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he wanted (fuck, needed) was a joint, but while Lee blew hot and cold on cigarettes he was uniformly down on people doing weed at work. Brad was going to be glad when this bit of work was done. It always freaked him, a little. Nothing had ever gone wrong yet but drug buys were drug buys — a fizzy thing to endure even if you didn't have an All-Star hangover, which Brad most certainly did. He had spent the previous evening hanging around the pool with the Reynolds kids and a bunch of others over in Santa Barbara, the Reynolds Seniors out at an attorney-rife party down in Hollywood, cocktails and canap�s and jokes about the new DA. Meanwhile their kids juiced their own party mix: wine, weed and Xbox. Brad wound up passed out in a bedroom with some girl. Not the one who wanted her nose fixed, Karen, who had some big-deal family dinner she couldn't get out of. Just some fifteen-year-old from the High, whose name he never found out but who evidently liked cocaine a whole lot and who he really, really hoped would have forgotten about the whole episode. At 7 a.m. Mr Reynolds came into the room, went to the closet and chose a tie.
    As he left he said, 'Good morning, Bradley.'
    'Morning, Mr Reynolds,' Brad mumbled.
    That was that. Mr Reynolds looked like he had stuff on his mind. Maybe some big law case or something. Hopefully not the fact that his teenage son and daughter were zoned on Valium half the time, supplied by Hudek, via Brad.
    As he sat on the rock Brad was more interested in the question of whether Hudek really had slept with Karen Luchs. It was possible. You never knew with Lee. Though Brad had known him most of his life, walked the same halls and kicked, caught and dribbled the same balls, he never felt he'd gotten to the bottom of his friend. There were questions unanswered. Like where Lee got his drive. Like how he knew how to do things. Like how he was one of those guys you wound up working for, instead of the other way around. Maybe he had screwed Karen, maybe not. Most of them had screwed most of the others at some point in time. It didn't really matter in the end, probably.
    Brad looked up when he heard a polyphonic snatch of the theme from The Simpsons, saw Lee put his Moto to his ear. The conversation lasted about a minute. Hudek didn't raise his voice, but he seldom did, so that didn't prove much. Finally he flipped the phone shut and crooked a finger at Brad.
    'Delay,' Hudek said, when Brad got to the car. His eyes were hard to read.
    'Delayed how?'
    Hudek shrugged.
    'That's kind of fucked up, Lee,' Brad muttered. The sun had made his head hurt worse. 'Lot of people waiting.'
    'I know that.' Hudek shrugged again. 'Can't do it now, is all. Have to be this evening. No biggie.'
    Far as Brad could see, it actually was kind of a big deal. It had never happened before, point one, and point two it was Saturday and a ton of people were waiting for weed and coke. The later they took delivery, the later it would be before they could stop driving around doing drops and start partying themselves. But Hudek was staring out through the windshield in a way that said he was unhappy enough already, so instead of saying anything Brad reached in and got the gun from where it had been lying ready in the rear seat footwell. He took it around back and put it safely in the trunk for the journey home, wrapped in a beach towel. As always, he felt a lot happier when it was put away.
    He dozed off on the way back across the Valley, as Hudek drove a steady fifty along 118, not saying a word. Sleepy played his game all the way home. Beep, beep, ping.
    The sun poured down, making everything flat and bland.
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    After dropping the others off at the Belle Isle mall Hudek drove around the Valley, not heading anywhere in particular. Wound up at a table outside Frisbee's with a cheeseburger and chilli fries, watching cars go by. Anyone glancing his way would have seen a blond kid, sport-toned build and medium tan, clean baggy