Honda Civic was parked in the southern lot, its windows fogged. Probably a high school kid and his date, enjoying more than the view.

“Over there,” Bunny said, directing me to the unoccupied lot on the park’s north side.

I maneuvered the Escalade as ordered into a parking space and switched off the ignition. Li’l Sinister pulled up on my left, driving a primer gray Chevy Caprice with low-profile tires and shiny, gangsta-style rims.

“Caught you on the news,” Bunny said contemptuously. “You must be a pretty shitty pilot, you know that?”

“We all have our bad days.”

“You’re gonna fly us to Mexico.”

The depth of his illogic was hard to comprehend. “I suck as a pilot and you want me to fly you to Mexico? That’s like saying, ‘I’m planning to go on a cruise. I wonder if the captain of the Titanic is still available?’ ”

“Like you said, asshole, we all got our bad days.”

“Why not just drive to Mexico, Bunny? It’s thirty miles away.”

“Why? Because every cop from T.J. to El Paso is looking for me. Because they got surveillance cameras at the border. You don’t think I don’t know how the game’s played?”

I was about to explain how the use of double negatives is never a good thing grammatically, but then Li’l Sinister jumped in behind me, breathing hard. “We’re cool,” he said, slamming the door. “Ain’t nobody on us.”

Bunny was giving me his best crazy, mad dog-killer look. “First thing in the morning, you’re driving us to the airport. You’re gonna rent a plane, and you’re gonna fly us to Mexico. You say no, I put a bullet in you right where you sit. I’m a wanted man. I don’t give a damn at this point.”

“Not that I wouldn’t enjoy some real Mexican food, but I have a better idea: why not give up? It won’t matter where I fly you, Bunny. They’d find you. I mean, let’s be honest, you guys aren’t exactly Butch and Sundance.”

Li’l Sinister jabbed the barrel of his Mac-10 into the back of my neck. “I say we cap his sorry ass right now, dawg.”

Bunny ran his left hand across his mouth, still pointing his pistol at me. “I didn’t kill that bitch,” he said.

“Then why run?”

“Jesus, are you that stupid? I’m half-black, half-Mexican. The Navy boots my ass out on some bullshit assault beef, this Bollinger chick mumbles my name before she checks out, and you want to know why I’m running?”

“How is it you know she said your name?”

“None of your business, puta, that’s how,” Li’l Sinister said, jabbing me again with his gun barrel.

His act was getting old real fast.

“Ain’t none of my DNA in her goddamn apartment, I guarantee you that,” Bunny said.

“And you know this how?”

“ ’Cuz I was never in there, that’s how.”

Bunny’s version of the story was that a distraught Janet Bollinger had called his boss, defense attorney Charles Dowd, a few days after Dorian Munz was executed to say she couldn’t take it anymore. Whatever “it” was, Bollinger wouldn’t say over the phone, only that she needed to get something off her chest concerning the testimony she’d given in Munz’s trial, something that had been weighing on her for a long time. Dowd then instructed Bunny to go interview the woman.

“And she just happened to live in the same building as Li’l Lunatic, here?”

“That ain’t my name, dawg,” Li’l Sinister said from the backseat.

“Shut up, Daniel,” Bunny barked.

Li’l Sinister flapped his lips in protest like a kid who’d just been admonished for chewing gum in class.

“I didn’t know she lived in the same building as him, OK, ’til I went down there to talk to her, like Mr. Dowd told me to,” Bunny said.

“So you go down there to just talk. Small world. Then what?”

“I knock on the door. No answer, so I go ’round back. Take me a look-see in the window. She’s laying there, blood all over the place. My cousin, he’s up on the second floor, in his apartment. So I go up there. Tells me he didn’t see squat. He’s on probation — agg assault.”