He stared at the TV and pretended not to hear me.

I left.

Two pit bulls were playing tug-of-war in the yard across the street with what was left of a lime-green bra. They forgot the bra and started barking and snarling at me through the chain-link fence as I walked to my car.

“Hey.”

I turned. Micah’s girlfriend bounded out the front door, down the steps after me.

“He’s really a very sweet guy,” she said. “Sweetest guy I’ve ever known. He’s just a little freaked out right now.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“He wants everybody to think he hated his dad. But when his mom told him what happened, he started crying. I mean, he was really broke up about it. Couldn’t sleep for days. Couldn’t eat. I think he was maybe hoping they could get together some day, but now…” She exhaled. “I just thought you should know, being how you used to work with him.”

I thanked her for letting me know.

“He wrote a poem about his dad, if you’re interested,” Micah’s girlfriend said.

“I’m definitely interested.”

“Go to YouTube and type in his name — you do know YouTube, right?”

“On the Internets. I understand it’s a series of tubes.”

She tilted her head down and away, exposing the side of her neck, while softly stroking her suprasternal notch, the dimple between her collarbones — subconscious gestures usually meant to convey sexual attraction.

“You’re different,” she said. “And I definitely dig different.”

“You better head on back inside before your boyfriend starts wondering what you’re doing out here with an old man.”

“Not so old,” she said coyly.

I watched her walk back inside. I wondered if she set off airport metal detectors with her face.

The street lights had come on, the ones that hadn’t been shot out, anyway. In their harsh vapor glare, I noticed that somebody had keyed my rental car. One long bumper-to-bumper scratch along the driver’s side. My money was on the gangster I’d seen sucking the Tootsie Pop. Oh, the many entertaining things I would do to him if only he’d ride by once more. I realized that my vengeful thoughts were contrary to the Buddha’s teachings. The essence of Buddhism is harmlessness. Hatred and revenge are the twin evils of mankind. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to snatch the little punk off his dumb little bicycle and mess his shit up good.

Flight service was advertising low ceilings and poor visibility from San Francisco all the way south to Monterey. High pressure was breaking down. A cold front was moving in. I filed IFR, picked up my clearance from Norcal Departure, and took off from the San Carlos Airport a few minutes before midnight. Climbing through 500 feet, the headlights from the nearby 101 freeway disappeared. I was in the soup.

There’s something uniquely calming about flying a small plane alone on instruments at night without an autopilot. Everything fades away that might otherwise distract you from the tasks of piloting. You’re in a cocoon. In the soft red luminescence of the cockpit, you check and cross-check your instruments incessantly, scanning to make sure each is working properly, that one doesn’t contradict another. You check your gauges, your GPS, your floating compass, never taking your eyes off the instruments, trusting them to keep you upright and on course. If the clouds demand it, you do this for hours, cross-checking, working the radios, holding your assigned course, maintaining your assigned altitude, staying focused. Do it long enough and it becomes automatic. Only then do you have time to think.

I replayed the tapes in my head of my meetings with Echevarria’s ex-wife and son. Both obviously remained embittered by how Echevarria had treated them, but their respective body language suggested strongly that neither was involved in his death. If lingering resentments over interpersonal relationships were motives for murder, half the earth’s population would be dead and the other half in prison. Somebody murdered Arlo Echevarria, but it wasn’t his former spouse or estranged offspring. Of that I was fairly certain. I was less certain about Janice Echevarria’s second husband, Harry Ramos. Was he involved in the same oil deal as Carlisle and Tarasov? Was he a competitor? Did any of it have anything to do with how Arlo Echevarria met his end? I wondered.

“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Oakland Center,” a voice intoned over my headset, interrupting my reverie, “cleared direct Jarrett, maintain 9,000 feet.”

I repeated the instructions from air traffic control. Seconds later, the clouds gave way and I was cruising above the moonlit overcast in smooth clear air. Off my left wing, the peaks of the Western Sierra floated above the milky blanket like islands on a sea of white. Ahead of me and to the south, the city of San Luis Obispo glowed beneath the creamy, translucent deck: a modern day Atlantis. Another forty-five minutes and I’d be home.

Center handed me off to Rancho Bonita Approach. The controller cleared me for the ILS approach into Runway Eight. I nailed the localizer dead-nuts center, squared the glide-slope indicator, slowed my airspeed and rode the needles all the way down at a steady ninety knots, breaking out of the clouds at 400 feet, feeling fine about what a damn gifted pilot I was — until I bounced it on. As Wilbur or Orville once said, every landing’s an adventure.

I taxied in and shut down. The airport was quiet. No grumbling whine of jet turbines. No piston-driven engines. Only the whisper of the wind intruded upon the darkness — a tranquility so perfect, a man could almost forget his troubles.

Almost.

My ex-wife’s Jaguar was parked in Mrs. Schmulowitz’s driveway. There was a light on in my garage apartment. I didn’t know whether to be enraged by the intrusion or aroused. As I unlocked the door and entered, I found Savannah in my bed, under the sheets, a nickel-plated revolver with an eight-inch barrel and plenty of scrollwork pointed at me. My cat was perched atop her chest, purring, his paws tucked contentedly underneath him.

“Your landlady let me in,” she said, lowering the gun as I locked the door behind me. “I told her I was your sister. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Once again I find myself asking, ‘What’re you doing here, Savannah?’”

“I’m scared.”

“You told me in Santa Monica that you thought your father might know something about what happened to Arlo. Is that why you’re afraid?”

“I asked him if he knew anything and he said no. But he’s acting very weird. Ever since you went to go see him. He thinks people are out to get him. Even you. He says he doesn’t know who to trust anymore.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“I’m sorry I got you into all this, Logan. I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you, that’s all.”

I nodded with my chin toward her gun. “Where’d you get the fancy shootin’ iron? Roy Rogers?”

The revolver was a gift from her father, she said, given to her after Arlo moved out. A woman without a man needs protection, Carlisle had told her. He’d even paid for shooting lessons. I asked her how she got my address.

“Online.”

You can find just about anything online. Edible movie props. The most shocking items ever recovered from a dog’s stomach. The secret history of the mullet. Anything and everything but a surefire way to purge yourself of those roiling emotions you feel deep inside for that one woman you wish you could forget and hope like hell you never will.

I tossed my wallet and keys on the wooden orange crate that served as my nightstand and dropped my loose change in an empty coffee can on top of the pink Frigidaire.

“You feed the cat?”

“I tried. He didn’t seem very hungry.”

Kiddiot looked as happy as I’d ever seen him, sitting there on my ex-wife all nice and cozy, purring his feline ass off.