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the question and just dug in his pocket, brought out the clear baggie with the two grams of meth he’d bought that morning. “I just got some stuff I could show him. You know. I could even leave this with you if you want. I mean, I got a lot of it.”
    The kid wiped his brow. “Yeah, man. Sure, okay.” Quieter: “What have you got there, couple of grams?”
    “Yeah. Couple of grams.”
    The guy staring at the bag. Ten hits, if he was good with it.
    Marshall said, “You got a number or something. For your dad?”
    It broke the trance. He looked at the ceiling, a hand rubbing at his neck. Track marks up his forearm, matted over by scarring. “Yeah. Hang on. Yeah, I do.”
    “Well, why don’t you get it. And I’ll just leave all this with you.”
    Marshall jiggled the baggie in his cupped palm. The kid turned and walked away into the house, this funny mincing gait, nudging the wall as he went. Marshall heard thumps, drawers banging, cursing. He waited. A minute later Junior reappeared, a torn scrap of paper in an outstretched hand.
    “That’s his cell. You can get him on that.”
    Marshall tossed him the meth and then he was gone.
    *   *   *
    He drove west on Lomas and pulled in at the university hospital and parked at a pay phone. He placed a call to Child Protective Services and explained the predicament of the little boy and girl he’d met that morning. He didn’t give his name.
    Then he dialed the number Junior had given him.
    Rojas took a long time answering, but he did pick up. “Yeah?”
    Marshall paused. Sun hot on his neck and the vicious glare of it off the concrete around him and he felt the sudden weight of all these things he could set in motion.
    He said, “I’ve got some stuff you might want to look at.”

 
    THREE
    Marshall
    Twenty minutes northbound. Dawn now with the earth all coolly shadowed and domed above him this faultless blue hemisphere from horizon to horizon. He turned off the interstate and swung in beneath the overpass onto a crossroad. A thin lace of road dust strung crookedly in his wake. Just ahead on the right a few storefronts side by side: drugs, a diner, a hardware place. No vehicles in the lots out front. On the left and a little ways up a gas station. No customers and no movement that he could see. Waiting there clientless on that lonely stretch it seemed more a shrine to quietude than anything else. Like that was its purpose and no other.
    He had a quarter tank but he parked up next to a pump and hit the lever to pop the flap. Through the office window the sales guy stood watching idly, arms folded, leaning on the counter. Marshall went in and exchanged pleasantries and paid for forty dollars’ gas. Back outside he could hear sirens. Southbound, growing louder and peaking as they crossed the overpass and then fading again. Two cars. Maybe for him, but he doubted he’d been seen.
    He unscrewed the cap and hooked the nozzle in the tank mouth and set the lever to keep it flowing. There was a pay phone over toward the road. He took some change from the console in the Corolla and walked over and fed the slot and dialed Felix’s number at the house.
    “Yeah?” Groggy, pushing away sleep.
    “It’s me.”
    “Hombre. That Cohen guy keeps calling me. I think you need to talk to him.”
    Marshall said, “What did he want?”
    “I don’t know. Shit, it’s early.”
    Marshall said, “I think you need to get out of the house for a few days.”
    “Why? You moving in?”
    “No. There’re going to be some folks coming looking for me.”
    “That’s all right.”
    “They’re not really the friendly type.”
    Felix thought about it. It took a while. “So what. I just gotta scram?”
    “I’d recommend it.” A dull thunk behind him as the pump finished.
    “Why? What have you done?”
    “Not too much yet. But I think there’ll be some more in store.”
    No answer.
    Marshall said, “Bottom line is I’ve aggravated some people best not aggravated. So I reckon you