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"I'll be done in a second. Maybe we can catch a drink or something. It's on me tonight."
    "Sorry, Mr. Jacobo. Maybe later, OK?"
    "You're a hard case, Emma." He snickered. "A real hard case."
    #
    Thank God.
    I was relieved to get out of there, but relief was just the flip side of fear. I felt spaced and wired and my imagination was starting to run amok. Closing the office door, I walked down the hall into the convenience store, checking the overhead mirror to see if anybody was hanging around in the aisles. The station was quiet – a dead zone on the night shift. Janice sat behind the counter, chin propped on her hand, leafing through a National Enquirer. She didn't look up when I walked by. Didn't see me at all.
    The ice machine rattled. A phone rang in back and I wondered who was calling that time of night. Maybe Heberto had talked Deacon into getting rid of me. Maybe they were making arrangements to compact the Lexus and dump my twitching corpse. I ran all these grisly movies: gang bangs and knives, arteries spurting across the floor in the warehouse, locos bagging my head and hands, wrapping my torso in a plastic sheet. I made the front door, but I didn't want to go outside. Too dark. Too quiet. Leaves scattered through a circle of streetlight on the corner and a trash bag rolled by the pumps in the empty lot. I checked the shadows by the propane tanks in case somebody was hiding in the alley.
    I was gripped. Losing it big time. I had to get my keys from Vincent and figure out what to do, and I needed a drink or something. A Valium. A lobotomy. Nobody had decided jack, I told myself. Nobody knew anything yet and nothing was going to happen for days, maybe weeks – if anything was going to happen at all. Like Deacon had said, this could all be a lot of nothing. Except it wasn't. One way or another, I couldn't do anything but wait.
    A pickup clattered by on Hollis, dragging its muffler along the blacktop in a shower of sparks. I waited until the street was empty, then walked over to the Hot Box, checking my back, scanning the alleys and sidewalks. I kept expecting to see Baldy turn a corner in the Lexus or a couple of Oakland cops pull up and nail me with their spotlight. I could hear a voice – Deacon's voice – and I didn't like what he was saying:
    "I know, Herb, I know. You're right. I like her, but why take a chance? Get Castel to dump her in the Bay – Arn, too, when he gets out on bail – and I'll figure out what to do with the Lexus. I don't think she suspects anything. We played it real good."
    Lovely.
    They say everybody has millions of these tiny bugs that look like hairy monsters with tusks and horns and dozens of eyes crawling all over their skin.
    I could feel them.

CHAPTER SIX
     

    The Hot Box was dead. A longhair in a stained T-shirt banged on the pinball machine by the door and a couple janitors were shooting pool at the table in back. The longhair checked me out when I walked in, but he was just a neighborhood druggie; I'd seen him around before. The janitors looked like janitors in grubby overalls. One of them leaned back to chalk his cue and I could feel his eyes trailing me across the room, or maybe it was just my imagination. When I glanced in his direction, he had turned back to the game, just another fat old man.
    Everything looked normal. Too normal. Vincent, the owner, stood behind the bar, polishing glasses and talking to a drunk hunched over a draw and a bowl of pretzels. I recognized the drunk. He was this sleaze-bag reporter named Brown who chased dirt for a Berkeley scandal rag when he wasn't busy drinking himself to death. A TV flashed scenes of chaos over their heads: Muslims waving rifles, a truck exploding in a market. The grill was shut down and pans clattered in the kitchen.
    Then I saw her.
    Steffy was sitting at a table back in the shadows, staring at her bottle like a zombie. "Great," I muttered. Just what I needed. I'd forgotten about the message Vincent had left with Deacon