Hood actually thinks about this one. Just the trace of a frown passes over his brow. Even if he’s just acting dumb I still love it.

“What’s an orgasm if you don’t feel it?” he finally says.

“That’s what I’m trying to explain, you Bakersfield hick.”

“You value your hot spots, Suzanne.”

“I know I do. And I know this, too, Hood-I won’t be young very long. I’ll use ’em while they’re usable.”

Mr. and Mrs. Geezer come to mind right then. I see Hood and me fifty years from now as Mr. and Mrs. Geezer and I know that’s supposed to warm my heart but it just plain doesn’t.

“You’re pretty much everything my mom told me to stay away from,” says Hood.

“That’s nice to hear. The old bag ever let you have any fun?”

Hood smiles again, nodding, eyes bright and not quite reckless. I kiss him with feeling and when the waiter comes through the ornate curtain into our little nest I tell him to beat it. He smiles and bows and pulls the curtain tight.

Then it’s just a small underwear adjustment and a pull of zipper and I’m riding Hood right there in the pillows. He looks straight into my face. Soon comes a point when my heart is pounding so loud I can’t hear much else and Hood’s usually sharp brown eyes glaze over, and I’m welded to this guy.

When he finally manages to stand and put himself back together, he turns away so I won’t see. Imagine. His hair sticks up on one side. He excuses himself to the men’s room. His wallet has fallen out and is half-hidden under a lush satin pillow so I look it over, finger the bills-eighty-two bucks. I take out two of the twenties, rub them together, then stuff them back. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I set the wallet at his place on the low table.

A few minutes later Charlie is back with his hair wetted down like Jordan does his before school. Charlie looks proud of himself, like he just got away with something, which he did.

“My wallet,” he says.

“Better count the cash.”

He sits down and a while later we have a dessert made of dates and cream. Most excellent.

Hood has another glass of wine and we don’t say much.

I look at him and he sees I’d like to do it again but he shakes his head no with a toothy smile and raises his fingers in a cross like I’m a vampire or something.

I drive him up Sunset fast in the GTO and blast up into the Hollywood Hills to this turnout I know.

We park and sit in the car just like real lovers, looking down on the city lights with the windows down and the breeze bringing us the smells of the arid hills but not so strong that they interfere with the new car smell, the finest fragrance on earth in my opinion.

I hold Hood’s hand and rest my head on his shoulder.

Hood sat on the safe-house couch and loaded a new disc into the recorder. He made sure the time and date were right. Wyte’s aluminum-cased laptop sat on the coffee table before him. Out on the deck Marlon was setting up the tripod. Suzanne stood with her back to Marlon, taking in the afternoon view of Marina del Rey through the shaggy-headed palms.

Hood could hear their voices through the screen door:

So this is what a safe house looks like.

Safe apartment is all.

What makes a safe house safe?

Only the good guys get in.

Bora Bora Way. Fifth floor. Sunset views. Nice.

We try. You bring the sunglasses?

All I own. Three pair.

Turn around.

Hood watched Suzanne stand at attention before Marlon as he adjusted the glasses like she was a star and he was a director who wanted everything just right. They stood face-to-face, and the breeze blew brown strands of her hair into his face, and they both smiled. Then Marlon positioned her facing the Pacific again and stood back beside the tripod and studied her for a moment.

Try another pair.

I’ve got my Jackie O’s.

Hood watched her trade out the first pair of sunglasses for her Jackie O’s. They were big and curvaceous and dark and Hood figured they’d be perfect for Lupercio.

I don’t get why all the sunglasses. Something tells me it’s not about the way I look.

It’s about the message you send.

She cocked her head and looked at Marlon. Then she turned just enough to see the palms and the beach and the whitecapped ocean beyond them. She turned farther and looked through the sliding glass door to Hood.

The reflection. He’ll see all this in my glasses.

But we want you to look good, too. The Jackie O’s are perfect.

Hood took the camera out onto the deck.

Ten takes later they had it right. Suzanne reassured her friends and family and colleagues that she was fine, she was safe, and this would all be over soon. She told everybody not to worry.

Hood and Marlon listened from the curtained kitchen so as not to be caught on the video. Later, watching the various takes on disc, Hood could see the apartment complex and the palms and the beach and the ocean reflected in the dark lenses.

“It’s Marina del Rey, all right,” said Suzanne. “It’s these apartments. It can’t be anyplace else.”

“Not if you know L.A. like Lupercio does,” said Marlon.

“And Valley Center, Torrance and Bakersfield,” said Suzanne.

She looked at Hood, then at Wyte’s computer, then back at Hood with an odd expression. Hood wondered if the laptop looked as orphaned to her as it now did to him. If so, it might be dawning on her where its owner was, which was downstairs working on her car.

“We appreciate this,” said Marlon. He ran his comb through his shiny black hair. It was a rockabilly do and Hood knew that Marlon was proud of it and wanted Suzanne to notice.

“I appreciate it, too. Thank you. Well, gotta go.”

They shook hands, and Hood walked Suzanne to the elevator then out to her Sentra.

“Where’s the Goat?”

“Resting.”

“Give it back to your friend?”

“Don’t try to figure where I’ve been, Charlie.”

Which is exactly what Hood was doing, going back to the night before. He figured she’d boosted the Goat for the BK job but as yet it hadn’t made the hot list. Sometimes, if the car’s owner was out of town, a stolen car went unreported for days or weeks. Long-term airport parking lots were popular places to make a grab that wouldn’t immediately hit the hot list. But he’d looked hard at the ignition when Suzanne wasn’t aware and it looked new to Hood, factory. And if she pulled the door lock with a slide-hammer, then she’d either gotten lucky and been able to work the assembly back in or she’d replaced it.

“Guess I don’t have to tell you to keep moving,” said Hood.

“No. Vaya con Dios, Hood.”

“You, too.”

“Always.”

Back upstairs Wyte was on the couch tapping the keypad of his laptop. A man that Hood had never met sat at the dinette table, two more laptop computers open before him and a box of discs off to one side. He was slender, silver-haired and tanned. Hood recognized him from headquarters-a surveillance specialist. Marlon sat across from the specialist, watching playbacks of Suzanne on the camera viewfinder.

Wyte introduced Hood to Bruce Lister from tech services. “Bruce and I got the tracker on the Sentra while Jones did her video.”

“Take eight’s the best,” said Marlon.

“Check this out, gentlemen,” said Wyte.

He set his laptop on the coffee table. Hood and Marlon sat on either side of him and leaned toward the screen, which displayed a map section of Marina del Rey. A blinking red indicator light moved northbound on Via Marina. The light advanced and the map quadrant slowly scrolled down in accordance with the speed of Suzanne Jones’s Sentra.