“You do remember my last safe house?

“Do you have a better idea?”

“You’re unimaginative, Hood.”

“I’m trying to save your ass.”

“Why bother?”

“So I can enjoy it.”

Suzanne was silent for a long moment. Hood slipped outside the headquarters building into the heat of the evening. Again he almost told her what he knew, but he could not.

“You have to help me help you. Come in.”

“Okay,” she said. “You work out the details. You get the location set up and figure the clues and get the video camera ready. Then I’ll do it. But no safe houses. No protective custody. No cages of any kind. None of that. I’ll tape a statement then I’m splitting. Deal?”

“Deal. There will be at least two more of us, a sergeant and a captain. They’ve done this before.”

“Comforting.”

“I want you to be okay, Suzanne.”

“You busy tonight, Charlie?”

He hesitated. If she was with him she was safer. Suzanne and Allison were safer. He would protect them and bring them to justice.

He couldn’t think of any meaning of the word idiot that didn’t apply to himself. “I hope so.”

Which leaves me three hours to boost a better ride because I can’t entertain Hood in a Sentra. And I need to hit the Burger King on Reseda Boulevard, which I cased last week and looks very good.

I take a taxi to a long-term parking lot by LAX where I’ve got an arrangement with one of the shuttle drivers who has a nice black GTO in a private corner. I pull out the door lock with the slide-hammer, grab the ignition assembly and go to work on the wires. My heart is not steady but my fingers are.

When I’m done I check my time on the Rolex I bought from Carl Cavore for a grand. It’s got ten diamonds on the dial and a rare mother-of-pearl face that tells me I’m gone in seventy-five seconds, not bad for a history teacher who steals cars only as a hobby.

Ten minutes later I’m at the Pep Boys in San Fernando, where another associate of mine replaces the GTO door lock with an off-the-shelf universal that looks fine. And he pulls what’s left of the old ignition and installs an aftermarket imitation that operates on a regular key. Which means I don’t need a key with a microchip to start my new beauty, just a freshly cut key that costs me next to nothing. The work and parts run me six bills but I’m out in less than fifty minutes because this guy doesn’t fool around.

Then to work. I park on a quiet residential street not far from the BK and I get suited up for the job: wig, gloves, pepper spray on my belt, Cañonita in the satchel, mask in my pocket. I’m already wearing the loose trousers and blouse and vest that allow for unrestricted movement in the event I need to run for miles and climb fences to get away from a homicidal maniac. The clothes help disguise me, too. I think a very quick prayer of thanks that the only person in the world who has recognized Allison as me is my own mother. I think I put some doubt in her, however, by questioning the agility of her mind. A little doubt goes a long way.

One of the things that Joaquin liked to do was to work fast, hit three or four remote ranches in one night, steal the good horses and run them up north into the mother lode because that’s where the miners and the money were. Three-Fingered Jack, who rode with Joaquin, used to complain about the thirty-six-hour runs to steal and sell the horses-no sleep, no time to drink or whore or gamble until they’d sold off the horseflesh. In his journal Joaquin admitted to drinking “many gallons of powerful coffee” on his three-day crime binges. He brewed the coffee and carried it in cloth-covered canteens wrapped in serapes to keep it hot and protect the horses.

Jack’s real name was Manuel Garcia. His hand got mangled in a roping accident when he was a boy, thus the finger loss. He was killed alongside Joaquin by Harry Love and his “California Rangers,” and they cut Jack’s three-fingered hand off for ID. The hand was purportedly displayed in the same jar as Joaquin’s severed head, and I’ve seen posters advertising the exhibition of the “HEAD OF JOAQUIN! And the HAND OF THREE-FINGERED JACK!” but there was no hand in the jar I was given by my great-uncle Jack and now keep in the barn down in Valley Center. I miss Valley Center.

Joaquin was credited with stealing roughly fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold and over a hundred horses. According to his journal it was more like twenty thousand in gold and a hundred and forty horses. Historians said he and his gang killed nineteen men, mostly unarmed Chinese mine workers. But according to Joaquin they killed four, and there is nothing dishonest, boastful or evasive in his own account.

All of which runs through my mind as I park in the lot beside the Burger King lot. The two lots are separated by a hedge of lantana and there’s a nice body-sized opening to let me through.

I stride toward the Burger King, all those nice yellows and reds brightly shining within.

I must have timed out the dinner rush pretty well because the dining room has only a few customers and there’s nobody at the counter as I step up and point Cañonita at the young Latina girl whose smile freezes on her pretty face.

“The money.”

“Yes.”

A boy with pimples and a French fry basket in one hand stares at me. The girl working the drive-through stops midsentence. A stout older woman with short red hair barrels out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dirty white towel and glares at me.

I swing the gun on her. “Sit and stay.”

“Where?”

“Right where you are.”

She crosses herself and kneels on the tile while the pretty girl empties the cash register into a plastic take-out bag.

“Double-bag it, please,” I say. “And don’t forget the quarter rolls.”

“Okay, yes.”

“Any dye packs, locators, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave them out.”

“We don’t have those.”

“Somebody’s going to get hurt,” says the manager.

“You volunteering, Red?”

Right then the door opens and in wobbles an old couple, the kind you look at and think, Wow, that’s what I’ve got to look forward to if I’m lucky. Mr. Geezer stops, balanced on a cane. He’s nodding. He’s wearing a blue shirt with a green cardigan over it even though it’s a hundred degrees out. Mrs. Geezer has monumental hair, a scowl and heavy-duty therapeutic nylon support hose. She looks at me.

“We will not eat here, Frank,” she says.

The old man regards me with beautiful gray eyes and he smiles, then pivots and places his cane for the turn.

He’s still nodding as he drops to the floor.

The old woman just stares at him.

The pretty cashier gives me the heavy double bags with one hand and the other goes to her mouth. The kid with the French fry basket says, “Whoa,” and the manager suddenly jumps up and looks over the counter. Two customers rush in from the dining room. The front door opens and three teenaged boys shuffle in then stop, bumping into each other.

I aim Cañonita at the teenagers while I walk across the room and stand over Mr. Geezer. I kneel down and find his carotid pulse with my left hand, my right still holding Cañonita firm on the boys. There isn’t much pulse and his mouth is hanging open some so I figure he’s not breathing right.

“Get down here and CPR this guy,” I say to the wife.

“I don’t know how.”

“Boys, you know how to do CPR, right?”

They mumble and shy away.

“Fuck, what’s wrong with you people? Pretty face, you know CPR?”

“I forgot, I used to know, but…”

“Shut up! Red! Get over here, sister. Your lucky day. And make it quick.”

The manager bursts into the lobby through a windowed kitchen door.

“Do you know CPR?”

“I do not.”

“Watch me. I’m going to show you once. I’m going to explain what I’m doing. Then you’re going to take over. If you make a move on me while I’m breathing for this guy-like if you try to get this mask off or the gun? I’ll come off him and shoot you. Got it?”