“Did you say yes on the nachos?”

“That’s a big negative on the nachos.”

She gave me my total. I pulled forward to the window and handed over a ten-spot. Giving me back my change, she noticed the bullet holes stitched in the SUV’s roof and cocked a tweezed, pencil-thin, nineteen-year-old eyebrow that said, “Like, what the hell are those?”

“If you’re a fan of the Cadillac Escalade, you’ll notice that this happens to be the Tupac Shakur Signature Edition. Bullet holes come standard.”

She smiled nervously, handed me my supper-in-a-sack and quickly slid her window closed.

I ate on the drive back to Hub and Crissy Walker’s house — checking this time, repeatedly, to make sure I wasn’t being tailed. It dawned on me as I polished off the second burrito, mystery meat and sour cream glopping in my lap, that I’d forgotten to check in with Mrs. Schmulowitz to find out how her tummy tuck had gone. Too late to call. I’d ring her up in the morning. Maybe she’d have news about Kiddiot. I hoped they were both OK.

My plan was to catch a few hours’ sleep back at the Walkers’ guesthouse, secure the $5,000 Hub still owed me, and be on my quasi-merry way. I’d make arrangements to have the Ruptured Duck transported by truck, then hop a train back up to Rancho Bonita. All of the money I got from my work in San Diego, I knew, would likely go to paying the difference between the actual costs to repair the Duck and what my insurance was willing to cover. Without an airplane at my disposal, I couldn’t instruct others to fly, and without students, I had no regular income other than my monthly pension check from Uncle Sugar. How I’d keep the lights on once I got home was a question I wasn’t prepared to answer.

The feeling lingered deep in my stomach, along with two Burrito Supremes, that there had to be a connection between the execution of the man convicted of murdering Hub Walker’s daughter, Ruth, and the stabbing death of Ruth’s former romantic rival, Janet Bollinger. I didn’t know what that connection was, but I found it hard to believe that Bunny Myers was the linchpin. Yes, he was unhinged. Yes, he had a hair trigger. Yet I had derived nothing from his body language or words as he held me at gunpoint to suggest anything other than the fact that he was being truthful when he claimed no involvement in Bollinger’s death.

All the same, I remained conflicted by a gnawing sense that Hub Walker did know something he wasn’t saying. Whatever it was, however, I wasn’t particularly keen on finding it out. Walker was a living legend. The world needs its legends. What it doesn’t need is people like me poking holes in them. As far as I was concerned, the sooner I left San Diego, the better. I’d be doing the world a favor. The people of earth could thank me later.

There was still the matter of who’d sabotaged the Duck. Driving back to La Jolla that night, my desire to hunt down and punish the culprit took on phantasmagoric overtones as I fantasized over what I would do to him. Carve out his lungs? Play “Lord of the Dance” on his face wearing golf spikes? I don’t dance and I don’t play golf.

It would have to be lungs.

First, though, I had to find him.

The mockingbird’s repertoire was impressive. I’ll give him that much. He sang all night perched on a telephone wire outside the window of the Walkers’ guesthouse, belting out tunes like the feathered incarnation of Frank Sinatra. Sleep amid his serenade was impossible. I finally gave up as dawn approached, did a few push-ups and crunches, took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and waited for the kitchen lights to come on in the main house.

Many Buddhists striving to become one with the universe meditate in the early morning when their minds are not yet cluttered with the trivial concerns of the day that lies ahead. I sat on the edge of the bed, closed my eyes with my hands loose in my lap, and tried to calm my mind and body, starting with my toes. But all I could think about was that stupid bird, crooning out his talented yet annoying heart. At 6:15, the kitchen door flew open and Hub bolted outside in his robe and slippers, waving his arms and yelling, “Hey!”

The feathered Sinatra flew away.

“If I sang that well, I wouldn’t be giving flying lessons,” I said as I exited the guesthouse, “I’d be working the main room at Caesars Palace.”

Hub rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You want some coffee?”

“Need is more like it.”

I followed him inside and took a seat at the kitchen table while he loaded the coffeemaker with grounds and water. Neither of us spoke. It was still too early.

“Heard you come in last night,” he said after awhile. “Out on the town, were we?”

“Something like that.”

He got out two cups and a quart of milk from the refrigerator. “Hope you don’t mind skim. Crissy won’t let me have real milk.”

“Skim’s like water with a little white in it. I’ll take it black.”

I told him that the sheriff’s department had arrested two suspects on suspicion of murdering Janet Bollinger.

“I heard,” Walker said.

“How’d you hear?”

“A little bird told me.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder and winked enigmatically. The coffeemaker hissed. Hub leaned his elbows on the counter and watched the ebony liquid stream into the carafe.

“Played golf with Greg Castle yesterday,” he said.

“So I heard.”

“He won’t go public with that paternity test he took. Says it would embarrass his family. He did tell me, though, he gave some thought to what you said, about an independent audit. He agrees it’d help prove his company wasn’t stealing from the government, like Munz said they were.”

“Good deal. Then I’ll just collect the rest of my money and be on my way.”

Hub looked over at me again. “What money?”

“The other five grand I’m still owed.”

“I don’t owe you nothin’,” he said sternly. “I said I’d pay you the other five after you dug up something to give the newshounds, to get ’em off Greg’s back. You didn’t do that.”

Anybody can get bent out of whack when the bills come due. But it was the degree of Walker’s vehemence that seemed out of character. For a man with an otherwise amiable, slow-to-boil disposition, he was being rather loutish.

“You didn’t know anything about Greg Castle’s paternity test until I told you about it, Hub. I think that counts for something. He also wasn’t planning on commissioning an audit until I suggested it. That counts for something, too.”

“That test don’t count ’cuz Greg won’t release it to the press. And he told me that audit was something Castle Robotics was probably gonna do anyway. From where I’m standing, that means you haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”

“I flew down here in good faith to work for you. I did the work, my plane now looks like something my cat coughed up, and did I mention I almost got killed? From where I’m standing, or sitting, as the case may be, that’s easily worth five grand.”

“A deal’s a deal,” Walker said coldly, “and you didn’t hold up your end of the deal.”

Crissy swept into the kitchen in black running tights and a gray, UC San Diego hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Hub asked her if Ryder was still sleeping.

“Like a log.”

She nabbed a bottle of fluorescent green energy drink from the refrigerator and asked me pleasantly how I’d slept, as if what had occurred between the two of us the night before hadn’t.

“That crazy bird kept him up,” Hub said before I could respond, “like it did me.”

Crissy took a long swallow from her bottle. “He just needs a little comfort,” she said, looking at me with a small, telling smile that Hub, waiting on the coffee, didn’t catch. “Like we all do.”

I pretended not to notice, and asked Walker again how he’d heard so quickly that arrests had been made in the Janet Bollinger case.