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"Thank you, sir, but I really don’t need it I’ve got enough, h"

"Oh, Jesus, help ly aware that this was the first tiht of Him--in decades

"Let’s talk about who you’re really working for, sir"

"I told you--"

"But I lied when I said I believed you"

Zzzzrrrrrrrrrrrr

"What is that?" Redlow asked

"Testing"

"Testing what, damn it?"

"It works real nice"

"What, what is it, what’ve you got?"

"An electric carving knife," the kid said

6

Hatch and Lindsey drove ho their ti to K-Earth 1011 FM, and singing along with golden oldies like "New Orleans," "Whispering Bells," and "California Dreamin’" She couldn’t reh in the old days they had done it all the time When he’d been three, Jimmy had known all the words to "Pretty Wo "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" withouta line For the first time in five years, she could think of Jiuel, south of Laguna Beach, on the eastern side of the coastal hills, without an ocean view but with the benefit of sea breezes that hborhood, like most south-county developments, was so meticulously laid out that at tin with astreets, iron streetlaements of palreenbelts with beds of colorful floere so soothing to the eye and soul that the subli

As an artist, Lindsey believed that the hands of reat beauty as nature was, and that discipline was fundamental to the creation of real art because art wasin the chaos of life Therefore, she understood the impulse of the planners who had labored countless hours to coordinate the design of the corilles in the street drains that were set in the gutters

Their two-story house, where they had lived only since Jimmy’s death, was an Italian-Mediterranean model--the whole community was Italian Mediterranean--with four bedrooms and den, in creae ficus trees flanked the front walk Malibu lights revealed beds of i azalea bushes As they pulled into the garage, they finished the last bars of "You Send Me"

Between taking turns in the bathroo fire in the family-room fireplace, and Lindsey poured Baileys Irish Cream on the rocks for both of them They sat on the sofa in front of the fire, their feet on a large,ottoman

All the upholstered furniture in the house was ht natural tones It ood backdrop for--the s

The sofa was also hugely coood for conversation and, as she discovered for the first ti turned into necking, and their necking escalated into petting, as if they were a couple of teenagers, for God’s sake Passion overwhelmed her as it had not done in years

Their clothes came off slowly, as in a series of dissolves in ahow they had gotten that way Then they were just as ether in a silken rhythht The joyful naturalness of it, escalating froency, was a radical departure fro the past five years, and Lindsey could almost believe it really was a dream patterned on some remembered scrap of Hollywood eroticism But as she slid her hands over the muscles of his arms and shoulders and back, as she rose to ain, and as she felt him loose himself within her and dissolve from iron to molten flow, she onderfully, acutely aware that it was not a dreaht sleep and ith this release, only now fully awake for the first ti the past half-decade, a night their clothes scattered on the floor and hearth behind thee Chinese sleigh bed, with less urgency than before, more tenderness, to the accompaniment of murmured endearments that see The less insistent rhythm allowed a keener awareness of the exquisite textures of skin, the marvelous flexibility of muscle, the fir of their hearts When the tide of ecstasy crested and ebbed, in the stillness that followed, the words "I love you" were superfluous but nonetheless musical to the ear, and cherished

That April day, froht until surrender to sleep, had been one of the best of their lives Ironically, the night that folloas one of Hatch’s worst, so frightening and so strange

By eleven o’clock Vassago had finished with Redlow and disposed of the body in afashion He returned to the Blue Skies Motel in the detective’s Pontiac, took the long hot shower that he had intended to take earlier in the night, changed into clean clothes, and left with the intention of never going there again If Redlow had er

He drove the Camaro a few blocks and abandoned it on a street of decrepit industrial buildings where it ht sit undisturbed for weeks before it was either stolen or hauled off by the police He had been using it for ait from one of the woed license plates on it a few ti the replacements fro back to the motel, he drove away in Redlow’s Pontiac It was not as sexy as the silver Cah for a couple of weeks

He went to a neo-punk nightclub naton Beach, where he parked at the darkest end of the lot He found a pouch of tools in the trunk and used a screwdriver and pliers to reray Ford parked beside him Then he drove to the other end of the lot and reparked

Fog, with the cla dead, moved in from the sea Palm trees and telephone poles disappeared as if dissolved by the acidity of the hts adrift in thehe liked Loud, dirty, and dark

Reeking of smoke, spilled liquor, and sweat The band hit the chords harder than any e into each tune, twisting the ly repetitious rhyth each nue amplifiers, they rattled the filthy s and alh on drugs of every variety, so, the preferred color was black, so Vassago fit right in And he was not the only one wearing sunglasses Some of them, both men and women, were skinheads, and some wore their hair in short spikes, but none of thee spikes and cock’s combs and colorful dye jobs that had been a part of early punk On the ja each other and roughing each other up,each other up in some cases, but no one there had ever taken lessons at an Arthur Murray studio or watched "Soul Train"