“I know that. Exactly what shit are you talking about?”
“My will. Weather gets most of it, but if I got killed tomorrow you’d get ten million.”
“Jeez. And I forgot to bring my gun with me.”
“I’m not joking,” Lucas said. “What I’m trying to tell you is,whatever you do, you don’t have to start saving for your retirement. When I croak, you get somewhat rich. When Weather croaks, you get even richer. You’re basically trust fund scum. You don’t need Haynes.”
Letty looked down at the tabletop, then said, “You’re telling me I can do what I want. I don’t have to do something I might not like because I think it would be prudent.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a pretty heavy burden. Thinking for yourself.”
“Yes, it is.”
—
THEY STOPPEDtalking about money and spent some time driving around, chatting about the Deese case, and Bob and Rae, and Virgil Flowers and Jenkins and Shrake. When he dropped her off at the condo, he was looking at six hours down to LA.
She kissed him on the cheek, before she got out of the car, and said, “Thanks. I needed the talk.”
“Gimme a last thought.”
“Slocum Haynes said I could call him at home any evening after seven o’clock his time. To chat. I’ll give him a call tonight. See what more he has to say for himself and his job.”
—
LUCAS SPENTsome time thinking about Letty as he drove south through the Central Valley. When she said, “And I forgot to bring my gun with me,” she was joking, but she did have a gun. She kept it stashed in a safe-deposit box, and a cop friend of Lucas’s with the California Bureau of Investigation would take her out toa range a few times a year to burn up some 9mm. Lucas had thought she might aim for the FBI or possibly the CIA, or some other gun-toting law enforcement agency, but her interests had changed at Stanford.
He had no idea where she would wind up but didn’t doubt that it would be interesting.
—
THE TRIP TOLAwas fast: he arrived after rush hour, and the 5 and the 405 fed right into Marina del Rey. He checked back into the Marriott, called Bob and Rae, and met them at the entrance to the bar.
They both looked at him for a long five seconds, then Rae took hold of Lucas’s biceps and said, “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” Lucas said.
Bob: “You look like shit. You’re kinda gray. You gotta start eating, man.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Lucas said, pulling away from Rae. “It’ll take a while to get it all back, but I’m right there... What are we doing?”
“That English dude comes on at six o’clock at Flower Child’s,” Rae said. “We could have a few beers and go to bed and start tomorrow or we could walk down there right now and jack him up.”
“I don’t need a beer,” Lucas said. “And I got the jack.”
CHAPTER
NINE
Los Angeles had been working its way through a heatwave, with rolling brownouts killing power across the basin. Washington Boulevard wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t as brightly lit as it had been in May.
As they walked toward Flower Child’s, Rae said, “All right, we’re gonna jack him up and you said you got a jack. What’s the jack?”
“I’d rather talk about your love life,” Lucas said. “I can’t believe that it’s taken this long for you to nail Tremanty.”
“She can’t, either,” Bob said. “I told her why, but she’s not buying it.”
