And now, here we were, years later, talking like all of it was water under the bridge.

“My little girl’s hurtin’, Cordell,” he said. “Nothing worse on this earth than for a father to see his baby girl in pain. Rips your guts up. You’ll do anything to stop that kinda pain. I mean, anything.”

Mrs. Schmulowitz emerged from her house lugging a galvanized watering can and began dousing the pots of pink geraniums that lined her back porch. I shifted the phone to my other ear and kept an eye on her to make sure she didn’t fall off the top step.

“I’d appreciate you talking to the police, telling ’em what you know,” Carlisle said.

“There’s nothing I can tell them they don’t already know, Gil.”

“Savannah tells me otherwise.”

“Savannah’s mistaken.”

There was a pause. Then Carlisle said, “Listen, Cordell, if I’ve learned one thing thirty years rootin’ around out in the patch, making hole, it’s that there’s never been a sticky situation that couldn’t be unstuck. How much we talkin’ ’bout here?”

“Are you offering me a bribe, Gil?”

“I’m trying to pay you for your valuable time, you stubborn donkey, is what I’m trying to do! Hell, I’ll have the money wired direct to your bank account if that’s what you want. All you gotta do is go talk to the police. An hour out of your day. That’s it. Don’t sound too sticky to me now, does it?”

“I’m not interested in your money, Gil.”

“Well, then hell, hoss,” he laughed, “you’re the only one.”

I was certain he’d checked out my credit report before calling. He knew damn well I was interested in his money. Given my financial straits, I was interested in just about anybody’s money. With the possible exception of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s.

“OK, here’s the deal,” Carlisle said, “I’m flying out to El Molino tonight for a business meeting. I’d sure like it if you could find the time to come on up a spell. We could do breakfast, pow-wow this thing. There’s a little café right there at the airport. Food’s real tasty. Ate there awhile back.”

“I’m not much of a breakfast eater,” I said.

“All right. Lunch, then.”

“It’s a long way to go for lunch, Gil.”

“Not for a crackerjack pilot who’s got his own airplane.”

My head ran through everything I had to do tomorrow: Get up. Look for a job without success. Sink deeper into depression.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I’m pretty booked tomorrow.”

“Well, I don’t doubt it, a man of your many talents. Look, Cordell, I’m just gonna cut right to the chase. How does twentyfive grand sound? You fly up to El Molino in that little ol’ plane of yours, enjoy a nice meal on yours truly, you’re back home come siesta time. No strings attached.”

Twenty-five grand. With no strings attached. I could pay off Larry and still have enough left over to cover the engine overhaul on the Duck.

“C’mon, hoss,” Gil Carlisle said, his voice as silky as a Texas waltz, “you got nothin’ to lose. What do you say?”

I said, “I’ll see you around eleven-thirty.”

I rolled out of bed early the next morning and straight into my patented, ten-minute exercise routine. Push-ups, reverse push-ups, crunches, lower back spasms, quit. Endorphin rush is a cruel hoax. Anyone who’s ever played contact sports at the collegiate level can attest to that in later life. Aerobic exertion is nothing more than pain heaped atop pain. The only relief comes when you’re finally done with abusing your musculoskeletal for the day. Which I more than was.

I stood up and stretched my aching lumbar. A lizard skittered past me and disappeared under the deco pink Frigidaire that came with the apartment. Kiddiot liked bringing in lizards to play with them. The only problem was, after awhile, he’d get bored and go back outside to take a nap or a sunbath, while his reptilian friends invariably found their way under the refrigerator. I used to pull the fridge out from the wall to set them free. But they didn’t want freedom. They would go scurrying from under the refrigerator to under the matching pink stove to die there. Or under the bed to die there. Or under my pressboard, ready-to-assemble Ikea nightstand or dresser. Or under the purple Naugahyde couch that Mrs. Schmulowitz picked up at a police auction (“Nobody else bid on it! Can you believe that?”). Sometimes, the lizards Kiddiot invited in even managed to die behind the molded, one-piece plastic shower stall in my “bathroom,” which was really nothing more than a corner of the garage cordoned off by two flimsy stud walls covered with sheetrock. To make the garage feel bigger, Mrs. Schmulowitz had the entire place painted hospital ship white. To make it feel more homey, she’d put down braided rugs. Over the apartment’s lone window, which afforded a picturesque view of the alley, she’d hung frilly gingham curtains, more suited to a little girl’s room. The cumulative effect did little to obscure the fact that the place was still a garage. But what the hell. It kept the rain off my head on those rare occasions when it rained in Rancho Bonita. Plus, at $750 a month, including utilities and high-speed internet service for my laptop, it was a relative steal by local standards. Throw in the free brisket dinner every Monday night during football season, and I had no complaints.

After showering and shaving, I pulled on a pair of Levi’s and laced up my good Nikes. Hanging next to the stove in the freestanding metal locker that served as my closet were a half-dozen clean shirts. I picked a short-sleeve blue polo. Silk-screened on the breast was the “Above the Clouds Flight Academy” logo, and the silhouette of a high-wing Cessna. Some people said the plane looked like it was flying toward the sunset. Others said it was flying toward a sunrise. It all depended on whether you were a glass halffull or half-empty kind of person, I suppose. Stitched in cursive script below the airplane logo was the self-anointed title, “Chief Flight Instructor.” Talk about delusions of grandeur.

My review of job listings on Craigslist the night before had yielded no viable prospects. I walked through the backyard, down along the left side of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house, through the gate of her picket fence, and fetched the morning paper from her lawn to review what few help wanted ads there were — a last-ditch attempt to hopefully find a job opportunity that would give me the legitimate excuse not to fly up to El Molino and accept a handout from my former father-in-law.

City of Rancho Bonita seeks Animal Control Officer. Hell, I can’t even control an intellectually challenged cat. How could I possibly be expected to arm wrestle possums?

Grassroots Environmental group looking for organizers to help save endangered forests. Yeah, right. Let’s cut down a bunch of trees and grind them into newsprint so we can get the word out about saving the ecosystem.

Couple seeking private chef to prepare fresh, organic meals 3 to 5 nights per week. Forget it. I’m a cook whose idea of an oven timer is a smoke detector.

After three minutes of scanning the want ads, I concluded that there were no jobs to be found in the greater Rancho Bonita area that required my skills, such as they were. I refolded the newspaper, quietly propped it against Mrs. Schmulowitz’s door, and walked back to the garage.

Kiddiot was lounging out on top of the pink refrigerator like the Great Sphinx of Giza. The tip of his tail swayed back and forth, over the edge of the freezer. His eyes were closed, but I knew he was only pretending to be asleep, the way cats do.

I washed the day-old “Savory Turkey Platter” out of his bowl, of which he hadn’t eaten a bite, and replaced it with a fresh can of “Tender Ocean Whitefish and Tuna in Delectable Juices.” I set the food bowl down on the floor near the kitchen sink and waited for him to make his move. He got up, took his time stretching, and hopped onto the sink, then down, onto the floor. He approached his food bowl warily, like it was hiding an improvised explosive device. He sniffed the bowl from a foot away, flicked his tail a couple of times, leaped back on top of the counter, then up onto the refrigerator.