I nodded toward the hotel lobby. "I see you didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, either."

"Right. And I can see that you were the answer they sought. Duck!"

I drove my shoulder into the sidewalk, rolled over, and brought the rifle up. I fired.

Corbin placed three well-aimed rounds into the chests of as many armed attackers. I dropped the other two with shots to the head-an old trademark of mine and a damned stupid habit.

Somewhere to the south whined dozens of police sirens.

"Finally," Ann said, unimpressed. She tried to open one of the doors set in a long wall of concrete. No luck. We raced toward the main lobby doors.

Corbin wheezed in great exhausted gasps. "You must know the Ecclesia is after you. They attacked Auberge."

"Yeah," I said. "I had a sort of hunch about that."

"Even Auberge management didn't know, and they've got informants everywhere to give them warnings about raids." He looked behind us at the carnage. "I guess they never thought to infiltrate the Ecclesia."

"But you did?" Ann said.

"A Buddhist friend of mine. She dropped too much acid at Bryn Mawr" "In here," I said. A side door surrendered to my kick. We rushed inside.

The Bonaventure was still in use, though it no longer qualified as the luxury hotel it had once been. The radiation problems this far from Arco South posed no danger, but fear was fear. True, a higher class of derelicts and bums inhabited the less-than-gleaming towers. Most even paid rent. But bums were bums.

To our right sat a greasy hotel clerk reading a newsplaque, the racing information onscreen. His gaze drifted lazily up to us, his eyes widening when he saw the three of us armed with rifles, pistol, and knife. His grease turned to sweat.

"No trouble, man," he said in a piping voice. "We've got protection."

My thumb played threateningly with the pistol's slide safety. "You personally? Right now?"

The clerk gulped like a sea bass and added more sweat to his face. Nervous hands gripped the edge of the counter. His newsplaque clattered to the floor.

"We're looking for someone," Ann said. "A dark-haired girl. Have you seen her?"

The clerk shook his head.

"We won't be long," I said. I cased the lobby area.

The light from the registration desk was the only artificial illumination in the atrium. Sunlight shone muddily through the ring of windows at the top edge of the cylindrical interior. It could have been a dim and restful medieval cathedral except for the pair of drunks snoring against each other on a mezzanine couch.

"Which elevator works?" I asked.

"The left one," the clerk said.

Inside, Ann asked me, "Which floor?" She surveyed the array of buttons. Outside the cracked glass of the elevator walls, what once had been a landscaped indoor pond lay dry and choked with cans and Mylar bags. There were even a few glass bottles here and there, which indicated how long the place had been in that condition.

An eerie image appeared amidst the garbage. Before meshimmeringly ghostlike-floated a view of the smoldering battle outside. I seemed to be viewing it from up high.

I punched for the top floor. "We'll work our way down from the restaurant," I said.

This elevator, at least, didn't groan and shudder. It lifted us quickly and quietly upward past the windows of the atrium, out into hazy daylight. The car glided up the interface between the central and northeast columns. Something clunked, and we jerked to a stop.

"I think we can handle things from here on, Corbin." I aimed the M16 at the elevator doors. "You don't have to follow us."

I moved Ann behind me. She stepped around to my side, knife at the ready.

Corbin shrugged and raised his own rifle. He had regained his breath. "You seem to be having more fun up here than I would be down there. Besides"-he grinned wickedly-"you seem to have gotten everyone more stirred up than I ever could."

The elevator doors parted. Nothing greeted us but a quiet restaurant foyer. Corbin slid around the doors to police the hallway. Ann and I wandered out to watch him. His husky figure darted in and out of niches and doorways with guerrillalike precision.

"You weren't a Buckleyite in college," I said. "You must have been a Minuteman."

He turned to grin at me, then said, "All clear. This way to the restaurant."

We stepped into a place that at one time had been one of the finest eateries in L.A. The new owners had let it slide into a lousy gin mill.

"Is the kid you're looking for about four-eight, dark reddish hair, garish clothes?" Corbin asked, gesturing to a booth by the window.

"Shut your fuckin' mouth, asshole."

"Foul tongue, rotten manners, and about three glasses of Plymouth gin in her?"

Isadora Volante sneered at us from behind a half-empty bottle. An ashtray held a pack and a half of cigarette butts.

"An adequate description," Ann said, stepping past us to the kid's table.

Isadora turned her attention away from us back to the scene several hundred feet below. The crack L.A. Fire Department stood about, casually debating the best strategy for extinguishing the blaze. The police munched doughnuts and watched. A few cops took occasional potshots at the remaining Auberge guards for the benefit of the TV crews.

Everything was under control.

"How'd you get here?" I asked the kid.

She tugged at a thin strap that supported a sheer, lime-green negligee.

"I was in Casino Grande when I felt the same sort of evil vibes I got from the old farts back in the hotel room. I begged one of the guards to let me out through the air conditioning shaft inside the Angeles Plaza."

"Sounds as if you breached their security," Corbin muttered.

"I have my ways. How do you think I was able to warn you back on the hill?"

I gazed around the restaurant. "We've got to get out of here without running into cops, feds, or Ecclesia."

"There might be a way," Corbin said, "but we'd have to deal with the Ecclesia." He pointed upward.

"The Huey." I shouted to the anemic old bartender, "You! How do we get to the roof?"

He pointed toward the kitchen door. Corbin ran through to check it out. I turned to the kid. "Let's go."

"Forget it. I'm cutting free. You guys are freaks."

"Auberge is gone, sugar. Look out the window-those're cops you see milling about. They'll be up here when they start thinking about it."

"That scares me like a limp prick," she said in a drunken slur. "I can handle cops. I can head up to Frisco-to Auriga, under Union Square."

Ann put a gentle hand on the child's shoulder. "How will that settle your account with the Ecclesia?" Spoken like a true comptroller.

"Who?"

"The ones who cut you up."

She turned away from Ann's penetrating gaze to stare furiously out the window, chin propped on hand. Down below, the cops had rounded up a few Auberge guards and were enjoying a workout on them with fists and clubs for the benefit of the TV crews. Suddenly, a startlingly bright beam of green light flashed from a slit cut into a concrete slab. Three cops fell down twitching, their abdomens exploding from the unfortunate effects of a high-wattage pulsed laser.

Isadora frowned and turned back to me. "How do you plan to get back at them? Spike their Geritol?"

I smiled and tucked my pistol away to take her by the hand.

"Ever take a ride in a space shuttle?"

Ann, the kid, Corbin, and I climbed through an access shaft that might have been built for a pygmy. Fifteen claustrophobic feet later, we emerged into a shack on the roof of the Bonaventure's central cylinder.

Corbin and I quietly peered through the doorway to see the aircraft sitting motionless on the helipad. The pilot and gunner paced nervously about.

"They're debating what to do next." Corbin raised his rifle to sight in on the gunner. "They don't want to encounter a wire-guided missile or gamble on a run-in with police choppers. What they don't realize is that the missiles are probably keeping the police away, too. Cops know how much their equipment costs." He squeezed the trigger.