David glanced back at Diane's Explorer and saw Blake in the driver's seat. Neither waved. "Isn't that the guy who helped you bring Clyde in?" David asked.

"Yeah. Blake."

David started toward the Explorer, then stopped and turned back to the van. "Officer Bronner, remind me to send you over some slides of lip- and tongue-cancer victims."

Bronner spit a brown jet of saliva into an empty Coke can. "I'll do that," he said.

David gave Blake a slight nod as Blake climbed out of the Explorer, turning over the vehicle to him. David climbed into the driver's seat. He watched his rearview mirror as he pulled out, to make sure Jenkins and Bronner weren't following him.

Chapter 71

ED'S voice was high-pitched and irritated. "You paged me 911. This better be an emergency."

"It is."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in my car."

"Are you in imminent danger?"

"No."

Ed took a deep breath. "All right. We need to get our signals straight. Cornered in a shootout-that's a 911. Waking up in a bathtub of ice with a missing kidney. That's a 911."

"Look, this is extremely important. The cops are staking me out to catch Clyde. I managed to sneak out, and I only have a brief window." David yanked the Explorer over to the side of the road. "Where are you? I'm coming over."

"How do you know they're not following you?"

"Because I've been driving in loops and circles all over the city for the past hour and a half. I'm not as much of a dumb-ass as when you first met me."

"Jury's still out on that one, Spier."

"Where are you?"

"I don't take meetings at home."

"Where are you?"

Ed paused for a moment, as if debating with himself. "I'm at Five-thirty-four Federal, just south of Wilshire. Apartment Six."

"Thank you," David said. "Thank you. I'll be there in less than- " He stopped, looking up at the street sign ahead. "Where the hell am

I?"

Before letting David enter, Ed made him explain himself at the door. The small ground-floor apartment was ransacked. Drawers pulled from the dressers and dumped, mattress sliced open, plates shattered. Holes had been punched into the walls at regular intervals in a search that went even behind the sheetrock. Ed moved through the mess with a practiced gait that showed he'd grown accustomed to it.

On a long folding table in the corner sat five or six computers of different shapes and sizes, screens blinking, monitors humming. About ten Nextel cell phones were lined up, charging. A bank of small televisions showed what appeared to be live shots of several rooms, from presumably hidden cameras. David watched a woman lean forward into what must have been a one-way mirror and attempt to floss an entrenched piece of food from between her teeth.

Sitting in a rolling chair, Ed began to splice a wire that led to a minuscule microphone. "Don't ask questions. Not a one."

David looked around for somewhere to sit. Finally, he picked up a slashed pillow and set it on top of an overturned bookcase, forming a makeshift banquette. He sat cautiously so as not to stretch the stitches in his side.

Ed looked up from his work and pointed at David. "Yes, I trust you, but let me tell you, if you mention one thing about this location to one person, I'll know. And believe me, I'm not someone you want to cross."

David gazed across the bank of screens. A skinny man was fucking what looked to be an obese call girl on a mahogany desk somewhere. "I believe you," he said.

A week ago, he would have been horrified to be threatened; now he found it almost flattering.

"Want something to drink?" Ed asked.

David reached for an unbroken tumbler at his feet.

"No, no. I keep the clean ones over here." Ed pulled a glass from a stack sitting atop a fallen dartboard and filled it with water.

He and David sat in perfect silence, David sipping from the glass nervously, though he wasn't thirsty. "So can you do it?" David asked. "Get me a bug of some kind?"

"Yes, and we call it a digital transmitter these days, Joe Friday." Ed flared his hand like a magician, and a flat metal disk appeared in his palm. About the size of a watch battery, it was dense with tiny components, like a computer's motherboard. "Works off radio frequency." Leaning over, he pulled what looked like a walkie-talkie from a desk drawer that had been left on the floor. "Here's your receiver. I go with the Motorola HT one thousand because it's more compact than a Saber, so you can strap it to your belt without looking like you have a perennial hard-on." He smiled, his grin a white crescent in the white of his face. "It'll get the RF transmission and kick it up to this" -he held up a molded, skin-colored earpiece- "as long as you're within a few blocks."

"I won't be within a few blocks. I'll be in the middle of a stakeout in Venice."

Ed ran his hand across the top of his head. It made a rasping sound on the red stubble. "A challenge. I love challenges. Where's Peter live?"

"Westwood. A few blocks east of the hospital."

"Where's his office?"

"On Le Conte."

"How many stories is the building?"

"Four."